Five hours of testing later and I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what’s changed with my new skill.

I can still place anchors, and I need to place them either very close to my body or within my active domain. Exactly the same as before, it doesn’t change even with the crown active.

These anchors though, are much more durable, and I think that if I use just the right amount of mana, they should easily last weeks, likely even months without crumbling. Sure, they will still be somewhat vulnerable to external interference, but even that should require a higher degree of expertise, given that these new anchors seem to be much less noticeable, more durable, and tend to require less mana overall.

From what I saw, most people tend to have some basic ability to manipulate mana even without any skills. Nearly anyone can learn to create mana barriers or simple projectiles with the right amount of effort, and the same goes for the disruption of things like anchors and the ability to sense mana.

Everyone can do it, but the difference in proficiency is huge. I mean really huge. Someone with low-level abilities wouldn’t have a chance in hell to make a barrier capable of defending against even my weakest attacks, much less disrupt one of my anchors — assuming they could even sense them.

Still, it’s kind of fun to consider that things like this should be so common. It almost reminds me of the way so many people on Earth know how to ride a bicycle or how to throw a rock. Hmm, there’s probably a better example, so what… I pause there. I’m getting off track again. I tend to do that a lot when I’m excited or happy, my mind just wanders, jumping from one interesting thing to another.

Who can blame me with so much to discover!

Anyway, I’ll probably need a better name for these things than “anchors”. Maybe I can just call them “marks” or something like that. It’s something to think about anyway. Other than vastly improved anchors, [Ley Line] improves the connection between them. I can send much more mana through without having to worry about breaking them or finding ways to strengthen the anchors.

It feels like there’s a line connecting me to my anchors and my anchors to one another, invisible and strong. It can easily handle an impressive amount of mana, especially with how thin it is.

I have a suspicion that it should allow me to place my anchors, marks, whatever, much, much further away. Probably not on the opposite side of the planet, but a small country away should be highly possible and I can probably push it even further with a bit of effort.

The efficiency, speed, and losses involved with sending mana across such a vast distance are things I still need to test.

What interests me the most about the skill is these Ley Lines, as I’ve cleverly dubbed them. It seems like I should be able to do even more with them, almost like Sophie’s web. There’s a chance they might remain stable even without anchors between them, but that’s another aspect I still need to test as I level the skill.

Overall, very good stuff.

Plus, I got my [Mana Manipulation] back just like I did before, even though it doesn’t seem like it should be that easy. It’s obvious that mana and I just go together that well, even the system can’t split us apart.

Jumping off the bed, I head over to the mirror and examine my face.

Still the same asshole.

I breathe on the mirror, coating it in the fog from my breath, and draw two cat ears at the top of my head.

“Nya,” I whisper, and my reflection does the same.

What a dumbass.

I then pick up my clothes, something I let the seller pick for me. A while back, Maya said that I dressed like a homeless man, so I decided to let the shopkeep pick something out for me.

I also remember that when Maya said that, I complimented her shirt, and told her that it was fitting for an older woman like her.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t very happy with that.

Anyway, the seller spent a surprisingly long amount of time picking these out for me. She even made me try on several different outfits. We picked the pants out fairly quickly, settling on a simple, sleek black pair that turned out to be very comfortable.

The shirt took a bit longer while she tried to match it to my eyes. We tried gray, we tried brown, but she wasn’t the least bit satisfied with either option.

In the end, she decided on a pale shade of green, which I approved because it felt nice to move my arms in.

Happy with it, I asked her for multiple pairs of the same pants and shirts, and she looked at me like I was some kind of barbarian.

Isn’t that normal? If you find fitting clothes, just pick as many of the same shorts or pants as you can before they stop selling them a year later when you might want to buy them again.

Even as a customer, I found myself forced to buy a range of different colors, so I ended up with gray pants, another pair of black pants, and three shirts: pale blue, burgundy, and gray.

I liked the feel of the material though, so I didn’t complain much, even as she demanded an outrageous sum in exchange.

At least the bag was free.

----------------------------------------

With an hour remaining on the clock, I finally stop by the blacksmith.

The metal sphere I ordered is ready. It’s a bit taller than me, and its surface is very smooth, extremely smooth. The only interruption in the surface is a circular hole just wide enough for me to crawl through.

“Don’t look at me like that. The integrity of the sphere increases if the entrance is smaller. Now just get in so I can seal it.”

With a sigh, I do as I’m told, having already paid.

The weirdness of what I’m doing doesn’t escape me. Willingly entering this weirdo sphere to be sealed inside. If I didn’t have an anchor placed in the inn I just stayed at and enough mana to defend myself, I would probably be worried.

I light one of my thermal orbs and examine the sphere as it seals around me, and blankets me in darkness.

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There is a bit of food, some water, and a bunch of rib-like braces around the walls for strengthening.

I asked the blacksmith not to use mana while making it and to try to purge it of any kind of residual mana, which, to his credit, he promised to do, already seeming to know about its effect on the white sand.

Still, I know for sure there will be some remaining, but it’s just something I have to expect, and I only need the sphere to hold on for a second or two at most.

I start working on my plan as well while making sure I’m touching as much of the sphere as I can—I wouldn’t want to leave it behind after all.

Using a bit of my mana, I form the thinnest and most durable mana projectile I can. It’s barely the width of my pinkie and about as long as my pointing finger.

With my new skill, I tie an anchor to it and continue compressing it for the next thirty minutes, turning it a dark shade of blue with hints of purple and light blue streaking through it. It’s getting close to destabilizing and exploding after turning bright white. Then I start storing kinetic energy behind it, ready to launch it away, focusing almost the entire capacity of my vortex core into that one point.

Lastly, I wait, watching the countdown and packing my bag, filling it with food and water.

As the timer ticks down, I breathe slowly.

Breathe in. Breathe out, my mind constantly keeping the projectile and kinetic energy in check.

Then the timer hits zero, and I leave Beyond.

Immediately, the sound of compressed metal creaking surrounds me, and I hear the sound of charged white sand even through the thick metal of the sphere.

A single grain of white sand pierces through the wall, and I tilt my head to avoid it.

So much for no mana, but I shouldn’t have expected such a complete mastery of mana from the blacksmith.

I throw a spoon I stole from the inn into the air and watch the direction it falls. Then I shoot the projectile in the opposite direction.

The projectile explodes forth at such a high speed that a small shockwave erupts within the sphere, rebounding off the metal walls of the construct.

My hearing cuts out only to be replaced with constant high pitched ringing, I watch as the projectile easily pierces the metal, creating a small hole through which grains of sand slowly start falling in.

I wait until the last possible moment, and teleport away, just before a grain of sand makes contact.

The process of teleportation turns out to be smoother than before, and it feels more stable. I appear near my projectile, which quickly disappears from my sight, continuing to fly higher and higher.

I take a moment to assess my current altitude and let myself fall for a moment before I start absorbing kinetic energy to stop the fall. Mostly to avoid triggering whatever aerial defenses they have around this moon.

Looking down below me, I see a seemingly endless stretch of white dunes giving the impression that it could go on forever. Now though I find a single giga-dune right below me.

It’s enormous.

As the sand got pulled toward the Champion, it must have flattened the surrounding area, only for the wind to slowly grow the dunes anew.

The white sand now lies scattered, a prison that lost its purpose the moment Caius died.

The huge number of sand particles floating in the air does make for a bit of a problem though, they were likely ejected into the atmosphere in the process of killing the champion.

I pop my [Mana Domain] into existence, and any time a few grains enter my domain, I send a small pulse in that direction to draw them away.

With the number of particles in the air, it's difficult, but still doable.

As I start thinking about what direction the central region might be, the air reverberates with a hum I can feel in my chest.

Down below, a geyser of sand explodes high into the air, and a massive monster emerges, leaping into the air, just one of its eyes turning out to be several times my size.

[Dustveil Whale - lvl ???]

It has three eyes on each side, each of these eyes yellow with a red pupil in the middle. The whale is massive, even bigger than the Gaiathra I met back on the fifth floor, and its color is pure white, more so even than the sand it leapt from.

The air reverberates again, though this time it's an attack directed at me.

My body shakes wildly, and my mind blinks on the verge of passing out. As the attack proceeds the Dustveil Whale moves its huge tail, flinging a massive amount of sand my way, sending a stream of the particles right at me.

Okay, let's keep a distance and then shoot it with some huge attacks.

Redirecting more kinetic energy, I fly away at high speed, even at the cost of some of the sand piercing my domain and burrowing its way through my body. I start creating a javelin next to me, quickly condensing it into a bar of tricolored mana, ready to destabilize at a moment’s notice as I continue to feed it mana.

By the time I turn around to shoot, the whale is nearly below me. The monster, the size of a skyscraper, moving at a speed comparable to mine.

I don't think I’ve been so surprised in a long while.

Still, I launch my javelin at the beast, and it breaks the sound barrier, the boom echoing through the area as it disappears from my sight.

The whale twists out of the way in a moment, opens its mouth, and eats my javelin.

Its six eyes watch me as I count down to the explosion, and when it finally explodes, there is no sign of it. No mana escapes the monster's mouth, nothing seeps through the skin. Instead, the whale buries itself deep under the white sand, swimming and then leaping into the air once more, its massive body twisting in the air like a dolphin.

Another attack slams into me, and my altitude drops for a moment before I fly higher again.

FINE then.

I change tactics, instead of focusing on a single powerful attack, I start forming dozens of mana projectiles, each one shaped like a nail with a flat end, to keep them from piercing too deep.

I shoot them at the whale, running through dozens of them every few seconds, and I speed up, adding more until hundreds of them are flying through the air like bullets from a machine gun. They embed themselves in the skin of the whale in large numbers, while it follows me nonetheless as I continue to fly at high speed.

The mana on the projectiles charges the white sand, which immediately starts attacking the whale, the grains moving wildly through the air.

Burrowing under the sand, the monster appears on the surface soon again. Wounds scarring its massive body, Though it’s still not enough to take it down.

When I repeat, the whale burrows under the surface and jumps back up, only to unleash that acoustic mental attack once more before burrowing again.

The monster follows me for hours, quickly being joined by two more whales, and another three after that.

Six giant monsters, two of which are slightly smaller and faster, constantly following me and attacking relentlessly, draining what little mana I have, even after a day in Beyond. But the desert is getting smaller and shallower at the edges.

I don’t think they were lying when they said the entire mana desert would attack the Champion if even a single grain of sand touched him. All the sand, charged by the mana batteries scattered across the desert, kept attacking until the Champion died, only stopping once he was gone. Meanwhile, a huge pile of sand has built up in the center, but the desert is slowly returning to its former state.

It isn’t long before the sand isn’t deep enough for the moby dicks to follow, and they stop, their sad cries sounding like music to my ears.

Though I’m clearly still in the desert, since my mana isn’t recovering, so I guess the edges aren’t defined by the sand after all.

With the promise of revenge against the white whales guiding me, I continue to fly, and when my mana finally starts to recover, I land safely on the rocky ground, and as is typical of the 6th floor. It’s night, and a purple nebula shines in the sky.

My next steps are simple.

Find out where the hell I am—whether I’m in the central region or back where we came from.

Figure out a way to go back, grab as much sand as possible, and make a ton of items to sell in the system shop.

Lastly, resume training with the RTE and orbs, and regroup with Group 4—or at least with the twins, Lily and Biscuit, as we planned before.