Mike’s eyes blinked open. He yawned, looking around to confirm that yes, this time he actually knew where he was and hadn’t been moved mysteriously in his sleep. That particular trauma would take some time to get over.

He put his head back down against the mat that Crosse had laid out for him. He was still in this fantasy world. Each time he drifted off to sleep he felt the vague hope that he would wake up at home in bed. He hadn’t even dreamt of home since coming here. Though he had only gone to sleep properly twice, he wasn’t sure if passing out from blood loss counted.

Mike blinked the blurriness from his eyes and sat up. What time was it? He wondered if the AI would tell him if he asked. “What time is it?” he asked the air. Nothing happened.

He snorted, was a long shot anyway. Mike heard a rustling from the other side of the room and saw Crosse sitting up in his bed. He looked at Mike with more alertness than anyone should have at this time of the morning. “Were you talking to your weird spirit thing? Does it usually give you the time?” he asked, looking curious.

Mike sighed, though it turned into a yawn, which made him conscious of his morning breath. Before he could ask what the people here did to deal with that something smacked against his chest. He looked down and saw a pale green fruit.

“Eat that,” Cross said, an almost Identical fruit in his hand as he bit down into it, revealing an interior that reminded Mike of an apple, but light blue.

Mike did as told, biting into the fruit. A familiar flavour filled his mouth and his eyes widened as he chewed and swallowed the fruit. “Mint!” he said and took another bite, and it really did taste like mint, though it had a very similar texture to an apple.

Crosse looked at him funny but didn’t speak up as he took another bite of his fruit. Mike thought about the AI and time as he ate the fruit. He wondered if he could make an Illusory clock, he hadn’t had much chance to fiddle with his spells yet, but he would love to just sit and experiment with minor illusion to see if it was possible.

So he would. Glancing at Crosse he willed the AI to open his Skills window.

He moved the Checkmark from Acting into Arcane Logic. It was becoming apparent that he was already decently proficient in acting, it seemed that being a Novice meant more than just having a higher number. He had only gained a single level in acting while he had it equipped for almost as long as language, which he had yet to unequip.

It seemed that unless he was going to actively try and practice acting or was going to try and pull off a lie that was beyond his skill, he wouldn’t be getting pointers from the Skill.

With Arcane Logic now equipped, Mike took a second to feel the mana around him. He could feel the Light mana that the tree still emanated, and the Dark mana in the pouch of gems.

Before he could actually start doing any Magic though, there was a knocking from the front of the room. He lifted his head and looked to Crosse, willing the Skill window to vanish, not wanting whoever was here to see it.

Crosse stood from his bed where he had been eating his minty-apple-thing and went to the curtain of metal leaves, he brushed them aside to reveal a hunter on the other side. It was a man similar in height and colouring to Crosse and carrying his bow in one hand.

“Crosse,” the man greeted with a nod.

“Ranlyn,” Crosse returned, nodding back. “What brings you here so early?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Gonal has reported the death of his son to the hunter elders. They would like to talk with you today at noon to clear up the story, as Gonal obviously wasn’t there to see any of it, he says that you told him that it was your fault that the boy died. The elders would like clarification,” This new hunter, Ranlyn, explained.

Crosse nodded, “I will see them at noon then.”

Ranlyn nodded in recognition one last time, then turned and left.

Crosse sighed deeply, looking into the distance, then he tapped the wall beside the door and Mike saw a line of Light Magic trail from the spot and reach the ceiling. The ceiling started to glow a soft white, illuminating the room evenly.

Mike had seen Crosse turn the lights out last night after they had gone to one of the trees by the river to clean up and eaten some food that was delivered to Crosse's quarters. He had been too tired to inspect it then, and before he could do so now, Crosse turned and spoke to him.

“Get dressed, Lady Ina was right that it would be a waste to give you a hunter’s bow if you have no idea how to use one. We are going to the practice yard to teach you how to handle a bow. You told me that this Spirit of yours helps you learn quickly? Time to show that off.”

***

The practice yard, it turned out, was right above Crosse’s quarters. After they had gotten dressed, Crosse needing to lend Mike some pants while his were being mended. They had made their way up the set of stairs on Crosse’s level of the hunters' barracks.

These stairs were longer than the previous sets and wound all the way around the tree, up into its branches. At the peak of the tree, there was a wide circular platform. Branches extending out in all directions around its edge, except one.

There was equipment up here, bows, arrows, staves and other training equipment. Crosse lead Mike to the edge of the platform that didn’t have branches extending out from it. Mike looked out in awe at the view.

The platform faced the forest, not the village. It looked out into the canopy of the nearby trees, cleared only slightly by the lack of the branches of this tree extending out in this direction. The huge branches were littered with the golden leaves of the gild leaf trees, that glittered in the light of the morning sun.

Grown out from those branches at intervals were targets. They were all over, and each of them, from the nearest, was riddled with arrows. From the nearest, less than five metres away, to the furthest, which had to be almost 200 metres away.

Crosse went to the side of the platform, leaving Mike to gape. He came back with a longbow. Mike looked at it, not a hunter’s bow, it didn’t have that telltale grain pattern curved with the bow, as if they had been grown into their shape. No, this one had been carved and sanded.

Mike took the bow, it was already strung and Mike put two fingers on the string, wanting to test its draw weight, which he suspected would be rather high.

Before he could Crosse thwacked the side of his wrist with his bow.

Mike yelped and pulled back his hand.

“If I ever see you try and dry fire any of the bows up here, you’ll get a lot worse than that,” Crosse said, giving Mike a stern look.

Mike nodded, feeling sheepish.

Crosse looked out at the range, and Mike followed his gaze. “Any moment now,” Crosse said, apparently waiting for something.

Then Mike felt something, he spun, facing towards Ina’s trees, eyes widening.

Mike could feel Light mana from there, it wasn’t even in his attunement range, but there was so much of it that it was creating waves of Light mana in the Aether. As Mike looked that way he saw that Ina’s tree was surrounded by a nimbus of dense Light mana.

When she had been in his Attunement sense yesterday Mike had thought of her as a beacon of Light mana, but now he knew he was wrong. The amount of mana that Ina controlled wasn’t just confined to her body, her whole tree was a giant battery, and Mike could see the bridge that Ina had retracted behind them yesterday now growing back out and connecting to the rest of the village.

The Light mana around the tree sunk into it as the branches connected and ran down it. Mike watched in awe as the Light mana spread to the next tree in a wave and across to the trees connected to it by the bridges, and then again to the trees connected to them.

The wave of Light mana reached their tree and Mike seized some of the thick light mana from the Aether. He didn’t channel it into a spell, he just controlled the brilliant white nimbus of mana under his control and pressed it against the wood of the tree at his feet, just in time for the wave of Light mana that was Ina’s spell to reach them.

Mike felt the spell, It was a manipulation of Light that was made to mimic the way that plants grew in sunlight, it wasn’t the same kind of academic and scientific understanding that he usually got when using Light Magic. He could feel the way that the spell spread through the living wood, making it move and change. Intricately growing in the ways that Ina desired it to.

He spun as the wave of Magic moved past him and he lost the feeling of it. He felt the sensation of a notification from his arm but didn’t check it immediately. He watched the wave of Light Magic continue out and along the branches to the sides of the tree, it interestingly didn’t cover the leaves.

As it reached the targets Mike saw them glow brightly, more so than branches. The wooden arrows that filled the targets sank into them, leaving them as smooth round discs, their surfaces textured by the concentric ring pattern of a tree stump.

Mike gaped through all of this. His concept of Ina’s power kept getting blown away. If Mike was correct she could have easily used that very same spell to kill everyone in the village, making the light mana shape the wood into deadly stakes.

She used this amount of Magic daily just to upkeep the lives of the villagers that surrounded her. Was this even a drain on her reserves of mana? Before he could go on a tangent as to exactly how much mana Ina could control, Mike willed the AI to show him the notification.

Congratulations you have learned the spell:

Crosse watched Mike as all of this happened. “I assume that was much more interesting to you than it was to the rest of us?” he asked as Mike read over the description of his new spell.

Mike just looked at him, then nodded his head once.