Without wasting any more time, I quickly push my mana forward and create an arrow made of mana. This is the only thing I can do right now as my mana reserve is not big enough just yet. I fire the arrow and see it fly toward the first man who did not prepare for an incoming arrow made of mana.
The arrow hit its target, and I can see the first man try to close the wound on his neck. I ignore the morbid sound coming from him and use the shock by creating a mage hand. With a mental order, the mage's hand pushes the sword away from the second man.
While I cannot use a mage hand to kill an enemy, it can be used to distract or disarm my enemy. With his sword falling to the ground, I create another mana arrow and fire it. The second one fell to the ground, dead.
I look at the last three men who are charging at me. I turn around and start to run away. I point my finger at the ground, use the Create Bonfire spell, and burn two of them when they step on my spell.
With them distracted, I create two mana arrows and fire them. Just like before, I killed two more kidnappers with my mana arrow spell.
"Fuck this! I'm out! I don't know that he is a witch!"
Before he could get away, I created another mage's hand and held his leg. A second later, he fell to the ground. Seeing him fall to the ground, I quickly run toward him and stab him in the throat with my dagger.
I get away from him and sit down on the ground, not too far away from the corpse. The fight took a large amount of mana from me. One more mana arrow, and I cannot cast any more spells. I get up from the ground and cast prestidigitation on myself before casting it on the corpses.
I walk toward the nearest corpse and start to search for anything useful.
~Fifteen minutes later~
After fifteen minutes of searching, I got a forty gold coin with a different design than the coin I have, sixty-eight silver coins, and one hundred and thirty-five copper coins.
I also decided to take the short sword for myself. It was a good steel sword, and I needed a close combat weapon other than my dagger.
After looting them, I drag the corpse with the help of a mage hand away from the road and into the deeper part of the forest. One by one, I stack them there before casting another prestidigitation, but this time, I change the smell of the corpse. I change the smell into the smell of a morning breeze.
While it only lasted for an hour, it should be enough for me to get away from this area and not be seen by other people. I take the rabbit I hunt and walk back home.
~Sometimes later~
"Ah! Vi! How is your hunt, dear?"
I smile at Vyros' wife, Laena, and nod my head.
"Yes, Laena. I got five rabbits this time."
"Oh my. You are improving. Catching five rabbits at your age is something that not many can do."
"Thank you for your compliment. Where is Dany?"
"She is sleeping in the back room. She misses you, you know? I never know how you manage to calm her down by only picking her up. I need fifteen minutes to calm her down."
I smile at her and say,
"I don't really know. She just stops crying whenever I hold her up."
"Fufufu. That means she really likes you. Anyway, place the rabbit on the table over there. I will start skinning it up. You have already removed the blood, right?"
"Of course. I don't want them to go bad fast."
"Good. I will cook them for you or…."
Laena looks at me with a teasing smile and says.
"Do you want to cook this time? I miss your cooking."
"I cooked some for you and Vyros last night."
"I know! It has been half a day since I ate your food!"
I sigh and smile at her before saying.
"Fine. I will cook for us tonight. Just make sure to leave some of the rabbits for me. I want to try to make a rabbit stew. Also, can I have some fish for Dany?"
"Of course! I will leave the best ingredient for you!"
"You don't need to."
"I must! Best ingredients make the best food, no?"
"That… is true."
"Then you need the best ingredient to make a great food."
"Fine."
~Later that night~
Just like usual, I decided to train my magic every night. For the time being, I cannot do much. The magic I can do is something that is fueled by three things: Imagination, Will, and Mana.
I create the foundation by imagining the spell I want to create, will it to appear in the real world, and feed it with my mana to create the result.
It was an easy step; it was really an easy step, but holy shit, the third step is the most difficult one. I did not have enough mana in me to feed my spell. Even a small fireball that explodes on impact needs a bigger Mana than what my reserve can provide.
Because of this, I need something to reduce the amount of mana required to fuel my spell. The only thing I can think of is that by using a wand-like in Harry Potter or a magic circle like in the anime, I watched in the past before I got super busy in real-life matters.
That is why I try to create a magic circle that has the concept of absorption to let absorb the mana in the air and transfer to let my magic circle fuel my spell from the absorbed mana.
That sounds good and all, but I encountered a problem. Creating a concept requires a large amount of mana. Because of this, I'm stuck in a loop. I need a large amount of mana to create a permanent solution to reduce the amount of mana required to cast a spell.
The only thing left for this is to create a magic wand or magic staff to reduce the amount of mana needed for my spell. However, I meet another dead end in this solution. I did not know how to create a magic wand or magic staff.
So, the only thing I can do right now is to train my magic and increase my mana reserve.