A gigantic canyon spanned out before them as they halted,. This was the first landmark, signalizing that they were approximately half a day's walk from Sanshu.
"Let's set camp here and go on tomorrow." Jaune simply nodded in agreement, throat too dry from the climate to coherently answer.
From this point on, it was all on him. He let his dimensional comprehension sweep across the endless sands beneath his feet finding no earth and towards the open skies finding no end.
Not that his range was exactly large, the skill itself was not able to rank up, but that didn't mean he couldn't improve it. With experience, one could understand more contained in one's area of sense at once and with that the range also expanded. It wasn't a skill you could really use in combat due to it taking just slightly too much concentration.
But for rituals concerning spatial magic and scouting, it was perfect. Of course, you would still subconsciously use it in combat, sometimes inspiring bursts of instinctive combat prowess.
But it wasn't consistent, which made it worthless when calculating ones own combat potential
Aside from the obvious uses this skill was what would help him repay a debt and help someone he at this point counted as a friend.
Finding the pyramid, was now his task.
-/-
On the next day when Jain started walking towards the canyon Jaune halted him.
"Let's not go through there, a pyramid wouldn't fit inside of it, and it's unlikely that it would be so close to the town, so let's not waste our time." The swordsman shrugged and gestured to the left and to the right, a questioning look on his face.
"We will be walking towards our destination on the left side of the road highlighted on the map, and when going back we will also go on the left side."
"Wait, what?" A confused look appeared on the swordsman's face causing Jaune to grin.
"Think about it for a moment."
After a few minutes of trudging uphill towards the left side of the canyon he opened his mouth, "Oh, I get it." causing Jaune to snicker.
The walking itself was, annoying, to say the least. The concentration needed to sense everything for any oddities made him stumble often, which then caused sand to get everywhere.
Jaune turned his head to the side and spit some sand out of his mouth, only for it to be picked up by the strong wind and fly back into the direction of his face. Thankfully he managed to duck his head.
"This is ridiculous, how do people live here?"
Suddenly he noted something out of the corner of his eyes.
A billowing cloud of sand coming in their direction.
He turned to Jain who was quietly walking beside him, immersed in his own thoughts, probably thinking about swords.
"Hey, is that what I think it is?", with a huh, the swordsman perked up and looked in the direction Jaune was pointing.
"Yeah, it's a sandstorm." Then he just walked on.
"Isn't it like you know, dangerous." Jain shrugged at the question, „It is if you're an NCP, for a hero it's pretty harmless we just sit down and wait it out, since going forward in a sandstorm only makes one lose direction."
"Guess being a hero has its advantages, anything special we need to set up?", Jain rummaged a bit through his bag and pulled out two masks, see through lenses on the eyes and a small opening at the neck.
The things looked ugly as hell.
"The hole at the neck region is to let the air in without the sand coming in as well, just plop down and put it on," at Jaune's dubious look he tried to calm him,"don't worry it's washed."
The mage sighed, it wasn't the hygiene that bothered him, but rather the fact that if anyone ever saw him wear that thing he would become a laughing stock.
"Whatever."
Muttering he plopped himself down on the sand below, put on the mask and held hands with Jain.
Wait, what was that last part?
"Jain, why are we holding hands," Jaune already suspected why but, c'mon," It's so we don't lose each other if one of us gets blown slightly out of position, don't worry, the ancestors of the desert have passed down a method to make this less uncomfortable."
"Oh really, and what is that method." You could almost hear the sarcasm. No, scratch that; you could hear it clearly, but you could almost see it.
"No homo."
As the winds tackled him like a particularly fat Ursa, making him glad he had someone's hand to hold Jaune was only sure of one thing.
This was going to be a long day.
-/-
In the first hour, Jaune practised his dimensional comprehension, loosening the information flow to gain more range and tightening it to feel everything around himself in a 3-feet radius.
He stopped soon enough since literally, everything he was surrounded by was sand, sand and some more sand.
Practising something once you were well and truly sick of it wasn't very productive so he started training his arcane bolt.
Forming the weakest he possibly could he could fire about 23.
So he did just that, every bolt was held within his grasp for minutes, him researching every movement and looking at every energy dilation very closely.
Of course not really looking, since even if the mask they both wore had eyeholes, the sand everywhere still kind of put a halt to actually seeing anything.
He felt with his skill and found something intruiging.
Arcane bolts did not have mass, they were mana constructs made by a spell matrix given to him when he was born.
So imagine his surprise when he noticed that these arcane bolts had a certain mass.
Concentrating fully he tried to discern what was happening. It was the sand. The sand was whizzing through his bolts as they hung in the air for him to inspect, all sand particles flew through, no, most did.
But a select few stayed stuck in the very weak gravitational field that mana naturally produced. He didn't know what phenomenon he was observing, only a scholar who spent years researching arcane mana properties, magnetic fields and atomic composition could.
Two of these fields of study didn't even exist.
But Jaune wasn't stupid, nor did one need several PhD's to see what was happening.
The mage dispelled his magic and summoned another one. Watching closely he noted how the first sand corn got stuck in the bolt. It jumped around a bit inside as if trying to escape but stabilized right in the middle.
After that, any sand particles that flew through the bolt weren't even the least bit attracted, but once they hit the sand in the middle, they stopped all movement and clumped together, a chain reaction of the sand core getting bigger and thus attracting more sand and thus growing bigger again started.
"Jaune, Jaune!" He was so sunk into his experiment he hadn't noticed Jain calling him, and the fact that he couldn't hear anything in the sandstorm.
Go away stupid hallucination, I'm experimenting!
A cuff on the head made sure he knew his friend wasn't a hallucination, thankfully it didn't disrupt his concentration enough to make him diffuse the bolt.
Jaune pulled off the mask and finally breathed in actual air, even if it was disquietingly hot air, in God knew how many hours.
For the first time Jaune looked at what he had created, something Jain was looking at as well.
"What is that?" A well-grounded question, in the air hovering right before the mage, was a ball of tightly compacted sand that flashed with violet arcane energy and occasional bright green sparks.
"A result of my arcane bolt interacting, or more like fusing with the sand." Jain shrugged making the mages eyebrow tick, of course, the swordsman wouldn't appreciate what weird sort of phenomenon this was.
"So is it useful, or just weird? "A valid question.
Looking around Jaune found some beaten down cacti, the only available vegetation in the desert if one discounted the green found in oases and some brown bushes.
The ball flew at the thing, at about half the usual speed, still pretty fast, but when it hit it, all hell broke loose.
Or at least, that was what he he would have liked to say, but honestly the sand just kind, of, crumbled upon impact and fell to the ground while the arcane bolt weakly exploded turning the sand into a small cloud, akin to a fart, before that too dispersed.
"Well, that was underwhelming, I know a mage can also gain Exp by experimenting and reading, but the Exp is really, almost as bad as if I had read a book."
Jain looked at him strangely.
"Don't get discouraged so easily, this experiment just proved that you can transport substances with your arcane bolt, what if next time you make a small cloud of poison gas, or sharp metal dust and launch it into someone's face. "Jaune's shuddered at the brutality of the suggestion.
Was this what being an adventurer was like? But he had to agree, the might of an adventurer was almost equivalent to his killing potential.
Be it against Grimm, dungeon monsters, or other humans.
Talking about Grimm, out of the corner of his eye, he saw some black spots approaching from the distance.
"You're absolutely right, if I could do that my combat potential would rise by quite a bit, I will work on it, but not now, we seem to have some company approaching." The swordsman's eyes narrowed, and he looked towards the black spots that were growing larger as they neared.
He drew his sword, but visibly relaxed once he was able to discern what the Grimm was.
"It's just some creeps, they usually run after sandstorms to pick off any weakened travellers and eat the corpses of the unfortunate." A sigh escaped his mouth.
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"But the only ones who do that are led by an alpha, not threatening, but still risky. Be prepared to give a fighting retreat and support me with spells."
Jaune didn't argue and walked to stand a few feet behind the swordsman, he knew what he was doing, Jaune could be considered semi experienced at hunting Beowulf in the forests of Vale, but here he would just follow Jain's lead.
When he saw how fast the Grimm were approaching his knees trembled a little.
"Hey, aren't they, like, way too fast. "Jain nodded."Yes, creeps, despite only having two hind legs, are some of the fastest land bound Grimm in existence." At this moment he turned to Jaune and smiled at him charmingly. "Don't worry, I can already defeat a bigger pack than this on my own, just stay back and try not to draw too much attention to yourself."
The; 'I won't be able to protect you otherwise' went unsaid.
Jaune started spawning numerous arcane bolts as carefully as possible, if you did it slowly with more concentration they would be slightly more powerful, maybe some would term the difference negligible.
But every bit counted.
There was a reason the famous quote, 'Fear the wrath of a calm man', was changed to 'Fear the wrath of a calm man and the prepared wizard.' After the slaughter that occurred at the gates of the magic academy, upon the advent of the war.
Wizard, in this case, being unisex, it just sounded better than if you said, fear the calm man's wrath and the prepared magic user.
But now that he thought about it, was a calm man's wrath that horrifying, he is calm, therefore he probably doesn't get into many fights and therefore doesn't have much combat experience. Shouldn't you be more afraid of the angry man's wrath since that type of guy had probably experienced numerous braw-.
His train of thought was rudely interrupted by an explosive swish sound, like the sound of a sword cutting through the air but multiplied by ten.
Looking at the source Jaune barely witnessed a gale of wind flying forth from Jain's sword horizontally. Well even if all the heroes who had such attacks in books used it vertically, that was actually pretty stupid, vertically it would only decimate maybe one tenth of an attacking horde. You would still get swarmed.
Horizontally, however, it would hit almost every front liner as long as the attack range was big enough, looking carefully at the sword projection Jaune determined that yes, it was big enough!
After the attack collided with the Grimm in the front of the charge a massive sand explosion bloomed, the result of the sand that had been stirred in the wake of the powerful slash finally ending its flight and colliding with bodies, resulting in a plume that must have been several dozen feet tall.
Before the sand even settled, an absolutely massive Grimm jumped out from the cloud heading straight for Jaune's brown haired companion, who appeared to be breathing a bit heavily.
Attacking horizontally had an even bigger advantage. The alpha Creep had been on the frontline, but because of its heavy plating and vitality, it had remained mostly uninjured, the same could not be said for its comrades who were already dissolving into black smoke.
Even the Grimm behind them had been knocked backwards slightly and were shaking their heads to recover.
This meant Jain now had about five seconds to 1v1, or 1v2 with Jaune's assistance, the alpha.
In that moment, the alpha Grimm was still flying through the air. Jain held up his sword majestically, as if to receive his opponent upon it Jaune couldn't help but think.
'Jain, you real-, you really aren't as stupid as you look.' And then he promptly sent a few arcane bolts towards the descending alpha Creep, since it only had hind legs and was in the air, it was completely unable to dodge the bolts which pelted its body.
The magic attack didn't do much damage, but the concussive force was enough to slightly swerve the Grimm in the air so it would land on the ground slightly to the swordsman's right and not directly on him.
Jain used this to simply take a diagonal step towards the left letting the Grimm completely bypass him, although not without holding out his sword and cutting up its stomach .
One second.
The Creep tumbled a bit on the ground after landing, two hind legs not really giving the best options for aerial combat it seemed, Jain already approaching from behind.
An arcane bolt nailed the thing directly in the eye, causing it to roar and turn towards the mage sending all these pesky attacks at it. Jain used this moment to leap into the air, sword thrusting downwards directly towards its head.
Two seconds.
The alpha tensed its legs as if to once again charge, this time however his target was a much squishier one.
Jain landed on its back, stabbing the sword directly through its neck and nailing it to the ground.
Three seconds.
A roar resounded, black liquid spurting from the wound and from its mouth, sullying the ground and it's killer.
A jerk went through Jain's arms as he spastically pulled the sword in different directions, making the wound even worse. Then he tensed his legs, braced his feet against the body of the dying Creep, and made as if to pull out his sword.
Four seconds.
Like a acrobat, the swordsman jumped from the back of the now dissolving alpha, ripping out his sword in the same motion. Doing a backflip, he landed a few feet in front of Jaune, causing the mage to also retreat.
Five seconds.
The Creeps that had been recovering from the sword slash had reached Jain and swarmed him, causing the swordsman's face to contort into a grin and for his body to spin in a whirlwind of steel, his sword changing altitudes as it spun round with its owner.
When the spin was done nine severed heads made a thumping sound, as they fell on the ground and started to disperse into black smoke.
As if it was a signal, the swordsman charged directly into the Grimm horde, set to decimate them until their numbers reached zero.
-/-
"Ouch, god-damn these things are hot." Jaune cursed, but despite the pain he put the coin he had picked up from the ground into his coin pouch. The little blister would be healed completely in a few hours by his regeneration anyway. It still hurt, and he once again cursed the sun for existing and the metal for being so heat absorbent.
"I don't know why you insist on picking up all the coins they dropped, it's just chump change, in the end, put together what is it, 80 or so Lien?" Jain sighed from his lying position.
Jaune was fairly sure that the point he had put into agility after the level up from the Creep horde was what caused his flipping the swordsman off to be faster than usual.
Or the practice.
"I'm just a starting hero, I'm not rolling in Lien like you are. "Jain rolled his eyes. "I still think picking up anything but the dagger and its sheath is a bit excessive. "At his words Jain patted the dagger now hanging below his sword.
"Whatever, in the end, it only took ten or so minutes to pick everything up, and now I can afford to eat at a good restaurant seven times." Jaune nodded at his own words. He had recently started to appreciate food more, especially the exotic one served in Vacuo.
One good meal a day keeps the uh, Grimm away. Sounded about right.
His critical gaze fell upon the still lounging swordsman.
"Enough dawdling let's get a move on." He promptly turned around to walk on, but still managed to see the expression on Jain's tanned face that signalled he was about to vomit up blood from anger.
"Jaune I have a question." The mentioned person glanced at the swordsman walking next to him. "What is it?"
"How do you distribute your Stats. "He had known this question would come, Jain didn't know his Level, but he could roughly estimate it. Therefore he would know that Jaune was way more physically adept, his magic reserves were lesser and his spells did less damage than other mages of his level.
"My automatic Stat allotment is into wisdom and intelligence, the other ones I all put into physical stats, depends on what I think I need at the moment. "Not like he had much of a choice, dimensional mages only had one offensive spell until Level 40. Rend. It was a spell that was quite similar to the sword slash projection that Jain had used to decimate the frontline of the creeps earlier.
A normal mage would simply wave his hands or staff, and a blade of dimensional energy would fly out the effectiveness of course dependant on the Wisdom and Intelligence Statistic and the mana put into it.
The special thing about this spell was that if you used it with a sword, you could almost double its power. Rend was made to be sharp. Maybe being fired off from something sharp doubled its effectiveness, maybe a swordsman could better utilize it because they understood sharpness and how to cut things on a visceral level?
He didn't know. But numerous sources said using it with a blade was better. And having such an obscure Class, he was desperate for any source of stability and guidance.
"Do you believe what you are doing is the best option available?" The fact he had to keep his concentration on sensing everything in their vicinity muddled his thoughts.
Like black paint falling into a puddle of clear water.
His path wasn't the only one. He could also use the fact that he would soon get the inventory skill to join any party he wanted. Being able to bring almost unlimited items into a dungeon was potentially life-saving. And shaving of the risk off death little by little is what adventurers appreciated a lot, secondary to levels and Lien, depending on the person.
But if he revealed his inventory skill, everyone would know he was a dimensional mage and most likely, before he could be carried to the level where he unlocked the teleport skill, not to even speak of level 40 where he would get his first really damaging spell that was worthy of being in the skill repertoire of a magic user, he would get kidnapped. Probably brainwashed by a mind mage, and be transported over the entire continent in a cage for the rest of his life.
He had thought long about the issue.
And the only other path that was even remotely feasible for him had been the magical swordsman path. He didn't have the luxury of taking his time, to think of more answers. He had to start laying the foundations to his future growth yesterday.
"I think it's the only option available to me, all other paths have been closed." Jain sighed. "To become a magical swordsman though, it used to be popular, back in the days of my ancestors, they wrote in our family grimoire. But soon people noticed being not as good as a swordsman at using a sword, and not as good at magic as a mage. Was not..." He trailed off.
"If you say you have no other option I believe you, just tell me what you actually need to do to succeed in your path. While I'm not going to spend my life helping you, I can offer some advice."
Jaune looked at the blue sky above him, it was always fucking blue, not like clouds would appear here, he accidentally looked at the sun, cursed and looked back to the ground. What did he need?
Swordsmanship, tedious, since his growth in that area, was crippled from the start by his class, the gain only being one fourth of that of an actual swordsman.
Stats. Which either meant, he needed to level faster than anybody else, thankfully because of his curse of being able to find dungeons he was set on that part, he just wasn't too keen on soloing a dungeon again.
Ever.
Another option was training, which he did, the only problem being that the returns were minimal and the more Stats you gained using this method the harder it would be. The only good point about this was that Jaune was sexy and he knew it, there existed fat heroes, how you wonder, well, they only allocated Stat points into their physical stats but didn't train or go out to kill Grimm often.
Only true physical exertion provided a good physique.
Oh sure running around adventuring and killing Grimm kept you in shape, no matter how rarely it was done, but only harsh work to increase your physique actually made you develop all the right muscles. And when you gained a Stat, your physique was so to say, locked, unable to deteriorate, since losing Stats wasn't possible, unless you sacrificed them in some ritual.
So, even if Jaune never trained again, his body would still be above average in the looks department. Not really life-saving, but nice.
The last thing he could think of was equipment. Artefacts to be exact. Since he was a mage he could only equip leather and cloth, no metal. The exception being artefacts. His steel greaves, for example, they didn't really have the most game breaking of properties, but they were metal and defended his feet, what he really, really, wanted was a chainmail vest and some gauntlets.
Rogues usually only wore chainmail vests and sometimes some shoulder plates and greaves.
With chainmail, gauntlets and his greaves, well, he would already be better equipped than some melee classes. Gauntlets were necessary to protect his hands since he would be using a sword and the chainmail vest was of course there to rudimentary protect his torso, the largest target.
He came from an old family, he knew the value of equipment. Someone equipped with only artefacts would have 1.4 times the combat potential as someone equipped with no name stuff.
For him, it wouldn't turn him into a monster, but hopefully, it would bridge the gap between him and melee classes of his level, the gap created by him being a mage.
And elixirs, he guessed, the potion that had given him the regeneration Stat, but he wouldn't bring his hopes up. Elixirs were rare. Raising a Stat or creating a new one without any work required. Not only were they rare. Everyone wanted them causing the price, of course, to inflate, first of all, adventurers who found it would most likely swallow it themselves, only those strapped for money would sell it. Secondly and thirdly everyone wanted them. These two factors caused elixirs to be sold at prices numbering in the tens of thousands of Lien.
Another advantage rich kids have over everyone else.
The last option was skillbooks, also something everyone wanted. Also something rare and expensive.
More expensive than elixirs even, the only saving grace being, you actually knew what you were buying, skillbooks had the name of the skill it offered on the cover. Which meant that some common, or not so useful ones were available for up to ten thousand Lien, doable.
The most common ones, of course, being not so useful. But having a skill and not having one could be crucial. If he had the money, and the chance, he would grab one even if it was only herbalism or spark.
"Hah, what I need to succeed, you know the usual, Swordsmanship, training my stats, artefact grade equipment, the most useful one being some gauntlets and a chainmail vest. Some skillbooks and elixirs wouldn't hurt either."
Jain laughed. "Well, we won't be finding any elixirs in Vacuo, maybe you will have more luck in Vale, ab-," Jaune interrupted him with narrowed eyes. "What do you mean more luck in Vale." The swordsman looked at him oddly.
"Every country has certain drop rates on certain items, what's likelier and what isn't. Weird that you don't know this but Vale has the highest chance of dropping elixirs, Vacuo the highest on artefacts, Atlas has the best skillbooks, coincidentally why they are at the helm of research and magic, they have more books hehe, and Mistral has the absolute highest droprate on close combat skillbooks weirdly enough." Jaune furrowed his brows, why hadn't he known about that? Not that he thought Jain was untrustworthy but he would first validate that information.
"Well continuing on, if we do find some equipment useful for you, you can have it, I call dibs on all swords though, it's my hobby to gather them."Jaune waved him off. "You already gave me an artefact grade sheath and sword, I will accept only the things I really need if we find something that is."
Rolling his eyes at being interrupted again Jain continued."Well, skillbooks are rare as hell in Vacuo, we might find some sword related ones in the pyramid if we find it. I can give you the ones I don't need but..." Jaune nodded.
"I understand."
"But Swordsmanship and Stat training, that I can help you with. Though, I don't want you whining during that, ruins the atmosphere."
Tears almost escaped Jaune's eyes, but he forced them back with the power of his manliness and social conditioning. If he held all his promises, Jain might actually be, the nicest person Jaune had ever meet. If.
"I would be grateful for any pointers you can offer."