Milo immediately realized that, in his enthusiasm to get the experience he needed, he’d forgotten what Julie had said about puma raptors not coming near the shore very often, along with her skill that kept predators away. His first Skim turned up none of the tracks he was looking for.

He also realized there was a chance he’d still be gone when Julie and Devin woke up, so he walked back and used his heel to dig out a short message in the ground just outside the front door so they wouldn’t be left wondering where he’d gone. He grabbed his pack as well, which had some food and water in it. He unstrapped his sleeping bag to lighten his load, leaving it on the wooden chair he’d been sitting on near the fire.

That done, Milo headed off into the forest once more. He waited about twenty minutes before trying Skim again, once again turning up nothing. Even so, he made sure to keep Pause For Thought on a hair trigger in case one of the creatures tried to spring out at him from the darkness. The larger of the two moons was nearly full, providing enough light by which to navigate the forest, but a stealthy predator would be easy to miss.

Milo kept using Skim every five minutes or so after that, not finding any puma raptor tracks for several more activations. Belatedly, he realized he could be Skimming for signs of Julie’s husband along with the raptors. He didn’t hold a lot of hope for finding anything, but the least he could do was keep an eye out. From that point on, he made sure to spend some time looking for any clues that could lead him to the man—or, more likely, his remains—every time he used Skim.

A few activations later, Milo found the prints he wanted. He immediately did a scan for the puma raptor itself, looking around carefully in every direction, but found nothing.

The trail of tracks wound through the trees off to his right, so he adjusted course to follow it. He walked a little slower at first; his imagination turned every bush and shadow into a prowling raptor, keeping him on edge, but his more frequent Skims failed to turn up any actual puma raptors.

When his mana pool dipped under ten, he consciously reined himself in. It wouldn’t do any good to find himself out of mana by the time he actually found the creature. He settled into a pattern of using Skim once every six minutes, checking for the creature itself as well as the tracks to make sure he stayed on course.

Despite actively looking for it, he was still a bit startled when, thirty minutes later, he actually found the creature he’d been stalking. It was still a ways ahead, surprisingly up on one of the lower limbs of a tree. It was lying down, legs dangling on either side of the large branch. It looked like it was asleep.

Nice.

He proceeded as quietly as he could. When he was about twenty paces away, a twig snapped underfoot and the creature stirred. Figuring he was close enough and not wanting to take any chances, Milo activated Fetch Book and pummeled it on the head until he got a kill notification. It slid off the branch after he’d finished, falling to the ground with a muffled whump.

The puma raptor, like the dingos, was worth only 18 XP. At level 3, it was well below Milo’s own level of 7, so he got a pretty hefty penalty as a result of the level difference. Doing the math, he realized he would need to kill 19 of the creatures in order to level up.

That was worrisome. His—admittedly limited—knowledge of large predators said that there shouldn’t be too many of them on the relatively small amount of land that an island would provide.

Actually, it seemed a little strange to him that there were any large predators at all; it didn’t seem like they ought to have large enough numbers for a stable breeding population.

Hmm...how big is this island, anyway?

Julie had said she and her husband had walked one day before reaching the north shore. Normal walking speed was something like four to five miles per hour, he was pretty sure. Assuming an average of ten hours of walking per day, that was forty miles at the low end.

That seems like kind of a lot, though. Would they have really walked forty miles? She was pregnant. Not very, but still.

Milo amended it to thirty miles per day. That still might be too much, but he was just guesstimating. He vaguely remembered hearing something about the Roman army marching thirty miles in a day.

She’d said it had been seven days of walking to find the south shore, and two days from east to west. Assuming that it was thirty miles for every day, that meant the island was something like 14,400 square miles in total.

That was a much bigger number than Milo had been imagining. He probably would be able to find 19 of the creatures after all. It would just take a while.

Milo left the puma raptor he’d just killed right where it had fallen. He felt a little guilty about murdering the creature for the experience points alone, leaving the carcass behind to rot—until he remembered that he was ultimately making the island safer for Julie and Devin, which was a win in his book.

He kept on in what he believed to be a southeasterly fashion, figuring that, if he went far enough, he’d emerge onto the eastern shore and get a little more confidence that he was dealing with an island after all.

It was another hour before he found more tracks. There were two this time, apparently traveling together. He was a bit annoyed to note that, in order to track them down, he would have to backtrack, as the prints led north and slightly west. Still, there were two of them, so he deemed the detour worth it.

He caught up to the beasts in due time and summarily beat the life out of them before moving on, resuming his southeasterly course.

Milo continued through the night, managing to kill seven creatures in total by the time the sun rose over the low-lying mountains ahead of him.

He stopped to eat, as well as to think about how he wanted to proceed.

As much as he wanted to, he knew that it was extremely unlikely that he would make his goal of reaching level 8 before he got his mage class option. It wasn’t the end of the world, obviously. One more day wouldn’t hurt.

He did still want to verify that he was on an island, however. Looking at the mountains ahead, he realized that he didn’t need to actually travel all the way to the far shore in order to do that. Assuming there was no fog, all he had to do was climb the mountain and then fly up to take a look around. Easy peasy. He might not even need to fly up in order to see the ocean; the mountain’s elevation alone might be enough.

The mountains looked relatively low, but it took him a couple more hours of hiking to make it to the top. He was able to track down another puma raptor along the way, bringing his total to eight.

It turned out the foliage was too dense to get a good view of anything from the mountain’s heavily forested peak. Milo stopped once more for a food break while he let his mana top up. He let it get all the way to twenty, since at this point it wasn’t really important that he be constantly regenerating mana; it was far more important that he lived through what he was about to do.

Leaving his pack on the ground and zipping his jacket up all the way. Milo activated Fetch Book, sitting on his textbook and hugging his binder to his chest. Then he shot up.

And up.

And up.

And up.

He spent seven mana, rising up at the highest speed at which he could tolerate the wind buffeting against him as he pushed through the air into the sky. At a guess, he was maybe pushing 50 miles per hour, but he really didn’t know.

The view was incredible, if slightly terrifying given the height from which he was seeing it. He saw the ocean past the eastern shoreline as soon as he rose above the trees, but he wanted to be able to see all the way around the island if possible.

At the peak of his climb, Milo could see well past the northern shore, but no matter how he squinted he couldn’t say with any certainty that he was seeing water directly to the south. He didn’t want to spend the mana to go even higher, since he would then run the risk of not having enough left to control his descent. Still, he was able to see a significant portion of both the east and west coasts. It was enough that he felt it sufficiently corroborated what Julie had said. This was, indeed, an island. It was also probably even bigger than he’d estimated, since it was fatter in the middle than at the ends.

Milo spent an eighth mana to spend twenty seconds reveling in the exhilaration of hovering what had to be something like a couple of miles up in the sky, overlooking the green island and miles and miles of pristine blue ocean.

Magic is so awesome.

And then—falling. He’d always wanted to try skydiving, but had never felt like spending the money.

The initial drop was gut-wrenching, like he’d left his stomach behind, and things quickly grew very uncomfortable as he rapidly gathered speed. The wind made his vision blur, and he decided to call it quits after just a few seconds.

No need to get too crazy.

Milo activated Fetch Book and gradually slowed his descent with his textbook. He’d made sure to keep a tight grip on it with his hand threaded between his legs. Before long, he was zooming along roughly as fast as he’d risen. He chose to head down at an angle to get a headstart on his return journey to Julie and Devin’s cottage.

He slowed himself significantly before he reached the treeline, then finally touched down with a comfortable four mana remaining.

The way back to the cottage was significantly shorter than the journey out. He was far more focused on his destination than on finding more raptors, though he did wind up killing one more of them that was only a little out of the way.

A little before noon, Milo received a notification that brought a big smile to his face.

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Congratulations! By spending 1000 mana, you have gained access to the Mage class.

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Finally.