Life with bandits

When I woke up the sun was just barely beginning to peek over the horizon.

Even before I always got up a little earlier than needed because there wears no telling what my luck had in store for me that day.

Looking around the campsite I see all of the bandits passed out, slumped against various objects and each other in their drunken state.

I guess this is as good a time as any time get some practice in.

Might as well work on purifying my mana core while they are all asleep.

I thought back to what I read about Arthur at the beginning of the story and how he described purifying the mana.

Also I noticed something now, before I was still overwhelmed with the gravity of everything, but now I can feel the presence of mana much easier than before.

I close my eyes and focus in on my core and like when I was healing my hand, everything went dark before showing me a scene.

Only it's not a sphere like object surrounded by blackness like Arthur had described.

Mine was a black orb sat in a copy of the field from my grandparents farm house.

I could see their corn field, and rows of various plant rows as well as their large pasture for their farm animals.

Sadly the house was nowhere to be seen, but oh well this would do.

I sat down directly beneath the floating black core, and begin picturing the human anatomy.

It seems my healing ability comes with some other capabilities as just like when I was able to peel away the skin and ground green infection points in my arm.

I was know able to do the same for purifying mana.

I mana particles shown a wispy black to my vision as they moved about my body.

I pictured a giant stream rushing throughout every point of my body carrying the impure motes of mana and then pictured a strainer spaced evenly throughout.

Each time the mana particles passed through the strainer the black wisps were slowly peeled away until they were completely white.

Once filtered to the point of near perfection they were brought directly to me underneath the core, and more impure particles would get pushed out to join the stream.

As I got the hang of the feeling I began to increase the speed of the stream, and proceeded like that for a while.

I only stopped when I began to see the beginning of cracks in my core.

Opening my eyes I see that sun has made it over the horizon and a few bandits are beginning to awaken.

Alright I need to find a way to get these bandits to trust me more.

I don't want to live in this cage until I can make my escape after all.

One of the bandits is walking around holding his head with a grimace so I call out to him.

"Hey, you." His head whips to me and he instantly regrets it as the sudden motion sends his head spinning and the headache increases.

"Whaddya want brat?" He calls as he steadies himself before glaring at me, as if it was my fault he was hungover.

"I can get rid of that hangover you got there." I responded and watched how he studied me to see if I was lying or not.

Eventually he relented and walked over to me.

"Alright, make it snappy brat. I got morning duties." The man snapped as stood, looking down at me.

"You gotta come down here. I can't heal you from that far." The man scowled at me and once again weighed the pros if it was worth letting me help him.

Like before his headache won out so he sat in front of me and I reached my hands through the bar just before his head.

I closed my eyes and pictured his head, the skin peeled away as did other bits of flesh and bone until I reached the brain where I could see but if angry red littered over the pink brain matter.

I targeted the angry red bits and as I got rid of them I could hear the man groaning in pleasure as I relieved his headache.

When I finished I opened my eyes to find a blissful expression on the man's face.

"Thanks kid, let me go get the others so you can do the same for them." The man hopped up and ran off to the rest of the camp.

I had a bad feeling about this, healing one person was one thing, but healing 40 people…

Time passed and now I was the one with the headache and a sharp pain in my chest, and there were still 2 bandits left.

My breathing was haggard, and beads of sweat poured down my face as the second to last bandit say in front of me.

"Get to work brat. We don't have all day." The man sat in front of me said, smirking at my tired expression.

I raised my hands, and wobbled forward my hand accidentally touching the man.

His face grew red and his smirk went to a scowl.

He grabbed me by the offending arm and pulled me hard, causing my face to smash against the bars.

Specifically my nose which began to pour blood, and pain shot up from the broken spot in the bridge.

"Ahhh!" I cried as I tried to jerk my hand back to cover my nose, but both hands were right in the grasp of the bandits own dirty hands.

He pulled again and my head hit bar again this time splitting the skin on my forehead from the impact.

I was seeing stars at this point and could only whimper.

My body sagged forward, but couldn't reach the ground due to the man's grip on my hands.

As I lay there dazed I hear the man laugh out loud and he jerks me a couple more times.

Thankfully they weren't with bear as much force as the previous 2.

When he finished he dropped my hands and stood, staring down at my body in sadistic glee.

"Good thing you had already healed us kid, but now you'll know not to touch me with your grimy ass fingers." He snarled and sent a kick into my ribs through the bars of the cage.

I whimpered again as I felt the heavy impact lift my tiny body up and slam against the bars in the other side.

I didn't move as I watched the bandit and his friend laugh loudly as they walk away.

I squeezed my eyes tight, but felt the sharp pain of my now growing headache and the equally sharp pain of my nose.

Seems he cracked a couple of my ribs with kick as well.

When I entered the balls I space I started with my head, skin peeling back until I got to the brain.

Deep angry red covered the entirety but the deepest was focused at the forehead.

I began getting rid of it, but the process took much longer than when I did it for the bandits.

Probably severity plays a role.

I began to make my way out healing the traumatized area around the cut that had formed on my forehead.

Also having to repair cracked bone.

With that done I focused on my nose, and it had a lot.

I had to repair the passages and the cartilage around the area.

Even with my eyes closed and me in this state I could feel the shifting of my nose setting itself back into its rightful place.

The pain in my core increased and the headache had returned, breathing was labored again as my body shook.

This must be what happens when you use too much mana.

I wanted to heal my ribs, but I didn't want to find out what happens if I pushed my body too far, so I entered my core area on the farm again.

And I began to purify my mana once again.

This continued for several months until I gained enough trust from them that I was allowed outside the cage during the day.

They would have me carry things for them or dig holes for their piss and shit.

They even began to take me on raids with them, where I would heal them as they got injured.

I did feel bad seeing the people suffering such a terrible fate, especially the women the as even with how terrible the name was they still lived up to their bandit name Wailing Wench.

At first I would heal the women, but after a while they began to lose the light in their eyes.

That's when I started to just kill them instead.

I understand this is quite heartless, but I'm still living at the mercy of these bandits and I'm only 5, nearing 6.

If I release them they will definitely know it's me, and if the girl doesn't get away then she'll be brought back and subjected to even worse abuse.

Selfishly I didn't want them to inflict anymore pain on me either, so I began killing them.

It wasn't so hard to fake that, as some of the bandits were rather… rough in their search for pleasure.

><

Another time skip next chapter.