Ren shivered as he recalled the stories of the outer forest his father had told him.
The Beasts there had hollow, despairing eyes.
They paid no mind to their wounds and moved driven only by hunger.
Even herbivores turned aggressive, lunging to devour anything that carried a trace of mana.
And that was only the edge of the forest.
In the dragons' territory, the mana itself would be Ren's worst enemy.
Like the grades of Beasts, the dragons' territory was divided, the deeper one went, into Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold zones.
In Ren's present state, the most he could manage was to set foot at the very start of the Iron Ring.
Fortunately the ruin his father had found lay near the entrance to the Bronze Ring, so he could reach it by passing only the midpoint of the Iron Ring.
'That much...... maybe even I can manage?'
Of course, Ren was hoping for a miracle.
The miracle of gaining a second Beast in the dragons' territory.
Realistically, though, it would be enough just to find a herb that could remove the Spore, or something like it.
Perhaps it would resemble the plant that had healed his mother.
But he could not aspire to the Silver Ring, let alone the dragons' territory.
If he went any deeper than that, the dense mana would eat into his body at once.
Ren slammed the book shut.
His heart pounded wildly.
Did he really have to go into that forest?
It was madness even to think about.
With nothing but a useless Spore, he might be devoured first by a Beast more dangerous than the mana.
He clearly would not survive even the first encounter.
But as his parents' muffled sobbing came through the wall and bored into his ears, he was left with effectively no choice.
***
As the night deepened, a resolve beyond fear sprouted in Ren's heart.
Just then his stomach growled.
The scent of sweet root stew still lingered in the room.
Once his purpose was clear, his appetite returned, and the scent was more tempting than ever.
Ren slipped out of his room like a shadow.
The Spore followed quietly behind him.
The floor creaked precariously, but years of experience sneaking out for midnight snacks had taught him exactly where to step to keep it silent.
In the kitchen, the feast his parents had prepared remained untouched.
Ren wrapped the stew and a large loaf of bread in a clean cloth, and took a few wild berries as well.
His father had always said that berries eased fatigue.
He gripped the cold handle of the smallest kitchen knife from the tool box and pulled out an old canteen, and he took his father's most treasured map and a rope.
After a moment's hesitation he put a flint for making fire into his bag as well.
It was not perfect preparation, but for now it would have to do.
Suddenly a sound came from the hallway.
Someone's footsteps.
Ren's heart nearly stopped.
He hurried back to his room and threw himself onto the bed the moment the door opened.
"Ren? Baby......."
It was his mother's gentle voice.
Ren burrowed under the blanket.
Fortunately the darkness hid the bag he had tucked under the bed.
The Spore settled onto the pillow and covered over that moment's crisis with its faint ash-gray light.
"I'm so sorry, baby." his mother whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Her hands were rough from years of labor, yet they still stroked his hair warmly and gently.
"If only we could have gotten you a better egg......."
"It isn't your fault, Mom, or Dad's either."
For the first time in hours, Ren answered in an unguarded voice.
"It was just...... bad luck."
"Do you want some stew? It's still warm......."
"I'll eat it tomorrow."
Ren promised.
He hated lying, but for the sake of his journey there was nothing else to be done.
"Thank you for cooking it."
His mother bent down and kissed his forehead.
The familiar scent of spices and love mingled together shook his resolve for just a moment.
"I love you, my baby."
"I love you too, Mom."
The door closed quietly.
Counting his heartbeats, Ren waited until the footsteps faded and the house sank into complete silence.
He tied the rope with the handiwork he had picked up while sneaking around with his friends.
The window opened onto the back yard, and the drop was barely two meters.
The Spore watched in silence as he fastened the rope to the bedpost.
'If you're coming along on this journey...... at least don't get in my way!'
Ren whispered to his companion as he shouldered his pack.
The night sky was clear, and the silver light poured down by twelve moons soaked the world.
Beyond the window, past the city's boundary, the dark forest spread without end.
Somewhere out there lay his only hope of a different future.
Ren gripped the rope with trembling hands.
'I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Dad.'
And then he lowered himself into the darkness.
***
Ren landed in the back yard without a sound.
It was a small garden where herbs and vegetables tended by his parents' Iron-grade Plants grew.
It was no longer theirs, but the garden still covered part of the rent and kept the family's modest table supplied.
Beyond the old wooden fence, the ground sloped away directly toward a vast plain.
The wide landscape lay silent under thick darkness.
There was no wall to climb, no guard to avoid.
Their house was like the last bastion standing on the border, just where the civilized world bled into the wastes.
Only a few of the great farms could afford to post guards.
Still less was there anyone willing to invest in this land, which bordered the outer zone of the abyss.
If by some chance the army fell, this would be the first place the cursed horde of demon beasts would strike.
That was what it meant to live on the front line.
But Ren could not understand why the adults were so frightened.
In the ten years of his life, and according to his parents in the thirty years before that as well, a horde of demon beasts had never once broken past the army.
To him this empty plain looked like a perfect place to train.
Of course, that was a pointless thought now.
Ren took out his father's old map and traced his fingers over the lines and notes he had already memorized.
How many times had he heard the story?
The year the harvest failed and the cure for mana poisoning could no longer be found in the market, his father had gone out desperately in search of medicinal herbs.
Like many others, he had no choice but to venture into the domain of the demon beasts.
That year a great many people never came back, and Ren's father had nearly met the same fate.
The special duty the kingdom had compulsorily imposed on its people had come close to taking his life.
"And just when I thought it was all over......."
His father always began the story at this part.
"I found it. A hidden entrance, as though the earth itself had split open to save me! At first I thought I had fallen into a Night Digger's hole, but no. It was an ancient tunnel. From before the Age of the Great Mana Expansion, most likely."
The map was detailed to the point of obsession.
Every mark, every turning point, every landmark was recorded without a single omission.
His father said he did not know himself why he had set down so meticulously a road he had sworn never to walk again.
But Ren thought he knew.
In some corner of his father's heart, he might have sensed that a day would come when this map would be needed.
***
An hour later, Ren finally stood at the edge of the forest.
It was luck that he had not run into a starving Beast banished from the heartland.
It seemed the day's terrible luck had finally come to an end.
Ren glanced at the Spore bobbing along beside him.
Its ash-gray glowed faintly against the dark forest.
The border zone was strangely peaceful.
Healthy Beasts had no reason to come near a mana-scarce zone.
Only the Beast hordes that erupted periodically moved through, and those on fixed dates, along predicted underground routes.
There was no such danger here.
"In theory......."
Ren whispered, less to his companion than to steady himself.
"I'll be safe until I get into the deep part of the Iron Ring. Even Iron-grade demon beasts hate this area as much as the dragons do."
Ren repeated it, convincing himself.
Then he opened the map one last time and fixed the first stage of it in his mind.
If the underground tunnel his father had found really existed, it was the best chance he had been given.
The demon beasts would not sense him in there, and he could go far deeper before he met any real danger.
Ren turned his head one last time toward his distant home.
His parents would still be awake.
Worrying over their son, talking over any way at all to make his life even a little better.
"I'm sorry. But I can't accept a future like that. Not without trying at least once...... to change it."
Ren murmured.
Then he took his first step toward the forest.
The Spore followed behind.
Under the light of twelve moons, that faint ash-gray was barely visible.
The journey that would change his life was just beginning.
***
Three kilometers had never felt so long.
Ren made his way along the mana-scarce zone that most Beasts kept away from.
The Moon Toads, however, were the exception.
Trees giving off an eerie light revealed the subtle shifts in mana density.
His father had warned Ren firmly to be especially careful of those creatures.
To look at, they were translucent blue amphibians no larger than a rabbit, but on moonlit nights almost nothing of them could be seen except their three eyes.
Those eyes shone softly with bioluminescence, giving off a radiance that seemed to drag the viewer into a trance the moment it was seen.
A single meeting of eyes was enough to paralyze their prey.
They were nothing more than immature Iron-grade Beasts that had never properly grown, but their hunting method was horrific beyond compare.
They gathered in small packs, encircled prey that had collapsed under their gaze, and then let acid flow over it to dissolve it slowly.
Ren shook his head as he recalled the latter part of his father's story, the terrifying part he had never wanted to remember.
There were things more terrible than the Moon Toads.
One of them was the giant Beast called the Night Digger.
A sluggish Beast the size of an ox.
It was a mature Iron-grade Beast that dug through the mana-thin earth to carve out complex burrows.
Their arms were deformed and long, and their claws were as keen as blades, able to cut a man in two with a single swing.
Fortunately their lazy nature meant they usually moved alone, but the territory they claimed was riddled with hidden traps that led into their jaws.
Both creatures, the Moon Toad and the Night Digger, relied on cunning traps to keep hunting and to survive in the barren border zone of this forest.