Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) by V.A. Lewis (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

I aimed for the next target, slightly further back. Once again, I hit all of my shots. Only when I went for the one after that, did I begin to miss; and even then, it was only around one in every ten or so attempts that missed.

Yet, despite all that— the deluge of Magic Bolts, the accuracy, and the fact that only a single spell failed so far— I was only getting more annoyed. My attacks were barely pattering the wooden targets! It was nothing like Karna’s spell which blew apart half of it!

A Magic Missile, from what I read, was supposed to be able to at least do as much damage as the ‘Blast Enchantment’ Karna used on his arrow. Yet, ten Magic Bolts were incomparable to it. I had to do something to make it stronger; there was a fundamental difference between the power of the spell Karna cast and these measly balls of energy.

And I was going to figure out what it was.

***

Karna ducked under a sword swing. The wooden sword whooshed just above his head. He grabbed the arm as it went past, and he twisted. In one swift motion, he had the other Goblin in an armlock, and held a wooden dagger behind his head.

Karna let go, and the Goblin staggered to the side. He got back up, picking up his bow and arrow, as he surveyed the battlefield. Good, he thought. It had only been an hour, but his team was already winning.

It was a simple siege exercise. There was one defending team and one attacking team. If you got eliminated, you could come back in after ten minutes. These were the basic rules of the war game.

Karna was on the defending team. Being an archer, he could just hide behind cover and shoot the occasional arrow like others sometimes did. But he did not like doing that. He felt that it was lazy. And yet, that was what he was doing at the moment.

Karna felt… content. Or maybe satisfied was a better word. He did not like the little Human girl that was named Melas. Well, he did not like Humans in general, but he especially did not like her.

Not only was she not a Dark Crusader, but he had to run errands for her. Him! One of the most talented Goblins in magic his age! Sure, he was not like Jasmin the Voodoo. But maybe one day, he could be. He was 13 years old, still a young adult with plenty of time to learn.

He had to go on scouting missions for Melas. Steal potions for her. He did not like doing anything for her. She was useless. The strong did not serve the weak unless the strong wanted to— that was a basic principle of life.

Karna did not understand why she mattered so much. The Commander told him and the others that she was the daughter of the Fiend, which made her important. But at the same time, the Commander told them that the Fiend was dead. So why was this girl important? It was not like protecting her would bring the Fiend back.

It made no sense to him. Maybe she could be powerful? But she was barely even a student of magic. She had first learned it a few months ago from what he was told.

So Karna showcased his prowess. His genius. Very little 13 year olds in any species could have done what he did with magic. That was a spell that took a lot of time and specialization to learn. It might have seemed like a demonstration for the others, but it was actually for the girl.

As a way to say: look, this is how strong I am, you are nothing to me.

And that was why Karna did not feel the need to prove himself in the war game. He was feeling pleased with himself, and thus a bit lazy. He drew his bowstring back, and loosed an arrow at an unsuspecting attacker. It struck the Goblin in the head, as Karna grinned to himself, remembering what he last saw of her 30 mins ago.

And all that Melas can do is a simple Magic Bolt—

Karna paused as he felt the mana in the air suddenly shift. It was being gathered by someone!

He spun around to see the source of the magic. And it was not just him. A dozen other Goblins that were proficient in magic stopped mid-battle to face the same direction. Gerritt, too, was looking around in confusion.

It was coming from the archery range. But that was impossible, the only person there was Melas. And this amount of mana was far more than was necessary for a Magic Bolt. Karna squinted, trying to see where it was coming from. Then he blinked.

He saw… yellow light. Coming from where the black haired girl was. And more and more Goblins were turning to see what was going on.

"H-how?" Karna uttered the words. She couldn’t have possibly learned the Blast Enchantment! he thought.

And he was right, Melas did not learn that spell. He stared in shock as he looked at the spell forming in the air. The glowing orb of energy coalescing onto the palm of her hand. And finally, he realized, it was not a Magic Enchanter’s spell, but that of a Thaumaturge— those that dealt with pure magical energy.

Magic Missile.

He watched, mouth agape, as the spell blasted straight at the nearest target. The magical energy came into contact with the wood, and immediately exploded.

The sound was muffled, as if it happened underwater. The flash of light was brief, almost instantaneous. There were no wisps of smoke rising up to the air like from Karna’s enchanted arrow. It seemed like no explosion happened at all.

Yet Karna’s eyes told no lie. An explosion did