Johan woke up the next day feeling a bit groggy. It wasn't unfamiliar to him, and he could guess that it was likely due to his skipping over the second watch last night. Not that he really cared anyways. He now had another goal. Between learning some more battle orientated spells and learning a fire spell or two.

"Morning." Anne said.

"Oh, hey, how was your extra sleep?" Johan asked.

"It was good, I heard from Markus that you had just gotten too into your studies. How do you keep an eye out for others while doing that if you lose track of time?"

"Oh, that's because I can use earth manipulation to tell if someone is approaching. Before I learned that spell though I just tried to keep an eye out. It's a rather useful spell that covers far more than what its name would imply. It also allows you to use the earth as a sense in a way, because you would be giving your manaspace a more physical form, at least that's how I explain it, I'm not entirely sure how it works, and the book I learned it from doesn't say anything about it."

"Oh? That feels like cheating." Anne pouted a bit.

"It really does, but I also had to learn to differentiate between human movement and animal movement. I also thought of using Nature Sense too, which would do something similar, but with plants. But for now, I have a different list of spells I'd like to learn and get proficient with."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. I want to have more combat type spells available. Quick spells for attacking and some that I'd have to prep before hand They are all useful in one way or another. Bullet seems rather promising too."

"Bullet? What's that?" Anne asked, curious.

"We can talk more as we walk. For now I need to eat and then pack my stuff." Johan said, excusing himself, before then standing up.

"Alright." Anne relented.

Food this morning was a few pieces of jerky, a bit of blackened bread, and a handful of sweet berries that Jen and Anne had found. It was a decent breakfast overall, but Johan was hoping to try and get some fresh meat for dinner. Maybe he would try his hand at hunting today.

"Hey, Johan." Pat walked up to him as he finished eating, and was preparing to take a drink from his waterskin.

"Yeah?" Johan took a drink.

"I got some of those rings done. I was wondering how to go about making them better..." She explained.

"Hm... Well, you should have everyone try on rings that look like they might fit, and mark it down roughly how big each of the rings need to be. Make sure you include yourself in that to by the way. Then you make new rings at that size. Although you could also try the string method, where you wrap a string around a finger then trace the circle, and use that as reference. Up to you really." Johan explained how he would go about it.

"Alright. I'll try the first method, after all, I might get lucky and have one or two that fit just right already." Pat nodded happily.

Johan had honestly forgotten that Pat was doing that. It wasn't odd for him to do so, at least not to him. He had been busy this week, with being lost after nearly dying, then fighting a troll. At least it was something that wouldn't hurt him to forget, at least not in a physical way. He did feel kind of bad for it.

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

Johan took another drink as he watched Pat walk over to each person and have them try on different rings. It seemed like everyone had a ring that was almost just right. From what Johan could tell, it was Jen who had one that fit perfectly, and both Anne and Markus found a ring that was just barely too small, though that was relatively easy to fix, since all that needed to be done for that was a little bit of sanding to get the rings down to size.

After all that, the group began to move. Both Jen and Anne walked next to Johan. Johan started with Anne, answering her about his spells he was wanting to learn. Jen was also curious about it, and took keen interest into the conversation. After about an hour, Anne finally went back over to Pat, who was talking to Adv about the logistics of making the rings fit.

"Alright. Do *you* have any questions about my magic?" Johan asked Jen.

"Nope. I'm a bit curious, but I don't need to know. Should we pick up from where we left off yesterday?"

Is suppose we should."

They spent the majority of the day walking and talking about various ways to tell what kind of creature made what tracks. From footprints, to size of disturbance, and even dung. Johan had even started to use some information. Now that he knew what to look for, he had a far easier time spotting areas where some sort of creature had walked through.

"Alright. We should stop for the day." Markus declared as they reached a small stream. "Tomorrow we will cross this stream and enter a somewhat more dangerous area. Across this stream is where a lot more goblinkin live. This includes goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, trolls, and a few others that are more rare. We can talk about these creatures in more detail tomorrow however."

"Hey, I want to go hunting." Johan spoke up.

"Alright. Take Jen with you. She has good eyes." Markus nodded at Jen who nodded back.

"Sounds good. Let's go." Johan turned to Jen.

"Alright." The two of them quickly vanished into the woods.

-----

As Johan walked, he readied Bullet. He had done some work during the lulls in the walk here, and had managed to actually complete the spell form. It was very simple, taking a few aspects from Wind Blade for propulsion, and using a few power enhancing circuits to make it so the propulsion effect was heightened to the extreme. Johan wasn't sure what would happen when used, but he could guess that there would likely be a sound similar to that of a gunshot, though mostly from the sound barrier being broken than combustion.

It wasn't long before the two of them found a small herd of deer, being about 25 in number. Jen looked at Johan who picked up a pebble that was about the size of the top of his thumb. He nodded at her, and she nodded back. He had told her how the spell worked previously, and she was aware that he was going to be testing it right now.

Johan took the pebble into his palm, and channeled the spell. It took about 1 minute for the first cast due to how simple the spell form was, being only a handful of lines. The effect was easy to see though. The stone ripped straight through the buck that he had aimed at. From where Johan was, it seemed as if it had ripped out the windpipe of the beast, which was not where he had aimed. Johan had gone for the head, but managed to kill it either way. He knew he was simply lucky this time, and would have to work on his aim with the spell.

The rest of the deer scattered after just a second, mostly because of the snapping sound that the bullet made when it had left his hand. Johan also noticed that his hand was reddened. It seemed that if he hadn't had his body enhanced that he probably would have lost a few fingers. It seemed that this spell was more dangerous than it appeared, though that wasn't a shock since it had no safety of any sort.

Either way, with this hunt, Johan became certain that this spell would be very useful, though maybe not so much in larger battles.

When the two of them returned to camp, Markus looked at the buck and nodded.

"I'll assume that cracking sound from earlier was you two?"

"Yep. I was testing the spell Bullet out. It's actually pretty dangerous. I might see if I can get my hands on a tube of some sort that I can imbue with it. If I hadn't been enhancing my body, I would have lost some fingers."

"Yikes. That's strong." Markus said, taking the deer to start the processing.

"It was also very loud." Jen complained.

"Yeah... I might see if I can get another spell to dampen the sound from it." Johan smiled at the thought of a magical gun, with a magical suppressor. It would be a fun project... *for later*. "Gotta work on those other spells first though."