The air was starting to get warm and the road was starting to become crowded. People looked at them cross-eyed as they walked down the road. Both of them were wet, drenched, and covered in mud. Girls looked at them twice. Mannat had a slender figure that made him look weak under clothes, but his wet clothes stuck close to his muscles and exposed his perfectly toned physique and the strength hidden behind them.

Pandit’s lips twitched as he looked around. “We are getting too much attention,” He said.

“Do you not like it?

Pandit let out a snort. “All the girls are looking at you. What’s there to like?”

Mannat looked around and saw that his friend was right. Only men paid attention to Pandit, and for some reason, it brought a smile to his face.

“Are you going to talk to the Witch?”

“--and say what? Mannat shrugged his shoulders. “If I complained she will laugh at me and ask me what kind of man can’t catch a rabbit?”

Pandit found himself smiling. “Seems like you have found your match,”

This was it. Pandit was worried about his wise friend, believing he might have trauma from the thing he committed back at the field. However, the boy was still the same. He hadn’t changed. It was a good thing. He could finally relax.

“Look to the left.” The whisper pulled Pandit back to reality. Was there danger? He didn’t sense anything. Mannat continued softly. “There is someone looking at you.” Pandit followed his sight and saw a girl --someone he knew-- watching them intently. It was Soman, Pathar’s sister. She was wearing a long dull yellow skirt with a belt of hand-carved flowers of various colors and a tight-fitting grey top.

She was looking at him? No, her sight was below his face. It was not his puffed chest she was watching and neither his toned abs. Down--

Suddenly, she raised her head and their eyes met. A sly grin grew on Pandit’s face while Soman blushed red. She looked away. Mannat did notice her scratching her hand. It was a sign of embarrassment.

She was not a particularly beautiful girl but had sharp features and big eyes -- kind of like a fish. However, Mannat liked her long and thin fingers.

“You should hurry. Or she might slip away.” Mannat said.

Pandit missed the rare pun from Mannat but knew exactly about his chances. He shook his head. “If I go looking like this, then not only will she slip away, but also dive deep and never came back to the surface.” He didn’t miss the pun then, or maybe it was a coincidence. It was a rare occasion that Mannat couldn’t read his loud-mouthed friend's expressions. “Unfortunately, she’s of the age of marriage and good three years older than me.” Pandit kept silent for a moment before getting sick of the quiet and asked, “Anyways, what are you going to do now?”

Mannat didn’t think about it. “Now that this business is over I can finally go back to my routine. What are you going to do next?”

“Me?” Pandit grinned and laughed. “I’m going to boast about my accomplishment. Share a tale and get some love. What else is there to do?”

They said goodbye at Pandit’s home.

Mannat went straight home. He took a bath, changed his clothes, and then went to the smithy to help his father. All his tiredness seemed to have grown wings and flown away with his head in its grasp. The rest of the day, he felt like water moving in a channel. He calmly flowed in the direction the channel took him.

He returned to the clearing in the evening and found the Witch waiting for him at the edge of the garden on the other side of the fence. This time she didn’t even try to hide her presence and looked eager to meet him.

“You took your sweet time to return back?” She greeted politely. Everyone has a level of politeness. Mannat was respectful; his father was loud; Pandit would grow quiet when he was being polite, and the Witch toned down her sarcasm.

“You lied to me,” Mannat said directly, not politely. He was frustrated. “You said it was a rabbit.”

The Witch smiled slyly. A corner of her lips curled up and up until it could no longer move. “And it was a rabbit. Was it not?” Mannat tried to refute her wayward claim, but she didn’t let him speak. “Tell me,” She said bending her torso over the fence. “Did you get the Experience?”

“What experience are you talking about?”

The witch frowned. “You didn’t get the message? That’s impossible.” She shrieked as if she had lost something important.

Only then did Mannat remember that he had actually received a system message like the one she mentioned. He told her in the hope to calm her down, but she started acting weird.

“You don’t know what experience is, do you?”

Was that a question? Mannat waited for her to bludgeon through the conversation like always, but he was up for a disappointment this time. The Witch was waiting for his answer and growing irritated with each passing second. It was not easy to get along with her.

He dropped his head and started pondering bout life. Finding nothing in his memory, he inspected himself. After all, it was a system message, if something had changed it would show up in his status.

Lo and behold, Mannat didn’t have to look further than the first line, but the find was much-much-much shocking than a simple skill up would have been.

Turns out, the experience she stressed about was none other than the level up bracket in the status that had never once in his lifetime –or anyone’s lifetime for that matter-- ever budged! Everyone’s level was zero, and had been like that for generations, as was the percentage next to it!

He wasn’t different from others. His level was also zero a day ago, and it was still the same that day. Only, the percentage next to it had increased to twenty-five.

It was enough to shock him, however. Mannat was an intelligent boy. He easily made the connection with all the clues in his hands. He tied to speak, but the sly, obsessive grin on the Witch’s face made him speechless.

It took him some time to get his mind straight. There were too many questions and thoughts wandering in his mind. Most of them told him the same thing he said to the Witch. “I could have died.”

“That’s what you will be doing as my apprentice. Fighting monster that normal people can’t fight.”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

The Witch scoffed at him. “You found it. You also brought it out of hiding. You definitely dealt it the final wound. What else do you want to do?”

“I--” Mannat hesitated. It was happening too fast. He wasn’t even her apprentice yet. Why was she pushing this monster-hunting business to him?

The witch interrupted his train of thoughts. “…because only we can find them. Only we can sense their presence.”

Did she mean to find them with Mana sense?

“Didn’t you ‘Inspect’ the demon? What do you think the phrase, ‘where there is one there are more means?” It was not a question. “It doesn’t mean there are more rabbits, but them – the monsters!” She shrieked. Her yellow eyes opened wide and stared right through him. “Since one already appeared, there will be more. They are back!”

But he was just a boy, not even a fully grown man! How would he deal with those monsters? How would he survive? It was impossible. He would die! Then who will wake his mother? Who will cure her illness? Who will--

“What are they?” Mannat said. His voice was grave, eyes vigilant. He didn’t trust the Witch, but he was ready to listen. he had something he wanted to clear first.

The Witch knew his thoughts. It wasn’t his face she was reading, but his heart. She knew exactly what to say, and how to convince him. “They are what your mother will become if the miasma inside her heart spreads to her whole body. She will start changing when the miasma starts coalescing. She’ll be reborn into one of them when it forms a bead in her head.” She said tapping her temple with her long bony finger.

Beads of sweat grew on Mannat’s forehead. He didn’t let his imagination run wild. His mind tied to show him things, but he shook his head and slapped his face to get his mind under control. The buzzing in his ear from the slap drowned all the other noises for a moment. It helped.

“So you better be ready.” The witch continued, despite his problems, his thoughts, his actions. She didn’t care how small and vulnerable the boy was. He came to ask for her help. “Or you will become one of them. The world is changing, and it is not going to stop for you. You have to grow strong; not just for your mother, but also for yourself, your loved ones, and your friends. Hurry up!”

Mannat took a gulp of saliva to wet his dry throat.

“I have another task for you.” The witch said pulling back from the fence. She was retreating. “It’s not urgent, but try to complete it as soon as you can.”

Mannat felt a headache developing. The witch was starting to show her colors. He feared many things --including being turned into a crow-- but not to be given a responsibility he didn’t know how to shoulder. However, it wasn’t all bad. He finally knew why the Witch was helping him. He had been wondering about it for a long time. Now he could relax around her.

Sighing he raised his head and looked into her eyes. “What do I have to do?” he asked. His voice was strong and confident. He had made up his mind.

The Witch also heard his heart and let a smile curl her lips.

“Don’t worry.” She said. Her voice similarly rose by a few octaves. “You won’t have to fight another beast, just find me the rabbit’s origin.”

Mannat was inside the hut, sitting on his chair and looking at the untitled book. It was not a work of fiction, but a record of reality, past, and future. On the page he had opened was a sketch of the corrupted rabbit. It looked different, slightly bigger, meaner, and vicious. Mannat saw the resemblance. They were the same thing. Only, the beast in the sketch had a much higher level than the one he had faced. The Witch told him: The beasts, monsters, and demons, were real and threatening. The book in front of him was a real surviving record of ancient history before the spread of mana.

He had been sitting there for quite some time and was deep in thoughts. A distant memory echoed in his mind. It was from three years ago when he had just received the skill ‘Inspect’. His father was teaching him the words of the status. Raesh taught him the meaning of the words and the numbers in front of them. That was the day Mannat learned how to write his name.

Raesh taught him the difference between strength and constitution and taught him why the latter had far more important than the former.

His father taught him all these things, but he never talked about the level column that had no value to its name.

Mannat had asked the man, only for him to laugh and rub his head. He hadn’t forgotten his father’s laugh; It was bright and filling.

He had pestered his father a few times for him to say, “The whole world would know my name if I knew the answer, son. Nobody knows what levels are and how to improve them.”

Mannat hadn’t believed him then. “But the world is so big. How can you be sure that no one knows?” He perfectly remembered how quickly his father’s smile turned into a frown in the face of his question. The world really was boundless and needless; especially for a boy like him who had only ever been to the town next doors.

“You are right,” His father had admitted. “Maybe there are people who know what levels are and what they do.”

“So they are keeping it secret?”

“Looks like it,” Raesh had answered quietly.

Mannat had stared at his face and said with extreme longing. “Father, I really want to know,”

“So do I, boy,” Raesh had quietly said, “So do I.”

That was the memory of their conversation. Three years later, he was one of those few who knew how to improve levels. If only he knew their purpose. The Witch hadn’t told him whether they would be of any use or not.

He was also wondering why anyone sane would go out of their way to hunt scary, life-threatening monsters. The whole deal was stupid. Perhaps, other masters were also forcing their students to chase monsters.

After all, not everyone could be a hunter. Their village had a good healthy population, but only a handful of actual hunters. Someone frail and defenseless like him, who couldn’t even wield a sword or aim an arrow, had no place in the trades of heroes and villains.

Mannat reluctantly closed the record. He sealed it again and replaced it with another book. This time, he chose the history of the kingdoms.

According to the book, once there were two very powerful Empires in the world, and one independent kingdom. The stronger of the two was the Ameer Empire. It occupied the west and a large part of the southern region. They had flat plains, fertile land, and the highest population. The Ragaestan Empire in the east was largely desert and had a much smaller population in comparison, but they were rich in resources. In the north, there were the Devil Peak Mountains and the Pahhadi Kingdom. It was a kingdom formed from small vassal states whose people were all refugees.

Besides these three sovereign states, there was another piece of free land occupied by none of the three governing bodies.

They called it no man’s land because none of them occupied it. Covered in a fog all year round, it was a complete mystery to everyone. The region had always been a cause of concern and greed for the two empires because of its strategic importance. The circular land shared its boundary with three kingdoms on the eastern side and loomed over the western empire’s neck like a guillotine. Only the Mountain kingdom was uninterested, as it was for the rest of the worldly affairs.

Then the war occurred to occupy the no man’s land.

Mannat tried finding the reason, but it wasn’t given in the book. He gave up and continued reading.

The two Empires fought fiercely in the south since that was the only region where their boundaries clashed with one another. At first, the Ragaestan Empire proved stronger with its stronger weapons, and resources. Ameer Empire tried to circumvent the gap by bridging the distance between the two Empires. They tried to occupy the region at the foot of the devil Peak Mountains. The eastern Empire noticed their approach and the battlefield shifted from the south to the north. Though the region belonged to the Pahadi kingdom, no one expected them to act. However, something went wrong. A third force acted. It took on the two kingdoms and ended the war.

The two kingdoms quickly retreated from there to save their necks.

The tidal retreat of soldiers from both sides gave the southern region an opportunity to gain independence, which it did under the leadership of their local military commander, Ra-ul --where Ra described his status, and ul was the name of his tribe.

In the west, people called south the land of laborers; since, most of their field workers were from the south. In the east, they called it the land of slaves. The southern people after independence named themselves Free and called their country freedom.

The war lasted for less than five years, but it caused the Ameer Empire to break into two, while the kingdom in the east directly collapsed. All of its regions declared independence under the local leaders, and the once giant Empire became 11 separate nations.

In the two hundred years since, the kingdoms of East reduced from eleven to six, and banded together under a democratic truce. Today, they call themselves the allied nations. The Ameer Kingdom, on the other hand, retained much of its lost land, but the southern nation persists their control under the support of the eastern hegemony.

Meanwhile, a neutral trade city grew at the foot of the devil Peak Mountain under the control of the Pahhadi Kingdom.

Later, the book went into details about the war, but Mannat wasn’t very interested in them. He already had too many questions and doubts. He couldn’t digest why two of the most powerful nations would go to war over a small piece of land. How did they lose so badly that one of them actually dissembled?

He wondered if there were any books related to the ‘No man’s land’ on the shelves. It would have to wait for a while though. He had read enough for one day. Outside, darkness had taken over the world; night had fallen.

Mannat collected his notes, bundled them together inside a leather cover that he had asked from his father, and went out.

The tree was glowing, the sky was twinkling with stars, the wind was cold, and his surroundings were quiet. Mannat exhaled a deep breath to calm his heart and empty his mind. The place was starting to grow on him.

The garden looked bare with a few patches of green here and there. He had picked the roots that were ripe and planted seeds in their place. His father had already taken the day’s harvest; the little he had kept for himself was inside the hut, in a crate by the corner. He wasn’t worried about not having anything to practice the next day, because the garden would be green and dazzling once again in the morning. Mannat had seen the shoots growing at a visible pace with his own eyes. It was a magical experience, but also scary at the same time. Who knows what an endless supply of mana could do to the forest ecosystem?

The wind was blowing, the night was drifting and Mannat was not worried about the future. He had a job to do and he was going to stick with it. The future was too distant and volatile for him to worry about. For now, he just wanted to save his mother. The rest he would see as it comes.

He ignored the Witch’s staff that was still standing in the same place she had stuck it. He passed by it and sat in the tree’s warm glow with his legs crossed and closed eyes. He saw facing the tree trunk for a change. He was slowly growing and not just mentally. His temperament was changing and becoming calmer. His focus had improved since he started meditating. He was starting to feel it, the world inside the flow of mana. At least he could say it was there, though he had no idea what it looked like. He could see himself getting there soon. He had a long road ahead of him, but it was no longer a steep hill. He was confident that his effort would not be in vain.

In the garden behind him, a carrot shoot slowly pushed out of the crust. It raised its leafy head and started growing toward the sky. There was nothing stopping it, but itself. It was still young, but soon it would be time for it to flower and spread its fragrance in the world.