It had been three days since Roland had arrived in the forest and he had yet to return to the town. Instead of doing that he remained in the forest learning magic. Compared to three days ago he now understood his magic a lot better.

First, there was what he dubbed ‘pure magic’. It was when you controlled your magic in its purest form. Unlike when he just got it he was now able to control a tiny bit of magic power outside of his body, as long as it was connected to the magic power in his body that was.

The second and most important discoveries had to do with the ‘web’ inside of his head. At this point he had beaten about a dozen magic nodes, making them his own. He decided to call this process the awakening of magic nodes.

He had experimented quite a bit with the nodes themselves and this caused him to find out about two major discoveries. The first discovery was that it was possible to connect the nodes to himself. He could absorb some of the magic power within the nodes and they would refill again over time. This discovery allowed him to practice magic more and for longer as he had a steady supply coming in.

Just yesterday he had made a second truly major discovery to do with the web. When he thought back to the tables in the cave where he awakened his web he remembered the tables seemed to be depicting a bunch of dots being connected with a line. Even though parts were ruined it was clear it should be possible to connect more than two nodes.

Two nodes barely did anything, other than the node that gave a blue light he had three other examples. One of them caused an extremely tiny breeze to come out of his mouth, another caused his finger to be pricked as if it was done by a needle, and the final one he tried caused his palm to get slightly warm.

So he started attempting to connect three nodes. At first, he went at it in the wrong way, trying to connect two nodes first and then continue the line. This didn’t work at all as when the two nodes were connected it felt like a finished product. With some of them such as the one where he emitted light, he could only feed it magic energy to keep the light going, when he stopped doing so the light went out. Some other ones, such as the prick of his finger, disconnected as soon as the spell had been cast.

It took a good while before he finally knew what to do. Instead of moving from the silver node and heading for a different one, he had to make them come toward each other. When Roland reached out to two nodes at the same time these would become a beginning point and an endpoint. If one of these connected to a different node no spell would be cast. It was only when they reached each other a spell would be cast.

The first success was a shocker, he connected three nodes and as soon as he did an odd effect took place. Roland felt as if his entire body started to breathe, his pores opened and took in as much oxygen as they could, it felt blissful. He laid down on the ground for about five minutes casting this spell before he ran out of magic power.

“Alright, magic is officially the best drug.”

After saying this he took a minute to calm himself down, then an hour later when a decent bit of his magic power had returned he tried casting a different spell. The casting of a new spell was hard very hard, it felt as if you were going through a maze blindfolded as you had to have your magic power feel the way between two nodes. But this also meant that as you cast it a few times you would become a lot faster at doing so, after all, you now knew the way to go.

The second spell Roland cast was a lot less fun. As soon as he managed to connect the three nodes he opened his eyes, he felt as if the spell was awaiting his command. He pointed toward a nearby bush as he attempted guiding his magic power toward it, it took a few minutes for him to find out how to send out his spell but when he did the effect was a little scary. A horizontal purple line came out of the finger he used to point, in just a few milliseconds of traveling the spell expanded to become a one-meter long line. It sped toward the bush and a second later a bunch of cracking noises could be heard. Half of the branches of the bush had been penetrated, falling to the ground.

Roland swallowed nervously as he thought about what that would do to the human body. Nonetheless, he immediately cast it again, and then again. After casting the spell eight times he ran out of magic power. The very first time he cast the spell it took nearly an hour yet the eighth time it only took five seconds. The difference in time between the first and second cast, in particular, was extremely big.

As a way to clear his mind, Roland decided to finally head toward the town he was close to. He could use a shower and even though it wasn’t completely necessary yet, it would be a good thing to refill his food and water supplies.

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Two hours later in a hotel room in La Paz, the northern capital of Bolivia.

“God damnit, where the hell did this fucker go!”

The asian lady cursed as she took off her black wig revealing her blonde hair. She was extremely pissed off, she was told to make this quick as there was someplace she had to be. But now she had been on the hunt for four days and the trail seemed to have gotten cold. 

She reached into her mouth before pulling out a small purple crystal. She carefully affixed this crystal to a metal device before her. It looked rather odd, almost like a movie trip. The closest comparison to make would be to a virtual reality helmet, with some seemingly random spikes coming out of the top of it in all sorts of colors. The small crystal was put in a crevice that put it perfectly. She then stood back and waited, but five minutes passed without any change signifying another fail.

Just as she put the crystal back into her mouth a voice came from her earpiece.

“Target has been located at Caztar, a small town a few hours from your current location. Please head to the location with extreme haste.”

The asian lady looked stumped for a moment after which she quickly stored all of her equipment and put her wig back on.

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Meanwhile, in Caztar, Roland walked through the street about to head back to the forest. Originally he had just planned to take a shower, make sure his disguise was alright, get some supplies, and go back but he ended up staying a bit longer.

He noticed there were no cameras anywhere in the town so he went to the clothing store to pick up some more clothes that people generally wore here, then he ended up deciding to have a meal at the town’s only restaurant.

He knew he had to be careful but since he was in a small town without cameras this bit shouldn’t hurt. Originally he was supposed to just stay in a hotel anyways but he decided to be more careful and sleep in the woods. Now after having spent a few hours in the town, he headed back to the woods.

Little did he know those two hours were enough for things to become a lot harder for him.