Out of the eighty plus people who were standing there, more than twenty of them immediately broke through to ascend. I wasn’t entirely sure how they all managed it, without the excess amounts of mana that were needed to manage the breakthrough, but they did.

I had theories, of course – Edgar had literally just said that people tended to bring a few potions or enchantments or wardlines, after all – but it didn’t really matter.

What mattered far more was the spike of mana I felt in the edge of my senses, headed right at me. Moving more on instinct than anything, I teleported a few feet to the side, leaving an afterimage in the air.

One of those who hadn’t broken through, a twenty-ish year old man with electric blue hair, had released a series of conjured blades at me.

“We’re allowed to attack each other?!” I shouted, shifting to the left in a pivot that Ikki had drilled into me to allow a bolt of crackling green force to whizz past me.

I felt a ripple of spatial mana trying to teleport my bag away, and I targeted it with Immovable Lock. It wasn’t designed to block teleportation, but it did anchor the bag in place enough to make it too hard to pull away.

I turned and started moving as fast as I could to the trail, but the blue haired boy who’d attacked me before leapt forwards, hand glowing with a gauntlet that flowed with creation mana. He punched out, and I teleported to the side again.

He let out a growl and a tide of creation mana rushed out of him, forging into a pair of stone spears in the air, which shot towards me. Turning to protect my backpack, I took several long strides backwards, getting out of the way of the dual spear thrusts. With the space, I started steadily heading to the trail head again.

Only a few moments later, ripples of ice appeared on the ground in front of me, making it harder to walk with the uneven elevation. The blue haired boy swung at my back, not even going after me any more, just targeting my backpack. I teleported two feet back, putting him in front of him.

“Oh, come on!” he shouted, slipping on his own spell and staggering back up to his feet. “Why should you get an advantage? Give me your backpa–”

I felt the flicker of mana from behind me, and took advantage of it. I teleported back in front of him, and tossed a Fungal Lock over his body.

The spell that had been fired at my back struck him in the chest, and flickering purple magic began to blaze around his head.

For a moment, I considered trying to steal his tarp. A second tarp was going to do a lot to help me, since I wouldn’t need to pack and unpack each night but in the end, I let it be.

Edgar was watching us and monitoring our actions. Thievery might be within the rules, but I suspected that it would actually lose me points. In a test of survival, stealing from strangers seemed like a good way to bring needless enemies on your head, and decrease your odds of survival in the long run.

Despite what some people thought, humans were social creatures. We worked in groups. Friendship and alliances were what had built the world, not being strong enough to rob and murder people to death. That worked fine in the short run, but as a long term strategy, all it did was guarantee someone would grow stronger than you in order to seek revenge.

No, the blue haired guy had been a prick, but I was confident in not stealing from him.

As I passed under the gates and onto the trail properly, the attacks and chaos of battle began to fade away. There were still a few people who shot me envious looks because of my tarp-turned backpack, but I honestly thought that most of them were probably jealous, rather than angry, the way the

One of them shot a pair of force hands at me, aiming for the bone branches of solidified mana, and I released a pair of pinpoint boneshards, tearing through the force hands before they could approach. I set five bones spinning around me in a staggered hexagon pattern and kept walking, peeling off the trail about twenty minutes in to shed the extra layers and store them in my tarp-backpack.

More importantly, I nestled the nearly hundred vials of potions and spatially-anchored vials into the spare clothes, cushioning them so that if I got into any sort of intense fight again, I’d at least reduce the risk of them breaking.

I put two fireball potions in my jacket pockets, though, just in case. Between the chill that swept through me even against the potion of warmth, and the gloves that I wore, my hands were a bit less dexterous than usual, but I should still be able to toss them without too much effort. And if not… Transport Item was always an option.

Speaking of options, though, I returned to the trail and cast several spells of my own. Harvest Distance came first – a brisk hike was barely enough to do more than break even on the spell, but over the course of the day, that would still be a decent amount of mana.

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The I cast my mana senses broad around me, stretching them out for at least a hundred feet in every direction.

If I were good at it, veiling my mana would probably be for the best. I was strong, but nowhere near strong enough to go blasting my presence everywhere. But while I would be able to hold my veil over myself while I walked about, I’d not be able to hold it in a fight, nor would I be able to while I slept. Since I’d be forced to reveal my presence either way, I thought it was best to at least know what was around me.

After that, I used a pulse of Sense Directionality and Internal Pocketwatch to figure out the speed I needed to go.

It felt a little bit slow. I felt like I could turn up the pace and easily move twice, maybe even thrice the speed, but I didn’t know if that was reasonable or not. I’d get tired throughout the day, after all, and while I was in good shape – better than ever, thanks to my abuse of the Foxstep spell – I wasn’t an experienced hiker, and with how sharp these mountains and glaciers were, the elevation changes would definitely mess with me as I hiked.

Bearing all that in mind, I kept myself moving at the slow but steady six mile day pace – just a bit faster than the minimum needed to get there safely within the month.

The first several hours were shockingly peaceful, especially after the explosion of mana and violence that had been caused by the opening of the gate. The trail was serene: old, fresh pines that were gently draped in a coating of snow, and the air was still.

Still, but not silent.

There was the creaking of the branches as they caught the wind, sounding like rusty hinges on a thick oak door. Every once in a while, there would be a loud, yet somehow muted, ‘wumph’ as a tree branch, its burden of snow too heavy for it, bent, and the snow slid off, skidding to the ground. Rarer still, there was the loud cracking as a branch or twig snapped, spiraling downwards in an arc.

The air was crisp, sharp and clean in a way that things could only be when they’re left undisturbed by humanity. Pine intermingled with tangs of the air’s snow.

Despite the fact it was the shortest day of the year, it was staggeringly bright. Anywhere the light shone through the canopy of trees, it caught on the snowfall and bounced, scattering around to light up the forest in a bold display that was unique. I’d seen snow plenty, but I lived in a city. The snow there could get greasy, muddy, and oily, worn down by the urbaneness of humanity.

Mountains and glaciers still stood tall in the distance, imposing like the magisterial might of an ancient magus, but truthfully, I wasn’t sure that even the mythical magi would be able to move the world like this. Could one person really bend nature to their whims? Somehow, I doubted it was really that simple. There was a purity that existed here, where there were so few people, and truthfully, I felt somewhat bad about interrupting it.

But that purity wasn’t a purity from life, just from humanity. Winter it may have been, but there was still life. Wintertail Deer stalked through the forests with a grace and silence that no mundane creature could accomplish, arctic foxes burrowed in their dens, moonlight hares scampered among the sparse berry bushes. Most seemed to see me as a non-threat, and that made me wonder about the nature of my mana senses. I was launching them around me, but despite the power of Edgar’s beastial magic supposedly making the monsters more violent and unwilling to share territory, none of them had attacked me.

I was sure that would change, but for now, I simply enjoyed the peace around me.

I encountered the first creature liable to get violent with me a bit after noon. I’d picked up the pace a little bit when after three hours of moving, I still felt I was going slow, but I paused when my mana senses picked up on the touch of a powerful creature a hundred feet up the trail.

An aurora bear.

“Hey there,” I called out to the bear, announcing my presence in a low, but not whisper-quiet voice, while walking forward. “I’m just gonna move through the area, okay?”

I caught sight of it then, a massive, lumbering frame. It was massive, its shoulder easily coming up to my chin, and it burned with the aurora that gave it its name, a shimmering rainbow of blues and greens, streaked with violet.

When the bear looked at me, I felt the touch of Edgar’s strange power in the air and groaned.

It charged, moving with a speed no human could match, galloping on all fours. It was on me in an instant, and rearing back, a brightly glowing paw ready to slam down on my head.

I Foxstepped behind a nearby tree, leaving a material echo in its place. The bear punched through the echo in an instant, turning it to ash, but I was already moving. I heard the sniffling of the bear scenting for me, and it let out a chuff of confusion when it wasn’t able to smell anything.

The blueshade plant’s scent magic might not be the flashiest in my arsenal, but its potions had already proven their use.

I hid behind a tree when I saw the bear starting to look around, and while I had to hide for a while, the bear must have decided that it had killed me, as I felt the touch of Edgar’s magic fading away, and set off again.

It got dark fairly early, but I kept moving regardless. The night vision provided by the ingrained effects of Vampiric Senses might not have been a match for the full spell, but i wasn’t going to waste time, and I only stopped once I’d gotten eight miles from the trail site. As I was getting ready to bunk down for the night, I felt something at the very edges of my mana senses and wandered over.

There, nestled among the snow, was a cluster of snowdrops that hummed with a faint telluric mana. They were only first gate, and I couldn’t see anything too special about them, until I shaped a basic lighting spell from ungated mana.

In the light of the spell, the leaves of the bell-shaped flowers glimmered like opals, an iridescence that was almost hypnotic.

I let the light fade, and considered my options. Plucking all of them would vastly increase the bulbs would survive the month, but would it be too greedy? I didn’t want to be the kind of beast mage who exploited the environment, like Edgar had talked about. But there was magic in these, faint though it may be, and I wanted to know more. For all I knew, I’d just discovered a solution to my money problems! I doubted it was that simple, but it was technically a possibility.