“Don’t be a wuss!” Shouted Junior, my so-called training, just a lecture on how to use my skills. His body stood like a stone dummy in front of me, giving his signature foxy grin he had inherited from Viralya. He pulled it off even more flawlessly than she did, being a real rascal and all.

“Come on, just activate it! You just have to use the skill! Remember, your mana is your own, and no one else's, you are a slave to no one!” He shouted encouragingly.

Viralya’s words about the system flashed into my mind for a second, making me pause. My flicker of hesitation went by unnoticed as I hovered inches away from activating the skill, using the horrible fire mana. I actually considered it for a second, before shaking my head in defiance and disgust.

The second skill I had learned from Viralya. The one I hadn't dared to use, even in a bloodthirsty rage, was a fire skill. It was one of those you learned by accident. It had been caused by frustratingly training balancing act, and accidentally igniting myself in flames in the process. While my other skills had taken a couple of hours and tons of attempts, I had gotten the skill on my second ‘attempt’. I was apparently super talented with fire mana, something I loathed. I looked over the skill again with a grimace.

*You have limitless talent and potential with fire mana, the corruption itself claims you as kin! You have learned the skill External Ignition. Use this skill to coat your body in flames and burn your enemies! All melee attacks have additional fire damage to target upon contact*

It was an overpowered skill. Only a little less than my manipulation skills like the shape of wind and elementary mana control. It had also leveled once during my fight with Junior, but I hadn’t activated it, only surging pure fire mana outside of my skin.

“Your skills can’t hurt you, remember? They are yours and yours alone. They will not burn their owner. It is your fire. No one else's. It's like being scared of your own reflection! It's irrational, and you know it!” I shivered at the mention that it was my fire. I wanted to trade my fire mana with his heat mana! He could make ice, the bane of fire! I mean, sure he could make fire with heat too, but at least he has options! Why the heck do I have to bother with the damn cursed mana? I did fine with just Psychic and wind during our battle! Of course, I said none of this out loud.

“C’mon! You have to look inside yourself and discover your faults! Reach deep y’know? And um… Well, whatever else Viralya had said!” He squealed. He had been repeating the same words and phrases for the last half hour, trying to convince me to use the skill. It was poor encouragement. I stared at him before mentally snorting.

“[email protected]$% that! Fires damn useless when it comes to anything but fighting! Screw that! I don’t need the damn useless mana!” I said in a half-pout. Junior shook his head.

“There are just one and a half weeks until your naming ceremony. Do you even know what that entails?” he asked while I shook my head. “Well, let's just say you won’t be having the best day of your life. It's a tad bit… Frightening. Hell, I'm terrified of it! If I’m scared, you should be damn well petrified!” He cursed. Now he sounded like a veteran soldier spitting in their helmet.

I eyed him suspiciously and rolled my eyes, dismissing his concerns. “Pfft. You’re probably just trying to get me to learn more fire skills so you can use it as inspiration for your own and milk me! Like you would even care!” I said. I knew he did though. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his hunting time if he didn’t. Apparently, the ‘hunt’ was very important to spirit beasts, and the thrill of the chase is the equivalent of a human taking drugs. It was like a carnal thing for them, engaging in ancient instincts held back by sapience.

He stared at me dumbfounded before letting out a chuckle, filled with amusement and some strange anxiousness.

“You’re an idiot,” He said, full out laughing now. “Your a f%*&ing idiot! You're going to die from this! You're not budging are you?” He roared in laughter, suddenly quieting and staring at me. The sudden shift of emotions I sensed was in sparkling clarity from the blue and purple tether we shared. He got up from his stone statue position, grinning and beckoning me forward, disappearing on agile feet, making me curse as I rushed to follow him, taking in and cycling balancing act.

The mana connected me to the earth, righting my sense of direction and pointing me forward. I half galloped, half stumbled out of the cave, coming out of the familiar cave entrance. I saw junior, his tail swishing back and forth with a bloodthirsty grin on his face as he beckoned me with a surge of mana, leaping into the bushes, leaving the clearing.

I stared at where the fox had disappeared, thinking for a second before shaking my head in frustration. He wanted me to go into the damn forest? The one Viralya told me not to go under any circumstances? F!^% you Junior! Damn, right I’m gonna get killed!

I let out a growling whimper and surged forward, following his trail as the stars shone on my back, bits of moonlight mana forming from the unseen corruption. I reached the place where Junior had lept in, staring at the impenetrable wall of plants, before sighing and going forward, taking my time and cautiously feeling out with Psychic perception, looking for monsters. I wasn’t a complete moron after all.

When I found none, I took a deep breath, and planted my feet in the earth, bursting into the trees at the speed of a simple toy race car. Pretty damn fast, if you ask me.

I felt plants whip by my feet, feeling Junior was ahead by what felt like miles, his pace and distance still increasing rapidly. He was really damn fast. How did he get so fast? What the hell?

Small thorns stuck to my soft flesh, tiny bugs latching into my arms and legs. I held a hand to my face, swirling Psychic mana with Psychic perception, trying to feel any dangerous beasts. I ran like that for 5 minutes before something pinged in my radar, a beetle crawling forth by its carapace. It was as big as a human adult's entire leg, mandibles clicking up and down in an unforeseen rhythm. I froze, crouching down in a pair of ferns, steadying my breathing and calming my thumping heart.

It crossed over near a tree, digging around in the fallen leaves for a bit before it revealed a small brown ball, no bigger than a fingernail in the soil. It scooped up the ball, placing it in its mandibles and it clacked towards me, reaching feet from my hiding spot before it stopped. The thing was a seed, its mandibles crushing down on the thing, shoving it into its mouth as it stood there, just a couple of feet from where I lay. A primal terror seized my mind, telling me to move would be to invite death into your home.

My heart just about leapt out of my throat, sweat oozing off me. It turned, looking at my fern with tiny beady black eyes, before stopping again, its legs suddenly propelling it forward, away from me, and back into the bushes. It shot forth in a blur, disappearing from sight.

I sat in that fern for a couple of seconds, breathing a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what that damn beetle was, but I was certain it could have filled me with a flick of its mandibles! This is bullcrap!

I felt myself getting angry, turning to leave for the cave, disregarding Junior's challenge, before a flash of disappointment, anger, shame, and fear broke into my mind, through a certain tether.

I felt Junior, looking through my eyes, a mixture of deep emotions swirling around him as I headed home. I stopped. Did I really want to just give up like this? I mean, I know I almost died and all, but I wasn’t exactly a normal infant. I had power. Mana. Skills. Things people from my homeworld only had legends of. Why, in Kankaar’s name, should I just leave like that? How would I shove Junior's fuzzy face in if I ran away now?

I slowly turned back in the direction of Junior, feeling his mana flare up a couple of miles away, still moving toward a distant location.

“Damn it!” I swore before my bare feet once more thumped the great forests, leading me to a certain demonic fox, farther and farther from home.

I dodged, the weird plant thing trying to curl around my ankle as I kept running, my destination clear. I could fight a grand total of none of these monsters. That much was obvious. I could either hide or run, and Junior had finally stopped at 3 and a half miles away, not counting the half-mile I had already crossed to get here. I felt his impatience, his childish glee, and bloodlust all at once.

I had considered running around, jumping off trees to get there like some kind of ninja, avoiding all the flora and fauna, but as it turns out, that stuff only really works in the movies. There is no way, even my enhanced balance could keep up with that, as well as have enough strength to jump from tree to tree. Let alone the trajectory and distance I would have to cross. I had tried and failed miserably, earning a nice ripe bruise on my left shoulder as a parting gift.

A scorpion, no bigger than my pinky finger, suddenly burst out the ground in front of me. I dove to the side, watching it scuttle towards me for a second before I got up on my feet and began running again, zigzagging so the thing couldn’t predict my movements.

I mean, it's a scorpion so it shouldn’t be able to do that but just in case…

Turns out, that was the right decision as a high-pitched clack of chiton claw rang out. Suddenly, dozens of the damn things unearthed themselves behind me and to my right, directly under a particularly large oak. They crawled out from the ground like a demon does from hell, swarming towards me. I surged balancing act, taking in the ambient mana rapidly to counteract the skills cost. Even with elementary mana control helping, I had still only been able to slow down 75% of the cost, at the heavier price of exhaustion and stamina. I kept running, feeling the danger that laid within over 30 tiny stingers, following behind me dutifully.

I ran by a loose twig on the first floor, sticking from the autumn leaves. I picked it up, and threw it into their small swarm, letting it bonk on some of them. The stick just tumbled back, not halting them in the slightest. I cursed and scooped up some soil, throwing it behind me. I kept doing this, not even looking at what I was grabbing as I searched for something useful. Before long, I managed to scoop something up while running, feeling it was a hefty pebble. I turned around and threw the rock with all my might, watching it fall towards the scorpions, bouncing off their chiton in sparks as they still didn’t even slow.

I reached out with my telepathy, hoping to confuse a couple of them, but their minds were primitive. Simple. Nothing in there to even mix up in the first place. I had kept both balancing act and Psychic perception on for the last 10 minutes, my mana at about half. My mana reserves were growing astonishingly fast recently. I would be in a much tighter pickle without the extra mana

This probably had something to do with the arcane exercises I did, and the fact that this happens to every sapient infant as their souls are bathed in the energies of the world, opening up the floodgates of the arcane. Whatever the hell that means.

Regardless, I needed something I could use right now, and my only skill that even remotely resembles a direct attack is shape of wind. (Completely discounting external ignition of course) and I barely knew how to use it. Mana flood didn’t count either as it was a suicidal attack.

I lashed out with my measly mana amounts, grabbing onto the winds and thrusting them at the small scorpions, hoping to blow them away or something. To my surprise, they actually stopped, digging their legs into the earth, delaying their inevitable catch-up. Not one to refuse a badly needed opportunity, I sprinted away, pumping more mana into balancing act than before. My mana dropped rapidly, the range at which I needed to maintain shape of wind increasing, as the cost increased with it.

I stumbled before letting go of it, running forward, not daring to cancel Psychic perception, regardless of its effectiveness or use. My head throbbed and my heart thumped wildly in my chest, my veins carrying mana across to nourish my body.

I ran forth, almost blindly, realizing I had crossed another half mile, giving me three more to go. There was no way I was getting there in one shot. I kept running, gasping, and wheezing in a desperate waddle for an unknown amount of time. Eventually, I stopped, checking for the scorpions behind me, waiting for a couple of minutes. Nothing.

I looked around, spotting a relatively low tree branch that housed an equally relatively acceptable-looking seat. I climbed up, mana still pumping. I was at 20% now, the shape of wind skill sapping me of strength. Sitting in the branch, I fell into a familiar breathing pattern my aikido master had taught me long ago.

I leaned my head back, and leapt into my mindscape, forgoing external awareness for a speedy recovery. I had no worries about my smell. I had been covered head to toe in mud and leaves. There was no way any beast could pick out my fear from all that... Right? I shook my head, looking around my mind before plunging into the mana river, drawing the energy towards me. I breathed it in, meditation increasing my regeneration 3 fold. The percentage ticked up to 76% in a couple of minutes before I let it go, opening my eyes and getting ready to jump from the tree and back into the dreaded forest.

Damn it… I need to be more conservative with my mana. I thought.

I froze before I could head down though, feeling something slithering and hissing through the branches, observing me with eyes only a reptile could make, Its fangs bared. It stared at me, its mind leaking into my own as I attached a small Psychic tendril to the beast's mind. It was smart for a snake. Smarter than your average house cat, but only by just a bit. I felt its thoughts, Its anger for invading its favorite hunting spot, and its slight reluctance to bite into a prey my size. It was about the size of a rattlesnake, but I knew it was so much more deadly.

I panicked for a second, the snake reeling back at the foreign emotion before I hastily gained control and sent soothing thoughts towards it.

“Not prey. Safe. Leaving.” I said softly, as its mental defenses were next to nothing.

It looked at me, its forked tongue smelling me, before it slithered off the tree branches, disappearing into the arching foliage.

Sweat ran down my back. That had been a valuable lesson. Never turn your back to the wilds. If you're lucky, you escape ignorant of the danger that passes by your neck, oh so close to ending you. If you were unlucky or ill-prepared… I shivered.

Jumping from the tree, with a more full mana capacity, I ran forth, trying to keep my steps quieter, my eyes and skills darting around in fear, just like the prey of the forest. I felt more than one predator approach from a distance of 100 feet away, as I avoided those spots like the plague.

I really wasn’t all that different from a young hare, darting through a snakes den I suppose. I knew Junior wouldn’t come to save me should I come into danger.

As much as I loved him, and I was reluctant to say this, I had attached myself to Viralya and him. My foster mother and brother. They both believed in strength from personal trial. Something I very much disagreed with as a very small baby in a magical jungle that could kill me in one fell swoop.

Sometimes, I swore I felt some presence, watching me. I saw it with Psychic perception, behind the nearest tree, but there was never anything there. The feeling persisted, tiny giggles tickling my ear in the wind. You better believe I went f^%$ing faster after hearing that, saving mana or no.

My feet were very much sore, and they were beginning to bloody. I loved my balancing act skill, it even helps me keep upright in this crappy, uneven terrain, but I would trade almost anything for shoes right now… Even my soul. Well, maybe not everything. I wouldn’t trade tacos if I had them.

I ran on in a trance, aware I was approaching Junior quickly as I braved the forest, eventually passing by a creek, fireflies dancing on the surface of the creek, not a ripple disturbing it. The sudden lack of noise from the forest halted me in my tracks. The animals weren’t coming anywhere near the body of water. It was cool, calm, pristine, and not a sound echoed from its waters. No plants could be seen that were anywhere near the creek either.

If the animals didn’t want to go near that thing, neither did I. I ran around it, estimating it would take me an extra one and a half-mile to get to Junior. By kankaars name… I will beat that squirt to a pulp!

Panting and heaving, I reached the half-mile point, already having crossed the circumference of the creek. I had all but gotten there! I could taste Junior's boredom and contempt, as well as anxiousness. I didn’t care what the hell he brought me here for, I was going to smash his head in!

I reached the edge of a small clearing, the moon shining strongly here as I felt neutral mana spring up across the clearing. The clearing was small, in a rough oval shape of about 50 by 75 feet, a massive boulder lying in the middle of it. It looked like a completely ordinary forest clearing, small tufts of grass growing out the edges of the massive rock. Nevertheless, something told me I should tread carefully here, my instincts warning me of something. I looked closer, switching to mana sense as I saw bits and pieces of death mana curl around the boulder. It formed the vague shape of a skull, trembling its jaw as if to speak, before dispersing and slowly reforming, small threads of neutral and death mana dancing in harmony.

Nope. Not getting anywhere near that. I deactivated mana sense and turned to look around, feeling out with my Psychic awareness this time. Junior was behind the boulder, his impatience clear as the moon and stars shining above my head. I crept around the rock, not getting within 5 feet before I spotted the devil himself.

He had a foxtail wrapped around his haunches, his small form reflecting the red coat, black accents streaking his fur. His whiskers twitching, nose doing the same, looking straight at me with sliver grey eyes.

A foxy smile bloomed across his face, full of mirth, yet malice as a childish voice erupted into my head. By kankaar himself, I wanted to strangle him.

“Wow! I didn’t think it would take you so long! Your super slow, Y'know that?” He said cheerfully. I shivered at my brother's childish tone of voice that was neither an illusion or act, simply a fragment of a broken beast.

“Since you don’t wanna use your flames, the gift, and talent you were given for your sufferings-” his eyes flashed. “You must prove you are capable without them. You have been given a very simple task. All you have to do is put a single lasting mark into the big ol’ rock right here. I don’t even care how! As long as you use your mana and skills only!” He said cheerfully. “And then you win!”

I was a little taken back at the sudden and seemingly easy task. However, I knew something was up. My next question just confirmed it.

“What happens if I refuse?” His smile grew.

“Then I’ll chop your head off!” He said in an entirely serious tone, but with a smile that stretched across his mouth and eyes. If I had any doubt these damn foxes weren’t sadists before, I was damn well certain now.

“You have one week! You must only use skills and mana, nothing else.” He said, taking on the tone of a stern lecturer scolding their student. “All you have to leave is a single scratch! And I’ll know if you do, my sense never lies after all.” He said.

What. The. Hell?! This is giving me serious Viralya vibes. But more unstable and stupid! I bet she has no idea about this! I’m gonna…

As if he could read my thoughts his smile flashed, teeth-baring a growl that knocked me from my feet in fear. “Don’t you dare tell mother. I’ll bite your head off if you do.” I had suspicions before, small parts of my mind questioning this. I had grown even more suspicious when I felt him moving really really fast. Now I was certain. He had been holding back before. His super rage mode wasn’t even his final form!

“Wait! What the hell is this man? What is going on, why are you-”

And with that, the fox elegantly bounced away, leaving behind a trail of ice that melted just as fast as it appeared, disappearing into the woods, and leaving me alone. I cursed.

Well. At least my task is only to chip the damn boulder. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get it on the first try! That’ll show the… Actually, maybe it's best if I don’t call him squirt anymore. That fox is too damn scary… Just like his mother…

I stared at the oversized rock, its form seemingly towering over the skies themselves from my point of view. This task was getting more daunting by the second. I refused to study it in detail with mana sense, not wanting to see that writhing skull again.

I reached out a chubby hand and focussed, breathing steadily in meditation, regaining my lost mana. Something told me this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill rock, and I was taking little to no chances. I quickly checked my notifications for anything useful.

*You have kept vigilance in the most deadly of scenarios, keeping this skill active to feel the very minds of the forest! Psychic Perception II becomes Psychic Perception IV*

*Your constant denial of gravity and the beckoning earth have brought you rewards! Balancing Act IV becomes Balancing Act V*

*You have thrown the wind itself into your enemies, maintaining it even at ranges further than within safety parameters. Shape of Wind becomes Shape of Wind II*

I was a bit impressed I had leveled the elusive manipulation skill, but I ignored it, focusing on the mana gathering in my palm. I took in my Wind mana reserves, depleting them and restoring them just as fast. I hadn’t appreciated how much the skill cost yet, as each time I used it, I had been far too distracted with keeping my life. Meditation was quickly broken when I reached 98% capacity, putting all my efforts in the small ball of wind in my outstretched palm instead.

It was a damn draining skill, sucking mana greedily to maintain the control, but also to use it. I had to use wind mana to gather more wind mana, to condense wind mana. My reserves were tickling down 2% a second, the mana gathering in my palm beginning to weigh more and more. It was my mana. I knew it would do this. Just as it would lighten when I commanded. I knew it like the back of my hand after all.

Its weight shifted unevenly as I lost concentration for a second, almost blasting a nearby patch of grass with the wind ball. I put everything I had into the damn thing, using mana sense and shape of wind to guide the mana along into my palm, and elementary mana control to condense it, further and further as it took on a pointed shape. My head screamed with pain but I ignored it, favoring my unbruised right shoulder as I lifted the ball up slowly, pointing it at the oversized rock.

Sweat slid off my baby smooth skin, crimson eyes flashing in a bestial growl. I kept shaping, my mana hitting 15% when I stopped, the strain on the skill not allowing me to condense further. I formed it into something of a crude jagged sharp needle, pointing towards the boulder. I held my other hand over it, pinching the other end of the needle as I stood up, balancing act surging as I hoped it would help with my aim.

I tucked my arm to the side, facing away from the boulder as I wound up a shot. My stance widened as I grit my baby teeth together, chucking the small spike with all I had. It flashed forward with a whoosh, near-silent as it suddenly increased in weight 4 fold, crashing into the boulder.

For a moment, I celebrated, a grin on my face as the needle stuck, before it fell to the ground, dispersing into raw mana as the rock was left unharmed, without a scratch. My jaw dropped open. I had put all I had into that attack. It wasn’t enough.

Oh F%[email protected] I thought.