Chapter 19: Chapter 19 - A Terrifying Roar

Perfect! So now that you guys have heard about how romantic and amazing I am for a bit, I’ll continue telling you how amazing I am myself.

I just want to make one thing clear, Julia said that I get uncomfortable in crowds, and that I basically froze, that’s not true at all.

I’m completely comfortable around crowds of people.

I don’t have any problem with them.

That was an isolated incident. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

And it was all part of the plan.

I just wanted to... increase my charm, yes that’s what it was, nothing else.

It was a small experiment, I just wanted to feel how introverted and shy people feel, so I decided that I should act like them for a bit.

***

It had been a few days after Julia’s and my romantic date out on the town... or I guess I should say our romantic date out on the village?

Anyway, in that time Darvel had made some serious progress with our business venture together.

I’d met some of the contractors he was using, and sussed them out for potential builders of my future bar.

And I’d have to say, they were good.

Very good.

I mean they had made most of the changes we required in that short time.

In the corner of the waiting room, there now stood a fully functional, and stocked bar.

We had ale, we had wine, we had... actually that was all we had.

These people were really low on variety when it came to alcohol, but that wasn’t a problem I could solve easily.

But it was definitely a problem I would try my best to solve eventually.

I mean if I could make my own beer... these people wouldn’t know what had hit them.

The business and money making opportunities really just came to me on a whim at the moment.

Maybe I could even start a brewery that could become a major supplier all across the lands.

Damn I’m good!

Anyway, I should probably get back into the actual story, or you guys might really start to get pissed off.

Like I said, it had been a couple of days since we finalized all of the plans for our business, and my date with Julia.

And at that moment I was standing in our now complete waiting room slash bar.

That night would be the official opening night.

And it would be my very first shift as the bartender.

So as you can imagine, I was completely calm.

So calm in fact that I even asked Julia if she would like to go out of the village with me for a bit.

I mean we had explored the village on our previous date, so I figured that day we could maybe go outside the village for a bit so I can practice some magic.

I mean it was absolutely not that I was nervous enough to freak the hell out, and that I just wanted to blow some stuff up to calm down.

"Are you ready to go?" Julia asked when she came to stand next to me.

I had been standing looking at our small little nook of heaven in the waiting room for a bit now, and the pride just kept swelling more and more.

I mean sure, it wasn’t mine alone, but I still had sixty percent ownership in a bar, which basically made it mine.

Which meant that I had every right to be proud about it.

"Yeah, we can go." I answered, as I grabbed her hand and headed for the door.

Now you might be wondering why I always tended to grab her hand when we walked somewhere.

Of course that’s just because I’m such a romantic.

It’s nothing like Julia said about me being absolutely terrified of crowds of people, and that her holding my hand kept me grounded.

That had absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

We stormed out of the inn, and through the village at a rapid pace.

I was really excited to practice my magic, and blow up some stuff.

Eventually we passed through the small gate, and out into the empty fields surrounding the village.

Under the eyes of the villagers that were going around with their business.

Out in the fields there were some people gathering herbs, off in the distance were some farmers working their fields, I could even see some woodsman cutting down trees at the edge of the forest.

Once we reached the edge of the forest, and I was about to step past the first line of trees, Julia suddenly stopped, pulling me to a stop right along with her.

I haven’t wanted to mention this before, but I feel I have to, she’s surprisingly strong for the petite little thing she seems to be.

If I held her hand while we walked, and she suddenly came to a stop, it would feel like I ripped my arm out of its sockets, and yet she wouldn’t move an inch.

"I think this spot would work perfectly." She said.

I looked around, at our surroundings and found that we were basically out in the open.

From this distance I could still see the people moving around in the village quite clearly, which of course meant that they could still see us quite clearly.

"Are you sure?" I asked, as I kept looking around. "I mean we are going to make quite a ruckus I assume, so wouldn’t it be better if we go a bit deeper into the forest?"

"No. The deeper we go into the forest, the higher the chance of us luring some beasts to us." Julia answered as she shook her head.

"You keep mentioning these beasts, but you still haven’t told me what they are?"

She just smiled at me when I said that.

"Eventually you’ll probably run into one." I don’t know if she was trying to be mysterious, or what, but it really wasn’t doing my growth of knowledge any good.

"Fine." I said as I lined up a tree I could use as a target. "Let’s get to work. Does every element basically just work the same as light?" I asked, Julia told you guys that I had been practicing my magic in our room, but what she hadn’t said was that I had only practiced with light magic.

I mean it’s not like I could practice fire magic in a building made entirely of wood, now can I?

"Yes, for your basic spells all you need to do is visualise your spell, and let your magic power flow into your creation." she answered.

I loved this world’s magic system, it was a lot less complicated than some of the systems I had read about.

Sure you still had a limited capacity of magic power, and it really sucked when you ran out, but everything else was pretty amazing.

So I lined up a biggish tree in the distance, imagined a projectile of earth in the shape of a bullet from Earth forming in front of me, and poured my magic power into it.

Within a second a perfect copy of what I had imagined had formed.

Okay sure, it might have been slightly bigger than I had imagined it, but that was only because I might have overdone the amount of magic power I poured into it.

I decided that it would be a complete waste to just let it go and start over again, so I might as well fire it.

Which is how Julia and I ended up standing in front of three trees that were slowly starting to tumble forwards.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The trees hit the ground, one after the other, and behind them my earth bullet was still going, tearing through one tree after another.

Of course this was all part of the plan, what better way was there to get people to respect you than to show them how much damage you can do with a single spell.

Which is exactly why I had decided that Julia was probably right about staying near the edge of the forest.

I wanted the village people to stare at the damage I had done, in abstract shock and terror.

None of it had been a complete accident.

I hadn’t accidentally overdone anything.

Everything was part of the plan.

Everything was always part of the plan.

Even when there suddenly came an extremely terrifying roar from the forest.

Now if any of you had ever heard a Lion roar, imagine that, then multiply it by about ten, and take into account that this animal seemed to be pretty far away, and you would have the sound that came from the forest.

When I turned to look at Julia standing next to me I could swear I saw her hide a small smile.

Why she would smile at a moment like that I had no idea.

"Should we run?" I asked, pretty scared if I have to admit it.

"It’s already too late for that."