Soul of the Warrior

Kefira shook her head at Reivyn's response. It wasn't the first time she had seen someone walk through the air, but they were definitely the youngest people she had seen do it.

"It's not all that uncommon to see people walk through the air," she said. "Almost all Casters with a specialty in the Air Affinity are able to do so once they reach a certain Level, and people who reach high-Tier 5 are able to do so by manifesting their will in their Domain."

"I was told that a Domain was a Tier 4 thing, but I already have a Skill that gives me a Domain," Reivyn said.

"That's different. The Domain that you were told about is more esoteric. It's not an actual Skill, just an amalgamation of Skills that act in such a manner as to give powerful people control over a limited space around themselves. Your Skill is probably the actual, legitimate thing, but I haven't heard of anyone else with the Skill.

"Tier 4 is generally accepted as the earliest someone can raise their Skills and Stats high enough to create their own Domain, but it's more common in Tier 5, and only those that were talented enough to cultivate one in Tier 4 are able to use it to manifest their will in late Tier 5."

"So, do you think I'll be able to manifest my will using my Skill?"

"Probably, but it would likely have to be at minimum around Level 50 before you could do so. Anyway, that's all stuff for later and doesn't really matter right now. I just wanted to let you know that what they did wasn't that strange. The only strange thing about it was that it didn't seem like a Domain thing, and they looked too young. It might have been Class Skills or something, though not Magic."

"Fair enough. Do you have any idea who they were or who they're affiliated with? Two people just materialized out of thin air on top of a desolate mountain top."

"No clue," Kefira shrugged. "They seemed friendly enough, though, so what does it matter?"

"Yeah, you're probably right. Just an unusual circumstance for an encounter. If we had passed them along the road after they descended the mountain, we wouldn't have looked at them twice."

"I'm going to go ahead and try out this 'whole jumping 'as far as I can see' thing, now," Kefira said.

Reivyn nodded his head, and he began to walk around the peak, looking out over the terrain. Serilla stood guard behind Kefira as she sat cross-legged. The wind was constantly blowing, and the air was incredibly cold, but none of those things bothered any of the three. Kefira calmed her mind and entered into a state of Meditation.

She had been working on the Skill for as long as she could access her Mana, and she didn't have to keep her eyes closed to stay in the mental state, though she hadn't progressed it to the point where she could move around and interact with people and things. She had heard of someone who had reached Transcendence with their Meditation Skill, and they could have it activated perpetually without it negatively affecting their life in any way.

That was the thing with Transcendent Skills: they typically broke the rules that one had abided by to reach Level 100 in the Skill in the first place. It was one of the reasons why so few people achieved it in any Skill. That didn't apply to Class Skills, though, as Level 100 wasn't the cap.

Kefira looked over the world below, and if she wasn't in a Meditative state, the sight would have taken her breath away. The world stretched out before her, and she could see for miles and miles. Her Perception gave out before the terrain did, and the distant horizon appeared to fade away into mist as it blended with the sky, but everything she could see was vivid and spectacular.

The green of the plains and forests took up most of the landscape, but she could clearly see the rivers and lakes, as well as the main highway they had been traveling across toward the capital. The capital was on the other side of some large hills, too small to be considered mountains, much further in the distance, and she felt that if she could just strain her Perception Stat just a little more, she might be able to make out the outline of the city.

She didn't focus on that for too long, though, as that had the possibility of breaking her Meditation. She could focus on mental things and magic pretty heavily, but she still wasn't Skilled enough to focus too much on external things too hard.

I first have to establish a baseline, Kefira thought. I haven't been able to perceive a limitation on my jumps for some time now, but looking at the open sky doesn't work. I need to find something I can see and get on the verge of Casting the jump to see if it will work.

She was very clear in how she would be able to determine if she could reach a destination or not. She hadn't always been able to jump very far, and in her training and experiments when she was younger, she found that the Spell would just fizzle out and she would instinctively understand that it was because she had tried to go too far. Over time she had learned to feel what it would be like if the Spell was going to fail before she attempted it, and that was what she was going to do now.

She looked down the mountain, drawing on her Mana and bringing the Spell up without fully activating it. She felt for the difference in the Spell, whether it would allow her to go or not, as she extended her vision ever forward down the mountainside. The mountain ran out of view before she ever reached that feeling, though, and what she could see of the ground beyond was definitely further than she could reach with her traditional Casting method.

Hmm, looks like I'm going to have to figure this out a little blind. I'll just have to delve deeper into the void with my Space Mana and hope that I can reach a point I can see where I can tell that the Spell would work. If I can do that, I'll know that I'm on the right track, but if not, I might not even know if I'm going the right way.

I should have gained a baseline before ascending already to the peak, but I hadn't even thought of it, too caught up in the adventure with Reivyn. Oh well, nobody's perfect.

She put thought to action, and she drilled her Space Mana deeper into the void, tunneling through the invisible space between the Realm and "outside." The line separating the Realm from the rest of the universe was simultaneously deep and paper thin.

From her experiments with the rent in reality down by the Boss Dungeons that had been destroyed in the Spider Lair, she knew that as soon as her Mana pierced the veil, the perception was that it was paper thin. That wasn't the case when she was tunneling through the tear, though, and it had seemed like it was hundreds of yards long.

She put some of her Mana a bit into the void tunnel, and she cast her jump Spell normally parallel to her strand, trying to see if she could tell how deep it usually traversed the void when she used it. The Spell didn't activate, of course, as she wasn't going anywhere, but she could feel the Mana trying to send a thread into the void to bend around the physical space.

The thread that her Spell sent out didn't even pierce into the void beyond reality. It just brushed up against the edge. Kefira's eyebrows rose in surprise at that discovery, and she nearly lost her Meditation.

She forcibly grabbed the strand with her will and dragged it into the depths of the void tunnel with her other strand of Mana, and she instantly felt like she was able to successfully cast the Spell to the foot of the mountain that she could see over the edge. It wasn't the actual foot of the mountain, though, it was several hundred miles away because of the angle that she was looking down.

She put her focus on how deep her thread had gone and was once again surprised to see that it had only gone about an inch in before the Spell had expanded multiple folds.

The Spell remained in an incomplete state, though, and she could tell that it would require more Mana to fuel it. Jumping about 400 hundred yards with her normal method would require about 50 Mana, but it didn't scale like that. If she only jumped ten yards, it would still require at least 30 Mana to activate. Dragging someone along with her doubled the cost, and adding a third person was about two and a half times the cost. She didn't fully understand the rules governing how much Mana was required, but it had never been that big of an issue for her to pin it down exactly before.

She pumped her Mana into the Spell, trying to complete the connection so that she could activate it, and it seemed like it was a bottomless well. More and more Mana went into the Spell, and she feared that it would never reach completion as there was no indication if it was filling up or not.

Suddenly, the Spell reached a tipping point, and it wouldn't take any more Mana as it felt as if it could finally be activated. She checked her Mana reserves and found that she had pumped 2,000 Mana points into the Spell to be able to reach the new edge of what was possible for her.

Wow, that's a lot of Mana. I'm not sure I could call this a casual "jump" at this point. If I wanted to bring Reivyn with me, it would be 4,000 Mana, and if I brought both Reivyn and Sera with me, it would be 6,000. That's most of my Mana Pool.

Kefira didn't complete the Spell, and she slowly drew the Mana back into her. One of the things that a high Skill Level in Mana Absorption allowed one to do is recycle unused Mana, not just absorb the ambient Mana from the surroundings. It wasn't perfectly efficient, though, and Kefira lost about 30% of the Mana she had pushed into the Spell before she had reclaimed it.

She broke off her Meditation and stood up, walking over to Reivyn.

"I've figured it out," she said.

Reivyn turned to face her with a look of appreciation on his face.

"Already? That was fast." He replied.

"Yeah, I already had a lot of the groundwork done when I was exploring the tear previously, so I just needed to adjust my thinking and work through the process. I can teleport us to just where we can see the ground beyond the mountain, but I don't think I have enough Mana to go any further than that."

"Well, that's still rather impressive," Reivyn chuckled. "I hadn't actually expected you to be able to succeed, I just thought you would get some good practice in."

Kefira stared at him for a couple of seconds with a blank look.

"You know, there are some pretty tall towers in the capital..." she trailed off.

"Yeah, but that's not on top of a mountain," Reivyn answered back. "It wasn't just about you getting to practice your teleporting. We got to explore the world a bit one last time before we reached our destination. I think that even if you hadn't been able to figure things out, it would have still been worth it."

"When you put it that way, I supposed you're right," Kefira said, rolling her eyes. "But, Hah! I beat your expectations, didn't I? Who's the magical prodigy?"

Kefira struck a pose, hands on hips and chin raised. Reivyn simply smiled at her as he cupped her face.

"I already knew it. You don't have to prove anything."

"Who's trying to prove anything to you?" Kefira folded her arms and huffed.

"Haha," Reivyn laughed. "So, you said you could take us just to the edge of where you can see the ground beyond the mountain? Does that mean just you, you and me, or all three of us?"

"All three of us," Kefira regained her serious manner. "If it was just me, I imagine I could go halfway back to the highway. As it is, we'll be about 80 or so miles on the other side of the village we left our horses at if I get the right spot."

"Wow, that's impressive," Reivyn looked out into the distance. "Considering how far we are up in the sky and the distance to the halfway point, that's, what, 600 miles?"

"I'll take your word for it."

"Well, we didn't push the horses too much, and I would say we traveled about 60 to 70 miles a day, give or take. With how long it took us to get here, 600 miles seems about right."

"That would mean it's around a thousand Mana per 100 miles, or so," Kefira said, speculating to herself. "If it scaled perfectly, which I know it doesn't, it would be about 20,000 Mana to travel 100 miles with my normal method of just brushing up against the edge of the void with my Mana. Since I know it doesn't scale like that, but I don't know how the costs increase as I go further, yet, so let's just say it would be 10,000+ Mana or ten times the cost."

"Yeah, that's what I would call improving efficiency," Reivyn chuckled.

"I still have to manually drag the Spell's Mana into the void after drilling a hole with another strand, though, so it's not the instantaneous cast. I'll have to work on it for quite some time until it becomes natural for my Mana to work that way, and I doubt there would be any significant changes in the cost for the distance of hops I would normally do, anyway."

"Then I guess you're going to have to really pick up your training on Map Reading," Reivyn said.

"Huh?" Kefira frowned.

"The next logical step is to figure out how to jump without seeing the destination with your eyes. You'd have to visualize where you're going and know the exact elevation you wish to jump to, so you'll need to perfectly understand a map to avoid any accidents."

"I guess you're right," Kefira sighed. She really didn't enjoy Map Reading.

"Of course I am."

The two stopped their conversation and just looked over the landscape before them, taking in the beauty of the world. Serilla was silent as always, but Kefira knew her well enough to know that she was also enjoying the experience. The three of them stayed on the mountaintop for several more minutes like that.

"Well, are you ready to get going?" Kefira broke the tranquility and looked up at Reivyn.

"Sure," he nodded. "We've done everything we set out to do, and more, and we'll have to backtrack a bit to reclaim our horses."

"Alright, take my hand."

Kefira held out both of her hands. Reivyn clasped done, and Serilla came up and grabbed the other. Kefira remade the connection with the void tunnel to channel her Spell through, and after priming it with nearly her entire Mana pool, she completed the Spell.

The jump was a bit different than the ones that she had performed before. Instead of almost an instant shift in space, Kefira felt like she was dragged out into the void and then spit back into reality along a parabola. It didn't actually take any additional time, but her perception of the jump was longer. It was a strange experience.

Reivyn and Serilla stumbled slightly, suffering from a bit of vertigo as they arrived at the destination Kefira had focused on. The three of them looked around, and Kefira was happy to see that there hadn't been any deviation in her target. They had landed in a clearing near the road that led to the village they needed to go to to get their horses.

"Ugh, I'm not sure I enjoyed that," Reivyn said, holding a palm against his head. His body swayed a bit as he regained his balance. "It's like I spun myself around with my eyes closed a bit. The whole world was swimming there for a moment."

Serilla wasn't much better. In fact, it took her a couple of seconds longer to regain her bearings. Kefira hadn't noticed anything different other than the sensation of how they traveled. She chalked it up to her Space/Time Affinity.

"Well, let's get going," Kefira said cheerfully.

The three regained their mounts, paying the premium they had promised plus the cost to house and feed the steeds, and made their way once more toward the capital. They didn't cut across the open fields this time, as there was no reason to go all the way back to the main highway that connected the capital city to the border.

The roads between the villages would eventually lead them to larger and larger cities, all the way to the capital itself. It meandered a bit, here and there, but overall it was a straighter path than going all the way back to their starting point. The roads weren't nearly as wide as the highway until they reached some of the larger cities, but they were all in good condition and properly paved.

Not cutting through the wilderness, on top of going a bit shorter distance, saved them a decent amount of time on the trip. It had taken them twelve days, almost a full two weeks, to reach the foot of the mountain from the highway, and the capital city was quite a ways further than that along the highway. The journey to the capital took another three weeks.

The roads way out in the furthest villages weren't patrolled by the army or the local militias, so they had to ward off some wild beasts and fight some of the nuisance monsters, but it wasn't anything they couldn't easily handle. There were no large tribes of monsters like Reivyn had encountered with the goblins in Garoq on his first outing when he had been conscripted. They generally ran into individuals or small groups of four or five.

Reivyn's Experience continued to tick up from the small fights, but even with killing the Wyverns and the two Ice Trolls, he was still several thousand Experiences away from gaining another Level.

Battles and warfare seem like a great way to get a lot of Experience, Reivyn surmised. Depending on the access one has to Dungeons, it might even be worth more. I would have to gain some more Experience with battles and higher Tier Dungeons to really figure it out. The biggest contributing factor would be the lack of a time restriction on Battles imposed by the System.

The journey, like all things, eventually ended as the trio finally reached Willowan, the Capital of Wispan.

Reivyn sucked in a sharp breath at the majesty of the sight before him. It was incomparable to any of the cities he had seen before, easily eclipsing The Capital of Garoq. The walls were huge and shined a blinding white and gold. Towers pierced the sky in the distance, and Reivyn could tell that the size of the city was more than ten times larger than the second-largest city he had seen.

Soldiers in gleaming armor patrolled the walls and grounds outside the city, and there were thousands of pedestrians along the roads going in and out. Reivyn couldn't even see to the other sides of the city, but he imagined there were just as many people along the roads to every entrance.

The city wasn't a square. It wasn't any definite shape, but Reivyn could tell that there were possibly dozens of gates leading into the city. It snaked around the natural landscape, with rivers and mountains jutting up against the edge that could be seen in the distance. There were large hills, too small to be considered mountains themselves, within the city with buildings built all along the incline and the top.

Sitting atop the largest hill, nearly in the dead center of the city, was a majestic palace that had towers topped with the entire spectrum of the rainbow. Even from this distance, Reivyn could tell that it was built with marble, gold, and all sorts of precious gems.

Reivyn stood in place, just admiring the sight before him. He was even more taken aback by the beauty than he had been atop The Dagger.

"Welcome to my home," Kefira said, a delightful smile on her face as she looked up at Reivyn. "The Jewel of Wispan."