80 – Seeing the sun

Melina shot glances at Lisette’s swords floating in the air, which were a sight to behold as they trailed in the air behind her, bobbing up and down according to her gait. They twitched sometimes, for instance when Melina spoke to her, as if they were reacting to her mind’s state. Ishrin had tried to divine how the bracers worked with some diagnostic magic that he knew, but all his spells were too low-Tier to work. He would have to reach Tier 5 and hopefully gain access to Tier 7 spells to know. Even though, according to him, with each Tier he gained there was a chance he would lose his ability to cast two Tiers above his current cultivation. It was hard to say for sure, as it depended on many factors.

“What are you doing?” Melina asked her in the end.

“I am training my mental resilience to increase the maximum floating time of my swords. It is a basic exercise Ishrin and I have come up with.”

She nodded in approval. She had been busy keeping Liù company while the pixie-cube floated all around the room, inspecting gadgets before Ishrin took them with him, with no time to help the others come up with ideas on how to train Lisette in her use of the bracers. She didn’t mind, knowing that they would come up to her in case they needed her input. For now they were focusing on basic exercises, which she agreed was the best course of action.

“What else have you devised?”

“Control exercises. Fine-movements exercises. Maximum distance exercises. Non-sync exercises. Plasticity.”

“You really have thought of everything, haven’t you? That should keep you busy for a while.”

And, though she did not say, it meant that the group could now focus on her own cultivation.

Lisette nodded proudly. “I think so.”

***

Ritual failed: the forces of magic are already open to you.

Ishrin cursed. “Ritual failed? What?” He kicked a small toolbox sitting on the ground, scattering the things inside and creating an immense amount of noise as they all hit other metal things in the room.

Heyyy :/

Ishrin waved off Liù’s protest.

“I’m a dumbass!” he said, holding his face. The sudden realization hit him. “I wasted almost all my mana for nothing!” indeed, the shimmering summoned magic armor was dull around him, and his core was almost empty. He didn’t regress his cultivation, but it would be hours before he was full enough again that he could devote some of his mana regeneration to consolidating his foundation. Now to speak of the fact that he still hadn’t properly cultivated ever since entering Tier 4, and while having a solid base was important, what was also important was actually progressing. He would eventually reach a point where he could passively cultivate, but it would take a ritual and at least two more Tiers before he could even contemplate it.

By now the girls had come to see what was up, and he felt like he owed them an explanation for making them worry. “Ah, you see,” he began. “I wanted to do a ritual to improve my control over the mystical and mundane energies of the world, as they say.”

“And?” Melina pressed herself against him, seeing how he was panting in exertion. “Why did it fail?”

“I already got the max grade for them. I didn’t think it was possible,” he glared at the ceiling like it had done something to offend him specifically, “but it looks like someone gave me a helping hand with it. I wonder to what end.”

Lisette was frowning. She confirmed that Sir Westys and team were far enough away before speaking. “Do you mean to say that the god who reincarnated you here was counting on you using this ritual to unlock the power to control the energies of the world?”

Ishrin nodded. “He must have known I would do it as soon as possible. Something must have been set into motion that he wants me to fix, and it appears that the only way to fix it is via perfect control of all energies, arcane and otherwise.”

“What could it be?”

Ishrin shrugged, rubbing the sides of his head. “At this point, it could be anything. It’s been a while since I contemplated Albert’s motives for reincarnating me, of all people, here. Why did he have to change me to make sure I would act a certain way? That aside, and trust me that I am pissed off about it, why did he set events in motion when I arrived in Noctis? Seems like a lot of divine intervention to me. If he wanted something fixed with his universe, he could have done so himself.”

“But he didn’t.” Melina hummed. “Which meant that he either couldn’t do it…”

“And that would open a lot of cans of worms in the process,” Ishrin muttered.

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“Or he didn’t want to do it.”

“Laziness?” Ishrin barked a laugh. “I would laugh more if not for the fact that it could very well be it.”

“It is either a rather complicated gambit,” Lisette paced, cutely placing her index finger on her chin while her blades floated behind her, “or something of no importance at all. I would rather like to assume that he acted logically, though.”

“Me too.” Echoed Ishrin.

“It would be impossible to divine our situation otherwise.” She finished.

“Either way,” Melina said cheerfully, “it’s not like we can do anything about it. What if perhaps Albert was trying to hold other gods at bay, who are weaker than he is but not so much so that they aren’t a problem? What if he can’t act too overtly, or weaken himself too much?”

The other two looked at her like she had sprouted an extra head. “That’s…” Ishrin began, “weirdly specific, Melina.”

“Just saying,” she shrugged, “it could be anything. No use postulating without enough data.”

“That.” Lisette clumsily put a hand on her shoulder, an attempt to imitate a social gesture that only resulted in Melina yelping and blushing furiously. Ishrin didn’t want to know what she was thinking. Or perhaps he did. “That I can get behind. We need more data. And to do so, Ishrin, I request that you teach me more magic.”

Ishrin frowned. “Weird logical jump, but okay. I will teach you some more about dimensional theory later tonight.”

Then he blushed, but the possible joke was completely lost on Lisette.

***

The return trip was swift. The team was not holding back anymore, and all the many monsters who attacked the party were dealt with quickly and mercilessly. Other than proving that they were actually pretty powerful for this region of the world, this also gave Sir Westys and his team a measure of how powerful higher Tier adventurers actually were. At least, in regards to Melina and Lisette. Regarding Ishrin, the young adventurers had somehow come to the conclusion that he was a hidden master faking his power to test them, and that they had failed the test. Which exempted him from all sorts of comparisons between Tiers of power.

Of them all, Sir Westys came to realize the error of his ways more than the others who had only followed orders, and although he didn’t apologize his demeanor was more and more submissive and harmless the more he witnessed just how close he had come to dying when he turned against Ishrin.

“Is it me or it’s deeply unsatisfying seeing the boy whimpering over there, sending us death glares when we think we aren’t looking, just to cower in fear when we look at him? Like, where’s the defiant young man who always talked back? And why does putting him in his place make me feel like I am the jerk? Zero satisfaction, only guilt. And he was the one who stabbed me!” Ishrin complained.

“You done?” Melina asked, rolling her eyes.

“I’m done, yeah.”

“Feel better?”

“Actually, yes.”

She smiled. “Good then. We can go now!”

They shared a little laugh together, Lisette included, cementing the idea that they were a package deal together, an unbreakable team of misfits who for some reason happened to fit so well together. This last thought made Melina giddy, adding a skip to her steps. Finally, after much pain and tribulation, she was beginning to allow herself to be happy.

On the way out, the miners they encountered were very surprised to see a team of adventurers emerge from the ruins of Tiamat Azur, with all its monsters and dangers. Not only that, but they were also unscathed—at least according to what the miners could see—even after all the tremors and earthquakes that had shaken this part of the chasm, and that told the story of just how powerful the forces sleeping in those ruins were. Some of the miners stopped Ishrin and his team to ask them questions, and it was there that the miners learned with great surprise and interest that the ruins were finally open.

Ice was spreading from the depths of the ruins, following not much further behind Ishrin’s team, but the miners didn’t seem to care. They would buy warming stones and overcoats, they claimed, and if Semiluminal somehow froze over, then it was all Duke Elstrom’s fault for being a lazy noble and they would simply start selling their stuff to the guild via portal.

The message spread quickly through word of mouth and soon all the miners began to rush to the ruins in search of artifacts or riches left behind by the adventurers. Even though the real items of value were sitting comfortably in Ishrin’s inventory, the miners still found a great mountain of loot in the ruins, stripping the very walls of the metals and the pipes made of exotic metals until the rooms were bare metal and ice. It would be quite unfortunate for any archeologist trying to divine what had happened in the ruins, and what civilization had been so powerful as to build them. But the miners were a more practical bunch, and every plate of refined metal they stole from the walls was coins ready to be added to their pockets.

Provided they could somehow stop the spread of the ice, which was now turning the plains into tundra, the ruins opening would change the shape of this place forever, catapulting Semiluminal from being a flourishing but relatively small city into an important trade outpost to where all kinds of merchants, adventurers and miners alike converged in hopes to get a piece of the infinite treasure that was the Chasm. Someone would, sooner or later, figure out why the ice was spreading, but it wasn’t Ishrin’s business. Besides, he was pretty sure he knew who was to blame: his failed ritual, which was probably sapping the local ley line of magic in order to keep icing the ruins. It would either stop when the power was depleted or, if the ley line was strong, transform the local region into an arctic anomaly. With winter now in full force, it would be hard to tell the magnitude of the changes. People would think it was a rather cold winter, but then spring would come around and with it, the expected slow retreat of the ice would not arrive. Then, probably, the guild would be called to investigate. Again, not Ishrin’s problem, although Melina had been grumpy about this for a while.

Then he told her about the opportunities this event would bring to the place, and she stopped complaining. It could become a training ground like no others on the planet for those who specialized in cold magic, advancing their cultivation paths to heights unseen thanks to the knowledge of the cold they could gain. Cultivation was all about insight, after all. After a certain Tier, which was different for everyone, one could not hope to overcome a bottleneck without a clear insight into their path.

Eventually, the group finally emerged back to the surface. With the sun’s warm light heating their skin, they all collectively breathed a sigh of relief, ready to put the whole fiasco behind them. A quick look at the team of young boys trailing behind them grounded them back to reality, though. They still had business to take care of.