Somewhat nervous I finish filling up my backpack with comestible plants, seeds, and fruits. I cast a glance around, searching for something else to do to occupy my time with, but after finding none I give up.

Everything is ready now, no point in further delays. I have been putting this off for five days now, and since the beginning, I knew that doing it for the sixth time would be bad.

This vast forest has a mystical environment. Countless creatures and monsters thrive in this place. Plants and trees found inside can't be grown in the outside world. The density of mana in the air is almost physically palpable. While inside, it is hard to walk in a straight line for long. The directions in which the Sun set and rises are fake.

It's like a labyrinth. I vaguely remember reading about labyrinths- also loosely called dungeons or caverns- over two years ago. In contrast to what I have seen here, in those places monsters tend to actually be born from just pure mana. I remember wondering if the Great Wild was one too. In that case, among them, this forest must be the hardest one to escape from. One can't just simply leave by walking away as you will just go in circles endlessly. Supposedly, trying to escape this place by just flying away isn't that simple either.

Once you enter, getting out is easier said than done. Few ever managed.

In my opinion, escaping the hold of the Great Wild is more of a question of luck.

Five days ago, since I sighted an end to the forest I have been both dreading and eagerly waiting this moment. No, even before that I guessed I was close to the border as the trees lost their toughness with each week of travel, and the fact I haven't felt any place of high mana density in weeks also pointed to it. These signs were evident, then I climbed a very tall tree to scout the landscape ahead and could clearly see an end to the interminable canopy in the distance.

The group of creatures and beasts would stay five days to rest, like always. That is the travel routine they are cozy with. I decided to use those five days to think of all of that which needed to be thought.

This could be my only and last chance of leaving, each second could be my last. I have always admitted to myself that without the creatures to have my back, this place would have made short work of me. Miserably killed in the first week, probably.

I could stay here with them, instead of leaving.

My time here has made me far stronger than I was when I fleed into the Great Wild that day, sure, but staying more is just tempting my luck. I enjoy the thrill of adventure, the rush of battle, but this forest is way out of my league.

In the end, if I think that I can manage to stay longer in this place then I am just deceiving myself. Relying on my luck any more wouldn't be wise.

There is nothing more to think about, my decision was already made and it was made since the very beginning.

I clap twice to get the creatures' attention.

"Everyone, please come here" I repress my feeling of silliness at hoping for them to really understand my words because I know they are way more intelligent than they seem at first sight and deserve more of my respect. Even if they don't understand my words, they will understand my intentions.

It's not a surprise to me when all of them started to come.

I am sure some realized I have been preparing to leave them these last few days.

I watch them as they start to gather around me, Curite, the unnamed species, and the Mingan. The general mood gives me the vibe that they know this is serious.

For a moment I want to laugh this off and pass everything as a joke but I can't. I don't want to abandon them but I know I must.

I gather my courage which is strangely even more difficult to do now that when fighting for my life and look at each of them, the companions with who I have passed over two years and three months. After looking at them I realize that I am more attached to them than I thought, it doesn't make this any easier. I gather my thoughts, then I speak.

"You may have realized already... this is the last day we will be traveling together..." For a moment my voice is caught back but I gulp and will myself to continue. "This is my farewell, good luck and thank you, everyone, for everything... really, thank you." My voice croaked at the end as I struggle to hold back my tears.

Some of the creatures rush to me, to lick my face or pat my legs, to headbutt me, or to impossibly try to pass between my legs and a plethora of other actions. The members of the group that aren't Mingan like the herbivore wolf or the armored gray lizard also come.

I named every single one of them. Mostly, out of boredom, going as far as imagining secret lives for each and silly conversations between them. The power of boredom is mighty but it still counts.

Carlos, Little One, Dusk, all of them give their goodbyes in their own ways and I hope to see them again someday. I remember Smiley and can't help but cry a little more for a short moment. Sacrifices were made too, and those will never be forgotten.

After every one of them is done I turn to Curite and pat her, my first and for now, only contracted Summon.

"Will you leave the place you have lived all your life in? Will you follow me?" I ask, not sure if the monsters of this forest need special mana to live or something, after all, they don't tend to leave on their own.

Different emotions invade me, agreement and denial, excitement and sorrow, duty and concern, and a few seconds pass as I decipher their meaning. Basically, a rejection but I understand why. I maintain the little disappointment I feel at this out of my face despite she probably being capable of feeling it.

"I see, you still have something to do or find here, right?" I feel more emotions from her. "Very well, I hope you find what you are seeking, and yes, if the need ever arises I will be counting on you" Our farewell done, she licks my face one last time and we part ways.

I am a little upset I still don't have enough mana to summon her so it will take a while until I can see her again but now that I think about it, an exotic monster like she would attract all kinds of wrong attention anyway. It wouldn't be safe if she is not in the state of being summoned when accompanying me, so I can unsummon her with a thought. I am not strong enough to even guarantee my own safety, be it in here or outside.

When all farewells ended everyone walked to the outskirts of the clearing. The leader of the Mingan stood silently before me. I smile at the familiar movements of his ears.

Yeah, I understand this well.

You join them with a battle and you leave them with a battle.

The leader—whom I named Leader— rushed to me as soon as I took a battle stance. Fast, even without his spiritual energy, I lift my hand and a Fireball materializes to meet him but he suddenly disappears from my sight, causing the fireball to go straight through nothing.

I insta-cast the modified Earth Lance that nullifies the original spell's launching speed. I guess a direction to attack blindly at. I take the lance with my left hand, as I jump sideways to the right and slash to my left.

The battle goes by so fast that I don't have time for a chantless casting and even less for the more traditional but stronger chanting. I realize now why the Lich fought hand-to-hand for a few moments back there, it needed time to chantless cast its spells.

Fortunately, as a mage of the city of mages, I don't have the same handicap.

Out of pure luck, the Mingan attacks right where I slashed. In an unnatural act of control, he stops his momentum with his legs on the ground, barely avoiding a glancing blow from my Earth Lance. Such modesty, had him continued his charge, my lance would have broken without even damaging his tough hide anyway, as the spell is originally meant to pierce and not slash. Furthermore, it's not meant to be used on monsters as tough as steel.

The battle continues, I keep throwing magic spells left and right. Spells like Water, Mage Light, and Clean aren't meant for fighting; Stone Skin's defense is way too weak relative to this forest, better to not get hit at all than to use it for a false sense of security; Gale, Boulder, and Flame are useful in just some certain circumstances; Ghost Hand is of limited use as closeness with living beings increases the cost of the spell exponentially; Earth Lance is better and a modification of it can decrease the mana cost by forming the javelin directly from the floor.

Summon Spirit is much more useful since I thinned out my mana that time. The summoned spirits, although still oddly intelligent, now obey my commands, verbal and mental. And with the increased efficiency I can use it more often than before. The same seven spirits always come when I summon them at the same time, the eighth, ninth, and so are always different and I feel they are less intelligent too.

I will not use it here because adding numbers to this farewell fight feels kinda wrong.

So, Fireball is the only thing in my arsenal that can really injure Leader, the explosion is kind of weak compared to a real to god Fireball, pitiful enough as to be renamed Mini Fireball, even, but the fire wickedly sticks to the target so it is the most useful spell in this fight.

I constantly retreat back and to the sides to have distance from him but being careful to not being led to a trap. And lead me to traps, he tried. I avoided being led to situations without exit or to the flames I myself started.

In just twenty seconds I am already breathing heavily and with a fifth of my mana left. Leader stopped his attacks and roared in acknowledgment. An honor, to be roared at, as the Mingan rarely make noise with their voice other than to threaten enemies.

I received no injuries apart from a few scratches, and the same for him. Of course, even without using his spiritual energy, he didn't even try to defeat me. Otherwise, he would have just dismissed my attacks and killed me in one hit. On the other side, I went slightly seriously with my attacks and scaredly serious with my defense. Anyway, I suppose he was just checking if I would manage on my own from now on. Such concern almost brings a tear to my eye.

All the group started to leave and some threw a glance at me one last time before starting to disappear one by one beyond the foliage and soon enough I was alone again.

...

The walk to the edge of the forest would take about six hours, but the night arrived early so I decide to run the rest of the way and find a good spot at the very edge to pass the night rather than to walk in the gloom.

After a while, I find a good spot, not a clearing but a long enough space between the trees.

The sounds of the wind and the insects awakening and starting their nocturnal life fills the night. This place is almost always dark, even in the day. These trees can really project some impressive shadows, and the fog that sometimes appears doesn't help to keep things illuminated either. I have grown used to walking with dim illumination and sleeping in the mantle of the darkness of the night skies.

Still feeling the chill of the night through my cloak and without a Mingan to snuggle with and rob their warmth, I decided to start a campfire. Usually, I never make those, even less in the night. Campfires and the Mage Light spell tend to attract a lot of attention in a full of life forest like this one, especially when that life is all monsters. Those lights easily give away our position but right now, I don't care. I am feeling nostalgic and not having a campfire would feel wrong. Also, here in the outskirts, it would be very unlikely to find dangerous monsters lurking about.

Okay, I found dangerous monsters that last time but what is the possibility of that happening yet again?

I really would like to leave as fast as possible but it may be better to do it with the light of the day on my side. Besides, I still need to give one more farewell.

Covering my body is the dark gray fur cloak that I got from a particularly big monster a few months ago; it's relatively warm and resilient. I practiced dozens of times on how to skin the animal until I finally got a barely useful hide. Inside the backpack, apart from food, I have quite the collection of rare(?) body parts of some monsters. The most important of them, though, is the first one I got, the black blade of the Shadow Crawler, it hadn't lost any of its edge in all this time.

I stretch my left arm and look at it flicker with the light of the fire. The burn scars that ran all the way from my elbow to my fingers are very difficult to distinguish now, a disgustingly obvious burn-scar no more. Since the incident with the Lich, it almost disappeared. Probably when it healed my ears it also vanished the old scars. But even as it was erased without my knowledge of it, a new one was marked on me.

I gaze at my chest; the five black dots are still there. They seem like tattoos but I couldn’t remove them no matter what I tried. I cut the skin from there—Perhaps I am a little crazy?— and healed through the miracle of the Mingan, however, despite healing the skin, the black dots healed with it. I am unsure whether healing magic does repair tattoos or not.

I guess it is a special spell meant to let the Lich drain my mana, as spells that can be easily cast to deal damage to a mana pool are non-existent. At least as far as I know, which is not much. For now, these dots seem harmless.

Not everything went bad from that encounter, the papers I got from the Lich's drawer although most of them useless, resulted to be rather interesting.

Like some kind of diary of some of its last days, the Lich wrote about some events with difficult to understand words, whose meaning I couldn’t remember sometimes. More or less he wrote about how he couldn't go far from the mansion because of the 'heart' and that same heart scaring off all living things around. He wrote of random thoughts and happenings, about how he started to worry as he caught himself staring at nothing and zoning out for hours with more and more frequency. His frustration at not being able to use magic for fear of bringing closer the time of his demise. His normal magic mostly unusable, he strove to complete his research about a spell strong enough to be useful but very low on mana requirement.

The research on that spell itself and the full spell-matrix are among the papers. It explains the theory and workings behind the spell. The spell is designed with a more scientific base. Many complicated words about the frequency and amplification but I understood the general idea. The spell focuses on the caster's hand and for a few seconds increases the volume of whatever sound occurs in that area several times higher. Using it you can shout from behind your hand and your voice would get its volume raised by several times. The Lich seemed to prefer just snapping his fingers and amplify the snap.

Such spell has no safety measures, though. It will damage the caster as much as anyone else in range but the Lich probably doesn't hear by using his ears anyway. The spell has no chant either, as designing a chant for a spell is several orders of magnitude harder. It doesn't matter, because the spell matrix is enough to chantless cast and eventually insta-cast it. However, that spell matrix could be tampered with, meant to deceive prying eyes and kill them from backlash if attempted to use without care.

After carefully studying each pattern, those that I recognized had no obvious traps. The ones I didn't recognize, seemed to be safe and logically well located too. After carefully activating it I found it to be fully safe from tampering. The spell had no name, so I named it; Sound Trap. I haven't trained with it long enough and can't insta-cast it yet.

The Lich created and refined the spell matrix of Sound Trap for long decades but it was only a side project. His main focus seemed in getting freed from whatever imprisoned him there. Unfortunately the papers I got mentioned little about his efforts in that area.

Anyway, I have already memorized the research and the notes so I don't need the papers anymore. And I can't keep the spell matrix around even if I wanted, I am bound to obstruct as much as I can any attempt of foreign acquisition of my magic, by the oaths I had to swear when I first attained control of my mana pool. I wasn't even four years old then.

The oaths are mostly about loyalty to Erandel but also forbids me from talking or giving away information about the town and any magic obtained from it to people not from Erandel too. The oaths are incredibly harsh, only after the last two years of traveling through the forest, I realized that. For example, if I were to be aware of my mind being compromised by mind reading or something I would have to give my utmost to obstruct it, and failing to do so for a while would result in death. Oaths to magic are unforgiving and unbreakable. They are beyond my understanding.

I burned the research papers days ago. The spell matrix I have conserved until now to study to the last moment, and that last moment is now. From this point onwards it's very probably I may come into contact with other people, the spell matrix drawings are no longer necessary, and hiding my knife and clock would be for the best too.

I take them out of my barely functional backpack. I grab my clock and knife and hide them in my scarcely recognizable shorts' hidden pockets.

After gathering some branches from a nearby small tree I take out the papers related to the spell matrix and insta-cast Flame on the wood I gathered on the floor. Once activated it shot ahead and a fire started expanding on impact. I fed it little mana so the flames stayed mostly on the pile of branches.

Then, without hesitation, I threw the papers to the fire.

Before falling asleep I summoned a spirit and commanded it to hide among the bushes and wake me up if some monster gets close while I sleep.

...

The following morning I resumed my walk to the outside of the forest.

I more or less have an idea of what will I do once I leave. Walk away, of course. But before that, at a respectful distance from the forest, I will turn either left or right and walk parallel to the forest until I find a tall and close enough landmark to scout the terrain and decide on a direction to go.

I wonder in which edge of the forest I am leaving from? Perhaps I am walking into the Empire, or could it be the Free City-States? I know it's not the north as there are only Erendal and mountain chains. From above the trees, I saw a big grassland. It's impossible to be in the south as it ends in the sea there. However, I will need to just pay attention to the movements of the Sun when it rises and then I will know.

After walking for twenty minutes more, the scenery I saw from the treetops finally appears before me.

High grass taller than me, starts to be a common scenery until I am pushing constantly through it as the trees become less and less in my field of sight. A few minutes later I walk—or rather push my way— past the last tree I can see. A sigh escapes my lips, a weight lifted from my shoulders.

I am not sure if I will ever come back, but I know I shouldn't stay any longer. I remember everything that brought me here, all the fights and hardships and all the dark paths and close brushes with death.

Even with all those shadows and dangers, the forest was always beautiful, though, gifting me breathtaking sights with each one of my steps. What wasn't beautiful were those damned ants, they are everywhere, like a plague. I always ran away from those ants and have run from many other fights, more than I would like to admit. At least it made me good at escaping. But I have learned, it's fine to avoid most fights; fighting for the sake of fighting is a mistake.

"Ah, stupid forest, with your stupid ants and your stupid tricks to disorient people," I remember several times in which I noticed the Sun setting in one direction, just to awake to dawn with the Sun coming out from the same place it set.

"Your carnivorous fishes, your carnivorous insects, your carnivorous birds, your carnivorous plants, and your herbivores wolves." Well, to be fair food is abundant in this place, someone had to go eat it, I suppose.

"To tell the truth, part of me actually wants to stay, to brave your depths and dangers, to discover your secrets, and to slay the powerful foes that lurk in your labyrinth-like forest. I got a few interesting things without even trying, I wonder what I would find if I really had the intent to adventure inside?"

I let out an amused laugh and take a long breath. I could still see stars among the leaves, high beyond the trees' canopy on the sky of dawn.

"This is my last day here, farewell to you too Great Wild, the mysterious old forest of legend."

I am not a superstitious person, not at all. I remember a time in which a thought crossed my mind, before coming here but I am not sure. Are labyrinths alive? Can't say for certain but this place sure feels like that.

"And thank you," I whispered. "For putting them there back then when I arrived." It's just a feeling, but it feels right.

With nothing more to say, I turn around and walk away.

...

What now?

The Sun is rising on the horizon, in the direction I am walking. This is the western edge of the Everlasting Empire.

For now, I plan to reach a city.

And then?

Maybe get a job, maybe to be a worker, an apprentice of someone... or the boy that sweeps the street with a broom... Hahaha. No way.

I am a mage. No, scratch that.

I am beyond a simple mage.

I am a Summoner.

Yes, I could be the weakest Summoner of all times, and yes... I only know a basic summoning spell and another one that I can't use yet... but everything must have a beginning, and this is mine and I wouldn't change it for anything.

I turn my head and shot a last glance at the forest behind.

I am free, finally free from it, from what got me in there and from the prison I didn't even know I was trapped in before this happened.

I stare into the dark depths of the forest from where I just came from. A rush of wind makes a harsh and haunting sound as it passes through branches and leaves, through grass and trees.

I feel the corners of my lips creep upwards into a half-smile.

Beware, everyone.

The Summoner is now free to roam the world.

- END OF BOOK 1 -