“Alright, where did we last leave off?”

“Same as yesterday. I still need to improve my mana tolerance.”

“Get to it, then.”

This is beginning to get frustrating. I’ve been meditating half the day for five days now and she’s still not satisfied.

The rest of the day, we’re traveling to some new place: always outside of a town. This is mostly due to Cruel and I learning more of how this place works through books and information brokers in the towns we pass through.

I’ve learned before that we’re in what’s called the Water Territory. I just assumed back then that it was called that because of how much water there is in the region. Apparently, that’s just scratching the surface.

The Water Territory is ruled by an overseer: a title reserved for four of the best mages in the continent. The overseer over here, of course, is a master of all magic relating to water: Lady Marga. We’ve also been told that she can see almost everything going on in her area. If that’s true and she saw what we did, then she’d probably have already sent people to catch us.

We aren’t completely helpless as Cruel knows her blindspots. She’s been mapping out a route for us to take to get to the places where she thinks the Fatechanger might be. We haven’t met anyone hunting us so far.

She says that we can’t evade them forever, however. She deems this forest outside of Vand the end of the line. We’ll be within the overseer’s sight if we go any further. We have to take care of any pursuers here if we don’t want to end up being flanked by them and any new party sent by Lady Marga. That means that I have to learn to fight with magic by the time they come.

“So annoying.”

I know that this is necessary, but I detest this training so much that I can’t help but put my thoughts into words verbatim. I’ve been doing the same stuff over and over.

I’ve been doing what she had told me to do back when we first met. It’s been nothing but that. The only interesting part about it is the huge flow of mana underneath us that Cruel tells me is the reason why this place is a blind spot. That’s all she told me. She said I wouldn’t understand anything else.

“Hard at work training, are we?”

I’m almost happy that I get interrupted by someone. I open my eyes to see a man with spiky hair and his eyes squinted. He has a rugged look to him, but he seems quite friendly.

“Yeah, she’s training me.”

I look over to see that I pointed at nothing. What the hell? Where did she go?

“What, if I may ask, are you gesturing to, Mr. White-hair?”

I get startled by the man who’s suddenly standing at a whisper’s distance from me.

“Too close! Also, don’t call me that! She was just here a minute ago.”

“Would you be interested in administering my assistance? I’m quite good at these things.”

He stands with confidence by what he says.

“She’ll be back. Thanks for the offer anyway Mister uhmm…”

“Dryn. Please, just call me Dryn.”

He bows as a polite gesture.

“Okay, Dryn. Just call me Soren.”

I offer up my hand to him which he firmly grabs onto.

“A pleasure, Soren. May I ask a question?”

Now we get to the point of why he’s here.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I’m a bit lost, you see.”

He says that as if he didn’t offer his tracking services earlier.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I was wondering if you mayhaps knew the way to Jur. I’d been meaning to visit an old friend who lives there.”

He surprisingly gives a question I can answer.

“Oh, we just came from there not too long ago. It’s east of here. There’s a nearby road that’ll take you all the way there.”

“Many thanks, Soren. I hope I am able to repay your kindness one day.”

I think for a minute here. We’re actually pretty broke right now.

“Maybe you can. If you have some coin—”

I feel a gust of wind before I can finish my sentence. And just like that, he’s gone. What happened was weird, but I don’t really see any point in dwelling on it. I just go back to my training.

“You’re still at it?”

Cruel’s voice plunges me back into reality. The sun’s already gone.

“Never mind that. Where have you been?!”

She tosses me a plastic bag containing some rye bread.

“Where’d you get the money to buy this?”

“I didn’t buy it.”

I have some concerns about this development.

“You stole it?!”

“No, it’s nothing illegal. We ran out of food a while ago, so I used that as an excuse to visit the town among other things. A baker just gave them to me out of pity. I might have to change my opinion of you. I thought you were gullible, but it appears that’s the standard for the people of this time.”

I can’t really argue against what she says because I also fell victim to her wicked charm. Plus, the baker probably had it worse because she’s wearing one of Sofia’s dresses that makes her look more lady-like.

“Thank you, I promise I won’t be a burden to you.”

She gives off a smile as if she’s proud of something.

“Anyway, I think you’re ready. You’ve been training the entire day and you don’t seem to be hurting anywhere.”

I can’t help but smile at those words. I’m finally done with the monotony.

“Before that, though; try punching a tree.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Punch a tree.”

I do as she says. I put down the bread, stand up, and walk to the nearest tree. I punch it as hard as I can. It felt like nothing to me, but I left a pretty deep mark on the tree.

“Yep, you’re definitely ready.”

The day after, I go through my usual routine of telling Cruel about her situation. I don’t really understand much of it myself. All I know is that she completely goes back to a moment in her life from fifty years ago every single night. She’s essentially immortal with the caveat of being frozen in time while the rest of the world progresses.

“Alright, where did we leave off?”

“You said I was ready.”

“Ready for what?”

That’s a pretty vexing reply. She could’ve written down everything that’s happened, but she said it wasn’t really necessary. I understood that as her saying “You do everything.”

“I don’t know. You made me punch that tree and said I was ready.”

I point towards the marked tree..

“Oh, so you can start working on focusing your mana now.”

“Wasn’t that what I was already doing?”

I scratch my head as I ask that. I have to admit that I’m a bit slow at learning.

“What you were learning was how to absorb mana around you and make it your own. Absorbing enough mana coats your entire body with a blanket of it.”

“Absorbing mana? Like a sorbere?”

“Not really. What you’re absorbing is mana that’s scattered around the world that you can find from any inanimate object. This is mana that you’re absorbing right now. When you take in that mana, it becomes yours. Sorberes, however, can adapt and copy signatures which tricks the mana into flowing into them.”

“I never knew that.”

She may sound like she’s reading off of a plain old book, but hearing more about magic this way has been quite nice. It’s surprisingly easy to get into compared to what I had thought initially.

“Anyway, let’s get back on topic. You’ll be learning how to focus that mana on one part of your body. You can choose any part you want, but I’d recommend just going with one of your hands for now.”

“How do I do that exactly?”

This part of magic is kinda difficult for me. She said a while back that I was gonna need to use a lot of my imagination to be able to grow as a mage.

“You have to have an image in your head of the mana going where you want it to go. What helped me was picturing my body having a bunch of plates with the same amount of water. After that, I imagined pouring more of the water into one of my hands. ”

I try to picture what she tells me. It didn’t work.

“I don’t think it’s working.”

“Try to think of something else. Something you’re more familiar with.”

Something I’m more familiar with? Like my plants? I try long and hard to imagine something, and a very long while later I get it.

“Luft cresses!”

I hear Cruel chuckle after I shout that.

“Go on. No need to explain anything to me.”

Luft cresses grow towards sunlight. They’ll climb anything in their way to get to it. They’re very special in that they can grow as long as some vines and let out a glow akin to what they’d been chasing all their lives. If I imagine that my right hand’s the sun and the mana from the rest of my body are luft cresses, then it might just work.

I feel it. I feel my mana moving throughout my body to my hand. It only lasts a short moment before it starts going back to normal.

“That’s your new task. Focus for as long as you possibly can. It shouldn’t take too long. At the very least, it won’t be as long as before.”

Why does training have so much repetition? I hate it.