The next three days were simultaneously some of the most exciting, boring, and painful in Leo’s entire life. Finally, after all this time, he was taking his first steps toward becoming a true Cartographer like his parents. Surviving in an unknown plane, strengthening his soul, and recording his findings in his journal were a dream come true. That said, the actual act of farming larva and rock rabbits for their gems wasn’t exactly the most thrilling thing in the world. As Grade 1 magical beasts, the larva weren't even capable of defending themselves in the slightest, and once he’d gotten used to the attack pattern of the rock rabbits, knocking them out and finishing them off wasn’t hard either.

  He may have received one or two nasty bruises from their hardened heads smashing into his shins, but at least nobody was around to witness him taking hits from such low-grade magical beasts.

  Strengthening his soul through cultivation was satisfying, but a rather repetitive task. Cycling foreign power from the magical beast gems grew much easier after achieving a rank 2 soul, and while a good chunk of the power from the higher-grade rock rabbit gems still escaped his body, he could tell that his methods of harnessing the power were growing with each one he consumed. He was lucky that his parents had insisted he spend a solid hour in silent meditation each day to prepare for the act of cultivating his soul, so sitting quietly and doing nothing for long stretches of time was already something he was more than familiar with.

  Although it did allow plenty of time for errant thoughts to try and force their way into his head while he was concentrating.

  Your mother is still out there…

  Millions of people in the Nexus are going to die…

  You need to hurry…

  Francy is dead because of your family…

  Just like all the other times these thoughts tried to worm their way in and shatter his cultivation, Leo squashed them out, isolating them and shoving them deep down where they couldn’t distract him. He knew time was of the essence, but he also knew that rushing was the most likely thing to get him killed. Having grown up listening to all of his parents' many adventures, he knew probably better than anyone besides the Cartographers themselves just how dangerous what he was doing was. If he tried to simply rush straight through into the next plane without growing stronger…

  Most likely, he’d end up dead long before he reached anyone who could help him.

  Mom and dad had to know what they were doing when they selected this plane as their emergency escape for me. Leo let out a slow breath, opening his eyes after finishing off his latest larva gem. This plane was only diminutive, meaning three days had been more than enough time for him to fully explore it. The rift that had once connected it to his home plane was gone, but there were three other ones scattered about he had access to. The only problem…

  Was that he had no idea which one was the correct choice.

  Leo frowned as he pushed himself to his feet, taking a peek at his soul as he headed over to the closest rift. His methods had certainly been risky, but the results of his last three days of cultivation spoke for themselves.

  Soul Rank: 4 (0 available)

  Beast Gem: Rock Rabbit (3)

  Skill: Harden

  Beast Gem: Larva (1)

  Skill: Digest

  As he walked, he plucked a handful of grass off the ground, trying to ignore the taste as he chewed it and forced himself to swallow. Having replaced the ash sprite gem within his soul with that of a larva beast gem, he’d gained the Digest skill. It was simultaneously the only reason he was faring as well as he was, and also a direct insult to his personal pride as a lover of cooking. The skill allowed him to eat and gain sustenance from anything he was physically capable of chewing and getting down his throat, but it did absolutely nothing to help with the taste. He’d briefly tried eating one of the rock rabbits raw, before deciding even grass was preferable to that.

  He hadn’t even entertained the thought of trying to munch on one of the defeated larva. He was quite fine with grass, thank you very much.

  And Digest wasn’t the only new skill he’d snatched up over the past few days. Flexing a hand, Leo watched as a thin layer of rock grew out of it and formed an earthy gauntlet. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted for an offensive skill, but at least he had some method of both hitting harder and defending himself now. Giving up the ash sprite gem had been a difficult choice, but a wise one, in his opinion. He could almost hear his father explaining his reasoning behind the choice of giving him that magical beast gem to jumpstart his cultivation. If things ever went wrong and he was separated from his parents during that first expedition, he would have been able to use the Silence skill to hide and wait for them to find him.

  But he couldn’t rely on his parents any longer.

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  Moving silently certainly had its benefits, but there were so many magical beasts that didn’t rely on sound to hunt their prey that now that he was fending for himself, he felt far more confident in his chances with the Harden skill instead.

  Stopping before one of the three rifts scattered throughout the plane, Leo stared into it for a few seconds, frowning as he tried and failed to gain any sort of intel off of it. The unfortunate truth was that, despite knowing he should be able to tell things such as the size, tier, and even some of the hazards waiting for him on the other side, at only rank 4, his soul simply wasn’t strong enough to receive that information. It was why new Cartographers apprenticed under more experienced ones, shadowing them and receiving their aid, often until they’d strengthened their souls up to rank 10 at a minimum. Even then, they would spend ranks 10 through 19 exploring well-known planes, not risking venturing anywhere truly unknown before reaching rank 20.

  Leo had some catching up to do.

  Not having the faintest idea where the rift would lead, Leo simply stood there, examining the rift itself. Like all rifts, physically, it looked like nothing more than a paper-thin, jagged black crack in reality. Like someone had dropped this portion of the universe and then quickly put it back into place, hoping nobody would notice the tiny crack that had been added. It was so subtle that unless one was a gem holder and capable of sensing the strange power they gave off, they’d probably walk right through it without even noticing. Rifts themselves weren’t harmful or dangerous. One needed to channel the energy within their soul in order to activate them and pass through from one plane to another. Leo could jump back and forth through the space that held the rift all day, and so long as he didn’t actively try to reach out and imbue any of his power into it, nothing would happen.

  Plucking a few more stalks of grass off the ground and shuddering as he chewed through them, Leo went over his options. While it was always possible there were other magical beasts hiding somewhere on this plane, as best he could tell, this current plane didn’t have anything stronger than the Grade 3 rock rabbits. Compared to cultivating gems that matched one’s own soul rank, it wasn’t really worth it to strengthen one’s soul with beast gems of a weaker grade than the soul itself, which meant he’d already grown as strong as this plane would allow.

  But which rift do I pick…

  Leo wasn’t a fool. His parents’ preparation could only have gone so far. Finding a good plane to settle down and raise him in that just happened to have a rift they could keep hidden, that just happened to connect to a low-grade, diminutive plane like this one, couldn’t have been easy. If they’d also added that this emergency plane was connected solely to other safe planes to their criteria, they would have been looking their entire lives.

  That meant from this point forward, Leo was on his own.

  The good news was that at the very least, planes almost always had a limit to what other planes they connected to. So there was next to no chance one of these rifts led Leo into a tier 40 plane where he was killed instantly by some horrifying magical beast. The bad news was that said limit was still greater than what he was comfortable with. Even if the connecting planes had to be within ten tiers of this one, that meant there was still a chance he’d waltz straight into a tier 13 plane, which could still very well result in his immediate death.

  Grumbling to himself as he munched on grass, Leo decided there really wasn’t any point to worrying about the decision. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in this diminutive plane eating grass, he was going to have to pick one of the rifts sooner or later.

  “Gem-hol-der-gem-hol-der-bring-me-a-skill!” he sang, pointing between each of the three rifts with each syllable. Some people may think using a children’s rhyme to select what plane of existence he was going to throw himself into was a bit foolhardy, but Leo couldn’t have cared less. Finding himself pointing at the rift directly in front of him, he tossed his handful of grass aside. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, stretching a sliver of power from his soul down into his hand as he brushed up against the rift.

  The sensation of having his body squeezed through the rift and dragged across reality was barely better than the last time, and Leo panted as he stepped out and fell to his knees in a new plane, sweating as he shuddered at the lingering sensation. His parents had warned him his first few trips through the rifts weren’t going to be pleasant, but they’d really undersold just how bad it was. Then again, he wasn’t sure how he would even begin to describe the sensation to someone who’d never experienced it for themselves, so he supposed he couldn’t exactly fault them.

  Leo didn’t have a more experienced gem holder watching out for him, so he did his best to recover quickly, forcing his head up as he looked around. He didn’t spot any immediate danger, so he allowed himself to take in the plane in its entirety.

  The simple grass-filled meadow he’d spent the last few days in had been replaced by a quaint forest, with trees as far as the eye could see. The chirping of birds overhead and sound of leaves rustling in the wind reminded him of home, and he felt a fresh stab of homesickness pass through him before he could lock those feelings back down.

  Moving away from the rift, Leo ran a hand along the bark of a nearby tree. He couldn’t help but smile at the rough texture under his fingertips and the memories that came back to him at the simple touch. Climbing trees had been one of his favorite hobbies when he was younger. He and Francy had spent hours trying to scale the largest trees in the plane, making plans to create the greatest tree house the planarverse had ever seen.

  That box he’d locked everything away in deep inside his chest threatened to burst open yet again, and he frowned, distracting himself by focusing more intently on his surroundings. Just because he had a soft spot for forests, didn’t mean he could let his guard down.

  As though the plane was agreeing with him, it was at that moment a few blurs shot through the branches overhead. Leo flinched back as he heard a rallying cry of angry screeches echoing through the treetops, as if the unseen beasts were protesting his very presence in their plane. Before he could do so much as run, three magical beasts dropped from the sky and landed all around him, trapping him within a triangle as they cut off any chance he had of escape. Unlike the rock rabbits, he didn’t know these ones by name, but that didn’t mean they were any less dangerous.

  After all, he highly doubted any friendly magical beast would be drooling at the sight of his flesh, or be baring teeth the size of his own knife.