Dex walked for hours without pause, his footsteps steady and measured, like the pendulum of a clock that knows no weariness. Yet despite the distance he had put between himself and the site of his battle with the Shadow Wolf, the terrain seemed reluctant to change. The forest was an infinite green-and-black labyrinth. The same smell of sodden earth mingled with the reek of rotting leaves. The same gnarled trunks that appeared to watch those who passed beneath them. The same strange sounds of invisible creatures growling and shrieking in the far distances-reminding him with every passing second that he occupied the very bottom of the food chain.
His left leg ached sharply, and the muscles of his back protested beneath the weight of a pack that was light to begin with. This noble body, accustomed to nothing more strenuous than walking across silk carpets in the Williams Palace, was screaming for rest.
Dex finally stopped and pressed his exhausted back against the trunk of a colossal tree whose bark was rough as stone. He slid slowly downward until he met the ground, his ragged breathing audible and plain in the forest's unsettling quiet-a quiet that resembled the stillness of a graveyard before its dead stir.
"I cannot continue like this," he told himself in a low voice, wiping cold sweat from his brow with the back of his mud-stained hand. "Blind running in this forest is nothing but a fast and free ticket to the grave. Intelligence alone will not save me if I lack the instrument to act on it."
He had no time for rest-his father's time was draining away-but to move without a true understanding of his own magical and physical capabilities in this lethal world was a different kind of suicide. He needed to take stock, to understand the machine he was now driving.
"All right, Dex..." he whispered to himself, raising both palms before his face and studying them. His fingers were long, smooth, bearing not a single scar from any real combat training. "You are now confined to the body of a young man at Rank E. In the language of this world, Rank E is not a mere academic classification-it is a magical disability."
In the world of the novel, the Mana Core seated in the chest was a sorcerer's second heart. Rank E meant this Core was minute-withered-and the Mana channels, the magical veins that carried energy to the limbs, were narrow and clogged with impurities. His Mana reserves were pitifully small, and any attempt to channel a powerful incantation would simply rupture those veins from the inside and leave him bleeding to death.
"But..." His pale blue eyes sparked with a defiant gleam. "Rank E means scarce energy, yes-but it does not mean stupidity. Weak Mana has a high degree of malleability in shaping, particularly when the wielder possesses the theoretical and structural understanding of how the elements function. I do not need to hurl a meteor from the sky. I only need a needle placed in exactly the right spot."
Dex decided to begin with the more stable of his two elements: Earth. He closed his eyes and sealed his senses against the forest's sounds. He focused his attention entirely on the centre of his chest, where his Mana Core resided. At first, he felt nothing. But with sustained, intense concentration-harnessing his elevated Intellect at Rank C-a faint pulse gradually emerged: a warm, viscous heat, like honey circling slowly in his chest.
"This is the Mana..." he thought with a surge of excitement. "Now-let us direct it."
With an iron will, he began to pump this warm honey from his core, forcing it with great effort through the narrow channels of his right arm. He felt a sharp, prickling pain-as though thousands of tiny needles were threading beneath his skin-clear evidence of how untrained this body truly was. He pressed his right palm flat against the damp black earth beside him.
The instant his Mana made contact with the earth, the world inside his mind changed completely. The absolute darkness behind his closed eyelids dissolved. In its place, a three-dimensional map drawn in vibrations exploded into his awareness.
This was Earth Sense-an advanced perception skill ordinarily beyond the reach of anyone below Rank C. Dex had breached that barrier through sheer intellect and his theoretical mastery of the novel's world. He felt the roots of the colossal tree he leaned against twisting like thick arteries deep in the soil. He felt a blind earthworm carving its path two metres beneath him. And most critically, he detected rhythmic vibrations fifty metres away-the footfalls of a predator weighing roughly a hundred kilograms, moving cautiously, but heading away from him.
"Good God... this is extraordinary," Dex thought, his heart thrumming with the elation of discovery. "The earth is not merely stone and soil-it is an immense neural network, and I am now wired into it. This is my own personal radar."
Having mastered the sensing application, it was time to test the offensive one. He drew his awareness back from the wide perimeter and concentrated his meagre Rank E Mana into a single point in the soil two steps ahead of him. He visualised a precise shape in his mind and worked to impose his will upon the dense matter.
The process was intensely draining. It felt like trying to lift a boulder using a single thread of silk. The black soil gathered and rose-a small mound of earth pushing upward like a fast-growing seedling breaking free of its womb. Under the pressure of his directed Mana, the soil particles fractured and compacted together with tremendous force, solidifying into a sharp, rigid stone spike roughly twenty centimetres in length.
Dex opened his eyes and examined the stone spike. It was small and would appear trivial beside the earthen walls and towering barriers raised by veteran sorcerers in the novel. But to Dex, it was a masterpiece of lethal engineering.
"The first tactical principle," Dex whispered, laying down the foundation of his new fighting philosophy. "Earth at my current rank is not suited for building fortresses, nor for hurling boulders at enemies. But it is perfect for disrupting footing and reshaping the micro-terrain."
Dex smiled with cold precision. He pictured a beast charging toward him at maddening speed-and at the decisive moment, a sharp stone spike like this one rising concealed beneath a carpet of dead leaves, driving through the soft underside of the creature's paw or severing its Achilles tendon. In a fight to the death, a twisted ankle or a cut tendon was equivalent to a bullet through the skull. He had transformed the very ground beneath him into a potential minefield.
But earth alone meant defence and disruption. What of precise, lethal offence? He now had to awaken the other half of his capabilities-the half that was more fluid, more ruthless, and far more deadly in the hands of someone who understood its nature.