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I don’t think so today,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s too much potential wealth to be extracted right now.”

A part of me expected the winds of fortune to gust angrily at that, but nothing happened. I supposed that Meadow had warned me that it was fickle for a reason.

“Hmm,” Kene said. “How about I go ahead and start working on the elixir while you explore? If I have Dusk with me, she can help, and we can leave when we’re ready, or if you need us.”

I frowned. I didn’t love the idea of being out here alone, but the efficiency would be better. Most of the minor herbs that Kene was picking up weren’t powerful, and powerful things I came across I could just consult with Kene about.

“Alright,” I said, waving and opening a portal. The strange little fox-bird creature trundled over and towards the portal when it opened, and I frowned.

The creature was wild, and it was potentially dangerous. It was much stronger than me, after all, and while I could fight up a tier, I didn’t think it was the wisest idea to needlessly do so.

But…

It had helped Kene. It seemed to have some intelligence to it, enough to recognize and judge our actions. It had been kind to us.

“Is it safe?” I asked Kene. They examined it, then put their head on top and cast a cleansing spell.

“It had some intestinal parasites,” Kene said, “but that’s normal for any wild animal. I cleared them out, though. No rabies or other serious diseases I could spot.”

I let the critter pass through the portal. Kene followed, and the portal shut behind them.

“Alright,” I said to empty air. “Let’s go.”

I spread my mana senses wide, not straining them to the maximum, but still keeping them radiated out to a radius of a dozen feet or so.

With that done, I started moving and sketching my Immovable Lock spell. I wished that I’d already had it ingrained, since that would massively increase my potential mobility, but combining Harvest Distance, Foxstep, and my broom let me keep a powerful degree of mobility, especially for my gate.

A spellbinder with a flight spell, a rich person with a better broom, or a third gate spatial mage might have been able to move faster over a long distance, but I was still able to cover a good amount of ground.

It was oddly peaceful as I moved. Sure, there was the odd wild monster, but I think I was beginning to understand why Orykson detested the term.

Monsters, after all, were animals. Powerful, magical animals. But animals.

As long as I wasn’t challenging them for territory, and was displaying enough power to make it obvious I wasn’t prey, few things were willing to hunt me. The few that were, I was able to teleport out of the way of, leaving an afterimage behind.

I didn’t have Kene’s herblore, so I passed over the things with only a tiny bit of energy in them, but I did stop to nab some wild chives.

Not prismatic chives or firelight chives. Just plain, ordinary chives.

With how fast we were running through the food stores, I figured that anythibg would be a help, even if it was just herbs.

After some time wandering, my senes what felt like a powerful mental mana source, roughly third gate in potency. Strong third gate, though, nearly on the border of fourth.

Slowing and entering the clearing, I identified it as a strange, jelly-like substance.

I considered marking it with a spatial anchor as something to return to later, but dismissed it.

While it might absorb enough ambient mana to punch through to fourth gate, it might not. And either way, if I left it that long, it might be taken by someone else.

Not to mention, the longer I took, the more likely I was to attract the attention of something that lived here and used the goop as a personal power source.

With a sigh, I used a stick to collect it into a mason jar, and tossed it into Dusk’s treasury. As I did, I felt a buzzing start to strike at the edges of my mind, and was suddenly very glad that I had a mindshield ring.

I left the clearing quickly, and felt a couple of mental stabbing attacks at me, but nothing able to pierce the mindshield. Before long, I was in the clear, grinning like a thief in the night.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I picked up a few new, weaker mana sources – telluric, death, and desolation – as I moved, and decided to put Kene’s theory to the test.

One of the mana sources was a tiny skull that radiated with the power of death, so I slipped it into my spirit – not through my mouth, this time. While eating things was the easiest way to fit it into your spirit, I took the extra time to absorb the skull while holding it. I didn’t want to know what eating it might do to me.

I hadn’t used a ton of death mana, mainly using it for the odd pulse of Vampiric Senses, or converting it over to top off my temporal mana. Still, the mana source broke down and refueled my death gate’s power.

There was a humming in my spirit as some of it reflected into my life gate as well, but it was imperfect – I restored more death than life.

That… left me even more confused. If I was able to break down Dusk’s mana without reflecting it, then why did I reflect a mana source? Why did the drops of destiny mana reflect, so to speak?

Was it because I’d chosen life and death? Because I’d chosen Fortune? Had I even chosen Fortune, without a well?

I groaned, almost wishing the skull hadn’t reflected, and then kept moving. Two more first gate mana sources found their way into my bag, both lunar, and then something caught the very edge of my senses.

I turned and navigated myself to a small, boglike clearing.

Actually, was it a clearing? It was an open gap with lots of mud and water and few trees, but I didn’t know if bogs had a different word.

What had caught my attention, however, was the massive bounty of destiny plants.

Much like Kene and I had expected, there were more treasures and plants deeper in the forest, and this was evident here. Where I’d only found a few of them during the fight with Bohn, this glade had eleven of the purple plants.

Not only that, but there was a small glow coming from under the murky waters, and it felt… strange. Compact, dense, first gate mana, but of no particular affinity I could recognize.

I slowed as I entered the clearing and brought my mana senses tighter around me, while sending a thought to Dusk. After all, there was no way that a glade so bountiful wouldn’t have something inside that was more than willing to protect it.

Sweeping my mana senses through the air like a brush, I searched for anything amiss, then empowered my sensory spells. Analyze Life, Death, and Space all flared, alongside Vampiric Senses.

That was what saved me. Something was moving under the water, and it had been able to hide from the imbued effect of Analyze Space, but the fully powered spell and Vampiric Senses laid it bare.

I frantically Foxstepped across the clearing as a creature almost the size of my entire body exploded out of the water. If my spells hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t have been able to at all. As was, I didn’t even have the time to leave an afterimage behind me.

The thing was a serpent, five and a half feet long, and at least two feet in diameter. It had thick, powerful scales that glittered like polished stones, and it emanated a heavy, solid power that reminded me of the deep earth.

The serpent whipped its head around and opened its mouth. A tight, grayish power built in its throat, rotating and compressing, and I wasn’t about to wait for it to unleash an attack.

I Foxstepped into the air above the snake and drove down with my staff, overcharged Briarthreads, Pinpoint Boneshards, and a bit of Blademoss.

That attack had ripped apart an abyssal shambler’s adaptive armor.

It slammed into the serpent’s back with a loud cracking noise, but when I landed, I saw it had only cracked the serpent’s scales. The serpent itself was fine. It unleashed the power it had been building, and a massive beam of power ripped through the air. I dove out of the way, leaving an afterimage, but I was still terrified to see that the attack blew apart three trees that it struck.

I was tired now, the staff having drained my power, and I’d clearly made a mistake. The abyssal shambler’s armor was adaptive, so of course I’d punched through it with a mixed series of new attacks.

This serpent’s scales, on the other hand, were more like Ed’s Skin of Stone spell. Raw defense, rather than adaptive.

Fighting through the fatigue, I shoved my staff and bone shards back into my spirit. I’d gotten a good attack in, but it had left me physically drained. I wasn’t going to be using the staff again, not so soon, as doing so would leave me vulnerable. The boneshards were great against fleshy opponents, but wouldn’t do anything against this serpent.

If this was going to be an endurance game, then I could try and play that.

I flicked my hands out and put a three layer fungal lock spell onto the serpent. It wriggled and tried to slip them off, which bought me the time to reach inside my spirit and tap my Temporal Basin. I’d only had it for a week or so, so the power wasn’t vast, but it was more than enough to supercharge my temporal gate, and converting it around, I was able to more or less restore my mana.

Nothing I could do for my energy, and no time to cry about that. Why wasn’t Dusk here yet? No time there either.

I foxstepped out of the way, and was surprised how much more it cost me, now that I couldn’t tap into my life energy flows to provide power for the spell.

I flicked my hands to cast another three-layer Fungal Lock onto the serpent, and saw it struggling again. For all the endurance, stealth, and magical offense, it seemed like it had sacrificed some physical strength – which was good for me.

I overcharged my Briarthreads, not for offense, but for defense, then held my hands out to the nearby trees.

They were simple things, just bald cypresses, which worked in my favor as I flooded them with Enhance Plant Life.

I wasn’t super skilled in the manipulation of new limbs grown with the spell, since most of the time I used that, it was just to send Blademoss at someone.

But I was skilled enough to throw a large, temporary root over the serpent. The serpent let out an angry hiss, then its scales sharpened and began to spin.

Like a lumberjack, the serpent cut through my Fungal Locks and roots with ease, then flung itself at me. I used another far-too-expensive Foxstep with an afterimage to dodge, but the serpent was smart.

It ignored the illusion, and instead unleashed another breath attack at me the instant it spotted me. I wasn’t able to pull together another Foxstep in time – a problem that my Beast Mage’s Soul should help with – and was forced to take the hit.

My defensive aura strained intensely, and my conjured briars broke apart. I was shoved backwards through the mud quickly, until I hit a tree and felt the air rush out of my lungs.

I didn’t think anything had broken, but having the wind completely knocked out of me left me gasping for breath and my vision blurry.

But not so blurry that I didn’t see a portal snap open next to me.