The girl set off towards the capital early in the morning.
The tavern lady bid her farewell, but as the girl asked, she didn't prepare much.
But still, her love for the girl didn't let her leave empty‑handed.
So, the lady overnight prepared her a small pouch with some food that could last for a while, and also a small pouch of money.
Only like that did she let the girl leave.
The girl, walking through the still‑sleeping town, looked down at the two pouches she was given and sighed.
Then, she set off towards the town gate.
At the time, the town gates were still closed, but the girl wasn't bothered by that.
That wasn't the first time she was sneaking out of the town at a time when the gates were supposed to be closed.
So she knew exactly what to do.
In reality, whether she set off before dawn or waited for the gates to open wouldn't really affect when she would get to the Capital City.
It couldn't make that much of a difference.
But the girl still did it because there was something she was a bit worried about.
If the Academy of Magic had been able to track her down to the tavern, they could as well have people waiting for her at the town gate.
And since the Academy's motives were still unknown to the girl, she decided to avoid them as much as possible.
So, she slipped out of the town completely unnoticed.
The only one who knew she was gone was the tavern lady.
The girl decided not to move through the road leading out of the town.
Instead, she concealed herself amongst the trees that had been planted on both sides of the road along with some bushes.
The trees and bushes were there like that so the roots would strengthen the ground, so the road wouldn't over time move from the load of carriages and things moving over it.
It was a smart way to reinforce a road with little resources.
But there was also the risk that the trees' roots could start eroding the road if they weren't being kept by someone.
But that wasn't really something for the girl to concern herself with.
At the moment, she was concerned about her journey to the Capital City.
As far as she knew, there was some way for those who possessed the Power of Death and Extinction to somehow bypass the limitations of human bodies, which would (among other things) let them travel extremely fast.
But the girl had never even tried to develop that power of hers in that way.
It was a well‑known fact that to achieve some results, one would first have to get through a stage when their power would be uncontrollable, which would cause them to kill many people.
The girl didn't want to be a killer.
But at the moment, she knew she would be alone for nearly a month.
She could use that time to train.
But if she failed in the training, she wouldn't make it to the Royal Capital in time and that would get her in trouble.
So, was it worth the risk?
The girl thought about it for a while before deciding to get away from the town a bit further.
Worst come to worst, she would just get away from the place.
Possessing no name, changing her identity wouldn't be all that difficult.
Especially in a world where the information network wasn't all that advanced.
So, hidden away from the gazes of people, the girl started her training.
It was on a vast field behind the town she had been in just a while ago.
Because the field was considered the breeding ground of monsters, no one really went there.
The only one in the town who ever went there was a herbalist, because apparently on the perimeter of the field grew some rare herbs.
And even he didn't go deep into the field, so the girl was safe there.
Of course, that was only from human gazes.
The probability that she would encounter a monster wasn't a probability.
It was certainty.
Still, the girl knew how to deal with that.
In the past, there were times when she couldn't properly control her Power of Death and Extinction.
In those moments, she would go to those fields to hide away.
And she encountered all kinds of monsters in those times.
So she naturally had to learn how to counter them.
Back then, her Power of Death and Extinction worked as a barrier of a kind, because the monsters could feel the danger from her, but that didn't mean they weren't hostile towards her.
So, to make sure they didn't kill her when the chaos of her power around her disappeared, the girl always quickly learned the most she could about the monsters present around her at the moment, so she could save her life when it was time for her to leave.
From all that, she knew exactly what to do when she encountered any monster in the fields.
She knew them all even more than they knew themselves.
Also, as the author of the book, she knew some secret facts about some dangerous, plot‑relevant monsters, but such monsters mostly didn't live around the town.
She chose the town exactly because it was in a plot‑irrelevant area, so even the creatures that lived there were different.
Because most of the creatures in the world of her book were tied to a certain area, depending on the climate, altitude, weather, and so on.
And the empire had great variety in all that, so it wasn't hard to find a place where monsters from the book wouldn't be as often.
In one thing, it gave the girl the disadvantage of not knowing the monsters in the area, but at the same time, she knew she wouldn't encounter the most dangerous ones.
Because those only lived in specific areas she knew to avoid.
So, within the field, the girl lay amongst the tall grass and flowers, closing her eyes.
To be able to concentrate on the Power of Death and Extinction, she could use two methods.
And those methods were quite contradictory; two extremes of the same spectrum.
The first method, the one the girl was about to use at the moment, was to relax as much as possible so her mind was clear and she could focus on the power within her.
The second method was to stimulate her body and mind into a chaotic state so the power came out on its own.
So, the girl relaxed her body and slipped into a half‑asleep state, her consciousness slipping every now and then.
And in that state, she was extremely sensitive to everything within her own body.
To most things, she was already used, but then, there was something in her chest that she couldn't grasp a hold of.
That was what she was searching for.
A tangled mess of black threads overlapping her heart.
The Power of Death and Extinction within her was extremely messy, so she couldn't control some of its abilities.
Like the one that would allow her to bypass her bodily limits (basically an ability to kill the limits either permanently or temporarily).
But she could use the most basic abilities; like bringing the power to her skin so she could kill weak things that touched her.
Or infect food or liquids to make them lethal.
The girl wasn't all that interested in those abilities.
They were useful, but not as much as the abilities still deep within the tangled mess over her heart.
That was why she needed to smooth out the strings of the power and let them spread over her body.
So, with her eyes still closed, she found one end of the tangled mess and started moving it to weave out.
She had a lot of work ahead of her.
But, naturally, things don't always go as people wish.
The element the girl was already taking into consideration appeared.
She caught a whiff of something that pricked her nose.
Her eyes snapped open and she sat up.
Turning her head to the side, she saw a familiar silhouette.
"Why the Screechers today?" she muttered in annoyance.
She was staring at a singular monster approaching where she was.
It was a creature standing about five meters tall when on all four.
It had a feline body, but instead of a mouth filled with fangs, it had a singular stiff tube for a mouth.
And atop that tube was a lump of flesh with two holes in it.
That was the creature's nose.
Another thing the girl's eyes instantly noticed was the pair of wings the creature had.
She didn't know why, all Screechers she ever encountered had those wings, but the wings were too weak to carry the creatures.
So why did the creature even evolve to have them?
But that wasn't something she could concern herself with at the moment, because the monster was getting progressively closer to her.
She needed to act.
The prickly scent coming from the monster meant it was calling for a female to mate with it, and as far as the girl knew, female Screechers were extremely violent.
So, if she didn't want to be torn apart, it was better to get lost.
And for that, she luckily had a singular ability from the Power of Death and Extinction.
Death Presence.
Just like it sounded, it could make the body of her target (even herself) temporarily have traits of a rotting corpse.
Wounds would appear on the body and start rotting.
The target wouldn't really die, but the rotting would still hurt like hell.
But even in that state, the girl could continue unweaving the tangled power around her heart, so she decided to use it.