The *uneventful* journey

The carriage was filled with wooden boxes, the boxes were covered with a white cloth. Jake did not really care about what was inside these boxes, he was primarily sitting and circulating black magic around his body. He wanted to reach a new efficiency, where he could enter the mode whenever.

After a few hours Rudolf started fiddling his hand, he started humming a song and looking around for anything interesting. Then he cried out, "How long until we are there", "Two days" the merchant was audibly annoyed from this one comment.

The rest of the day was spent with bumpy roads, and Rudolfs fiddling. The fiddling nor bumps did not disturb Jake that much, he was in deep concentration circling the black magic around his body. The black magic felt dense and heavy like mercury, but the second Jake got unfocused the magic would be dispersed like colour in water. Also, the body was not shaped like a circle, it had multiple different ends therefore circling the black magic was tougher than you'd think. 'The heart really does make it look easier than it is' Jake thought as he lost control of another strand of Black magic. Strangely as black magic passed through Jakes's brain he would feel his senses dampen. After hours of practising Jake entered his demon form by speeding up the black magic.

This scared the shit out of Rudolf.

He did not feel any differences, except that the black magic was more efficiently circling, he theorised that he could stay in this state for a longer period of time now. He returned into his normal form to find Rudolf standing with his burning sword drawn.

"RETURN MY COMPANION YOU WITCH" Rudolf screamed scaring the shit out of the merchant.

Jake broke into laughter, Rudolf had this silly side to him, unexplainable hate of witches. Everything that confused or annoyed him would always be related to witches. If a stray cat were to jump on him, "Witches I shall not be a part of your pranks" then he would walk away pridefully. If something unexpected ever happened, "The witches have fooled us, brothers". Nobody really knew where the Shakespearian language came from, but he always went into it.

Then the carriage stopped, they heard multiple small steps, like a crab waddling over somewhere. The woman fearlessly walked over to the back of the carriage before literally screaming at Rudolf. " You FUCKING UNCOOKED GOBLIN CHICKEN, SHUT THE FUCK UP. I WOULD RATHER GET FUCKING RAPED, RAPEEEED OF FUCKING BANDITS THAN HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOUR CHILDISH MOANING. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUP" she screamed, then she waddled her way back to the front. Jake was red from holding his laughter in, whilst Rudolf had his jaw hanging open, completely amazed

Needless to say, Rudolf was completely silent the rest of the ride. The ride continued quite uneventfully and eventually, it was night and the carriage stopped. They heard the horrifying waddling louder each second and Rudolf started sweating( cough cough reference).

"We will make camp here for the night, you can sleep in the carriage if you want." She muttered before waddling back to her carriage. Rudolf was drenched in sweat at this point and Jake felt kind of exhausted from the black magic practice he did. It had heavily drained Jake mentally and he could not wait to sleep. Nevertheless, he fell into a deep sleep shortly after. Rudolf was left there drenched in his own sweat wanting to sleep but failing each time. He had been sitting down filled with energy, doing nothing the entire day, his body rejected the notion of doing that for the rest of the night. After a few minutes of attempting to sleep, he simply exited the carriage.

It was the middle of the night and therefore pitch black. Without a lantern, he could not see his own hands. He did have a skill that could make his hand start burning, or he could make his sword a makeshift lantern. However, last time he tried doing this he got surrounded by a pack of wolves. Now he was deeper in the forest and he did not want to find out what creatures lurked here. At least not through that fashion, instead he would go on an old fashioned adventure finding the creatures in their own lair.

Rudolf had just learnt a new skill which he nicknamed "flame vision", in reality, it was simply a weaker heat vision. He got it after versing a shadow mage, who he had issues locating but through this trick that problem disappeared. This vision only worked for 10 meters which made it quite restricted. He picked a direction and started venturing. He would burn the ground every few metres in order to know his way back. He got the idea from an old folklore

There he was, alone in the middle of the night, in the middle of who knows where venturing like a blind idiot. One would wonder how this person would ever achieve the title of best with his idiotic actions, never failing to surpass his previous ones.

The air was cold, the ground was wet with branches littering every other step. Rudolf felt as if he had eyes on him as if the trees were staring at him. He shrugged this off due to his anxiety, it was only natural to feel afraid in the middle of the night after all. Then that thought quickly disappeared when he saw it.

Precisely ten meters away there was a creature. The creature had a humanoid shape, it looked as if it had been starved since there were only flesh and bones. It was on all four, staring at Jake. You could not call it staring however, because it had no facial features. No hair, no ears, no noose except one thing. It did have a mouth and right now it was smiling wide showing its gruesome, bloody, sharp teeth. Still, Rudolf could feel himself get pierced by its look, and right now he was not thinking about how or why. He felt the murderous intent radiating from the creature, it gave Rudolf a tingle in his stomach.

It started crawling forward, Rudolf was standing still almost frozen, staring at it with his sword in his hands. His sword was burning and his body was also on flames, he could not control himself and therefore his body had automatically gone into this mode. The creature's smile got wider and showed more of its teeth. It stood up on two legs with it's back hunching over showing its gruesome spine, it was about three meters tall. Where its fingers should have been it had claws, it stood there still almost as if teasing its prey.

Suddenly, Rudolf ran forward charging straight at the creature, the creature was caught by surprise and jumped backwards shrieking. It had made a mistake, Rudolf was never scared, no instead he was excited, ignorance was truly a blessing in disguise. He had been egging for a big fight all day and he finally got what he wanted.

The creature was now taking this completely seriously, it had apparently found another predator instead of prey. It kept a set distance from Rudolf using its long thin legs to move. They ended up circling around each other,

Then it jumped forward striking Rudolf with its sharp claw. Rudolf brandished his sword to deflect it, it had merely been a test to measure out the other's strength. Rudolf then attacked to which the creature jumped back. Rudolf felt so excited that he lost all control of his powers. At that moment his sword was glowing with a blue flame. Rudolf felt the heat from the sword, it felt as if it was hot enough to burn the burning man. Rudolf's mouth was dry at that moment.

The creature then jumped at Rudolf. Rudolf felt the heat very distinctly as he brandished the sword. The creature hunched over to bite Rudolf, it caught Rudolf with surprise, and his left shoulder got heavily injured. He could feel the pain but it quickly recovered due to his healing, the same could not be said for the creature. Its mouth had been burned in the process of biting Rudolf which made it shriek. They both started swinging their weapons with a new passion. There started appearing visible marks in the claw. Then, with a slash it's claw got to cut through simply because of the heat.

The creature let out another shriek before jumping on Rudolf, it did not care if it were burned. It would take this son of a bitch down. The creature bit into his right shoulder whilst sticking its other claw into his stomach. In response, Rudolf tied his legs around the creature's waist before hugging it as hard as he could muster. He took out all the fire from his sword and put it into his body. His body was now burning with a blue flame, the creature stopped biting and simply started shrieking. The pain was mind-numbing and it simply wanted to run away, but Rudolf had other plans as he hugged even tighter. It kept on shrieking louder and louder, jolting its body trying to get rid of Rudolf until it stopped. It had died and Rudolf pushed it to his side.

In the middle of nowhere, Rudolf was lying beside a burned corpse, letting his healing do its wonders. The creature had seriously damaged Rudolf and he had pushed himself quite hard this fight. His clothes had burned up, the only thing he had left was his armour which was red now from all the heat. Eventually, the healing stopped, he was not completely healed but if he went any further he would pass out. He stood up and started limping back to the carriage following the burned marks.

He climbed into the carriage, put his head against the wall and quickly fell asleep. This time Rudolf was smiling.