Once Alira left, I returned to my musings. My first plan failed, but I think I was over-complicating things. This time, the idea was simple: compress air and then release it. The tricky part was releasing it only where I wanted to.

After a few hours learning to control my mana shield to create a spherical object, I advanced to reducing the size of the sphere. The last part was the hardest, and it took me hours to cancel only a tiny portion of the sphere. Each attempt proved impossible until I remembered I needed something to visualize. Instead of a sphere, I imagined a balloon tied up, and just releasing the knot to rush the air out of it.

With each new attempt, I could build more and more pressure, and the exit hole became smaller and smaller. It had to be getting close to morning by now, but I was ready. I felt like a discount Green Lantern, as it took me about an hour to compress about one cubic meter of air to something about the size of an apple. My napkin math had me confident it would be more than enough.

Without further ado, I unleashed the 'balloon' near the bars. The effect was much more impressive than I imagined. It seemed this metal was not steel strength, so pieces of metal bars were all over the place. And of course, the sound—it was like a plane took off near my ear.

With tinnitus ringing, I emerged from the cell. The sound had attracted attention, and two guards rushed inside but were unconscious seconds later.

I headed to the nearest wall, and after a few lightning bolts, I had a hole wide enough to squeeze through. The bad part was that I was in a building on the third floor, but the good part was the building had a lot of decorations that I could hang onto.

I tried to keep my feet steady as I descended the building, gripping onto the ornate decorations jutting out from the walls. A sudden gust of wind almost made me lose my balance, but fortunately, I had a good grip.

Step by step, I made my way down from the third story. Finally, with a sigh of relief, I reached the bottom, my feet landing on the pavement below. I expected some adrenaline, but it had been surprisingly easy.

I had a suspicion, so I pulled up my stats sheet.

Strength: 7 (+2)

Agility: 5 (+1)

Stamina: 6 (+3)

Perception: 2 -

Intelligence: 46 - (+5 from Arcane Intellect)

Charisma: 8 (+1)

Spirit: 2 -

Faith: 0 -

Somehow, I had gained a few stat increases in these two months. I would have to check it more often, but it did explain my newfound climbing prowess, that and the part where I lost some weight as well. Seems no fast food and lots of walking is good for the body—'who knew?'

The sound must have attracted some attention, so I made my way as far away as possible. The problem was it was dark, I was very tired, and the city was new to me. It was slow work navigating the streets while trying to avoid soldiers, but they seemed to dwindle the further from the center I got. As I reached the edge, I had two choices: try to walk through a gate or climb a wall. In the end, I decided on the wall. The chances of them stopping me were low, but they would have a time and location of my exit, making it easier for them to extrapolate my destination.

From the top of the wall, I could see the lake. Unfortunately, I was facing the north side, so I would have to do some backtracking, but at least I had a point of reference.

Something hit my Mana Shield as I was walking near the shore of the lake, searching my way south. As I turned around, four shadows were coming towards me from the direction of the city. It was night, so it was hard to tell, but they looked similar to the assassins at the empath compound that nearly got me. Clearly, I was on someone’s radar.

Dodging a dagger strike, another arrow hit my shield, and I felt the now-familiar weight on my Mana Shield, so clearly they were the same. And they brought a friend. How nice of them.

I fired a Lightning Bolt, knowing they would dodge them. The idea was to get them in the same general direction for my Arc, but he didn’t even try to dodge it as it hit him in the chest and then nothing.

It had occurred to me they were slower than the last time as I could dodge some of their hits. It seemed they had some sort of adamantine armor.

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Panic started to swell up inside me. I had nothing. It was starting to make sense why mages were support classes in this world—they had a powerful counter. I really needed some additional spells, but now it seemed retreat was the only option.

Problem was they were faster than me, and the weight of the shield was increasing.

I was brought out of my thoughts by another lunge from one assassin aiming at my chest. It sparked and bounced harmlessly, but not without adding to the weight. I retaliated with another Bolt, but it only staggered him a little.

Meanwhile, another assassin circled around and with a swift motion attacked my back, and I was forced to reposition yet again.

I launched Bolt after Bolt, trying to keep them in front of me, but my time was running out. Out of desperation, I tried running towards the lake, thinking about my once great idea. The shore wasn’t far, but I was beginning to feel the Mana Shield weakening, so I increased my pace.

They were indeed much clumsier in the now knee-deep water, except for the archer, who was still on the shore firing projectiles, but there was no time to wait. Putting as much power as I felt I could safely do, I cast Arc and hit the water.

It did seem to have a more pronounced effect, so the armor was not perfectly fitted with adamantite. The closest assassin even dropped to his knees, then after a second or so, collapsed fully.

The ones that were further away backed slowly, so I had to stop my Arc spell since it wasn’t doing anything. I was surprised when one of them went to retrieve his injured ‘friend’ and deposited him on the shore.

While the two melee assassins that remained kept their distance, the archer had no problem hitting me, as dodging while in the water was impossible, so I went deeper and deeper into the water.

The others had switched to daggers, and they seemed to throw them enough to hit me once in a while. Clearly, they knew perfectly well they had to maintain the dot on my shield.

With no other choice, I expanded my shield just a little bit and dived under the waves.

I could see absolutely nothing beneath the waves, and it seemed the extra air in the Mana Shield made me buoyant enough to not allow me to sink, so I swam opposite to the shore.

They didn’t even attempt to follow me; maybe the extra weight of the adamantium would not allow them to float.

I made great time crossing the lake thanks to the reduced friction in the water, but I soon started to feel the pressing cold temperature of the water. Emerging from the cold waters, I made my way across the gravel beach. With each step, I could feel the pebbles pressing against the soles of my feet, meaning the shield was close to breaking.

As I slowly opened my eyes, I was greeted by the blinding light of the sun. I still felt tired, my limbs stiff from all the swimming, and my back felt the night spent on hard ground.

I couldn’t even remember finding this field, so I must have been pretty exhausted. The warmth of the sun had a soothing feeling on my muscles as I pushed to my feet to try and get a better view of my surroundings. A vast field of tall grass, almost up to my lower chest, stood around me.

With the sun beating down on me, I made my way south, with the comfort that at least I had time to think. The new revelation about spell absorption meant I had to come up with something. This time, it had to be instant so it could be used in battle and powerful enough to bypass the adamantium.

By the end of the day, I had three ideas. The easiest was a fire spell that would be absorbed, but the ignition would still be normal fire that would do damage. The next would be some sort of air spell that would move people around, knocking them out, and the most complicated one was a chaos spell that should bypass the magical protection altogether.

I had trouble creating fire quickly, so in the end, the wind spell was the easiest. With practice, by the third day, I could send waves of air that could move wooden sticks about as hard as I could kick them. The wave required travel time and would greatly diminish its power over distance, but I had a new tool for melee threats. Since all I was doing was pushing air, I started calling it Air Push.

The fire core for the spell still took a good ten seconds to create, even after a few days, so it definitely wasn’t ready for combat. But when time wasn’t the issue, it could prove useful.

As for the chaos spell, nothing worked. I even tried using the Chaos orb from the quest to maybe combine it with a spell, but nothing. Not even little progress. It seemed some kind of order was required to cast the spells, and the chaos destabilized them.

Sometimes you never know when inspiration will hit. As I was walking south, I encountered some marshy land, and I almost got trapped in quicksand. It was still a work in progress, but if the earth had enough water, I could make a portion of the earth vibrate, and whatever was on top of it would sink a little and become trapped. With these new spells, my confidence was finally restored enough for me to seek out civilization again.

As I pushed open the door of the inn, I could hear heavy laughter coming from inside. Stepping into the brightly lit interior, the comforting scent of properly cooked food washed over me. I turned my eyes, scanning the room for any familiar faces, and at the back of the inn, I found them.

With a smile, I made my way to them, weaving between the tables and dodging the occasional drunken customer. They seemed to be in a heated debate, but as I got close and their faces turned to meet mine, they changed into grins of recognition.

“About time,” Alira said with a smile, making some space for me to sit near her.