Felix enjoyed the quiet moment as the last of the coffee dripped into the bottom of the carafe. The smell was like nothing he’d ever smelled before. He could tell that what instructor Grendel was making was nothing like the coffee he’d had back home.

  Grendel removed the silk and grounds from the top of the carafe, leaving only the coffee in the larger bottom. With the coffee ready to be served, the instructor took out two hand-painted mugs, one saying ‘I’m beary sorry’ and the other with ‘I can’t bear to be without you’ written on them, both with cute little pictures of bears.

  He filled the cups with the coffee and offered one to Felix, who was having a hard time holding back laughter. When he saw the enormous, ferocious-looking instructor sipping out of a little bear mug, it was hard to contain himself. He didn’t want to offend him or seem ungrateful.

  “I think that, given your affinities, I should refrain from telling you why we sleep. Figuring it out for yourself might be a helpful way to progress on your path. For now, I will only tell you that sleep is crucial for recovery during training. You should consider visiting the gym more often. You might not be able to become a knight, but that doesn’t mean you can slack off on your physical training.

  “Remember what I said, take advantage of every opportunity, make the most of every little advantage you can. You have an especially difficult start to your journey, but if you manage to make it past this first hurdle, I’m confident that you’ll go far.”

  Felix took a while to consider, but in the end, he didn’t have any other options. He didn’t think he’d find a way on his own. At the very least, he should try to listen to the instructor. If he wasted a bit of time on a useless spell, then so be it. Even if the training didn’t let him pass, it would probably be helpful at some point.

  With Felix's agreement, the instructor started developing a training plan for Felix as they drank their coffee. He promised to update it once Felix had managed to use his spell.

  The coffee was strange for how normal it was. It did taste a little fruity and quite acidic. Not really what he’d normally associate with coffee, but he’d grown accustomed to the strange sensations that came with Agrona’s food. Drinking something that only made him feel a little tingly and maybe a bit more aware almost felt underwhelming.

  When Felix eventually left the gym, it struck him how much his situation had changed. When he woke up, he had nowhere to go and no idea how to progress. Yet in the course of a few hours that had changed, now he could train in the gym, seek out more guides, or learn his spell. Suddenly, it felt like he didn’t have enough time to do everything he wanted to.

  Still, there was one option that called to him, after he realised there was a relationship between mind and life mana, he felt a reaction. There was only one place he could go to see what that meant, and that was the Ways.

  Strictly speaking, it might not be the best place for him to go, but right now Felix just wanted something, anything that showed he was actually progressing after he’d been stuck for so long. So it was that Felix made his way through the slowly filling crossroad to step through the golden gate yet again.

  By now, he’d gotten used to the overbearing pressure exuded by the creatures at the starting line. He simply waited for them to depart before setting off into the dense jungle. A primal part of his brain still tried to tell him to be terrified, to run for his life when faced with the overwhelming beasts, but after facing them so many times with nothing happening, his rational mind was able to beat his instincts.

  Now knowing that the little spider creatures were responsible for his deaths, he approached their territory with great care.

  ‘I need a name for them, thinking of them as spiderlike creatures is going to get old pretty fast. Well, they’re cute and they look like spiders, so maybe cuter?’

  Felix’s face scrunched up.

  ‘Definitely not, death threads? Eye-ders? I can’t really be this bad at naming things… I’m just stalling, aren’t I? Whatever, I’ll just call them slicers until I come up with something better.’

  Instead of barging into their domain, Felix crept close enough until he could see them and stopped. This time, he’d observe them. It was hard to believe the cute little creatures could be responsible for the gruesome deaths he’d suffered.

  Carefully, he started making his way sideways, skirting their territory, looking for a way forward. He crawled through the damp overgrowth, enduring the oppressive heat. While keeping time inside the Ways was difficult, it felt like hours passed as he tried to find a way around them. His legs were scraped raw, his arms bled from all the cuts and scuffs and bug bites he picked up.

  If the Ways didn’t heal him up after every attempt, he’d have been seriously worried about infection.

  Eventually, Felix had to acknowledge that they likely circled the entire starting area. There was no way for him to go around them, and there was no way he could go through them. If he was going to pass this hurdle, he’d have to find another way.

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  Still, even after the gruelling hours, even with his eyes stinging and muscles burning from pushing through the jungle. He refused to give up. His mind felt numb after he’d spent hours making sure he didn’t miss any of the pocket-sized reapers. Still, he didn’t feel discouraged.

  Maybe it was the fact that he knew, even if he died now, there were other options for him. He stopped approaching the challenge as his only hope in a desperate situation and started treating it like a puzzle. Maybe this mindset is why a certain detail about the creatures stuck out to him.

  They circled the entire starting area, but it wasn’t a smooth circle. In some places, their territory seemed to recede deeper into the forest. Even in places they’d clearly claimed there would sometimes be spots that were left conspicuously unoccupied.

  While this seemed like an obvious thing, if it weren’t for the hours he spent observing them, he’d probably never have noticed the tiny detail. The next question was obvious. Why were they avoiding certain areas?

  Too tired to keep crawling through the jungle, he settled in to observe. He found a spot that had several empty pockets and climbed up a tree. With a safe vantage point, Felix made himself at home.

  At first, he thought it might be patterns in their movement that left holes. Eventually, he ruled that out as a possibility. Next, he tried paying attention to the plants. He used the pocket closest to him as his starting point. One by one, he looked at every plant growing in the pocket to see if the others had the same plants.

  A few times, he got close. Some of the plants were only missing from one or two pockets. Eventually, he found a fern with sharp leaves, lighter green along the edges, growing darker toward the middle. It must have been the twentieth plant he’d checked, and finally he found one that was in every pocket.

  Felix got so excited that he nearly jumped out of his spot in the tree. It was probably only because he’d spent hours moving through the forest looking out for the little spiders that he checked to see if any of them posed a danger before he jumped down.

  It was when he noticed that the fern he was so excited about wasn’t just in the pockets but all over the area. In fact, one of the little spiders was happily nestled amongst a particularly dense patch of them.

  Eventually, he had to admit to himself that the plants likely weren’t the answer to his conundrum either.

  He tried everything he could think of, every reason why the slicers might avoid a certain area. It had nothing to do with the light or shadows, or any different-coloured dirt or scary birds hanging around. Eventually, he realised that he needed a closer look. He wasn’t getting anywhere, holed up in the safety of his tree.

  Quickly scurrying down the tree, his aching muscles having had time to recover during his vigil, he made his way to the edge of the slicers’ territory. He picked a pocket of safety on the edge of their territory so he could get close.

  Hunkering down, he kept a careful eye on the slicers around him. They were watching him, but none of them moved to attack. Cautiously, he took his eyes off them and tried to inspect the empty pocket. He tried peering in, but he still couldn’t see anything that would make the slicers stay away.

  Finding a stick, he threw it into the pocket to see if the slicers would react. He held his breath as he waited. Nothing, they were agitated but didn’t move to attack. Grabbing a long stick, he started poking it. The slicers grew more and more agitated, but they never did anything to stop him.

  After a while crouched down at the edge, he had to admit that he wasn’t getting anywhere. If he wanted to find out what was happening, he’d have to step into the circle himself. He spent a long time trying to find anything that would give him an excuse not to.

  Every time he thought of entering, the memories of his various deaths played in his head. His hands started sweating and his legs shook, but he knew that there was only one way forward. He’d have to go in.

  Slowly, he started inching forward, carefully keeping an eye on all the slicers. They tracked his every move. Chittering noises drowned out all other noise in the forest as more and more of them filled the area. Under the tense standoff, he could feel his heart racing, his back drenched in cold sweat, but he kept moving forward slowly.

  After a long and tense standoff, his entire body was in the slicers’ territory, but none of them moved to attack. They were clearly agitated, but none of them fired their threads at him.

  Letting out a sigh of relief, Felix cautiously turned his attention to the pocket of safety. It wasn’t easy taking his eyes off the very real danger staring him in the face. He kept shooting glances up at the branches to make sure none of them suddenly attacked.

  The first thing he noticed was a strange, sweet smell he couldn’t detect from outside the pocket. It wasn’t a pleasant sweetness. It was too sharp and far too intense. Thinking it might have something to do with why the slicers stayed away, he quickly started trying to locate the source.

  It wasn’t easy. The whole area carried the smell. He tried lifting things to his nose, but the smell was so overpowering that he just couldn’t figure out what caused it. He tried taking a few of the plants outside the safe pocket to see if the smell was coming from any of them, but none of the ones he checked gave off the smell.

  Then he realised the folly of his idea. If there was a plant producing it, it would have to be in every pocket. He’d already checked that from the tree. His next guess was the soil, but though the smell lingered when he took the soil out of the pocket, it wasn’t strong enough to be the cause.

  Eventually, after checking a few more pockets, he had a breakthrough. He found a dead slicer covered in beetles that were only a little larger than grains of sand. Taking a part of the carcass out of the pocket, he was delighted to find that the smell followed. The beetles were clearly dissatisfied with being carried and dropped off the carcass after a little while.

  The smell grew fainter and fainter as they left. He’d finally found it. Now there was only one thing left to test. Would the spiders ignore him if he smelled like the beetles?

  Quickly running back to the spider carcass, Felix gathered some of the dirt from underneath it. Making a little pouch with his shirt, he filled it with as many of the beetles as he could carry. Repeating his nervous manoeuvre of inching out of the safe pocket, he watched as the spiders closer to him slowly inched back as he moved forward.

  He didn’t stop. He kept moving forward. He couldn’t stop the beetles from escaping. They were just too small. He quickly realised he was on a time limit. If he kept slowly inching forward, he’d be stranded in the middle of their territory. As fast as he could go without dropping even more beetles, he started racing forward.

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