We ended up staying by the stream for about two weeks—maybe more. The area had an irresistible magical charm: a bubbling brook running through the woodnd over smooth, moss-covered boulders. Occasionally, I saw tiny sparkles dang over the water created by the sunshihe air was fresh, smelling of damp earth and floral perfume from surrounding flowers, with a gentle breeze and the sun’s warmth on my skin. There was vegetation everywhere—ferns, thick leaves, and t trees—that made the entire pce seem alive. Birds were flying around, their happy chirping blending with the sound of the stream as if they were part of the same song.

  This pce affected me bit by bit. From being on edge, a fighter in the middle of hell, it was like I was bei aurning to myself. I felt like I returned from the trenches of war. This pce was exactly what I o remember the feeling of simply rexing and breathing, to remember what it was like to be normal again.

  For the first two days, I did nothing special. I pyed with Rue ier occasionally, but mostly y beside the stream, looked at the clouds floating in the sky, breathed deeply, and rexed.

  After two days, I remembered all the new and iiables and fruits I bought and started experimenting. I first experimented with the yellow root that looked like a twisted pretzel. Acc to the seller’s expnation, it was a kind of substitute for a potato. Identify said it was called Raak. For the first experiment, I peeled one root and boiled it in water. I tasted it, and it tasted like a potato, but with a sweet uone and something else mixed in. As if I mixed a potato with some sweet potato and roasted chestnuts and added a little bitterness. The bitterness added a uwist to it.

  As a sed experiment, I peeled a few more roots, diced smoked crab, mixed it all with sweet cream, fried onions, bck pepper, and nutmeg, and baked it. The result was so scrumptious that I had no words to describe it. Perfect harmony among all the fvors produced a fantastice that made me feel like I was s ih heaven. The first bite ure bliss. I couldn’t resist smiling like a moron, delighted with the result. Baking five more pans, I eventually ran out of raak and almost caved into the temptation and licked the pans —almost.

  When Rue and I sat down to eat, we couldn’t stop because the food was delicious. Rue kept muttering, “Sho goof,” which made me ugh.

  I asked him, “You speak telepathically. Why do you sound like you’re chewing? Your mind doesn’t chew.”

  “mah mouf iff fuww.”

  “Yes, your mouth is full, but your mind isn’t. You speak with your mind, not with your mouth.”

  “Roo’fs mouff if buhsy.”

  Shaking my head, I let him eat in peace. It was a lost cause.

  It was so delicious we both ate too much. After dinner, Rue y on his beanbag on his back, his fs in the air, pointing skyward, and whimpered, “Rue’s tummy ouchie. Bad John. John make food too much delicious. Rue’s tummy ouchie.”

  I y on the cou a food a and grunted. It was the most I could do.

  , I tried the crushed red vegetable in the leaf bowls. Identify called it flimo. After boiling it, I tasted it, and it was simply delicious. It reminded me of a tomato fvor with added beef stod fried mushrooms. Maybe it was the elusive umami fvor that I never entirely grasped what that meant. I made sagna until I ran out of flimo paste, this time in the oven, not on a campfire. Rue wouldn’t have fiven me if I hadn’t given him one pan, so I gave him one and stored the rest.

  I went to the Archive and updated my sagna recipe.

  If you’re in the world of Lumis, use flimo paste. It is the closest thing to tomatoes that I have found so far.

  To get to my recipe, I had to scroll through hundreds of pages in the Archive. The amount of garbage added daily to the Archive was crazy. I haven’t yet received an answer from Lis to the message I sent him, but the number of questions and ents under his posts kept growing. Curious, I checked the post about the special Traits, and now 328 people called me a liar because they were merts and didn’t get Luck.

  There was a ret addition from a Traveler who wrote that he received the Artisan Schor css and received the Trait Diligehere were already twelve people who called him a liar. They, too, were Artisan Schors but didn’t get Dilige made me ugh. While the Archive was one big mess, there was some fun stuff in there. I added my own ent and asked what criteria they met to get the css. Maybe they will answer, maybe not. Anyway, I was curious. Artisan Schor certainly sounded iing.

  The hing I tried was the scaly fruit. It was too sweet, but I thought it could be an iing smoothie if I mixed it with yogurt. I didn’t have a blender, sigh! So I had to chop the fruit with a knife and then mash it with a fork. When I mixed it with yogurt, it came out luscious—sweet with the sour delicacy of yogurt and simply amazing. Of course, I gave oo Rue and stored the rest as a refreshing treat for the future.

  The st thing I tried was the tiny e fruit. It had a chy flesh like an apple, and the taste also reminded me of apples—but like it was more apple-ish. Years ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Mexico, and there, we saw someone selling apples that looked bad. They were small and wrinkled—as if they were old. But their price was more expehan all the other apples. Out of curiosity, we bought some and tasted them. They were the best apples we’ve ever tasted. Their taste was as if someone had created the distilled essence of an apple—trated and rich. That’s what this little fruit reminded me of—the distilled taste of the fruit cept.

  After eating over twenty, I used the rest to make a pie with honey, raisins, nuts, amon, varact, and allspice, and the result was mouthwatering. While the pie was still in the oven, Rue sat i, stared at the stove ily, panted, and asked me, “When is ready?” every two minutes.

  After tasting the pie, I made more pies from most of the remaining fruit. I left a small portion for myself to eat raw. They were too yummy.

  After two weeks by the creek, I felt ready to move on. I had already achieved plete mental bance, with no more outbursts of anger, so I was fident that I wouldn’t be a dao others. We flew towards the major river, waited for a boat to pass a of sight, became visible, and took out the jet skis. We flew along the river o skis and passed some boats. I saw the people on the boats looking at us in wonder or astonishment.

  Now and then, Rue called out enthusiastically, “Rue love fast! Rue love Mahya.”

  My jet ski ran out of energy, and I had to keep replenishing it with my personal mana so it would keep moving. I was sure Rue would stop and ask me to charge his ski, but he tio ride. After another hour, we stopped by the river for lunch.

  I checked his jet ski, and it was empty.

  I asked Rue, “How did your jet ski kept going?”

  “Rue gave ski Rue’s mana.”

  It suddenly occurred to me I had never checked his mana progress. After cheg him, I discovered his orbs were bigger! When I checked in the past, he had three tiny orbs, two and a half to three millimeters in diameter. He also had the four mana els in his legs, but they were hair-thin, and he didn’t have the work of the smaller els throughout the whole body.

  Now, his orbs were the size of a grape, the els in his legs were wider, and I saw branches of thinner els throughout his body. He still didn’t have as many els as I did. Or maybe he had them, but they were so small that I didn’t see them.

  “Your orbs have grown! gratutions, buddy. It’s amazing you have more mana!”

  “Yes. Rue eat yummy snakes with mana. Rue get yummy mana!”

  “Are you sure this isn’t an attempt to get a seak?”

  “No!” He shook his head emphatically, but didn’t meet my eye—the sneaky dog. “Rue never do something like that! Rue need yummy so have more mana!”

  Ha! I didn’t buy it even for a sed.

  But his mana did advance. Lis said mas progressed by eating other mas, and the proof was right before my eyes. So maybe not so sneaky after all. I decided to give him the be of the doubt.

  I charged Rue’s jet ski and sat tee actively. To speed things up, I also cast Absorb Mana on myself. My els didn’t even tickle. I was ready for the spiral.

  I made the spiral and pressed it as much as possible. Befoing down the first el, I gave the rings another squeeze downwards and mao add another ring. I repeated this in all the orbs and els. The way down with the spiral was easy, but the way back up was much more difficult. I had to split my mind into three parts: one creating the spiral, the sed holding the Absorb Mana cept to add that aspect to the els, and the third pressing the spiral as much as possible. At one point, the spiral almost escaped me and unraveled, so I split my mind into four, and with the fourth part, I just kept the progress so it wouldn’t uhe fourth part was still difficult, but easier. The problem was that the spiral was fightihe whole way, and with the difficulty of the fourth split, it was almost too much.

  After an unknown amount of time, I finally finished. My body shook from the effort, and streams of sweat ran down my fad stung my eyes. I felt like I ran a marathon, climbed Mount Everest, and swam across the English el without taking a break iween. I fell onto my bad just id there panting. Night had already fallen, and the sky was full of stars. Rue was sleepio me.

  After I recovered, I checked the red light.

  Fourth Spiral pletedQuality: 97%

  When I checked my profile, I saw Mana Regeion x 4. I tio lie with my profile open as I ted the seds. My regeion had increased to thirty-seven units per minute. Additionally, I noticed Firearms advanced from [Novice] to [Apprentice].

  I love progress!

  For a few more minutes, I remained lying there, intending to open the house shortly.

  The “tongue arm” woke me up in the m, and the word “Food!” echoed in my mind. It was so nostalgic that I couldn’t help but ugh.

  Spirals were an exhausting business. And I still had to figure out how to build them in others. I didn’t fet that I had two friends and a familiar who also needed increased regeion.

  This is how we tinued on our way for two days. At noon, we would stop for lunch; I would charge Rue’s jet ski, eat, and tinue on the river. In the evenings, we made sure no one could see us; I located a good pce to put the house on the Map, and we flew there. At home, we had dialked a little, or watched a movie together, rinse a.

  Ohird day, I pced the core on the ground and was about to tell it to open the house when I felt dirty maer my mana-sensing range. I turned around and saw two pims charging toward me. Without thinking, I shot lightning at them. It killed them on the spot, but the pce where the lightning struck lit on fire. I rushed there and stomped on the fire until I put it out.

  This was not good. Before, my lightning was white, like regur lightning, and didn’t cause fires. Now my lightning was red and had fire in it. I had to figure out how to get my regur lightning back.

  After I opehe house and fed Rue, I left him in front of the TV—he was now watg the Chicago P.D. series and was already in season three. I flew towards a tributary ected to the major river and sat in a hidden er. I preferred to shoot lightning into the water. It might kill some fish, but at least I won’t burn down the forest.

  I repeatedly shot a weak bolt of lightning from my hand, which was stantly red. Despite my attempts to will it, make it, or intend for it to return to the standard white lightning, I was unsuccessful. I tried to apply what I learned about iion and magic when I learo fly to this situation, but I couldn’t figure it out. My iion recise and specific—I wanted my white lightning back. After hours without success, and a lot of “fried” fish in my Ste, I thought of something.

  My lightning turned red when I ected with fire. The fire colored it red and tur into fire lightning, nur lightning. So, I had to “remove” the fire from the lightning. It took me another hour to crack it, but I finally did. I didn’t have to remove the fire, but hold it back. It required a mind split—one side fires the lightning, and the other holds the fire back, but it worked great. I still felt that I didn’t achieve the desired result. It was my lightning. I even had the word “Lightning” in my profile as an affinity, so I felt I should be able to trol Lightning without mind splitting and holding fire back.

  After trying a few more times, I gave up for now. I was exhausted and o go bae to sleep.

  We stayed in the same pce for two more days, and I practiced my lightning. I’m embarrassed to admit that I probably killed all the fish iributary. Or at least it felt that way. In the beginning, when my lightning hit the water, a lot of fish floated belly up after each strike. The numbers deed steadily, and the st four strikes made only one fish float belly up.

  But fish or no fish, I cracked the mystery. It was simply a matter of practid familiarity. I learhe two types of my lightning intimately, learo distinguish between them, and learned how to fire them at will. In this case, it wasn’t a matter of iion or desire but simply learning the two different types, improving trol over them, and then trolling the type of lightning I wanted.

  And most importantly, on my profile, now o the word Lightning was [Medior] instead of [Junior]. It was very nice. Although, in my opinion, I should have gotten a separate ability or affinity—Fire Lightning or Burning Lightning or something like that. But the system didn’t think so.

  Stingy system.