The surprise magical beasts surrounding him looked like some horrific combination of goblin and monkey. They were covered in green, pockmarked skin, but their arms were lanky enough to drag along the ground. And rather than fight with crudely made weapons, their hands were free, lined with nasty cracked nails that were almost more like claws.

  A fact Leo was made well aware of when the first one lunged at him and tried to grab him by the throat.

  In no rush to see what those teeth would do to his face, Leo slashed up with his knife, cutting deep into the beast’s arm and causing it to scream as blood went everywhere. He sensed movement behind him, and had just enough time to trigger Harden and cover the skin on his back in a thin layer of stone before he felt another one slam into him, sending him staggering forward. Even if the skill prevented something from piercing his skin, it did nothing to stop momentum.

  His eyes widened as he spotted another blur shooting for his head, and he dropped low, turning his stagger into a roll. Careful not to accidentally impale himself on his own knife, Leo leapt out of his roll, shoving his knife into the chest of the nearest beast. While that one went down, his attack cost him, and he had the wind knocked out of him as one of the beasts tackled him from the side, sending them both rolling around on the ground.

  The magical beast screamed in his face, sending specks of saliva all over him. But just before it could sink its teeth into him, Leo used Harden again, ramming his rock-encrusted forehead directly into the beast’s face and hearing a satisfying crunch for his efforts.

  Stabbing it in the side once, twice, and then a third time for good measure, Leo kicked the beast off him, scrambling to his feet as the one remaining beast stared at him with narrowed eyes. The only beast still standing was the one whose arm he’d already slashed open, and the magical beast looked as though it were weighing its options. Panting, saliva dripped from its jagged teeth as its eyes flicked between Leo and its slain comrades, clearly trying to decide what to do.

  “You want to end up like them?” Leo shouted, trying to keep his shaking to a minimum as he pointed his knife at the final beast. He’d foolishly thought smacking a few rock rabbits out of the air meant he knew how to handle himself in a fight, but coming within a hair’s breath of having his throat ripped out by a slobbering magical beast showed he had a lot to learn. “Come on then, let’s go!”

  To his surprise, the beast screeched at him one last time, before turning and running away, leaping up onto the nearest tree and struggling as it swung away one-handed. Leo stood there for a few seconds longer, panting as he waited for the magical beast to change its mind and return. After a solid ten seconds had passed, and the calming, distant sounds of regular, non-magical birds chirping in the canopy finally returned, he let himself relax.

  His knife fell from his hand as he sat down, wiping the beast spit off his face with trembling fingers. On the one hand, he’d officially survived his first real fight, without even sustaining any serious injuries. Sure, his chest hurt from being tackled and having the beast land on him, but from the look of those teeth, things could have been far worse. Letting out a quiet laugh, Leo picked up his knife and turned to his spoils.

  Time to see what type of beast gem he was dealing with.

  Retrieving the gem from the much larger magical beast was a bit trickier than the rock rabbits. While the gems for higher grade beasts were larger, so was the amount of space within the beast’s body one had to search through to find it. Luckily, as an amateur chef, Leo was no stranger to rooting around in an animal’s entrails, and he got to work hunting for the gem. As he did, he thought about the unknown magical beast.

  Technically, if these beasts really are unnamed, that gives me the right to name them. Seeing as my first impression was that they were some weird cross between goblin and monkey… gonkie it is!

  From all his reading, Leo knew there were really only three conventions of naming when it came to Cartographers who discovered new magical beasts. Some went with his preferred method, trying to come up with two already known things the new beast reminded them of and smashing their names together. Others took the time to try and come up with something genuinely new, taking root words and prefixes and carefully designing an appropriate name for the new beast.

  And some Cartographers named them after preexisting things, like people. Leo’s father had one particular story he’d loved to talk about any chance he got about two Cartographers who had an ongoing feud, each one desperately searching for newer, uglier magical beasts to name after the other. It finally got to the point where the Cartographer’s Guild in the Nexus itself had to step in, declaring that they couldn’t have half a dozen magical beasts all sharing an identical name.

  Leo chuckled to himself as he thought about how hard his father would laugh every time the story came up, or how his mother would roll her eyes and shake her head at the ridiculousness of the situation, unable to hide the ghost of a smile as she watched her husband’s giddiness. He felt that pang in his chest that was growing increasingly familiar, but rather than shove it down, he sighed, his gore-covered hands pausing in their gem hunt as he looked up at the canopy.

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  “Survived my first real fight,” he said to nobody in particular, watching the tree limbs sway in the gentle breeze. If he tried hard enough, and ignored the tiny leaf sprite drifting by lazily overhead, he could almost imagine he was in his own backyard, silently watching the forest breathe as he recovered from a hard session of training. “I’m sure you’d have a lot of pointers for me, but I guess I’m going to have to figure them out on my own.”

  Leo shifted, feeling the small box his father had left him with press against him. The desire to open it and see what was inside was incredibly strong, but he’d been instructed not to peek until he’d gotten his soul up to rank 20. Normally, such a feat would take months, or potentially even years of careful cultivation if one wanted to be assured of their safety, cautiously hunting down magical beasts at or below one’s own soul rank to ensure they didn’t bite off more than they could chew.

  Leo was planning to do it in only a few weeks.

  “Don’t you worry about me, dad,” he said, grinning as he found what he was looking for and ripped a bright red gem out of the first gonkie’s chest. “I’m going to be just fine.”

  It was a risk letting down his guard in order to cultivate out here where he might be attacked again at any moment, but Leo was starting to get used to taking dangerous risks. That probably wasn’t the best habit to have, but he’d worry about breaking it later.

  Crossing his legs, Leo held the gem up to his chest, holding his breath as he tried to get a feel for it first. The gonkies hadn’t been too hard to defeat, which meant he really didn’t think they could be more than a Grade 5 or 6 magical beast, but if through some fluke they were Grade 7 or higher, his soul would pretty much implode the moment he tried to take the power into himself. Cultivating with a gem one grade higher than one’s soul was risky. Two grades higher was stupid, but possible, provided the cultivator had a strong enough will.

  Three was pretty much suicidal.

  His soul was still immature enough that he couldn’t tell what skill the gem contained, or its exact grade, but at the very least, he could sense it wasn’t too far beyond his own.

  Probably Grade 5 then. That’ll do nicely.

  Preparing himself, Leo took a deep breath, converting the gem into pure power and drawing it into his core. Falling into his meditative trance, Leo closed his eyes and willed the energy to form that familiar swirling storm his mother had drilled into his head. Ever so slowly, bits of the storm drifted down, coating his soul and gradually building up a fresh layer of power. It wasn’t long before he finished off the gonkie’s gem, and he stood up, quickly rushing over to the second one.

  Magical beast gems exposed to the air didn’t last long without the proper containers, but they were usually able to last for a couple of hours, so long as they hadn’t been harvested yet. Leo got straight to work, slicing into the second gonkie and fishing around for what he knew to be hidden within. With a grin, he plucked the second gem free, admiring its reddish tint as he wiped the blood and viscera off it. Not wasting any more time, he slipped back into meditation, pulling this gem into himself as well and cycling the power around his soul.

  By the time he finished, he was pleased to find that his soul was already about halfway to Grade 5, which meant he only needed to take out two or three more gonkies in order to rank up again. Though he could worry about that later.

  He still had an entire plane to discover.

  Having learned his lesson about getting up close and personal with the gonkies, the first thing Leo did was find a decent-sized branch and break it off. That done, he cut off a strip of his shirt, slicing it into thin strands. After whittling the branch down a bit to make it easier to hold and carving a notch in the top, he forced his knife inside, securing it with the strands from his shirt. It wouldn’t win any beauty contests, and it probably wouldn’t last very long before he needed to repair it. But for the time being, he finally had a weapon with some actual reach he could rely on.

  Leo made a few experimental thrusts with his make-shift spear, pleased with how his whittling had turned out. It wasn’t one of his favorite skills he’d developed, but as with every skill he’d learned, his parents had been insistent he at least know the basics.

  Spear in hand and rift at his back, Leo headed off into the forest, keeping his eyes peeled for anything and everything. Not only was he looking for threats or signs of civilization, he was also trying to find anything that looked even remotely edible.

  One could only eat grass for so long before they decided life just wasn’t worth living anymore.

  Luckily, if worse came to worst, now that he was in a forest and had plenty of firewood available, he could actually cook and eat the gonkies he’d just killed. The vast majority of magical beasts didn’t taste very good and made for notoriously bad meals, but at this point, he’d take even somewhat spoiled meat over more grass. Back when he was still trying to decide what kind of Cartographer he wanted to be, his mother had mentioned some made it their life’s mission to hunt out those rare few magical beasts that actually were delicious. They were few and far between, but supposedly, if prepared correctly, the flavors from those magical beasts were better than anything else in the entire planarverse.

  Leo paused, watching a colorful caterpillar slowly make its way up a tree before him. He hadn’t actually given it much thought yet, what with his mind being a tad preoccupied with surviving and everything he’d been through with his home being destroyed, but he supposed he finally had his answer. His mother had been insistent that all the best Cartographers had some sort of goal they devoted themselves to, body and soul, and had instructed him to think hard about what he wanted his own goal to be. He’d still been a bit on the fence regarding his answer, but now, he did have a goal. Even if it wasn’t one he’d come up with on his own. Not to mention crazy enough to get him laughed at by just about anyone he actually told it to.

  “Defeat the Planar Lords,” he muttered, walking deeper into the forest. “Save the Nexus.”