We stepped out of the rift portal and onto a narrow platform on the side of a cliff. Below was nothing but clouds, making me curious about what would happen if one fell. Would they die, or get ejected from the rift? I certainly was not going to test it to find out.

The only route away from the arrival platform headed up the cliffside. The path was only a few feet wide, plenty large enough for a single person to walk comfortably. However, it would be a tight fit for some of the larger fighters I’d seen, especially if they wore heavy armor.

A few scraggly trees and hardy plants were growing just off the trail. I identified each plant as we approached, collecting anything that appeared to be valuable. I hadn’t regained my Herbalism skill – an oversight I was kicking myself for now. I’d gotten complacent with the Space-dominant rift and its lack of valuable herbs, and completely overlooked the valuable skill.

At least I’d picked up Beast Lore.

“What kind of creatures did he say we’d likely see first?” I asked quietly as I worked, just in case there were nearby predators.

“Foxes, but I’ve heard there are variations in this rift, so we shouldn’t assume that’s what we’ll see,” Robert reminded me. “Actually, I’d prefer if we approached this delve as a team instead of having me as your watcher.”

I looked at him questioningly, and he explained, “Since neither of us are personally familiar with the rift, there is a higher risk of injury. I’d rather not chance it. We can always run it a second time before leaving if you want to challenge it yourself. You did schedule a full week of travel time, after all.”

His explanation made sense, and after months of delving together, I’d come to trust his opinion. While I was only about 1500 points away from buying the upgrade – a bit less if I applied all my saved experience – rushing wasn’t worth potentially dying. While I could easily cast Restore and heal myself, I had to be conscious and aware to do so. There were plenty of injuries that could stop that from happening.

Even with the other healing options I’d prepared, there was no reason to establish bad habits or imagine myself invincible.

“That’s fine. The reset is twelve hours?” I asked.

With the lack of ambient mana, rifts took a lot longer to reset. It was the largest limiter to progression I’d come across since awakening. Being restricted to one delve per visit was annoying. However, my parents had swiftly rejected all requests to stay overnight or spend a full day in either of the larger cities. Their presumption that I had a secret boyfriend only strengthened that refusal.

The Nature Mage shook his head. “No, it’s down to a bit less than eleven now. Most of the siphons have slowed to a trickle, so the reset has sped up with the increase in mana. At least, that’s the case for the St. Louis rift. It might be different here,” he added. “Gathering arrays are also being installed around rifts to help feed them and delay the expected effects of increased environmental mana, so that’s probably helping to reduce reset times, too.”

“Is that why the mana density around Atlas offices is getting thicker?” I asked as I scanned the area around us with Mana Sight. “I was wondering what caused it. I thought it had something to do with the rift producing mana or something.”

Robert shrugged. “That’s part of it. Rifts produce mana, but they are more like filters than founts,” he said before stepping back onto the path and taking the lead. I quickly finished harvesting the Crawling Jasmine – a common ingredient in both Health and Stamina potions – and rejoined him on the path.

When the first mob attacked, it was not a fox as reported. Instead, it was a goat with copper-colored horns and hooves displaying an unnatural balance paired with the ability to stand on the tiniest ledges. Otherwise, it looked like a normal, if slightly large, goat.

[Copper Capri – level 4]

I wasn’t surprised when the creature attacked. In rifts, even prey animals and those that were mostly herbivores tended to attack anything that got too close.

Though we’d agreed to work together, Robert still let me handle the fights that were obviously within my capabilities. I wasn’t trying to limit the use of enchantments, so I quickly sent a cluster of Air and Space [Bolts] to take out the mob.

I’d designed a few new weapons in the months since I’d started working with Artificer Maker part-time, but the cluster caster was one of my favorites. It looked similar to a normal enchanted rod or baton – and was capable of slotting into one of my modular staves – but instead of relying on a single elemental power source, I could activate multiple elements to send tightly clustered groups of spells to tear through any single elemental defense.

I mostly paired other elements with Space since I had a lot of Space mana cores and could easily refill them with my personal mana. However, I could add any element I had a core for. It took a bit of testing to work out the right rune combination, but Artificer Maker had been sufficiently interested to provide a bit of guidance when asked.

As we made our way down the path, we were largely unmolested. Anytime I left the path to collect an interesting plant or pick up something that stood out to Mana Sight, we were promptly attacked by increasingly large groups of angry goats with various metal alignments. Reaching the branch in the path marked a shift in the rift, as the goats disappeared and were replaced by Whisper Lynxes.

They were basically dusky-looking bobcats with small Air magics. If I hadn’t had Barrier active, I’d likely have been killed by the first one that attacked. Even Robert had been surprised when it jumped over a large stone and pounced, nearly knocking me into the clouds below.

Thankfully, a quick Teleport returned me to the path, albeit sprawled prone and covered in dirt. I looked over to the now-dead mob. There was an arrow sticking out of one of its eyes.

I hadn’t even realized Robert was an archer.

“Are you alright?” Robert asked, extending a hand. “I barely missed you with the vine. Your training with Teleport really shows with how quickly you pulled that off. What’s your range now?”

“Without an Anchor, I can go as far as I can see or sense through Spatial Sense – which isn’t actually very far, but it gets me around the line-of-sight limit. With an Anchor…I think I’m ready to tackle a couple hundred miles.” I sighed and sagged my shoulders. “The limit is completely mental. I’m almost sure of it. My instinct says I should be able to go as far as I want, but my brain is having a hard time accepting it. My instructor at the Mages’ Academy agrees. He says distance shouldn’t matter at all for teleportation skills.”

It was something I’d only started touching on before my return. I’d been more interested in increasing the number of people I could teleport with me instead of extending my range. As a member of a party, that had been more important.

Using a Portal would have probably been more functional than trying to force it with Teleport, but I’d never bothered learning the other spell since I had Teleport. In hindsight, it was pretty short-sighted. Portal would have been much better for non-emergency movement.

I should probably figure out how to cast the spell sometime soon so I could practice with it before it was needed. Hopefully, my mental block about distance with Teleport wouldn’t manifest for the other spell. They were inherently different, after all.

It would certainly make traveling back to St. Louis easier if I could do it with one spell instead of requiring a bunch of hops to get where I wanted to go.

“Just keep working on it. As quickly as you’ve picked up everything else, I have no doubt you’ll figure it out and be teleporting all over the place soon enough,” Robert said with a smile. He turned back to the fork in the path and asked, “Which way do you want to go?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The path to the left angled down sharply before skirting around a large boulder and disappearing. The path to the right quickly faded into a rough game trail that inclined sharply and led toward a rockface off in the distance. This was supposed to be a resource rift, but we hadn't seen much of note besides the mobs and a few herbs.

“Which direction do you think leads to more resources?”

“Probably the harder trail,” he said. “I talked to one of the adventurers after you went to sleep, and he mentioned the mine was off the main path. This might be what he was talking about.” He pointed toward the rock wall in the distance. “That could easily be a mine. Even if it isn’t, we should probably check it out.”

The rougher path led to a large stone wall decorated with ribbons of multi-colored ore. I scowled when Robert handed me a pickaxe.

“I think I liked you better before,” I said, mostly joking.

Robert snickered and adjusted his position so he had a better view of the surroundings. “My job is still to protect you. That means if you want to collect resources…” He nodded toward the pick in my hand.

I looked from the pickaxe to the stone wall, mulling over my options. I had no desire to manually mine the ore that was clearly present, but I didn’t want to leave resources (or money) behind. I’d used my Bolt spell to break apart stone before, though I’d been at a higher tier then. I now had a stronger Space affinity, even if only by a few points. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to double-tap my affinity and cast Bolt while opening a little hole behind the ore.

“I’m going to try something,” I said before manifesting a Time Barrier between us and the wall. Not only was using the Time variant cheaper, but it was also stronger than the Space version.

“If you’re trying what I think you are, we should probably back up more.”

We moved into a nearby alcove set at an angle to the rock wall, and I adjusted the Barrier to compensate for the change. The largest ore vein was barely within range of my Spatial Sense, as I’d only grown it to encompass about three hundred meters. The sixth, or perhaps seventh, sense made casting and directing spells much easier, negating the need to see my target.

It also allowed me to directly target a nearly imperceivable gap between the ore and the stone encasing it.

“Here I go.”

A small explosion sounded, and the ground rumbled slightly. I was momentarily concerned that the walls around us might collapse, but they were fine. When everything settled, Robert and I stepped out of the protective alcove and examined the results.

“I guess that’s one way to avoid Mining,” Robert mused as he took in the destruction. It wasn’t as grand as I’d hoped, but plenty of relatively large chunks of ore were strewn about the area, intermixed with smaller bits of dull, unprocessed metal.

“Do you want to dig out some more or move on?” my partner asked as we collected the chunks of stone and metal. I raised a brow and handed the pickax back to him.

We spent the next half-hour destroying the wall and collecting materials while intermittently defending against the mobs drawn to the area by the noise. When we’d collected the bulk of the ore, Robert and I backtracked to the original path.

It was apparent that attempting to cut through the rocky terrain was pointless, so we didn’t bother trying to avoid the additional hike.

We reached the top of the rift’s mountain a couple hours later. The exit portal was guarded by a familiar-looking creature that I was almost certain I’d seen before.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, remembering where I’d seen the creature. “I didn’t realize they were called Oryxes. I thought they had a different name for some reason.”

I’d seen pictures of the non-magical version of the boss before in some military magazines my parents had gotten. It had been a while, even for my eighteen-year-old self, so I wasn’t sure if it was something from our time in El Paso or Colorado. Both had similar high-desert environments, though Colorado was more mountainous. Then again, there were mountain ranges around El Paso, so I couldn’t discount the possibility the creature could be found there either.

Regardless, the animal wasn’t native to either location. That much, I was sure of.

[Bladed Oryx – Boss – level 6]

“I’m not getting anywhere close to that thing,” I said, eying the pair of long, bladed horns that jutted out of the top of the creature’s head like twin sabers.

Wanting to maintain our distance, I cast Pause, locking the boss into place. Robert followed up with Grasping Vines to ensure it was fully entangled, just in case my spell dropped for any reason. When he was confident it posed little threat, Robert sent me a nod.

I used the opportunity to test a new cluster of spells, sending Space, Fire, and Ice [Lances] toward the trapped boss. I expected the combination attack to be effective, but seeing the level six boss effectively one-shotted was a surprise. While the enchantments I’d made were strong, I didn’t expect them to hit quite so hard. Given I’d clustered a trinity of opposing elements with moderate-output spell effects, I probably should have.

“That was effective,” Robert commented, pulling the defeated boss into his storage ring.

“Thanks? Maybe I’ll make you something like it once I get some Tier Two materials to work with,” I semi-offered. Given my mana limitations, it would take a while to enchant anything at Tier Two, but that wasn’t insurmountable. I’d had the same issue adding the [Stasis] effect to his ring.

“I wouldn’t say no to having a backup like that. Most of the nobles I went to the Academy with carried manatech backup weapons. I’ve just never been willing to pay the high price to get one when they only work well at the same tier.”

It was a valid critique. Attempting to use a higher-tier weapon often caused backlash, and using a lower-tier one was nearly pointless.

I held up the silver coins from the chest. “Just two.”

“That’s about what I expected,” he commented. “It’s a good thing the boss’s horns are worth more than that.”

“You are going to help me harvest that thing, right?” I asked before stepping through the portal.

Robert chuckled and said, “I think you’re getting spoiled.”

I grinned. He was probably right. Between his storage ring holding most of the loot and his helping process everything, I really was quite spoiled with him as a partner/protector.

I didn’t mind at all.

͠ ͠ ͠

Name: Emie Mercer

Level: 0 (300/100)

[Progress toward Upgrade: 8731/10000]

Profession: N/A

Affinities: Time, Space

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Health: 120 (2.4/min)

Stamina: 210 (8.4/min)

Mana: 122/150 (6.5/min)

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Attributes

Strength – 9

Agility – 12

Vitality – 12

Intelligence – 15

Wisdom – 13

Perception – 12

Unallocated: 0

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Spells

[General]

Alchemical Flame

Cleanse

Deflect

Detect Lie

Enhance

Flare

Identify

Illuminate

Mana Bolt

Silence

Spark

Target

Transmute

Universal Translation (passive)

[Time]

Barrier

Cure

Grow

Haste

Heal

Pause

Restore

Slow

Stasis

[Space]

Anchor

Barrier

Compressed Space Bolt

Create Dimensional Space

Crush

Gravity Bomb

Phase

Recall Item

Seal

Telekinesis

Teleport

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Skills

[General]

Academics

Athletics

Beast Lore

Direct Casting

Fauna Harvesting

Imbuing

Jewelry Making

Mana Manipulation

Mana Sight

Material Processing

Medical Knowledge

Meditation

Research

Spatial Sense

Spell Modification

[Specialized]

Alchemy (Novice)

Artificing (Novice)

Cooking (Novice)

Enchanting (Novice)

Tailoring (Novice)

Woodworking (Novice)

[Combat]

Batons (Novice)

Dual Wielding (Novice)

Quarterstaff (Novice)

Spears (Novice)

Wands (Novice)

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