(POV Flavius)

I’m beginning to wonder if the tracking function on Kai’s staff-card is broken.

Simply because, there’s no way she could be on that island.

Situated between the human and demon continents, mountain peaks seem to rise from the ocean. There are no beaches on this island—just water, then cliffs giving way to mountains. It’s a fairly large island, and would certainly be capable of supporting sentient life. In fact, it's been documented that there was once a thriving civilization on the island, full of things now unimaginable, and impossible. 

While no one knows of those documents were true, there is one thing certain about the island.

It’s surrounded by the strongest ward we know of.

It’s just a simple physical ward, preventing people from passing. However, it’s also a physical ward that even the strongest the empires had to offer couldn’t breach.

Actually, forget about breaching—they didn’t even scratch it. A level eight-hundred powerhouse could only stare at the ward, confused and perturbed.

And, for some reason, the tracker showing where Kai is, it points to the interior of that same ward, the one that nobody has gotten past, ever.

Niten and I had been overjoyed when we were in that damnable labyrinth, having fought our way to the tenth floor, when Kai’s position had changed abruptly.

The card didn’t display any good coordinates one second, and the next, she was very, very far away.

Glad that we no longer had to attempt the labyrinth, which Niten thought was a tier eleven monstrosity, we fought our way back out.

Promptly afterwards, we went through one gate after another, getting closer to her coordinates. Finally, we ended up on the lowest point of the human continent, but still, her coordinates were lower.

We went to the demon continent, before discovering that her coordinates were now above us.

Once we discovered that the coordinates centered around that infamous island, we made a few theories, as to how she had gotten there.

She could have been caught by a nether rift, and spontaneously transported to the island.

Or, she could have happened upon a transport rune, maybe even a gate, which brought her directly inside the ward.

The chances of that would normally be astronomically thin, since the two gates, or the transport rune and it’s target location would have had to exist from before the ward was erected.

And, the ward’s been up for longer than Niten’s been alive. Longer than anyone’s been alive. Well, anyone that I know of. 

There’s probably a hermit living somewhere, with an absolutely monstrous age. There have always been stories like that, where a hero happens across a hermit, and the hermit passes along sage advice, based on his life experiences.

I remember reading one as a kid, where the hermit happened across the hero of the story, who was badly wounded. The hermit healed the hero, and taught him magic.

I never really liked that story—The hero’s journey was too easy, and everything was handed to him. Real life is never so clean.

Oh, sorry. I got a little off track.

Anyway, the last option is that Kai had somehow made it back out of the labyrinth,  gotten to the island within an hour, and bypassed it’s ward.

Yes, it’s a little unlikely.

I don’t know what to think of it, but Niten is convinced that Kai found a gate or a transport rune deep within the labyrinth—farther down than we would be able to go.

That’s still a mystery.

How did Kai get so far down?

While the latitude and longitude measurements on the tracker were completely nonsensical, the height was clearly working, since every time I checked it, she was farther down. Much farther than we could safely go.

Well, now Niten and I are sitting on a well-stocked fishing boat, waiting outside the island’s wards.

While the ward prevented anything from entering, there was nothing to say that you couldn’t exit. Hopefully, Kai will be able to find her way out soon, and we’ll be waiting for her when she does.

I had left the affairs of the academy to my second in command, the so-called vice headmaster, Colden Hawfield. He’s a pretty eager guy, always saying that he’ll catch all the failing students, and make sure they do their best. He also loves rye bread. He eats it with everything, all the time.

With him in charge at the academy, I can afford to wait outside Ascension Island for as long as need be. 

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I’ve advanced another quarter of the way to the center.

The mana density has increased exponentially as I neared whatever’s causing this, a good thing, since my resistance to it has also increased exponentially.

I think it’s been a month or so?

I might have lost track, given the lengthy nature of the meditations, and the temporal disorientation that happens during them.

My progress is getting faster as well, with my stats increasing ever faster, and my leg mostly mended now. 

I can actually do simple exercises now, as long as I don’t strain myself too much—Which is all too easy to do, now that I’m getting closer. Gravity also tends to behave oddly in high-mana areas, especially ones where the density is very high.

What I mean is, the gravity around me had been increasing, along with the density of the mana as I move towards the center of the valley.

This is why my physical stats have seen explosive increases lately, as my body strains itself to resist the pull of the earth.

It’s also why, even though I can do simple exercises with my leg, I won’t. I don’t want to accidentally make it worse, you see.

On a very happy side note, I’ve recovered almost all of this life’s memories.

There’s just one period of time that I can’t remember at the moment—that of the actual fight with the lich. I can remember losing my hand, and the system message that popped up after that, but no farther.

I somehow know that I did something to the lich, preventing him from following me, and that we fought for quite a while before that.

But the details, like how I was able to fight it for so long without a hand, or how I found a transport rune, those escape me.

It’s like, I know the end results, but not how I got there.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

It’s more than a little frustrating for me.

There’s been another change around me as I move deeper into the valley’s forest, besides the mana density levels increasing.

Where at the edge of the forest, there were only large flat stones left of what should have been a massive city, now there are walls still standing semi-intact, with thick and stout trees weaving around them.

There haven’t been any intact walls yet, but I get the feeling it’s only a matter of time, given the trend of things being more complete closer to the center. 

Maybe there are whole buildings somewhere.

Well, given that I’m already three-fourths of the way to the center, I should see them soon, if they exist.

In fact, I saw the center sooner than I thought.

As it turns out, there’s a limit to how much a tree can withstand, unless they’re certain special types of trees.

There were none of those here, though.

As a result of the mana density and pressure, they aren’t able to take root past a certain point. That meant that the center of the valley was in a clearing, devoid of trees and other shrubbery obscuring my vision.

When I crossed from the forest to the clearing, I was afforded a clear view towards the center.

I will say this—It was beautiful in it’s own way.

There weren’t any complete buildings, like I had hoped. Instead, the clearing was occupied by bright green grass and flowers. There were partially intact stones in the clearing, though none were from small buildings. 

There had only been one building here, before the city was abandoned, or lost, or destroyed.

A church.

There were two walls still standing, if barely. Ivy had clung to the thick stones, and climbed part of the way to the crumbling top of the walls. A smattering of stone pillars still stood, looking like replacements for the trees that couldn’t, due to the pressure. A single bell tower was completely intact, incongruously standing tall.

Little motes of light floated around the ruined church, evidence that the mana density around it had reached incredible levels, since it had turned into a physical phenomenon.

I couldn’t see anything that would cause the mana density levels to reach such levels, though. It might be obscured by one of the still-standing walls, or it might be in that bell tower.

Though, now that I’ve reached this clearing, I’ve had to slow down a little.

Even while my resistance to the density levels rises exponentially, it would appear that it’s still a smaller exponent when compared to that of the increase in density.

In other words, I need to slow down, and take more time to adjust myself to the new, higher density levels.

It looks like it should only take me another two or so weeks to reach the ruined church, though.

…Is what I thought, but it only took a week and a half.

What can I say? Things began moving quicker than I expected.

I’d made it past one of the crumbing walls of the church, and immediately noticed a few things.

The thing causing the high-mana zone must be in the bell tower, since the density hasn’t stopped increasing, even after stepping foot into the old church grounds. Also, the only things past the walls are more stones, lying where they had fallen. Nothing that felt like it would cause mana to gather.

As expected, my stats continued to see increases. Even though I’m still level seventy-four, I now have the stats found at level one hundred and fifty.

If that’s a scary thought, then consider what would happen when I really do reach that level. My stats would still increase, going far beyond my level.

I look forward to it with eagerness…

I might also mention that moving has gotten really difficult lately, due to the gravitational field around me. I’ve had to get up, walk a few steps with sweat pouring off me, and plop back down to meditate some more, since the mana density is now increasing dramatically every few steps.

It was like this that I slowly crawled my way to the bell tower. As for food and water, well I could just take some of the moisture from the ground, and boil it clean with magic. I also have some deer jerky, and berries. If I run out, I just backtrack, until I get far enough away from the clearing that animals are able to roam. Then, I quickly walk back to where I was, due to the fact that my resistance letting me bypass all the hard work I had put in earlier.

Anyway, it’s been increasingly harder to move forward.

It took me a week to get from the walls, to the bell tower entrance.

Another two weeks brought me halfway up the bell tower.

Three weeks after that, I was nearing the top of the stone stairs winding their way up the bell tower’s insides.

Finally, I could see into the top of the bell tower a week later.

That was when I found out what had caused the mana to gather in such a large amount.

It wasn’t a godly artifact, or a treasure of any sort. 

In fact, I didn’t think there was anything I could do with it.

You see, at the top of the bell tower, there was a single skeleton, sitting up against the wall. Unlike the lich, this one was very dead, and had been for a very long time. The skeleton had flowing robes on, and a simple, but elegant mage’s staff next to it.

Of course, as soon as I could, I was going to take those. They looked nice, and would be a good replacement for the clothes I was wearing at the moment, which had been tore, stained, dirtied, and made nearly unusable.

However, the skeleton wasn’t the focus of the mana.

That honor went to the most complex mana rune I’ve ever seen, sitting in the middle of the room and glowing resplendently.

Huh. I wasn't expecting that.    

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Author's Note:

I kinda based the ruined church off of Elgin Cathedral, so if you guys want to see what I was imagining, then go ahead and look it up. 

Also, the book I had read once in english class was referenced quite directly in here. Let me make this clear—I referenced it out of spite. Nothing else. 

—River.