Before I had time to catch my bearings, I felt something pull at me, dragging me off my feet and pulling me towards the angry Megailian man standing at the front of the boat. I started, not understanding what was happening until I was in midair again. A few moments later, the unnatural pull on my body disappeared, causing me to crash back into the wooden deck of the ship. My left arm bent unnaturally, before it snapped on collision with the deck. Luckily, I didn’t feel a thing from my ruined arm.

  I looked back up at the angry Megailian man, before shivering.

  He had thirteen runes. He had to be someone important. Maybe the commander. I had no clue what a thirteenth rune did, but I knew for sure it would be dangerous. Sallia, Felix and I were already injured and weak, and my father and Claus were the only others that landed on the boat. This wasn’t a battle we could win even at full strength, and in our current state escape would be nearly impossible.

  The Megailian commander glared at me, and yelled something I didn’t understand because of his heavy accent. The other Megailian troops nocked arrows, pointing some of them at me, and some at Sallia, Claus, Felix, and my father. I winced. I didn’t want my father and Claus to die here, at least. I cared about them and wanted them to be safe.

  But I doubted any of us were coming out of this alive.

  The Megailian commander yelled something at me again, but his accent was too heavy for me to understand. This time, however, I did catch the world ‘island,’ despite his heavy accent.

  I frowned, but I took too long to respond. An arrow zipped out of an archer’s bow and towards Claus. Claus, who was still shaking off the impact of being dragged out of the sky, seemed to realize the arrow was coming towards him, and his hands scrabbled along the wooden boards for a fraction of a second, before he found his spear. He threw it towards the archer, the bone spear enlarging itself the moment it left its hands -

  And some other bone-user took control of claus’s spear, before it slammed itself into the deck of the ship. Claus’s spear didn’t deflect the arrow, or kill the archer.

  A moment later, the arrow sped up and turned green, before it ripped through Claus’s head. He died with his eyes wide open.

  I sucked in a breath, before the Megailian commander yelled at me again. This time, I could finally make out part of what he was saying.

  “Where are the islands? Allius tha pligusu perissuteru tos filus sou!” He yelled. I had no clue what his second sentence meant, but the archer who had killed Claus gestured threateningly with his bow, pointing towards Sallia.

  Sallia, who had broken a leg during the fall, was still moaning in pain as she tried to re-orient herself on the boat, but Felix and my father were glaring at the Megailians as they reached towards their own weapons. They were bruised and injured from the fall, but they had just seen Claus die.

  A moment later, out of the corner of my eyes, I spotted something small in the distance.

  It was a flying boat. The village chiefs had seen the great ocean monster finish destroying the ships of the outsiders, and had come to attack the Outsiders before they reorganized. But they would be too late to save us.

  I gave the Megalian commander a grim smile, doing my best to look weak and placate him, and reached for a little bit of water with my ability. In seconds, it turned into a giant map. Since the Megailian commander wanted to know where the islands were…

  I made a map from my vague memories of Earth, since that was completely irrelevant right now. The longer I could confuse them, the better.

  The Megailia turned towards the map I had created with my illusion, before snorting. He took a step closer to me, and then slapped me as hard as he could, the force nearly physically lifting me up and throwing me back towards the deck. My head slammed into the wood with an audible crack, and I saw stars for a moment.

  My father finally lost his temper. A gust of wind propelled him forward, and he raised his spear towards the Megailian commander. I immediately added the Call of the Ocean to my illusion, hoping it would distract a few Megailians and give my father a chance. The odds were terrible, but if we killed a thirteen rune commander here we could make the war much easier to win for the other islanders. This could be our final contribution to the battle.

  Sallia and Felix, seeing the fight start, leapt to join us. Sallia picked up her sword, and ignoring her broken leg, did her best to charge forward. Felix battered down the first wooden planks that tried to assail us, beating them down with his own rune abilities.

  However, there were too many Megailians here. The moment Sallia tried to charge, a bundle of ropes coiled around her, before tripping her. An arrow in midiar flew towards Felix before it quadrupled, then each arrow homed in on Felix’s limbs. I teleported one arrow attacking Felix towards the Megailiain commander, allowing myself to get hit by an arrow to my stomach, and the Megailian commander’s eyes widened in surprise as an arrow suddenly appeared right in front of him.

  But it didn’t kill him.

  The arrow suddenly halted in midair as the Megailian commander’s runes glowed. Some sort of pushing ability? Or the ability to harden the air?

  I had no idea.

  A moment later, the arrow dropped out of the air and clattered to the ground.

  A pulse of blue ice stopped my father, chopping off one of his legs just below the knee. He fell over, his charge halted. At the same time, I saw Sallia drop to the ground, struggling with ropes that were coiling around her like a python.

  The Megailian commander snorted contemptuously, before taking another few steps towards us. He was no longer focused only on me. Instead, he was eyeing Sallia. As the youngest of us, she probably looked the easiest to get information out of.

  “Where are the islands?” He asked, again, even as Felix ignored the arrows in his body and tried to kill the commander with a splinter of airborne wood. A moment later, the splinter stopped in midair, before it turned around and sped into Felix’s chest. Blood started pouring out of his chest as he stopped moving, clutching his new injury.

  Sallia shook her head, her mouth foaming as she struggled, but didn’t say a word.

  The Megailian commander took one step closer-

  And Sallia suddenly sprang into action. With a level of dexterity and power her broken body shouldn’t have possessed, she managed to fight her way out of the moving ropes for a moment and grip her sword again. Groaning with effort, she tried to kill the commander in a single moment of surprise.

  He snorted, and Sallia’s body suddenly snapped backwards, completely deflecting her attack. Her sneak attack failed to accomplish anything.

  “Fine then,” said the commander. He gestured towards one of his soldiers, who tossed him a sword.

  Then, with a single, casual movement, he caught the sword and beheaded Sallia.

  My cooldown for teleportation finally ended, a moment too late to save Sallia’s life, and I stared at the Megailian commander with hate. I scanned our surroundings, before looking at Felix, who wasn’t dead yet, and hoped he still had one more attack in him. Even if it probably wouldn’t work, I wanted to kill the commander for hurting Sallia.

  Felix, who was wheezing and clutching his chest, saw me and seemed to realize my teleportation was ready.

  He stopped worrying about his impending death, and shot another splinter of wood out, making it zip towards one of the archers.

  Right as another plank tore itself off of the deck to block his attack, I teleported the wooden splinter right next to the Megailian commander’s neck. My aim was a little off, but it was still close enough that it might kill him if I was lucky.

  For a single moment, I thought we had succeeded. A spray of blood ripped out of the commander’s neck, and I felt a savage grin form on my lips.

  Then, one of the soldiers pointed at the Commander, and his runes glowed. The commander’s injured neck quickly restored itself. I felt a growing sense of frustration as I realized we had failed. I saw an arrow kill my father, and took one last look at the distant boats of the islands.

  I hoped their raid on the outsiders would be successful, and that they avenged us properly.

  That was the last thing I thought before an arrow tore through my brain.

  I died.

  Less than ten seconds later, before I even had time to process my surroundings in more detail, I saw another notification

  I paused, taking a moment to consider my surroundings. I was in a situation I remembered quite clearly; I saw myself, as well as a stream of other, silver-colored souls starting to drift upwards. Just above us, I could see cracks in reality. And just beyond it lay a massive, endless ocean of black water. I tried to see where Sallia and Felix were, but I couldn’t figure out which soul was which. I had no clue which souls belonged to my fellow transmigrators.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I decided to stick around in this dimension until the end of this battle. It would be a shame to lose the rest of my rewards for helping this battle come to its final conclusion, whatever it would be.

  Darkness overtook me.

  An unknown amount of time later, I was jostled out of my slumber by two notifications.

  My Achievement increased from 11,926.06 to 15,526.06. More interesting was the second notification.

  I read over the ability description, before I turned my attention back to the world below me.

  Did we win?

  I couldn’t see anything anymore. I was wrapped in a cocoon of golden light, and I could see two other cocoons nearby. However, I couldn’t see the islands or the ocean anymore. I couldn’t even see the ocean of souls - it looked like we were stuck in between the ocean of souls and the dimension we had lived in for a decade and a half. I looked down, trying to spot our home, before realizing it was a lost cause.

  I had done my best to help the islands, but I would never know whether they survived the fight with the outsiders or not. I had no idea whether they fended off the invasion.

  And I would probably never know. I had gotten a bunch of Achievement for a [major] contribution to the battle, which hopefully meant we had won. But I would never know.

  I felt a small amount of sadness well up inside of me, before I accepted that I would never know the final outcome of the battle. I was dead. I just had to hope that my actions, and my wishes for a better future for the village and people I cared about, would come to pass. But now that I was dead I couldn’t do anything anymore.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the other two golden cocoons unraveling, releasing two other silvery souls. Those should be Felix and Sallia.

  While there were still things left I wanted to do, and things I wanted to know the answer to, it was the end. It was time to leave. I turned back towards my System notifications and exited slumber mode.

  Chapter title: First Death

  There is still an epilogue chapter for this world left. Miria and company don’t get to know the outcome of their actions, but readers do!

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