Book 3. Chapter 18
‘Barrier.’ Part 2
“You’ve done well this time!” Artemis announced a month after forcing Kalysto to train twenty-four hours a day, allowing her to ‘rest’ only to go heal the fairies that were infected during the three attacks that Mhiralla launched that month, or to go heal the demons in Desmond’s kingdom for a day.
Kalysto tried to take advantage of this time to level up the skill ‘Jhil’, but despite her continued efforts, she was barely able to reach level 78.
“This is great, Kalysto!” The fairy was enthusiastic, finishing reviewing the written test that the fairy champion had written. “Now, let’s move on to practice. I want you to create a protective barrier around this dessert so that only fairies can touch it,” she asked, passing her the plate on which rested a sweet red dessert.
“I don’t think she wants me to eat it, Master!” Tsuki commented suspiciously as he watched the training inside the room that the fairies had given to Kalysto.
“You’re not thinking of making Tsuki check whether it works or not, are you?”
“I would never dare harm a sacred beast,” she assured her, pulling out a small blue two-headed lizard from her inventory. “This little guy is a different story, though,” she assured her as she stroked the head of her little pet.
“Good, because he’s not going to do it,” she assured Artemis as she began to conjure the barrier, drawing the sacred symbols in the air for protection, injecting the air with mana. Half an hour later, it was over and Artemis let her pet approach the small golden bubble protecting the desert, only to have it repel the lizard.
“Perfect, now we can finally start working on what we need!” she announced as she reached inside the protective barrier and touched the dessert. “Take this and activate it,” she said, handing her a home stone similar to the ones the queen had given her earlier. As soon as Kalysto activated it, she appeared in the middle of a clearing surrounded by a forest and in front of two stone stairs that led to a flat surface about ten meters wide.
“A platform?” asked the saintess, walking towards the smooth stone surface. “Are they going to put on a play or something?” At that moment Artemis appeared near her, accompanied by a fairy that Kalysto did not recognize.
Inspect! she thought.
[Name: Rafhaela
Race: Fairy
Level: 305
Class: Warrior
HP: 5’800.000/5’800.000
MP: 15’000/15’000]
Why the hell does she have to bring such a powerful fairy as a guard? A quick glance at her surroundings told her nothing, but since she had started to see fewer and fewer fairies inside the castle, she couldn’t help but get suspicious.
“I want you to help me engrave these symbols on the stone of the first step. I’ll take care of the second,” Artemis commanded as she engraved the first symbol.
Kalysto was quick to imitate her, the stone where she ran her finger imbued with mana to engrave first the glyphs and then the runes mixed with ancient symbols, turned black with the passing of her fingertip, and the smell of burning flooded her nose, but she tried her best to ignore it and continue concentrating on her work.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The next time they went to work on the spell, Kalysto brought Tsuki with her. And even though he was only at level 50, she felt more at ease not being alone with Artemis’ new guard.
While it took Kalysto three days to finish recording her part, it took Artemis a week to finish hers, mainly because her mana was running out all the time. But when they were done, a barrier protected the outside of the stone circle, some twenty meters away, a space in which several meter-high mana crystals had grown overnight, leaving only a small clear path to pass which led to the two steps and the small platform where they had drawn more symbols. On the second step was the barrier created by Artemis and inside it an empty space. But Kalysto could feel a formation of mana inside, though she could not see it with her own eyes.
“Master, is that a portal?” Tsuki asked in her mind.
I think so, but I feel it’s better if we pretend we don’t know anything about it. It could be dangerous if they know we know. If that was what she suspected it had to do with the fairies’ means of escape from the continent, it wouldn’t be strange if they were looking for a way to silence them in order to save their race. And she had enough to do with the health curse affecting her and the blocking of Jhil’s skills, it was best not to give the queen a reason to think that she might be a danger to the salvation of her people.
As soon as she finished her part, Kalysto spent the next four days creating her fifth circle of mana and discovered why Artemis complained about the mana expenditure involved in creating a barrier since the one the saintess created ate 10,000 mana just to keep it active. So she had to be absorbing mana crystals at least twice a day to replenish the amount lost.
But then, after the pertinent congratulations and sleeping for two days straight as soon as Artemis gave her the go-ahead for the work done by both of them, Kalysto threw himself on the bed in her room in the fairy kingdom, and slept for two days, only to spend the next few days in Desmond, creating the barrier around the king’s castle.
“You are aware that you will lose the teleportation point as soon as I finish creating it, right?”
“Then I’ll have to make a new deal with you and wait for you to learn how to create one for me outside the barrier,” Aegir replied. “While I have studied the subject a bit and find it fascinating, it is beyond my area of expertise.”
“And why do you think I would help you?” She said with a hint of haughtiness as she smiled, half-jokingly.
“Because I have the books and notes of the one who created it over four hundred years ago and I can lend them to you.” Kalysto’s eyes immediately glittered with desire, wanting access to that information.
She had secretly duplicated the books Artemis had given her and kept them in her shadow, as Aegir had taught her, but having access to a book that specified how to create a teleportation point was something completely new.
“Interested?” Aegir said with a smile on his lips, convinced that he had her where he wanted her.
“Teach me to teleport and we have a deal,” she replied, arching an eyebrow, unwilling to budge.
“Agreed.”
Tsuki stepped out of Kalysto’s shadow, mimicking what they had seen Aegir do with the spectral dragon when he had taken them to purify his uncle’s lands.
“I see you’ve gotten better at using the shadows.”
“Only as a storage place and for Tsuki to enter and exit at will. I still can’t create crystals or do everything you do,” she said, remembering the crystals he had to create for the queen, which she had to purify and imbue with the energy of the purification skills with the help of spells and runes taught to her by Artemis, in order to create crystals that when buried in the earth would purify the surrounding area. Ten of them surrounded the barrier that Kalysto had created in the fairy territory, another five hundred bordered the outer barrier that Artemis had created in the past. Preventing the black plague from ever polluting their lands again.
“It is only a matter of time and practice. You have a great advantage in being able to absorb mana crystals. It usually takes a long time to do so, though as you may have noticed, mana absorbed in this way usually evaporates within a couple of hours.”
“That’s annoying, but true.”
It took Kalysto four days to finish the barrier around the castle.
“So, that’s a magical barrier?” Alice’s grandfather asked, touching the golden light. “I don’t sense anything strange.”
“Unless you’re a monster, you shouldn’t feel anything strange,” Kalysto clarified.
“That’s the second time I’ve seen one,” Alice muttered, catching Kalysto’s attention. But before the saintess could ask where she saw one, Aegir’s face lost all colour.
“We have a problem!” he announced, pulling a sack full of fruit and a sack full of mana stones from his shadow.
“What is it?” Kalysto questioned as she saw him hurry over to her.
“Keep this in your shadow! Quickly!” And just as she was about to do so, a violet window appeared before her.
[Kalysto, come back immediately! We’ve found Mhiralla’s hideout!]