My stomach hurts. I really shouldn't have eaten those berries. At least, not that many of them, but it was hard to resist. They were all I'd had to eat for the last few days and I couldn't help myself. I should probably go to a well and wash up a little, but it's not like it would make a difference.

Like most of us kids who live on the street in the slums, I don't have a change of clothes, and I'd just get dirty enough by the end of the day no one would notice a difference. Hopefully, I make it through this winter.

Though this summer heat is probably going to kill me first. I should go to the well and splash some water on myself to cool off. The well isn't that far away from me, anyway.

Shaking my head, I get up from my spot on the ground, then make my way out of the city. There are walls surrounding the city, and I have to go out through the gates. They don't close unless they're needed to, and the guards won't stop me from coming back in.

Moving around this much is going to make me hungrier, but if everything goes well today, that won't matter. I've been trying for a couple of months now to learn magic. If I can learn a spell, even just a single offensive one, then I can start hunting my own food. I can leave in the morning, hunt down one of the basic monsters in the area outside the city, kill it, cook it, and eat it. If I'm lucky, I might be able to kill some of the slimes and sell their cores for coin. It wouldn't be much, but it would help feed me.

Immediately around the northern part of the city aren't the farms, but the fields. I don't know where the farms that feed the city are located, just that there's forest to the north, several miles away and up a slight slope. There are hills to the east, so the farms are probably south. There are watchtowers on the hills, to alert the capital in case a threat is coming.

Since the slums I've lived in are on the northern side of the city, the northern gate is the one I leave through. I head north along the path for around a mile or so, then step off of it and walk over to the river that flows out of the forest and toward the city.

Once I reach it, I dunk my head into the water to cool off a little, then pull my head back out and scoop out some of the water to drink. The cool, crisp water helps settle my stomach a little, but I definitely need something else to eat. Walking this much already made me really hungry again.

Most of the monsters in the fields are slimes. The majority of those are around a foot or so at their widest, with a solid core at their center. From what I know, the cores are the way to kill the slimes, and they sell ten for a copper coin.

Slimes, from what I've learned these last few months, mostly just laze around or hop around. The really big ones will attack if you get too close, and if you attack one slime, all nearby slimes will turn hostile. It's best to only attack a slime that has no others within ten feet of it.

I didn't attack any, that's what I learned watching others fight them. There are a few younger guys and gals out here grinding out their Levels. Most of them have swords. Mages don't seem to be able to cast very many spells before needing to recover their Mana. At least, not starting out.

There's no one hunting around me right now, so I take a seat on a rock that's in some shade under a tree and focus on my left hand. It's been impossible for me to find someone who will teach me magic, so I'm mostly doing this by experimenting.

I did manage to start sensing my Mana about a month ago. Now, I'm trying to make a bolt of compressed air. It's a basic magical attack I've seen, though I'm not sure how much Mana it costs. The mages I've seen using the elemental bolt spells usually only cast up to three or four before they stop and rest.

Those kids probably have some Levels to their name, and I'm not sure where my Mana amount compares. I know I have an unusually high amount in the slums, at least among the other kids and the few adults I talked to. None of them had Levels, either, since those are gained through kills. The only adults who knew spells and who lived in the slums weren't the sorts of people I wanted to get involved with.

They were the most shady sort.

Based on what I've observed, however, I might be able to cast a few shots of the spell. That should be enough to kill a rabbit from full. I check my Status real quick.

Name: Maxwell Zanroval Age: 12 years Species: Human Sex: Male Level: 0 Experience: 0% Mana: 17/17 Mana Regen: 0.017/second Strength: 7 Constitution: 8 Agility: 8 Perception: 9 Magic: 17 Vitality: 10

If I'm right and the spell costs 5 Mana, then I can cast three of them from full, and will need to spend, uh… fifteen minutes to regenerate that much? That gives me three hits to kill something. I want to try killing a rabbit, there are a few that live in this area. The slimes will 'eat' them, which is kind of interesting to watch.

They catch and kill the rabbit, then suck it into their slime bodies and dissolve it over time. It takes hours for a slime's acidity to dissolve even a small rabbit. At least, that's for the smaller slimes. I know that the bigger and more powerful slimes can dissolve things much faster.

Closing my Status, I take a deep breath and focus again as I look at my palm. It's time to get back to work, putting together all of my experimenting these last few months. I tap into my Mana, feeling the faint flow of it within me, the aspect of air touched into it.

Wind. Air. Compressed down. The feeling of a breeze pushing me, then a strong wind. Visualizing it concentrating, that force of wind strengthening, becoming a force that slams into things. Condensing it down into a slender bolt, drawn out of my Mana.

A bolt of violet-touched wind forms above my left palm.

[Air Bolt] Learned!

From what I've seen, wind magics are usually touched with green. Maybe it depends on our bloodline? The other people using wind magic I've seen are probably all from long-time magical families, maybe even all of them come from nobility. I'm just a kid from the slums.

Oddly, the spell only costs me 2 Mana to cast despite everyone else I've seen only managing to cast a few of them at a time. It's about six inches long and a quarter of an inch thick, and other than the violet tint to it, the spell is almost entirely clear. Not quite glass, but similar enough. Air compressed down to a solid state.

Aiming the bolt at a nearby hopping slime, I twist my wrist. The bolt shoots forward, piercing straight into the slime and its core.

+7% Experience!

Really? I killed it with one hit? That was awesome! I kill a few more slimes, missing my mark only a couple of times. After each kill, I retrieve the core and bring it back to the river to wash it off before the slime hardens, then set it down by the boulder.

It's only as I'm washing the fourth core that my excitement dies enough for me to remember that I'm hungry. I have enough Mana to cast the spell twice more before I'm out of Mana, so I let it recover all the way. Rabbits will probably be harder to hit 'cause they're always moving around and I was only targeting lone slimes that were lazing about.

Once my Mana is back to full, I look for a rabbit to attack. They will run if I get within ten feet of them, but my [Air Bolt] shoots around fifteen or so.

I find a rabbit and slowly sneak up on it, conjure an [Air Bolt], aim, and shoot.

My spell misses, slamming into the ground about four inches to the right of the rabbit. Startled, the creature bolts and I grumble to myself. I'm too hungry and light-headed, and my stomach still hurts from all those berries I ate earlier.

I'm used to pushing through my hunger and sickness, though, so I look for another rabbit to kill, my attack passing straight by it and coming undone a couple of feet later. My third attempt, the rabbit gets spooked by something and bolts as my attack shoots toward it.

In the end, it takes me twelve attempts to actually kill a rabbit, and I'm left even more hungry than I was before. Hungry and exhausted. I pick up the kill and bring it back to the tree, then gather up some sticks to build a fire. I know how to draw fire out of my Mana, though it's not good for using as an attack as it's just a small flame. I use that small bit of fire to light the sticks on fire, then I get to work on cooking the rabbit.

Having never cooked anything before, I do a terrible job. The meat is cooked black on the outside and still a little raw on the inside. I eat the cooked parts and toss the rest of it, including the guts, to a slime. The slime happily sucks the meat into its goop, and I lie down on the rock to rest some more. I've never been this full in my life.

I must have dozed off at some point because I wake to voices. Nearly thirteen years of practice has taught me how to continue acting asleep even when I'm suddenly woken. Whoever is there won't know I'm awake.

"Is he dead?" The voice sounds younger.

"No, just sleeping," an older voice responds.

"Are you sure?" The boy asks. "Look at his clothes? And those injuries? And he's just… it's like he just collapsed there."

I'm lying on my back on the rocks, my feet planted against the ground, the grass poking them a little. My outfit is a really old, tattered, and ripped tunic that used to be brown but is now a dirty beige with stains and even some bloodstains on it. My pants are sort of the same, but they're still a darker brown. How could he not tell I'm from the slums? Pretty much everyone can just by looking at me.

Or maybe I do look dead, even though I'm breathing? I'm not sure how that would work, but I guess it's a possibility.

"Yes, I'm sure," the man responds to the boy. "He's breathing, Colton. None of that blood looks fresh on him, nor do the bruises. He's probably just napping."

"Why would he be napping here?" The boy – Colton – asks. "And I told you to call me Colt when we're out here, Thomas."

"At a guess?" Thomas asks. "I'd say he's from the slums and wanted to get out of the city for a little bit. He might not have a shelter of his own, and with the river here, he can cool off some from time to time more easily than in the city."

"He'd cool off in the river?" Colt asks.

"Yes, Colton," Thomas responds, ignoring the boy's nickname request. "The river water is cool, even during the summer. Now, you wanted to come out here to train, are you going to or are you going to continue to inquire about the boy?"

"There are four slime cores by the boulder."

"I noticed," Thomas states. "He may have recently learned a spell and is hunting slimes for their cores. He's probably going to use the coppers he'd get from them to buy food every now and then."

"Oh," Colt says. "He doesn't have a bag, though. How will he carry them back?"

I hadn't thought that far. I could pull off my tunic and use that to carry them back. The cores are about two inches in diameter, so I can probably fit twenty or so of them before it's too much for me. Saving up for a sack won't really be feasible, though. I don't even have a pouch to store the coins in, so I'll have to spend them quickly or lose them.

Maybe if I earned a lot of coin at once and bought a really cheap pouch, I wouldn't have to worry about that. That's a thought for another day for sure, though.

"Now, let's get to your training, Colton," Thomas says. "Unless you wish to return home instead? This trip was meant for you to get some Experience, Colton, not inquiring about a boy from the slums who's napping in the shade out here."

"Sorry," Colt apologizes. "This is my first time encountering something like him."

"Well, you can ask questions later," Thomas says. "This way. Do you remember what the trick is to killing slimes faster?"

"Assess their type," Colt answers as their voices grow further away. "Then use a bolt of their elemental weakness. It'll penetrate their ooze more easily. I'm powerful enough starting out that it won't be an issue for me, but it's better to get into the habit of doing that for monsters with elemental weaknesses, even if they're weak."

Their voices fade out as Thomas responds to Colt, and I count out a minute before sitting up. Elemental weaknesses? So killing slimes would be even easier if I used a spell that they have a weakness to? What are their weaknesses? I can sense seven elements in my magic, so I'm going to guess that the weaknesses are those.

Time to see how this works.