As it turned out, setting up a permanent teleportation platform in a random park was strictly against city law, which was… Frankly, completely reasonable. It sucked a bit to have to take it down, after I’d just spent so much mana on creating the platform, but since I was already going to have to do it almost forty more times anyhow, what was two more?
I tracked down Kater to ask about the possibility of setting one up inside the sanctuary.
I would have preferred Thea, but at least it wasn’t Olive. I got the sense that she didn’t like me. Or anyone, really.
“No way you’re setting one up behind the wards,” Kater said. “That’s a security risk piled on a security risk, piled on a third, even larger security risk. We like you, but there’s trust, and then there’s leaving a free backdoor open.”
“Makes sense,” I nodded. “Do you know where I could set one up, though?”
“Hmm. Well, do you want the legal but long and expensive option, the technically legal but kind of sketchy option, or the completely illegal option?”
“Uh,” I said. “Let’s avoid me being thrown in prison. Or jail.”
“Alright, the legal options it is then. The expensive but above board option would be to formally request to set up a permanent teleportation platform for personal use in a specific area. They’d probably turn you down if you requested the park, but if you rented out a workspace in one of the towers, you might be able to pass? You definitely could if you became a full citizen and bought property. They’ll process the paperwork, run background checks, confirm with Mossford about your character, and all that stuff. It could take months, maybe years, and there’s fees for running all of these checks. You’ll probably have to disclose how you plan to make use of it, too, since you’re nowhere near strong enough to teleport from Mossford.”
Dusk said that sounded like it would be really, really annoying, and I nodded to her.
“Alright, what’s the legal but sketchy option?” I asked.
“Set one up outside of the city,” Kater suggested. “It’s unclaimed territory, and apart from a few bandits, nobody lives out there. Our home borders the marshes, and you’re already keyed into our wards. Unlike with setting it up in the sanctuary, it won’t let you bring other people through, but you can at least get them into the marsh, then they can loop around, fly down the cliff and enter the country the legal way.”
I considered that for a moment, then nodded.
“That’s a great idea, thanks!” I said, then Dusk conjured her cloud, I summoned the cauldron, and we set off.
It took Dusk and I the better part of three weeks to get fortified teleportation platforms set up in both her realm and in the marshes outside of the city.
If I’d done nothing but create and fuse platforms all day, I might have been able to get it done sooner, but I needed both mana and time for working in the preserve, practicing my spells, and to make sure Dawn, Dusk, and Kene all got some attention.
The long weeks in the city, on top of the time I spent there beforehand, were slow but steady, and I worked to grind away at the spells in my spirit. By the time I’d completed the platform, I’d removed more than half of the tiles in the second beastgate, and seen gains in multiple other spells, mastering the Mass Harvest and Enhance Plant Life spells, Testudinal Reserve, Enhance Forging, and Sky Dragon’s Senses. I was drawing close to mastery on Mantle Dragonfyre as well, and had improved my ability to squeeze one out under pressure, or to cycle a third time if I deliberately slowed the spell down.
Though mastering a spell as flashy or important for me now, since I had the energy conduits inside of me, it still shaved a bit of time off my casting, and was a needed step towards the far more impactful ingrained bonus.
And I did manage to ingrain two of my spells as well: Material Echo and Surveyor’s Eye.
The ingrained power from Surveyor’s Eye was a little bit on the boring side, only improving my eyesight, but that synergized well enough with the existing ingrained effects to improve my senses, so I couldn’t complain too much.
Material Echo’s ingrained benefit wasn’t much better, improving the strength and clarity, of my echo or recall spells, but while that wasn’t anything truly revolutionary, I got enough use out of echoes and recalls that I knew I was going to appreciate the bonus.
With the weeks passing, Dawn grew stronger every day, and I thought that she was beginning to feel roughly like a first gate spirit, though I’d yet to actually see her cast any spells yet, I’d noticed flecks of gold beginning to appear around her from time to time.
My own spirit continued to heal and strengthen, and eventually, Kene and Meadow approved me to improve my growth item to third gate. I didn’t know what spell or function it would unlock, but it was bound to in some way improve or adapt my senses. Placid Mind had let me defend my mind with my mana senses, and Witch Sight concentrated them through my eyes to help break illusions. What would a third gate spell do?
Kene and Dusk both used the time to work on their own progression too. Both of them worked on their steps, but Kene continued to work on whatever the mysterious spell project that they’d alluded to when they’d taken the animation silver, and they traded in the murder-based natural treasure for one called a Last Moment Miracle, which empowered healing spells more the more damaged the person you were healing was. With the side eye they gave me when they made the trade, I had an idea that I was the reason for it.
Dusk, meanwhile, focused on growing the trees insisde of her realm, planting them along the shores of the waterfall and lake in the very center of her being. Before long, small folk began to build some new houses among their branches.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The lushloam tree grew easily, and I could swear that it was already beginning to improve all of the plants in her entire realm, just a tiny bit, the interactions between all things better. Mycorrhizal effects were stronger, the solbees spread pollen better, and walking around it, it was as if my own body seemed better.
The purestar tree grew every bit as easily as the lushloam, and it seemed to improve her realm as well. Where the lushloam made everything work together, the purestar tree gave me a sense of everything being in its place. The mushrooms that served as decomposers ate the rot around it without risking spreading to the healthy trees, while the gemworms burrowing in the dirt refined the soil without overconsuming from it.
The hollowvoid tree, on the other hand, seemed loath to grow, remaining a sickly little sapling, and more than once I found Meadow and Dusk sitting around it, discussing the sapling.
The day that I completed my last crunching of power on the teleportation platform, Meadow, Kene, Dawn, Dusk, Siobbhan and I all gathered together outside of the city, at the platform itself to work through our advancements.
I’d chosen the stump of what had once been a massive tree, and the stump was easily fifteen paces across, and was covered in small mushrooms, and we all sat down on it in a circle. At Kene’s nod, I took out the lens and put it down, then retrieved the materials from the Idyll-Flume. The trial had provided me with the resources to boost the growth item to second and third gate, but this was the last freebie. To boost it to fourth, I’d need to hunt down the materials on the list, and feed them to the lens.
For now, though, I didn’t stress about it. As I opened the leather bag and placed them around the lens in a circle, my tail swished in excitement. A moment later there was a flash of light, and the materials crumbled to dust. I felt some of my mana and energy suck dry as another channel appeared within my body and spirit for a brand-new spell.
I wasted no time in testing it, sending my power through the lens, and I felt the edges of my mana senses grow firmer, thicker somehow. As with before, the name of the spell came to mind unbidden: Impel Senses.
Against the strange, firm border of my mana senses, I could feel Meadow and Kene’s mana senses pushing against me, as well as others. Strong senses from very, very far away that were lingering across vast swathes of land.
I focused, and with a moment of effort, pushed the senses out. Kene gasped.
“You just vanished from my mana senses,” they said. “It’s… Woah, that’s weird.”
They focused on me, and I felt their mana senses hammer against mine, but my senses were far stronger, and I repelled them with little effort. Meadow raised her hand and tossed me a seed. I caught it, and she turned to Kene.
“Use a divination spell to look for apple seeds, if you don’t mind, dear?”
Kene nodded and green light flowed over their arm. I felt magic pressing against my senses again, but this time, it was far more potent. If Kene’s mana senses had been a hand pressing against me, this was more like a direct attack, and I fought through it the best I could. Kene’s spell flickered each time they punched through, then vanished the moment I pushed the spell out again.
Then my knowledge and mental reserves ran out of power, and the spell collapsed.
“That’s an interesting spell,” Kene said. “Not a veil, not really. When it’s active, there’s clearly a gap in my senses, they’re refusing to move in that direction.”
“If you were to work on your blending-veil, you may be able to combine the spell with the technique to nudge people’s senses around you, and to what you’re hiding,” Meadow speculated. “That may also help with blocking divinations, which I suspect is the true boon that the spell offers.”
I picked up the lens and slipped it back into my spirit, then nodded.
“I can definitely see some uses for that. I’m also getting ready to head back to Mossford. I know you’ve been wanting to get back to your village for a while, Kene.”
“I have,” they nodded. “I’m… Worried. I won’t lie, I expected to be gone for two months, but it’s been closer to six. It’s almost Fresh-Storm already.”
My gut clenched at that, my tail literally drooping between my legs as I realized that all the time here and in Puinen had caused us to miss both Poets Day and the Daffodil Festival. Neither were celebrated in Delitone.
I’d also been away from my family for a long time now, and as I thought about just how long it had really been, I felt a pang in my heart. Hadn’t I only just recently been thinking about how I needed to get something nice for Ed and Liz’s housewarming gift, because I’d missed it? Could it even be called a housewarming gift now?
How did the saying go? A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
I frowned and nodded to Kene, while Meadow passed around the potion. A moment later, we stood in Kene’s mana-garden, and paced over to their third life gate – they hadn’t had a chance to dig that deep in their solar garden yet.
The wall of mist was still present, but Kene had dug away slowly but surely at the ground of their mana-garden, digging easily deep enough to come up to their waist, or to the middle of my chest. The mountain of dirt they’d piled up to one side was more than large enough to be an entire spell’s worth on its own, maybe even two.
Kene hopped down in the hole, and glanced up at Meadow.
“Why did you stop digging?” she asked.
“It wasn’t letting me dig any further,” they admitted. “I was worried about damage.”
“It is still a breakthrough,” Meadow said. “You have to break through.”
Kene nodded and focused, and as they reached down and began to scoop at the dirt with their hands, I could feel the mana beginning to rush from across the garden and concentrate into their fingertips. They dug a fraction deeper into the dirt, and the mana rebuffed them, trying to slip out of their control, but they held on tightly, forcing more mana into their hand, digging it out one tiny handful at a time, until…
There was a sudden rush, and mana stormed through the garden. Kene’s mana density, which had been a bit lower than mine, suddenly sparked and grew weightier, denser than my own. Power flowed through the foundation, through the roots of the trees that Kene kept so well manicured, and the walls in his garden seemed to stretch just a bit further skyward.
When the power rushed over the mountain of dirt and the hole where Kene stood, they changed. The dirt compacted, transforming from soil into what looked like rough mud bricks. The steep incline that led into the ground where they’d been digging compacted, shifting into a set of stairs that were lined with a polished blue crystal.
Then the wall of mist shifted. It didn’t vanish, exactly, but it… dispersed. Rather than a strange wall made of misty bricks, it was the ordinary mists that could be found in a mana-garden.
I applauded, Dusk let out a cheer, and Dawn let out a shower of happy sparks. I wasn’t sure how I could tell the sparks were happy sparks, but they clearly were. Meadow smiled and congratulated Kene, who gave a relieved sigh.
“Any chance you’ll show me what you were working on?” I asked.
“Nope!” Kene said, taking the stairs back up to us and kissing me on the cheek, then they looked at the bricks. “What do I do with these? Grandmother never told me, and the guides for advancement aren’t the clearest.”
“You can extract them, and they sell exceedingly well,” Meadow said. “But you’ll want to keep them, as they’re used in future advancement. In the short term, you can stack them on top of your walls to artificially make them a bit higher”
Kene nodded and Dusk whistled that it was her turn now!