CHAPTER 17: I am Not a Hero
We were just about to leave. The supplies and gear I got from the villagers was quite useful.
Backpacks loaded. Boots strapped. Swords sheathed and shoulders stretched. The girls were settled in the village, resting. A few had managed weak smiles. Ronta Vro felt safe enough to breathe again.
And just like that, it changed.
It was subtle at first. The sun hadn't even touched the horizon yet, just a pale orange brushstroke smeared across the treetops.
But Kaku stopped walking.
One step forward, and he froze like he'd hit a wall of ice.
Keyra followed a second later. She reached for her hip, hand instinctively brushing over one of her curved daggers. Her expression didn't change, but her shoulders tensed.
Trent's hand hovered near a flask at his belt, and even Kail, who hadn't said a damn word all morning, lowered the book he'd been reading and stared toward the treeline.
I scanned their faces.
Every one of them was locked in place. Eyes toward the woods. Not moving. Not blinking.
"What?" I asked, feeling the hairs on my arms start to rise. "What is it?"
Trent's eyes narrowed.
"Something's coming," he said, voice quieter than usual.
"Something big."
Kaku exhaled slowly, his tail flicking once behind him like a warning signal. "Magic beasts."
From behind us, the old trees of the Edelmere swayed, though there wasn't a breeze. The light filtering through them had shifted. Just a bit. But enough.
"Magic beasts?" I repeated. "From where?"
Trent turned to me, more serious than I'd ever seen him. "The Eldemere's not just any forest. It's ancient. Home to animals warped by mana over centuries. Mutated. Cursed. Some get twisted so bad they go feral and start attacking settlements when the balance breaks."
"And the balance just broke," Keyra said flatly.
I tried to feel it, anything. That tingling on the back of your neck, the crackle in the air, the pressure in your gut. But there was nothing.
Just forest. Wind. Sky.
"I don't sense anything," I said.
Trent turned to me slowly. "I'm not surprised."
That made me blink. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You can't pick up mana sources," he said with a shrug. "Takes training. Time. Experience. Especially when the source is scattered and wild like this."
Kail spoke next.
First time in a while.
Voice sharp. Precise.
"There's another reason."
All three of his companions looked at him.
He didn't blink.
"You have no mana."
I stared at him. "What?"
"You heard me," he said, as if it was a diagnosis, not an insult. "You have none. Not even a trace. You're a hollow void in the spectrum."
Kaku nodded. "I noticed it first, back when we met. Couldn't feel anything from you. I assumed it was deliberate suppression. Some warriors do that to stay hidden."
Trent scratched his jaw. "But when we sat around the fire? I felt it too. Or... didn't feel it."
Keyra crossed her arms. "Everyone has mana. Even a thimble of it. Infants. Dying men. Commoners. It's everywhere. In everything. Like breath. You? You're like standing next to a hole."
They were all watching me now.
Waiting for me to respond.
Waiting for me to panic. Or explain.
But inside my head?
All I heard was the echo of one truth:
Ki.
When I chose Ki in that void, I hadn't considered the cost. I thought it was an addition. A perk. A power system layered over the rest.
But now it was clear.
I hadn't added Ki.
I had replaced everything else.
No mana. No magic. Not even a drop of the thing that powered half this world.
Just pure, raw energy that didn't play by the same rules.
I couldn't let them know that. Not fully.
So I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.
"Well, that explains why I suck at spells."
Trent gave a small chuckle.
Kaku, though, kept his eyes on the forest.
"Don't take it too hard. I've met a few without mana over the years. Most died young. You look to be of age. You're doing alright, all things considered."
"Comforting," I muttered. I didn't even know how old I was. I haven't looked at like a mirror or anything but my body felt like it did in secondary school. I mean I was almost thirty back on earth but I guess teenager means adult in themes like these. Same as it did in the middle ages and before that.
Keyra was still watching me. Less like she was judging, more like she was recalibrating.
"Anyway," I said, changing the subject, "what now?"
Kaku didn't answer immediately. Instead, he turned to Kail and gave him a small nod, silent, but loaded.
Kail closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. His hands relaxed.
And then something shifted around him.
The air.
Like a ripple in a pond you didn't see get touched.
He was sensing them.
Reading the flow of mana like a map only he could see.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and stared back toward the tree line.
"Morning," he said simply. "They'll be here by morning. Maybe sooner. Dawn, if their pace holds."
Kaku exhaled through his nose. "So we've got, what... twelve hours?"
"Give or take," Kail replied. "More if they get distracted. Less if they're already agitated."
"We're screwed," Trent muttered, rubbing his forehead. "Top speed, I might be able to make it to the Guild in Torak and beg for reinforcements... but with the terrain and travel time?"
He glanced at Kaku.
"We're looking at thirty hours minimum before backup could even show up."
Thirty hours.
Right.
That was the length of a day here?
Another thing I didn't know, couldn't ask about. My stomach twisted. The casual mention of the timeframe was a reminder that I was still a foreigner in every way that mattered.
And if I asked why their days were longer than Earth's?
It'd raise the kind of questions I wasn't ready to answer.
So I kept my mouth shut.
Let them plan.
Let the tension hang heavy between us.
Ronta Vro, this quiet, half-forgotten village was about to become a warzone.
And I didn't know if I was ready.
But I knew I'd be fighting and I didn't want to fight.
I didn't say anything at first.
Just stood there, staring at the trees. The same trees I'd just walked out of yesterday, feeling like some half-baked warrior who'd barely survived a fight with a cave-dwelling maniac and his goblin harem.
And now?
Now they wanted me to stand against an entire horde of mana-mutated beasts?
I looked at Kaku. His arms were crossed. Calm. Steady. Like a mountain that'd already accepted the avalanche was coming and was just waiting for the impact.
Keyra stood with her hand on her hip, half-shadowed by the tall grass near the path, her expression unreadable but her body language tense. Like she was already building a list of things she'd kill me for.
Trent... actually looked surprised. Hurt, maybe.
And Kail, well. He was too busy sneering at existence to add anything useful.
So I did what I always do when I'm backed into a wall.
I made a decision.
"Can one of you maybe draw me a map?" I asked.
Silence.
The kind of silence that makes birds stop chirping out of sympathy.
Trent blinked. "A map?"
"Yeah," I said, louder this time. "Or at least point me toward Torak. I'll figure it out."
Kaku's brow lowered slowly. "You're leaving?"
"Damn right I am."
Keyra stepped forward, tone sharp. "Wait, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm not fighting some magical horde," I said bluntly. "That's your problem. I did my part. Got the girls here. I'm out."
Trent stepped toward me, hands up slightly like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "You're serious?"
"Completely."
"You're really going to leave this village behind?" he asked. "With all those girls in it?"
"I told you," I said, locking eyes with each of them. "I'm not a hero. I never was."
Kaku's jaw tightened. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. Disappointment rolled off him like heat off steel.
Keyra wasn't as quiet.
"You coward," she snapped. "You fight your way out of a damn goblin warren, survive hell, save lives, and now you run?"
"That goblin chief almost killed me," I snapped back. "You think I wanted to go through that again? You think I want to stand in front of whatever's coming out of that forest with nothing but with no training and a sword I can barely use?"
"We could train you," Trent offered, voice lower now. "We could help you…"
"In the thirty hours it would take for those creatures to show up to the village. Fuck no," I said.
Flat. Final.
Keyra let out a bitter laugh. "All that effort. All that talk. All that potential. Wasted."
Kaku took a slow breath. "We're not asking you to be a hero."
"Yes, you are."
I turned, adjusted the strap on my pack, and started walking right down the dirt path that would, eventually, lead to the city of Torak.
"You'd really walk away from this?" Trent called out behind me. "From them?"
I didn't stop walking. "I already did my part."
"Unbelievable," Keyra muttered.
I could hear her footsteps crunching after me before Kaku's voice cut through the air like a whip.
"Keyra."
She stopped.
I kept walking.
Then his voice called out again, this time to me.
"You better hope we don't cross paths again in Torak," Kaku said. "Because if we do, you and I? We'll finish a different kind of conversation."
I didn't answer.
Didn't look back.
Just kept walking.
Because right now, I wasn't the hero they wanted.
I was the guy who knew his limits.
And if I wanted to live long enough to push past them, I needed to walk away from this one.
No matter how much it made me hate myself.