It was almost as good as flying. But only almost.

After spending the night in a tree to sleep, Lenore was still sore from pushing herself a little too far when the next morning came, while I was physically fine, with only a bit of magical exhaustion. With that in mind, we decided to see what would happen if we did things the other way around, with Lenore waiting within her Hallow, while I was moving my body, using my own BLood Magic, with Lenore’s Wind Magic as support.

Would it allow us to move through the forest at speeds similar to the speed we could achieve on the ancient road? How long would I be able to keep up? With such an interesting idea, and given the fact that Lenore refused to fly on her own at least for the rest of the morning, we decided to find out.

At first, things were a little iffy, Lenore’s magic worked best in conjunction with her wings, a feature I obviously lacked. Trying to apply what she used to running mostly meant that, instead of pushing myself forward faster, I pushed myself upward, leading to a strange, incredibly awkward hopping gait, each step turning into a vaulting leap.

Unless I was willing to put on some bunny-ears and a costume for which I lacked the… ass-ets, there was no way to make that part work.

So, I decided to steal a page from a different genre and tried running with my hands stretched out behind me. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work either, even if it made me chuckle and get a little more serious, taking to the skies. Or rather, the trees.

We were in a dense forest, with many tall, sturdy trees to move, all of which had quite a bit of distance between them. On the ground, that hardly mattered as there was enough underbrush and detritus to require some caution, but once you reached about a dozen meters of altitude, things turned a lot clearer.

Instead of pushing off against the ground, I started jumping from tree-branch to tree-branch, using Lenore’s wind-magic to make the jumps while cycling my Blood Magic to only strengthen for the moments when I pushed off and landed, conserving some power for myself. Playing flying squirrel worked surprisingly well. And it was fun. Just not as good as flying.

After about two hours of my new mode of transportation, Lenore and I decided that pushing both of our bodies into a state of physical and magical exhaustion while traversing unknown, potentially dangerous, terrain was a foolish idea, even worse than what we had been doing.

But just because running and flying were out of the question, it didn’t mean that we had to stop. We just had to slow down.

Remembering how Lenore had tried to use sound as a carrier for her Death-Magic, I considered trying to make things work the other way around. Instead of using Wind.Magic to carry another magic, could we, when working together, use her Wind-Magic in conjunction with my Darkness-Magic to improve my concealment even further by muffling sound and preventing the spread of smell?

Once Lenore considered my idea for a few moments and spent a couple minutes coming up with her first idea, we continued on our path, this time going stealth-mode. Moving along the ground made things difficult, thanks to countless fallen branches, leaves and all kinds of junk that was slowly decaying on the ground, to say nothing of the various shrubs, smaller trees and roots that forced me to take each and every step carefully. It was silent, partially thanks to my slowly increasing skill but mostly thanks to the double-layer of magical muffling but it was slow. If we had time, the method employed should allow us to sneak up to most things, as evidenced when we accidentally stumbled upon a doe with her fawns.

We noticed them from a bit of distance away and Lenore suggested we use them as test-objects. Not trying to actually do harm, just to see how close we could get, if fully focused. Feeling intrigued, and knowing that the worst that could happen was that we spooked the animals, I agreed and tried my best.

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The stepping, without disturbing anything, was curiously the more difficult of the two processes I juggled, concealing myself with magic was trivial in comparison. Curiously, the more I concentrated on my steps, drawing additional attention away from the mental process that handled the magical Concealment, the easier it felt to use the magic. Maybe it was because there was less noise and disturbance to conceal.

Finally, after a glacially slow approach, I was close enough to the fawns to make out individual hairs, just a step or two away from being able to reach out and touch them. But doing so would be incredibly mean, giving them the fright of their young lives, without any real benefit. Sure, their fur looked soft and a little fluffy, making me remember the wolf-cubs I had petted back in the Den of the Winter Wolves, but it was just not worth it.

Instead, I simply waited, quietly observing and watching them, but not even trying to get closer. After a couple of minutes quietly watching them, I decided that I had some nice footage for a later video and retreated, just as silent and stealthily as I had approached.

Once we had sufficient distance, I used my Darkness-Magic to conceal a use of Observe, curious what sort of levels these beasts had. Sadly, the moment I used the ability, the doe noticed and she, along with her fauns, fled through the woods. Still, I now knew that I could sneak up to a skittish, level 38 doe. It would be interesting how that ability would work against other beasts and humanoids.

After the test was done, Lenore decided that she felt up to flying some more and we switched, with me moving into my Hallow while she took us to the skies. Sitting within my Hallow gave me the leisure to check if the new ideas we had tried out had resulted in an increase of my skill-levels.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [68/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Rune-Mastery [72/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Magic [57/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Stealth [47/100]

It was a great harvest, for only about a day worth of testing. Especially the increase of the Blood Magic Skill surprised me, as I hadn’t really done anything new with it, I had just continuously used a familiar concept on Lenore, maybe that was what had done it.

Other than that, Stealth was a nice increase, even if it left me wondering why Stealth increased when used in conjunction with magic, while Athletics did not.

“Let’s look for some sort of lunch, shall we?” I asked Lenore, my body reminding me that a hard, physical work-out required you to refuel your energy, even if you were able to magically supplement your stamina. The body was still the foundation.

“Agreed. What are we looking for?” she replied, lowering her altitude a little, so we could look for a suitable game to hunt, or some other forage that we could use to stretch our food-stores. While we should have more than enough in our magic bag to last the two of us until we reunited with the others, foraging was just good practise.

Somehow, even after Lenore noticed some deer, I wasn’t quite in the mood for venison. Luckily, we soon came across a stream, flowing out from the mountains, giving us a potential food-source. Fishing wasn’t something we had practised a great deal of, but at the end of the day, magic was a wonderful way to cheat at such activities.

No need for a Lure, no need to mess around with bait, a rod or anything mundane like that. No, just spot the fish, a trivial task in the clear waters of the mountain-river, focus a non-trivial amount of Astral Power into a blast of Mind Magic and crush the feeble mind of your lunch. Ice-Magic made retrieving the fish into an easy task, too, as I was able to cover it in a thin layer of Ice, allowing me to levitate it out of the water.

Preparing the fish was the hardest task, as I had little knowledge but luckily, a quick retreat into my Capsule-Space, followed by a short online-tutorial gave me the right starting-point, allowing me to get some reasonably well prepared , grilled trout. It, together with some biscuit and onion, made for a wonderful lunch, setting the mood for an afternoon of flying and looking for something interesting. Maybe some more fish.