A completely black ball the size of a fingernail bounced silently against the bark of a dead, dry log. Before the ball of shadow could dissipate, there was a short, sharp whistle. A blink of an eye later, a dagger could be seen lodged into the exact spot that the bolt had hit. Only its hilt was left protruding out of the wood.
“Whoa!” Janet exclaimed, the elation she felt clearly written all over her sweaty face.
The bolt had been released into a random trajectory. That forced her to track its weaving track through the air, so the direction of her dagger throw was only decided at the very last moment.
Yeah, her throwing skills had improved by leaps and bounds. She was now confident that if she faced the Rumbler Hogs from a week ago, she would not need to be as circumspect in dispatching them.
Her fights had born fruit. Janet could now hold her own against most opponents.
Her speed and reflexes had surpassed what could be considered base human. If Janet chose to, a hundred-meter dash would take her less than five seconds. That came in very handy when she needed to flee the opponents she deemed too dangerous.
Her senses had also grown sharp enough to detect the difference between the rustle of a leaf and the silent footstep of a hare from 50 meters away. Her training, both in magic and her dagger, ensured that any beats she detected were dealt with or evaded just as easily.
She was like a whole new Janet!
A long, thin shadow construct weaved through the logs placed strategically around the clearing. Their misshapen trunks created a makeshift obstacle course for training purposes, making Janet’s throws that much more difficult.
The construct reached the dagger and coiled around its handle. With a slight tug from the mana in her own shadow, the construct pulled the dagger free.
Janet looked at the thin hole left after the dagger was dislodged, then her eyes shifted to similar holes in the thirty-something logs throughout the clearing.
With the power and accuracy of each throw, she was 100% certain that had this been a real fight, all her targets would have been brained and killed instantly, reduced to nothing but fuel for her advancement.
Janet took note of the time. The shadows were at their shortest. Janet could tell by the added strain on her mana as the construct dragged the dagger back into her palm. It was struggling to remain manifested in the midday sun, forcing Janet to waste mana with every second it remained active.
Today’s training was over. It was time to prepare for the main activity of the day.
Before that, though, Janet stank. Her skin was filthy with a caked-over mixture of sweat and dust. If she went out hunting like that, beasts would smell her in the wind from a mile away.
Beside the clearing that was her training ground for the past three days was a gaily babbling stream. It originated from a spring higher up in the hills. Although the stream was shallow and carried only a tiny amount of water, it fit Janet’s needs perfectly.
Janet took out a loofah she’d harvested on her travels. Next was a piece of dried root from a plant with sword-shaped leaves and white flowers she’d found on the rocky ledge all those days ago. It would serve as her soap.
The soap-root produced enough lather to drown a baby every time it was injected with mana. Janet had used similar roots to clean herself back in town but with no mana, her baths had never been half as cleansing.
Bathing done and feeling thoroughly reinvigorated and rejuvenated, Janet took out some dry branches and made a fire. Forty or so minutes later, one tender, juicy hog steak from her first hunt was set aside to rest on a broad leaf. The delicious juices needed to redistribute through the roast, whose every whiff tantalized Janet with the promise of a heavenly lunch.
As that rested, Janet tended to a root vegetable that was slowly roasting in the hot coals. She had harvested five of the white-fleshed tubers the day before after a hunt for a horned hare led her directly to its feeding grounds.
The tuber was stored after Janet deemed it cooked. It joined a pre-roasted steak in her storage that somehow still retained its heat and freshness. The two, along with a fruit and some leafy herbs, would be her dinner.
The jungle was still a dangerous place even with Janet’s new strength. Creatures existed within its confines that even now could still swallow Janet in one gulp. She did not need the light of a fire attracting such monsters her way.
After her lunch, and with a belly bathed in warm contentment, Janet drank from the stream and filled her waterskin. She then doused the fire with water and a mound of soil. A hot campfire pit was a dead giveaway that someone had been around the clearing.
She also collected her training logs in case the site was compromised during her time away. The logs had taken Janet a full day to collect. She did not fancy having to do it again.
As per her mantra, a hidden Janet was a safe Janet, so she took all measures necessary to ensure that anybody tracking her would have a hard time of it.
Janet reached the hills in an hour. The air up there was fresh and the breeze crisp. Janet took a deep, cleansing breath as her eyes panned through the landscape.
There was a thin trail of smoke to the west. That meant people, and thus danger. Towards the southeast was a large lake into which her stream drained. Even now, while the sun was glaring down onto the green paradise in all its glory, Janet could hear faint roars and squeals coming from that direction. That way lay a wild melee of hungry and thirsty beasts, Janet's least favorite travel destination.
The west was eerily silent. Not even bird calls carried upon the wind from that direction. The trees that way were taller and their canopies wider and sparser. To any adventurer, that indicated a section of jungle devoid of resource or profit.
The trees there were old and ancient, their roots drinking up all mana and nutrients from the soil. Their canopies also blocked off the sun’s light, smothering the undergrowth.
Janet would explore that direction next. The area was likely very safe, allowing her some time to train peacefully and consolidate her gains from the past few weeks. She also suspected that in the damp, musty undergrowth there, she'd find some amazing fresh mushrooms.
To the east… the main route through the jungle lay that way. There would be people, hundreds of them, towards that direction. Janet shuddered at the thought.
Caution aside, scoping out danger was not the reason Janet had climbed the sparsely forested hills. She was here to learn.
The previous night, Janet had heard a roar of challenge coming from this direction. It had been deep and sonorous, shaking the leaves with its intensity. As the sound reached a crescendo, there had been a single crack that tore through the forest, like the snapping of a tree-sized twig… or the sudden discharge of electricity.
Then, the entire jungle had been drowned in a pall of nervous silence.
Janet suspected that a certain solitary bird was roosting in these environs: A Thunder Owl.
The birds were magnificently potent beasts that could discharge lightning from their feathers. For some reason, the lightning was not part of their innate magic. They were wind-attuned beasts, yet their main weapon – the means by which they hunted and repelled hunters and nuisances – was a blinding white lightning bolt that rivalled the natural discharge of plasma from a thunderstorm.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
As the owls were creatures that were relatively peaceful, subsisting on rodents and smaller animals, hunters left them alone. That antagonizing one almost always led to death might have also contributed to hunters’ reticence to make an enemy out of the beasts.
Janet was not stupid. Hunting the [Thunder Owl] would be suicide with extra steps. Her goal here was to watch, and hopefully learn.
While Janet was growing in power quite quickly, a glaring issue had arisen, made apparent during her many fights.
The altercations were either a short-lived, underwhelming affair that consisted of her killing her opponent with a single dagger throw or in an endless barrage of [Shadow Bolts]. The other option involved her having to run.
When a dagger throw failed to pierce through a beast’s armor, as had been the case in a fight against a [Diamondback Beetle], or when the armor was reinforced with mana thus repelling her bolts, Janet had to flee.
Her shadow constructs were a chiefly utility ability. Against creatures with any amount of power, they were utterly useless.
Janet needed another magical ability if she was to keep her upward trajectory in power, but she was completely clueless as to how to go about creating one.
One solution was to spring for another weapon and go the warrior route, but that would require years upon years of training before she was halfway decent in a fight, time she could not afford to waste.
Hence, the Thunder Owl.
Janet’s main worry was that shadow, though great for utility and stealth, was not very good in a fight. She hadn’t yet even cracked how to use it for stealth! Her only mana affinity was slowing her down with how limited it seemed to be.
The crack of thunder the previous night had given her an idea. If she learnt a trick such as the owl’s, perhaps she could learn how to employ other elements other than shadow.
She could almost imagine herself blasting apart the infuriatingly stoic [Diamondback Beetle] with a blast of searing heat strong enough to cook it in its shell, or shearing through its protection with blades of sculpted wind.
A girl could dream. But such magic was yet out of reach.
‘Was that…’ Janet thought, careful not to utter her thoughts out loud.
There was a strange wind formation in the air. The wind was blowing from the south, yet trees in a thicket to her west were bending eastwards. A deeper look revealed that the trees were actually bending towards the thicket’s center.
Something there had the power to manipulate air currents.
Breathless with caution yet undaunted, Janet put one boot in front of the other, making sure to remain crouched among the bushes. She’d grown good enough at the crouching from her hunts that she could now account for sight lines and matching her movement to the rustling of the leaves without conscious effort.
Janet crept closer to the trees. Progress was slow, but caution ruled over her rising impatience.
What was she expecting to discover here? While the owl utilized electricity, it was not a given that Janet could learn the trick just by observing it. Chances were that the owl’s feathers possessed some special quality that allowed them to generate electricity…
Janet shook her head. Such doubts only served to keep her weak and helpless. If she was to advance, she needed power. She had learned during her time in the jungle that all power came from overcoming danger and risk to life, so she marched on.
It took her almost an hour to cross the 200 meters or so to the isolated copse of trees. Her eyes, peeled for any sign of danger the entire time, were beginning to hurt a little.
Janet smiled in triumph. She pumped her fist in silent jubilation as right in the middle of the thicket, she spotted a gigantic brown bird quietly snoozing away with its head tucked beneath a wing on which Janet could see silent arcs of electrical discharge.
Windblown particles of dust and dislodged leaves swirled around the bird in lazy arcs, but Janet had eyes only for the silent arcs of lightning.
She almost laughed maniacally like an evil mastermind whose plan had come together, but stopped herself at the last moment. Waking the owl would lead to certain death.
Still, she interlocked her fingers and nodded slowly, her brow furrowed thoughtfully like a master strategist. The first step to acquiring the knowledge she south was a resounding success.
The next hours would be spent in meditation, so Janet looked for a well-concealed spot with a direct line of sight to the owl’s wing. She was hoping to use the acute mana-sense acquired during meditation to study the energetic interactions happening within that wing.
Thus began the rest of Janet’s evening.
==========
Sylthis rubbed her eyelid. This scouting duty was getting a tad too monotonous. Training, then a fight, followed by more training and fighting. It was all so droll.
Sylthis watched as the girl activated [Meditation]. As always, it impressed her how simply such a profound state was achieved by the child. She didn’t even realize that she was activating a Skill, yet she could utilize the state with great alacrity.
Was that perhaps the reason her party had been sent here? To ensure her progress remained organic and untainted by the Almanac System?
Questions aside, Sylthis was impressed and somewhat proud of how far the girl had come. She had been a cowering, uncoordinated magical toddler just a few short weeks ago, yet now she was…
“Darius!” Sylthis shouted as her stream of thoughts cut out.
Her calm quietude had disappeared, replaced by a towering rage. What was Janet doing? Didn’t she know manipulating raw environmental mana without the screening protection of a Skill was an easy way to get scorched to a crisp by the untamed ferocity of natural mana flows?
“You seem animated,” the party leader observed.
As ever, his state remained unruffled. He did not bother looking away from Sylvia’s project with which he was now helping to put the final touches.
“Janet is trying to Thunder-Owl her way to higher magic. Right next to a LV 12 Thunder Owl.”
“Is she succeeding?” Sylvia asked, her tone interested yet distracted. She too was keenly focused on the swirling cloud of golden runes.
Sylthis was not in any way an expert of mana formations, but she knew a mana anchor when she saw one. And the one Sylvia had crafted was the most intricate and sophisticated she’d ever laid eyes on.
It would be a powerful tool when it finally took hold of a mana core.
“What do you mean is she succeeding? She’s going to burn herself up!”
It was Brian who answered Sylthis’ hysteria with his infuriatingly smooth, polished tone of voice that always ended up sounding arrogant.
“You forget, Sylthis. Her magic's not anchored.” He pointed at the construct Darius was helping to enclose inside a cube of solid light. “There’s nothing for the ambient mana to interfere with.”
Sylthis thought about the logic. It was sound. Without an anchoring formation in her core, Janet was not fully separated from the ambient flows of magic. It was why she was finding it so hard to create magic that suited her, and why she would ultimately need to register at a Guild.
“What about her core?” she had to ask. She was not the most well-versed when it came to matters magic, but even she knew that a core exposed as Janet’s was to the full weight of ambient mana would soon be marred by impurities and stray Mysteries.
“What about it?” Brian riposted.
“Her magic might get corrupted,” Sylthis stated matter-of-factly. She turned her eye to the fire mage, a naked challenge expressed in full there.
“And that’s our problem because…”
God, could a person be more infuriating!? Sylthis almost threw the perception focus on her lap at the pompous oaf, but controlled herself.
She chose to ignore the levitating man and turned to face Darius and the elf.
“Are we seriously going to allow Janet to get mana poisoning? All her progress will be lost!”
The shouted entreaty reverberated through the clearing, in which had been erected four magical constructs. They were shaped like tents, and were used in a similar manner, but the inside of each was far larger than their simple-looking outsides betrayed.
Sylthis thought the tents looked cozy and welcoming, but she couldn’t help but hope she’d soon be back in her spacious manor and the alchemical garden in its depths.
Darius looked up. His sight skimmed through the forest all around them as though looking for threats, then his eyes landed on his scout. There was no emotion betrayed by his motions. His fingers were still moving the runic script inside the cube around.
Just as he parted his lips to give his answer, Pireus chimed up.
“You know, we’ll be forced to clear the corruption if ever we want to accomplish the goals set by the missive,” he supplied thoughtfully. “I mean, I’d hate to be in charge of dealing all that pain to the child when the time comes.”
Sylthis felt a smile begin to creep up her lips at the support, just before the warmth powering it withered like an exposed bud in winter.
“Or we could just shatter her core and begin all over again. She won’t be losing much either way,” Brian retorted.
Horror rose in the Cyclopean’s mind as she imagined Janet going through the harrowing, maddening pain of a shattered core. The helplessness and terror of having everything one had worked for dissipate into thin air and the realization that they’d have to start again…
Could Janet survive going back to the state she’d been in before her Awakening? Sylthis just couldn’t see her bouncing back from the depths of such depression.
As Sylthis fretted, her brain furiously trying to formulate an argument to counter Brian, the elf came to the rescue of Janet’s future self.
“I’m fairly certain I’ll be done here by tomorrow evening. You should send the message to put the plan in motion.”
“Thank the Spheres!” Pireus smiled. “This place is too silent for my tastes.”
“What about Janet? Do I need to scare away the owl?”
“No need. Now that we’re moving forward with the plan, she will meet Him before the day ends,” Darius answered. “Nothing that happens from now until then will be of any consequence.”
Sylthis sighed in relief. At least for now, her charge would avoid too much harm.
She withdrew from her Ring of Storage a marble tablet inscribed with dense runic script. Without hesitation, she fed 100 points of her mana into the palm-sized block, which disintegrated instantly into inert sand.
The runes on the tablet lit up brilliantly for a fraction of a second as it broke down, sending an encrypted ripple through the manascape. Nobody but authorized parties would even detect that a wave was passing by.
The signal to proceed was relayed, and the puzzle began to assemble itself. At its very center was Janet, still unawares as to her importance in the machinations of beings more powerful and scarier than her darkest thoughts could ever conjure up.