Chapter 43: Living off the Land

It's been a week since they had come to the forest. And Van had improved far more than he was expecting to. It probably helped that he didn’t have so many eyes on him as he did in the castle, not to mention the fact that in a forest as dangerous as this, not doing the best he could probably wasn’t going to cut it.

Walking over to the circle he drew, he gently sat down crossed-legged as he hummed a half-remembered tune from one of his past lives. Bringing out a few notable items from his soul realm, he then began the process of creating a shade to serve him.

“Let's see… ash from an ash tree. Wolf fangs. A burnt wolf pelt. A rank one mana core. A vial of my blood to give it some extra oomph. And maybe some fire oak to give it some fire-like properties? Ya… I’ll just throw that in as well…” Van then gently levitated the ingredients into the center of the magic circle and pondered what else to throw in. with a final thought he threw in a small pebble of iron he found near a river stream on one of his excursions out on the forest.

Slowly he closed his eyes and concentrated on what he wanted, gathering the mana from the surroundings as well as from his mana pool and core. Slowly, his familiar Azra woke up from her slumber deep in his soul realm and sleepily added some of her own mana and affinity into the stream of energy coalescing in the center of the circle. With a few beads of sweat and a bit of wrangling due to lack of experience. Van was able to create what he desired.

In the center of the circle formed a blackened wolf with eyes like fire and claws and teeth as hard and sharp as iron. A strange shadowy and smoky visage that looked unnatural and deadly. It looked to its creator without a thought of its own and waited for its orders.

With a thought, Van formed a link with his shade and gave it a simple order. And with that, the shadow wolf slunk into the darkness and entered Van’s shadow to wait for further orders. With a sigh of relief, Van slunk back and relaxed a little. Glad that his first time trying to do a summon himself worked out. “Yes… those combinations of materials seem to be good… I’ll jot down the ingredients and see if I can’t make more later.”

Just then, Lyn came by to give him a hug, followed by her posse of zappers that she was able to win over a few days earlier. Just like Van, Lyn had been also working on becoming stronger, zipping about the forest and challenging small lizards and carnivorous plants half her size, and bringing them back as trophies to show off with pride.

Her latest work was when she found a small group of zappers who had recently lost their colony and queen and were being attacked by a rival colony of bees. Lyn came in to save the day and fend off the bees. The zappers then made her their new leader and worshiped her wherever she went. Which of course got to her head…

Now Lyn was challenging ants and bees wherever she found them and was slowly building up a small cult following. Now even a few of those ants and bees were following her around, doing whatever she said.

“Look! Look! Master! I did good! I did good!” Lyn said in her cutesy voice filled with joy. Showing off her new batch of followers, now including a few of those bees and ants and even a few butterflies. Showing them off like prizes, expecting to be praised.

Van turned around with a wry smile. While he wasn’t against her gaining a small following or for that matter joining in on the training and challenging herself. There should be a limit as to how far she should take things. He really didn’t want to have a small army of insects follow him around wherever he went. Even if he could probably store them all within his soul realm.

“Good job Lyn. I’m very proud of you,” Van said with a smile.

Lyn beamed up at him. Her smile taking her entire face, her chest puffing out in pride at the acknowledgment of her master. With a turn, she faced her growing army and with a wave of her hand, they all took formation. The ants on the ground lined up and the bees and zappers taking V-shaped formations. “Look! Look! Do you see! Do you see!”

Van’s eye widened a little at the display. “That… IS impressive...” he couldn’t help but say. “Not only is she conquering the nearby hives and colonies. But she is actually teaching them military formations. For a girl who doesn’t always watch where she is going and smacks into trees or for that matter likes to do silly dances alongside a number of other stupid things. This is strangely intelligent of her. Which begs the question of if she’s smart, or dumb?”

Either way, Van was proud of his fairy, and told her so, which made her squeal in delight and zip away, promising to bring back more. Like a dog bringing back a stick, or a cat bringing back a dead mouse. He couldn’t help but think this when she and her little army moved back into the forest and out of view. Searching for new victims… and followers…

Van chuckled as she left and got up to leave, only to turn and realize another pile of offerings of fruits, nuts, and herbs was placed nearby him. No doubt by the order of Lyn, instructing her followers to give tribute to her great and powerful master. With some amusement he walked around the pile, thinking of making a designated place for all these offerings since it seemed that she wasn’t going to stop, no matter how many times he tried to tell her. “Well… it's not all bad… I got some of the ingredients that I need for my ritual thanks to her. Not to mention we don’t always have to hunt for food, so me and my dad can just focus on training. I just hope this is not taken out of what she and her followers need to survive.”

He bent down to take a few of the flowers and herbs, seeing which ones looked the most alive and sending it in his soul realm where he will plant them on the outer, and greener, layer of his island. It was never his intention to create a garden there. But he had a feeling Lyn would be pretty sad if she couldn’t bring her friends along. So he might as well make one so that they had someplace to live inside him.

With that done Van walked over to the fire where his father waited. He was stirring a pot of stew for today's lunch and the smells were already enticing as it was. Without much thought, Van used some of the herbs that were offered him from the pile he took from and threw them into the pot to add to the flavor, and sat down on one of the logs near his father.

“More offerings?” his father asked, amused.

“I think at this point I should just make a designated place so that we don’t keep tripping over all the piles she keeps leaving all over the place.” Van joked though he was somewhat serious.

Alv chuckled. “Must be nice to be so loved. I even heard her start making seminars where she talks about how great you are to her large group of friends. How they will conquer the forest and bring a new world order for insect and fairy kind. How the great and almighty master will uplift them to greater and more powerful heights and-” at that point he couldn’t continue anymore and started laughing, especially after Van’s facing continued to grow red from embarrassment.

“Ahh… great… that’s just great…” Van said, feeling like he was having a headache come on. “I’m going to have to have another talk with her.” he said, pinching the upper part of his nose between his fingers and rubbing it.

“Let's move on… I actually have a question for you.” Van said, trying to change the subject but also genuinely wanting to ask his father something that had been on his mind for a while.

With the last wheezes of laughter, Alv nodded. “S-sure, what did you want to ask?”

“Well… I've been wondering why I have been having such a hard time running when I’m using my aura? When I launch myself from tree to tree, like you have been teaching me, I can go pretty fast. But the second I try running in a straight line or zig-zag or whatever. I have a hard time going as fast as when I would launch myself in a straight line from a tree.”

“Well, the answer should be obvious right? When nothing is in your way and you don’t have to think about where your feet should go when you're flying through the air from or wherever you launch yourself from except for where you're planning to land. You go pretty fast because the only thing to resist your movement is the air around you. But when you are trying to run, you have to constantly keep in mind where to place your feet. Not to mention, unlike jumping straight up, or doing the same motion when jumping at an angle from a tree and launching off it in a straight line. Running on the ground requires a more complicated motion of moving your feet in a way that will move you forward.

“As you know, we grow from crawling to walking, then running. We don’t really think about all the motions we are actually making with our legs, and how much of our brain and body we actually put just to take a single step. We become so used to it, we simply forget that there's simply more to it than that. Such as the strength and grip we have with the ground, the balance of our body as it moves, the muscles that must work in just the right way to make us move from one place to another, the brains constant use of whatever information it can get from what your eyes can see, to what you can hear and even feel through your skin.”

“Have you ever tried to walk with your eyes closed for more than ten seconds? It's not an easy feat. your body will feel a small sense of vertigo, and you will constantly want to open your eyes to see where you're going. When you are trying to use aura to speed up your movement, your body’s trying to catch up to all those small and big changes as fast as it can. When you are trying to run with aura, the biggest thing holding you back is your own fear that you may trip on something at high speed. So you don’t go as fast as you want to, despite knowing that you probably could. Your own sense of self-preservation is telling not to, because if you did trip at high speeds, you can break a nose, smash in your face, or at the worst, snap your neck with a fall.” Alv finished seriously.

“I… see… so how do I avoid all those dangers and still move fast?” Van asked

“Through trial and error of course!” Alv said somewhat mischievously. “Just like when a baby is learning how to walk.” he chuckled. “But, no, seriously. It's through trial and error. As well as a small dose of confidence.”

Van gave his dad a look that said he didn’t believe him, and a small glare on top of that showing his unhappiness at not receiving a real answer.

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Alv said, making a calming motion with his hands. “But I’m not lying. You're just forgetting what the other point of using aura is.”

This time Van looked a little confused and tilted his head in a silent question.

“You become faster and stronger when you use your aura right? And it’s not like you have never taken a few hits when you had your aura on before when we trained at the castle. But did those wounds hurt as much when you had your aura on as opposed to when you didn’t have it on? Come on Van, you should already know the answer to that, right?”

Van hesitated. While it was true he knew that he took less damage when he had his aura on than when he had it off. Would it really protect him from when he smashed into a tree at high speeds? He asked this of his father.

“Of course it can, whenever you're afraid that you might crash, just put all your aura into defending yourself. You might lose a chunk of your aura pool from the crash, but at least you would be fine, right?” Alv said.

“Okayy… but what about just moving in general?” Van asked.

“Like I said, trial and error, it's like learning how to walk again. And that is why we are here, to teach you how to walk. And it's not like you have to learn everything from scratch. I have some training exercises and movement techniques that I'm going to teach you so that you can become a pro in no time.” Alv said with a confident smile. “Would you like to go over them?”

“Yes, please show how I can properly run with aura,” Van said excitedly at the thought that one of the issues he had been having might be solved soon. Unfortunately for him, his stomach growled and he looked sheepishly away as if father looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Perhaps after lunch,” Alv said, amused.

“Ya… and let's make sure to leave some for Lyn too,” Van said

“Of course,” Alv said with a smile and started handing out the bowls for the stew.

The two eat silently, enjoying the meal that was made with the bounty of the forest. The taste and the flavors that warmed their bodies, and the soothing atmosphere that eased their worries.

Van thought back to when he first arrived here, the first few days were pretty bad for him, so used to a more comfy and controlled life. With three meals a day, a nice comfy bed at night with someone to warm it. No canyoning bugs or sudden changes in weather.

But he had to admit. It was slowly growing on him, somehow… it was soothing to the soul, this feeling of absolute freedom. And no more was that seen than when Van looked at his father. Who was like a completely different person. He smiled more than he had ever seen his father smile before. Who seemed to have a spring in his step and a youthful energy to him.

Not that all the changes he saw in his father were positive. Oddly enough, Van would sometimes see his father all of a sudden jerk his head left and right, all tense-like before relaxing and shaking his head. Once, he even caught his father bolting up in the middle of the night to look deep into the forest before taking a deep breath and letting it go, and going back to sleep.

Van usually chalked this up to his father being able to sense dangers that he just couldn’t yet. But it also seemed that not all of those dangers were real.

But Van just didn’t have the courage to ask. He didn’t want to ruin whatever joy his father seemed to be having right now.

“What are you thinking about?” Alv suddenly asked out of nowhere, jerking Van out of his thoughts.

“Huh!? Oh… nothing…” Van replied, not even realizing that he was staring off into space and went back to finishing the leftovers in his bowl before asking for more.

A little concerned, Alv decided to keep those concerns to himself, knowing his son the way he did. He trusted him enough that if Van was really troubled by something, he would say so.

After finishing their meal, the two decided to talk for a bit as their stomachs digest their meals. Making sure to leave a small bowl of stew for Lyn to come back to. While the small fairy could live off mana alone. She was always happy to eat delicious things, and always made a big show of how thankful she was for whatever she received.

With that done the two went out into the forest to train, talking all the while about what this and that. Van going so far as to ask when he will hunt his first monster. And Alv telling him when he was ready. Sharing a few jokes, they disappeared into the forest.