Ara informed me a while ago that gravity was the next skill she started working on. I thought that was seriously cool and despite her original misgivings about my male tendencies to think up violent skills, she thought it could have some positive applications for me. That didn’t stop her however from giving me a lesson on the dangers of creating excessive gravity anomalies. In other words, if I created a gravitational object too dense, I could create a black hole that I couldn’t control. The anomaly would only continue to feed itself with all the worldly material it could suck in from around it. Never satiated, it would consume the entire world and eventually us all along with it. I didn’t need her to embellish, I had seen enough science fiction movies to make the point adequately clear. It did make me a little hesitant to use the gravity skill making me a little overcautious which stopped me from exploring the skill more than I could have.

While Ara worked on that I decided in the interim to see if I could learn some earth skills. Through the solid skill I could detect objects either in the ground or standing on the surface. Given enough time I could even detect movement, albeit a rough indication of what was moving. To make earth move I needed to change the way I viewed the ground. Earth as a material could move when liquified in an earthquake, or under immense pressure or heat, like lava. Even sand moved through dunes in the wind. Those would all be difficult natural situations to replicate but the easiest for me would be the liquification. The lava one sounded cool, but I had no idea how to start getting it up to temperature and then just what did I do with it. I decided to put the lava idea in my future to-do basket and so I worked on a more attainable skill set.

Every time Hana and I hunted I spend some time replicating earth movement. I found the best way for me start was to wet some soil and then treat the wet soil like I was building a sandcastle. By forcing the soil from below ground and from the surrounds towards a central point, I could push the soil upwards. At first my constructions looked like weird alien structures, but as my skill improved, they started to develop recognisable forms. I experimented using vibration as a construction tool. Just like civil construction use large vibration rods to remove air bubbles in concrete, I could do the same by creating internal vibrations, partly liquifying the earth. Doing that was great and all, but the last thing I wanted was for my entire construction to collapse like jelly due to vibration, so I learned to only vibrate limited areas that needed change.

Thinking of how we were going to search the Wildemere marshlands for iron, as an experiment, I first wanted to try using large magnetic bars to attract iron before using my skills. I took three iron bars out of my storage that I managed to procure from the old man. They were three meters long and about five centimetres in diameter. I first wanted to investigate the magnetic properties of iron versus other metals. I knew that the similar alignment of electrons created a magnet but since I had no idea how it worked in practice, I needed to experiment a bit first. I achieved that by creating small fingernail sized cubes with various mixes and metals, then I aligned the spin of the electrons in the molecules of each cube. I did that by heating up the cubes just short of melting them, and before the metal molecules started cooling, I arranged them to face in a specific direction forcing them into a lattice and making them powerful magnets. Iron proved to be the best ferromagnetic metal I could use at that time, also because it was readily available. I would keep on trying using different combinations and keep my eye open for other interesting metals and minerals.

In making the magnetic bars I used transmutation as I aligned the electrons in the iron bars. It took me some time because I was also increasing the density of electrons in the iron bars at the same time while trying to improve the bar’s magnetic properties.

I used short wooden stops to keep the iron bars apart. Ever since the three bars became magnets, they just wanted nothing better than to connect their north to south poles. That presented a significant problem because if they did manage to connect, it was going to be near impossible for me to pull those bars apart again. Finished with them, I placed the bars back into storage until I needed them again.

The early morning of the first day of the quest, everyone looked ready to go. The day before, we met up at the guild and confirmed everything we needed was ready to be loaded. With Cortez’ keen oversight, we packed all the provisions onto the open cart. There were boxes of goods, but there was enough space for us to sit comfortably on top. We designated Cortez as the driver, Hana sat shotgun, finding cart riding particularly interesting and learning how Cortez directed the pair of horses.

It was going to be a long journey to get there, at least eight days travel all going well. The first four days we travelled north following the Shimmerstal to Draguilet main road.

The knights protected that part of the road well and we didn’t need to be overly worried about any monster incursions. When we arrived at Draguilet we didn’t stop there for long. Only Cortez and Aliz headed into the city with the horses to get fresh food, but we camped outside the city for about four hours from the city. Because of that, I didn’t get to see the city which I confess was a little disappointing.

The next morning Cortez and Aliz arrived early, and we packed up and headed northeast onto a smaller forest road. Luckily the road, as little utilised as it was, didn’t initially go through any thick forest. The forest didn’t seem to change much from what I could remember from the woodcutter camp.

I did notice a few good medicinal and edible plants along our journey, but Tobias refused to keep stopping for me to collect them, so I quickly learned the art of retrieving plant materials while travelling. I turned one of my metal spheres into a sharp disk about the size of my palm. With all my practice I became far more proficient with manipulating flying objects and I could shoot out the disk at high speed, hack the plant or shrub clean off, then retrieve the disk and plant using wind skill. The Red Sparrows would only shake their heads and watch my actions with fascination.

The first day’s travel was unsurprisingly uneventful, the track we were on was in poor condition and we wasted some time trying to get around the larger potholes and furrows in the road. When the two horses seemed to be struggling with the heavy load, sometimes we walked next to the cart and assisted it by pushing it from behind. I swore that as soon as Ara delivered my gravity skill, I would lighten the mass of the cart to make it easier for them.

At our night camp, Cortez surprised Hana and I by playing an Ironwood Flute, a wind instrument made from a type of wood from the Ironwood Forest to the south of Obon. The warm mellow sound warmed the hearts of everyone there, some of the songs the Red Sparrows knew well and sang together. Hana and I couldn’t sing with them because we didn’t know any of the words, but we appreciated the music and their camaraderie.

We slept in two tents, the men and women separated three to a tent. I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, I had gotten used to having Hana nearby and I couldn’t study my skills in the evenings without freaking everyone out, so I volunteered to take the first watch in the evenings up to midnight, that way I could do a few things in peace while the rest slept.

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While I was on first watch I washed up behind a small makeshift hide made of leather placed behind the cart. The hide only covered up to a person’s neck just high enough for modesty. We set up another hide about neck height which covered the ablutions long drop. I confess that I really felt uncomfortable in that one. Earlier I asked Tobias why all the hides came only up to neck height. He simply said that enemies liked to attack from blind spots and the more we could see them coming, the more advance warning we had. I do remember something about samurai when on the loo kept only one leg in their pants so that it was quicker to move in response to an assassin’s attack. Heck, surely those samurai must have suffered from constipation. It was better to keep our lives than our modesty it seemed.

Later I pulled out a folding deck chair I had made previously, moved closer to the fire, and asked Ara to read me some material from a book called ‘Unusual properties of forest plants.’ Other than that, my watch thankfully passed uneventfully. Hana was next on watch, but I confess that I was happy to see her. We probably chatted for a bit longer than we should have but I slept well despite the snoring duo in the tent, although I would have preferred something a bit more secure with some solid walls around me, but Hana was a competent watch, which is why I slept like a baby.

Cortez was already busy with breakfast at sunrise the next morning. The early camping noises filtered into the tent, and I became the last one to rise. I guess they left me to sleep because of my late-night shift. Once up, I asked Tobias what I could do to contribute, and he pointed out a few housekeeping tasks. Hana already helped, and I couldn’t but notice how well she interacted with the team, and they took to her like fire to tinder. An hour later we packed up and left.

The road soon morphed into something like an animal trail which became more difficult to navigate since it was far less used, and the forest started becoming denser. It became challenging to find our way, we did have a few small detours, but we were with an experienced team, and they managed to keep onto the right trail. I also discovered that earth sense could help me discriminate compacted earth from the normal forest soil. More than once I corrected our direction when we were about to deviate. It only happened once or twice that Tobias decided otherwise, but after returning both those times to the route I originally suggested, they trusted my judgement after that.

I asked Tobias what monsters we could expect in the area. He mentioned that wolves and goblins were known to be active around there. Sometimes they hunted in packs but in that case only when they were specifically hunting for something. We could deal with smaller monster attacks, but a large pack of wolves made for a formidable enemy. I really hoped that we didn’t bump into anything like the direwolves I met while in the woodcutter’s camp. Tobias suddenly threw something out of the hat.

“Karato mentioned that you should be able to get us out of any situation with few problems. Didn’t you wipe out eight ogres and over three hundred goblins a little while ago?”

A chorus of surprised voices erupted from the other members of the Red Sparrows.

“Huh, but haven’t you only recently become Intermediate level adventurers?”

“No way.”

“Don’t forget he killed three ogre generals, one of those while entirely naked.”

Hana piped in ‘matter of fact’ from the front seat. It seemed some divine being had it in for me. I decided when I got the chance, I would kick Karato’s rear end for speaking his mouth off. Well, they could also have found out from the guild’s monster kill records anyhow. Those records were open to most guild members. I couldn’t claim all that glory however.

“We were able to achieve that with the help of two other adventuring teams. Hana was also highly effective with that bow.”

But I could see they were thinking about how we were able to pull off something like that.

At our lunch time break we stopped off at a small sunny spot amongst the trees and rested the horses. Cortez heated up leftover food from the morning and added what looked like some sausages. Unfortunately, it didn’t taste like much which to be fair wasn’t really his fault, largely because he didn’t have much in the way of any spices. I still thought Obon would make for a good town to make spices because of the warm dry climate. Unfortunately, lack of a viable water supply remained its most important drawback.

Tobias and Aliz started sparring out in the open for a bit of exercise. I was fascinating to see their fighting styles openly displayed. Tobias knew that he could never beat Aliz in a battle requiring dexterity and Aliz didn’t have the strength to beat a tank. However, it was good to see how one or the other tried to outwit their opponent through clever techniques while utilising their strengths. Tobias never committed to strikes he couldn’t land, so he patiently waited for an opportune time to strike. Although Tobias did use a shield, he didn’t use it in those sessions, probably to both give Aliz a fair chance and to allow him to train his skill without using a shield, after all there was no guarantee that he would always have a shield with him in battle.

After twenty minutes of sparring, Aliz who had been quiet for most of the journey suggested that I have a sparring fight with her as a bit of light sport. She conveniently produced a set of wooden swords out of her bag like a magician producing a rabbit out of a black hat. I smelled Karato’s handiwork, but I was nonetheless willing to learn something out of it. I faced Alize with a wooden sword in my right hand and my scabbarded knife in the other. Her experience far outdid mine, but I still wanted to see how I compared.

Confidently, I carefully approached her and when I was within striking range, I lunged the sword forward to stab the area where her armour ended under the armpit. Suddenly Aliz punched towards my face, but I parried her fist with the edge of my sword and rotated around as if to cut her neck in a back-hand slash with my knife. Her left elbow gripped my arm in a grip and locked it down against her body. Quickly she swung around and pushed her sword around my arm, directly into my chest.

Heck, when she pinned my arm in that vicelike grip of hers, I realised just how strong she was. She sported a winner’s smile until I directed her to follow my eyes downwards to the sword now magically in my left hand and pointed underneath her breastplate armour at her left inner thigh. Karato’s training had born some fruit it seemed.

It was a risky move from my side, shifting my sword from my right to left hand in a seamless move while it was in her blind spot. Although we tied in that match, I ended up losing all the following matches. I swallowed my pride and promised that one day I would fight without skill restrictions and give her a proper taste of my abilities.

Hana also wanted to spar with Aliz and ended up giving Aliz a good workout. In many ways Hana was a better sparring partner for Aliz. Looking at Hana’s performance, she was a better fighter than I was. With my skills it might be better for me to provide a supporting role. I reminded myself to ask about Hana’s training because her overall skill was particularly good. They broke even in score and about that time we had to get moving again.

From then on, whenever we had a break during our travels, we sparred against each other, which made for good training. I was interested in sparring against Hana which gave us some good practice.

We camped at another small opening in the forest, although that one was half as big as the opening we sparred in previously. The sun set quickly in the evenings and as on the previous night, I claimed the first watch. I sat down in my chair after my evening wash up and decided to work going through the menu options on my Creation Core.

The noises of the forest were a bit different there. It seemed the denser forest contained different critters. When I heard the animal noises, Ara decoded the sounds for me and told me the details of what animal species made what noise. Also, I activated my air sense to monitor the area and picked up a few odd forest animals transiting through and one particularly territorial owl that kept hooting the other owls out of the area.

Just before midnight as I went planned to wake up Hana to start her shift, my presence sense picked up a large creature entering my sense range.