43rd of Season of Water, 82nd year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt gazed at the Valley of the Lost for a moment before jumping into the myst. The omnipresent danger slammed against his senses like a monsoon downpour, the only ray of light and safety straight ahead.

  Newt chuckled at how obvious the trap was, and how silly and irritated he had been when he had visited the valley for the first time. He walked the safe path with confidence, when a third realm spiketail appeared in the mist.

  The beast hissed a warning, and Newt cocked an eyebrow.

  “Scram.”

  It scrammed.

  Newt kept walking, and the danger all around him lessened. He had crossed the barrier between the third and fourth realm zones, but continued towards the fifth realm one. Only there could Newt practice his danger sense. The fourth zone offered few to no real dangers, while the sixth realm one meant death.

  Even the fifth realm was a gamble, but Newt’s body was at the middling layers of the fifth realm, his magic also at the peak of the fifth. The only problem was his humble mana reserve, but it was enough for a quick or even moderately long encounter. Anything past twenty moves against a peak fifth realm manabeast would see him dead.

  I’m not here to train combat techniques. Gatemaster Greenthorn told me I need to rely on danger sense more than on strength and magic.

  It still felt odd - having weekly training sessions with an exalt. The man rarely spoke, but instead pricked Newt with mana. His corrections came in the form of invisible needles hitting at what wasn’t supposed to be there. Most of the time, he just asked Newt to do easy mana circulations through his various muscles and pointed out mistakes.

  A year had passed since they had started, and Newt was still making mistakes. Never the same one twice, but the gatemaster grew increasingly demanding the closer to perfection Newt got.

  “What if I die?” Newt asked him before he sent him into the Valley of the Lost.

  “Then we have both wasted our time and the time of others.” Gatemaster Greenthorn said in a calm voice. “Respect yourself and do your best not to be impolite to your teachers.”

  And so, Newt walked the familiar myst, no longer worrying about finding mysterium, since he didn’t need it. Gatemaster Greenthorn had told him that he was his first and only ward. As such, Newt’s resources came out of his pocket. And his pockets were the order’s coffers.

  In return, he expected Newt to treat the order as his own property and home. To tend to it, to sacrifice for it, the way he would for his clan. To walk into the area beyond his realm, so he could further hone his danger sense, since it was important and a huge advantage at any realm. The lower the realm, the greater the advantage, plus Gatemaster Greenthorn assured him that as danger sense developed, the imminent danger would become clearer to the point of evolving into true prescience.

  He didn’t explain more than that, but Newt’s imagination ran wild. He closed his eyes as he navigated the myst, and let his danger sense lead the way.

  The surrounding danger lessened again; he had entered the fifth realm zone. There was no going out until he found the exit, and until then, he would share the world with manabeasts more powerful than he was.

  He still felt the distant pull of false safety, but it had grown faint as the surrounding danger had vanished. Only an inkling of danger hinted at the exit’s location, but the sensation was faint, the gate distant.

  He really is as horrible a teacher as he claimed. Newt had no idea what to do next. Should he go straight for the exit, stalk saurians in the myst, meditate and wait for them to come to him?

  Maybe I’m just a horrible student and should’ve asked?

  With no direction and multiple approaches to his problem, Newt decided on trying them all. Since no place was better or worse, he sat where he stood, closed his eyes, and spread his mana sense, feeling his environment, and seeking inspiration.

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  With sharper senses, he caught… something. He frowned. Roots of mana spread through the ground, sinking, feeling, and seeking. Yet, no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find the confirmation he was looking for.

  I’m certain, even if I can’t prove it. The wrongness and distortion in the natural sense of danger is coming from the ground, thinning the higher one looks. Why?

  He searched and focused. There were no obvious pockets with greater concentration of danger or safety in the area, but that just meant there were no dangerous enemies.

  Maybe I should’ve checked in the layers of the myst meant for those at the lower realm?

  Too late to do anything about it, but Newt made a note for later, when he left his current layer. He kept sensing, focusing within as well as without, but nothing out of the ordinary happened in the first twelve hours. No sudden flash of inspiration, and not a single instinctual tug in a direction, right or wrong, in which he could experiment with his danger sense.

  Twelve hours is practically nothing. Newt assured himself, but his situation was completely different from meditation. During meditation, his mind was active, sculpting, his body constantly circulating mana. While not very different from his current activity, there was one crucial difference.

  Results!

  Newt was constantly improving, constantly achieving something and bettering himself. In the Valley of the Lost, he was wasting time.

  Gatemaster Greenthorn said I probably won’t manage it on the first try, nor on the fifth, but that I should build a habit of just striving for something. Newt was fairly sure his new master was a worse teacher than he was failing at being a proper student.

  Who even tells their students - “Go, fail at this”?

  Newt wanted to make it on the first try just to show his new master just how wrong he was about Newt, but the reality bent frustratingly in the exalt’s favor.

  I’ll go hunting. Mix and match, that’s the key. Newt wasn’t certain of his assumption, but he knew meditation wasn’t getting him anywhere. Had he been older or suffered more setbacks on his path, he might have stayed and meditated for days or weeks, seeking enlightenment.

  As he was, Newt got up, thinking something was wrong with his approach and decided he needed to change it.

  He drifted through the mist for an hour, when he sensed an island of safety. It was incredibly safe. He just needed to follow his sense of danger, and he would find salvation.

  That safe, huh? He sneered at the natural wonder aiming to kill him.

  The island of safety wasn’t moving though.

  It’s not a native beast; it didn’t sense me. That realization came with a sigh of relief, a native, peak fifth realm ultraraptor would’ve been a difficult opponent, if not an outright deadly challenge.

  His heart raced, his breath quickened and grew shallower. An urge to circle around sprang in his mind, an instinct to attack from the back, but he had no idea which way the beast was looking.

  A tense moment passed, and Newt advanced. Slowly, carefully. He pushed his mana sense outwards as far as he could. It traveled though the myst as if through syrup, unraveling a mere handful of yards away.

  Newt drew it back. It wasn’t helping, its pitiful range less than his sight. Finally, he caught sight of the creature. A longclaw, it turned, and Newt stepped back, disappearing in the myst.

  The source of safety shifted.

  It’s moving slowly. It must have sensed something, but didn’t see me.

  A part of Newt wanted to back away. He was facing a lethal threat. But he had faced lethal threats before, and they made him what he was.

  Newt stepped forward, glaive in hand. The longclaw was twenty feet tall, striped brown with green.

  Earth? Newt wondered about its element. He would’ve preferred a fire attribute enemy, but those were rare in the myst.

  The longclaw sniffed and turned. The creature shrieked and bulldozed towards Newt, its rapid footsteps landing heavily on the ground.

  It showed no hints of magic or technique, just tons of powerful muscles and unstoppable force. Flames burned around Newt, making him lighter and propelling him in sync with his leap at the incoming saurian.

  The longclaw swiped its sabre-like talons, moving faster than its size and awkward movement would suggest. A large ball of flame burst at the attacking claw, searing the limb and pushing Newt back.

  The longclaw hissed. A layer of stone covered its scales, but the damage was done.

  Newt sent another ball of flame straight at its face. It exploded, washing over the longclaw’s face, but doing no damage, thanks to the earthen shield.

  Newt didn’t intend to hurt it with fire, following right behind it and striking with his glaive. He aimed to sever the longclaw’s neck, but the creature moved, the decapitation turning into a slash on the neck.

  Blood sprayed, but a moment later, a layer of rocks covered the wound. The longclaw roared and turned to face Newt.