As she followed the water, the small creek slowly but steadily widened and connected with a few other streams, by then it was two meters wide and Kali realized she's been traveling for well over a day again.
She was just so absorbed by getting better at the acrobatics needed to jump and swing from branch to branch while also keeping her attention on her surroundings. The many evergreens around her were from a variety of similar species, — she noticed once she paid closer attention to them,— blue and green spruces were the most populous with pines as a close second but as she traveled further and further down the mountain fir started popping up but those couldn't reach as high as their humongous cousins.
Fir trees were verdant green and their canopy started just half a meter above ground, providing a great hiding place for smaller animals but they could only thrive now that the larger trees were sparser and didn't obstruct the sun so much.
This also had Kali ambling through the meter-high snow more often than not with there being fifty or so meters between some of the large trees. At least she could see much further ahead without the many obnoxious trunks in the way of her vision.
Her journey had been interrupted before for a few hours when she found a subspecies of fir that had crimson red leaves and had no snow either on or nearby it. She remembered there being a type of fir like that that had magical properties but she couldn't quite recall what those were so she spent a few hours figuring it out.
A bit of a fun interruption along her otherwise monotonous journey, a change of pace would keep things fresh she thought.
She only needed about ten minutes to figure it out when she threw a snowball at it and the water turned into vapor as it reached within a meter of the tree, the vapor then proceeded to seep into the needle-like leaves as if it was a ghost possessing it.
She guessed it worked somewhat similar to her Water Gathering Rune, maybe it was even the thing they based the Rune on. A set amount of Runes was gifted to most sentient races more than 15 hundred years ago by an ascendant entity that called itself Solaris.
Many elves were rather dubious about this occurrence as Cores just started popping up randomly a few centuries ago in people and just when nearly every newborn had Cores this entity just popped up and told them how to use it. It called what the Runes were capable of by manipulating mana 'Magic' and while the Runes were put under severe observation and research, they weren't entirely kept under the hold of the ruling class.
For whatever reason Solaris gave a 'starter pack' as it called it to the Rulers of larger nations under the magical contract that they would teach a large part of it to their subjects. This went differently for each nation some fell while others rose higher than ever on the back of magic. It also didn't help with keeping things peaceful that no two 'starter-pack' was the same. Each had some runes or techniques that only they had on the entire planet.
With time people who were later called Rune Forgers managed to first alter some Runes and then make ones of their own. It was a time-intensive and secretive craft so Kali didn't know any more than that about it but it sounded like something she should look into in the future.
Kali's To-Do List:
-Learn to fly
-Learn Rune Forging
Ah, I should probably think about more short-term goals no? Hmm
She got to thinking about that once she was done reviewing her experience with the crimson fir. She could hunt so food wasn't a problem and with the stream neither was water. The shelter was a bit of a hit-and-miss but she could keep going for another few days at this pace so she'd leave that to her future self.
Neither of the countries bordering the kingdom near her was too good of a destination, the nearest was the Northern Water Province of the Corvus Empire which was what they called this part of the erstwhile Water Kingdom that was the home of the Autumn Elves after it was conquered.
It wasn't too bad of a place to hide as the bastards oppressed their Provinces both technologically and in education. They only had enough military in towns to defend them from wandering monsters and even those towns were few and far between on the far shore of the continent.
The humans found the Karyst Jungle to be too much of a bother to tame so they just hid in their towns so while the Jungle would be just as much of a pain as this arctic forest she wouldn't have to worry about random humans finding her.
Zadkiel was more than thorough with his education in this so she remembered it clearly, they shouldn't even have mapped more than a fifth of the jungle.
The only thing that probably held back the still-hiding elves from retaking their land was the threat of a legion arriving from the Imperial Core and those wouldn't have much of a problem with putting down a rebellion. Even her father had trouble when a few legions decided to try their luck at invading the kingdom a century ago.
The other nation would require much more travel to reach as it was far to the north, when the jungle ended came a wide savannah and it was split around halfway towards the desert it shifts into, by the largest river on the continent. It is aptly named the Bloodraven River for the large amount of blood the Corvus empire shed while trying to push their border further to the north. Those guys had a weird obsession with ravens, they even called the emperor the Raven Lord or something stupid like that.
Her father had a tenuous alliance with the republic about assisting each other against the empire, so she could either go hide under the nose of the humans or her father's allies.
The Empire it is!!
Well, it might be a stupid idea but if it was who would even think about her doing it? Wasn't it a genius idea if she thought about it like that? It was! She nodded to herself, satisfied with her outsmarting her enemy.
Right, she was thinking about short-term goals. First, she had to reach the jungle which if she remembered right was called Karstirien by the Elves there, much better than what the humans gave it, Karst Jungle. They called it that because it had large karsts in it, very creative though the elves weren't much better but she felt like no one would fault her for being biased.
She opted for walking on the small riverbank instead of making a clear trail through the snow for any would-be pursuers to follow, this put her in a slightly dangerous position as any animal that frequented the stream for drinking would come across her but she hoped she'd be able to climb a nearby tree before they got to her.
Not that it would help with bears or other animals that could climb trees too. Maybe she'd have to fight then, she was a bit apprehensive about that, the only thing she 'fought' so far was the wall of her bedroom when she used it for spell testing and that dumb bird. Neither fought back too much.
Kali ran thought-up scenarios through the back of her mind, trying to come up with good countermeasures for each of the beasts she knew to live in the area. She already avoided a bunch of wild animals and even a few magical beasts, the animals were mostly easy, and her physique let her sneak around them or just hide until they wandered away while for the magical beasts, she used what she did with the lynx a day ago.
She was mostly sure she could fight off a normal animal with little effort but she didn't have any way of gauging how strong any magical beast was aside from what she knew of from her lessons. Those magical beasts had Cores just like sentient beings and they either evolved to absorb mana passively or from their prey.
The second type was the most dangerous and they tended to attack settlements as other beasts with Cores were much harder to find than a human child for example which it could find plenty of in a small town. The annoying old man once even told her that there was a mutation that happened in a rare few that allowed them to consume and absorb the essence of the target directly.
She refused to believe him at first but the old man never lied to her before, he at most withheld important information. Like how to use the damned ring he gifted her. How useful it'd be if she could just make herself invisible with it.
Illusions were still far from her level of mastery in magic, even a basic Minor Illusion was much more complicated than all of her Spells combined as it was designed to blend in with its surroundings perfectly or mimic something.
The most she could do was Shadow Cloak which was a mana intensive Spell that cloaked her in shadows as the name suggested, it was a Light elemental Spell that would use mana to absorb light around her and the upkeep of that was taxing on her. She could cast two Water Blades out of the mana needed to keep the Cloak up for five minutes.
As her mind wandered once again back onto magic she almost failed to notice the snow crunching softly only 200 meters to her right, her vision of its origin was blocked by a rather wide fir that sat in the snow. She jumped over the stream and landed softly on the other side of it to put something else between herself and the thing that made that sound.
The crunching was soft but it sounded like a lot of snow was crushed but somehow it was dampened. Fur, it was fur that dampened the noise and whatever it was its furred feet should be large based on the sound. Kali eyed the tree warily as she crept closer and closer to the nearest tree on this side of the water to hide but she was still 30 meters away when a large furry head peaked out from behind the tree she was staring at.
It was covered in soft snow-white fur and she wasn't sure she'd have noticed it just by her vision if it was further away and without the verdant evergreen as a contrast. It was a Frost Wolf, one of the apex predators of the mountains aside from magical beasts but they sometimes had magic of their own though it was rare.
Its icy blue eyes that glowed a bit were an indication of this being one of those rare few and at the same moment, Kali understood why people tended to compare her to these beasts. Its soft and curly snow-white fur was the same shade as her hair and the eyes now glaring at her from afar resembled the ones that stared back at her from the mirror.
Though she hoped her dental hygiene was a bit above the wolf as she glanced down at its large fangs still covered in dried blood as it bared them at her before launching itself into a sprint.
"Fuck," Kali exclaimed in horror as she realized that the tiny stream with its 3 meters of width would hardly stop the beast that already covered half the distance to her.
Her initial stun wore off just then and she launched herself further backward with a heavy leap, while midair she made a hand sign that caused a strong Kinetic force to slam into the snout of the angry canine, making it stumble for a moment.
Now that it was closer Kali realized it was somewhat small for being a frost wolf, those were supposed to be five or so meters at the shoulder on average but could grow to ten if they had Cores and consequently essence enough for it. Beasts with Cores tended to grow larger instead of becoming purely stronger while remaining compact like the elvenoid species.
Yes, that was a word, despite how egotistical Kali found it to name any other species that looked similar to them elvenoid. Well, back when the thing was first used elves ruled over both east and west Iasira, which was the continent she stood on now. How far they'd fallen.
She landed on the ground a good twenty meters back but the wolf was just now leaping over the water, she didn't have time to cast any of her stronger spells.
Ah, shit, fu-, what do I do?
Trying to suppress her rising panic she rained down Kinetic attacks on the beasts, they arrived near instantaneously after she activated the Spells so they were mostly the only Spells she knew that could reliably hit the thing while they were both moving this fast.
She landed five Kinetic strikes that delivered kinetic energy directly into the flesh of the beast, the force of it could crack the trunk of the thicker trees here and uproot the smaller ones but the only thing the five Spells managed was make the mutt while in pain. Three assaulted its back, which turned its momentum midjump towards the frigid water and the other two struck near its eyes but she missed both as the thing flailed around from the previous three.
The other Spell she cast was Kinetic Hammer which did fuck all against the wolf, it would have launched her dozens of meters away but the canine seemed to be much more ... dense than her. The Spell was supposed to keep melee attackers away from mages but it was tailored by elves against humans at most, she guessed.
Kali, taking this as a sign, turned around and bolted for the largest tree nearby which was an obnoxiously large red-fir, not the crimson one from before but one with a bark that had a crimson tint. The thing was barely a third of the height of the humongous trees she left behind but it still stood at over 50 meters of height so it'd do.
She crouched, coiled like a spring and released. Barely escaping the jaws of the beast snapping shut behind her ankles, she managed to grab one branch with her left arm but her left slipped. Barely in time, she wrapped her legs around the trunk of the tree, quickly followed by both of her arms, she hugged the tree like a koala.
Just as she was managing to calm her thundering heartbeat she made the mistake of looking down due to hearing the sound of claws digging into the bark. The wolf was clawing away at the base of the tree, jumping sometimes and clawing chunks out of it just three meters below her spot nearly around 8 meters from the ground.
Ugh, persistent mutt.