Just before noon on the day that Lloyd was supposed to arrive, a carriage pulled up outside of Cassandra’s house. This wouldn’t be particularly odd if not for the fact that the carriage had no beasts to pull it. Instead, it seemed to move under its own power.
Of course, Sophia came from a world of sports cars and air planes so, for her, an automatic carriage wasn’t particularly impressive. Cassandra, on the other hand, seemed somewhat surprised.
“Do you like it?” Lloyd asked, stepping out of the passenger compartment.
“Brother Lloyd, I heard that automated carriages are still rather expensive,” she said. “How in the world did you get one?”
“Oh it’s not mine,” Lloyd laughed, “this was sent to pick us up by an old mentor of mine. His help was instrumental in arranging all of this.” Clearly Lloyd was referring to much more than just the carriage.
Sophia was quite curious as to who this old mentor was. Whoever it was, they must be a person of at least some influence to be able to send a magic carriage all the way out to Bright Cove just to pick her up. Interesting, Lloyd seems to have no shortage of powerful friends, she thought. There has to be something shady going on for someone so well connected to be sent so far away from the Church of Light’s central authority.
“Are you ready to go Sophia?” Lloyd asked.
This was it, time for departure. “Mom…” Sophia turned around to say goodbye, but there was no need. Everything that they needed to say to each other had already been said.
“Sophie, before you leave, there’s something I want you to have.” Cassandra held out a leather-bound book and a silver pendent. The book seemed rather ordinary, but the pendent practically glowed with power.
“Mom, this pendent…”
“Oh, this?” Cassandra laughed. “It’s just a low ranked magic item that I refined. Nothing more than a trinket to remind you of home.” She opened the pendent which emitted an illusory image of Bright Cove Beach at sunrise. It was breathtakingly realistic, even going so far as to replicate the sound of lapping waves and smell of salt water.
“Mom, this is amazing!” Sophia hadn’t even known that her mother knew how to refine magic items.
“Haha, it’s nothing much. Now this,” she said, indicating the leather-bound book, “is the real treasure.”
Now curious, Sophia flipped through the pages of the book. Suddenly, she gasped. “This is!” The book contained training methods. Spiritual mantras meant to calm the soul, physical cultivation techniques designed to strengthen the body, there were even some of Cassandra’s insights into the Dao!
Sophia was speechless. She always suspected that her mother might be more powerful than she let on, but this was something else. The secrets in this book… there were people who would gladly kill for them! Sophia immediately closed the book and held it tightly against her chest. Looking at her mother she felt like she was seeing her for the first time.
“Be careful with it Sophie,” Cassandra said seriously. “It’s for your eyes only. No one else should see it, or even know that you have it. I’ve placed an enchantment on the book so that only you can read it, but, just to be safe, you should destroy it if you feel that it’s in danger of being stolen.”
“I’ll keep it safe,” Sophia promised.
“Good, now, you mustn’t keep Brother Lloyd waiting.” Lloyd had decided to wait in the carriage so as not to disturb them.
“Alright… goodbye Mom!” Sophia said, hugging her mother one last time before stepping into the carriage and closing the door behind her. As the carriage pulled away she continued looking out the window until her mother had faded from view.
For a long time the magic carriage was silent except for the sound of the wheels rolling across stone. Sophia never could have imagined just how attached she had become to her new life. At first it was just a chance to wield magic and fight monsters, but, over time, she found herself growing attached to the people of this strange new world. Pull yourself together! Sophia thought to herself, this is your eight year old brain messing with you! I won’t even be gone for very long. In a year or so I’ll come back to visit, and I’ll feel like an idiot for making a big deal out of all this!
“Brother Lloyd,” she said, trying to take her mind off things, “How long will it take to get to South Sea Academy?”
“Hmm,” Lloyd had to think for a moment before answering. “I imagine it won’t take us longer than a couple weeks.”
“Really?” she had assumed that it would take much longer. “Where is South Sea Academy anyway?”
“It’s on an island chain not far from Albion’s southern coast”
“WHAT!” East Dragon kingdom was hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the southern coast. “There’s no way we’ll get there in just a couple weeks!” Sophia shouted.
“Haha, relax little Sophie” Lloyd laughed and waved away her concerns. “You didn’t think that we’d be traveling the whole way there in this carriage, did you?”
“Um, well…” she actually had thought just that.
“Hahaha, the carriage is only supposed to take us to East Dragon city. From there we’ll be using an entirely different means of transportation to reach our destination.”
“East Dragon city…” Sophia had yet to see any major cities in this new world. She had to admit that she was looking forward to the opportunity. “What kind of transportation will we be using once we get there?”
Lloyd smiled mischievously, but refused to answer. “You’ll just have to wait and see~”
“Hmph, fine, keep your little secrets, see if I care.” Sophia pulled out her mother’s book and began to study it intensely, completely ignoring Lloyd. Minutes turned into hours and hours turned into days. All the while Sophia studied her mother’s book unceasingly, except for the times when she needed to eat or sleep.
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First, she glanced over the spiritual mantras. They were useful, but the meditation techniques that Master Fu had taught her were more effective, so she didn’t really need them. When she saw the body cultivation methods, however, she could barely control her excitement. Master Fu’s martial arts were excellent on Earth, but in this new world they could only be considered the most ordinary of training methods. Here, tempering the body was done by channeling the elements directly through one’s flesh and bones. These kinds of techniques could produce a body that was truly superhuman.
Of course, body cultivation techniques are quite difficult to develop and thus extremely rare. In addition, the technique that a magus practices must be compatible with their Spirit Realm. Fortunately, Cassandra’s book had several methods compatible with Sophia’s Vast Ocean.
“Hey, Brother Lloyd, do you know what level my mom’s cultivation is at?” On their second day of travel, Sophia abruptly spoke up, asking an unusual question.
For a moment, Lloyd was so surprised by her breaking her silence that he forgot to answer. “Um… to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure.” He eventually said.
“You don’t know?” it wasn’t the answer that she was expecting. “Don’t you have a way of determining how powerful a person is?”
“Of course, but it’s not easy to detect the power of a person stronger than you unless they deliberately broadcast it,” Lloyd explained.
His words indicated that, at the very least, Cassandra was more powerful than he was, but, since Sophia didn’t know how strong Lloyd was, that didn’t really mean anything at the moment. Sophia was tempted to ask what level Lloyd’s cultivation was at. However, in the end, she decided that it would be rude to do so and went back to studying her mother’s book instead.
As their journey reached its fifth day, Sophia was starting to grow increasingly bored. Her eight year old brain could only focus on studying for so long before it started to crave some form of excitement. Lloyd was a great conversation partner and had all kinds of funny and interesting stories to tell, but there was a limit to how much entertainment he could provide.
Even when they passed through a town or village, it only provided a momentary distraction before they found themselves returned to the endless monotony of forests, farm land, and gently rolling hills.
Ugh, something happen! Sophia begged silently, assassins, monsters, hell, I’d even be ok with bandits, just please let something interesting happen before my brain turns to mush and oozes out of my ears!
The moment the thought passed through her mind, the auto-carriage came to a screeching halt. “Huh?” Suddenly Sophia could sense several presences surrounding them. Holy shit, she thought to herself, did I actually jinx us? “Um, Brother Lloyd…” she said, somewhat worriedly. With a child’s body and virtually zero understanding of her new powers, Sophia didn’t have the slightest confidence in being able to repel an enemy ambush.
“Stay here Sophia. I’ll handle this.” Sophia had never heard Lloyd this serious before, but he didn’t seem particularly worried so she trusted that he had the ability to handle the situation.
Unhurriedly, Lloyd stepped out of the carriage to face the twenty or so men surrounding them. Yup, definitely bandits, Sophia thought, catching a glimpse of them through the window. The men were a ragtag bunch of miscreants. They wore shoddy, mismatched armor and were dirty and unshaven. Actually, they looked more like barbarians than bandits. However, one of them gave Sophia an oppressive feeling.
This one was clearly the leader. He was the only one without a full beard and the only one who looked like he had bathed in the last week. When the man saw Lloyd step out of the carriage his face distorted into a disgusting grin. “I’ll make this simple for you,” he said. “Hand over all your women and valuables and I’ll let you be on your way. Of course, I’ll also be taking the carriage so you’ll need to go on foot!” The rest of the bandits laughed like he had just told a hilarious joke.
Lloyd grimaced, as if the sound of their laughter was grating to his ears. “I didn’t think that even bandits were stupid enough to attack a member of the church,” Lloyd said. The carriage was emblazoned with the insignia of the Church of Light so there was no way that the bandits didn’t know who they were attacking.
“Hahaha!” Rather than become frightened, the bandit leader simply laughed. “The church doesn’t give a damn about what happens all the way out here in East Dragon kingdom! Even a child knows that this place is a dumping ground for outcasts and dissenters!”
It would seem that Sophia had been right in her earlier assessment. Somehow, despite being young and charismatic, Lloyd had offended someone in the upper echelons of the church and had thus been banished to the other side of the continent.
Lloyd gritted his teeth, and unleashed a fearsome aura of power. The bandits all fell silent, and even Sophia was shocked. Lloyd’s spiritual power was immense. It even made her Vast Ocean look pitiful by comparison. “Is this the strength of someone who’s formed a Nascent Soul?” she wondered.
The bandit leader was as white as a sheet. He never expected to run into someone so powerful during a simple raid. “Um, please forgive me my lord!” he begged. “I was blind and didn’t realize that I was offending a great expert! Please show mercy and spare my pitiful life!”
The other bandits fell to their knees and begged for mercy as well, but Lloyd didn’t even take notice of them. He snorted coldly and began to emit a blinding golden light. Realizing that their pleas had failed, the bandits scrambled to get away, but it was too late.
The entire area was enveloped in a brilliant flash of light. When it cleared and Sophia could see again, she realized that the bandits were… gone. Literally gone, as in no blood, no body, not even a pile of ash. They had just disappeared from the face of the earth.
Sophia was stunned. She could only gape as Lloyd calmly returned to the carriage. So powerful! Lloyd’s strength was far beyond anything that Sophia could have imagined. And my mom’s supposed to be even more powerful! Sophia wanted to laugh, somehow she’d been surrounded by experts since she was young and hadn’t even noticed.
Lloyd didn’t speak for the remainder of the trip. Apparently, the bandit leader’s taunts had struck a nerve. Sophia decided not to bother him and returned to studying the leather-bound book. After seeing Lloyd’s incredible display of power, her resolve to become stronger only grew. Finally, on the tenth day they arrived at East Dragon city.