Routine

What keeps us in the right track, preventing us from straying from the path we want to walk on.

Since I've started reading the books the old man gave me I've been basicaally in a cycle of training, reading, eating, training eating, repeat. The only exception being when I spar with the people here in the dorms or when Grandpa teaches me swordsmanship.

When I was a student I always said I hated routine and complained about how boring it was to do the same things every day. Even if I knew, deep down, that I liked routine. I just didn't like being stuck, without the feeling of making progress. Another reason why I liked videogames, specially RPGs.

To escape this feeling I decided something. After I break throught to the fourth level of the Burning Skies Yang Fire Technique, Richard, Lyra, Doggy and I will go do some missions. Missions are only one of the few methods to earn contribution points among others, but it's relatively easier compared to the others which made it easy for me to convince them to help me do some.

Contribution points are what we use as currency in the Academy. Be it to buy pills, weapons or even get Techniques from the Academy Library, all of it takes contribution points to do.

We haven't picked a mission yet, but we've already agreed it would be better to pick a hunting mission so I can get some experience in fighting beasts. They've been really helpful, be it by giving advice on our spars or by simply being understanding towards me and my almost non-existent common sense about society in general; you can't get to know everything just by reading books for a couple of days.

A week quickly passes by and I broke through to the fourth level of the Burning Skies Yang Fire Technique and we go choose a mission to do at the Mission Hall.

The building in which the Mission Hall is situated is not the biggest, but it's surely one of the most crowded places in this humongous Academy. There are a good amount of lines of people waiting to get assign a mission as you can't choose an specific one and get done with it, you can only tell the worker at the Mission Hall the category of mission you want to do and the level of difficulty.

Even with all the crowd in the hall, Lyra somehow managed to bypass everyone in the lines and the atendant handed her the mission paper.

Bring five (5) inner cores of the five elements: water, earth, fire, wind and metal.

Inner cores have similar functions to a human's Dantian in the body of a beast, however differently from humans, Inner cores are completely physical, instead of partially spiritual as a human's Dantian. This difference makes beasts' bodies incredibly resistant and powerful, but their ability to store energy in a concentrated form is weakened in return.

The only place we can encounter beasts of all the five elements is the Thunder Forest, a massive forest spanning several empires. It's almost a sure death for us in the inner zones of the forest, but it should be all right to go in the outer parts to hunt beasts' cores.

Going back from the Mission Hall I separate from them and go to the Willow Tree Manor.

Dad, as always, is calmly sipping his tea as a noble lady would. He speaks to me with a smile, "Came here for your ring right? You only come here for things like this."

"I'm sorry...", this is the only thing I can say. His smile is a little melancholic, but how he tries to make it seem like his usual smile only makes me sadder.

"It's alright, after a few weeks you won't be able to escape me anyway. Here's the spatial ring you wanted."

He hands me a simple ring, apparently made of some type of stone with strange carvings on it, but they're not even similar to formation lines. I asked him for a spatial ring when I first decided to go on a mission, but he said he only had his, so it took a while for him to get a suitable one for me. Most spatial rings are glamorously decorated as they are items many nobles try to show off as these rings are really damm expensive.

I spend the rest of the afternoon with Dad, I'm going away for a while, I should at least do this much for him.

The next day I'm at the gates of the city together with my group. Dad already put everything I need in the spatial ring, which has a massive space by the way, about the size of the arena I sparred with Richard on my first day, but three-dimensional.

We're all equipped with clothes and armors suited for battle, differently from our spars where we fought with regular training clothes. This will be the first test for my armor, I'm pretty excited about this trip.

"You're pretty late." Lyra says with a snort to which I respond with my own snort, "You're just too early."

Her facade fells as she laughs at me and says, "Just joking. But you're right, we got here pretty early."

The sun just rised and even the cows haven't woken up yet. We have to get going if we want to get to the forest by tomorrow. Even if our mission doesn't have a time limit we still want to do it as fast as possible.

Richard and Doggy already entered the carriage which is quite similar to the one Dad and I used to get to the city before, but much more luxuous. I don't know if it's better though.

Both Lyra and I enter the spacious inside of the carriage excited with our first time going to the Thunder Forest. Richard and Doggy already went there once with their parents, so they're going to lead us and explain things for us who haven't gone there before.

The carriage seems to work the same as the other one I rode before as Lyra started it from the inside just as my Dad did. The speed is about the same, but this one is much more comfortable and stable. The forest isn't too far off considering our speed, but there's enough time for Richard and Doggy to tell us about the forest.

Hours quickly passed by with our chit-chat and cultivation, eating the food we brought in between the two and taking turns sleeping so someone can look at the road.

We arrived the next morning on the settlement outside of the forest. This settlement was made specifically for people like us, who want to profit from this dangerous yet incredibly rich area in opportunities. There are a few inns here, almost all of them are full, but those which aren't, are the luxury ones that are almost close to a hotel. All types of people are trading on the small trading center organized by the adventurers.

We looked around a bit but nothing caught our eyes so we got back to the inn we rented before going to the market, one of the best ones at that. It's price was a little higher than the others because this one had separate rooms, one thing needed as we didn't want Lyra to be uncomfortable.

I entered my room and just slept, a lot. I only woke up when they called me to begin our mission in the forest. I guess I was really tired to be able to sleep like this. I quickly put my battle armor and got together with them at the one of the common entries of the Thunder Forest.

The trees are variate in size, but they seem to be from the same family. There's a deep mist permeating the entire area, impossibilitating us from seeing more than ten or so meter ahead of us. Thankfully, Richard brought some tokens we can bind to sense each others position. Having a experienced guy around helps a lot.

We look at each other and enter the forest. The ground is a little charred, but the vegetation flourishes. The trees aren't crowded together, making some natural paths for us to walk by, but making us susceptible to ambushs from the beasts we're hunting. Since we've entered our eyes have been enhaced by Qi, so seeing through the mist isn't difficult. However there are some beast here who are great predators in this environment, being able to camuflate themselves perfectly in the mist and vegetation.

Richard is walking at the south position, I'm at the north-east, Doggy's at the north-west and Lyra is in the center. Richard's position allow him to quickly see every thing in front of us, including our only long-range fighter, Lyra, a perfect position for the leader of the group, a position Doggy pushed him into. His trust in Richard is apparently great.

We walked for hours without seeing anything or anyone. We haven't even heard a living being's noise. This is bizarre, as Richard said that although the outer parts of the forest aren't densely populated by beasts, there are more than enough for us to encounter in these hours we were walking.

This is giving me a bad feeling, I only hope this feeling is wrong...