Portal has taken a step forward on the path!

Portal is now a Rank 76 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

Xavier grinned. He hadn’t expected to gain a rank up during this fight, but he was glad for it. He’d been straining to place two of the five portals he’d just created in the perfect spot, putting more focus on being precise than he ever had before.

And it looks like that effort had paid off. He’d known it would be a good idea to field test this ability.

Arrows soared through those fourth and fifth portals. The twin portals were close by, less than a foot away. He held his breath as the arrows soared through and came out of the twin portals.

They cut straight through the strongest of the vines wrapped around his body. This slackened the grip the vines had on him, and he was able to shrug them off.

Xavier’s instinct was to leap backward and spread his newfound dragonkin wings, but he stood his ground. The first thing that he did was release the Forest Dryad he had his hand on. The dryad was dead, a kill notification springing up in his vision to further prove that. He’d died from a combination of his allies’ attacks striking him and Xavier’s hands wrapped around his neck, strangling the life out of him.

Xavier stood his ground and gazed out at the remaining Forest Dryads. There were still a lot of them. From the twelve that had been here when he’d arrived, nine still lived, and eight were still in the clearing. The shout that had come from above became louder as the first of the sword-wielders tumbled to the ground. He glanced up to get a look at the dryad, the one he’d thought would teleport back but never did.

The dryad didn’t slam into the ground, however. Just as the branches had moved to try and stop Xavier from flying through the gap in the canopy, so did the branches move for this dryad. They grew and shifted so they could catch him where he fell, like a tightrope walker being caught by a net at the circus.

Xavier returned his gaze to the enemies around him. Every single one of them was a long-ranged fighter. The last melee fighter, he was sure, would be back to the ground soon. But these archers and mages had fear in their eyes.

Xavier didn’t blame them. They’d only landed two attacks on him since the beginning of the fight. Every other attack had either been dodged, or sent straight back, injuring or killing some of their number.

The fear of him was paralysing them, and that was without Xavier needing to activate Aura of Fear. They didn’t appear to know what to do anymore.

Xavier was glad they were frozen like that. He knew it wouldn’t last for long, but it was giving his Portal spell time to reach the end of its cooldown.

He didn’t cancel out the portals that were around him. If anything, they were like floating shields, protecting a part of him from future attacks. In theory, he could have created one big portal that would have sucked up every single one of the attacks coming his way, but if he wanted to precisely redirect the attacks, he needed to create several smaller portals to reach that end.

Xavier tilted his head to the side and tried something as the seconds ticked down on his Portal spell. The cooldown this time around had been a few seconds longer than the last time, as he’d created five portals instead of three, and had to use more concentration than before.

Xavier focused on one of the portals in front of him. Something he’d quickly learnt after first experimenting with the Portal spell was that he could sense where his portals were. Even with his eyes closed, or if they were out of range of his Farscope ability, their location in space glowed like a beacon on his mind. It was a rather remarkable sensation. He sensed when the portals sprang to life, and he sensed when they were deactivated.

But he wondered if there was something else that portal mages were capable of—something else he’d yet to learn how to do.

Could they move an active portal? If he had that ability, it would open up a whole other avenue of attack and defence…

It was thinking of these portals as floating shields that had given him this idea. Whenever he cast Spirit of Protection, he was able to use a spell that was usually only available to certain tank classes—Floating Shield. This allowed him to move a shield in the air.

Doing that same thing with a portal would be amazing.

Xavier concentrated his mind to that task. He knew he didn’t have much time to dawdle. He could have practiced this new possible technique somewhere else, but there was something about the pressure of being in battle that had always managed to make him stronger. It pushed him to the very limits of his ability far better than training on his own could.

Training on his own could perhaps get him 80 percent of the way there. Training with someone else? More like 90 percent.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

But if he wanted to go all the way, he had to pressure test his abilities in real situations.

That was something that he’d discovered when he had first arrived on this floor, and it was something that he knew he needed to hold onto.

So Xavier pushed, putting just about every ounce of his mental energy toward this one task—move the portal that he was focused on.

The fear on the Forest Dryads’ eyes was beginning to shift and change into anger and determination. Xavier had first wondered if the fear would make these people run, but it only seemed to strengthen their resolve.

He heard a soft sound somewhere behind him, outside of the range of his Farscope ability, and realised it must have been the last remaining sword-wielding Forest Dryad finally making it back to the ground.

There was still two seconds remaining before the cooldown on his Portal spell could be used again.

Xavier pushed on one of the portals as hard as he could.

The archers nocked arrows and pulled strings, the arrowheads taking on a green light. The mages raised staffs, the crystals at their head glowing with powerful energies. The sound of someone running came from behind him.

The portal Xavier focused on didn’t move.

The arrows were loosed.

The spells were cast.

The footsteps grew nearer.

Xavier pushed at the portal again. If he wasn’t bearing so much concentration down upon it, he might not have seen the slightest of shudders in it.

But he’d seen it! It had moved!

Though it had only moved by roughly a centimetre—not far enough to do him any good.

An instant after the portal moved, it deactivated without him willing it to. This came as a shock to him.

Xavier blinked, coming back to reality. He kicked off the ground, leaping and expanding his wings, swiftly making it into the air just as the attacks came his way. He heard the whoosh of several arrows and felt something slice through his boot and dig into his foot. His Farscope ability showed him exactly what that had been.

The sword-wielder had managed to reach him in time to cut him.

Xavier was in the air when the Portal spell reached the end of its cooldown. He knew he’d been foolish to just stand there when he’d been attacked from all sides, and wait to the very last moment to move, but that kind of time pressure had made him concentrate even harder than he knew he could.

Combat brought something out in him that he didn’t know how to harness outside of it.

And he’d moved the portal. That was significant. That was powerful. The moment he’d done it, he’d felt a massive drain on his Spirit Energy. Nothing he couldn’t handle, but it was far more than simply maintaining the Portal spell would allow for. This was something more.

Xavier was grinning broadly. In the last battle with the dryads he’d had, he hadn’t been hit once. In this battle, he’d been hit three times. The thrill of the fight was exciting him, and the thrill of discovering new ways to use the spell he’d been practising with for seven days straight was even more exciting.

I should restrict myself in fights like this more often. Maybe there are other ways of using existing spells that I have that I’ve never even considered before.

While soaring through the air, Xavier felt like it was time to push this fight forward. He created a simple portal, one just large enough for him to fit through, and soared straight through it.

He came out on the other side of the portal straight at one of the mages. It only took a single strike for him to take the mage down. The shock on the male dryad’s face was palpable, but the mage didn’t have a chance to scream before his throat was ripped out.

The rest of the remaining dryads died swiftly after that. The Portal spell he’d just used had a reduced cooldown to the last few times he’d used it, as he’d gained a rank in the spell and pushed his proficiency forward.

A simple portal like that had the spell regenerate in less than a second.

Notifications had popped up the moment he’d made that portal shudder. The main part of his conscious mind had been too busy evading the attacks coming his way to read them, but another part of his mind had brought them up instantly.

Portal has taken a step forward on the path!

Portal is now a rank 77 spell.

Portal is now a rank 78 spell.

Portal is now a rank 79 spell.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

He couldn’t help but be shocked by that. He hadn’t gained that many ranks in a row for the Portal spell since the first time he’d started experimenting with it. Moving that portal, even by the tiniest amount, must have been a more significant feat than he’d realised.

That was why the cooldown had gone down so much.

Xavier couldn’t wipe the manic grin of his face as he soared through portal after portal, taking down his enemies. Sometimes he would create two portals and shove his hands through each one, yanking one Forest Dryad in each hand straight through and deactivating the portals to decapitate them at the exact same time, then he’d toss the heads at the other dryads’ feet.

The first time he’d done this there had only been four Forest Dryads remaining. The rage in their eyes deepened, but the fear was evident in them once more. Xavier was getting better and better at reading fear in his enemies, and that had improved significantly since he’d made it to D Grade.

He wondered if that had something to do with being dragonkin now. Something told him this race of beings would be very adept at not only reading fear, but creating it.

This time, the dryads truly looked as though they wished to run.

Xavier didn’t let them.

When the fight ended, Xavier had succeeded in what he’d wished to do—he’d only used a single spell. Portal. And because of that restriction, he’d managed to bring it up all the way to Rank 80, something he hadn’t thought would be possible in a single fight.

Xavier looted the corpses and proceeded to prowl through the forest, looking for more Forest Dryads to test himself on.

An idea was forming in his mind.

Whenever he completed a Hunt Quest, he had different options to choose from. One of those options was Ability Acquisition. Sometimes, when he chose that option, it would reward him with a new spell. Though that was incredibly rare, only having happened to him twice. Other times, it would simply give him more ranks in whatever spells or skills he’d utilised the most during a fight.

If Xavier were to do what he’d just done with the Forest Dryads, but instead do the same while fighting a Hunt Quest beast, then he’d be able to push the rank of Portal up even faster than he already had.

And if he were able to do the same not just against any Hunt Quest beast, but against a C Grade Hunt Quest beast, well… then there was a chance he might be able to gain another portal magic spell without having to spend a Spell Credit to do so.

God, he was going to miss this floor when he was done with it.

At the same time, he couldn’t wait to see what he was capable of when he finally left this place and moved forward.