Beasts

When she awakens, she clutches her head looking up at me grilling a lot of fish, she gets up and moves around me warily.

"Sit down cross-legged and meditate like you usually do but instead of condensing into your mana core let it disperse throughout your body".

Doing as I instructed, she started breathing.

Four hours later she was as good as new the only evidence remaining was blood on her leather tunic and the broken nose that healed the wrong way.

"You must be hungry" I handed her a fish that she ate to the bone before I could turn around and hand her another.

She ate all the fish and went straight to sleep waking up to me standing where I was before the only difference is it is daylight with the same apathetic look on my face I say "We are going to fight".

She quickly learned that I was going to attack her after the word "fight" came out of my mouth.

She would not last more than five seconds and even that was a struggle.

"Your instincts are correct you are supposed to dodge but there are times when controlling your reaction and countering are your better options sometimes your only option".

I lecture her like my self-defense teacher Mario taught me back on earth.

The Centers for Disease Control virologists had a lot of death threats after the pandemic, and they paid for us to have a weekly class in self-defense and firearms training which was taught in the building.

Isla nodded her head in understanding, but I feign with my right and she still ducks left meeting with my left knee getting knocked out.

Isla would not hit me back, but she learned to defend herself and not run into my feints, not retreating and holding on until the last minute.

She looked like a boxer in a turtle shell.

I continue to drill into her the methods of survival and since she was healing a lot, she ate a lot.

We both hunted and ate to our heart's content. Due to the high volume of prey we tracked down my tanning skills became superb.

I made us both pants and shirts along with leather armor protecting our chests.

I also made a sports bra for Isla she very much appreciated it. I made new shoes taking tree bark I thinned it out using mana and made insoles. We took our time training in no rush.

We were not on a schedule, but I didn't forget about our pursuers.

I doubt they would come in here for two children and the way I killed those soldiers was anything but childlike, even though I avoided using mana I still worry.

Using the memories, I gained from Standish the soldier I taught Isla math, Standish only learned to count to one hundred it was enough for me.

Our routine consisted of hunting if necessary if not then we would fight and fight and when Isla was completely tired, we would fight again.

I would never use up all my energy, it wasn't even half.

Afterwords came a healing session and then lesson after lesson was meditation followed by sleep. Eating would take place in between all those activities.

I made a stone pot for Isla to make stew in as eating meat all the time is not a balanced diet, I didn't hesitate to teach her more about anatomy and how the body works.

If she was curious about how I knew all this she did not show it being obedient to a fault and even going so far as to check on me after sparring.

Time passed like this for two months and in that time a huge change happened in Isla. She no longer walked behind me when hunting even going to hunt herself.

She would take guard shifts at night allowing me time to sleep because up until then I would keep watch all night and sleep three to four hours in the morning when she was awake.

The biggest change for her was her mana core although she started later, I could already see hazy streaks.

I think it is because she is allowing her mana core to come out and absorb the world's energy directly instead of through her body like me.

As I was roasting a bird that I caught, I feel a mana-clad presence from the east the direction we came from.

"We're leaving pack everything now," I said to Isla suddenly. She started using mana waving her small hands to grab everything not wasting time on things we do not need.

I build four mana balls filled with fire and compress them into fist-size balls. I then create another layer around them compressing the air as much as possible. I now have four grenades.

Mana signatures flooded my sense followed by more coming from the east, west, and south.

I sling my pack and start running at full speed to the north sending out my mana at full blast to get a better read of the situation.

What I sensed shook me.

Over a hundred mana signatures and growing all of them coating themselves with mana, all of them in the shape of large creatures almost five feet high and all running at a breakneck speed in our direction.

It is a beast tide.