In a quiet corner of the library, the warm spring sun shone through the massive arched windows and fell on the sleeping form of a young man. His hair glistened in the sun while his drool reflected the rows of plants that made the library feel more like a garden than a building.

  A great thud abruptly pulled Felix out of his meditation, scaring him enough that he nearly fell out of his chair. Reaching for his staff, his vision darted across the room searching for a threat, only to land on a peeved librarian.

  “Sir, while we can tolerate you sleeping in the library, as it’s not strictly against the rules. We can’t allow you to use our plants to feed your pet.”

  “I— what? Menium is tied up outside.”

  Unamused, the librarian pointed to the side. Looking over, Felix saw a monkey with soft, light golden fur lounging on one of the bookshelves. It looked utterly relaxed as it lazily plucked leaves from one of the library’s pot plants. Its oversized, pointed ears twitched in happiness at every bite.

  Felix jumped up in horror. “Menium!”

  The monkey perked up and looked around to see Felix. It jumped up in excitement when it saw he’d gotten up, and rushed down the shelf so quickly the shelf nearly toppled over. It got halfway down before stopping. A deep look of concentration crossed its face before it looked over at Felix and gave a couple of happy chirps.

  Climbing back up the shelf, it quickly swiped the delicious plant it forgot in its haste. Tucking the pot under one arm, it climbed down and ran over to Felix to give him a hug around his waist. All while happily chirping, as if he were telling Felix about all the lovely snacks he’d found.

  Felix smiled awkwardly at the unimpressed librarian before looking down at his companion.

  “Menium, did you take the Library’s plants?”

  Menium nodded vigorously before plucking another leaf and shoving it into his mouth.

  “And what did we say about taking other people’s plants?”

  Thinking hard, Menium reached into his mouth and pulled out the spit-covered leaf before offering it to Felix.

  Felix let out a groan and dropped his head into his hand.

  “No, sharing is for our own food. Plants, think, what do we do with other people’s plants?”

  Menium thought long and hard before its ears drooped and it sheepishly tried to hide the pot behind its back. Its eyes darted from side to side. Spotting the furious librarian, he gave her a sheepish smile and offered her the spit-covered leaf.

  The librarian coiled back in disgust, seeing that Menium’s shoulders slumped and he looked down at the floor. Reluctantly, he ate the rejected leaf himself.

  Watching the display, Felix could only let out a sigh.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the plants. If you’ll allow it, I’ll replace them from my own stock. I left my cart out front. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  Seeing that the librarian looked sceptical, Felix handed her his identity token.

  “Here, if you check my mission history, you’ll see I do gardening tasks through the guild all the time. I also trade in plants. I can show you what's in my cart. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

  After the librarian checked the token, Felix spent the next several hours negotiating and fixing the damage Menium caused. In the end, he still had to pay a fine since he couldn’t use plant magic to finish the job.

  As Felix and Menium pushed the cart out of town, Felix grumbled.

  “Honestly, who’d have thought elves would discriminate against people who can’t cast plant magic. There’s no way they didn’t come out ahead. How could that librarian keep a straight face while saying a rain blossom and an emerald weed are worth the same amount?”

  Passing the town gate, Felix pulled the cart to the side of the road.

  “Sigh, hold up, Meni, let me see where we are going next.”

  Felix took out his coin pouch and carefully counted its contents. With another sigh, he tied it back to his belt.

  “Right, there’s no point going deeper inland, we don’t have the funds to get any fey-touched plants. We could try finding some wild ones on route, but I doubt we’ll get anything sticking to the main trade routes…”

  Menium sat and listened attentively before letting out a few alarmed chirps at Felix’s insinuation that they’d go off the main route.

  “Yeah, I know, we won’t go off the main road again, it’s risky here, deeper in it’s a death sentence. No, I’m thinking we should visit Vaelis.”

  Menium shot up in excitement and started tugging on Felix’s shirt. Laughing Felix swatted away his paws.

  “Alright, alright. We’ll go. It’s been a few months since I’ve had the funds to transfer my mail over anyway. It would be nice to see what everyone’s been up to.”

  “We’ll take the northern pass, there’s a cultivar around that way and a couple of smaller libraries I haven’t been to yet.”

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  As they started pushing the cart again, Menium complained.

  “Look, it will only add a week or so to our trip, you know I need to keep training.”

  Menium chirped grumpily.

  “Hey! You take that back. I know it looks like I’m taking naps, but I’m actually hard at work. I swear, someday I’m going to figure out a way to show you what I’m up to. It’s frustrating enough that I can’t show my progress to anyone else. I don’t need you doubting me, too.”

  Menium rolled his eyes and chirped in response.

  “I know, I know. Look, it’s not like I don’t want to help more with the cart, I can’t just grow my arm back or start training as a martial artist, you know? And before you mention it, no. Eating more won’t help me grow stronger. That’s a beast thing, only you can do that.”

  “… Stop being smug.”

  Menium chirped in outrage.

  “I don’t need to look at you to know you’re being smug.”

  A month later, Felix sat next to a campfire, carefully pruning a small, unassuming plant. Doing his best to ignore the sulking Menium. He carefully examined every leaf he pruned, memorising even the slightest change in the plant’s mana.

  When the intense silence grew too heavy, he let out a sigh and put down the plant.

  “Look, I’m sorry, ok? How was I supposed to know we’d run into a mana tide? Can you just finish your breakfast so we can get going?”

  Menium turned his head away from Felix, ignoring him.

  “How about this, if we get to the next town in time, we can take the airship for the last bit. I should have just enough coin for it, and it means we’ll get to Ilmaréth by nightfall.”

  With a speed that Felix had no hope of matching, Menium finished his food, packed up the camp and started pushing the cart. Felix had barely enough time to grab the common forest dark weed he was so carefully pruning and hop in the back of the cart before they were off.

  Felix had to do his best to hold down his camping supplies and merchandise as Menium sped down the road. The cart bucked wildly over tree roots and stones on the poorly maintained path. The roads between smaller settlements were often in rough condition, as most people travelled by air. The roads were mostly used by Travellers, Explorers, and those who made a living from the forest. They weren’t the type to mind rougher paths.

  “Menium! If you break the cart, it’s coming out of your food budget!”

  The threat was enough to slow the excited monkey down just enough to make the ride tolerable. Felix didn’t offer to help push the cart. At the pace Menium was setting, it wouldn’t help much, and in all honesty, Menium was more than capable of handling it on his own.

  Knowing he’d be trapped in the back of the cart for the next few hours, Felix turned his attention inward. Focusing on his mana, he could see the raging rivers of life that used to flow through his body. Through years of practice, they’d changed. From uncontrolled chaos, raging rivers that desperately tried to shuttle life mana throughout his body, they’d become unrecognisable.

  The chaos was still there, but it had become less frantic. The flows now formed a beautiful, slowly shifting web of flows that wove through him in a controlled rush. Just looking at it, he felt like he was standing back in the garden at the Crossroad. The tamed chaos he could barely understand had become a part of him.

  Spending so much time with the elves had been worthwhile. Felix still couldn’t use his life mana to fight, or heal, or do much of anything outside his own body. But it had been years since he needed to sleep. Even eating and breathing had become less of a requirement as he lost less life mana through his improved control.

  Not that he’d intentionally weaken himself by testing how long he could do without. He’d spent years slowly reducing the waste and accumulating life mana inside him.

  He had no idea what he’d accomplish by doing it. He’d just come across enough vague references to know that many of the powerful elves did so, and it didn’t take him much effort to slowly build up his reserves.

  For all he knew, they did it to reduce wrinkles. Still, even with all the research he’d done over the years, he’d found so few ways to improve that he had no reason not to try all of them. It certainly did nothing to help him heal his missing arm.

  A well-timed bump from the cart going over a patch of overgrown path stopped his thoughts from dwelling on the final gate’s toll.

  Felix shook his head, realising he’d gotten caught up in his life mana again, that wasn’t what he wanted to focus on. He turned his attention to the complex maze of blooming mind mana fractals that shaped his thoughts. He didn’t have to look long to find the enormous crystallised core that made its home in the shifting tapestry.

  He felt his connection to what used to be his Memory Garden, and let his thoughts fall into the core.

  For six years, Felix had added every scrap of knowledge he could find to it. He’d travelled from town to town, city to city, scouring every library, discussing with every scholar, spending every coin he could spare on lessons. The spell had gone from something he cast by instinct to something that didn’t even require casting.

  Felix no longer needed to focus on adding to the garden. The spell had evolved into something barely recognisable. He’d added so much to the spell by channelling it in every waking moment that even Perfect Image had become a part of it.

  The spell born from his constant efforts had no official name. It wasn’t something that could be taught to others. Without the same insights into mind mana, without an affinity as pure as his, it would be impossible to cast it.

  Even if Felix found someone with the right affinity who’d be willing to spend over a decade dedicating every moment of their time to training a spell that had no clear advantage. Felix had no way to show anyone what he’d built. He couldn’t just invite someone into his head to see what he was working on.

  So his greatest creation, his Inner World, would forever be his greatest source of joy, but also his greatest source of frustration.

  Letting his consciousness swap places with the fragment he kept in his inner world, it felt like he was coming home. With the constant stream of new memories entering his Inner World, he always had to keep a part of his attention focused on organising the new information. If he didn’t, his carefully sculpted world would quickly become a chaotic mess.

  His Inner World looked nothing like the Memory Garden of the past. A carefully maintained garden now stretched as far as the eye could see. Beyond it, the terrain varied wildly. Hills and valleys, rivers and oceans, buildings and ruins, planes and forests, mountains and deserts. His world had it all.

  With a thought, Felix shifted position to land in the centre of his latest experiment. A massive greenhouse with carefully subdivided plots. All filled to the brim with the same plant. Thousands upon thousands of common forest dark weeds filled every corner of the greenhouse.

  Some fresh sprouts, some old and withered. Some in dry soil, some in wet. Plots with varying temperatures, lighting, noise, insect life and soil.

  Felix carried the memory of his latest pruned plant to a plot near the edge of the greenhouse. He bent down and carefully laid the plant to the side while he dug a hole for it. Gently, he lowered the plant in, covered its roots in soil and patted it down like he was tucking it in.

  Please let me know what you think of book 2's start in the comments!!! o(〃＾▽＾〃)o

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