With Dash nestled safely within his core, his makeshift spear repaired, and a belly filled with regular bird meat he’d managed to catch with the help of a simple snare trap and some insects, Leo spent the next couple of days practicing with his new skill as he explored the plane.

  Or at least, he thought it was only a couple of days. The days in this plane felt longer than what he was used to, but for all he knew, it was just his imagination.

  During his exploration, he ran into a few more handfuls of gonkies and fended off the occasional arrow-hawk seeking to finish his haircut, free of charge. Yet even with the random magical beast attacks, overall, he still thought of the forest plane as rather peaceful. He confirmed that the plane was roughly seven or eight miles wide, making it a small plane, one size category larger than the plane he’d grown up in. Also unlike his, this one was pure forest through and through, with no standing body of water. At the very least, it did have a river running through it, which allowed him to take a much needed bath and alleviated his concerns about water.

  Taking a drink from the river, Leo smiled at the memory of his father trying to explain to him why the lake in their plane never seemed to run dry, no matter how much water the townsfolk took from it. As expected from a child of two Cartographers, Leo had been especially inquisitive growing up, and had gone through a phase where he demanded answers to practically every question that popped into his mind. His father had struggled with that one in particular, trying to use small words to explain to a five-year-old how the many planes had what was known as a ‘base state’ that they constantly returned to. Leo hadn’t been happy with that answer and demanded more detail, right up until his mother picked him up by the scruff of his shirt, told him it was because of the Planar Lords, and tossed him into the lake so he could practice swimming with the weight of his clothes dragging him down.

  By now, it had been at least a week, or possibly more depending on how messed up his sense of time was, since he’d lost his home plane. Leo wasn’t about to pretend like he was over the loss of not just his home, but his father, Francy, and everyone he’d ever known, but the near-constant pain within his chest he’d been desperately trying to ignore all this time had at least died down to a more manageable ache. Both knowing that his mother was most likely alive out there, and that he had millions of people potentially depending on him, helped give him focus. His troubles seemed a lot smaller compared to how much tragedy would befall the planarverse if the Nexus truly did collapse.

  Leo splashed his face with water, shuddering at the very thought. Not only was the Nexus home to millions of people and the Planar Lords, it was quite literally the focal point of the entire planarverse. All Cartographer maps placed the Nexus at the center, and if the plane collapsed, it would throw countless planes into complete chaos as everything from trade routes to alliances were thrown off and made impossible. Only the farthest, most isolated planes would be unaffected.

  All the more reason he needed to continue growing stronger.

  Soul Rank: 6 (2 available)

  Beast Gem: Arrow-Hawk (4)

  Skill: Dash

  At this point, Leo had finally outgrown the forest plane. He’d confirmed that the gonkies were only Grade 5 magical beasts, and the arrow-hawks were Grade 4. A plane’s tier always either matched or slightly exceeded the highest Grade magical beast contained within, which meant that unless he’d completely missed a much stronger magical beast hiding somewhere within the forest, this plane was either a tier 5 or a tier 6. Now that he’d reached a soul rank of 6 for himself, it was officially time to move on.

  Still, he could barely believe the speed at which he was advancing. He knew that the first ten soul ranks were the fastest, and that most dedicated Cartographers could reach a soul rank of 10 within a few weeks if they really tried. But still, he was more than a little proud of himself for already hitting rank 6 within roughly a week’s time, all on his own.

  Munching on a strip of jerky he’d prepared from one of the birds he snared, Leo stepped away from the river and pulled out his journal, checking his current location. His small journal wasn’t exactly optimal for the creation of a sprawling map of the different planes, but it was all he had, which meant he had to make do. Currently, he was using each page to denote a single plane, marking where the rifts were located and using a simple numbering system to match pages to planes. It was going to get complicated fast, but that was fine. So long as he had a method of remembering where the different rifts were located and what plane they would spit him out onto, that was all he needed.

  Picking the closest of the five rifts he’d discovered on this plane so far, Leo began jogging. Using Dash was tempting, but after nearly breaking his ankle from a thick tree root jutting out of the ground, he’d come to realize the skill really wasn’t the best for covering large distances after all. It seemed the farther one tried to travel with Dash activated, the less control they maintained over their own body. From some incredibly cautious testing, Leo had confirmed that twenty to thirty feet was about the maximum he could use the skill without tripping over his own feet, and even that was incredibly risky unless he was running along perfectly flat ground.

  Luckily, even without Dash he made it to the rift in no time at all and without encountering any angry magical beasts. Now able to sense the cracks in reality from a few dozen feet away, he slowed down, making sure he had a firm grip on his makeshift spear as he walked up to it.

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  The rift looked like any other, and Leo frowned as he confirmed for the umpteenth time he couldn’t sense anything from the jagged cracks splintering out from a seemingly random point in space. The ability to do so would come with time and a stronger soul, but he was impatient. He really didn’t like leaping into the complete unknown.

  “Here we go,” he muttered, reaching out and tapping a finger against the rift.

  Before recoiling as the rift shocked him.

  “Ow!” he shouted, leaping back in shock as he aimed his spear at the rift reflexively. “What was that for?!”

  Unsurprisingly, the rift didn’t deign to answer him, and Leo willed his racing heart to slow down. Planting his spear on the ground, he shook out his partially numb hand, understanding dawning on his face as he realized what must have just happened.

  He’d attempted to enter a plane that was weaker than him.

  One of the first things any aspiring Cartographer learned about was the interaction between plane tiers and soul ranks. While plane tiers were mainly referenced in terms of how dangerous the magical beasts were within the plane, at least until it was cleansed, they directly related to a gem holder’s soul rank as well. It was a hard fact of the planarverse that someone with a soul rank higher than a plane’s tier could not access that plane. No matter how hard they tried, or how strong their mental will, it was simply not possible. Gem holders held no sway over the rifts themselves, and seeing as rifts were the sole way in and out of the many planes, there was no way around it. The only exception was if a gem holder strengthened their soul while inside the plane, but even then, with only access to beast gems lower than their soul rank, a person couldn’t really grow more than a single rank above the plane’s tier.

  However, there was a way around this restriction.

  Naturally, not being able to enter a lower-tier plane after strengthening one’s soul would make traversing the planarverse rather difficult. Routes would be lost, and gem holders would be continually forced to leave planes behind for good as they continued growing in power. The solution was soul dampening.

  With enough practice, gem holders were capable of temporarily limiting themselves, pulling back on the many layers they’d built up within their soul and essentially scrunching their souls up. For all intents and purposes, this allowed them to act as though they were a lower rank than their soul truly was, with the caveat that it weakened their bodies and souls alike. Magical beast gems stored within the soul weren’t lost during dampening, but they were temporarily disabled as well, unless the weaker soul was capable of holding them.

  According to his parents, there were plenty of famous gem holders who refused to dampen their souls even a little bit. And after witnessing firsthand what happened to his father and childhood home, Leo could understand why.

  The only reason his father had lost his life was because he’d dampened his soul all the way from rank 42, to rank 5. Leo couldn’t even begin to imagine how uncomfortable such an act must have been to maintain, all for the sake of raising him somewhere away from it all. Everything he’d read assured him that soul dampening was only uncomfortable at first, and the body quickly adjusted with the help of the lower plane, but even so, to give up that much raw power and strength…

  “Either way, that makes this decision slightly easier,” he muttered, making a slight note in his journal before snapping it shut. The fact of the matter was that Leo didn’t know how to dampen his soul. It was one of those things that had to be taught from mentor to student, and his parents had assured him they would teach him how to do it during his first expedition.

  Thankfully, even if that rift was out of the question, he still had a few others he could try.

  Jogging over to the next closest rift, pausing briefly to dispatch another overeager arrow-hawk and add its power to his soul, Leo found himself standing before a second rift. This time, upon laying a hand on it, he was able to open it without issue, and the planarverse screamed by in a flash as he stepped through and stumbled out the other side.

  Managed to stay on my feet that time, he grinned, leaning on his spear for support as he looked around.

  There wasn’t a lot to immediately look at, and he realized he was standing within some sort of thin ravine, with walls of winding rock located on either side of him. The crevice was about as wide as he was tall, and it snaked forward, immediately vanishing behind a bend in the rock. A quick look behind him confirmed that this rift was located at the end of the tunnel, and Leo’s grin quickly flipped around.

  A dead-end rift, leading to a plane without proper visibility of potential threats. I'm going to have to move carefully.

  Unfortunately, Leo’s current position wasn’t the greatest for his Dash skill, as he didn’t have a ton of room to maneuver. Ideally, he’d figure out a way to climb out of this ravine and up to the surface. Taking a closer look at the smooth walls and confirming he wouldn’t be climbing these any time soon, Leo hefted his spear and began cautiously moving forward. Technically, he could sit around and wait an hour for his soul to allow him to travel back through the rift once more, but even with the potential danger waiting unseen ahead of him, he was far too curious as to what this new plane held.

  Almost immediately, he was forced to pull out his journal and begin sketching the path he was taking as the tight ravine he was following began branching out into countless paths. Until his soul was strong enough to detect rifts from farther away, the last thing he wanted was to get lost and not be able to find his way back to the forest he’d grown comfortable in. So far, this plane looked rather arid and barren, with little more than rocks and clay deposits as far as the eye could see. If it didn’t have any food or water, and he couldn’t get back to the forest…

  Well, it would be a pretty embarrassing way to go.

  Turning down what had to be his fourteenth tunnel, Leo glanced up from his journal and blinked as he realized the tunnel had finally opened up into a large cavern. There were dark brown stalagmites jutting up out of the cave floor, some reaching up above his own head, and a handful of creeping brown vines stretching down from the surface near one wall. But while the vines were an exciting find as a potential method for getting him up to the surface, they were nothing compared to what was located in the dead-center of the cavern.

  People.