The acrid smell of trees decaying from the lack of nutrients proliferated through the air. Their moss-covered roots clawed across the stony ground like a series of wooden spiderwebs.

Four people could be seen crossing over these roots to reach the path up ahead. The one leading the group seemed to be the oldest, but even he wasn’t old enough to be considered an adult. Compared to him, the three following him were practically children. This group of four looked like they were all out for a friendly excursion.

However, the “Forest of Illusions” was no such place for fun activities.

Guiding the group with a machete in hand, the leader hacked at low-hanging branches and shrubbery in his way to clear a path for the rest to follow. While he was leading the group, the boy in the back of the group lugged the majority of the group’s items while the boy and girl in the middle were walking at a leisurely pace.

“Seems like finding a place to set up camp before sunset won’t be as easy as we thought.”

“Jerry, climb up those trees and see if there’s a clearing nearby.” Kite ordered the only empty-handed male.

Kite was the leader of the group, or so he’d like to think.

“Me again?” Jerry groaned. While it seemed that he was extremely reluctant to do any work, the truth of the matter was that he was extremely happy to do so. He was, after all, the only one in the group who knew any flight spells.

“Spirit that holds dominion over the air, listen to my prayer. Obey my contract with the Wind God and release me from the shackles of the earth.”

Following the incantation of the spell, Jerry slowly began to rise up into the air towards the treetops before quickly disappearing into the foliage.

“There’s a hill about two kilometers southeast of here.” Jerry’s voice was heard from overhead. “I’ll go take a closer look.”

“Going on a stroll by himself again!”

“He’s relying on his ability to fly too much.”

“I’ll smash his head in when he gets back.”

“Feed him raw meat later!”

“Let him be tonight’s watch!”

“………”

By trial in absentia, Jerry was already determined to be guilty by the rest of his annoyed companions. Poor Jerry.

It took two hours for the group to finally arrive at the hill. The journey here had truly been a difficult one and the sun was already setting beneath the horizon by the time they arrived.

A traveler needed to finish many preparations before the sun set. The tents had to be set up, a campfire had to be up and running, and fuel for the fire at night had to be well stocked. 

Naturally, the three travel-weary members wanted none of that. And just as naturally, that left Jerry to be the one to do it. He was the only guilty person in a party of innocents and his punishment for leaving the group earlier was to do all the preparations for a chance at redemption. That was simply the most basics of rules in a civilized society when it came to dealing with a prisoner.

“I’m beat! My legs are killing me!”

“Belladonna, how can you say you’re the one tired? You weren’t the one laying out the path, the one leading the way, or even the one carrying the luggage!” Jerry protested.

“Shut up. Hurry up with your tasks.”

“Belladonna, could you act a little more ladylike now please?

“And who should this lady be?”

“They clearly aren’t as tired as they say they are if they have the energy to keep arguing,” Kite whispered to Elric.

The latter nodded his head in agreement.

Night came soon enough. The beginnings of a campfire were already starting to shape up at the front of the tents with the help of all the firewood gathered there—courtesy of Jerry. Lighting the campfire was left for Kite to do since he was the one studying pyromancy. To him, the act of casting a small fireball was hardly a challenge. Meanwhile, Belladonna was preparing the mountain pheasant Jerry had caught while gathering kindling.

As he watched the smoke rise up from the campfire, Elric’s thoughts began to drift away to memories of his home.

His home was Savana, a small town located upstream the Tosli River. As small as it was, Savana was luckily blessed with trade due to its close proximity to the second major city in the region, Sina. Elric was the son of the town’s grocer, and he would often be called to the store to help his father with the customers or manning the counter. This left him with very little time to play. Perhaps his father realized that, as the man would always say to him, “My son, I hope to pass down the store down to you in the future.”

As a result, Elric grew up with the dream of being a grocer in Sina.

Merchants would often drive through Savana in their luxurious carriages to reach Sina, and the sight of them motivated Elric to work towards his dream. It wasn’t rare for the merchants to make a shortstop in Savana so they could change out their horses for camels, an animal better suited for the journey. One of Elric’s favorite pastimes was to simply listen to the merchants talk about their dealings and fares in Sina. For example, a recently constructed central theater or the last carnival. Unfortunately, Elric knew nothing about those things since he’d never left Savana until he met his master.

His master was named Victor, a magus, and the only one in Savana following his arrival. Savana was overjoyed to finally have a magus in their midst, but the excitement faded soon after. The reason behind that was because Victor wasn’t like any other magus they had heard of or seen before. He didn’t even feel like a magus. 

Victor was a leecher and a heavy drinker, an image that tarnished the name of all other magi who swore off vices like alcohol just as a monk would. Clarity was particularly important for a magus when casting spells, so many magi regulated their lives quite seriously for their mind and mana to always be at peak performance. 

But being a horny drunkard wasn’t even the biggest shortcoming of Victor. It was his aptitude for spellcasting. His mana control was absolutely atrocious. If he didn’t use too much mana for a spell, then he used too little. His spells failed more often than they worked and would often result in a series of localized disasters for the town. Consequently, the town stopped asking him for any magical requests. 

Several of the richer families had hoped that Victor could at least be used as an insider to the Circle of Magi, but that hope died as quickly as it came. Rumors were that Victor had a bad reputation within the Circle. Be it embezzling from the association, seducing the wife of his superior, stealing a statue from the church, or exploiting his status as a magus to cheat others, the rumors were endless. If there was one thing that Elric had learned about Victor, it would be that Victor was not a man who paid his dues easily.

Elric’s parents were at their wits’ end when Victor came to their store to purchase a few things on a tab, of course. Victor haggled for hours on end before realizing the grocer would simply not budge. In the end, Victor begrudgingly asked to put half of the bill on his tab and the other half to be paid off by his monthly stipend from the Circle of Magi. 

But that wasn’t even the end of it. When Elric’s father turned around to get the accounting book, Victor seized the chance to head straight for Elric.

“Boy, would you like to learn magic?”