A Chance Encounter

Eventually, it was decided that we would learn exactly how to become adventurers in the nearest town, as it was obvious neither of us knew exactly how to become an adventurer.

Surge definitely knew more, as apparently she has always been infatuated by the idea of them, but both of us had no clue about the finer details.

Continuing our trek through the wilderness began to fall into a nice rhythm.

Well, nice isn't the optimal word but it was manageable.

Having Surge search for monsters or animals is useful, and once we have them locked on, it was as simple as taking them out.

That being said, it was very useful as training and practice for my magic. I may lose some prey at times, but I've been able to try out a ton of funky ideas.

Something I've been able to discover is that casting magic can be very dynamic as long as I'm fine spending a bit more mana.

Earth and Wind magic are the easiest to use when it comes to what I'm gonna call Ranged Casting.

Ranged casting is pretty simple as a concept, instead of summoning and conjuring magic from your body, you conjure it somewhere else.

The easiest way to do it is via placing my palms on the ground and using Earth magic. I didn't even realize that I had done these things before until I remembered the ramps and such I made with Earth magic.

Aside from the obvious uses of creating spikes, ramps, etc., this could also prove useful to trap people or affect the field of combat in some way.

Wind magic also seems to come to me very easily, and I'm sure that's because it's a similar concept as what I've been doing with Earth magic.

My main forms of attack with wind magic are just very hard gusts of wind or variations on what I've learned from the Blowback spell. I've tried for about a month or two to conjure something akin to wind blades or spikes but they always devolve into just faster and faster orbs of air.

On the flip side, my newest and most potent wind spell known as Wind Pellet is coming along swimmingly.

Jokes aside, whilst Wind and Earth magic are coming relatively easily, casting water or ice magic at a range have been a struggle, and I've hit basically an impassable wall with fire magic.

Earth and Wind magic can be cast at just about any range as long as I dump enough mana into it, whilst water magic seems to be limited to at this point to just over ten meters.

That is to say, that's the limit to which I can summon it away from myself. The actual functional range of my magic is much larger since the speed and such of my magic can be increased to an insane degree.

Aside from ranged casting, I've also been working on Empowered casting, which is another thing I've seemed to do with my Ice magic. By funneling more and more mana into a spell, I can choose to dedicate that mana to make it fly faster, become larger, become smaller or more compressed, and even add effects like making the projectile I fire rotate.

Combined magic is the last thing I've been experimenting with, such as the heated wind, but I'm sure I'll discover more as I keep training.

Magic aside, today marks the fourth month of our journey. We're moving slower than we originally thought, but now we're no farther than a week out from the nearest town.

Incidentally, we've finally come across a road! Apparently from now on our travels are going to be a lot smoother.

We were able to cross into and out of the Demon Range with minimal issues, we ran into no tribes or societies of other demonoids or Tiamat's, which is weird, but also nice in a way. The only things we ran into were monsters.

There were groups and families of bears like monsters, boar monsters, more than our average amount of obsidian cerva, and even a few monsters that I can't describe as anything except lizard versions of those same listed monsters.

Truly a weird experience, having a three-meter tall lizard thing with jet black deer antlers running at you. Yet, the strategy of 'hit it really hard till it dies' hasn't failed yet.

Most things go down in an ice spear or two, it a rock bullet, or a few wind pellets, or a fire lance, etc. The toughest creatures are definitely what I'm coining as Scaled Cerva, the lizard monster.

They took nearly four spells each to take down, which doesn't sound that impressive, but normal obsidian cerva go down in one shot at this point.

Surge seems to have just accepted the fact that I can cast without chanting as well as my insane mana pool, which is good for our journey, but I need to think of an explanation for when she asks about it.

I can't just admit that I've been training magic since I was two, let alone that I'm constantly focusing on cycling more and more mana every day instead of focusing on getting us into a town faster.

Even if I've yet to use even fifty percent of my mana pool in a day, as there's a limit to how much healing mana I can churn through my bodies network at this point, I think it's probably still smart to continue to train until I can tell that the effects have become diminished.

"Travelling on this road is already making me feel better, just imagine when we can actually rest for a night on a real bed." Surge says, her third time trying to make small talk.

It's not that I don't like Surge or don't want to talk to her, I've just never been good at maintaining a conversation.

It's what ended my last relationship, I think.

"I know, taking a real bath and laying in a real bed will be so nice, assuming we make enough for an inn on our first day as adventurers," I say, dodging a slap in the back of the head from Surge.

"Don't say that! We'll make plenty of money since you're plenty strong! I'm sure a full day's worth of work will get us a nice warm bed." Surge says, yet before she can continue her tirade, a loud scream of terror stops her dead in her speech.

Surge looks down at me, and wordlessly we begin to run westward, in the direction of the scream.

Something about that yelling sounded, familiar.