With the issue of water solved, Rane knew that he had been granted the gift of time… but that gift was still finite. He would need to begin sourcing food, and, in order to do that, he also needed to regularly use ambient, potentially revealing his presence to some of the more powerful creatures in the Kelston Great Wood.

He tried not to think about it too much, but it did occur to him that the monster that wiped out their army might not be the only creature of such power within the massive expanse of trees and foliage. Humanity had not conquered here, and so, he had no idea what to expect.

He did not expect the worst, but that was not because he was unaware of the possibility. It was simply that, if the worst were to occur, it would not matter anyways. He was lucky to survive the first encounter. No amount of preparation would save him from another monster.

His thoughts were interrupted by a pang of hunger. He could last a bit without food. That did not mean it would be comfortable. It also didn’t mean that he would be still able to move in the final days of his journey to the grave.

He needed to observe the area's fauna and decide what he could reasonably catch or kill. He walked aimlessly downstream for a few minutes until he found an area from which he could observe while remaining mostly hidden. Then, he waited.

During the day, the voice of the forest was hushed. The light breeze rustled leaves and limbs, producing a soft noise as if the trees themselves were breathing. And still, he waited.

It may have been boring if there was anything else he could be doing; however, at the moment, nothing was more important than this mundane task.

Then he heard the familiar crackling of leaves. For a split second, his mind shifted to one thought: the axtl honor guard, but he quickly dashed it away. The leaves crackled with an unfamiliar cadence. It was likely a small animal hopping around in the leaves.

There it was, a small buck rabbit, with its dark antlers protruding from behind its gray ears. After each small leap, the creature's ears twitched a bit, as if refocusing themselves to their surroundings.

Rane’s breath quickened, and saliva began to fill his mouth. He swallowed and seized control of the ambient around himself for the first time since he had fled from the monster.

The buck rabbit’s ears twitched again, and its head jerked towards Rane. It stared directly at him, then bolted away.

A small blade took to the air, poised like an arrow in a crossbow. It shot forward at the fleeing rabbit with a low whistle, but only found itself embedded in the flesh of one of the many wooden columns that defined the forest.

Rane could only watch as the small thing took bounds that carried it half a dozen yards each time.

As it disappeared into the forest, Rane’s stomach made strange noises that were accompanied by a pain that was currently dull, but that he knew would only grow sharper.

Rane re-assumed his position and waited. As he waited, he thought. The thing had sensed his ambient as soon as he took control. It clearly wasn’t a creature with much control over ambient itself, but it made sense that it could sense the presence of others through it. Without such a skill, there would be very few small animals in the forest.

The real question though, was how would he manage to bag any prey without them sensing his presence.

Rane knew that most hunters around Auryck used traps of some kind, but he had no idea what those entailed. He could have learned while back in training, but he had neglected that portion a bit in favor of diving wholly into his ambient training.

It had worked, too. Despite his meager talent, he had achieved classient with a decent degree of control, though others may have learned some of the other key skills that they were supposed to learn while alone in the woods.

In order to survive here, Rane would have to progress once more.

And so he found himself once again sitting in a clearing near a stream, circulating ambient through and around his body, but with a new focus. Ambient aura suppression. He needed to be in control of the ambient surrounding himself without disturbing its natural movement.

He had once viewed this technique as an announcement of one’s lack of prowess, or confidence. Now, he knew that he was wholly incompetent, and that without such a skill, he would starve to death while weeks deep into the Kelston Great Wood.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The method of his training was relatively simple. Rane had placed sticks in the ground at the edge of his area of direct control, which was now about 7 yards. He was approaching the area of direct control that was associated with brazients, but he knew that he lacked the impact or control to claim such a title.

Ambient aura suppression was a little misleading, as it only described what the outside effect of the technique looked like. In reality, there was no suppression happening. In order to claim that he had achieved aura suppression, Rane had to claim control of his surrounding ambient without making its flow predictable. It was like being in a state of constantly reaching out with dozens of hands. His area of direct control would be the same, but he could skip the step that required him to flare his ambient. Instead, he would simply be in control of all ambient within his ability to perceive it.

He was on his knees while resting his quads on his heels. He slowed his breathing and with his eyes closed, identified the locations of the 17 upright sticks arranged around him. From this point of perception, he could see that he had not placed them all in a perfect circle. A few were also outside of his area of perception.

He sat, motionless and focused on a twig behind him and to his right. How could he grab it without disturbing everything?

Several hours later, the closest that he had gotten was isolating the ambient only on the space surrounding the twig, but he could not use it with enough force to remove the twig from the soil. He could knock it over, but he couldn’t influence it with enough impact to make it lethal. It wouldn’t be enough to fill his belly, and certainly not enough to save him from a creature that wanted to use him to do the same thing.

The sun was going down, and Rane was no longer focused on his training. He sat near the stream, tossing leaves into the small pool and watching them float down the path before eventually disappearing into the dimming woods.

Some leaves didn’t make it, getting caught on the edges of the bank. Those ones tickled his mind, so he began breaking off small pieces of the twigs and tossing them into the stream as well, hoping that they would collide, sending the leaves on their way.

He had little success, but was able to knock one leaf loose. He brightened for a moment before he realized again where he was, what he was running from, and when his stomach sent him another signal of dissatisfaction.

Rane turned away, looking for a tree with a wide base. Such a thing was not difficult to find in such a location.

Rane flared his ambient, taking control of the area around himself and drilling into the soil at the base of the tree, hollowing out an area large enough for him to sleep away from the elements. Maybe in the future he would bring in some grass or leaves to prevent himself from sleeping directly on the cool soil, but he was tired, hungry, and disappointed. He crawled into the small space where sleep quickly found him.

*****

He woke up sweating and panting as he tried to grasp hold of the fleeting remnants of some nightmare that had gripped him in the final moments of his rest.

The pain in his abdomen was still muted, but was noticeably more constant. He began to look at the world a little bit differently. That leaf, that bush, the lichens and fungi on the bark of the trees. Any of them may prove edible. But alas, he did not know any of these things for sure, and a bad guess in a situation like his own would surely kill him.

Today, he would not even leave the clearing beside the small creek. He had to grasp this technique, and not just to get his meal for today. He needed to remain hidden from many things prowling in this treacherous land.

He crawled out of the small space and walked over to the pool, where he cupped his hands to drink. It seemed like the water quieted the protests of his stomach, if only very slightly.

He knelt once more, closed his eyes, and began to take deep, slow breaths. Today, he noticed, he had actually not even knelt in the center of the circle of twigs. It bothered him a little, but he was not going to break his concentration over such a minute detail.

The sun had just passed its highest point in the sky when Rane collapsed forward into the moist soil of the clearing. It stuck to the sweat that covered his face, and it smeared as he took gasping breaths that moved his whole body.

He had made no progress, none at all.

The training had kept his mind from wandering, but with his meditation broken, and his mind worn, the events of the past week flooded his mind again. The deep breaths turned to heavy sobs as he imagined what Klein must have thought of him as he fled. It wouldn’t matter anyways, but that knowledge did not console him.

Rane leapt to his feet, grasped the ambient around himself tightly once more, and screamed a scream of anger and sorrow. The air and ambient reverberated with the noise, suffused between the two. He stomped forward and lashed out with his short blade, willing it to be sharp, letting it leave his hand to strike true at the trunk of his temporary shelter. He continued to swing at the trunk of the tree, leaving deep gashes in its ancient trunk, until he tired, which was relatively quick, as he had been tired even at the beginning of his fit.

He thought briefly of how stupid it was that he had made such noise and expended valuable energy, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He should be dead. He didn’t want to die, but he should have died with his squad. Even if he made it back, he did not think he would ever be able to face the families of his squad mates. He would flee from them, too.

Rane crawled back into his burrow and fell asleep once more, this time with the sun still hours from abandoning the world.