I have been walking for hours now. I would like to say I am feeling sad but right now I am feeling nothing. There is just a void in my chests, one bigger than the one I had before dying.

I keep walking and walking until I see the sun vanishing from the sky and the stars appearing. At some point I finally start to feel my body again. I am hungry and thirsty. I look around to see if I find something but there is nothing but trees and grass on my field of vision. The night is not fair to the ones who can’t see in it. If it wasn't for the moon and the stars I would be in complete darkness.

I sit down near a tree to conserve my energy and try to hide myself from whatever is in this forest.

As I am almost falling asleep I feel mana passing through my body, as I wake up I see that a spell is being formed in my hand. It’s the happy memory spell, Lucia is trying to change our memories again. But I will not let her do it. If she does that again I will be unable to use mana forever and no matter how sad and angry I am, now that I have some time to cool down I refuse to die. If I can’t go the Maka Kingdom, fuck them. I will reach the other side and make my own place. This void I am feeling, it hurts, it hurts so much, but if I don’t try to live I will be the type of person I despise the most. I will be truly weak, someone who chose to be weak. I never found anyone like this in this world and I don’t plan to be the first person I know to be like this.

I stop the spell and begin to look inside my own soul again to go to that void space I saw before.

There I see mine and Lucia’s soul in pieces still fusing with one another. Mine is little by little getting back together while Lucia’s is scattering little by little.

I can see her projection behind her soul, she is crying, because she is sad and afraid. She can’t move, or communicate more than this.

I move toward our souls and begin to force our souls together. I will use her to fill the void in my soul before my soul becomes complete again and her’s vanishes.

Lucia does not show any signs of being against this even after stopping crying. I use my hands to pretty much hold our two souls together for a few moments and then I am back in the real world again.

I am feeling things again, I am sad, I am angry, I remember the love of Arnold, the good times I had with everyone, but I still have all my memories of my old life. At this point I am just me, but I have her feelings. I feel sorry about this situation, she didn’t have time to enjoy life. I will hold on to these feelings and live a life worthy of this sacrifice as she will never return, I don’t even know if she will just die and cease to exist at some point, but if that is the case I cannot forget the one who let me feel again. Lucia, I will become you from now on, I hope I can live the life you wanted.

I try to project myself and for some reason I am able to even if just a few meters, so I begin to sleep keeping my senses sharp in case anything comes near my body. Luckily for me nothing but some birds happen to get near me. The dangerous part of this forest is probably a few kilometers away.

Hours later I wake up and begin my plan to survive this forest.

My sense of direction from my old life is back so I know which direction is north based on from where I came from. I make my magic string always fall a little to the north so even if I walk I will know where to go.

Next thing is to find water. I know for a fact that there are a lot of small rivers in this forest all I need to do is find one. I can probably survive one more day without water if I don’t have to fight anything, food can be taken care of later.

I climb a tree near me and look around to see if I find somewhere where there aren't any trees. After a few repetitions of this while walking north I find a place. A small pond where some elk come to drink water. There is no fish, frogs, nothing. The pond is clean as it can be but just to be safe I will camp here for a few days and test the water.

I first look around for any type of fruit. I saw some apples and oranges around here. This forest is way too hot for a place so far north. Climate must also be a little different in this world. I never found any books or people to teach me about climate, most of the things were common sense, In the winter is cold, the summer is hot, clouds mean rain, etc…

After a few minutes of looking around making sure I am not leaving the area of the pond I find an apple tree. I pick some apples and wash them in the pond to see if anything will happen. Nothing happens.

Next I open then and make small cups of them and let them sit there for a few minutes to see if the water will change the insides. Nothing happens either. I drink just a sip of the water and wait to see if anything happens and this time it does. I feel a little sleepy. I don’t know why but it’s good I made some tests. Now I know why the elks around here are so peaceful.

A few minutes later I am back to normal. I will probably have to heat this water before drinking but that will be a problem as I have nothing to do it.

Against my better judgment I try something stupid, I will try to heat the entire pond with my magic. I put my hand in the water and concentrate, I imagine a really hot flame that would instantly heat this entire pond but just enough so the water will stay here. After making the rune it happens, the entire pond boils for a few seconds and stops. To my surprise something comes out of the pond, it's some kind of salamander, I don’t know which one exactly but it looks like it’s the toxic kind that is both poisonous and venomous. It is blue and when the water is on top of it’s scales it becomes almost invisible, it’s around 1 meter long.

I take my chance and cut it in half with my greatsword as it is weak and carefully move it’s body away from the pond.

I test the apples as well, they are safe and provide me with some food and liquid for the time being. I pick some twigs around and prepare a bonfire for when the night hits. I also kill one of the male elks I find near the pond as there are a lot of them here in comparison to the female ones and leave him to bleed out so I have some meat to eat later. It will probably taste like shit but it’s food. By tomorrow all these animals will probably come back to their senses but I won’t be able to eat an entire elk alone in less than a day so there is no reason to kill more than one.

As the night hits, I use my magic again to ignite the bonfire. There is plenty of wood around so I can keep this going all night. The pond also cooled off and it is safe to drink now.

I drink a lot of water to satiate my thirst and begin to work on the elk. I cut two of its legs out with my great sword and move the rest of the body somewhere far away, like an hour away from the camp as I wait the legs to bleed as much as I can. These elk are big, almost as big as common horses, just two legs will be more than enough for the time I plan to spend here. Keeping that body would also give me some problems if whatever thing that prey on these elks smell it near me.

After making the trip back I proceed to cut and cook part of one of the legs. The skin was the harder part to deal with but I got enough muscle to eat. As I eat I begin to make a mental calendar so I don’t lose track of time. Today is the 17th of Taurus of the year 243 of the Golden Era. I need to make sure to keep counting the days.

After eating I put a lot of fuel in the bonfire and go to sleep. Learning how to sleep at command is one of the best skills I learned.

The night was peaceful, nothing came near me. When I woke up I grabbed everything and continued to walk north. If I don’t find any other ponds or a river before nightfall I will go back to that pond and try to make canteneers with anything I find. I have a few apples with me, they are really juicy so I don’t think I will no get dehydrated so soon.

After what I think is a few hours of walking, It's past noon by the position of the sun. At this point I am thinking about returning but I see something, a fucking aligator, and a big one at that. Probably 5 meters long. I read that they live in this forest near rivers so if I follow this one I will probably find a river as they can’t go far from it. Several minutes later of me tailing this beast I am at a river, one that goes north as far as I can see. There are several alligators here so I will steer away from them for now.

I walk a few kilometers north following the river until I can’t see any more animals that could actually fight against me near it. This river’s water is safe as too many animals and probably monsters are drinking from it and even has fish in it.

I walk for a few days along the river until it starts to go east. I can’t go that direction so I make camp there.

Along the way I got a good idea on how this part of the forest works. I am probably in the ‘safe’ area still as I didn’t see a single drake. The ‘dangerous’ area for this forest is a breeding ground for drakes of all elements, but mostly earth drakes, so I have to prepare myself while I still can.

First I secure some food by getting some fish. There are some big fish that look like an orange carp that are constantly appearing in the water. I catch one as big as my head and cook the meat I can in a stick near the bonfire. The meat of this thing does not rot at all from what I've seen so I can just store it away from the ground and it will be good later.

Next in the plan is housing. I will stay here for a while until I get what I need to pretty much walk as long as I need so housing will not be a waste of time. I use my greatsword to cut trees and move then so I can make a house. My size and normal strength don’t help me in anything so I have to hack away the trees until they fall. After that I use a little mana to charge my sword to carve the wood so I can connect them and make walls without the need of nails. It took me a good two weeks to make a house and in that time I discovered why this orange carp is so plentiful in the water. It’s a hermaphrodite monster. If you leave it alone it is able to lay eggs that hatch in minutes and grow in just a few days. It probably gets its energy from water somehow as it doesn’t eat and die in a matter of minutes out of water. Shame it doesn’t have a big enough crystal to be useful, sometimes I can’t even find it. I just made a little fence in the river as the current is really weak so I can cultivate the fish.

Fire is also making any animals around here ignore me so I have peace.

With my square house complete near the river I begin the next step. A way to carry water with me. I probably could make something out of wood but it would take months for me to make something safe so that is out of the question. So I try to experiment with things a little.

I kill almost every animal and monster I can find to see if they can be used as a bag of some kind where I can primarily put water in it and drink from it later.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

And elk was the first thing I found. After killing it I removed everything from him leaving only the bones pretty much. Cleaning the bowels of anything is not a fun experience. As I have to test what I can use I need to see if any of its organs or muscle is rot proof. I clean the bones in the river as I probably can do something with it later.

I also killed a big hawk, it’s bigger than me, but way too frail. It didn’t even taste good. I used it’s feathers to make a pillow before disposing of the body.

There are small rodents like squirrels but I leave them alone. There are some wolves here as well but they are smart enough to not come near me in any way, running away when I start a fight.

The last animal I did anything with was the alligator. Took a lot of walking to find a lone alligator again but I managed to find one not so far from where I was. After killing it and taking it’s corpse back to base I do the same with it I did with the elk, but this time I also keep the skin. I can probably make something with it if I clean it enough.

A few days later I managed to clean enough of the alligator hide to do something just in time to see that none of the organs or muscle that I didn’t eat began to rot.

I put it all in one place near the river where there are no trees and set everything ablaze. The smell of it burning is less painful than the normal smell it had. It also generated a big fire, one big enough to heat metal. I use this opportunity to heat my greatsword as it can fix itself given time so I can melt the alligator hide and make bags with it. I managed to make five 2 liter bags before the fire died down. I use part of my own clothes to make these true bags making leather strips out of the sleeves of my jacket.

I slept one last night in this place and began to leave. I filled all the bags with water and got as much fish I could carry and skewered everything in my greatsword so it would not weigh me down. I drink as much water as I can without getting sick from it and continue north.

Today is the 9th of Cancer and I begin to move north again.

For a few weeks I walk north only finding animals and a few big insects like a spider half my size or a big Mantis a little bigger than that. They are weak and mostly prey on each other. I saw some big bees and butterflies corpses along with corpses of wolves and some birds along the way.

I also think I found why there are so many ponds and lakes in this forest. There is probably an underground river feeding the entire forest as once I dived in a big lake and found big holes I could enter into that were shooting water up from time to time.One thing I just noticed around this time is that my hair doesn't get bad. It gets dirty but it still maintains its size and feels like I washed it with shampoo and conditioner. I know a lot of women who would kill to have my hair.

I maintain this pace until the 15th of Leo, where I finally enter the ‘dangerous’ zone of this forest. Until now I could leave my greatsword somewhere and fight with my saber but now I have to be smart. I can fight one or probably two drakes at the same time but not without it. I need the range and power it has to cut them.

As I begin to feel the presence of creatures around me I hide my things near a big tree that you can see for kilometers away as it is an odd one bigger than all others and proceed to intercept the creatures.

As I walk forward an Earth Drake just pops up from the ground in front of me. I look at it in the eyes. It has a body of a western dragon without wings and no long neck, also he is the size of a medium horse which makes it bigger than me by a lot. It’s not attacking me but is also not moving away.

“Hello, mind if I pass?” I say cautiously.

He then growls at me and shoots a stone spike at me out of his mouth. I didn’t even see the rune being formed, it just happened. I dodge in the last second. A second later and my head would not be here.

I jump back and get my guard up as the drake starts to just look at me again. I move back and forth a little to see if it will do something and it does, it shoots another stone spike at me without a rune. How do you even do that? It's clearly magic, I feel the mana on the spike and it vanishes after a while because not enough mana was used.

I try to attack it up close but a stone wall appears in front of me before I can even reach it. Minutes later, after trying to get near him to no avail, he stops playing with me and starts to machine gun me with stone spikes destroying several trees in the process. I get a lot of cuts and the only reason I am not impaled is that he is far enough from me so I can dodge.

After running away and leaving the area I go back to the tree where I stashed my things. The drake is not pursuing me so I am safe for now. As I calm down from the experience of defeat yet again, I start to think how that drake is able to use spells without runes.

I make a bonfire and start to review what I know about magic.

One, Magic is the term used for phenomena that uses mana as a fuel or catalyst.

Two, spells are magic made and used by things, animals, monsters or people that follow some rules like the use of elemental affinities of the user.

Three, for the use of a spell it’s necessary that a rune processes and converts mana into what the rune especified.

As I note these three things in my head I think about something in relation to what I just saw with the drake. He is not using rune but he is using spells. He is doing something to make mana take the form he wants without the use of a rune. There has to be something hinting on what he does in all this.

For the next few days I move to a pond south of here and begin to stock up so I can use my brain to actually think about what I learned reading all these years and not just surviving. I have been on the edge pretty much since I left my shack.

During these days I review every little bit of information I can remember that I didn’t think was useful at the time.

Anything that has mana has a magic circulatory system that is ethereal linked to it’s soul. You also have the center of this system that stores all of your mana.

This system works like muscle where the more you use it the stronger it gets, even increasing the total mana of the user, but this is really hard as the system is really bad at this as when using runes the mana go almost instantly from the user to the rune so the system cannot be trained as easily as a muscle. You need to have a shit ton of mana to be able to even train your Mana System.

Everyone can start some kind of spell but not everyone has mana to finish it as even the most basic spells require a lot of mana.

Maintaining a rune, after it is charged, uses mana.

Looking at all this information in my head I think of something. Maybe the drake is processing the spell within his mana system?

Drakes are said to have a low to medium amount of mana but that thing I just fought was throwing spells at me like he could do that forever. He was not using runes because the moment you create a rune anyone who knows to use a spell will be able to tell when you do it.

I then try to experiment with something.

I will try to move my mana inside my body without sending it to a rune. After hours of trying to concentrate I am finally able to do that, I feel my mana going through my arms and then…

“AHHHHHHHHH!” I scream in pain.

Fuck this shit hurts. It’s like your blood becomes rocks and starts to try to do it’s thing. The best part? I can’t use runes anymore and If I don’t try to continue this it hurts more. Fuck my life.

--//--

It’s been around two months now. I have been circulating my mana non-stop inside my body even when I am sleeping because if I stop I feel like my blood stops moving. I have to maintain the fire I created before without the use of magic so a lot of trees around me were cut. It was not easy without being able to charge my greatsword, but the pain gave me a reason to hit and destroy anything I can. Also the lack of people to talk.

“Mira let’s go survive another beautiful day.” I say with a forced smile to my greatsword. I named it Mira so I had someone to talk to. The two sabers ignore me so they don’t get names.

“Look, another dumb wolf, you love wolves don’t you Mira?”

“ ” Mira says to me

“Of course I like them too. If I could I would make pets for them but they think we are food so they have to go.

“ “ She pretty much shouts to me.

“It’s not my fault you are the only thing that can hack those beasts. You are a sword, start to act like one.” I shout back to ther.

“ “ She says to me in a sorry voice.

“I am sorry too. We are a team and we should work together.” I say back to her.

A few moments later the wolves attack us and I crush them with the weight of the sword and drag one of them back as the meat I have is almost running out.

During the rest of the day I try to speed up the process of circulating mana around me to see if it will stop.

--//--

It’s the 16th of Libra, I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and notice something. I am not feeling pain anymore even if I stop circulating mana.

“YEAH!” I scream to the heavens as I throw my hand to the air wishing for fireworks so I could commemorate not feeling excruciating pain for once in two months. And to my surprise they are here.

As I put my hands up,a fireball forms in my hands and is shot up until it explodes above the trees creating the effect of a firework.

“Mira, I found something new!” I go shout while running to her then running back to my temporary toilet as I forgot for a second what I was going to do.

After returning I was too energized to sleep again.

“Mira, I can use spells again, without runes. Look.”

I try to think about creating a small flame in my finger tip. As I point my index finger up a small flame appears.

“Mira, I just discovered something incredible, you will be able to tell all your friends about it.”

“ “ She says to me in a little sleepy.

“Wake up, we have things to do. We can sleep at any time later.” I say in an energetic voice.

We move to a little inside the area where all the cut trees are where I stab her in the ground so she can see me.

I put my hands up and start to think about a fireball going up and exploding but nothing happens. I then try to make a finger gun and think the same but nothing happens.

“ “ She says while laughing at me.

“Stop, you saw the fire in my finger. I am not lying.” I say frustrated to Mira.

I then punch the air thinking how I want to punch something until it explodes and as soon as I finish the motion the air explodes where my fist was.

“HA! I told you.” I say triumphantly.

For the next few hours I start to test things to see if I figure out the rules. By the time the sun is in the sky again I found some things.

The first is that my mana is circulating really slowly inside my body without me doing anything. I can stop it and nothing will happen.

The second thing is that without mana circulating I can’t use spells.

The third is that I need some type of motion to use the spell, where the stronger the spell I am trying to use is, the more personal and/or adequate the motion has to be.

For example I can’t fire any fireballs using finger guns. Probably because I hate to use guns. Just waving my hand forward does more than finger guns if I try to use a spell.

The fourth thing is that I can make my spells do more specific things that are still tied to the affinities I have. Like creating heat without fire. I can move the molecules around me using mana generating heat. I was even able to completely burn a tree trunk without burning anything else. The other times not so much, but if it worked once, with training maybe I can do it again with anything.

The fifth thing I found is that the faster my mana is circulating the more powerful I can make my spells.

The sixth thing I found is that I shouldn’t try to use or make strong spells. Once I activate them I have to use them. I had to shoot a fireball the size of a school bus up and hope it would explode without creating a forest fire.

And the last and most important thing I found out is that I can circulate mana on Mira so she is always strong as long as I have mana.

After hours of testing I go back to my makeshift tent I made with the fur of all the animals I killed for meat and begin to nap a little while hugging Mira.

“Now you can be strong and beautiful for more time while we are fighting.” I say while a little sleepy.

“ “ Mira says to me, teasing me.

“Ok, let me correct myself. You can be stronger and more beautiful than you are for more time while we are fighting together.”

After that I began my power nap to recover the time I didn’t sleep last night. When I wake up I am going to try my luck against that drake again if I find him. Now I have some cool ideas I need to test against a real opponent.