I spent quite a bit of time chatting with Egan to catch up and share about what we did with our days when we were apart. Sleep catching up with him I let him go to bed asking him to bring me as much meat as possible tomorrow. He wouldn't have to hunt anymore if my idea turned out to work.
Once he lay down next to me, I once again gave him all the available energy I had in me before I collapsed from exhaustion.
When I woke up, he hadn't been there for a long time if I believe the absence of heat in place. Having finished my traps, I decide to sit outside and work my magic. I need to have more control and I am now certain that depleting my life force reserve causes it to grow larger once regenerated. This is how I spent the day testing the limits of my magic and trying new ideas.
When Egan came back he brought me what I asked for and I had a supply of meat available for my traps.
I decided not to eat today and put as much bait in the traps as I could before talking a bit about our day and going back to bed and passing on my extra strength to Egan.
The next day I was more than disappointed to see that none of the traps on which I placed a bait were triggered. I climbed into one of the foyer trees where I used to sit when I wanted to have a good, unobstructed view of the village.
I then used my magic again to summon a wind that would help me diffuse the smell of the meat around. It took several hours of effort to finally see a bear walking towards one of the two baits I had set.
He walked without any kind of caution towards my bait and fell into the first of three trap layers. The bait is obviously placed on the last layer, the one closest to the village.
I could hear those roars of pain once he put his paw in the trap, fell and then impaled himself on the stakes of the trap. The sounds of pain he emitted weighed heavily on my conscience, I take no pleasure in hurting, quite the contrary. I made a new stake emerge in the trap but this time, it was his skull that was pierced, which definitively silenced the bear.
Once calm returned, I made the wind blow again in different directions. When Egan returned, I had caught one more fox and one more wounded wolf in my traps.
He was literally drooling when I relayed to him the memories of the three animals falling into the death holes. I levitated the 3 out of the traps to bring them back to a corner of the village for Egan to eat.
I also collected the old baits to give them to Egan then I used the fox to make 3 baits. Once the tablecloths were cleaned and put back in place, I joined Egan.
I placed a sort of cocoon of earth around the remains of the wolf and the bear so that the smell did not spread, then we discussed again before going to bed. Before sleeping I did what will become a habit: fuel Egan as much energy as possible.
Now that Egan doesn't have to go hunting anymore, he just has to fetch water and then come back. He was therefore able to spend half his days sleeping in addition to his nocturnal rest. He only wakes up now to eat and drink and play a little when he wants to stretch his legs.
For my part, I spent my convalescence practicing magic and the days went by in a pleasant routine.
I have been stuck for several months because my wounds are still not completely healed. The slowness of my healing irritated me and with Egan sleeping all day I soon got bored.
I would have liked to be able to train myself physically by exploring more magic training to make my days less monotonous. Sitting all day for months even to train my magic was heavy. Fortunately the magic that I call the magic of the spirit helped me a lot to bear the boredom. As soon as the boredom became too strong, I spent hours observing the life forms that swarmed within reach of my mind.
Egan sleeps most of the time so I spent most of the time alone with myself although Egan always slept next to me. The good news is that my mastery of magic has greatly improved. I spent my time testing everything that came to mind and figuring out how I can best exploit it while reducing energy consumption.
I think I could now dig all the holes I had to make around the village in one go without being exhausted while it took me several days of work and intense fatigue to do it a few months more early.
This progress makes me realize that my potential may not be inferior to Egan's. If I could make so much progress in such a short period of time then with practice and better ideas to explore to further improve my training I too will be able to become much more formidable.