“I guess this is goodbye,” Boni said.

It was the day of my departure. Since no one else from Yange was participating in The Grand Competition, I was the only one making the trip. And I was doing it solo. Boni had kept bothering me, he called it being insistence, that I leave with a Troop that had left the day prior. He even offered to pay for the trip. But like he had said, I insisted on going on my own.

We were outside Yange’s gates. And I was clad in my new clothes. At the cost of six silvers, Detta, the tailor, had fashioned me clothing I was comfortable wearing. Starting from the head, I had on a turquoise marvin, a turquoise overcoat, maybe it was a trench coat? Long coat. Underneath that, was a dark turquoise vest and a light turquoise shirt. A dark turquoise pair of trousers and turquoise boots. And finally turquoise fingerless gloves. She had had to work for the color though, or so she claimed. I suspected she had just being trying to squeeze more out of me. She hadn’t even gotten the turquoise right, leaning more towards green than sky blue.

I had kept the old brown bag. It had in it my old clothes, both pairs. If things didn’t work out, I would need them. It also had dried up meat and fresh fruits for the journey. I had bought only two apples for myself, but Masi had given me a few mangoes and oranges. They made the bag heavier, but as long as I had them, I wouldn’t have to hunt. I had a water canteen, but I could create water from noting so that wasn’t a problem for me. And finally my staff, a new one, was strapped at the back of the bag. I had had a strap added that allowed it stay at a slight angle on my back. The good old dagger was at my waist. Beneath the coat.

“Why do you sound like I’m not coming back?” I asked him. “I could lose in the first round. What else would I do than come back here with my tail between my legs?”

“Let’s be honest, if it were me, I would never come back. Win or lose,” Silas said.

I was surprised he was lingering around after we had left the town. I had thought he would just wish me luck and walk to the farm, grumbling to himself all the way there.

“Why wouldn’t you come back? You have a farm and everything,” I asked in surprise.

“Money. I could do the same work there and earn more.”

“Then why haven’t you left already?”

“Like you said, everything I have is here. But if I somehow found myself there, I wouldn’t return.”

I turned to Boni then. “I guess it is goodbye.”

“I will still watch your fights. Even if it is only the one,” he quickly added when I went to correct him.

Wait… had he just said watch? Like watch, watch or something other kind of watch? I decided to just ask. “What do you mean ‘watch my fights’?”

He opened his mouth, then paused. He had probably been about to ask me why I didn’t know about something. Then he began again, “There are broadcasts of all the fights. People can usually watch them in view screens.”

Broadcasts? View screens? That sounded a lot like television to me. But how could that be? I had researched as much as the local library could allow, and I hadn’t found any mention of such a thing. Maybe I hadn’t looked in the right places. Did they use magic or electricity?

“Of course, there is no guarantee that the town will show your fight. But I could get lucky,” he said, interrupting me from my spiraling thoughts. Then he added, “It will cost me, but I think it will be worth it.”

“Yeah. Watching you get pummeled into the ground will be very satisfying,” Silas said.

Of course he would be watching too. Just how much will the family lose just because I decided to go and do something so stupid as participate in The Grand Competition? I vowed to myself to send them some of my winnings, if I do win. If I lose, then it will just be the price of watching a single fight. Not much, right?

“Or the wins. There could be wins too,” Boni pointed out. But Silas didn’t hide that he was skeptical of that.

“Is there a way to communicate over long distances?” I asked. If there were broadcasts, then telecommunication wasn’t farfetched. “Like when I’m at Sjuma and I want to tell you something immediately?”

“Scrys. Those are even more expensive than the broadcasts,” Boni said.

“How do they even work?” I asked.

Boni went to answer, but his father spoke over him. “What have you been reading all that time you spend in the library? Anyway, if we start explaining everything you don’t know to you, you will end up missing the whole competition altogether. I’d prefer you lose because someone beat you up and not because you were a no show.”

Under his breath he added, “And Masi will kill me if she doesn’t watch at least one of your fights.”

I don’t know whether he intended for me to hear that or not, but I did. And it had me all the more anxious. I had never had people’s hopes riding on me before. Not in my previous life either. I shucked responsibility as much as I could.

“I will head out then,” I said as I turned and began walking away.

After a few steps, I looked back. And they were still there, watching. I wanted to tell them to go to the farm before it was too late. But words failed me. My jaws stuck together. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn’t let them see me cry. So I nodded to them, and began again. I forced myself not to look back.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

…

Ever since my foray in the fighting pits, I had increased my training intensity. And also tried my hand at learning new Skills. The arsenal I had had proved to be inadequate for a well-trained opponent. Especially my magic Skills. They were too obvious and generic, making them easy to predict and counter. Oh, he is throwing a rock at me. Look at that, a ball of fire. How could I ever protect myself? And now he thinks I’m sweating too much.

Even I, a self-proclaimed amateur, could easily come up with counter measures for such kind of attacks. If it was true what Boni had said, then my opponents will have had years of training. Finding Skills, training them. And finding other more complex Skills to train. Finding counter measures for all those Skills. They will be used to anything I could ever learn from a book. I needed things that couldn’t be found in books.

So I had begun trying unorthodox things with Mana, hoping for at least some of them to register as Skills. Crazy things like a vaporizing breathe, I got nothing. Air whip, nothing. Air chains, nothing. Cooling the air around something, nothing. In fact, I hadn’t gotten anything that could lower temperature. And it was getting annoying the longer I stayed without an icicle Skill. It would be very useful, a long range piercing attack. I didn’t have any of those.

Trying to enhance my own muscles for speed with Mana had at least bore fruit, earning me the Skill [Fast Dash]. Training it wasn’t my favorite activity. I had lost the number of trees I had run into. Not to count the number of times I had knocked myself out. There was just little room for direction control when the Skill kicked in. It usually lasted for two seconds, but those were enough for me to know that I need to learn control. Plus, it didn’t have a dial down button. I was either full on speeding or the Mana wasn’t enough to activate it.

Working with [Fast Dash] had me thinking about the opposite of that. Immobilization. Anything I had tried to immobilize that was living had refused. I guess that was breaking a law somehow. I had settled to using the air around them to stop them, but that had proved weak. Even chickens had been able to wiggle their way out in seconds. If they had ever been immobilized in the first place. So I went with the ground, the most steadiest thing I knew. And it worked. Skill [Earth Grab] was gained. It opened up a hole in the ground around where I targeted, if there was something there, it would drop in and the hole would close up. I hadn’t tried it with living things in fear of crushing them to death, but the few tree logs I had used it on had come out just fine. It also had a maximum range of five meters. I could push it to ten, but the hole wouldn’t be big enough.

My fights in the fighting pits had taught me that I needed armor for both physical and magical attacks. But since I was cash starved, I focused my efforts to creating magic shields. The basic [Shield] was easy, but also weak. I could remember Boni breaking through it with bolts during one of my [Agility] training sessions. Yes, I was training my [Agility] by trying to dodge bolts from a crossbow. It hadn’t been fun at all. But because of that, I had learnt how weak the basic [Shield] was and started looking for other kinds. Which led to the [Staff Shield]. As the name suggests, I had to be holding the staff for the Skill work. And only worked when the staff was in motion. If I tried activating the Skill while just holding the Staff, nothing happened. But in return, the [Staff Shield] didn’t allow any bolts through.

…

‘Clare, do you know exactly where Sjuma is?’ I asked my Daemon after crossing the bridge by the river. It was the farthest from the town of Yange I had even been. Without taking into account where I woke up.

‘Less than two days from your current location, if you keep to the road and maintain a steady pace.’

‘That is what I was told! I am asking, if I got lost would you be able to direct me?’

Apparently, the road didn’t branch at all until it arrived at the gates of Sjuma. That was kind of unbelievable. From what I knew, all roads branched one way or another. Unless the area was very unpopulated. That would allow for the existence of two towns and only the road connecting them.

‘No. Please stay on the road.’

‘Okay. If you ask so nicely.’

I look around at the forest the road was bisecting through. And it was boring. Walking. Just walking and walking and walking. There was nothing else to do. I could go around throwing [Fire Balls] all over the place, but that would get boring fast too. Not to mention eat up the Mana I would need if I happened to come across any nefarious fellows. Like those I had first seen. So, I was left with just walking. And nothing else.

When I used to walk for long distances in my previous life, I would do so with my phone blasting music through my earphones to my ears. Those weren’t boring at all. I could walk for a few hours just bobbing my head to the tunes of my favorite songs. It was just so hurtful that I couldn’t remember any of them. Every time I tried humming a tune, it would lose its thread and I would find myself humming garbage. Or a mix of tunes together. I gave up and resigned myself to the monotonous journey ahead of me. At the very least, I wasn’t sharing the time with anyone. That would prove worse. Way worse.

‘Clare, how much time will it shave off the journey if walk a half times faster?’ I asked just to pass the time.

‘It is hard to tell. It depends on how much time you spend sleeping.’

It had been an offhand question, but things had gotten very scary. ‘What are you saying?’

‘If you sleep as long as you slept the last time you were in a forest. Your estimated time of arrival is the day of The Grand Competition.’

‘You are saying that I might oversleep and miss my first fight? Thereby disqualifying me from the competition altogether?’

‘A very likely possibility. Yes.’

‘Then I will not sleep.’ I declared resolutely.

‘That will leave you incapable of performing to your full potential during your fight.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’

‘Walk faster, a lot faster.’

‘Okay.’

I raised my pace considerably such that it had me feeling a slight strain with each step I took. It felt like I was always about to start jogging, but never getting there. As the hours stretched, and the road twisted and untwisted, my water consumption increased. It peeked just after noon, and I decided to take a thirty-minute break.

But after I found myself succumbing to a nap, I got back up and resumed the journey. By the time nightfall came, I had gone through all my fruits and more than half of the dried meat. With how tired I was, I didn’t bother looking for a tree too far away from the road. And when I secured myself, I was out.

…

I woke up to a fully lit day. I had overslept, again. What was with me and trees? I slowly climbed down and began my day the way I usually did. Lots and lots of warm up and stretches. A thirty-minute session that left me with a sheen of sweat. Then I created water for my morning cleanliness; I had taken to using a mint extract I had had to teach myself how to extract and a twig to brush my mouth. The locals had their own versions, the few that bothered to brush their teeth, but I liked my mint. I resumed my journey with a piece of dried meat in my mouth and a pace to rival the one I had used the day before.

By the time the sun was overhead, the forest had begun to thin out before opening to a clearing several times larger than the one outside Yange. The clearing was filled with farms as far as I could see, or the forest let them. But the most obvious difference was the fact that the walls I could see were definitely made with rock and not wood. The city itself didn’t appear that big, maybe two times the size of Yange. It had me doubting if it was really Sjuma. I really hoped it was, cause I had less than twenty-four hours before my first fight of the competition. Assuming I was among the first ones to fight.

I increased my pace further as I approached the city. There was only one way to find out.