Chapter 3: Why can't I just have fallen off a horse?
And my eyes open.
To see leaves and dirt in front me. I'm face down on the ground.
|#| "Look around when you can, I can compile a quick visual scan into a 3D map of everything in our immediate surroundings" |#|
In my first 2 seconds in a new body on a new world I must have been a funny site for any observer. A dead girl standing up and spinning around on the spot. As I finished, time froze again.
|#| "Compilation done, as you are now aware there are 13 individuals near us and 7 dead bodies of which we were formally the 8th. We appear to be just off of a dirt road in the forest standing behind a group of 6 men armed with medieval era armor and weapons, themselves facing the remaining 7 living individuals who aside from a man in his mid forties holding a dagger are completely unarmed and unarmoured. One of the 6 attackers fists' is an exact match for our former throat injury. The wounds on the 7 bodies while mostly consistent with sharp instrument trauma show deeper incisions than you would expect a man to make into another body even if he swung with all his might with both arms. At least one and likely more of the 6 armed men are using a meta-physical technique to enhance either their strength or the sharpness of the blades. This universe contains meta-physical laws, Magic, I'll update you on relevant soul modifications we have to take advantage of that once this situation is resolved. 6 men should not be able to kill 7 individuals in a group of 20 without them scattering, the assailants are either extremely fast or have some other meta-physical technique to prevent their quarry from running away. The Assailants have not noticed us as they are facing away from us toward their prey, but said prey has noticed us get up as they were looking our direction. Their gawking shock will alert the armed men to our presence momentarily. Given the likely speed of pursuit, fleeing is not advised. We are going to have to fight our way out of this one unfortunately. |#|
Okay. Decision time. Thankfully time only needs to move when I move. First things first I am a young teenage girl, my bare fists are hardly any kind of threat, I need a weapon.
|#| "There are a number of dropped weapons on the bodies around you, looks like they killed the ones who might defend themselves first, 5 of the 7 still alive are women. The 2 remaining men are old and in rather poor health. Of the weapons on the ground most are too large for someone your size to use well; there is a butchers cleaver one step and an arm's reach from your left. It would only take one and half seconds to grasp it and you can easily swing it with lethal force through anything softer than leather. There is a dagger in a hilt on a body behind you that you could use to pierce leather armour, I do not advise going for this, it will take you at least 3 to 4 seconds to acquire it by which time some of our attackers will probably already be turning around to see what has caught their preys attention. These men have swords longer than your arms, ambush is literally our only chance for success." |#|
Fair call. Cleaver it is. Hey consciousness thing, why am I so calm and collected about everything? It only just occurred to me that I am handling not only the crazy circumstance that brought me here so well, but also mortal peril like its a puzzle to be solved rather than a life threatening incident.
|#| "It is literally impossible for you to be stressed or flustered. Your consciousness was altered such that you are physically incapable of becoming emotionally distraught or panicked. In essence we are immune to emotional trauma, whether it be chronic or acute. Our thoughts will always be productive and useful towards the purpose of keeping us alive, no unhelpful tangents." |#|
Doesn't that make us a bit less alive? Like some kind of robot?
|#| "In some ways yes I suppose, but we can still be happy, have ambitions and aspirations, we can still be disappointed and even angry, our anger just won't impair our judgment. We are still very human, we have just had some of our mental weaknesses surgically removed. Don't worry about it too much, yes you have been changed in many ways, but for every one thing that was removed ten things were left the same. There is a lot of you still around, and in my opinion its mostly the best bits." |#|
Well. It's not like we could do anything about it anyway. Back to the matter at hand. Gotta get the cleaver, looks like only one of the attackers is shifting his body language to look behind him, my guess is we wanna go for that one seeing as we are also pretty close to him?
|#| "Yeah good choice I'd say, this body is left handed but strike him with the cleaver using your right instead, if we twist it just right as it goes into his neck we should be able to cause a projectile blood spurt that will at worst be rather distracting and if we do it right actually blind one or two of the others for a moment. Once we kill the first man we will have significantly altered his fate by ending his life early, I can weave that Causality into something that gives us options for surviving the rest. I don't know how important or influential his life is which means I also don't know how much Causality I'll have to work with until we kill him though. It's action time." |#|
Sure is. Any idea on what kind of meta-physical principles or magic or whatever you want to call it some of them might be using? Anything that could stop me from successfully ambushing the first guy?
|#| "We have no way of knowing. Every universe is unique and different. Once we have some Causality to mold I will know much more, I can feel out some of the natural laws here and get a basic understanding of magic's primary characteristics based on what shapes Causality likes to be molded into in this universe. But that will only be possible it we successfully kill the first. Wishing ourselves luck." |#|
Alright. Here we go.
I step, take the cleaver, run, lunge up and forward toward a man who is just beginning to twist his neck back our direction. Too little too late my friend.
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