The two arrows cornered the anize, and the lizard-bird creature got hit despite its best avoiding maneuvers. It fell directly into Mahon’s hand under the appreciative look of Ranaeril.

“How come you already know how to double-shot when you discovered archery barely a month ago??!” Katar swore on the side.

Jorik laughed and patted the young man on the shoulder. “We’re trained to learn. And despite our young looks, we’ve much more experience than you.” He winked.

Both Mahon and Jorik were indeed very fit, and they had had no trouble shooting arrows all day long. They had incredible coordination and always searched for efficiency. Mahon was the true master of control, but since he had started to teach Jorik in Nightmare, the noble was slowly apprehending those concepts as well.

Using a bow required strength, precision, and control, and both Mahon and Jorik excelled in those. They quickly learnt how to fire accurately at their target, but it wasn’t the most determinant factor in their insanely fast progression to double-shooting. The Flow was.

With its reading of underlying rhythms, the space around them became much easier to deconstruct and understand. The direction of the wind? The movements of the target? A perfect sense of timing? An uncanny instinct for arrows’ trajectories?

The mysterious magic had them all and helped the two men in almost all aspects of archery. And in those it didn’t, Mahon and Jorik quickly filled the gap. They became able to double-shot in a month, and proved it by hunting anizes, the first test to become a Hunter.

There was only one more step before they could finally cross over the mountains and meet an Immortal King.

“Alpinism is the way of both moving and surviving on the mountain. But I already told you that.” Ranaeril said the day after they completed their archery course.

Mahon, Jorik, Ranaeril and Halueth were all sitting in a small circle near the climbing training site. It was very early in the morning, and they had already eaten their breakfast, but most of the village hadn’t even woken up. The sunlight was barely visible over the mountains, and the sky was slightly red dyed.

“You know how to climb. You know how to shoot. That’s not for fun that we taught you those two skills before even going further into the mountains. Up there,” Ranaeril pointed his index to the high mountains behind him, “we’re not into our territory. We’re just part of the surviving species. There are only two rules to know in the mountains.”

He paused for a second, eyeing Mahon and Jorik with a serious face.

“The first one is to never, never give everything you got. If you’re tired, you’re dead. For many reasons I’ll explain to you later on, but just remember it. You should always move and act at a leisure pace. The second rule is the hardest one. In the mountains, only you and your teammate exist. There is nobody else. Even us. We’ll never risk two people to save one.”

Ranaeril marked another pause before he continued.

“We go together, because it’s easier to fend off monsters and move in a bigger group. But each party is independent. We don’t lend material. We don’t solve your problems. We don’t carry you if you’re in trouble. If your teammate dies, you’re on your own. We’ll do our best to help you, but we’ll never go out of our way to do it. That’s just how it is up there. It’s simply not worth it. Better you die alone than bring two more to the grave with you. Do you understand those rules?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

Ranaeril nodded solemnly at the two men’s answer.

“Perfect. Then it’s time for you to get to know the mountains. We’ll try to go higher each time, depending on your capacity and the weather conditions. But we can’t be idle that long for the village, so we’ll also try to make each expedition worth it. For now, we’ll simply leave and come back tonight. The next time, we might need more than one day to reach our destination. Now let's go. You’ll learn on the way.”

The group of four men left the village shortly after. They had equipped themselves with a quiver, a shortbow, and their climbing equipment. They also wore warm clothes sewn with thick animal skins that didn’t hinder their movements. The group was split into two parties, one with Mahon and Jorik, and another with Ranaeril and Halueth.

They left through a small path where they could only walk one behind the other, but at least it was still walking. The path was going steep uphill, but it didn’t seem to slow down any of them. Even Halueth, the oldest of them, showed no sign of strain as they went up. They easily found a common rhythm, punctuated by the clatter of their climbing nails clinging on each other.

Half an hour past the village, the path ended abruptly at the bottom of a cliff.

“That’s where the fun really starts.” Halueth spoke. “We’ll climb side to side to save time, but remember don’t get yourself tired. It’s not really useful now, but you need to practice it before we go higher up. Because there, the air will be rarer and each action will exhaust you twice as much. And each drop of sweat will come back to haunt you once the night arrives and the temperature drops drastically.”

“Show us what you learnt.” Ranaeril concluded as he gestured to the cliff with his head.

Mahon and Jorik took out their equipment, and put on their harness. They tied their rope to each other before Mahon went first, with all the climbing nails. The cliff wasn’t high enough they would need to switch midway, and one rope-length would be enough to get to the top.

Jorik moved the rope so that he could secure Mahon’s ascent, and he soon gestured to Mahon that he was ready. Mahon checked that his under-shoes were properly fixed to his shoes before he stepped on the first hold of the cliff. In three short moves, he was already two meters high, and he continued to climb with ease up to five meters where he found a nice spot to place a nail.

He selected one with a flat but large head and inserted it vertically inside a small crack. He then turned the nail so that the flat part became horizontal, and he pulled, checking that the nail was indeed stuck inside the crack. With a swift motion, he then clipped his rope to the snap hook at the other end of the climbing nail and continued upwards.

Ranaeril and Halueth quickly joined the duo, and Mahon and Jorik finally realized what it meant to climb efficiently. Halueth, who had gone first on the cliff, climbed leisurely, but there was not a single hesitation in his motions. He progressed smoothly and seemed to never cease to move up.

When Mahon climbed, he made sure he had a good hold in hand before pushing on his feet. He then took some time to find another hold before he pushed again. That rendered his motions slightly chopped with alternating climb and rest times. On the other hand, Halueth never stopped once.

He was always on the move, always going for the next hold while pushing on his feet. He moved slower than Mahon, but since he never stopped he quickly got past him, and he arrived first at the top. Ranaeril then climbed shortly after, and Jorik followed once Mahon also reached the top.

“Good.” Ranaeril commented. “Given how fast you learned archery, I had no doubt about your climbing abilities, but it’s always good to confirm it with one’s own eyes. You’re really two geniuses, you know that?”

Without waiting for their answer to this rhetorical question, Ranaeril started to walk on a narrow trail that weaved between the rocks, always going higher and higher.

“Keep your rope tied.” He explained while moving. “There will be no more climbing, but the path is a bit dangerous sometimes, it’s best to be cautious. Also, you’ll have your first experience with high altitude so move leisurely. At the most subtle sign of something going wrong with your vision, don’t hesitate to stop immediately.”

Without further warning, the four men started climbing the path and stopped talking. For hours, they moved up, going one step at a time at a leisure pace. If the temperature wasn’t so low at the beginning, it slowly started to fall the more they rose.

The mountains became thinner and steeper, and an icy wind started to assault them. The group pulled their clothes closer to their body not to let any openings to its frozen bite. The path turned scarper, and they always had a hand touching the nearby rocks to secure their ascent.

Sometimes the wind blew so hard they had to stop and grab anything they could to prevent themselves from falling. The long and perilous climb slowly ate at the four men’s endurance and willpower.

And then the lack of oxygen started to make itself known.

Mahon had trouble breathing, and he felt something wrong with his body. He felt weaker than he should, given the amount of strain he was subject to. Soon, Mahon and Jorik started to pant like they were on their last round in Slander’s twenty laps run while they were only walking leisurely. A steep walk, for sure, but still a walk.

“That’s what height does to mankind. The mountain suffocates us in its embrace the higher we climb. If you try to push through it, you’ll only end up dead, like many others.” Halueth started explaining with a calm voice. “It’s probably not something you’re used to do, but up there, we adapt to the mountain, not the other way around. Now that you know what to look for, let’s move a bit slower. We’re almost there.”

“Why aren’t you even struggling?” Mahon managed to ask between two ragged breaths.

Both Halueth and Ranaeril seemed to be as relaxed as a thousand meters lower.

Halueth laughed at the question. “I lived all my life on the mountains. Besides experience, my body slowly adapted to these conditions. And yours will too. Today’s journey serves no other purpose than to get you familiar with high altitude. As long as you’re not capable of reaching the summit without looking exhausted and under three hours, don’t even dream of crossing to the other side. It will kill you.”

“I thought we couldn’t afford to just train for the village.” Jorik commented. “Aren’t we wasting resources if we get nothing from this?”

“No.” Halueth shook his head. “Because this mountain is our way of measuring your progress. The next few months we’ll take you to other places, where we need to go. We might go high. We might need to climb. We might need to walk for days. We might have rain, snow or constant wind. We might need to travel at night. We might need to fend off monsters. We might even go back empty headed, for the mountains will bar us its bowels.”

A light smile floated on Halueth’s lips as he enumerated the numerous things that waited for them.

“There, you’ll gain experience. You’ll understand what to be careful of, and what to ignore. You’ll be able to read the signs of hidden, luring monsters. You’ll know when to step on snow and when to take a detour. You’ll realize what it means to listen to what the mountains say and prepare a journey under good circumstances. You’ll learn multiple ways to use your climbing material to get you away from difficult situations.”

The path became less steep, almost flat, and Mahon realized they were finally reaching the top of the mountain. The end of today’s journey.

“Each couple of weeks,” Halueth continued, “we’ll climb this mountain. Ranaeril and I will observe how you fare. How you adapt to the altitude. How you move when the wind strikes. We’ll evaluate and judge if you’re ready to cross.”

The old man marked a small pause as they walked the last steps to the top.

“And to answer your question, Jorik. It’s also not completely useless to climb here. Because we got to see the heart of the mountains. And it heals our own.”

Halueth’s words got carried away by the wind while the four men stood still at the top of one of the tallest mountains. They dominated all their surroundings, and more than the low oxygen, the view was breathtaking.

As far as the eye could see, there were thousand meters high mountains, some craggy, some flat. Some with sparse, stripped vegetation, some with just rocks. They were all different, and yet something united them in a giant family.

They all had snow, covering them like a mantle and giving them a white plumpness that reflected the sun. Clouds of similar color clung to their flanks or groomed their summits like bridal veils. They were defying the sky with their imposing height, and when the wind stopped for an instant, a deafening silence was the only witness of their timeless battle.

The lower valleys brought a touch of green in this otherwise white and gray scenery, and weaving rivers dug their path around the immobile and magnificent rocky colossus. The four men said nothing for long minutes, immersed in their own thoughts, both charmed and intimidated by what laid below their feet.

“Welcome to the Notitia Peaks.” Halueth finally whispered after some time.