Tercius shifted in the saddle. Below, the lake he made was already full and the water was rushing over the landbridge to restore the flow it had.

“That went well…”

Lucky bleated.

Tercius pulled on the reins, turning Lucky around. “Now let’s make some real distance before we start on a shelter for the night.”

Tercius looked over the treeline, towards the towering mountains that loomed to the east and north of him. The mountains were a feature he engraved in his memory as a landmark that he could use for easier orientation. He found them easily on the mental map. Comparing them with the canyon, he got a rough idea of where exactly he was.

“Three and a half days to get here…” Tercius took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing at the heights hidden by clouds and mist. Tall and barren, the northern behemoths were an obstacle in his path.

But he had more obstacles to overcome before he got around to tackling them.

The forest before him being the first. Gently, he squeezed Lucky’s sides.

The forest was teeming with life and sounds. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, small mammals ran on the ground, while reptiles hid in the tall trees. The occasional larger animal bolted before Tercius ever got the chance at more than a chance at the tail end, leaving only swaying branches and bushes to show for its presence.

Often, both Tercius and Lucky had to duck under branches or even the occasional hanging vine. Even more often the option to duck was not there and they walked about to find a path that would allow Lucky passage. The ram was tall— too tall for this forest. On the plus side, the undergrowth was not a bother to Lucky, who simply stepped over most of the foliage that would have impaired a human from going further.

Neon-green veins covered his eyes as he inspected the surroundings with {Magia Sight}. The roots below the forest floor had magia in them, the tree trunks had it, the branches had it, the leaves had it. The green clouds overlapped everywhere he looked, showing a bright uni-colored wall. Tercius focused and the background darkness collapsed towards him, devouring the outermost parts of the verdant wall and in doing so allowing him a clearer image of his immediate surroundings.

{Magia Sight} [55]

— At will, your eyes adjust to the magia spectrum.

—{?}: At will, you restrict the range of observation.

—{?}: ???.

Interpreting what he saw was another matter entirely. {Pattern Insight} helped to do it quickly, while his experience gave him the context to understand what meant what.

Although he had learned to read the most common colors on his own in the years since he gained the Skill, most of the strange combinations and rare colors he now knew came from the last few weeks spent in the tutelage of Mistress Kalina. How a person saw magia was often highly individual, and one of the first things she had taken the time to make sure he knew was to read his own palette.

Merit where merit was due, Mistress Kalina had taken her role as a Mentor with great dedication. Her blackmail still left a sour taste in his mouth and he would be nowhere near as friendly with her if anything were to happen to Rona because he didn’t get there a week or two earlier, but her investment in preparing him would never be denied.

His vein-covered eyes scanned the foliage. Shades of olive and brown revealed where the red fauna hid in the green flora. Where specific shades revealed sizably large or even particularly bright red signatures hidden deeper inside the thick green wall, Tercius made some adjustments to his and Lucky's way through the forest. For the smaller and duller red magia signatures, he kept his mundane eyes wide open and went straight ahead. The thing with living beings in the forest was that they were by no means static. While some bolted as soon as they heard or felt the thumps of Lucky's hooved feet, some had other plans.

He checked a few times just to make sure and then Tercius reached down to the side of the saddle and pulled out the hunting spear, making Lucky turn around.

“Stay, Lucky. Be calm,”

It didn't take long for Tercius to have a partial visual of their prowling stalker.

Large golden eyes observed them from behind a screen of green foliage, the large body hidden nearly completely. Tips of the triangular ears rose above the leaves, while below two forepaws were resting on a large stone—

Tercius’ eyes narrowed. You stay right there, kitty cat. Observe me a little more…

He focused on the stone and reached outwards with {Stone Shaping}. Tercius' fist tightened on the leather reins and, with a burst of magia, the stone turned to liquid. Before the beast realized why the rock on which it stood turned to squishy mud, Tercius pointed the spear at the beast and willed the liquid rock to rise up. Then just as quickly as he sent the magia into the stone, he pulled it back out. With the magia gone, the new form settled instantly and the horned mountain lion started thrashing about and nearby breaking branches. Three of its legs were completely inside the remade stone, while from one of the back legs only the paw got captured and the beast managed to get it out.

Tercius observed as the panicked beast tried to liberate itself, all the while hissing and baring its massive teeth at him. Lucky stomped in place, his ears rapidly flickering.

“Calm, Lucky. Calm.”

After a while, Tercius was quite sure that the beast was not able to free itself. Briefly, Tercius considered what to do with it. The spear in his hand was heavy. Tercius took a deep breath and shook his head. In the forest, the beast was very unlikely to live long enough to starve or die of thirst. It would become part of the food chain or, for all he knew, it might even free itself after a while. Neither was his business. Tugging on the reins, Tercius turned Lucky around and they slowly continued their journey through the forest.

The hike through the thick growth was perhaps the most enjoyable part of the entire journey so far. Despite everything— the situation with Rona and Septimus, and even Leawarra and her tribe and everything else that warred for his thoughts— he felt… good. Great, even.

There was a peace in this dangerous wilderness, a harmony that appealed to that part of him that grew up surrounded by people who only wanted to suck up to him so that they could get a connection to his mother and father, the famous power couple. People wanted to know everything about them, including what their children got up to. He, being one of those children, had been on their watchlist.

He hated it, every day of it.

His parents didn't understand him, nor did any of his siblings for that matter. They were fish in the water, while he… He had been drowning. His solitude had been invaded too many times before he even knew of the concept. His escapes to nature and its remote and dangerous places offered him a pleasant escape from a world that he was ill-suited for.

Now, that old world was gone.

When he first observed the state of the world he was reborn in, one of the first things he distinctly remembered thinking was that while water, food, hygiene, and general health and security might be serious issues, at least there were no cameras, nosy journalists, and stalking paparazzi around.

Quite possibly, he considered it a worthwhile tradeoff.

For a brief moment, an image of Mistress Kalina being hounded by a paparazzi came to him and Tercius chuckled.

Not only was it against the current Laws of Chaos for a Magos of Mistress Kalina’s caliber to appear in the public eye— at least not in any other capacity other than what a few of her Titles demanded— but what magi he knew were mostly private and solitary people, his Mentor included. They would not allow for someone to ruin their privacy. Yet that was exactly what Perdinar, Mistress Kalina, Mistress Prime’era, and Mistress Helfira asked him to become— an intrusive invader of privacy, a secretive collector of information, an unseen maker of discrete actions, the lowest of the low.

A spy.

As Tercius traveled and tried to deconstruct the dubious offer for things and angles he might have missed, the dark clouds from the east moved his way and he made a stop for the day, rapidly starting work on a new shelter. His previous experience and fortified {Stone Shaping} allowed for a smoother process and a faster completion time.

Face red and eyes narrowed with intense focus, Tercius willed an enormous volume of stone to close the large entrance of his new shelter. The piles of flowing stone rose up and came at him, settling in the doorway. What fading sunlight illuminated his triangular mountainside cavern disappeared. Careful of his steps, Tercius moved around the sleeping Lucky through the near darkness and shimmied into his bed, pulling on the blankets. He sighed deeply.

The near-complete absence of magia from his body was making him nauseous, his thighs were sore from the saddle, and beyond that he was generally tired all over. The air was colder here, especially in the evening. When the wind came from the north, the cold bypassed clothes and flesh, striking his very bones. A layer of thicker clothes from now onwards would be required.

Slowly, the drowsiness took him under its grasp. When he woke up, the smell of freshly harvested foliage fought with the musky smell of a ram in the chilly cavern. Outside, a thundering downpour of rain hammered. Something else was there too. He blinked and frowned into the darkness. Holding his breath, he listened. In the background, the now-familiar thumps and scratches sounded as well, barely audible yet still there.

Tercius scowled and turned around in his warm blankets. He stared at the darkness where the wall should be. They found him. Again. It had to be a Skill of some kind.

So… what to do now? As long as the clouds covered the sun, he was trapped inside his little triangular cavern. Hopefully, the clouds would disperse within the day, but he had to take into account the possibility that it might take longer.

Tercius covered his head with the blankets, sharing some of the warmth with his nose and ears.

Food, water, and security.

He had food for about six to seven days for himself, eight days if he really stretched it, but Lucky would go through the massive pile of green foliage they managed to get inside their shelter within two days. On the waterfront, he had resupplied yesterday and had enough in store to last him as long as seven or eight days, but that was only if he took himself into account. Since he had to share that water with Lucky, they had less than a day. Security was the trickiest. He should be safe in his shelter, but that was only if nothing capable of opening his shelter came along. If it went as far as self-defense, then it was inevitable that he would have to use his full power.

Feeding Lucky should not be a problem, as he could use a few broken-off branches to grow out some foliage in one of the earth piles he purposefully left in the cave's corner.

Getting water for the ram should be even a smaller problem as it was raining outside. With some minor modification on a few air vents he made, or even by creating an entirely new network through the thick wall, he could harvest that rainwater for Lucky. Perhaps he could make a small pool on the flat floor to collect the water? He would have to be careful not to disrupt the current weight-bearing system of his cave as well as make an outlet in case of too much water, but other than that all was good.

Finally, security. Checking on his walls often and reinforcing in case of damage was his first and preferable option. But, just in case of a breach of his defensive structure, he better have options other than {Spring of Crystal Thoughts} and external use of energia.

He did not come so far to turn back without Rona and Septimus at his side.

{Stone Shaping}, {Green Hands}, and, if he managed it, {Small Blades Mastery} had to grow.

But before any of that… The darkness of his cave had to go.

After Tercius made a large energia harvest and bound that energia in equal part to all three Cores of the Skills he intended to focus on for the immediate future, he illuminated his tent-like cavern with a couple of candles. The flintstones were tricky, but he managed.

Looking away from the small stone basins that held the candles, Tercius looked at the stone wall that was his entrance. At the very top were a dozen two-meter long holes. He widened a few air vents that were previously gently sloped downwards, changing their direction upwards very slowly.

At the same time, on the outside of his shelter, he made a small horizontal canal that caught the rain that ran down the slope above his shelter. The canal bought the water through a stone pipe he made and finally deposited it into a large indentation he made on the floor near the very entrance. Not wanting a dip in the cold rainwater, he also made sure to add appropriate drainage of excess water.

The work went by quickly and efficiently.

{Stone Shaping} [51] is now {Stone Shaping} [52]

{Stone Shaping} was the first Skill Tercius picked up under someone else’s tutelage, and it was also the Skill that made him hesitant of something he termed as “overleveling Skills”— a phenomenon that was likely solely unique to him and others capable of interaction with Flu and his extended family, if such groups or individuals existed at all.

{Stone Shaping} [52]

—You take control of a solid mass of stone. The controlled stone can turn liquid. The controlled stone can be shaped at will.

—{?}: You gain a sense of the current shape of the controlled stone.

—{?}: ???.

It was by complete accident that he discovered that a large presence of energia in his body could rather easily lead to overcoming a boundary of change of a Skill with a “weak” addition to the original Skill.

In hindsight, the result of the accident turned out to be an excellent addition, as his control of stone rose like crazy afterward. Furthermore, while the sense was developed within the Skill, the years of stone shaping independently developed a nascent overarching sense of physical shapes. It was a weird one. Sometimes that sense was fairly simple. For example, if he observed a complex shape that intrigued him, that shape would linger in his mind almost perfectly for a long while. Other times, simply looking at a statue would give him a sense of how it would be if he was that exact statue, if his arms and legs and everything else were just so, if his species was just so. It was a strange experience, not unpleasant in any way, but rather always thought-provoking. Rare as it was, it was memorable.

As the years behind him showed, even {Magia Manipulation} benefited from that accident with energia and {Stone Shaping}. His manipulation of magia was good before a single teacher gave him a single word of advice, and Tercius placed that squarely on the shoulders of this.

And yet even though that same accident had enormous evident benefits, it also made him hesitant. Getting lucky from the first try was a fluke that was unlikely to ever repeat and it just showed that a good Skill could as easily be ruined by him, if he misused it when he was saturated with energia.

He had to think of the perfect addition to the Skill before doing anything and waiting was something he was actually good at.

For example, for the second boundary of change of {Stone Shaping}, the one that still showed as a bunch of symbols, Tercius chose to expand the medium of control from hand-only to nothing less than his thoughts. It was a roaring success, in his opinion.

That was why {Language Acquisition} lingered at [40] for over seven years now, even though he could have advanced it over the boundary of change during any random morning or late afternoon at any point in time and allowed it to progress further. At no point in all those years did he think of an alteration that would meaningfully add something to his Skill and so the only reasonable thing left to do was wait until one came to him. At least in regards to {Language Acquisition}, he finally had an alteration candidate that he was quite enthusiastic about. The exchanges done through the {Familiar Bond} with Amber and through {Teaching Bond} with Lucky were a sort of a language, one he would very much like to develop further.

Altering {Language Acquisition} in that direction was the first thing that actually satisfied the two primary conditions he had established for Skill alteration.

In fact, if not for the pressure he experienced during the last year, many of his other Skills would have been under their most recent boundaries rather than over them. The last year had had so much haste in it that some of the potential of the Skills he developed was bound to have been wasted by him.

With the water problem and air supply problem suitably solved, for now, Tercius turned to solve the future problem of Lucky's food.

He took a small branch from Lucky's food pile, stuck it in the dirt, watered it, and his hands closed around the future bush.

{Green Hands} [45]

— The blessing of nature itself manifests in your hands. You can influence flora and fungi to grow at an accelerated rate.

—{?}: Your blessing lingers in the influenced flora and fungi.

—{?}: ???.

In the bout of recent Skill alterations, the last addition to this Skill might have been an error on his part. The addition was the same as the one he gave to {Stone Shaping}, and yet where that worked like a charm on one, the other did not acclimate well enough. He could project the “blessing of nature” with only his thoughts, but he could barely control any of it. It manifested like an aura around him and it was incredibly weak, magically speaking. Almost non-existent. The aura still accelerated plant growth, his Mentor confirmed to him that much, but at a severely reduced capacity.

The good news was that the Skill still worked with his hands as well as it did before, so that was something. He should have known better, actually. The Skill had “hands” in the name, and there he was, changing the medium of expression to something else.

Before his eyes, the bush took hold and grew. The roots extended into the dirt and leaves unfurled from ever-extending branches. Before three hours had passed, Tercius’ shelter had a bush that came up to his waist.

{Green Hands} [45] is now {Green Hands} [46]

{Green Hands} [46] is now {Green Hands} [47]

In the meantime, Lucky had woken up and started going through his food stores like there was no tomorrow.

"Eat less, you glutton." Tercius pushed the ram's head away from the newly grown bush. "No, this is for tomorrow. I have other things to spend my time on than just growing food for you. No. Lucky, no. Yes, I know it's fresh— Lucky, back off…"

Lucky blinked, his rectangular irises pleading.

Outside, the dark clouds drenched the lands while half a dozen hungry humanoids stood before the entrance to Tercius’ shelter.