Ike gripped the thread and pulled. It held his weight without budging. He grabbed onto it with his other arm, then wrapped his legs around it. The thread was so thin it was hard to grasp with his legs, but now that he was Rank 2, his arms were more than strong enough to haul him up alone. One hand over the other, he hauled himself up into the sky. Wisp stood at the bottom, watching him climb up.

Ike gestured to her. “Come on!”

“One at a time. My thread’s strong enough for us both and much more, at the best of times. That barrier makes things weird. Best to play it safe,” Wisp called after him.

I understand. He turned his eyes upward and kept going.

Upward into the sky. He quickly approached the height of the barrier. Ike braced himself, preparing to run into a solid object. There was no way he’d just… slide through the way Wisp had suggested. He’d have to figure out his own way through.

His hand thumped into a solid surface. Ike drew to a halt. He slid his hand up over the thread, feeling the edges of the boundary overhead. A small hole pierced through the barrier, barely larger than a coin.

Pain stabbed into his finger. Ike yanked his finger back. A small cut opened on the inside of his finger.

He shook his hand out, then grabbed onto the string again. He wrapped his legs around it to secure his hold. From his safe position, he took a close look at the barrier.

Immense pressure emanated from the whole thing, but here, the barrier grew thin. The pressure weakened. He patted the sky, thinking.

“Just climb through already!” Wisp shouted up at him.

“I’ve got bones!” Ike shouted back at her. He turned his attention back to the hole in the barrier. Lost in thought, he twisted his lips. He poked at the hole a few times, clutching on with his legs to let both hands get a grip. It was only thanks to his Rank 2 physique that he could risk such a maneuver. Even at Rank 1, he wouldn’t have trusted his legs to grip on to such a narrow thread. Rank 2, on the other hand, made it easy.

The aether he inserted into the gap swirled around on both sides of the hole. The barrier stretched as thin as a sheet of paper. It trembled under his examination, equally as fragile as paper. He punched at it. The paper trembled harder, but held. Less like paper, then, and more like the delicate, thin strength of a drum head. Experimentally, he formed a ring of aether around the edge of the hole and pushed outward. The barrier stretched. It expanded to the width of a fist, then stopped.

Ike grinned. He added a second ring of aether to the first and pushed again, this time with the power of twice as much aether. The barrier stretched again, only widening to about the size of a child’s head. Not one to stop while something was working, he added another ring, and another. The barrier widened once more, but didn’t grow any wider than the size of his head.

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Ike lowered himself, grabbing onto the thread again to consider his next move. The ring technique worked, but this was clearly all the more it could give him. He needed something else. Something different. A new technique.

He activated Ice Armor, creating a sheen of ice on his hand. In the winter, back in the slums, the roads would freeze over in the sheer cold. The ice settled into any little crack or hole in the cobbles and expanded it, making a new hole. He’d seen strong rocks with hairline cracks get burst open by a strong enough freeze. Ice had great opening power, shattering power, breaking power—all of those qualities belonged to a material people usually associated with closing, stillness, stiffness.

It wasn’t as if the ice would crack the road open forever. Eventually, the new holes in the cobbled in would get filled with stones, just like the old cobbled road, but… He glanced up at the barrier. Maybe it’ll work the same way? He didn’t need the barrier to open forever, just for long enough for him to squeeze through.

Ike pressed his hand against the barrier. He activated Ice Armor over the surface of the barrier, using his aether rings to freeze the surface. Ice crackled over the sky. Immediately, it began to melt. Before it could, he drew back his fist and unleashed a punch into the ice. Shockwaves pounded into the frozen barrier.

The ice cracked, then shattered. With it, shards of barrier fell away. Before it could close up again, Ike scurried upward. He clambered up the thread toward the stone face it latched onto.

“What do I do once I get to the top?” he called down at Wisp.

“Climb the stone!” Wisp shouted up.

“I’m not a spider,” Ike grumbled to himself. He closed in on the top, where the thread latched to the wall. Reaching his hand away from the thread, he activated Lightning Grasp and thrust his hand into the stone wall. His fingers pierced the stone. A thin stream of lunam leaked out. Still holding on to the thread, he slowly put all his weight onto his hand. The stone held. He activated Lightning Grasp on his other hand and climbed out onto the stone, away from the thread. Holding there, he looked down at Wisp.

The second he stepped off the thread, Wisp scrambled up it. In the blink of an eye, she climbed from ground level to the barrier, then to the top of the rock. She didn’t pause there, either, but kept climbing. Her fingertips and toe-tips pressed to the rock, she scaled it as easily in human form as Ike had seen spiders scale walls in the slums. He stared after her, then shook his head. “After I wait up for you…”

“Huh? Can’t hear you from way back there,” Wisp called mockingly.

Ike rolled his eyes. He went back to climbing. Unlike Wisp, he took his time, making sure to set his hands firmly before he raised his feet. He used Lightning Clad to enhance his legs so he could kick footholds into the rock. The two techniques together let him easily clamber the rock wall, if with somewhat less ease than Wisp’s natural ascension.

As he climbed, he absorbed the wisps of lunam. Now that I can process aether, I should be able to use this. All energy is based on aether, after all. For now, he simply stored it in his core, with the intent to attempt to convert or use it later.

One hand at a time, he climbed toward the top of the cliff. Ike shook his head, heaving a deep breath. Just a little further. A little…

At the top of the cliff, Wisp shouted.

“Wisp?” Ike asked, startled. No reply.

He gritted his teeth. Reaching up, he sped toward the top of the cliff. Whatever’s going on up there, I don’t want to be caught on the face of a cliff while anyone’s trying to kill us!