Chapter 37

I shoved the meat in my mouth and started quickly chewing as I took off by imbuing my aura within my own muscles in my legs. I chose each and every muscle perfectly and did the miniscule adjustments for each stride in order to optimize my running speed and minimize my aura output as had become a habit for me. I swallowed the meat as I arrived at the scene not even 10 seconds later. I might be in a rush, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna waste this heavenly meat.

I skidded to a stop in the dirt and sent up a huge dust cloud in the air, at least twice my height. I cracked my neck with my right hand, which was still wrapped up tightly in bandages. Then I took off my hood. The brown cloak/hood flapped in the heavy winds I had just created by my speed and looked like a cape.

I looked towards the group in front of me and saw an ugly scene. There was a group of 6 adventurers who were surrounding the Veara's carriage. The bandit's were using the trees to hide and shoot spells at the group. 2 adventurers were badly injured, one warrior, and one thief. There was a priestess who was holding her staff in the air and casting a protection magic around all 15 people who were cornered. A translucent golden light surrounded them in a semi-circle that looked like half a sphere.

The priestess was sweating heavily, clearly struggling and was also the only priestess there, because she was busy protecting her comrades and the Veara's guards, she wasn't able to heal the two injured people.

There were at least 40 bandit's with swords surrounding the shield, eagerly awaiting the time the spells sent from the mages in the trees penetrated through. The group defending was easily outnumbered three to one as two of the 15 people were a noble lady and her maid, both shaking in fear.

The relentless spells bounced off the barrier, causing it to glow dimmer with each passing moment. The three other adventures were a tank, who was carrying a massive shield, a mage, who was a small girl with a staff the size of her body, and another warrior, who also had a bow on his back, he seemed like a combo of archer and warrior. There were also 7 knights with light armour on as they probably expected to be mere decoration.

One of the seven was clearly the leader, but he was lying on the floor next to the two injured adventurers. His body flickered with a transparent white glow at times, clearly indicating he was a master swordsman, though with how bright his aura was, he was a weak one.

I took all of this in within a second, a skill that was natural to me after I lost my memories. Perhaps I was a battle maniac, but I was able to instantly analyze and react to situations almost instinctively.

I dug the balls of my feet in the dirt only a second after ripping my hood off my head. My sandals I wore out had torn long ago, so I was barefoot. I instinctively launched forward with such precision and minimal effort, it felt like I was effortlessly bouncing off a trampoline.

I arrived at one of the mages behind the tree's and caught him by the face as I landed a few feet behind him. I pivoted on my heel and smashed the back of his head into the tree I landed next too, I immediately picked up his staff and cocked my arm.

By the moment the other mages reacted to my first kill, I had already whipped the staff at them, passing through one's skull and pinning a second mage to a tree through his chest.

Heh, two bastards, one staff.

"W-What?!" Someone finally spoke up about what I had done, but his voice wasn't urgent enough to alert some of the other's.

I started using the thick tree trunks as footholds to zip through the forest, each step crushed a tree and caused it to fall. I arrived at the mage who called out a moment ago and crushed his chest with a kick before he could complete his spell. It's not that he was slow, I was just too fast.

With that, 4 out of the 6 mages were killed.

However, it also meant that the other two mages and the 35 warriors noticed my presence.

"Get him!" One of the warriors shouted at the mages.

With this, all the spells were redirected in my direction.

Multiple scythes of wind charged in my direction, while rocks started to float out of the ground and launch in my direction.

I dashed sideways, skidding to a stop on the dirt once again and kicking up a large dust cloud, then I started weaving through the trees, as two mages launched a constant barrage of wind, earth, and water spells at me.

Avoiding fire, huh. Smart, don't wanna start a forest fire and kill yourselves.

I glanced back towards the Veara group. The priestess had made use of my distraction just like I wanted her too and had started healing her friends, while the mage had charged up a large scale wind spell during the time the priestess was holding off the attacks. She sent a large tornado with massive scythes that were cutting through the trees cleanly and sending them tumbling. A couple bandits got caught by this tornado and were either split in half or sent flying into the air and landed with tons of cuts all over their bodies.

At this point the battle was about even, with the wind spell having killed around 8 people. Even though the bandits had more warriors the adventurers and knights were clearly higher quality fighters. The warrior and thief who were injured earlier back to fighting and the mage and archer in the back supporting them and the knights in the fight made it a good fight. The captain of the knights was still injured as the priestess had healed her friends first and passed out from overextending her mana and stamina.

I took this all in during just a glance and smirked. They reacted nearly perfectly, just like I had hoped they all would, the only thing they could have done better was healing the master swordsman knight leader before the injured adventures, but that's neither here nor there.