After experiencing the sewage treatment plant and its slimy inhabitant, we focused on less exciting things. Mainly, training the two students I had promised to help while studying the findings of their research. Sadly, we either had a lacking sample size in regards to the research or there simply wasn’t anything useful to find, I wasn’t sure which was the case. Maybe it was both, but only time would tell. I’d certainly continue to have people research how traits were assigned, though ultimately it was only a side amusement. I highly doubted that the data would come in handy anytime soon, the change had happened and from now on, traits and attributes would grow organically as people aged, not be assigned due to prior life experience.

Another project I was working, and making significant progress, on was the actual cloak of Shadows. Weaving Shadows into a near-corporeal form and using the Void Crystal to stabilise them without a constant application of Darkness Magic was one thing, but I had yet to truly decide what to do with the cloth. A cloak was the obvious answer, but what exactly I could do with it, I had no idea. The best case scenario was to use the Feather from Lenore, the Crystal and the cloth together and create some sort of artefact that might allow me to fly. Wings, along the lines of what I had when Lenore and I used the Raven’s Shadow, allowing me to fly at least temporarily. I doubted I’d be able to make something that’d work for unlimited flight, but something that used my Astral Power? That sounded somewhat feasible.

I had made quite a few concept drawings for that item, though I was having trouble with the Wind-Magic aspect. It needed one to fly but all I had used Wind Magic for thus far was to conceal myself, be it sound or scent. Neither really mapped to flying, nor did the few times I had tried to use Wind Magic to attack or what I had taught Sonja about the use of Wind Magic to enhance her archery. No, if I wanted an artefact that allowed me to fly, I’d have to push my Wind Magic in other ways.

For that, I was now out and about, with Luna and Sonja watching nearby. Luna wanted to see what I could do, while trying to help Sonja get some insights into my experimentation and Sonja, obviously, wanted to learn herself. She still didn’t have the strength to be a true archer, At the moment, she could either use an elevated location, using gravity to give the arrow additional power and her Wind Magic to improve accuracy, If she wanted to remain on that route, she’d have to get a lot stronger, so she could use a proper bow with enough power to deliver dearly arrows from afar. She might also want to look into ways to improve her eyesight, so she could actually find her targets to take aim, but that was to be considered later. The other option she had was to use a light, short bow and remain at street level, using her Wind Magic to improve the low power of her bow. In that case, she’d have to be mobile and flee, using agility and speed to stay away from Shattered and Undead, essentially employing tactics similar to those we used against the slime. For this, Strength wouldn’t be as vital as for the first option but she’d need more than she currently had.

Both options were interesting in their own right, with completely different applications of Wind Magic, especially if she could make use of what I had in mind myself, using Wind Magic to lighten my steps and speed myself up. Which is why she was watching me now, trying to see what I could do. Though so far, that wasn’t all that much.

Mainly because I hadn’t actually found the right way to go about things. WIth Blood Magic, my primary enhancement magic, I could use my muscles as targets and empower them but with Wind? That wouldn’t really work, especially as I wanted to use Wind Magic to move in ways I normally couldn’t. There were no muscles that allowed me to fly, I’d either need magic or that old joke about trying to hit the ground but missing. Not something I could use, not unless I was desperate and in need of a gamble.

What I could consider were ways to push myself forward with the wind, similar to the wind pushing leaves ahead of itself. I doubted I’d be able to actually use Wind Magic to fly directly, not without massive galeforce winds, but giving myself a push? That should work. Maybe I could even use magic to reduce air resistance, though I had a feeling that wouldn’t be too important at slow speeds but if I managed to hit higher speeds it might become vital.

Stolen novel; please report.

My first problem was how to implement the effect. I could use Wind Magic to send out a breeze, pushing air away from me, but that was always that, away from me. The origin of the moving air was generally my hand, as I habitually used gestures to give myself a mental framework, but that didn’t really work when I wanted to run. I could hardly push behind me to try to conjure the wind that hit me in the back. So, the first step would be to get the wind moving as I wanted it to move.

That alone was significantly harder than I had expected. I had never really thought about how much I used my hands to gesture as I used my magic, from a simple swipe to conjure wind, to slow, almost hypnotic hand motions when conjuring water, my hands were almost always involved in the initial phase of my magic. It wasn’t as bad when it came to Darkness Magic, but even there I noticed my fingers twitching and flexing.

Amusingly, the easiest way to circumvent this problem was to use a spell lasting for a longer time. When I conjured my current concealment cloak, I only twitched my fingers in the beginning, the movement curiously close to the motions I’d use to draw the Runes of Shadow and Concealment, and once the spell was running, I could simply keep it going.

With that in mind, how could i go about creating a similar spell, one that allowed me to move faster than normal? Pushing my own movement was the idea, so maybe the answer was to use something similar to the Cloak of Shadows, only that I had to take control of the air around me, pulling it towards my front, only to force an opening in the middle, letting the air flow past my body on both sides before coming together in the middle, giving me a further push? That sort of circular airflow sounded like something that might work, at least I could imagine it fairly well in my mind. Amusingly, I was fairly certain that this was essentially the way to remove air resistance, which I had originally discarded as a later project. But it sounded like it was a good first step if only to see if I could control the air around me and use it to push myself.

Air pushing against my front was trivially easy to accomplish, I only needed to move and the air would push against me, or rather, I’d push against the air, simply because the air was generally stationary and when running, I was not. Magical research and some simple physical training, not that it really did anything for me, what more could I want?

Starting to jog, I focused on my Wind Magic, amusement bubbling up in me when I felt Titanic Ambition kick in, boosting my attributes quite a bit. I could feel myself pushing against the air and while the resistance wasn’t major, it was there. Easily perceivable and, thanks to my Wind Magic, easily manipulated. Creating magical effects was a lot easier when they originated close to your body, so my first step was to essentially create a plough of air, parting the air before me as I passed. It took a few tries, but it wasn’t anything seriously complicated, if anything it was amusingly similar to a few of my attempts to attack using Wind Magic. Only, instead of trying to use wind to slice through a target, I was using Wind to slice through the air. A lot easier, even if it was a little challenging to keep it synched with my body.

The next step was to keep the air I was pushing aside moving around me, so it wouldn’t simply dissipate into my surroundings but instead meet up again, behind me. If I could make things work, the two air currents would clash and at that point, I’d have an overpressure behind me, one that had to try and escape into all directions. If it moved in one of those directions, namely in my direction, it would push me forward, hopefully increasing my speed as I kept running.

Amusingly, that worked out a little better than expected, especially when I realised that quite a bit of the concepts I was using were the same ideas I had taught to Sonja in an effort to improve the power of her arrows. Only, instead of launching a projectile, I was the projectile.

Once that idea settled into my mind, things sped up a great deal, allowing me to get the basic version down and gain two points in Wind Magic for my efforts, bringing the skill to twenty-seven. It was coming along nicely.