“Excuse me?” I asked in disbelief.

And in growing annoyance.

“I forbid you or any of the others,” Venix continued, to the confusion of said others. “From traveling to Goryuen.”

A frown grew on my lips to match his own, and I stepped closer to the Antium man. I looked up and met his eyes, uncaring about the height difference. “Explain.”

“The isle is beyond you,” He said shortly. “To venture there is to court death. There is a reason I have yet to visit those shores since my return to the riverlands. I am uncertain if it is not beyond me.”

I took a deep breath to try and tamp down on my temper before I blew up on him. “That and the fact you need a writ of permission to visit the isle,” I said, some of my heat leaking into my voice despite my best efforts. “Which I have.”

“Inconsequential,” Venix said unflinchingly, unblinkingly. “I could obtain such a writ if I wished. That is not the point.”

Even through my own frustration, I was surprised to hear his own audible in his voice. It was rare for Venix to express his emotions in his speech like that.

That didn’t stop my frown from transforming into a scowl. I raised one hand and pointed at him. “Then what is your point? You were there when I discovered that bunker,” I said in frustration. “You know how important they are. How much they could tell me. I’m not going to let this opportunity pass me by. I’m not afraid of a little danger.”

Venix narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off.

“If the gentlemen do not mind,” I heard a firm, feminine voice say. “They are disturbing the other guests.”

Knocked out of my annoyance, I blinked and turned to face the owner.

It was the proprietress of the inn, her arms crossed over her chest and an iron frown on her painted face. I almost cringed at the annoyance obvious in her eyes. Looking around, I found she was correct. Most of the other guests had paused in their own dinner to watch the confrontation between Venix and I. Some of their gazes were interested in the inadvertent show, while others just looked irritated.

“Don’t bother me none, Lady Saeko!” One rowdy patron called out drunkenly. “Ain’t every day you get to see two barbarians fight it out!”

“Silence, Yorinobu,” Saeko Umihara said unflinchingly, not even bothering to look at the heckler. “Else I call in your tab immediately.”

The man hastily sat down, properly chastised.

Meanwhile, Lady Saeko met first my eyes, and then Venix’s. “Sir Hart. Sir Venix. I ask that you take your disagreement either to a private room or to the yard.”

I bowed my head to her in apology. “Of course, Lady Saeko. My apologies. Venix and I can take this to a back room if one is available?” She nodded at me, but this time she was the one who was interrupted before she could speak.

“No.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and the entire room, me included, turned to look at Venix.

Said Antium’s arms were still crossed, and a stony look had overtaken his face. “There is nothing more to be said,” He said with finality. “You are not ready for Goryuen. I shall prove it to you. If you wish to venture to that accursed place, there is only one way I will let you.”

“You must best me in a duel.”

The dining room fell silent at that. Even Lady Saeko looked taken aback by that declaration, much less the gobsmacked looks on my companion's faces.

This was extremely out of character for the normally stoic swordsman.

“Venix, what…?” I asked in confusion. “You’re more than three times my level! That’s impossible!”

In the months since we’d reached Kawamara, I’d finally asked Venix what his level was. He’d barely blinked before answering me, uncaring about taboos involved in sharing one’s level.

At the time, I’d been one hundred and twenty-four.

He’d been four hundred and fifty-seven.

That was at least two months ago. He had to have grown some since then, considering the amount of hunting he’d done. I had little to no chance against someone that strong. Not unless I really wanted to kill them.

“My decision is final,” Venix said firmly. “Either defeat me, or I will do all in my power to prevent you from reaching the isle. If you wish to face me, I will await you in the yard at sunrise.” At that, the Antium man ignored any further words from anyone else, turned on his heel, and marched out of the dining room.

Azarus stood up to join me, as everyone else in the inn watched him walk up the stairs. “The hells has gotten into him?” He asked, baffled. “Ain’t ever seen the guy act like that.”

“Me neither,” I whispered, brow furrowing.

Renauld and Liora joined as well. “Are you going to do it, Nate?” The male Gnoll asked me, worry obvious in his tone. “I don’t think the big guy will mess you up too bad, but, uh. I’ll patch you up if he does.”

I snorted, uncrossing my arms. “Gee, thanks man,” I said sarcastically, pausing momentarily. I eventually nodded. “But yes. I…think I’m going to try. This just means too much to me. I’ll…try and make Venix see sense in what is apparently the only way he understands. A duel.”

The same heckler from earlier called out across the dining room. “Nice! Guess we still get ta see the barbarians tear each other apart!” He cackled. “Good luck, little man!”

I felt my eyebrow twitch at the taunting, and then again when Liora fixed me with a deadpan look. “What he said,” She said dryly. “You’ll certainly need it.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said under my breath. I shook my head and turned to face Lady Saeko. “I apologize once more for the interruption, my lady. I’m afraid that we’ll require the usage of your practice yard on the morrow.”

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To my surprise, the impeccably dressed woman rolled her eyes at me. “Apparently so. You’re lucky I’m so used to the banalities of men, Sir Hart. I only thought Sir Venix was above such things. Apparently, even insectoid men must peacock in such a manner. Off with you,” She said, waving a hand. “I must go and discipline another customer.” At that, she turned around to glare at the heckler with narrowed eyes.

He gulped.

…………………………………………..

I didn’t bother sleeping that night. It’s not like I needed it anymore.

And neither did I spend the entire nighttime fretting in anxiety about the duel that I had next to no chance in winning. Instead, I spent that time in meditation.

While I didn’t have a proper Magi meditation method for me to use, I still had my old reliable in the form of Aetherial Melding. I drifted in a sea of unseen Aether, sitting still as the veritable heartbeat of Vereden pulsed all around me. This might not be useful for me, but it was still calming. Comforting, even.

This had only grown more curious, once I had Ascended into a full-on Magi.

Now, I pulsed back.

Not with Aether, though. With my Mana.

Intertwined waves of my own radiated from my being, visible only to me in this odd state of being. Twinned crimson and azure crashed into the pulses of emerald that suffused Vereden, unseen, only to be washed away. It was both beautiful and humbling.

It reminded me that, although I had finally become a proper Mage, I was still nothing but an ant in the face of an entire planet.

A thought had occurred to me, during one of these sessions. Ever since I had met Anima in the Concord, that strange Spirit realm that seemed to exist out of phase with that of the material, I had wondered. Was it her that was the origin point of these pulses? Did she have a physical existence here in the real world, somewhere deep beneath my feet? Did Anima live within the core of Vereden in some way? Because that’s always the direction I had assumed these pulses to come from. They radiated up from the ground, always originating beneath my feet.

I couldn’t know, and Elder Jinshin hadn’t either when I asked him. Even as familiar as he was with Anima, he knew nothing about it. Maybe Grey would, but I couldn’t ask him that now.

I suppose it was just as likely that Vereden itself was the origin.

While my outer ring was occupied with my somewhat useless drifting meditational thoughts, my surviving core ring was involved with something a bit more practical.

Key word was a bit.

It was examining my Status.

See, it had shifted in the months since my Ascension. Grey and everyone else hadn’t been kidding when they said the first Breakpoint was when everything changed.

For one, it no longer tracked my Stamina at all. This was somewhat expected, as from what I understood, Stamina had just been a byproduct of my soul that was now being used in the production of Mana. Instead, it tracked my Mana now. Just…not in the way I had expected.

Name: Nathaniel Eugene Hart

Titles: Unbound Liberator, Calamity Slayer

Level: 131

Age: 25 Sol

Race: Human (Precursor)

Affinity: Terrestrial (Celestial)

Classes: Thornblade Acolyte (Uncommon)

Professions: Aetherial Melding

Health: 1330/1330

Mana: 98%

Vitality: 173

Strength: 100

Spirit: 60

Dexterity: 282

Perception: 173

Intelligence: 396

Wisdom: 396

Free Points: 0

Options: [Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]

Damn thing tracked it as a percentage. The System was able to track my ‘Health’ as precisely as singular digits, but it couldn’t track my Mana that way? It was a bit frustrating, I had to admit. But it was a good reminder that the System kind of flailed about when it came to supporting actual Magic. That’s the explanation I’d received in the first lecture I’d ever gotten from Grey, last year.

The System was broken, in a way. And it had never gotten the chance to be whole.

However, that’s not all that had changed, of course. Even beyond the addition of parenthesized Celestial to my affinity. I’d obviously grown in strength since I’d left Elderwyck. Before my Ascension Ritual, I’d been locked at level one hundred. And oddly enough, I had yet to gain my level one hundred class ability at the time. That had certainly changed, when I’d checked my Status after the entire affair had been over and done with. I’d immediately shot up to level one hundred and twenty-two, as those levels had been locked to me until I successfully became a Magi.

Rhazal had been worth quite a bit of level Aether.

I’d been bombarded with so many level-ups and Status indicators I hadn’t even been able to see at first.

A good problem to have.

Probably the most exciting one, though, had been my gift from the System for properly reaching level one hundred.

A Skill evolution.

Before I’d left, I’d asked Grey about it. According to him, every Awakened was guaranteed one of these by crashing through the Breakpoints that existed at the hundred intervals. With them, you could individually ‘ascend’ a particular Skill or Talent, evolving them into a more powerful form.

I had almost immediately wanted to use it on Ringed Mind. My hope had been that with an evolution, maybe whatever had been broken in the Talent would be fixed.

Grey had shot that idea down.

“I emphatically advise against that, Nathan,” My mentor had told me, back on the dock that we were preparing to depart Elderwyck from. “At your current level, your Status is likely struggling to support your mental Talent already. In fact, it’s my belief that is the reason it fractured in the way it did when you saved my Sylvia. Your Intelligence is simply too low to support more than an additional branch of thought, and your middle ‘ring’ broke under the strain. If you evolved it further, the resulting evolved Talent might well break once more, without the Virtue backing to support it. Please, wait until you’ve at least broken through the second Breakpoint to consider evolving your mental Talent.”

I had, reluctantly, taken his advice.

Instead of evolving Ringed Mind, I had opted for my second most used ability. A Skill, this time.

Sylvan Vigor.

The entire process, which I had initiated on the ride to Kawamara, had been a bit underwhelming. I had simply selected the Skill from the drop-down menu that had been presented to me on my Status for the evolution, clicked Yes on the pop-up, and bam!

One new evolved Skill.

Sylvan Vigor had become Might of the Wyrdwood. It had even gone up in rarity from Superior to Rare.

But while the process of upgrading it had been underwhelming, the actual Skill was not.

I’d been pretty glad I had gone with that, in the end.

As for my other gains by gaining so many levels, they’d been pretty underwhelming. To my disappointment, I discovered that, after level one hundred, you no longer gained an alternating Skill and Talent every ten levels.

Instead, you got something every twenty. And since I was a Mage, the System had flagged me as such, and now I was going to be getting less Skills. At least that was what Elder Jinshin had kindly told me, during one of my lessons with the monk.

As such, I’d only gotten a single other ability after Ascending. That being a frustratingly out-of-reach Talent by the name of Arboreal Channeling. Channeling Talents were supposedly very common, and were meant to help you, well, channel your Mana. The System gave them out like candy, apparently, to newly Ascended classers. Both Cultivaors and Magi received similar abilities.

But I couldn’t take advantage of mine yet, because I didn’t have a proper meditation method for channeling my Mana.

Deeply frustrating.

Even though I had grown a whole nine levels during my time in Kawamara, to level one-hundred and thirty-one, I hadn’t gotten anything else in that time.

What I had…was going to have to be good enough for my duel.

I…

Well.

I suppose there was something else I could use. But I was reluctant to use it except in life-or-death situations.

But I guess I’d see how things went.

A subtle change in the Aether that suffused the air told me that it was nearly dawn. Nighttime had passed in the blink of an eye, as deep in my meditation as I’d been. I opened my eyes and got ready for the duel. I thought about putting on the armor I’d made for myself, but a headstrong part of me rebelled against the idea. I knew Venix wasn’t going to be wearing any, and I didn’t want to be shown up by the Antium man.

Any more than I was probably already going to be.

Damnit, I had my pride.

Instead, I just secured Terractus at my belt and my daggers at the small of my back and exited my room, a determined cast to my face.

I would not be denied my chance for more answers.

Time to do this.