Staying in the same place was out of the question, all this training and the moment he broke through was through an emotional turmoil.

  It was clear that what he needed to do was to experience crisis, experience crisis and overcome them. And where did he find said crisis? Danger mainly and danger meant going inland, so that it was.

  But first, he had something else to take care of…

  “Brakk, Dashura, Raskar you were.. I was unworthy of your trust!” He stuttered while kneeling and bowing to three small hills in front of him.

  “It’s my fault that I let you and your potential die, let all of what made you disappear, to erode back to mother earth’s embrace.”

  A chilly wind rifled his fur, as if trying to harmonize with the emptiness inside of him. A lone leaf descending on his head.

  After another ten minutes of rumination he got up, the void inside him was getting unbearable, the calling ever echoing for him to join it…

  He walked for a couple hours east, as if trying to run from his actions, before acknowledging that carelessness like that was beckoning for death.

  He set camp. Made a simple sleeping cover, at some point he even lifted his head wanting to yell out an order, before slowly lowering it down with a sigh.

  That’s how it was sometimes. One doesn’t learn to appreciate what they have, they only learn how precious it was after the fact. A curse that every person faces.

  The night passed peacefully, the primitive shelter protecting him from danger. On the following morning he scavenged for wild onions, roots and potatoes, tied it all up in a net made out of tendons and then finally returned to traveling.

  Not one to waste time he also experimented with his powers while on the move. For now it seemed he could very vaguely move the cold throughout his body, marginally increasing its concentration on a chosen spot.

  For now he focused on his legs, his aim to at least freeze the surrounding grass on his step or the occasional dew remaining from the morning. He quickly found out that he’s only capable of sustaining said training for only half an hour, his jak running empty by then.

  And the quickest way to replenish jak was to kill, so he did. He hunted as much as possible, leaving a path of corpses in the meantime as he had no need nor capabilities to store so much food. A lucky day for the scavengers, not so much for the corpses.

  His progress in travelling slowed down significantly, but his jak manipulation improved at a steady pace.

  Slowly being able to transfer the cold to pretty much any part of the body at command, making that patch of skin along with the fur paler and harder.

  And so did two weeks of traveling passed. Early on he spotted quite a few campsites and hunting trails, but the further he got in his journey the rarer they became, which was a bit odd considering the distance between villages stayed the same.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The question was quickly answered as he approached a change in biome.

  The fluvian kid's words he previously dismissed as a fairy tail for the young seemed to be true. What he came into contact with was ‘The Ghost valley’ in their words. One named for its ability to turn you into one at a moment of negligence, a dead zone so to say, a point of no return.

  It was a swamp. One presumably filled with all sorts of venomous and poisonous beings if his past lives served him right.

  ‘Tsk, what a shame’ Torin thought, moving through a swamp was difficult enough in a group, not to mention alone. No one to watch his back and sides, no one to pull him out if he sinks in.

  Well the good news was at least that he was extremely unlikely to attract any of the fluvian forces, which he managed to avoid mostly with luck and a little bit of skill. Not to mention swamps were a great place for wild boa-, but just as that thought came up he pushed it away.

  His frozen heart still needed time to thaw out, maybe in the future he could consider it.

  ‘Still, this is bound to make me stronger, after all if I don’t I’ll die’ He murmured as his hooved legs slightly sunk into the damp moss.

  Carefully traversing the terrain filled with trees, water and spiky bushes that were harmless thanks to his hardened skin he spotted his first prey. It was a rather large centipede sporting twenty centimeters in width and roughly four meters in length.

  It was feeding on what appeared to be a large, crocodile-like amphibian. Its traits were hard to distinguish as it was half sunken into the moss with its guts spilling out, but it seemed to be rather round with smooth skin, four appendages and a long ’face’.

  Just as his brain registered the threat and he took another step towards the centipede it reacted, lifting itself from the ground to almost his height it screeched at him, as if telling him to leave its food alone, the potent venom glistening on its foreteeth clearly as much as a deterrent as the hard chitin covering the whole body.

  Not one to be discouraged, Torin welcomed the challenge. The calculative glint in his eyes now containing a hint of insanity. With a swoosh he charged forward.

  Holding the spear with both hands he stabbed it into a small puddle upfront just to pole vault over the centipede, his tattered cloak fluttering as he twisted in the air to jump on the rear end of the animal.

  The beast reacted as soon as the boarling touched its body, instead of thrashing around it wrapped around Torin at lightning speed, the latter barely having a second to react forcing all the ice he could manipulate to the spot the centipede's fangs were aiming at.

  *clang*

  They bounced off like hitting rock. Its head wildly swinging back just for Torin to grab it with hist both still free hands and apply as much crushing force as possible. The centipede now fully panicking tightened the crushing force on Torin as well, everything up to his chest slowly being squeezed.

  In their desperate struggle they started rolling over the damp ground. Torin's breath started turning shallow, his lungs having less and less space to expand by the second. He focused all the now free ice energy into his hands aiming to brain freeze the damn insect.

  The corners of his vision grew darker and darker, the centipede mug turning into a blurry mess. Yet the closer he got towards death the stronger his frost became until..

  *krrash*

  The insect's frozen head broke off of its body, with the rest slowly uncoiling and dropping down onto the ground with a wet squelch.

  Taking deep breaths after the brutal battle Torin seemed excited instead of scared or emotionless, he just did a new thing. He couldn’t do that before, but now he could, and what was the price? A slight chance of death? Everyone dies anyway, might as well accept it and get used to it.