Chapter 28

Time seemed to fly until it was finally night once again. This time I exited my universe. I then carefully transported myself across the castle until I was near the stables. Despite the multiple jumps it was easy to remain unspotted. I was only outside my universe for a fraction of a second each time.

Once I was close to the stables I had to make some choices. There were dozens of horse type magic beasts inside. Part of me wanted to transport all of them into the plane. The problem was that I didn’t have room for all of them. It would also be suspicious if I just killed them all. I wanted clan Hill to think they were stolen. So instead I found myself only transporting the three strongest to the drake’s plane. Hopefully that would keep the drake fed for a few days.

I considered transporting a couple more to the dryad grove. However, then we would have to deal with butchering them and cooking them. Considering how cramped the plane was, it seemed like a terrible idea. The dryads were able to grow enough food to keep us from starving. If we wanted meat it would be better to wait until after we escaped.

After a bit of consideration I did transport one of the more average mounts to the dryad grove. Once we escaped from clan Hill I’d have to do some traveling. I could teleport myself but that was limited to a couple hundred feet each time. Eventually going back and forth would become exhausting. And walking would be far less efficient than riding a horse. I had never ridden a horse on Earth. Fortunately Zhao had learned how to ride horses.

The next morning there was a bit of a stir when it was discovered that the four horses were missing. Apparently the three strong ones were owned by clan Hill elders. One of which elder Yui had killed. The other two were not happy though. They threw quite the tantrum when they arrived at the stables and found out that their mount was gone. I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to them scream at the guards and stablehands. Although I felt a little bit bad for the stablehands. It wasn’t their fault that the horses disappeared.

Eventually things settled down again. Which meant I had to spend another boring day trying to figure out questions to ask the tutorial. Eventually I gave up and ended up studying what the tutorial could tell me about magic.

That information was far more in depth than anything I had seen before. There were the eight primary magic elements. Which were water, earth, fire, wind, light, dark, life, and death. After that were all the combination elements. Those combinations went by various different names. Depending on how the elements were combined they could create different effects.

Sometimes they even created similar effects. For example combining air and light would let a mage control the light around their body and make them invisible. Light and dark could be used similarly and allow a mage to blend in with shadows. And dark and air could also be used to conceal a mage, although not as well as air and light.

Another example was ice or freezing magic. A fire mage could easily reverse their power and freeze objects by simply pulling the heat from them. When combined with dark magic that became more pervasive. The freezing effect would spread to other nearby objects. Almost like a freezing corruption.

In fact some people called dark magic corruption and light magic purification. It was an apt description for the effects of light and dark magic elements when they were combined with other elements. When combined with another element dark magic tended to spread the effects. Almost like it was polluting anything around it. Light magic did the opposite and made the effects more pure and contained. Although when light and dark interacted they neutralized one another.

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The exception to that neutralization was shadow magic. Of course that was only the case when a mage started by combining both light and dark magic. Shadow magic was fairly weak offensively and defensively. However, it had one powerful effect. Shadow magic was nearly invisible. At least in comparison to almost any other magic. Which made them excellent assassins.

A third tier shadow fire mage was a terror to fight. Even for tier three and tier four mages. The shadow fire mage could blend into the shadows making it difficult to find them. In addition unlike normal fire the shadow fire could also blend into shadows. It was nearly impossible to defend against a shadow fire mage assassin.

Luckily dark and light magic was rare. Tier three mages were also extremely rare. Which meant that tier three shadow mages were nearly as rare as tier four mages.

I couldn’t help but shudder a bit as I read what tier four and tier five mages were capable of. At that level they also had access to numerous tier three mage powers. As the tiers went up the mages became far more powerful. They also had fewer and fewer weaknesses.

The only downside I could find to being such a high tier mage was that you had to learn how to use all that magic. Before a tier four mage could use tier four magic they had to master all their tier three magic first. Which also required them to master all their tier two magic and the basic elements. That could take decades.

I couldn’t help but look at the next tiers. Tier six and seven may as well be gods. And tier eight was simply called divine tier magic. At that tier the mage would have access to every single type of magic. Even the tutorial admitted that there were no records of anyone being born with tier eight magic talent.

That resulted in me finding an entire section of the tutorial on how mage talent could be procured. I had always thought that gaining mage talent was impossible. It was something people were born with, not something they could gain later in life.

According to the tutorial it was possible. Just very difficult. At least in this world it was nearly impossible. The easiest way was to take a pill that would give you access to one of the basic elements. That took extremely powerful herbs though. The type that could only grow in an environment with a higher energy density than anywhere on this planet.

Another option was having the talent granted to you by one of the gods. Which was maybe possible on this planet. But first you would have to meet a god. And then convince them to use their power to grant you mage talent. Which took quite a bit of divine energy. So gods didn’t just go around granting mage talent to everyone they saw. Only their most devout followers and champions were granted such boons.

I was a bit excited to see that I could also eventually grant mage talent. Planar guardians were also able to grant magical talent. However, the energy cost left me feeling a bit numb. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen so many zeros. According to the tutorial it was only meant to be used in extreme cases. Such as if all of a certain type of mage died out in a universe. Even then it was suggested that immigration from other universes was a better alternative.

Once again I went down a rabbit hole when I heard about immigration between universes. In the lower universes it wasn’t something that occurred often. But it was common in the higher universes. Once a cultivator or mage reached a certain power they would have the ability to travel between universes. Certain types of mages and ability holders could also move between the universes. Some of them could even move other people between universes.

In a way my use of the dimensional originator qualified as an ability that let me move people between universes. However, it was only between one of my own universes and whatever universe I was located in. At some point I’d like to gain enough power that I could travel to some of the higher universes.

Eventually I realized that I had spent the entire day asking the tutorial questions. Once again it was night. I decided that I had waited long enough. I would get out of the castle and start moving away from clan Ashton territory. If I was spotted I’d just hunker down for a few more days.