Seeing the man wave his hand, Mikhail starts chanting a spell. Since it will take some time, Kajus and I step in front of him in case the stranger attacks manually.
The man takes a defensive stance, but he looks spooked by our weapons.
"Celm duwn, O em nut e threshid," he says.
We don't understand a word.
He is confused. Slowly, he puts his arms down. He points at himself, then at the three of us. Then, he slowly cups his hands together, like he is molding a ball of mud or crushing something invisible.
Then, he raises his hands in surrender.
Seeing that, Kajus starts lowering his sword slowly.
"What are you doing?!" I scream at Kajus, looking back and forth between them.
"He seems harmless. Didn't you see the gestures he made?" Kajus answers.
Seeing his tactics work, the man targets Kajus. He makes more gestures—waving a flag? He sticks his index and middle fingers up while curling the others? He switches between them rapidly.
All while slowly stepping back, thinking I can't see him.
"What if this is a trick?" I say to Kajus.
I slowly start moving forward, keeping him in the striking zone of my spear.
Suddenly, Mikhail screams.
"Hah!"
The chant is finished. He is ready to strike. Kajus and I jump behind him immediately.
Seeing that the magic is about to kill the young man, Kajus starts waving at him like he's saying goodbye.
The man looks confused by our movement, but it's too late. Mikhail fires.
SFX - WOOSH
The ice spear flies... only for the man to be standing there, fine.
What?!
"YOU MISSED!" I scream at Mikhail, jumping in front of him to guard him.
"After taking so long, you couldn't even hit a still target?" Kajus chimes in, also jumping to guard Mikhail in case the man attacks.
"I... I didn't miss," Mikhail says, trembling.
"Oh yeah? The ice spear must have phased right through him, then," Kajus mocks him.
"No... he dodged it,"
Mikhail stammers. "I saw him move his head just enough to dodge the spear."
"Bullshit!" I scream at Mikhail. "No one can dodge an ice spear from such close range! Even Mr. Ian in his prime couldn't do that!"
Before we can continue our conversation, I see the man look around, trying to find an escape route.
He gets into a running stance.
"Attack!" I scream at Kajus.
I swing my spear at full speed. He dodges. The blade barely grazes his chest.
He steps back, only for Kajus to appear right beside him. Kajus delivers a horizontal slash at hip level.
The man dodges that too. He leans all the way back, pointing his knees outward in an impossible angle.
He uses his leg strength to snap back up and tries to run. Kajus chases him.
Kajus tries to slice him vertically downwards. The man dodges by twisting his body all the way to the left. As the sword passes him, he uses the momentum of the twist to punch Kajus right in the head.
That won't do much, I think, getting closer behind him.
But Kajus freezes. He drops his sword.
What? The same Kajus who has been fine after being chewed on by the strongest opponents was almost knocked out by a simple punch to the head?
The man tries to run away after hitting Kajus, but luckily, he runs directly into my range.
I swing with all my power to knock him out.
SFX - THWACK
SFX - THUD
I got too close, so I hit him with the wooden shaft of the spear rather than the blade. He hits the ground hard.
I step forward to kill him by stabbing his heart, but Kajus puts his sword between my spear and the man's chest.
"What are you doing?" I ask Kajus.
"He's useful," Kajus says, not budging at all.
We argue for a moment, but I eventually give up. "Fine. But you carry him."
"Let's go back to the camp!" I shout toward Mikhail.
1 Hour Later...
We finally reach camp only to find Mr. Ian sitting next to a campfire, whistling.
As we get close, he suddenly turns around and points his short sword at my neck.
Seeing that it's me, he slowly lowers it.
He starts using sign language.
"Where did you go?"
Before I can answer, he continues signing. "I told you to guard the camp.
It is lucky that none of the slaves woke up and tried to run away, or we would have been fucked."
"I am sorry," I sign back, apologizing. "We found a peculiar human."
"Peculiar, you say?" he signs.
I explain what happened between us. Meanwhile, Kajus and Mikhail dress the man in the slave outfit we have. They use chains to tie his hands together, leaving a gap of about an arm's length.
They tie his legs to a heavy iron boulder to prevent him from running away.
After doing all that, we tie him to a tree using rope and wait.
After some time, he starts gaining consciousness.
We start our lesson.