'I won't last much longer like this,' Marcus thought as he jumped over an old, dead tree.
He had an extremely cold and indifferent expression on his face as he ran in a random direction away from his pursuers.
His eyes were constantly darting left and right as if he was in search of something. He was also persistently trying to think of ways to outmaneuver and escape the men chasing him all at the same time.
'I can't hide because of that annoying mage's detection spell, and I can't even kill him since he's surrounded by so many others who would kill me long before I get a chance to even approach him.
'Although, it's not like I could hope to fight him one on one either.'
As Marcus continued to ponder about his hopeless situation, he suddenly heard a distant chant that made him turn his head left, and when he saw the spell that was coming in his direction, his eyes shrank to that of pinholes.
A bowling-ball sized rock headed right towards Marcus at an incredible speed, and unfortunately he wasn't going to be able to dodge this one due to being midair from jumping over another dead tree that lied in his path.
Because of this, Marcus was only able to pivot his body slightly to the right and allow the rock to only hit part of his shoulder instead of hitting it square on.
*THWACK*
*CRUNCH*
"Urrgh!"
Luckily, the rock didn't end up hitting his shoulder directly and instead only managed to hit a part of it, but due to the speed and density of the rock thrown at him, he instantly felt a terrible amount of pain radiating from that part of his arm.
A sharp cracking noise also occurred at the point of impact that alluded to the fact Marcus now had a slightly broken and possibly dislocated shoulder.
As he was hit midair, Marcus continued to fall on the exact same shoulder he'd been hit at.
Even with the amount of pain he experienced up to this point, he couldn't help but grit his teeth and let out a small whimper due to the accumulated pain he was now experiencing at his arm.
Believe it or not though, Marcus having landing on his dislocated shoulder was both a good and bad thing.
This was good because after falling on the dislocated part of his shoulder, he instantly popped it back into place, and this allowed him to be able to continue running.
It was bad though because now he wasn't able to get back up to his feet as quickly due to the immense pain that came with popping a shoulder back into place. This was also in addition to his previous injuries from earlier making it even harder for Marcus to stand back up.
About 30 or so meters away, a man with one of his arms extended toward Marcus, raised one hand into the air and made a fist pump.
"Gotcha you son of b*tch!"
"Nice shot Jerome! That bounty's as good as ours; now let's hurry before those other bastards steal our kill," the man beside him spoke as he never took his eyes off the now heavily injured Marcus.
The man who launched the rock at Marcus was an earth mage and the man beside him, who congratulated Jerome on his accuracy, was another mage that specialized in detection magic.
If Marcus knew that there wasn't just one detection mage but two amongst the group of hunters, he would almost instantly curse his poor luck. Having one detection mage was already a pain, but having two completed sealed any chance he had of escaping from his pursuers.
The two men quickly advanced on their prey to deliver the final kill as quickly as possible.
Many didn't know this but rumors were going around that stated killing an omen gave out very lucrative rewards. Not only would they receive gold for killing them, but they'd also receive an extra unknown benefit from the Terra system in doing so.
No one knew how this came to be but no one cared either. After the devastation caused during the old war, the rumor was spread to encourage the annihilation of the filthy race of mongrels before a second war could ensue.
That is why to this day, Marcus had yet to come into contact with a fellow omen aside from his father. Even throughout his travels as a slave and traveling throughout the human territories, he hadn't seen or met another omen at all.
His species of people was endangered, and to his knowledge, he and his father were the only ones left alive.
Marcus, who now heard the approaching footsteps of the bounty hunters forcefully made himself stand up. The two men were fast approaching and were now only about fifteen paces away from him.
Marcus had wondered if the mysterious power that caused Tom to miss him earlier would manifest again to help him, but he doubted such a thing would happen a second time and refused to leave his life up to chance.
'Come on! Get up!' Marcus screamed internally trying to force his body to get up.
Right then, the earth mage casted a spell, as a sturdy looking pillar of earth manifested from the ground and headed directly towards Marcus's head; however, a fireball that was thrown from the right instantly connected with the rock pillar that was headed for the omen.
Marcus was thrown back by the shockwave of the two elements' explosion and his back hit a tree which again caused Marcus to find himself on the ground struggling to stand back up.
"What was that? SHOW YOURSELF!" the earth mage shouted as he looked in the direction the fireball came from.
Almost instantly after he said this, another incantation was spoken from where the previous fireball came from, and a new one headed directly for the now half-conscious Marcus.
Jerome, the earth mage, was enraged at the other mage's complete disregard towards him, but he reacted to the situation as best he could regardless. He knew his magic wasn't strong enough to instantly kill the omen, even though it could be considered half dead already. So he instead opted to form a cage around Marcus to protect him temporarily from the fireball that was about to burn him to dust.
Though his earth affinity wasn't suited very well for offensive purposes, at least to his knowledge, it suited the current situation just fine as the fireball connected with the earth cage and only left small damages along its bars. Said damage was also instantly restored due to the surrounding earth acting as a median to replenish the cage's overall health.
The fire mage grew even angrier than the earth mage as he started to shout a slew of curses at the mage stopping him from acquiring his rewards.
"You son of a b*tch! Remove your cage now before I burn you alive! Why are you even protecting that foul excuse of a creature anyway," the fire mage continued to shout. "Are you one of those pansy sympathizers who vouches for these accursed wretches?!"
Jerome's lips started to twitch at the fire mage's shamelessness. He obviously wasn't trying to defend Marcus and was only trying to prevent the fire mage from stealing his kill. Otherwise he'd have happily let the deranged pyromaniac kill the omen before him.
"Piss off you impetuous arsonist. This bounty's mine and you know it. You obviously missed your chance earlier when your spell failed to kill it last time."
Jerome was of course referring to the burn wound on Marcus's arm that had caused him quite a bit of pain, but failed to finish the job completely.
The fire mage grew livid at Jerome's insults and lobbed a few of his own.
"Oh shut up you muscle-headed dolt. The only reason someone like you can even pronounce those insults is because of the mage behind you."
The fire mage was referring to the detection mage that now stood beside Jerome.
It was a common stereotype amongst mages that earth mages were 'all brawns no brain' and for detection type mages to be 'all brains no brawn'.
Due to this, Jerome became vexed at the common insult he'd heard again and again all his life.
So what if it was true that he'd only heard those words in passing from his partner. It didn't matter, at least he knew how to use them to piss off idiots like the one in front of him, even though he likely couldn't spell the word if given paper and pencil to write it down on.
The annoyed Jerome decided talking would get him nowhere as he noticed the fire mage begin to cast an even larger spell in hopes of taking he and his partner out so that they'd be out of his way permanently.
"Fire Wave!"
A 10x10 wall of fire manifested in front of the fire mage and headed directly towards Jerome. The fire seemed to have a will of its own as it moved forward without anymore input from its caster and engulfed everything in its path.
Fortunately all the trees around them were mostly long dead and the forest in front of them, if it could even still be called that, was no more than old rotten trees devoid of any leaves and only tree stumps and some rocks remained.
Jerome reacted quickly and casted a spell to encase he and his partner in armor made of rock that didn't leave any part of their body exposed to the wall of flames.
"ROCK ARMOR!"
The wall of fire passed right through them, and the armor protected them well enough to only feel a tiny bit of warmth.
When Jerome deemed that the threat had passed, he released the [Rock Armor] to find where the fire mage had gone, and once he looked in the direction of where he'd been earlier, he only saw an out of breath mage currently with their hands on their knees trying to catch their breath.
Jerome was confused at the mage that now stood where the fire mage once was earlier, but he soon realized who he was after taking a closer look.
Clearly this was the mage from earlier that casted the first [Mana Pulse] spell to chase after Marcus. It seemed the fire mage left him behind due to him moving to slow and chose to pursue the target alone.
Luckily because of this, the hotheaded mage's attacks only succeeded in grazing Marcus and only one of his attacks managed to hit his now singed arm.
Without his detection mage to spot Marcus for him, he'd found it exceedingly hard to hit the elusive rat that kept escaping his clutches in the all encompassing dark forest.
Now though, the tables had turned as the fire mage now stood right beside the cage the half-dead omen now lay in. He moved as closely to the cage as he could with his face pushed directly against the cage and his right arm reaching through the bar hovering right above Marcus's face to deliver a spell point blank and ensure his target died this time.
"Time to die you little vermin," the fire mage spoke with a wicked smile on his face and eyes that seemed to scream madness.
Marcus could only look up at the crazed man before him with dull eyes as he started to see small flickers of grey manifest within the palm of the man's hand. Marcus had no where to go in the relatively small cage and even if he wasn't trapped, he still needed more time to recover.
It seemed he would die again at the hands of another mad arsonist.