Foxstep was not a spell built for medium or long distance travel. It was a short ranged teleport, one that had been designed that way through thousands of years of evolution. It drew on the life energy in my muscles to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the movement, something I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish without Magister’s Body. It was tied to the senses, at first using the eyes to locate where I was going to teleport, and now using my mana senses, or at least being linked to them. Spatial Anchor was designed to be easy to grasp with the mana senses, and I had been physically holding the spell.

More importantly for my purposes, this technically meant that the range of the spell wasn’t limited, at least not by the spell design. The limit was in the amount of life energy it could draw on, the amount of muscle fatigue the body could take, and the amount of mana that was able to be pumped in.

I also had my testing spell, Harvest Distance, an advantage the average spatial mage didn’t, allowing me to recover mana based on the movement of my body. Something that Foxstep’s genetic effect was able to trigger, allowing me to recover a chunk of my mana as I moved.

The effect of teleportation spells were nearly instant, taking less than a second. I’d never personally measured how long foxstep took, but it was fast.

The teleportation spell that the thief had used was a complex and powerful one, halfway into being a ritual. I suspected that it would take nearly thirty minutes to complete under normal circumstances, but the thief had done something to hold all but the last minute of casting in place. Enchanting, maybe? Or a legacy – those broke all the rules.

But even still, once the spell was cast, the actual effect took less than a second.

I smashed mana into Foxstep in the same instant that the thief had used his own teleportation spell, and in that instant, the thief had been both miles away, and in my hands.

I teleported to my anchor, crossing twenty miles in a single instant, the same instant that the spatial distortion was present.

It shouldn’t have worked. If I’d been working with the normal teleportation spell for a second gate mage. If I didn’t have Magister’s Body. If I hadn’t been able to recover mana, and draw more from Dusk and my plants. If my teleportation had been off by even a millisecond.

Any of those would have caused the spell to fail, and left me on the roof.

But I had all of those things, and as the teleport spell concluded, we appeared in a camp. My body was absolutely worn out, having effectively just run an entire marathon, and I was hungry, dangerously thirsty, and in need of a good nap, but I pushed that off for now.

It was a pretty camp, with two tents set up, a campfire, and wards that had been blended into the environment well – better than I could manage – around the perimeter. Underneath us was a cleared out area with spellwork drawn into the ground, infused with a powerful and complex anchor that had functions open that I’d never really opened on mine, though one of them was definitely the teleport anchor function.

There was also a tall man that I was attached to like a koala, who spun and shook me off. We both fell to the ground, and I heard him let out a long string of expletives as he fell before we both scrambled back onto our feet.

I found myself staring down a tall, skinny man, with short brown hair and stubble over his face, and several long scars on his left arm.

“How did you follow me?” he demanded. “You’re not a third gate mage, and even if you were, you couldn’t have gotten Seven League Step to work that quickly.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Do you have a weird kind of spell-mimic legacy?”

“Why did you steal Kamal’s ring?” I asked in turn.

“You first,” he insisted.

“You’re the thief,” I said.

Dusk was doing something as we spoke, tapping into the small folk within her. She cast some sort of naiad spell, then she began to cast a brownie spell.

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As the thief began to speak, I felt my aches and pains soothing, and my hydration returning. It wasn’t undoing the stress – far from it – but it was like I’d stopped to get water, food, and a short break… After running a marathon.

“Doesn’t it make you mad?” he said. “Kamal just blew close to half a million silver standards in there, and bought out the best items, just because he could. Because nobody would tell him no. I don’t steal for no good reason.”

He paused.

“Well, I stole his recording crystal collection for fun, but he can afford to replace them. The rest? I don’t just steal that for no reason. I take from those who would have squandered resources on themselves.”

“And the rice?” I challenged.

The man grimaced.

“I’d brought potatoes in a storage ring, but rot got into them, and I needed to do something.”

“Then, what, you’re going to donate all of the proceeds to charity?” I asked. “You haven’t touched the fifth gate stone you stole, of course, right?”

In response, the thief waved his hand, and a large stone the size of a couch appeared. I actually felt my eyebrows creep up at that. Then he pulled it back into the ring.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t,” he said. “Explain how you followed me now. It’s the least you can do.”

So… I did. When I finished, the thief’s eyebrows had crept all the way up his face and into his eyebrows.

“You’re serious,” he finally said, then shook his head and cursed before looking up at me. “Alright. So what now? It seems like we’re at a bit of an impasse. You can’t stop me from running, but you’ve got enough death mana left to try and hurt me. But I can’t keep you in place or hurt you, not with just spatial mana. What now?”

“What are you going to do with Kamal’s ring?” I asked. “I doubt it’s the only source of wealth that he has, but it’s probably a substantial amount. Enough to set you up for life, if you’re willing to settle down. At least a half million in money, more in elixirs and resources.”

“Well, my initial plan had been to use it as a sacrifice at the alter,” he said. “But I had a buyer reach out and offer me ten million in Mossford standards for the ring and its contents.”

The winds of fortune blew in my spirit, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly they were trying to tell me. Was it a warning, to not trust the thief? Was it telling me that I should trust him, and that his intentions really were to help people? I was starting to understand what Meadow meant by the winds of fortune being fickle and difficult to interpret.

But something there caught my attention.

“Sacrifice?” I asked.

“In the tower,” he said, shaking his head. “You didn’t know? It’s called an altar for a reason.”

I paused. The sage’s challenge had put an altar at the very end, and I was pretty sure that Idyll had used the term altar to refer to the place where you got a gift at the end of each floor.

If you could sacrifice stuff to make a stronger reward, that explained a lot, actually. There had been mention that the tower gave out various strengths of enchantments, like the odd fourth gate item. There was no way most people would sacrifice everything at the first floor – most would save up for the third, or hope to push to the fourth. Enhancing a growth weapon was amazing for those of us who were still beginners, after all.

“And what are you going to do with that ten million?” I asked.

“Some of it will go to me,” he admitted. “I have bills to pay. Half of it will go to my partner, since she helped me pull it all off, and she’s due an equal share. But the rest will go to helping out my community.”

“Of course it will,” I said. “How do I have any reassurances whatsoever that this will go to the charities you say it will?”

“You don’t,” he admitted. “But can you stop me? Your mana’s drained, but I’ve still got second gate magic. I can flee, and I don’t think you can stop me. It would be inconvenient, but doable.”

“I’ve seen your face,” I said. “I could report you to Delitone, get you in a lot of trouble. You could be prosecuted. Even you will have to leave out the same portal as everyone else.”

As I spoke, I held up the shiny black orb that was the natural treasure equivalent of a recording crystal.

“They can see your face. And by your own admission, you don’t have the offensive magic to stop me.”

“Then we’re at an impasse,” he said calmly. “How about this? You have the recording. And you know I’m from Delitone. You can check the public donation records for the Changley Hall Orphanage and Orange Roof Recovery Fund. If at least four and a half million of the five I get isn’t sent to them, you can go tell the constables.”

A teasing grin spread across his face.

“Or, if you want, you can help prop up the child of a spoiled man who’s had resources worth more than your home poured down his throat from the time he could walk.”

“How do you know my home?” I asked, a little too hashly.

“Just a guess,” he said. “My partner has noticed you’ve worn the same suit every day you’ve been near camp. No changes at all. You have a lot of magic items, but they have no harmony – they’re a hodgepodge picked up on adventures, and at least one of them is so old that it barely registered on her spells. You’ve assembled your power out of the bits and bobs that luck has sent your way, not out of being born in a position of power.”

“I’ve had more than my share of fortune,” I said. “I stumbled into mentors a thousand times stronger than I ever should have. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – claim to be self made. I was guided just as much as Kamal. More in some ways. Not in raw cash, but nevertheless, I was given help that most would dream of.”

The thief gave me a slightly disappointed look, then spoke.

“Well, either way. Do we have a deal? Or are you going to try and capture me, and I’m going to try and run?”

Again, fortune stirred, but there was no direction to it, nothing telling me one choice was better than the other.