A warm strand of sunlight hit my face, rousing me awake from sleep.

  I stood up and stretched my body a little before taking a step outside. Whiteness was visible for miles upon miles, with frozen mountains sprouting out of the ground like mushrooms.

  I took off the mana shackle, took a deep breath, and looked at a boulder covered by snow.

  A small fire started to burn beneath the boulder, which gradually increased in size.

  I changed the shape of the fire, and it made a magic circle beneath the boulder, and a small explosion happened under the boulder.

  But due to the sheer size of the boulder, almost 5m in radius, the amount of damage was negligible.

  I wore back the mana shackle and started the control exercises once again, a small magic circle being made and broken continuously near my finger.

  “You should remember that using magic circles to attack is a wastage.” Eleven exited my soulspace and appeared on my shoulder.

  “The best way to attack is to use pure mana, that is the most efficient and most powerful way as well. You should only use magic circles for comfort or for unexpected situations, atleast that’s what I heard in one of the earlier classes by Sir Edward” He commented.

  “I do know that, but pure mana doesn’t cause the explosions, and truthfully speaking explosions are fun. Also, making mana circles is really helpful for control practice.”

  “True..”

  He stood on my shoulder silently.

  “Say Eleven, If both parties wish for it the bond between a spirit and a mage can be broken without any side effects .”

  “So?”

  “You wanted to be free right? I can’t help but feel that previously you were bound with the academy, now you are bound with me. If you want t-”

  “You are mistaken about something Eric” He spoke in serious tone.

  “I am not bound with you, I am friends with you. You need atleast one friend to truly enjoy exploring the world don’t you?”

  “I am relieved then, as long as you stay happy”

  “You lived for too long and thought too much in your previous life Eric Evelyn. But that’s what make you wise, thank you for offering me the chance to explore the world and be with you.”

  He took flight and started to fly around above me.

  *Sigh*

  To think a day would come when the man equivalent of a toddler would say I was a overthinker. But still a warm smile came on my face.

  “Wake up!” a few small birds entered the room through the slightly open door and started shouting.

  Seriously this bird..

  Soon the sounds of clothes rustling and foot steps started coming from inside, and after a few moments all 4 unfortunate inhabitants of the room came outside.

  “What the fuck was that?” Laven was flabbergasted at what just happened, he was not from the academy after all, while he had stayed there for the past 6 or so months he never had the chance to witness Eleven’s waking prowess.

  “Why is he still doing this Eric?! Why don’t you tell him not to do that!” Theo shouted.

  “You think that bird will listen? This is clearly Eleven’s Favorite activity after chess.” Adiel said calmly, he was used to this by now, we had suffered for a whole year in Eleven’s hand after all.

  Delsa just silently stared at the bird, though I am pretty sure her eyes screamed blood at this point.

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  After getting an explanation about what had just happened Laven called us inside to provide instructions.

  “We will soon be exiting the 60km range around the academy, and beyond that the temperature regulation spell doesn’t work, so wear these” He took out a bunch of winter clothing, all of us were in the mages robes till now.

  The temperature regulation spell was truly a commendable magic circle. It tracked where each mage was within a 60km radius and increased the temperature around the travelling mages while they stayed within this radius.

  “Also carry these and eat a few berries whenever you are hungry”He took out 4 little bags that contained mountain berries.

  “And lastly we will start to encounter monsters now, rank-F and E monsters will be prevalent, while rarely we will encounter rank-D monsters, which I will handle. Also, remove the bracelet in the morning from now on Eric, do whatever you want at night, sleep read or practice mana control.”

  I slipped off the bracelet.

  “Wear the clothes before we move onwards, It will get cold really fast once we start walking”

  The clothes he had taken out were a single woolen shirt and a thick fur robe, along with a pair of gloves.

  All of us wore the clothes and then exited the house, which with the wave of Laven’s hand disappeared into his soul space.

  “Lets go then.” Theo shouted, and after using the quicken spell we started to walk twice as fast as what a normal person would on a plain road.

  And true to his words after barely half-an hour of travel, during which Adiel and Delsa kept talking, Theo kept playing with a ball of mud in his hand, of which shape he changed every few minutes and Laven kept moving with a straight face, the surroundings began to become cooler exponentially faster.

  Within 5 minutes the cold air started biting on my face, much colder than when I had arrived in the eastern ranges with that horse, god knows where it went, due to me getting here in the summer while right now the season was winter.

  “There are a pretty good variety of monsters around here, by afternoon we should start spotting them.

  Ice trolls, Snow Ghosts, demonic oaks and even Ice drakes, There was even an A-rank Ice drake king somewhere east from here.”

  “Aren’t even the weakest Ice drakes rank-C?” Adiel asked.

  The ranks of mages and the system made ranks going from F to SSS were similar. F and E ranks corresponded with Mage apprentices and Quasi-mages, while D to SSS corresponded to Tier-1 to Tier-7 Mages.

  There were other names for Tier-8 mages, Arcmages and Grandmages in the System, but till now I had read no record of what those names were.

  While there were the creatures in the God’s army in the recording we were shown before the other gods got here, there were no monsters, It is an invention of gods to make things more interesting.

  “There was a clearing done around here a year ago, The drakes that are still here are barely 1 to 5 year old, a few should barely qualify as E-ranks, while the rest are still F-ranks.”

  As we continued on the path, the cold continued to invade our bodies, though the fur robe was enough to keep us warm.

  “There’s a Ice troll if I am correct, directly on the path you are currently on” Eleven’s voice rang in my head through voice transmission. I had taught him a voice transmission spell, which could luckily be used by Wind spirits by making a circle through mana, so no need of engraving for them.

  It was truly an inconvenience though, that not all types of mana could use all mana circles without engraving them first.

  I could use the spells brighten without engraving a spell for it, though I would prefer just directly using a fire instead of making a mana circle on the spot through salt or mana.

  “Eleven says there is a Ice troll ahead.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “About 1 km I guess”

  “It’s about a km away” I said.

  “How big was your perception Laven?” Theo asked.

  “200m”

  He had chosen the standard mana sense spell then, If he had done something like me his perception and mana control distance would have been 800m.

  As we continued to approach closer Laven asked us to stop.

  “I can sense it now, It is rubbing its back on a tree. It’s a Early Rank-E monster, so who is going to fight it? Theo or Eric?”

  I looked at Theo, and seeing his expression knew it was his first time ever facing a monster, I atleast had 1 week of experience.

  “I am going first then” I told Laven, and when he nodded I took a few steps ahead.

  When I had walked about 20m the monster came in my perception too, a ugly white thing with a bear like body and a boar like face.

  I don’t know about fighting people who gained power with system, but I knew for sure that fighting against any monster was a task too easy for mages.

  I focused my perception on the monster, and summoned a fireball directly above its head, it was huge too as I had supplied about 10 normal fist-sized fireballs worth of mana to it, it was almost the size of a football.

  It noticed it immediately but didn’t have the time to dodge as I made it hit the troll’s head immediately.

  *Boom*

  The sound of a small explosion rang in my ears.

  The smoke around the troll cleared, and I saw that the troll was staring in my direction with a bloody head.

  It started to run towards me.

  I willed and my perception slowed down, what had been perhaps 60km/hr became equal to a human running in my perception

  *Boom* *Boom* *Boom*

  3 more fireballs hit it right in the head.

  The troll, with a half-exposed head, fell with its face towards the ground.

  “Hitting its eyes with smaller fireballs would have been better.”

  I nodded, I also noticed Eleven swoop down and after taking out the mana stone from the troll’s head through the help of wind mana he gulped it down with great relish.

  *Sigh*

  This owl…