Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 4: Pest Control

At least without mana. I jumped straight up, reaching with my left hand to latch onto the wood. I cleared the five-foot vertical jump easily, actually ending up overshooting. I went too high, barely managing to latch onto the branch as I fell. My hand scrabbled for purchase on the branch, and once I finally grabbed hold my enhanced strength allowed me to pull myself up with ease.

I laughed lightly, my plan seeming more feasible from up high. Looking out, I spied another branch a good five yards away. Feeling bold, I shifted my balance on my perch, prepping to leap. Then I jumped. I sailed through the air, a laugh bubbling from my lips at the incredulity of my situation. Me, a mage! Trying to parkour through a forest like a godforsaken ninja!

But I knew almost immediately that I would fall short of my target. And even with an enhanced body, I didn't want to fall ten feet to the forest floor. It would still hurt. Instead, I reached my arm out to the branch, pulling for all I was worth. A flare of white telekinesis flickered around the branch, brightening as I got closer.

The pull was a bit weak with how far away the target was from my body, but as I got closer the pull strengthened. A glimmer of hope rose in that split-second, only to be brutally snuffed out when I accelerated into the branch.

I impacted my chest hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs. What was even more unfortunate was the fact that the strike rattled across my sternum as well, disrupting my mana core.

I remembered reading at some point that getting struck in the mana core was a lot like getting kicked between the legs. Now from experience, I could say they felt awfully similar.

I slid off the branch with a pained groan, falling to the floor as the mana pulling me into the branch winked out. My mana shroud broke as I hit the ground, shattering to as many pieces as my pride.

Leaves fell slowly from the tree onto me as I curled inwards, recovering from what did feel uncomfortably close to getting a boot in the family jewels. After a few minutes of self-pity, I stumbled to my feet as my mana core finally snapped back to functioning.

I dusted my shirt free of bark and dirt, then peered back at the branches of the trees. An idea began to form in my head of how this could work, and it would save me a lot of time in the long run.

—

It took a decent bit of trial and error to finally get where I was now, leaping from branch to branch through the forest. I balanced on the bough of a particularly tall tree, my legs already bent and ready to leap off to the next one. I jumped, my mana-enhanced leap sending me ten feet across. But that wasn't enough to reach my next handhold.

Reaching out with telekinesis, I pulled on the branch in front of me. Instead of the branch snapping in half and flying at me like an arrow, I was pulled towards the bough instead. I deftly grabbed hold of the limb with my good arm, anchoring myself and then pulling myself up.

I quickly scanned the treeline, finding my next couple of targets. I cleared the gap to the next branch, which was a bit shorter than the last jump. I didn't need a telekinetic pull for this one. With barely a moment to balance myself, I took another leap toward the next branch. With a telekinetic pull, I was able to hoist myself up onto that branch, too.

I fell plenty of times as I slowly mastered this pseudo-parkour. One of the first things I learned in this endeavor was that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. When I used telekinesis to pull on a branch, I had better hope my weight wasn't enough to snap the wood. If the branch was too weak, it would break off the tree and come hurtling toward me like a spear.

That caused one of my falls. Now I was extra careful to make sure a branch could support my weight.

Another hard lesson was learned when I misjudged a jump again. I had a backup plan in case that happened: pull on the branch and push on the ground, hopefully allowing me to reach the limb. Instead, the strain of trying to use two effects at once had caused me to fail at the pull, and I crashed to the forest floor once again.