Chapter 24
They passed beneath the archway and into the ancient hall, the air cooler here, thick with the scent of stone and memory. Torches burned with bluish flame, illuminating murals half-lost to time—elegant elven script winding across the ceiling, depicting stories Ren couldn’t begin to understand.
People moved with purpose. Outsiders, each of them. Some bore weapons strapped to their backs, others walked with arcane implements, glowing crystals, mechanical prosthetics, or stranger things still. No one stopped to stare. No one treated him like an oddity.
Ethan led him through the central hall, down a wide corridor that opened into what had once been a reading chamber. Now it had been repurposed into a war room. Maps lay spread across a broad stone table, marked with pins and glowing runes. A few figures nodded to Ethan as he entered, but none interrupted.
“This is one of our command halls as I said before, We also have a special hall whose location is not known even to me - a mobile fortress that roams the Sea of Dust.”
Ren’s eyebrows lifted. “You move a base through the desert?”
“With difficulty,” Ethan replied, amused. “But it works. The Order has learned how to survive in every biome the Shardlands offers.”
“Also, you mentioned a hierarchy before, where exactly do you place in that.”
“Now, we start.” Ethan turned and led him down a side corridor into a long chamber where training equipment lined the walls—staves, weights, dummies enchanted to shift forms. . “I already had a tutor back in the town.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow, then gave a rare, satisfied nod. “Good. We’ll build on that foundation.”
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The next morning came too early.
Ren found himself standing in the training courtyard just as the pale morning light filtered through the cracked arches of the old hall. The air was damp with dew, and faint mist curled at his feet. Ethan was already there, arms crossed, eyes sharp despite the hour.
“Ready?” he asked.
Ren grunted. “As I’ll ever be.”
The first hour was all physical training. No weapons, no magic—just pure conditioning. Ethan led him through drills that focused on core stability, speed, and endurance. Sprinting between broken columns, balance work atop uneven stones, climbing old beams, and endless push-ups until his arms shook. It wasn’t about building brute strength—it was about control, responsiveness, and not dying when something chased you through a mana-drenched ruin.
By the end of it, Ren’s shirt clung to him and his lungs burned, but there was a strange satisfaction in the ache.
Then came the magic.
Two hours of focused mana work began with Ethan having him sit still in a quiet grove beneath an open skylight, legs crossed, breathing slow. He guided Ren through exercises to sense the mana in his own body—feeling its flow, pressure, rhythm—and how to shape it without instinctively pouring it into food. It was like learning to flex a muscle he hadn’t known existed.
After that came the control drills: condensing mana into small spheres, threading it into patterns, releasing it without backlash. Ethan adjusted his posture, corrected his breathing, gave feedback that was sharp but never cruel. They didn’t try combat spells yet—Ren had barely scratched the surface of controlled output. That would come later.
The final hour was practical combat.
Not with weapons—not yet—but movement. Dodging. Reacting. Sparring against an unarmed opponent, keeping your balance, not freezing when a fist came toward your face. One of the instructors, a lean woman with a jagged scar across her cheek, stepped in to test him.
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Ren didn’t land a single hit. But he didn’t give up either.
When it was done, he stood panting, drenched in sweat, bruised but strangely clear-headed. The fatigue ran deep, but it was the kind that meant something. Like rising dough, slow but inevitable.
Ethan clapped him on the back as he handed over a canteen. “That’s the schedule. Every day, unless you’re injured or dead. Questions?”
Ren gulped down the water. “Just one.”
“Yeah?”
“…When do I get to cook?”
Ethan smirked. “Now.”
He pointed toward the treeline beyond the base’s outer path, where baskets had been left near the edge of the old plaza. Inside were bundles of herbs, strange root vegetables, and something that looked suspiciously like a glowing avocado.
“Your ingredients for the day,” Ethan said. “None of them dangerous. Probably. Try not to poison yourself.”
Ren looked at the basket, then back toward the training courtyard where others still sparred or meditated. He was sore, exhausted—and more curious than ever.
“Right,” he said. “Time to see what mana-roasted avocado actually tastes like.”
He grabbed the basket and headed for the kitchens, his steps slower, but his mind already turning.
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Ren sat at his makeshift outdoor kitchen—a flat slab of marble once part of a noble’s bathhouse, now doubling as his chopping board. The forest air was rich with the scent of moss and magic, the sun just beginning to dip behind the towering ruins.
On the slab were three ingredients: a bunch of frostroot bulbs the size of his fists, their skin cold to the touch and flecked with pale blue veins; a mana-infused avocado with a pearlescent sheen and a stubborn refusal to ripen on a predictable schedule; and a few pinches of ember-thistle spice, scavenged earlier from a bush that had tried to singe his eyebrows off.
He hummed to himself, knife in hand. “Let’s see what you’re all hiding.”
The frostroot was surprisingly crisp when sliced—like jicama crossed with ice. A thin fog curled from the cut, lightly numbing his fingertips. He diced it carefully, then mashed the mana-avocado in a wooden bowl. Its flesh shimmered faintly and tasted like a cross between butter, lime, and savoury soup.
He added a squeeze of forest citrus juice for brightness, then tossed everything together with the ember-thistle.
A blue system glow flickered to life at the corner of his vision:
You have created [Frostroot Ember Mash]!
Restores 35% Stamina over 15 seconds.
Grants minor Cold Resistance for 10 minutes.
Ren grinned. “My first buff which gives above 25 percent to something, guess Ethan was right when he said the ingredients were more potent here.”
He plated it in a shallow clay dish and set it on the table beside him. For the first time in days, he didn’t feel like a confused tourist on a death march through a magical warzone. He felt like himself. Chef. Experimenter. Craftsman.
He was mid-bite when someone cleared their throat behind him.
“You’re the food guy, right?”
Ren turned. A young man stood at the edge of the plaza, wearing a faded hoodie under a reinforced leather vest. His hair was dyed an aggressive green that clashed with the forest, and he carried what looked like a crossbow that had been modified with glowing pipes and too much hope.
“Uh, yeah,” Ren said. “Ren Saito. You?”
“Name’s Dex,” the guy said, walking closer and eyeing the plate. “Level 22 Arc-Engineer. Or I was. System said that class doesn’t exist here, so now I’m ‘Unstable Mechanist’ and things keep exploding.”
Ren blinked. “Sounds... fun.”
“It’s mostly screaming,” Dex said cheerfully, before nodding at the dish. “Can I try that?”
Ren slid the plate over. Dex took a cautious bite. Then a larger one.
“Oh. Oh, that’s cold. And spicy. That’s like eating menthol set on fire.”
Ren chuckled. “Yeah, I’m still tuning the spice ratios.”
“Don’t. It’s brilliant.”
They were soon joined by others.
A tall woman with cybernetic eyes that no longer worked but still glowed faintly. A quiet man in full medieval plate mail who introduced himself simply as “Greg.” A teenager who said she came from a floating city where everyone had wings—though hers had transitioned into dragon-kin wings the moment she crossed into the Shardlands.
One by one, they settled around the long stone table. Someone brought out scavenged cups, someone else passed a bottle of something fermented and probably not legal. Ren served what he had, improvising portions and garnishes, feeling the old rhythm of a shared table return.
Alright then, lets cook.
