The moment they left through the gates, Edel broke into a full on sprint. The guards behind them stared at the two beasts leaving on their own, but in the end they decided they weren't getting paid enough to care.

Kiel wasn't in the best mood, so seeing Edel run out of nowhere leaving him behind, annoyed him.

With a sigh, he started running after her. He thought about how he would give her a good earful, but the more he ran and tried to catch up to her, the more his mind cleared.

His annoyance disappeared as he started having fun chasing Edel through the forest, dodging past trees at a very much unhealthy speed.

Seeing him get closer to her, she kicked up a notch and increased the distance. Usually at this point he would start teleporting to avoid large trees and close the distance. This time, he turned to a skill he really should be using more. Sacrificing his vitality, he enhanced his strength and his speed exploded.

Almost instantly he needed to teleport to avoid a tree that he approached much sooner than he expected.

His perception was working overtime as the density of the trees increased. Soon, he caught up to Edel, canceling his skill and teleporting on her back. Sometime during the race his Unbound Adaptation also leveled up but that was secondary to winning over Edel.

She was indignant about his cheating, and she told him so through the bond, but he was having too much fun to care. And she did start running out of nowhere, this was his payback.

They reached their spot by the river before he realized it. This place had become like a second home to him. Sure it lacked all the niceties that Melissa's house had, but he had so many memories of this place, both good and bad. Most important one of all, it was where he met Edel.

Sleeping on a proper bed, tucked in, was nice and all, but it wasn't cuddling with Edel in the short grass underneath a tree nice.

And there was even a lizard the size of a dog waiting for them. Didn't even have to hunt for dinner. A teleport and a claw to the face later, the lizard was dead.

Taking his favorite part of the tail, he couldn't help but gag after the first bite. His face fell, and he spat out the few bites he had taken. Seriously, how had he managed to eat this sort of stuff, let alone found it good tasting.

Oh no... Melissa has corrupted me.

After eating good food for the first time in a while, he couldn't go back. It also didn't help that Melissa was an excellent cook. Either he was going to find a way to cook the meat himself, or he was going to learn a way to use his spatial magic to store food for later.

Leaving the tail for Edel to eat, he drank from the river to rinse his mouth and satiate his thirst. He looked at the few fish passing by the slow currents of the river and couldn't help but laugh. He never really attempted to catch a fish before. The river was a lot deeper than he was tall, so it wouldn't be easy, but maybe if he teleported next to the fish...

That was an idea for another day, he didn't want to get wet right before sleeping and the sun was already down; it would take ages to dry.

Sitting by the tree a few meters away, he curled up next to it, trying to fall asleep to no avail. A few minutes later, Edel sat next to him, protecting him from the cold and getting ready to sleep herself.

He hadn't realized how cold it was until she cuddled up with him. It was like being hugged by a warm fluffy blanket. Soon after they both fell asleep.

Early next morning, Kiel woke up when Edel got up from where they were sleeping. The sun had barely broken past the horizon, and he felt much better than yesterday.

Looking at the fish swimming in the river, he thought about it for a moment and decided he didn't crave fish that much yet.

Now he had a couple different ideas on what to get for an apology gift. The best one was something he got on his own, like wood for a new bow. He didn't see her with a new one yesterday, so she must not have bought anything.

He didn't know anything about what wood was suitable to be made into a bow, but he knew where he could find the best kind of wood. If this didn't work, he could ask Melissa for help, but that was his last resort.

There was definitely the elasticity of the wood to consider, but high enough skills could probably bypass that issue. He didn't think finding a quiet zone would be too difficult, and indeed it wasn't. In fact he found another one while he was heading for the closest one he knew about.

He entered with Edel, though thinking about it again, he told her to wait for him outside. He was going to need to concentrate for this, and protecting another person at the same time would be difficult.

His idea started with the trees that grew inside a quiet zone. If inside high ether density areas was where all sorts of wonders grew, how much did that entail?

He walked inside the zone of unstable space, his attention half on focusing where the space was the weakest and strengthening it, and half on the sheer destruction all around him.

I might have walked a bit too far.

Dozens of cracks were forming in the space all around him, and he had to retreat a few meters because the strain was getting too much. Not too many trees had survived this deep inside the quiet zone, but to his surprise there were a few.

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Getting to those trees would be difficult, and there was also no way he would be able to get any wood from them.

Instead, he focused on the ones around him. They looked like normal trees, but if that were the case, they wouldn't have survived for so long inside the zone.

Extending his claws, he scratched the surface of the wood, and for the first time in a while his claws met their match.

He was unable to cut through the bark of the tree. Putting all of his strength on his paws, he strained himself and barely made a dent on it.

Taking a deep breath, he then activated his skill, sacrificing vitality for strength. It was hard to put his mind entirely on this because he also had to watch out for the space itself trying to kill him.

Still, this time his claws cut through the bark of the tree... about three centimeters in that is.

That's not going to cut it... I didn't want to do this, but you leave me with no choice.

He apologized to the poor tree that'd withstood all of the ravages of the unstable space until now. Unfortunately, it met him, and he could help give the space a little boost.

He waited until there was a crack close to the tree and the same way he held the space together, he pulled at its ends, helping the crack expand. He could feel it was much easier than other times he'd used this skill.

Space tore apart in a jagged line away from him, taking half the trunk of the tree with it.

Despite a large chunk of it missing, the tree refused to fall, so after waiting for a good chance, he unleashed another spatial rend, taking most of the remaining trunk of the tree.

That was more exhausting than he expected. The tree started falling in his direction and he went to teleport away. He gathered his ether, but the usual resistance of the space around him was missing. He willed himself to move, but nothing happened.

With the tree falling even faster, he used whatever little energy he had left to sacrifice his vitality for speed. The world around him seemed to slow down as every last muscle in his body strained itself in effort.

He dodged past the large falling tree, barely avoiding being crushed, and the moment passed away.

He fell to the ground panting, only barely keeping his focus on the space around him. It took him an entire minute to get up, but instead of continuing to chip away at the fallen tree, he slowly made his way out of the quiet zone.

He'd gotten too used to using his teleportation as a get-out of jail free card, and it was creating unhealthy habits for him. He could have easily run away from its path, but when his teleportation failed his mind blanked out.

If he hadn't entered that weird state a few minutes ago, he might not have made it.

Checking his skills, he didn't see anything different until he looked at the level of his enhanced skill.

Unbound Adaptation (Lvl 11)

The skill jumped three entire levels, going from level 8 to level 11 in the blink of an eye. It felt like he'd used his vitality to fuel both his perception and strength at the same time.

That level of enhancement, however, didn't come for free. He felt exhausted in a way he couldn't describe. Thankfully, his energy was slowly coming back and a few minutes of rest later he was able to walk without his limbs trembling.

Edel was worried about him, but he reassured her he was fine and after recovering his ether he went back inside. If that wood didn't make a bow fit for a king, he would eat his tail.

This time he was more careful about his usage of Spatial Rend.

He still had to use the skill to carve out a smaller piece of wood, because carrying back a few tons of wood didn't seem like a possibility for him in any future.

Unfortunately using that skill was messy, and the chunks of wood that he cut were borderline unusable.

Ending up with something usable at the end was more a result of luck than actual skill, but he was thankful he didn't have to repeat this entire process. At least it was excellent practice for Spatial Rend that also leveled up in the middle of carving away at the tree.

The piece of wood, was of course too large for him to carry comfortably, but thankfully he had backup.

Edel was happy to carry the wood for him, though it was heavy enough that they needed to rest periodically. Thankfully, the forest had been much quieter these last few days, so nothing attacked them.

While he was resting in the shade of a large tree next to Edel, she got up and licked his face. When he told her what the wood was for, she seemed to have had an extra burst of energy.

While resting, he decided it would be good to have a break to eat something. He wasn't really that hungry and he would much prefer Melissa's cooking, but Edel was burning through her energy at a prodigious rate, and she needed to eat.

He told Edel to wait for him and left. She sent thoughts of agreement and rested against the tree behind her.

He hadn't managed to walk more than a few meters away when he stumbled. That was weird, because he felt perfectly fine, yet the world started to spin.

It took him a second to realize that it wasn't spinning, but his senses had gone haywire.

He felt dizzy, and had to fight in order to get back to his feet.

An echoing silence filled the forest around them, and he realized he could hear his heartbeat clearly in the quiet.

Another second later, space began to twist and shudder as he realized they stood in the middle of the creation of a new quiet zone. The ether around him picked up in speed the same way the wind did before the formation of a hurricane.

He had no time to stare at the earth trembling beneath his feet. Edel felt his panic before he said anything, and he screamed at her to run.

She wasn't going to make it. They weren't going to make it.

He didn't think about his next actions, that part of his brain had been short-circuited the moment he realized what was going on. He teleported next to Edel, closing a crack in space that might have hit her and focused on calming the space around them.

Edel had been much further inside the center of the new zone, and now so was he. The ether here felt like it could pick them up and throw them around, and Kiel had to close dozens if not hundreds of small cracks that attempted to form every second all around them.

He sacrificed his strength and vitality and anything else his body could give, in exchange for perception. He felt Edel pick him up by the scruff of his neck as the world around him started to lose color, his body feeling weaker than ever.

He had no idea if that was an effect of his perception or the unstable space, but it didn't matter.

Two images collided in his mind. Edel was moving slowly, moving forward as if stuck in slow motion, yet he knew that wasn't the case. He could see the world around them shift as she moved at a speed far above what he'd ever seen from her.

His mind struggled to hold that level of perception as he could feel the rest of his body breaking from the speed at which Edel was carrying him.

He could see his body almost like a third person was watching from above. He felt disconnected from reality as every bit of his being focused on the space around them, closing tears in space dozens of meters away before they covered that distance a second later.

Then they were out, and he let his perception fall back to normal.

His entire body felt like it had gone through a wood chipper, and he'd definitely had more than a few bones in his body broken. Exhaustion battled with adrenaline to keep him awake as the world spun around him.

The last thing he could think before losing his consciousness was that his gift had been ruined.