“Let’s explore the caves!” I said, rotating my arm that had been broken the day before. It was slightly… off, but it seemed fully operational. I wasn’t entirely sure how to describe it, actually. Sore, but deeper than muscle soreness.

“Alright,” Kene agreed. “When do you want to go? Also, is your arm okay?”

“Just a bit sore,” I said, and Kene frowned.

“Bone is telluric and life, so while I’ve repaired the damage, it won’t be completely healed until your telluric energy patterns are repaired.”

“Oh!” I said, turning to Dusk, but before I could, Kene shook his head.

“Babe, no. It's not an issue of power, it’s an issue of healing and repair,” they said. “Flooding your body with her mana and breaking it down into energy will just make the current state have more power, not heal you faster.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“Well, no,” Kene admitted.

“Then it should be done anyways,” I said. “Her mana’s grown denser due to the advancement, so breaking that down should give my Magister’s Body a lot to chew on, and deepen the amount of energy I have to draw on.”

“Ah,” Kene said, nodding. Dusk put her hand on my leg and sent mana into me, and… Wow.

It zinged through me with an intensity unlike anything I’d felt before. I’d fought third, even fourth gate mages, but none of their attacks had actually entered my mana-garden or spirit. This was, and as I slowly peeled it apart into its component mana types, running it through my body, and allowing it to break down, I felt the Magister’s Body chugging away as fiercely as it could, roiling and stretching itself as far as I could.

Magister’s Body was a growth spell, meant to grow and adapt to the power I exercised within it.

But it was still only supported by the mana density of a second gate mage – that was to say, me.

The density of the power that Dusk had packed into me simply couldn’t be processed well by Magister’s Body, so it did what it could, diffusing it, almost as if doing the opposite of overcharging a spell. It soaked that power into me, and it took hold.

The energy that ran through my body wasn’t suddenly able to output the intensity of third gate, but the pool of power greatly expanded. In fact, I thought that I might have almost double the amount of energy running through me now.

That didn’t mean I was able to run twice as fast, heal in half the time, or that my strength had been doubled. It was still just the spare energy running through me, what my body didn’t use, but it was still running through me, and the doubling of the energy did feel good. Great, even. I was stronger and faster, just not by a dramatic amount.

I took a breath and opened my eyes, then smiled at Kene.

“Alright, now I’m ready.”

We headed out into the clearing, and I added a few more Spatial Anchors into my chain, putting one in the clearing, and one at the mouth of the cave before we descended.

As we headed down, the mana began to grow thicker in the air, and the air also got warmer. I cast a simple ungated spell to cool me down, and Kene did the same.

A mild pressure also began to build in the air, and Kene frowned.

“What?” I asked, sweeping my mana senses around us.

“Nothing, just… I don’t think we could have gone deep enough for the pressure to have reached this intensity.”

Dusk whistled in agreement, and I frowned, taking note.

Deeper in we went, until the sunlight no longer shone down, and Kene conjured a ball of light in their hand. I went ahead and put another anchor down, since the one I’d placed at the entrance was getting to the point I could barely sense it, even with my monocle.

Down and down into the depths we went, and above us, we sensed powerful bats, filled with lunar mana, though it had the strains of other mana types and unusual constraints that made me suspect they were beasts, not lunar elementals.

When our light came into view, several of them shuffled away, and I tensed, prepared for a fight, but they didn’t swoop down to attack… even if the guano all around the cave was powerful enough for me to cast another ungated spell, cutting off my sense of smell.

Once we passed the bat cave, the underground leveled out, and we were walking a straight path. I placed down another spatial anchor, and felt a slight tremor in the earth. Kene and I exchanged a look, then pressed on.

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We finally emerged in a large, open cavern, lit by glowing orange, yellow, and red crystals in the ceiling high above. The cavern floors were smooth, polished tile… Actual tile, complete with grout and everything. It was mossy in many spots, grown over, but clearly real tile.

On the far side of the cavern was a large gateway, with wrought iron gates and a thick padlock. Lines of spellwork ran along the gate, glowing blue, and projecting a powerful ward along the wall.

Above the gates was a sign that stated ‘Herein lies the sleeping dragon’, and on either side of the gates stood a stone statue of a drake. Each drake clearly had one half of a key on a heavy metal chain around its neck.

Drakes weren’t something I’d experienced, but to my understanding, they were akin to terragon. More physically powerful than a cute little estragon, but not as smart, and definitely way less intelligent than the sapient dragons.

“Wow,” Kene said, glancing around. “Another hidden trial within the trial, do you think?”

“Maybe,” I said. Something about this setup was strange, and the winds of fortune were singing loudly in my spirit. But something else too, a factor not fitting in right… I focused my mana senses around the drake statues, since they were the clearest thing in the room.

Then I felt it, a spark of dragon magic. Powerful, intense. Sixth gate, but carried on intensity that suggested greater power.

The drakes transformed into flesh and blood, and their power blasted across the room. Each drake was well into third gate, and their power was dense and compact. In a fight between one of these drakes and the spriggan, I would have bet on the drake nine times out of ten, despite having an ostensibly lower mana-gate.

Powerful, elegant, and deadly.

Both drakes opened their mouths, and massive waves of force exploded out of them with even more ferocity than the Dragonblood Serpent’s breath weapon had possessed. I shoved Kene back and teleported out of the way, then leapt into battle.

I caught one of the drakes in an overcharged triple Fungal Lock spell while Dusk released a shockwave spell, enhanced by her ascension to third gate. The shockwave struck the drake and pushed it back slightly, but dealt virtually no damage.

I teleported out of the way of another breath weapon and brought my Briarthreads down at its hide, then teleported backwards to dodge a swipe of its claws. Dusk’s hand spells began to bind the one that I’d caught up in my locking spell.

And then that drake moved. One sweep of its tail, glowing with a dull gray power, ripped apart the hands and lock at once. The other drake clawed at me from behind, and I barely managed to overpower my Briarthreads in time to stop it from skewering me.

Kene’s golden light and runes fell over me, and for a half a second, the winds of fortune stilled, contented, before they started singing again for more.

I didn't have time to listen, though, as I spun, bringing out pinpoint boneshards in a blast, then using the distraction to teleport into the air. The rain of bones scored the drakes, but didn’t deal any major injury.

The drakes both blasted at me with a breath weapon, and I teleported down, only for one of them to barrel right into me. The sheer weight and strength of the drake caused my already sore arm to crack, and when his foot landed on my good hand, I was forced to draw my staff into my mana-garden to stop it from cracking under the force. What I wasn’t able to withdraw, however, was my hand, and I felt my fingers and the long thin bones that made up the back of my palm crack.

Dusk released a pair of shockwaves at point blank range, each one ringing with the power of a third gate mage, but the drake used some sort of anchoring technique that kept it in place. It snapped down, ready to bite my head off, and I teleported out of the way, just in time.

But the other drake was there, lashing out with its tail, and I teleported into the air, only for the first drake to use a gravity-assisted leap to head right for me. Dusk tried to catch it in midair with a pair of giant hands, like the ones she’d caught the assassin off guard with, and blow it back with her shockwave spell, but the first drake bashed apart both of the hands before they could grab it, and released a breath attack at us.

The winds of fortune were practically screaming now.

I frantically teleported to the other end of the cavern, and was met by continual long rays of breath weapons chasing me across the cavern, closing in on us with every second. I teleported behind one drake and slashed out with a crescent of blademoss. That left a few cuts, but like Dusk’s powerful shockwaves, did far less damage than it should have, by my estimation, despite the hefty burden it put on my spirit.

These cavern drakes were tough!

Before I had even a second to think, the drake I’d cut with the blademoss slapped out with its tail, glowing with gray mana, and I teleported to the side, only to be forced to teleport across the room again, landing near Kene.

Worse than tough, they were strong, and coordinated, working together with an efficiency and willingness to put me down that left me stunned.

Dusk whistled and leapt off me, catching Kene and dragging both of them into her realm.

I was certain that if Dusk overcharged her shockwaves and hands, and I drained my mana like crazy, a bit of luck, and the use of Burn Future, I’d be able to match this pair…

But I had learned from the War Root. I wasn’t going to rip my spirit apart to barely damage these drakes.

But there was one thing that I could do better than these drakes, even with their absurd power.

I reached out with my mana senses and touched the spatial anchor. With a flicker, I teleported there, then I reached out to my anchor in the bat room and teleported away again. Anchor to anchor, I chain teleported until we were in the small clearing from two days ago, just after we’d escaped the hawk, and only then did I allow myself to take a breath.

The drake’s bite would have killed me, if I hadn’t teleported out of the way just in time. I looked around, then opened up a gate to Dusk’s realm.

“So, uh…” I said, taking a breath. “How about we look for another mana nexus instead?”

Kene looked at my arm, cracked again, and my bloody hand where the drake had stepped on me and closed his eyes, as if begging the universe to give him the strength to put up with my foolishness. He then opened his eyes and looked at me seriously.

“I’m glad you retreated,” he said.

“Huh?”

“When you fought the war root, you could have retreated, but you didn’t. This will take a while, and your hand will be weaker for a week or two, but you’re alive, and you’re not strained to the point of nearly breaking. I’m glad you ran.”

I smiled and kissed them.

“Well, maybe I’ve learned something after all.”

“Let me fix you up,” they said, “and then we can fly and look for a nexus.”

“Deal,” I said. “And… thank you. I know I rush into dangerous situations, but I’m glad you’re able to help me, and I appreciate it a lot.”