Swimming was much more tiring than Yuriko expected.

Cousin Miya and Ryoko had taught her a bit. After what she experienced in Kogasi, she knew that, as she travelled the Chaos Sea, it was only a matter of time before she found herself in the deep end of a body of water again.

“As long as you fill your lungs with air, you’ll float,” Ryoko said. “As long as you don’t panic and waste your energy, you’ll get through it.”

Well, Yuriko didn’t know if she could keep her strength up for a day-long swim. After an hour of awkward paddling, she was already feeling the strain. Thankfully, she could simply float and rest for a bit. Her Anima helped, actually. She supported her swim by manipulating her Anima. And here she realised its limits.

She’d thought that Anima manipulation didn’t spend Animus, but she was wrong. It did, but it was minuscule enough that her Animus recovery was more than enough to cover the expenditure. It was her…Anima…that got fatigued instead. And her mind, too, probably.

She couldn’t tell where it split. Flaring or condensing her Anima was not a problem. Either could be considered their natural state. Manipulating it and using it to exert force into the environment was something else, and she could feel her Anima waver and strain, as well as her head. It was as if she’d spent hours forcing herself to study. Memorisation and struggling to understand school concepts was a tiring task, and the idea and feeling of mental fatigue were quite new to Yuriko.

While she floated with her face pointed to the sky, she let the odd waves nudge her body where they would. The movement of the water was annoying since the waves reversed regularly. If it was headed to where she was going, that was fine, but if it was against? If she didn’t swim, she’d be pushed away, but if she did, she’d tire herself faster. There must be a better way to do this!

The carnivorous fish wouldn’t leave her alone either. It was a different one every time, and the second attack had come as a surprise. She didn’t even realise it was there until it almost had her in its jaws.

She’d hardened her Anima against assault, but the beast’s bite force was strong enough to pierce her condensed protection. Thankfully it was more than a pace thick, and in the process of trying to get to her, it broke several dozen teeth off. She kept the serrated triangular teeth with her. It was a nice souvenir. She just punched the thing along its gills and it left her alone. It wasn’t the same one that greeted her back at the boundary since it lacked the long gash she’d given it.

She was attacked a couple more times before inspiration struck. What if she shaped her Anima like that fish? She did so, forming a sleek shape with stabilizer fins and a broad tail. She rocketed along just under the surface, coming up for air every few minutes and making more progress in the past ten minutes than she did in the last five hours of swimming.

Ten minutes was the most she could use it for without having to rest though. She didn’t know why it took her this long to figure it out. She used her Anima to glide in the air before, after all.

Days of travelling with little choice in what to do had left Yuriko in a pensive mood. The last few times she travelled the Chaos Sea, she’d been on a ship. There she could train, study, and rest while keeping a schedule. She wondered if she could have hitched a ride with the adventurers’ ship to Coltherstone Fortress, but no, there was no guarantee that they were headed there in the first place.

After the novelty of travelling without aid had worn off, she had little to do other than think. The idleness wasn’t something she was used to. Even before her Atavism Ritual, Yuriko had always kept busy.

She subtly altered the shape of her Anima so that it clung to her limbs and moved when she did. Every kick she did in the water propelled her farther and faster than before. She gazed down at the depths, but couldn’t see the bottom. Other than the huge carnivorous fish, there were smaller and more colourful variants flitting about in large groups.

They avoided her vicinity but by now, she swam faster than they could. She giggled at the little flighty things and frolicked about with her newfound freedom to move. The only limit was how long she could hold her breath.

Come to think of it, it was a good thing that the Waypoint had air, didn’t it? She shuddered to think what would have happened if the entire thing was water and nothing else. She would have drowned if she didn’t manage to leave quickly.

Afterwards, she would have spent far too much time bypassing that Waypoint. She might have lost days of travel time.

What could she have done in that case?

It was strange to think how the Waypoint didn’t respond to her thoughts to change. They were more like planes than Tidelands in that case. Well, considering they had Veils too, even if they were paper-thin rather than the robust boundaries of the planes, the only difference between the Waypoints was the size and the density of ambient Chaos.

Each Waypoint she’d gone through was at least at two to three iarvesh. A Tideland, depending on the depth, ranged from one point one to one point nine. Just under two iarvesh, really, and that was already fatal to someone who wasn’t at the level of Knight.

Kogasi plane was around three iarvesh, but the planar structure made the ambient Chaos more docile than here. There, the Chaos just pressed against her Anima, here, they actively tried to burrow in. If not for her control and strength, she would have had a severe case of Chaos poisoning.

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Memories surfaced briefly before receding, leaving fragments that were like gems glittering in the sand. Waypoints were more malleable than Tidelands and planes, and a strong enough Will could shape it.

Impulsively, Yuriko exerted her Will on the surroundings. She was several paces underwater and was just about to surface to get another lungful of air. But why bother? Water could turn to air as easily as the air turned to water. She’d done it before, back in the Purelands. She used a mote of distilled Chaos to create enough water to fill a bathtub. Not all of that came from the mote, the rest of it came from the air around her.

There was more than enough Chaos nearby. All it needed was her Will and a push. So she did.

The Waypoint pushed back. A resistance that was much like a curtain covering a window. The wind could stir it, but it always returned to cover the opening. Only a strong enough wind and something to catch the fabric would change its position.

Yuriko’s Will was the wind. Her Intent was the direction. And her Animus was power.

Like shattering glass, the reality around her shifted. A bubble of air as large as her head formed right in front of her, and she drew it into her Anima and breathed it in. It was sweet, fresh air.

A moment later, she felt a ripple blast back into her. A primordial scream of pain and anger. But it faded away almost immediately, and even the memory of it was gone. Mostly.

A seed formd in Yuriko’s Anima. Altering reality directly was dangerous and incredibly difficult, she suddenly knew. Thoughts and memories drifted from Damien and she knew the idiocy and temerity of what she had done.

She was in a Waypoint, in the midst of the Chaos Sea. There was a reason why Sorceresses were restricted from travelling the Chaos Sea alone. The dwellers, especially those who didn’t have a permanent form, hated it.

At least she hadn’t done it in the Chaos Sea, but then again, the only use for Sorcery out there was to shape a region of Chaos to Order.

Still, she could expect dwellers to search and attack her. If she was lucky, none noticed. It was a small shaping after all.

She was wary for the rest of the time she spent in the oceanic Waypoint. But thankfully, other than a few big fish, she had remained unmolested. The opposite Veil soon made itself known, and she passed through it with little trouble.

Outside, she formed the stone steps and looked around, trying to see if she had attracted trouble. When nothing was forthcoming, she shrugged and continued on her journey. Seven days spent already, and hopefully, the time dilation didn’t add too many days to her trip. Maybe it even shortened it? Was today the 22nd Day of Fire still?

Her walk through the Chaos Sea lasted for a couple of hours before the entrance to the next Waypoint appeared. She paused outside this time, wanting to see what was through the Veil rather than barging in. She touched it and got the sense of…emptiness?

She briefly considered just going around this Waypoint. If she focused on arriving in Coltherstone maybe she could just bypass all of the Waypoints. There were both advantages and disadvantages to that, of course.

If she tried to do that, the entirety of her journey would be in the open Chaos Sea. Any stray thought could lead her where she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t rest if she wanted to, and she might find herself moved by a consciousness other than her own.

Waypoint travel was safer as they provided a point of reference. That, more than anything else allowed her to keep going where she needed to be.

Ah, well. Her head was getting fuzzy. She’d sleep if the Waypoint ahead was safe. She pushed into the Veil, and suddenly found herself in the sky, falling.

“Oh, Burning Moon!” She cursed even as she shaped her Anima into wings. All around her was nothing but air. Oh? What were those dots over there?

She angled herself to face the largest dot she could see and propelled herself in that direction. The strength of the wind sent her hair flying all over. It was cold too, and the temperature control of her clothes strained to keep her warm. At least until she unleashed her Radiant energy.

Afterwards, it was a rather comfortable, and uneventful flight. The dot turned out to be a floating piece of rock that was just a bit bigger than she was. She alighted on it, glanced around and permeated it with her Anima. It was nothing more than rock, though.

Well, at least she could rest here. She anchored herself to the rock with some pitons and rope, ate some of her rations, and slept fitfully for the next few hours. Nothing attacked her and she wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or not.

The rest of the Waypoint was the same. Floating rocks and nothingness. The winds sometimes blew her around, but after some thought, she realized it was faster to go with the wind than to try going in a straight line. She reached the opposite Veil soon afterwards.

The next Waypoint, the last before Coltherstone, was a barren wasteland filled with erupting volcanoes. The heat didn’t bother her, but her clothing couldn’t stand up to it unless she hardened her Anima. The land she walked through smouldered, and frequent eruptions of heated gas and fiery lava caused her to shift her trajectory.

The volcanoes spewed not just smoke but also threw out fiery rocks and ash. No flying here. She thought it was an empty Waypoint too, but she was mistaken. Not a longstride from her entry point, a pile of rocks shifted then formed into a quadrupedal creature, with several horns and a club tail. The cracks along its body gleamed with reddish light, and its eyes were scorched pits. Ashes drifted out of its nostrils, and an internal flame burned from within, visible when it roared.

For all that though, it was…fragile. A sharp blow in the middle of its eyes stunned it, and several smashes later, it was nothing but rubble. It had a large Chaos shard though, nearly fifteen HiJin. Yuriko pocketed it and grinned, suddenly looking forward to more of the creatures.

She found a couple more in her path and retrieved another twenty-five HiJin of shards. Forty gold marks worth. This Waypoint alone exceeded her savings in the Imperial Bank. Suddenly, it wasn’t so surprising that adventurers existed and that they would risk their lives in the Waypoints.

When she exited, it didn’t take more than a couple of hours to find the next one. But this time, there was a difference. Instead of the Veil just appearing in front of her, she could see it in the distance. She could also see a greater mass off to the side and she knew she could get there after a day’s travel if she wanted to. Delovine plane.

She could see gigantic Arkships, and the sleeker Chaos ships entering through a Chaos Channel, with a few heading towards the Waypoint instead. There were dozens of ships, and only one could enter the Channel at a time.

The Waypoint, Coltherstone Fortress, had a transparent Veil. She could see what lay beyond, and it looked like a walled town surrounded by open plains. She could see people walking around, busy in their everyday life. With a relieved sigh, Yuriko entered the Waypoint and made her way to the walls.