Minutes before the time the wolves would be disappearing, I sit unmoving on the ground. I have taken a very close look at the terrain and I am doing something that pains my heart. Very long and thin tendrils in the most likely places wolves would run through. The exercise was not something I ever practiced. But after years of doing other things with Aether without the system’s interference, it wasn’t too hard.

I found a very good spot. I can stay very well hidden and still be able to sense the passage of 3 trails, that nearly converge into each other. Running ahead of a wolf, I hope my timing was correct. Even if this is not the place, there is a chance I will get lucky in one of the other paths.

If this doesn’t work, I will have wasted a portion of my Aether. There I sit with eyes closed, trying my hardest to go unnoticed by whatever mechanism warns the wolves. This is the crux of the problem, even a tendril of mana warns the wolves when the night is almost ending.

People have even taken to capture and caging wolves to see them despawning. But it didn’t work. A few believe the wolves just are very good at hiding.

I’m not one of those, not for a second. It doesn’t make sense, given all I know. The wolves being hunted in the few minutes before sunrise, don’t just become silent and run away so fast that nobody notices them. It’s simply not the logical conclusion.

I try to make my aura, or vigor as imperceptible as possible and even stop breathing a minute before sunrise. Elation hits me a moment later as I sense a single wolf cross my Aether line. All I fell, is not being connected to my Aether. That meant it has entered another living being.

I strain myself and move another line a few meters ahead. The wolf advances and I need to repeat the process a couple of times. Every time he disrupts the line, and I place it a couple of meters ahead. Right as he gets to the closest point to me, the small piece of rabbit meat I put as a trap is wolfed down in a single bite. I can hear him swallowing and smelling the air.

Perhaps he noticed someone near. I do not have a precise clock, only my experience measuring the amount of light, and when the smallest sliver of the sun becomes visible.

Each second ticks by and my heartbeat slowly increases. Even trying to meditate, I fail to keep my normal heartbeat. I open my mana senses as wide as possible and send dozens of tendrils to the spot the wolf has stopped. He gets up sensing something different.

He is probably unsure of what is happening exactly. Before he has time to run, the world wrenches and I feel a phenomenon not too dissimilar to my observations in the void.

This…this…I cannot believe it.

This is massive, I don’t even have the words to describe it. It opens up so many possibilities. If we manage to learn from this, this single aspect would become a linchpin for humanity's advances.

Thinking logically it is only speeding up our advances. But this aspect of magic would probably have taken years to develop.

The runes I sensed had both a simplicity and a complexity that passed the idea of a well-developed spell formation. A couple of times observing it would probably be enough to lock it down in my mind.

I still have much to go through. What I did learn was this process didn’t seem outside our reach. The complexity and mana usage was significant, but not impossible. After we experimented and learned from it we should be able to teleport throughout the instance. As long as the costs were low enough and we had enough mages capable of casting the spell, the distance would no longer be much of a limiting factor.

Temping down my expectations a little, I try not to get ahead of myself. But it was exciting. Even if I was wildly exaggerating our capabilities this would speed up the learning process and our studies of magic.

I may not have come at a hard conclusion on what my course of action would be. I didn’t know my stance on who to kill, but there was magic to explore and experiment. In a month or two, we might be able to have access to teleportation. That would be a huge step.

With a thousand things in mind, I continue my track to the village. Now only 20 miles away I run into a couple of people midway as they start the day hunting rabbits.

Getting to the village is strangely comforting. So little time and I already consider the village my home. I enter and soon a messenger finds me.

“Hi mister, Charlie told me to get you. He wanted to speak with you after you arrived.”

“Ok, he is in his office?”

“Yes.”

I go to the guild and enter his office. With no time to get a word in I hear him:

“So, you have been up to mischief? We have entered in contact with two new villages, who informed us that you talked with them.”

“I didn’t tell them where to find us.”

In a less severe tone, but still a little serious he says: “I know boy, if you had gone spreading our location around, I wouldn’t be composed. They found us by sending a lot of scouts.”

“Ok. I just thought they would take longer to react.”

“I guess that they were just the first. All of the new villages must have sent out scouts, but that is not important. Come on, tell me what you learned.”

I take a paper in his desk and start to draw a rough map of what I found.

“In short, I discovered 5 villages beside the one we already knew. They form a hexagon with us in the middle. In a straight line, we are talking about almost exactly 100 miles between us and each of them.”

“Given our efforts, we guessed that as well. We didn’t have too many scouts, but we made contact with these three villages, and we are sending scouts to the other two.”

He points the villages form a diamond shape and are both equidistant from our and Sara’s village. He continues then.

“One of the ones making contact with us was this to the left, but the other we are not sure as they didn’t tell us where they stayed.”

“Why didn't we have more scouts? You just said there were only a couple.”

“Capital, we can’t pay everyone in contribution or the economy collapses. We are already pushing our luck a little. If we weren’t trying to ramp up our industries so fast, we would have the resources. Bur for now, no luck.”

I open my backpack and show him.

“I traded a little of the information about what I discovered in my track and a little work for this and 20 pounds of salt.”

He looks at the bag full of fresh vegetables.

“That and the salt should save us a couple of silver coins. Thank you, Nash. With this, they will need to pay for the difference instead of only trading in items.”

“We could also incentivize then in getting what we want. There is a couple of mines located on the squares I drew.” I show him the places and accompany. “Iron, probably copper, and this one I don’t know.”

“We have begun to look into it. With this map out efforts will be much more significant. We could even sell this info to the other villages.”

“Yes, or offer in a larger trade that favors us or to gain goodwill.”

At those, he turns his head and thinks for a moment.

“Maybe. Regardless, it’s good information to have. What are these other places?”

I point to every place as I speak.

“The triangles are herbs. Here is a field of something similar to wheat. The mountain has birds and eggs on it. And these are the areas with monsters. I run into a feline right here, but I managed to run fast enough, that he ran out of stamina.”

“That was an adventure. I don’t know how you managed to keep your own stamina up. This is what? About 800 miles in 2 days and half days?”

“A little more, but yeah.”

“Impressive.”

“You just need the stats to repeat the feat.”

“Yeah, I know, it is still impressive. Now, what are you gonna do?”

“Rest, I need to sleep. I spend too long awake.”

“Ok, the rest can wait for you to be rested.”

“Ok, just take these.” I put on the table samples of everything I found in my walk and organize it so they are in the same order as the legend on the map. “These are samples from everything on the map. Like I said, some of this I don’t know, but the herbs are all fine. I eat some and did not have any problems.”

I leave most of the vegetables and part of the samples in the office and leave. After I leave my backpack in my room, I head for another place that people have opened up. Probably in imitation of Sarah’s village.

Pasta. At least now we have something different to eat.

I really should learn what the other village is called, and our own. If we don’t have names we can come up with new names.

The delivery I heard about is been used well if this is the result. The food is not to the standards of the restaurant in Sarah’s village, but it better than only having the inn’s food.

I head back to the forest and find a comfortable place to sleep. This is the life. Previously I didn’t go out to sleep, because I thought it would be too dangerous, but during the day the danger is almost null. I only had to think about it.

After days awake, exhaustion finally catches up with me, and I forget the world exists.

Night set in and I open my eyes. I get up quickly, but I see a guard patrolling around. Seeing me he says.

“Finally got up?”

I chuckle and answer: “I guess I was more tired than I realized. I hope I didn’t get in the way of your work.”

“No, standing the whole night right by the gate is very boring. I can see if there is some monster from here just fine.” He says pointing back at the wall.

“I can imagine it been boring. Thank you for looking out for me.”

“No problem.”

I head back in the city thinking over a few things and remembering what I wanted to do before I fall asleep. Opening the long-overdue stat screen, I go through it. I don’t want to depend overly on the system, but I shouldn’t neglect it. It’s a valuable tool.

You have participated in a trial of your village. Bonus Exp. 4x +50% No permanent casualties. +50% Enemy Commander present Enemies: Goblins Avg. Lv. 18 x151 Wolves Avg. Lv. 9 x102 Goblin Shaman Avg. Lv. 25 x1 Goblin Chief Avg. Lv. 35 x1 Your contribution awards you: 28.42 K Exp. (0.65%) You have gained a title: Explorer. Uncommon Rank. – You have experience the joy of exploration and was deemed worthy of acquiring the title. Bonus: +5% chance of finding treasures in your exploration. Blacksmith +6 Lv. 28 Kinetic Meditation +4 Lv.35 Running +4 Lv.36 Pole mastery +1 Lv. 5 Mana manipulation +4 Lv. 34 Mana Infusion +18 Lv. 31 Unarmed Combat +5 Lv. 12

Carrying skill +2 Lv. 19 Runic Language +4 Lv. 4

Strength +1 Constitution +3 Agility +5 Dexterity +3 Endurance +2 Perception +3 Intelligence +1 Willpower+1 You have gained enough EXP. points to reach Level 10. Chose a class before progressing.

That is a boatload of Exp., Skill levels, and stats. I go straight for my stat screen. With this many points, it will probably have had quite a few changes. I look at it and it surprises me a little.

Name: Nash Level:10 Titles:3 Class: [Expand] 4803/0 EXP Strength 20 Soul 3 Constitution 18 Agility 19 Dexterity 18 Endurance 24 Perception 19 Intelligence 20 Willpower 31 Health 299/300 201 /day Mana 355/355 36 /hour Stamina 190/190 2,85 /min

I have a lot of things happening. My stats are all pretty much capped. I also notice a couple of my skills are don’t seem able to get higher than 35. Perhaps there is some limitation in place. Maybe levels or stats.

I look over my massive increase in mana infusion, and I’m surprised. Some of that could have come from infusing wood, but I must have infused my body. How the hell did I miss that? My mana only got low in the couple stops I made to exercise my mana pool.

There are so many changes. How the hell the system calculates this extra chance of finding treasure. I ignore it and head for the guild. Now is the time to take care of a few things.

I have a look at the classes I could choose.

Explorer – Uncommon rank [Expand] +5% Endurance +0.25/level +5% Perception +0.25/level +5% Chance to find treasure Druid – Common rank [Expand] +10% Willpower +0.5/level Blacksmith – Common rank [Expand] +10% Strength +0.5/level Runner – Common rank [Expand] +10% Stamina +0.5/level

Looking over the list, I don’t find anything that speaks to me. All of these options have their advantages, and none of them seem like a bad choice, but they also don’t feel like a good one. My gut just tells me to hold, on choosing anything yet.

Trying to get more information, I look over the expand Options, I see explanations on what exactly the classes are, but nothing new comes to light. I trust my gut and don’t choose anything just yet.

Before I getting to the guild, my stomach starts to growl loudly. I should get something to eat.

In a few minutes, I'm satisfied, and head to face Charlie. I find him leaving his own office.

“Hi, are you are leaving?”

“I had a long day, I’m just finishing up before I head to bed.”

“Ok, let’s walk and you can fill me in on what has been happening in the village.”

And so we do. I learn about everything the village has done. What we exported, what we imported. The new industries and what else changed.

I saw the clock finished. Given the rush of manufacture, it was adjusted by about by minutes every time we had an accurate time measurement, such as sunrise and the speech from the mayor.

It wasn’t perfect but would get close in time.

I hear about our efforts in making sand. So far we only had small test batches to figure out the formula. The problem was the expense of salt. When we had a cheap supply, we could start production.

What got a smile on my face however was to know that the kiln was up, I only needed to inscribe it. Merlin had even done some work on the best way to go about it.

I had thousands of things I could do, but I chose to start with this. It’s time to inscribe.