I now had a new friend! I foraged for any nuts, but I only found some frost berries.

  Right now, I had a lot of time to myself, so I decided to go back home and build my friend a new home.

  I couldn’t make snow blocks like Glynn could, but I made a pile of snow, compressed it, and dug out the center to make a small igloo. I then used my new daggers to draw lines, so it looked like it was made from small blocks.

  It was much easier said than done, I don’t know how, but I wasted around three hours making this bad boy. Maybe I shouldn’t have carved seven tiny ice flowers at the entrance, but I spent my time weirdly. During this time neither Aveeno, nor Glynn visited me.

  I have always been a weird child; I have such a low attention span and can never dwell on a single topic for too long, but sometimes I have the patience to make tiny things.

  Okay, now that I finished with the tiny igloo and ran out of patience, I decided to play a little game with my new pal.

  Hmm, I should give my little buddy a name, let’s just call him George.

  I walked into the forest for a while before setting George ‘free’ and waited around twenty minutes before following his tracks.

  It’s like tag except George couldn’t run away forever.

  Following his tracks, sometimes I met a wild boar or wolf, since I didn’t bring my weapons, I took detours.

  After ten minutes of following his tracks, backtracking, and avoiding wild animals, the tracks became scarcer, eventually disappearing.

  Welp, there goes seven years of training. Luckily, I was cheating. I slowly focused on my mental string and pulled.

  It tugged upwards, and up the tree I went until George saw me and jumped to another tree, I climbed a bit higher before leaping onto a large branch and chasing George.

  Oh, how curious George was. Attempting with all his might to lose me, unfortunately for him I was cheating and had wall hacks.

  This reminds me of when I played tag with my dad, I always thought he was cheating somehow because every time I saw him, he ducked behind a tree and disappeared.

  Then he magically appeared behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, even though I’m the one who is it and supposed to tag him. As far as I knew, he wasn’t awakened.

  Bonk

  I hit my head on a branch.

  This also reminded me of the times when my dad constantly told me to stop daydreaming when we were playing tag.

  I was much higher up than I thought, earlier the trees I was on were about one and a half stories tall but now I was around five stories up.

  Good thing I was just about to land in a pile of soft snow—

  Oof

  I kept going down after crashing into the snow since there was a hole underneath.

  I think I fell in an old pit trap.

  Yep, there’s a skeleton here, no spike pit though. I was very far down, about three stories tall, the walls were completely smooth and about three meters in diameter.

  Instead of panicking like any sane person would do when they fell victim to a trap, I started looting the skeleton.

  He wore rags but sometime in the past they would have looked expensive, I think it was made of silk.

  In his bag… oh it’s a space bag, this guy was rich rich.

  Man, whoever had reset the trap without grabbing the loot lost out on a lot.

  Anyways in his bag was a couple of rotten food, a few gold coins (he was VERY rich), a few dull or broken swords, many broken magical tools (did I mention he was rich) and one chipped rock.

  Tossing the rotten food, weapons, and rock away, I equipped his bag and started to figure a way out.

  I first used the guy’s bone and weapons to see if I could pierce the wall, no such luck, the dirt was harder than bone or iron. I was only playing tag, so I didn’t bring any of the ice weapons Glynn gifted me.

  And that was about all my ideas, it was quite lonely down here, so I summoned George.

  As if God himself bestow me with a gift, George gracefully fell into my arms.

  He seemed very happy to be here, he ran from end to end, jumping up a lot, attempting to claw me, and even climbing me before jumping off.

  After a while George calmed down and gave up, curling beside the rock, I petted him then put both in the bag, at least I tried to, George couldn’t go in for some reason, so I put him on my lap and combed his fur.

  Some of the sparkles stuck on my hands.

  It was already the afternoon; I could tell from the angle of the light coming into the hole.

  …

  I looked at the sparkles and the sparkly George and had an idea; I was going to become a squirrel.

  Just like how I made the purple powder stuck to George and George could climb trees easily, perhaps I could do the same thing with my hand to the wall.

  I placed George on my head and stretched my fingers.

  My fingers glowed purple before leaving an afterglow on the wall, now, whenever I put my hand on it, it now stuck. But just the tip of my fingers weren’t going to pull me up solely, I also tried the same with my feet.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mixed results, the shoe stuck to my feet and the attraction didn’t go through. Going to figure out a way to make that convenient, so I took them off and placed them in my bag. Now when I put them against the wall it stuck.

  However, the wall was very smooth, and I often lost my footing.

  After around thirty minutes of defying gravity, I finally got out of the hole.

  At this point, there was a whole line faintly glowing purple.

  After I put my shoes on, I went ahead and sensed the string from the pile of purple dust at home and slightly plucked it, roughly north-east.

  When I returned home, I had a sense of déjà vu, like there was an impatient Aveeno and a Glynn.

  “Guys, look at the loot I found, I found it on a rich skeleton.”

  Aveeno didn’t look impressed when I showed her my worn-out bag, but her expression changed when I put my entire arm into the bag, she had sparkles in her eyes.

  “You found a space bag? Woah, those are so rare, can I have it?”

  “Nope, finders’ keepers.”

  Glynn was curious and simply asked me if I could show all of my spoils.

  I held my bag upside down and it was only now I got a good look. Ten copper coins, seven silver, three gold, four broken magic tools, a couple of dull crystals, and one chipped rock.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll give you good news if you can give me that rock.”

  I agreed, although it was chipped, it was smooth and looked perfect for rock skipping but all the lakes and ponds I found were frozen over.

  Glynn smiled, “I finally convinced tribe leader to let me teach Aveeno, and by extension, you.”

  “Teach? Teach us magic?” I said excitedly.

  While I was distracted, Aveeno stole George. “Yeah, we’ve been here for a while waiting for you, but you didn’t stay put.”

  “Hey, give George back.”

  Aveeno skipped into the open space a bit before turning and putting him on her head. “You have your space bag, I have George. I’ll trade you if you want.”

  “No thanks, I’ll get him back later.”

  “Before we get started,” Glynn waved his hands, removing most of the snow from the sky and land and putting it into a large pile beside him. “You and Aveeno should spar while I set up the formation.”

  Aveeno tossed me an icicle before grabbing some snow and making another one.

  “Don’t worry, he means he can set it up in a couple of seconds.” She smiled.

  “You’re underestimating me, I’m better than most people my age.”

  “We’ll see about that…” she twirled her icicle before accelerating towards me.

  I reversed my grip on my icicle before meeting her blade head on.

  Aqua blue sparks flew as we clashed a few times before she immediately disarmed me and rapidly poked me to the ground.

  “I yield.”

  She poked me one last time for good measure.

  “You are barely passable.”

  While her guard was relaxed, I launched a sneak attack.

  “TAKE THIS.”

  She quickly got into a position to defend herself while George flew from her head and into my hands.

  “Hey, give him back!”

  “I’ll trade you, admit you lost the first round and I’ll give him back.”

  Without hesitation she accepted, “Deal.”

  She then disappeared from my sight. Before I could even blink, she was already knocked me down, pointing an icicle at me while holding George.

  “I give up, but I think we had a tie, right?” She mischievously smiled at me.

  “Uh, yeah, a tie.”

  She happily placed George on her head before skipping to Glynn.

  I think my battle with Aveeno lasted less than ten seconds and during this time Glynn set up a formation on the ground a portion of the snow was in the middle of the formation.

  I voiced my concern if he was going to summon the devil.

  “Of course not, all this does is that it injects excess amounts of mana into the air that coats the mana around, so you can visually see mana being used, of course since I’m injecting ice mana, anything that is ice would be empowered while other types would be suppressed, but regardless, it should not change much. Now go sit down.”

  Aveeno was already sitting on a circle and Glynn urged me to go sit across from her, so I relented and entered the sacrificial circle.

  “I will provide most of the mana for this formation but you two need to inject some mana into the mini stars beside you.”

  Glynn placed his hands onto the formation and started to inject mana, his veins on his forearms bulged and glowed light blue, Aveeno did the same, but her veins didn’t bulge, I then placed my hands on the stars and injected mana, my fingertips glowing purple.

  After a few minutes, the air, snow, grass, and ground around the formation was dyed light blue while Glynn approached the center.

  “Now watch closely, I’m going to show you how to spread your mana in the environment and manipulate it from afar instead of physical contact.”

  He faced his palms towards the snow.

  “There are three ways to release mana, the first way is to release mana haphazardly, most fire mages do this to release a burst of power although the control is very short and expends the mana quickly. What I will be showing you is the second way, to concentrate mana so you have greater influence over its actions and also last a lot longer.”

  Soon drops of pure blue liquid formed on his fingertips before gathering and falling.

  Like a rain drop, it fell quickly before rapidly expanding and coating the snow, most of it was dyed blue.

  “Mana takes many forms, for the case of ice, it is usually a liquid like water.”

  The other drops flew away into the fields, the second they left the formation, they disappeared. Soon some surrounding snow started to move and come into the formation, once they did, they started to glow blue.

  His veins stopped glowing before he raised his hand.

  A large ball of snow rose above his palm, before shifting and compressing into a smooth sphere.

  “When you exert your influence, you have rudimentary control over what you possessed. But”

  He then made a few motions with his fingers. Like a pulse, a wave of mana traveled and hit the snow, making it follow and form into a rectangular block before compressing once more.

  “You need to send waves of mana to give instructions, the closer your construct is to you, the more control and the faster you can shift it.”

  He shook his hand and snow fell from the block, revealing a long ice katana.

  “Give it a try, first step, condense your mana on your fingertips.”

  Following his instructions, me and Aveeno’s veins glowed before forming mana.

  Mine wasn’t a liquid, it was more of an aura, like a candlelight’s glow.

  Aveeno formed crude blotches of mana on her fingertips, they looked like filled water balloons ready to burst.

  She shook her fingers over the snow before a few drops detached and stuck on the snow, at most she could control four batches of snowballs.

  For me, I had troubles, my aura didn’t detach from my hands, it only moved when I scraped it against the snow or grass.

  Glynn couldn’t help me much because gravity mana is not a common topic, so he left me to my devices while he just mainly focused on guiding Aveeno.

  An hour passed by, during this time I continued to create gravity mana, I discovered that whenever snow fell in range of the mana, it slowly sucked in. So, I guess my mana has a mini gravitational field. It had greater attraction if something else was also coated in my mana and fell in range.

  Aveeno had more success than me, she finally made her first proper icicle. The other ones had cracks or parts that were way too big or way too small to connect nicely into one icicle.

  Glynn congratulated her before telling her to make an icicle as fast as she could when she physically touched the snow. It took her ten minutes to make that perfect icicle, while if she did it by hand, it would take less than one second.

  I soon made a little discovery, just like the purple powder I could remove my mana’s attraction to one another and let it disconnect instead of forcibly scraping it. When it disconnected midair, it hovered a fixed distance from me, when it was on something like a rock, it moved with the rock.

  Then I made a breakthrough, if I made the attraction just loose enough, when I threw the rock, it could leave a trail of mana in the air or taint an object it hits. This meant that if I threw a rock into the mana patches, it would follow the same trajectory and hit the same mark.

  It seemed overpowered to see that if I landed one hit, then the rest automatically hit but people aren’t stationary, but if I did taint an object, if I threw it close enough, it will home in.

  Plus, if I sense the faint connection of the string like how I did to George, I could figure out the direction they are in.

  By the time my thought process became complete, the formation had already run out of mana and the sky was getting darker.

  Aveeno was practically beaming, and I was no different.

  “It looks like you guys made a lot of progress, we’ll do it daily to practice your control.”