There was little, she had found, more painful to an Arcana than being at the edge of power and not achieving it. Wichita was largely immune to it given her Heart’s deficiencies. And yet that did little to soothe the burning that took over her body. The Heart wanted her to contest against the forest again, and it wanted her to do it now.

Wichita had other ideas. Like preserving her life and generally not aggravating the deadly forest around her. Not to mention the fact that she had a headache. A rather bad one. So bad that she wasn’t sure she would be ready for combat in hours, let alone right now.

No, her Heart would have to give up. This was not the time for foolishness. Wichita sat down on her floor, deciding to go into meditation. The headache intensified as she tried avoiding distractions.

Massaging her temple, she tried again. Thinking calm thoughts was supposed to help, at least according to her instructors. But her instructors were bloody idiots, and she would have fired them if she had a choice in the matter. How was thinking calm thoughts helpful with headaches? The bloody idiots just hadn’t dealt with them before and thought that she was wasting their time.

Wichita had been told multiple times, to her face, that Arcana were too evolved for the headaches she complained about. Not a common occurrence, certainly, but they happened just about every time she concentrated on one thing for too long. Like right now.

A flash of pain burst into her skull, making her yelp. The needle pointed at her, as if it was looking at her with concern. Or wondering if it was time for a feeding yet. The thing was probably hungry already.

Wichita sighed, clutching her head. There was little she could do in her condition. At least she’d had the wisdom to enchant Jace's shirt before taking on the forest. There was no way she would be able to enchant anything now.

The minutes passed as she lay down on the forest floor, looking at the sky. Well floating above the forest floor, it was rather difficult for her to properly lay down given that she wasn’t really made of matter.

The sky was a rather lovely shade of purple, turning brighter with every minute. Wichita wasn’t sure how the sky worked in this Age, but it was quite beautiful. Perhaps it was simply the time passing, or maybe something else, but her headache had calmed a bit. There was still too much going on in her head, but a strange calm threatened to come over her.

For once, she let it. And immediately regretted it. Of course the headache returned right then. Shaking her head in frustration, she lay there, feeling too lazy to get up. If she really tried, she could almost feel the wind. The feeling reminded her of home.

Like the Little Wind that denoted the hours back in her day, it was there just within reach but still far away. Like a figment of her imagination, there only because she wished it to be. Thinking about how it might not be there anymore when she emerged from the forest. Wichita had grown up with it. Now it might not be around anymore. How strange.

But that was enough procrastinating. There was no way she could allow the headache to remain while the forest might test them any moment. The meditations did help, even if they seemed to make it worse.

Closing her eyes, she let the feeling spread through her, letting her thoughts flow away. To her surprise, even the headache faded, and a feeling of calm washed over her. Like the sound of leaves swaying with the wind in a forest.

Wichita did not know why she thought of that. Or if she had even heard that before. But it occupied her mind. And she let it. The thought was nice…and it reduced the headache. Losing all sense of time, she just sat there, enjoying the feeling for what felt like hours. And still too short.

A part of her, the rational part, questioned why she had opened her eyes at all. But another part knew why. There was something coming. Wichita wasn’t sure how, but she was sure of it. There was a change in the forest.

Displacing the enchantments on the other three, she set about waking them up. And not a moment too soon. The trees started closing in again, denoting that their rest period was done. For some reason the other three looked beady eyed and exhausted. As if the sleep had not been enough for them.

Then they looked at the trees slowly moving towards them. Rose growled at it while Tully simply decided to run towards the corridors. Jace, however, glared at the trees like he wanted to murder them.

Wichita held out his shirt to him. “I would suggest moving.”

Jace gave her an unamused look and took the shirt and dropped his head through. What was up with them? Why were they so grumpy?

“Three hours.” the boy muttered. “The bloody forest woke us up in three hours.”

“I guess it doesn’t want us to recover too much energy?” Tully said, heading left.

“Test it first!” she yelled ahead. How had they forgotten to test if the way was safe?

“Oh, yeah sure. I mean there’s-” Tully began before she was tackled into the ground by a rather large dog. Or was it a wolf? Wichita had a hard time telling between the two.

“Tully!” Rose yelled, her eyes hooting open as she ran towards her sister. Wichita sighed. There was little need to be worried. The dog was too weak to harm Tully.

As she had predicted, the girl waved her hand, slapping the dog. The poor things head fell off. Rose skidded to a stop looking at it. Even Wichita hadn’t expected that.

“Just how many levels did you get?” she asked.

“Just three! But I got a lot of stats from them!” Tully cheered, getting up. Wichita decided that the girl’s clothes needed a self repair enchantment. There were a number of tears on them already, and she was sure more would join them soon enough.

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“How many?” she asked, more curious than anything else. But it would be good to know.

“A hundred and twenty-seven!” The girl grinned widely. Wichita paused.

“In a single level?” she asked in shock.

“Oh no. In three, I gained all three of them together—oh look! I got another one!”

Wichita looked at her in shock. A hundred and twenty-seven meant thirty-nine stats per level.

“Do you get to assign them?” she asked.

Tully turned to her in confusion. “…yes? Is that not normal?”

“No.” she said, taking a deep breath to calm down. “No, it is not. The Arcana reduced their stats to one just to prevent the System from assigning them randomly. But please tell me you didn’t put them all in Strength.”

“Oh, no. I distributed them all across. I even put some into mana!” she said.

“Did you put some into intelligence? That must have been your lowest stat.” Rose said. “Why didn’t you fucking ask Wichita about it? What if there is something in there that we don’t know? What will you do then?”

Tully pouted, a reply on her lips. Wichita preempted it. “I would recommend we pick up pace. The forest might take this as us stopping.”

There was little chance of it, but she did not want her subjects to argue. Wichita was hardly new to ill-tempered people, but the sheer amount of arguments the three of them got into was absurd. Could they not just keep their opinions to themselves? Why did Rose feel the need to express such things to her sister?

Wichita doubted she did not know that it would cause trouble. The girl had a perception class or fuck’s sake, she knew better.

“How are you doing Jace?” she asked as they started jogging. For some reason the other three seemed hesitant to drop into a full run like before. Perhaps they had simply grown unafraid of the forest.

That terrified her for some reason. What if the forest decided it wanted to teach them some humility. What was that dog about anyway? Wichita had expected more to emerge out of the woodwork and start biting at them. And yet the forest hadn’t attacked them yet.

“I am just tired.” the boy groaned out. “Sleeping and then waking up so quickly just doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Was it really that low?” she asked, puzzled. “I admit, I don’t have a good measure of time in this place.”

Jace looked at her and then looked up at the sky. “I suppose this isn’t normal?”

“I would not know. The Ages have changed since I walked the outside world; the sky has likely changed quite a bit since.” she confessed.

Rose stopped, turning to look back at her.

“Don’t stop.” she commanded. The girl did start jogging again, but still questioned her. “What do you mean the sky has changed? Does the sky change a lot around here?”

“Not a lot, but there are drastic changes in the environment from one Age to another. The First Age had a sun, but it wasn’t there during the Second and Third Ages.”

“Wait, how did people survive without the sun? Isn’t that like needed to survive?” Jace asked, sounding surprised. And far more awake than he had been before.

“I would not know about that. The world adapted with the Ages. The ones that didn’t died off.” she shrugged.

“How do you adapt to-” Jace started, sounding very surprised by this. Wichita wasn’t sure why. And she didn’t get the time to find out. The forest acted, plunging them into darkness.

“What the fuck!” Jace screamed. Wichita could vaguely make out some shapes in front of her mana sense, but for the most matter even she couldn't see. This was not a simple thing. Even Arcana depended on light to see, but they could still see with very low levels of it.

This was either a very thorough removal of light, or something else entirely.

“Rose, use your Skill.” she commanded. “Tully, prepare for attacks.”

As if responding to her, a tentacle shot towards Jace, reaching for him. Wichita had the needle intercept.

“There are tentacles around!” she warned. “Jace, stop moving! I can barely sense you.”

The boy's mana levels had grown since he arrived in this world, but they were still too low for her to sense him easily. The fact that he was panicking, moving around erratically like he was dodging a threat did not help.

“How can I stop moving! There are tentacles around! I felt one tickle me!” the boy yelled back, only growing more panicked.

Wichita sighed. “That’s me you idiot. Stop moving before you kill yourself. The amount of mana I have in my body is deadly to humans. If your hand passes through me, you will die, and it will be painful.”

The boy stopped moving, freezing in place. “…where are you exactly?”

Sighing again, she called on her most reliable subject. “Rose, any news yet?”

“I am not seeing anything!” the girl replied. “Are you sure about those tentacles?”

“I killed one.” she replied, looking at the needle. “Or at least I hope I did. I can barely sense them.”

The girl’s Skill was out then. That was disappointing.

“Tully, are you sensing anything?” she asked.

“Not really.” the young girl actually sounded nervous. “Do we move forward? The path was pretty straight.”

“I would be surprised if the forest didn’t move around while we were in this state.” she said, hoping the forest hadn’t added cracks.

“But yes, we should move forward. I will try to sense any obstacles in our way.” Relying on her weak mana sense troubled her. The thing was too unreliable, she was likely to lead them into a crack and end their lives. But they didn’t have an option did they?

“Keep using your Skill, Rose, perhaps you will see something I miss. And be careful, I can’t see anything either and my mana sense is very weak.”

“What’s a mana sense?” Tully asked.

“Not the time!” Rose yelled.

“I must agree with Rose -” Wichita’s eyes bulged as she saw what was coming. “Tully shoot as much Sword Qi in front of you as you can, now!”

The girl did so, the silvery thing heading out in a straight line. The darkness around them was momentarily dispelled as fire met at it. In the light of the reddish-brown flames, she saw the scaly face of her enemy.

A drake. No, worse.

A drake with tentacles.