“Very well done boy!” Drigor exclaimed. “Come over here let me measure your mana capacity.”

Kiefer obediently walked over and let Drigor measure his mana levels. He was confident that Drigor could only measure relative amounts and not the actual value of mana he had left, so Kiefer made sure to leave about 90% left before meeting Drigor.

“Hmmm. This is intriguing.” Drigor muttered to himself. “Do you want to try summoning some undead now? I’m sure you already deciphered and understood the secondary incantation that I showed you to form contracts with souls in the netherworld.”

“Is that possible? It is still a long time before nightfall.” Kiefer asked, knowing full well what Drigor’s intentions were. It was still early in the morning, but the sun had already rosen. Drigor had wanted to see if Kiefer could raise the undead in daytime considering how large Kiefer’s mana pool is.

“Why it most likely will be possible if it’s you my boy!” Drigor replied proudly. “You have already established the portal link and yet, you’ve spent only 10% of your mana. This means that your contract invocation will probably be strong enough to maintain link even in the sunlight. If it works, you will be the first ever necromancer, aside from me of course, to be able to raise the dead in the day.”

Drigor looked over to Varn’s frowning face, and understood what Varn must have been feeling. Trying to comfort Varn, Drigor faced him and smiled, comforting him, “You don’t have to compare yourself to him you know. Besides Kiefer, you are probably the next best student I’ve taught. Kiefer is abnormal if I may say so myself so you won’t be able to match up to him. I’m sure you already knew that when you taught him in Alluviate, didn’t you?”

Varn finally stopped frowning, as if having forgotten how abnormal Kiefer was and laughed at his own stupidity. Of course he wouldn’t be able to match up against Kiefer, nobody probably ever could.

Drigor then gave out orders to Varn to keep training his mana for today, and that he will move to phase 2 the next day. Turning to Kiefer, Drigor ordered Kiefer to follow him. As they approached the middle of the training ground, the earth suddenly rose up and swallowed Kiefer whole. Kiefer then felt himself being moved in the earthen shell through the air.

The palace guards watched as the master flew through the skies and over the palace walls with a large spherical earthen ball in tow. They had seen this countless times and were used to it by now. It was the method the master used to transport students that were ready to proceed to phase 3 to the battle grounds to test their abilities. This, however, was the first time they’ve seen it happen in the morning, as all other times were when the sun was just about to set.

As Drigor landed in one of the base camps closest to the city, the necromancers all came out to greet him, as they bowed and showed their respects for their teacher. During the day, to protect the necromancers, they would be moved to one of the inner bases to avoid being caught in potential conflicts in the forward bases.

“Hey hey. Looks like master bringing in a student for phase 3.” (Necro 1)

“Really? So early in the morning? Does that mean we will be stuck taking care of a brat for the whole day?” (necro 2)

“Just be glad we are getting reinforcements this early. I heard that just last night, there was some unexpected reinforcement in the south. They say it was a very powerful necromancer that summoned hundreds of giants.” (Necro 3)

“That’s not possible. I don’t think even master can do that. It’s just those idiots exaggerating their stories.” (Necro 2)

“Either way, I’ll gladly accept more help, though it will be some time before the new guy is useful to us.” (Necro 1)

The necromancers hushly discussed the unexpected circumstance that is occurring before them as the master finally landed softly on the ground along with the earthen sphere.

“Hello again my students. I’ve brought with me a talented young mage. He is going to proceed to phase 3 today and I want you all to watch him carefully.” Drigor announced as he undid the earth spell. However, all that awaited him inside was a sole medallion lying at the bottom of the earthen shell.

Drigor as well as his students all stared blankly at the medallion wondering what was going on. Then a sudden realisation dawned upon Drigor. His face contorted with anger, his mind racing through options on what his next move would be.

“Dammit I was careless. I should have doubted such a sketchy character with an ambiguous background! His abilities, and his attitude, all this time he was deceiving me. I had no idea Gondor had a human general under his arm. I need to find him quick.” Drigor thought as he rapidly sank into the ground, feeling for the presence of the runaway mage.

And yet, try as he might, he could not find anything. Perplexed, he kept wondering who the young man was and what his real motive was. Sure Drigor had figured that Kiefer was a spy, but he did not know what sort of information Kiefer gathered or if gathering intel was even his true goal at all.

Thinking back, Drigor began listing down possibilities. Kiefer had learnt necromancy from him, so his mana recovery would be severely limited, that is unless he was lying about having successfully invoked the portal spell. Even then, even if Gondor had an undead army to face him, Drigor was sure a mere human mage, no matter how talented, would be no threat to him, undead or not.

His mind led him back to 2 people – Varn and Nicole. Varn would be the easiest to track, so he went back to the palace first, hoping Varn had also not been in on it. Relieved to see Varn still training, his thought that Varn might also be working with Kiefer riled him up. In a rage, he dashed towards Varn, held him up by the neck and pinned him against a wall.

“TELL ME NOW! WHO IS KIEFER!?!?” Drigor demanded, his voice echoing through the palace.

“uggkkk … choke- king… help- stop… please” Varn struggled, stunned and shocked at the master’s sudden outburst of rage. He had no idea what was going on, only barely hearing Kiefer’s name before being choked against the wall.

Drigor released him and cast and earth prison, shackling his legs and arms in place. Then he continued. “Tell me what you know about Kiefer now! That brat betrayed me and ran away with some unknown methods. I can’t track him, but maybe you do.”

“Kiefer what?!? He ran away? What happened? How did he run away?” Varn asked in return, still not fully comprehending the situation.

“That what I want to know! You’ve known him since before, so tell me what went on and what his abilities are!” Drigor demanded again.

Varn spent the next 20 minutes explaining his own past and his relationship with Kiefer to Drigor. Drigor interrogated him thoroughly, and only after making sure that Varn was not part of the whole deceit then did he let Varn go from the earthen shackles.

Drigor proceeded with his next plan. If he could not find Kiefer, he was going to lure him out. With that in mind, he returned to the school where he first met Kiefer. There, he silently observed Nicole, checking if Kiefer had made any attempts to contact her. Seeing that she has only been around her other female friend, Drigor chose to go with the more drastic measure.

Desperate to find Kiefer at all costs to find out his motives, Drigor launched an earth spike at Nicole. While it was only a basic spell, with his power level, Drigor easily made it seem like an advanced level spell, with the spike actually being the size of a spear and travelling faster than most magical projectiles.

He watched in amazement as Nicole barely even flinched as his spike hit her body and shattered without leaving as much as a scratch on her pristine clothes. Drigor hid underground just before Nicole could turn her head to look in his direction, finding the source of the unknown attack. She seemed unfazed by what just happened, having gotten used to the surprise attempts on her life by her family’s rivals.

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She trusted in Kiefer’s protection necklace that she received as a parting gift. Clutching something hidden beneath her shirt just above her chest, she smiled sweetly, as if reminiscing something dear to her and then continued with her school life. Drigor on the other hand, was perplexed by the weird phenomenon and decided to try again, this time with a more powerful spell while looking out for Kiefer at the same time. He suspected that Kiefer might be hiding close by protecting his lady from the shadows.

This time, he encased the girl, completely up to the neck, startling her friend that was next to her. As her friend started to panic, Drigor began crushing the girl, but there seemed to be a sort of barrier around the girl, preventing the earth around her from moving any closer. Then with a sudden outburst of silver light, the earthen shell cracked and crumbled into dust.

The girl smiled at the failed attempt and caught up with her friend that had run off to get help from the professors. Relieved that her life was not in danger, the 2 girls quickly ran to their next class, out of sight from Drigor who had risen back up from underground. Drigor was left standing alone in the school field, dumbfounded by what just happened and unsure of his next move.

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Kiefer sat above the clouds on his mana platform, pondering about the things he’s learnt. Drigor had shown him a crucial aspect in travelling between worlds and dimensions. This was his key to returning to earth, although he was sure it would not be so easy. At the very least, the balancer would not make it as easy as he would have like it, not until he’s finished his task here on Aoia.

The spell to open the portal to the nether world worked very differently from Kiefer’s PD. Through careful and detailed analysis of the runic incantation, Kiefer deduced that the huge amount of mana that it takes from the caster was used as a sort of drill to make a pinhole link between this world’s mana and the netherworld’s mana, before constructing a larger more stable portal link from both sides of the link.

Imagine 2 dimensions side by side like pieces of paper and a tiny string thread through both pieces. Then when the string has pierced through the adjacent paper, it would rotate and swing in a circular motion, tearing the hole bigger and bigger before finally, on both pieces of paper are large gaping holes to form a bridge for souls to cross.

Kiefer was stuck at this point because this meant that the other world that he’s trying to link to needs to have its own mana source too. Hence, returning to earth was not an option at this point since there is no mana on earth to form the portal. However, Kiefer was intent on researching how to cross different dimensions, particularly between dimensions and worlds with a physical manifestation unlike the nether world.

The presence of non-Aioa origin undead creatures meant that the netherworld was a destination for souls not only from Aioa, but also from other physical worlds where there is life, be it intelligent or not. And if those worlds could support life, it would not be too difficult to survive there since he is able to manipulate mana to support himself.

Kiefer made mental notes on his plans for discovering new worlds and possibly returning to earth.

Step 1: Develop a way to establish a portal to the netherworld without the use of runes. (Compulsory)

Step 2: Through the netherworld as a bridging world, create a portal back to Aioa to see if portals can be opened from the netherworld using mana from this world.

Step 3: Study the arrival of souls within the Netherworld and their origin and see if their origin planes of existence could be pin-pointed.

Step 4: Open a portal within the netherworld leading to the foreign mana-rich world.

Step 5: See if the same can be done using his PD space instead of the netherworld.

Step 6: Create a runic device that acts as a visible landmark from far away to be planted in the foreign world.

Step 7: Eliminate all other variables to study the movement of foreign world in relation to Aioa. Open the portal from the same location and the same time using the same amount of mana here on Aoia.

Step 8: Look for the landmark device after eliminating variables to see if it has moved and if so by how much.

Step 9: If it is considered safe to do so, enter the new world while maintaining the portal open, and then try to open a new portal from the new world back to Aioa.

Step 10: Name the new world.

With the 10 step plan in mind, he put it on the back burner and focused on the task at hand – Killing Drigor. He could not get much information on Drigor’s abilities, but he could tell Drigor was skilled in combat from watching him fight with Varn. His spells are also top of the line, but he was lacking in one thing- detection. Kiefer noticed that Drigor could not tell the location of people once they are not touching the ground and his only way of tracking people would be using the medallion. He could not even sense Kiefer’s mana pulse used to track him.

Kiefer noted down Drigor’s weakness and came to the conclusion that a surprise attack from the air would be the best option, if they could find a way to prevent him from escaping underground. As Kiefer was thinking of strategies, there was a somewhat itching feeling at the back of his head. Somewhere deep inside, Kiefer almost felt like Drigor was not a bad person, looking at the way he treated his students and his general attitude. People only avoided him because he was mysterious, but once you knew him, he seemed almost unnaturally normal. However, with a quick shake of his head, Kiefer re-focused on the fact that Drigor had indeed killed Wanda and that he was doing this for Isana.

Doing some quick calculations in his head, Kiefer estimated that Isana’s group would have met up with Luna by now and if he made haste, he might be able to catch them at Rashael’s place, which he could not be certain of its location.

“Meh! That’s not much of a problem though. I have the perfect titan tracking system on Aioa anyway, maybe the ONLY titan tracking system.” Kiefer thought to himself as he started sprinting north bound, towards the Rashael Province.

The further he travelled, the thicker the clouds became and soon, Kiefer had to resort to travelling above the cloud line to avoid the torrential mid-autumn rain. The difference between the top and bottom of the cloud lines was drastic. Above, it was cooling, dry and bright, while below, the thick clouds covered most of the sunlight streaming through, making it dark and cold. The water soaking onto his clothes made the cold even worse and it was extremely uncomfortable moving at high speeds while the rain water smashed into his face.

However, Kiefer found a way around it. He first thought of using his orihalcom to form a rain shield, but there was so much air resistance he could not move fast while carrying it. Finally, Kiefer laughed at his own stupidity for not thinking of the simplest solution. He immediately set up his dome shield and dried himself using a thermal pulse.

As the heavy rain bounced off the top of the dome shield and flowed down the sides, it looked like a huge waterball flying through the air. Kiefer had solved the cold and wet problem, but visibility was still severely limited. Naturally, solving that was also a cinch, with a simple (in Kiefer’s point of view) Permafrost spell, the rain drops froze and shattered against his dome and the ground all around him for 100m. With the water cleared up, Kiefer headed straight for the capital city of Rashael.