I was right.

Not only did I hate Raiju’s idea, but everyone else did too. I mean, except for Jaegan, but he liked it when I was miserable. I was going to be cold, wet, and miserable for the foreseeable future while everyone else stayed warm and dry.

Instead of relying on some clunky piece of armor we’d kludged together, Raiju had me ride on her back with [Wall of Force] formed into a hemisphere that ended about a foot above the ground. The tricky part had been figuring out how to anchor the Skill to myself instead of the ground, but with Jaegan’s mocking assistance, I figured it out in just under two hours.

We’d already been hurtling up the mountain for four hours with no end in sight. It seemed to just go on forever, though Raiju assured me that she could see a glowing green disk at the top of the path, nearly a hundred miles away. Seeing as she had [Enhanced Senses] as well as a [Perception] in the mid three hundreds, I took her word for it. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but do some math to see how soon we could reach the top.

Based on my earlier experiences with her and her increased Stats from leveling and fighting the [Ashen Devastator Hydra], I think her sustained speed has increased from the twenty-five miles an hour she used to be able to sustain. The new math shows thirty miles an hour, but that doesn’t take into account the terrain we’re working with and the fact that it is so damn cold. With all that figured out, I’m willing to bet we’re going to be doing more like ten miles an hour, with all of the switchbacks and cliff faces even I can see along the path ahead… we’re going to be able to make barely twenty miles a day of vertical progress. It’s not enough.

How can I speed us along? I don’t have any Skills or Spells that would lend themselves to speeding her up besides [Haste], which has the nasty downside of slowing you down for as long as you had it going. I mean, maybe it’d work?

I messaged the party to see what they thought of the idea. ‘What do you guys think about me putting [Haste] on Raiju? It’d speed her up for as long as I held it, but she’d be slowed down as soon as it fades for the same amount of time.’

Surprisingly, it was Arlian who finally poked the hole in my plan. ‘Milord, despite the increase in raw speed we’d experience, it wouldn’t do much to deal with the terrain. We all know she’s far faster than she’s moving right now, but the weather and circumstances are slowing her down. [Haste] would only exacerbate the same issue, plus drain your Mana.’

‘You’re right.’ I muttered mentally. ‘Back to the drawing board I guess.’

What else could I do? [Sun Jump] is a teleportation ability, but it doesn’t work without direct sunlight and it would only take me. I leaned close to Raiju’s neck and screamed in frustration, earning me a quick question of if I was alright, but I just told her I was frustrated.

We traveled for nearly a full day before our first real obstacle came into view. Stretching out above us was a thousand foot tall cliff covered in a four inch thick sheet of ice.

At first, I thought it was going to be easy, that Volta and Voltaire would be able to glide up along the ice and then draw the rest of us using the prodigious amount of rope I had in my ring.

Nope.

While the [Arcweavers] were able to float above the snow by a bit, the second they tried to do the same with the wall, they fell into the snow and began screaming in pain. After helping them back into the sled/tent, I tried using [Elemental Pactlord] to just summon an [Ice Goliath] to bear us to the top, only to find the Skill was sealed. It was the same with [Air Step], which failed after the first jump and sent me sliding down the wall into the bank of snow at its bottom.

“Dad would just wall-run up this damn thing, but I was never very good at that. Hell, I didn’t even unlock [Freerunning] after training with him on it for the better part of a decade.” I was huddled up in the covered sled along with everyone but Raiju, who genuinely seemed to be enjoying the mountainside, snow and all.

I turned to the rest of my party. “Anyone else have any ideas? I’m fresh out.”

Ylsa pulled a pair of climbing axes from her bag with a sigh. “I could probably make it to the top on my own in a few hours, but I’d be vulnerable and exhausted at the top.” She shook her head as she spun the tools in her fingers. “I’d be a sitting doe and would soon return to you, but much faster than I left you.”

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Before I could ask, Jaegan filled in the small gap in my understanding. “She means ‘sitting duck’, but hasn’t ever seen one, so she says doe instead.”

She threw up her hands. “No, your mythical ducks do not exist! A bird who can float atop the water? Preposterous.” She huffed before shoving her climbing axes into her bag once more.

The painfully weak [Mage] looked me up and down. “If your dad would use [Freerunning] to get to the top, or some variant of it, what would your mom or the rest of their party do in this situation?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Mom would use [Elemental Teleportation] and…” My eyes went wide.

He poked me weakly in the leg. “Don’t keep a dying man in suspense. What did you figure out?”

My hands trembled as I reached into my spatial ring and retrieved the gift Mom had given me on my System Day. The supple red leather bound tome had the Sunbeam family crest pressed into the cover and below that was my mom’s name in Elvish. The [Mage] whistled, but waited for me to speak.

“This is the first book I ever touched that contained even a single Spell.” I stroked the red leather like it was a long lost pet. “Mom had it displayed on the mantle and I knocked it off with a ball at two years old. It’s one of my earliest memories.” I chuckled. “Instead of getting mad, she took it as a sign and showed me how to use my first Spell through it, [Light].”

I flipped to the dog-eared page and uttered the twisting words for the Spell. A soft golden sphere producing light that felt like the spring sun sprang into existence above my finger before I moved it to the peak of the tent with a gesture.

All of those days, sitting with Mom and learning Spells rushed back to me in a wave. I’d been suppressing the good memories of Spellcraft so long that remembering even a single one let loose the floodgates on more than just the memories as tears ran down my cheeks in streams. Over a decade of

Surprisingly, it was Raiju sticking her head in through the flap that startled me out of it. She looked over at the glowing orb and basked in the feeling before noticing my tears.

“What’s wrong?” She turned to the rest of the party with a growl starting in her throat. “Who made him cry?”

Before anyone else could get themselves in trouble, I patted her massive cranium. “No one made me cry. These are bittersweet tears as I remembered some parts of my childhood I’d tried to block out.” I ruffled her fur. “Thanks for trying to defend me. I appreciate it. Now, why did you pop in?”

She nuzzled into my side. “The fake sun’s going down out here. I think we should make camp.” Her eyes glowed excitedly. “Maybe you can make some of that stew we had with Khor?” Everyone felt it as her tail started slamming into both sides of the covered sled. “Please? It was delicious and even gave Stats!”

Ignoring the looks of incredulity from the rest of my companions, I nodded. “I can do that. We’ll have to get some windbreaks up before I get started though.” Though he looked like he wanted to ask me questions, Jaegan held his tongue for the moment and instead offered to put up a hollow stone box for us to rest in for the night.

Twenty minutes later, I picked up [Basalt Bunker] after Jaegan showed just how useful it could be as he made a twenty foot square block of stone with a single doorway out of nothing. He explained that it would last for forty-seven hours, or his [Wits] divided by five, with his mastery of the Skill. After teaching me a few tricks with the new ability, he shuffled off to one corner where Ylsa had set up the old man’s bedding while I prepped dinner with her help.

As my elemental companions didn’t need to eat or sleep, they offered to stand guard so the rest of us could relax. When I eventually relented and let them do as they wished, Arlian sank into the stone box with a sigh of relief before flowing into the ceiling corner nearest the slope down. Meanwhile, Volta and Voltaire took turns cycling the air within the bunker and standing guard out in the snow.

It seemed the floor wasn’t meant to be totally impossible, so while we rested at the foot of the wall, no ice boulders hurtled out of nowhere. However, that didn’t stop the siblings from worrying as they took their guard duty seriously.

When I pulled the [Moonsilver Powder] out, Ylsa froze in place, but I shushed her and added a liberal dose to the pot before tasting it and adding another ounce or two.

“Dominus provides.” She muttered under her breath.

Licking the tip of the finger I’d used to swipe the back of the spoon, I shrugged. “It was my grandfather, actually. Though he didn’t tell me what it was worth, so I just started using it to season my stews after Dad told me it was good for them.”

To her credit, she didn’t berate me like Khor did, but she did ask a few questions about my childhood as we cooked. I gave her the same basic story I did Khor, though with far less obfuscation since she already knew what my Class actually was and who my Mom and Dad were.

Jaegan, Ylsa, and I were joined by a dog sized Raiju for dinner. She licked her chops. “I want this to last a while, it’s been months!” Everyone laughed at her antics as her tail wagged a hundred miles an hour.