Felix slipped down the tree, precious cargo in hand. Halfway down, he placed his legs on the bark and kicked off, launching himself into a roll. He weaved through the trees at a speed that would have left him from a couple of months ago in awe.

  The last dash cleared him of the slicer’s territory. He didn’t slow down or look back. He’d long grown used to the slowly building hoard that would follow him, though he’d learned to clear their area before they had the time to build up to the numbers he’d seen on his first trip through.

  Dashing through the woods, he didn’t move in a straight line. Sometimes he’d zip to the side and grab some vines hanging from a tree. He’d flip over a rock, quickly scraping off some moss before moving on. As he moved to the river, he filled his bag with more and more ingredients.

  His time learning from Agrona had helped. He’d even started enjoying cooking after learning from her. He was by no means an expert, but he’d definitely learned to appreciate just how skilled the dwarf was. Eventually, the Ways had started recognizing his efforts, and his personal library was now filled with books on cooking and ingredients.

  Alas, his lessons had ended when he finally figured out how to get Knucklehead to ferry him across the river. His focus was now on the next challenge he had to overcome. Something that made his previous issues look like child’s play.

  Felix stopped in a clearing not far from the river and started hiding the ingredients he gathered from across the forest. He’d long learned that Knucklehead would accept help, but wouldn’t accept it if Felix handed him everything he needed.

  After stashing his loot, he didn’t head towards the river. Instead, he backtracked to a particularly nasty set of brambles, using his crudely fashioned knife to carefully cut free some of the branches.

  Working quickly, he started removing the thorns and branches. What looked like firewood quickly transformed into a pile of javelins through his labour.

  “Thirty, that better be enough. I don’t think I can carry any more over the river.”

  Felix turned his gaze towards the raging current. The time since his duel with Eugene had changed him. From the second he’d won, a countdown had started. He couldn’t know how long he had before his actions would come back to haunt him, but he knew they would. He just hoped he’d bought himself time until after the deadline for joining the elite group. Felix sighed.

  ‘Another clock hanging over my head.’

  Felix had thrown himself into training like no other. He’d taken to borrowing a weighted vest and books from the library to use while he served aspirants at the dining hall. It had earned him several strange nicknames, but more importantly, it had earned him a second spell.

  ‘Garden of Memories’, a spell that uses mind mana to create a garden in his mind. As the name suggests, he could plant memories and revisit them later.

  The spell was strange. Felix had to exert great effort to channel it while he learned something.

  The spell called it growing a memory. Once he’d ‘grown’ it, he could meditate and enter the garden in his mind where he could relive the memory.

  His heart nearly broke when he first got it. Another spell that was completely useless in combat. Still, he didn’t just ignore it like he had with his first spell. Using every little advantage he had became more than a saying to him. It had become a philosophy that guided his every action.

  A philosophy that proved its worth when, after nearly a month just spent learning books from the library, he realised there was more to the spell. When he kept revisiting the memories of cookbooks for his kitchen work, his plants started growing faster. At some point, he realised he could perfectly recall the information even without entering the garden.

  That still wasn’t the most useful thing. Books often had overlapping information. For instance, multiple books explained temperature control or cutting techniques. If he referenced and compared these things enough, new plants would grow from his understanding. That was when he realised the technique had greater implications.

  When he channeled the spell while practicing a cutting technique. His understanding from multiple books resonated with his practice in a feedback loop that helped him rapidly improve. His plant of understanding would grow as his technique improved, and his technique would improve as his plant grew.

  Something that should have taken days to master took him only a few hours. As soon as he realised its potential, he started using it in the gym. While using the spell while fighting or running through an obstacle course was nearly impossible at the start, once he managed it, his improvement skyrocketed.

  Add in the fact that Felix needed almost no sleep, and the past few months had seen him rapidly change.

  Weaving the bundle of javelins into an organised pack using some vines, Felix hefted the bundle onto his shoulder.

  “This time, it’ll work. I can feel it.”

  He rushed off towards the river as he reflected on the other changes he’d undergone.

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  The constant use of his spells had left him with a habit of looking dazed most of the time as he wandered the garden in his mind, followed by unnerving moments of focus when he focused on the real world. It was a bit of a problem. He’d actually managed to make one aspirant cry with the intensity of his stare when she tried to order breakfast.

  “Not something I have time to work on right now.”

  That wasn’t his only change. His hair, skin, and even eye colour had started being affected by the mana he kept channelling. The change wasn’t obvious at first glance. Instead, his features had become subtly more youthful, and his hair had a subtle shine that was hard to put into words.

  Looking into his eyes made people feel like he could see everything about them in a single glance.

  The effects weren’t as prominent as the weather changing around Lara or the earth trembling around Aster when their emotions ran high, but he liked it. Subtle as they were, if you paid attention, you’d know the changes were caused by his mana. It felt like they marked him as a Traveller.

  Agrona had kindly explained that even esoteric mana would affect the body. As he grew in his affinity for his mana, more of it would become part of him. It wasn’t the same forced assimilation knights underwent, but over time, it would still affect his body.

  He should have realised it, after all, even before he acquired Garden of Memories, he’d already noticed improvements to his memory.

  Felix stopped his train of thought as he reached the riverbank. Jumping onto a tree, he quickly bounded up to another before grabbing a branch and swinging himself onto one of the taller stones on the shore.

  A quick skip across the stones left him standing out in the river, just in time to see Knucklehead paddling his way downstream.

  Taking a stone from his pocket, he tossed it right where Knucklehead was looking to draw his attention before waving him down.

  After leading him away from the noisy river, Felix greeted him.

  “Hello, fellow hunter, I’m looking for passage over the river. Can you take me?”

  “Of course! How exciting, journeying with a peer from another shoal. First, I need to find ingredients. I’m trying to cook a dish worthy of a name. I’m hunting knuckleheads to try and make something with their meat. Will you help me catch some?”

  Felix made an exaggerated look of disgust and shook his head.

  “Ah, that’s a terrible idea. Knucklehead meat is waxy and lacks flavour. I’m sure your skills are great, but not even an elder can make a knucklehead taste good.”

  Looking into Knucklehead’s beady little eyes, he noticed the worry setting in.

  “I know! I’ll tell you what, I know of a place where we can hunt for ingredients! Not far from here, there’s a clearing, the home of a great beast. It has been left to fight an intruder on its territory. If we sneak in while it is away, we can steal its treasured ingredients before it returns.”

  Knucklehead practically jumped up in excitement.

  “Perfect! Let's go! Lead the way!”

  After leading Knucklehead to the clearing and helping him ‘find’ all the ingredients he needed, they moved to a different clearing where he could cook his meal.

  With a bit of guidance from Felix, some of which came from his cooking skill and some from trial and error, Knucklehead Skewer, or as he now insisted on being called, ‘Shardhawk Omlet With Amber Moss’ managed to cook a dish worthy of a name.

  Just as they finished testing the dish, the forest rumbled as the panther and humanoid creatures started their battle. With a bit of prodding, they were soon in the boat and crossing the river. After several painful deaths from drowning, being eaten, and being smashed against the rocky outcrops. Felix figured out how to cross the river safely.

  As soon as Felix crossed, he managed to convince Shardhawk Omlet With Amber Moss to go ahead to his shoal, promising to visit once he took care of some business. Once Shardhawk had left, Felix quickly started preparing.

  With no time to spare, he started stringing vines between some of the stones that jutted out into the river and some of the trees closest to the riverbank. Leaving javelins at strategic points, slowly shaping the battlefield to give him every advantage.

  This was not the first time Felix had crossed the river. No, he’d done that several times, even managing to get close to the mountain in some of his attempts. Yet no matter how fast he moved or how he changed his route, he’d eventually be hunted down.

  He’d had so many nightmares after being stalked and hunted through the woods by that abomination. The thing took pleasure in dragging out the hunt. It played with Felix like he was food on its plate, scraps it was too bored to eat.

  Once he realised he couldn’t run from the thing, he knew he’d have to kill it. That begged another question. How on earth was Felix supposed to fight it?

  Finding the answer had been the hardest part of the challenge yet. He’d died to that beast more times than he could count. It dwarfed the number of deaths he suffered from all the other parts of the gate.

  Noting the time, Felix quickly made his way upstream, pulled a tightly wrapped chunk of meat from his pack, and tied a vine to it before flinging it out into the river. He couldn’t let the owl’s meat be swept away by the rushing river, or it wouldn't work as bait.

  With everything set, Felix settled in and tried his best to calm his nerves. He thought he’d grow used to the fear eventually, but every time he reached this point, every time he waited for that thing to appear, he had to fight his instincts to run.

  Every time felt like the first time he’d been caught with Knucklehead.

  He’d grown better at handling the fear though. With a force of will, he managed to focus his mind on the task ahead instead of what would happen if he failed.

  Soon, he saw the shadow of the beast lurking on the opposite bank. As always, the thing was hesitant. It didn’t want to get in the water. The first time Felix noticed it, he’d thought it normal, after all, the river was no joke.

  It was only after he tried using the river to his advantage several times that he realised the real reason the thing feared the river.

  Just as he was watching the creature, waiting for it to realise that there was no way forward except through the river, he noticed the vine holding the meat snap.

  He smiled.

  “Perfect.”

  THE END IS NIGH!

  Volume 1 is officially complete on

  (′▽`???)