The cave exit was wide and high enough to get through without effort, which was not surprising given the size of the previous inhabitant. I noticed scratch marks on the sides, probably the magic had acted like steroids on the wolf and it had to widen the entrance to avoid getting stuck.

I cautiously peeked outside. At first glance, there was no immediate threat, so I left the cave completely and looked around. The entrance was on a shallow slope that steepened just beyond, rising some distance to a mountain that was part of a mountain range. Towards the front stretched a hilly landscape, mainly covered with grass and low bushes. Here and there, clumps of trees could also be seen. At least it was not a desert, so the water supply should not be a big problem.

Where there were plants, there were usually animals. I would still have to prove myself as a hunter, but the chances of capturing something were undoubtedly there. But first, I wanted to take care of Nigel’s remains. Burial was out of the question for me for two reasons: first, I had no tools for digging and the stony ground looked pretty hard. Second, and more importantly, I couldn’t get Orthok’s words about revenants out of my head. I had no desire to be awakened in the middle of the night by an undead arm squeezing my throat. The hunter saw no danger in this case, but I preferred to play it safe.

I looked for a half-dead bush and laid my load there. Then I gathered dry grass and small twigs on the ground and packed all that with it. Then I held my hand over it and made the fire sign appear on the palm. Carefully I took my hand away again, the transparent symbol remained in place. Even when I took two steps back, it did not move. “Fire!”, I said emphatically, and my improvised pyre blazed up. “Rest in peace,” I wished the apprentice mage. “I didn’t know you long, but you seemed like a good guy.”

After saying goodbye in this way, it was back to business as usual. I looked up at the position of the sun. It was only an estimate, of course, but several hours had passed since our morning outburst, and the sun should be much higher. So the portal took us a good bit to the east. Or west, if we were south of the equator. In any case, it must have been several hundred miles.

Well, in itself this information was useless to me, I saved it anyway, in case Orthok could do something with it. Then I checked my mana level. Lighting the fire had cost me six mana, I still had eleven. I considered. We had the short sword, but I didn’t give myself false hope: with a sword, I could only defeat an opponent by making him laugh himself to death. My only viable weapon was magic, and if I had to practice anything, it would be casting spells.

I gathered a handful of small stones and looked around for a target. A boulder about thirty yards away lent itself to the task. I placed one of the stones on the palm of my right hand and aimed it at the boulder. “Fly!”, I said, and the stone left my hand and flew towards the target, but fell to the ground just before it. A glance at the mana supply showed that one mana had been used up. I repeated the process with another stone. As expected, this one landed not far from the first. Since the stones were not exactly the same, slight variations were understandable. I grabbed another stone, about twice as heavy as the ones before it. And again, the stone flew about the same distance. Hmm, that was unexpected.

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I looked at the mana display. Aha, the last spell used two mana instead of one, so the stone flew the same distance despite having twice the mass. The good news was that the laws of physics apparently applied to magic as well. But why had the spell used two mana? I would have expected that one mana would be consumed again and the bigger stone would travel only half the distance. There could be only one explanation for this.

To test my assumption, I took another small stone and imagined how the stone would hit the large rock. Shortly after, the test object hit the boulder and fell to the ground. Checking the mana showed that this time, two mana were used. I placed the next small stone on my hand and pictured the boulder being hit with significant force. Promptly, I heard the impact and the ricochet flew into the bushes. The last spell cost me five mana, so my mana core was now completely empty.

My theory seemed to be confirmed: the spell was directly affected by thought. On my first cast, I had no concrete ideas, except for the desire to make the stone fly. So that was implemented with the minimal use of mana. When I used the large stone, my attention was on the spot where the first two projectiles landed, so the spell made the stone fly exactly that far and used as much mana as was necessary to do so. After that, my wish was implemented to hit the target or hit it even harder.

How cool was that? I had been racking my brain the whole time on how to dose the mana usage and the solution was so simple! I grinned: sometimes we really did go too digital. Of course, there were still plenty of unanswered questions and approaches I could take to answer them experimentally, but it was already a damn good starting point. I just had to make sure I had enough mana.

So I went back into the cave, took a quick look at Orthok, who was lying there unchanged, and sat down to meditate near the magic source. The mana supply had replenished just as quickly as last time, but the increase in mana core was a long time coming. It must have been at least an hour before I felt the longed-for pulse of warmth and the gauge jumped to 18/18. Somewhat perplexed, I ended the meditation. After some thought, I thought of many reasons why it was taking longer, but I was getting nowhere with the current information, so I discarded the thoughts.

I had to prepare for the trip into the Devastation. My water bag was empty by now, and hunger was also making itself more and more noticeable. It was time to do something about it. Thoughtfully, I looked at the hunter’s short sword. On the one hand, it would be an additional burden. On the other hand, I didn’t want to rely only on magic, with my mana amount I could cast only a few spells, so I hung it on my belt. After some consideration, I decided to take the quiver as well. We were out of bows anyway, and probably the arrows were better suited for throwing than rocks. I wasn’t sure how accurate they would fly, but hoped that magic would do the aiming for me. Of the original twelve arrows, only five were left after the fight against the monster, so that would have to do.

Thus equipped, I cast a parting glance at the motionless Orthok and left the cave.