Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

"Which mark does it make?" Al asked while watching Irea nail the pin-like brick into the ground. 

"Roughly fiftieth?"  Irea replied before taking a quick look at the marks she made on one of her wooden pieces. "Fifty-third one," she added after making sure her calculations were correct.

"I think we should turn around at this point," Al proposed, turning around and looking to the south where they came from. "Traveling in a straight line might not be the best way to look for useful stuff, but we already moved far enough. There is nothing of interest here," he added with a slight note of disappointment. 

"At least we got some herbs," Irea countered, patting a small bag attached to her belt. "While not much for two days worth of walking, it's still something." She looked up at the setting sun before drowning in her thoughts for a moment. 

"Are you okay?" Al inquired, sending the girl a slightly worried look. While the two days they spent together were far from enough to make them like each other, at least they managed to bury the hatchet and get on neutral terms.

"Yeah, sorry for that," Irea shook her head as she came back to reality only to look around. "Hey, how about we go one mark sideways each? You would go east. I would go east. Looking at the time," she looked up to the sun again, "I think we should be able to converge back on this mark before the sun fully sets." 

"And what for?" Al bit his lips. "It's not like we are likely to find anything of interest in this desolate land," he stated his opinion, yet still reached out to the girl.

"What?" Irea asked, looking at the man's extended hand.

"If you want to go one mark away, shouldn't we mark it as well? Give me a stick, please," Al explained his intentions. Even though he wasn't happy with the idea of going sideways from the set path, he still decided to go with the girl's idea. 'In the end, two thousand steps is all it will take to prove myself right. It's just not worth arguing about it,' he thought while accepting the bricky nail. 

"Well, see you in a few moments then," Irea nodded her head in gratitude before taking yet another look at the sun above her. 

On the endless open plain like the one they were at, the sun's position during the day was the only reliable feature allowing them to navigate through the sea of grass. 

With everything confirmed, Irea made sure to move away from the sun while Al moved in the opposite direction. Without the assurance of the other person to count the steps, Irea didn't dare to split her attention to anything else. 

"One hundred," she spoke softly to herself as soon as she reached the first significant number. She then placed a small mark on her wooden plank before looking around, searching for anything of interest. Sadly, just like for the last two days, there was nothing notably different about this patch of the grass. 

"Two hundred." Irea placed another mark once she counted to twice the number of the steps before. 

"Three hundred," 

"Four hundred,"

"Nine hundred," she placed the ninth mark on her board. At this point, she could already see the place she would reach by the last point of her journey. But even though nothing of interest there, she pursed her lips in determination and continued to diligently count her steps. 

"Huh?" Just as Irea was about to hide her plank and pull out the bricky nail, she finally noticed something. 

But rather than jumping in joy, she slowly lowered herself on her knees all the way to the point where the grass hid her entire body. Once she stopped moving, only a tiny part of her head stuck above the blades of grass, still staring in the very same direction as before. 

It wasn't something particular that she noticed but a movement. Something far easier to detect yet far more challenging to see the details off. 

"Could it be?" she whispered to herself as the blood in her veins boiled up. Right at the edge of how far she could see, there was a hint of a treasure that everyone in the camp was looking forward to. 

It wasn't a tree which would mean there was a forest nearby. It wasn't a seagull that would indicate a presence of a sea. 

It was a wolf. 

Or at least, something pretty similar to one. While it was possible that what she saw was just a stray, abandoned specimen, chased away from its pack, the chances of it were just too small. 

For Irea, stranded far away into the nothingness of grass, the sight of a wolf was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it meant its habitat was somewhere nearby. And a curse, because when compared to the usual monsters, the animal breed of magical beasts was far more dangerous even to the most outstanding cultivators that she knew off. 

'I need to retreat,' she thought before turning her head around and taking a look at the sun. Right now, only a few moments separated her from the sunset. And while the darkness could help her cover her tracks, given how wolves didn't really that much on their sense of sight, it would actually make it far more dangerous to travel during the night.

With her direction confirmed, Irea started to crawl back the way she came from.  Bit by bit, she distanced herself from the place where she noticed the wolf, hoping to escape from its own range of detection as soon as possible. 

'Dang, it's getting dark already,' Irea noticed with annoyance a few moments later. With the grass covering her vision, she almost lost track of the sun that was her only guidance in this sea of grass. Worried that she would lose her sense of direction and get genuinely stranded in the vast steppe, she quickly raised her head to look at the sun... 

Only to gaze right into the eyes of a wolf that appeared right in front of her. 

It was tiny for the standards of the monsters that she was used to encountering in the desert. But for her own human build, it was enormous. 

'Fuck,' Irea remained motionless, gazing deeply into the amber eyes of the creature. 

For a moment, the situation remained stable. The wolf didn't appear to have any ill intent towards the girl. But, rather than that, it curiously started to sniff her face out, as if it was the first time for it to encounter a human. 

Then, a rustling sound came from behind. 

"Irea?" Al's voice reached the girl's ears. But what was far worse, it clearly spooked the wolf. In an instant, its calm demeanor changed as it turned towards the voice and lowered itself on its legs.

But it did not growl. Just from this fact alone, it was clear that for a wolf it was, it was already a seasoned hunter. 

"Cccaaalllmmm dddooowwwnnn," Irea spoke out in a soft voice, elongating each sound of her words. Then, moving her body up at the slowest pace that she could, she rose above the grass level to make sure Al would notice her. 

"What's wrong with you? Are you okay?" Al asked without a care in the world as if his brain suddenly took a sudden hit resulting in his intelligence leaving the man. 

"Not a word," she said in the same, slow manner while looking for the tiniest hint of an attack from the wolf's posture. 

But rather than trying to fight or flee, Irea reached underneath her clothes and pulled out the same fish jerky that she was forcing herself to eat throughout the journey. 

The wolf instantly turned its snout towards the meat in Irea's hand, clearly curious about the new smell previously hidden by the girl's own sweat. 

"Here, you can have it," Irea continued to speak in a slow voice before placing the piece of jerky on the ground and slowly retreating a few steps.

'It clearly never encountered humans before,' Irea thought while watching the wolf approach and sniff the jerky before carefully picking it up. From how it munched on it and shook its tail, it was clear it had no evolutionary experience of encountering her species.

"Here, you can have another one," Irea pulled the next piece of jerky while feeling a sting on her heart while doing that. But rather than placing it on the ground, she gently threw it towards the animal. 'It's better to go hungry for a while than to fight its entire pack,' she thought, watching the wolf happily consume another piece. 

"Don't say a word," she ordered Al in the distance as she pulled out the third piece of jerky. But this time, rather than throwing it towards the wolf, she dangled it before its eyes before throwing it as far away from herself and Al as she could. 

For a moment, the wolf simply stared at the girl with its amber eyes. Its tail also stopped swinging, indicating that Irea's plan wasn't going the way she hoped. But ultimately, it turned away and chased after the piece of meat. 

"What was that?" Al asked once the wolf disappeared from his view. Even though it was already rather dark, the rustling of the grass in the distance could serve as a hint for the speed and current location of the animal. "Don't tell me you are scared of a simple wolf," he said with disbelief spreading on his face. 

"A single one?" Irea shook her head in denial. "I could kill it with just a thought. But it was just a scout," she added after calming her breath down. "I saw another one, way more dangerous in the distance before just happening upon this one," she explained her encounter before slowly making her way back to where both of them came from. 

Without the sun, she could only recalculate where she stood where she encountered the wolf before tracing her path back to Al. Even though it was possible to guide their steps with the stars, neither of them appeared to know their way around doing so. 

"Isn't that great, though?" Al asked, looking in the direction the wolf chased after the jerky. "If there are wolves, there is bound to be other kinds of prey here as well," he added, tightening his fists in joy. 'That would mean the end of this monotone diet!' he thought with excitement. 

"Yeah, this is the best thing that we could discover... But now that I think about it isn't there something strange about this place?" Irea asked, finally daring to turn her head away from the direction the wolf came from and looking Al directly in the eyes. "Isn't it strange that we didn't encounter a single monster so far?"