---James---

How hard was it to find one city? A floating one at that?

James spent quite a few hours just jogging through the woods, a slight trickle of mana infusing every one of his movements. Jogging in terms of effort – his cruising speed was closer to that of a car.

Every once in a while, he’d get annoyed and jump – clearing the tops of the trees with a sharp crack and peering about in the surroundings.

How big was this zone?

Had ‘R’ dropped him on the opposite side of the damned map?

It wasn’t running away from a challenge if he couldn’t find the dungeon again, was it?

He was trying to keep to the prehistoric area – the way it shifted to a prairie with incredibly long grass made James wonder if each area was really just a massive nest.

A human nest? Were all the native human’s dungeon monsters?

Maybe, or maybe James was just dumb.

Flying a bit in frustration, James took to the sky low altitude cruising above the forest like a glider.

Flying was harder and slower…but slower was a relative thing. He could move much much faster on the ground but had to dodge trees constantly and watch out for trip hazards which messed things up… slightly.

Harder was also a relative thing – He just had to focus on getting into that strange sort of headspace where gravity was nothing more than fuel for him to be stolen. An unlimited natural resource to be tapped.

At that point James could float in a single spot indefinitely. He could then add a push of movement – in several different ways – and that push worked differently based on if he was using his magic lens or his science lens.

Magic worked based off his wishes and thoughts but it had nothing to really build off of. He had no concepts for flying – nothing even remotely telling his mana he should be doing what he was doing. He did have concepts for moving his own body but ‘move me this way’ fighting against the world was inefficient at best.

Aether let him cheat.

His whole ability to fly was cheating in a way… Considering his body mutation interacting with aether was what was giving him this zero gravity ability in the first place, true flight was also achieved by cheating with aether.

Aether movement worked well at pushing him off solid objects. James realized if he was cruising low and ‘pushed’ himself along he was really pushing off the tops of the trees below him. He hadn’t realized that’s what he was doing, but every push was accompanied by a jerk of a tree canopy so there was certainly a cause and effect link there.

Kind of like how a hoverboard pushed air down and let you levitate – but only close to the ground – this manner of flight wouldn’t let him get much higher.

As a brief test James filled his blood to bursting with fuel then shot himself what had to be four – five hundred meters in the air. Briefly he had looked out at the massive forest and hint of a curvature before falling once again. He had sucked all of the kinetic energy out of his impact as he could but it still left him feeling bruised and battered.

While magic had no concepts to help him, aether had no…no tool to achieve what he wanted. No way of just doing what he wanted just because he wanted it. His dump of skills did seem to be shifting more and more into having flight as an ability, but it wasn’t innate quite yet. It was still mostly a ‘manual’ sort of mess.

So how was he actually flying then?

Well, If James was a regular practitioner of aether abilities, this was the point he would need to make a machine. A rocket to tape to his leg. A backpack that pushed his aether into working the way he was currently working it.

Quite in line with aether’s mantra, James was currently cheating his cheat power. By flipping back and forth between the two sides he could slightly borrow their abilities.

Aether spells and mana machines.

Not quite as nice and tidy as that but close enough.

It was easier to do in the midst of a fight, but a constant rhythmic flip between the two kept his insides nice and messy and malleable.

If he stayed in an aether build for too long his ability to direct everything faded completely away. The reaction he had started ran out of fuel and spluttered to a stop. If he stayed in a mana build for too long his body realized it didn’t have a concept for gravity or flight – it realized it shouldn’t even be able to float without a concept for anti gravity or ‘floating’ or whatever. It would quickly burn through his regeneration and then toss him out of the sky with his pool on empty.

It really felt like James was currently that sketch for a road runner that hadn’t realized the cliff was no longer underneath it. If either side stopped to think too much he’d fall.

Good practice if nerve wracking without the clarity of a battle – James did spy a giant tiger shaped creature prowling through the woods and a pack of velociraptors but they were barely more than an after thought.

Pit stops to fight them lasted less than a minute and only after suplexing and eating the tiger did it gave him a point of primal heat vision stat – a single point. One measly monster stat, barely enough to make James see the barest hint of heat in the woods.

Finally after an entire day of aimless flying about, a nap through the night and another morning of flight, James found it. A speck in the distance seemed unconnected to the forest below and a drop to the ground and burst of running through the trees got him close enough to see the city once more.

James almost flew in from the sky but figured he might as well head in the front door to be polite.

Dropping down by the edge of the lake and jogging up to the gate he went through customs quickly enough – confirmed he wouldn’t look down and felt an external force take hold of his head.

It wasn’t a mental compulsion, this geas felt kinetic based entirely out of his mind. Like there was an invisible person standing behind him and physically pulling his head up if he strayed too far.

Once out of sight of the gate, James put his mana against the task. He pushed his head up against the edge of its range of movement and then did the equivalent of burning [haste]x5 in his head to shove it down the rest of the way.

Like glass shattering, the effect that was encorceling his head snapped and his head slammed down into his chest.

Eyes closed just in case, James rolled his head about, breaking through the last bits of whatever spell this was with several cracking snaps. He then continued on happily unencumbered.

He didn’t want to look down and intellectually understood the appeal of a aid for that…but wanted to be controlled even less. He could not look down under his own willpower. It wasn’t too hard.

Now…where was Maddy and her friends?

James wandered till it got dark and ended up finding a twisting alleyway to fall asleep in.

Waking up the next morning face pressed directly down on the glassy floor, James quickly rolled till he was facing the sky and started up again.

Wandering the city for another three hours lost and hungry, James was suddenly accosted by the head of the city.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

She was laying on a sheet of blue glass and floated up along side him slowly and discreetly. The queen literally slid into view out of the corner of his eye. Kind of like someone laying on a couch, James half expected her to have a bowl of popcorn as she moved up beside him an amused look on her face.

“Theres not too many adventurers free of the rules and you seem to be the only one without a purpose. Forgive me for being bold but…What…are you doing?” The queen asked.

James felt like she was making fun of him. If she was the head of this city there was no need for her to come interact with every adventurer wandering about – he wasn’t that special after all.

Floating was a flex wasn’t it? James felt a bit of a competitive urge come over him and with a flex of will he pushed himself up as well. James slowly twisted his body to roughly hang sideways and tensed like he was performing a sideways plank. There! Like this he could face the queen face to face lying down as she was – why was she grinning?

James awkwardly floated along down the street looking at the grinning queen in silence. Wait she had asked a question hadn’t she? One he hadn’t answered yet…what did he say? Admit that he was lost? Continue to compete and hope she dropped it?

“Are you propositioning me?” The queen asked after nearly a minute of silent awkward floating.

James was suddenly completely aware that with their positioning it looked like they were lying down together staring straight into each others eyes. Like they were on a bed or…picnic blanket or something romantic.

James fell to the ground in shock, scraping his face along the glassy pavement until he got control over his body once again and shoved himself back up to his floating position – face completely red.

The queen was attractive now that he looked closer. She had a sort of tomboy woman in uniform style and…

Fuck. He was acting like a teenager. Sure he hadn’t gotten laid more than once but he didn’t want to be this pathetic…She was laughing at him. Definitely shouldn’t shoot his shot there – James could feel the self worth he was trying to stack upwards breaking away. Return to monk James. Look at me. Look at me James – don’t fall down the rabbit hole. Return to monkeee!

“Do you know where Maddy’s group is staying?” James asked, pushing past the awkwardness, his internal rambling all the while trying to ignore her statement.

“Yeah they left a while ago to go practice against a nearby nest. Last few days they’ve been coming back after four-ish hours…want me to take you to their place or can you find your own way there?” The queen asked a bit of mirth leaking out of her tone.

Yep. Definitely making fun of him. Interacting with others was awful – James wanted out. He wanted to fly back to the forest and try again tomorrow. Pushing past that weakness James nodded in a stiff jerk. He wished he could just fight social interactions. It would make this whole thing so much easier.

“I’m back to continue the dungeon…if you can take me to a spot nearby and a place to get food I’d appreciate it.” James asked. He was hungry – he hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours at this point and it showed.

“A lunch date? Sure~ I know just the place,” the queen nodded, nearly causing James to fall once again. She then sat up – stretching and rearranging herself in a cross legged position before speeding down the street.

This is fine, James lied.

…

James was slightly happy but ultimately felt defeated after the meal. He had won but…he had lost so much.

James had no money – she had paid for everything and now was paying for him to stay a week at the same motel style inn Maddy’s group was renting. She said it was because he was continuing on her quest to advance the state of the town by running the dungeon…she was rich…she could deal with it.

James still felt like it was pity.

The meal had tasted amazing – a series of stuffed buns James was certain were just small panzerotti's and a wide variety of dipping sauces. That somehow made it worse.

The fact she kept pretending to flirt with him too made him feel like he was being bullied the whole time.

James entered his room and twisted himself into a handstand as soon as he was alone. With no other output for his frustration he began to perform hand stand pushups – forcefully pushing his body down with his power to increase the challenge.

He hadn’t earned that meal. He hadn’t earned that charity and it made him feel weak. The small part that wondered if her advances were genuine was squashed. He knew not to listen to that stupid hopeful part of him. He was an adult now.

James had supposedly grown strong! How was he still so weak?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

A literal pool of sweat covered the floor below him and James’s arms finally started to shake before he calmed down. Flipping onto his back, the sweaty man lay there for a few minutes in silence before pushing a burst of mana down and shifting his body straight to a standing position. Attempting to dry himself James pushed kinetic energy into any sweat he could feel flinging the moisture roughly away into his room.

Not quite a towel but it did the job?

It had probably been enough time by now hadn’t it? Any more would be him running away.

Exiting his room and traveling over to the neighbors – hoping the room number the queen had given was not a prank – James knocked and tried to act natural.

The one guy opened the door and stared out at him silently.

“Yo?” James spoke trying to add as much confidence to his voice as he could.

The guy – Troy James seemed to remember his name was – nodded and lead him inside.

Nailed it. James lied to himself.

…

The group somewhat caught up over the next few minutes. The main source of awkwardness was how James had left and come back. If he had stayed with them as soon as they exited the dungeon they’d probably all be buddy buddy but…

Well they seemed to have already accepted he was leaving so his return was a bit of a shock. Not a bad shock just a…unaccounted for event.

It was fine. James didn’t even know why he had come back to them – he could always run the dungeon alone it had just felt polite to see if they wanted to continue together.

As soon as he made to leave however, Maddy drew him back and began to make him feel more appreciated.

Amazingly it didn’t feel like pity or obligation – she truly managed to make him feel welcome in less than an hour.

It was nice – part of the reason James had come back was due to a lingering sense of owing her for helping him and spending ages explaining how mana worked…but it was nice feeling like she didn’t expect anything in return.

Still sort of awkward but nice.

…

James’s addition to the group didn’t change their plans. They were practicing and then returning to the dungeon in a weeks time from when James appeared. Or a week left before the timeline placed by the dungeon.

James seriously considered their offer to run some nests but…those were simply some fights dotted about and for combat James preferred to stay alone. He could fight in the same area or work together on something but no part of him wanted to learn how to work as a team accounting for others.

He did take a glance at the list they had however – and headed out for some exercise on one or two of them.

The nests were kind of disappointing. It was hard to take them seriously after the badlands and knowing what he was facing took some of the excitement out of it.

James could add excitement back.

His first self challenge was to bind his hands. He fought a bunch of annoying splitting balls by dashing about and stamping them to death using the restriction as a way of branching out his fighting style.

He got a weird look when he asked the others to help tie him up before he went off to fight a pack of inflatable snakes, but they seemed to have accepted his eccentricities and didn’t judge too much.

Binding his body was fun and all but it was something he had already done before. It was starting to feel stale.

His next self challenge was to fight a tree upside down – forcing his body to stay in a handstand while tanking the branch whips and attempting to control the air to blow away poisonous spores.

The fight after was an attempt at fighting without touching the ground or the trees around the area – considering how hard flying was this was the biggest hit yet.

Every challenge gave an achievement but only for a single stat or two – as if the system felt he had outgrown that sort of reward. At least the upside down fight was a unique achievement?

Really the only dangerous sounding nest nearby was the one below the city – James was incredibly tempted to try and fight the sirens. From what he could tell they hypnotized through light and sight…so if he fought them `blindfolded’ he’d just be dealing with some intelligent fish people?

Of course Maddy had mentioned they were shaped like naked woman and unless that was an illusion James…decided it was better to not try. It just felt weird. Like the only people who wanted to fight those creatures were perverts.

Each evening James pushed himself to socialize. He’d head on over to his neighbors room for a few hours and share their dinner. Maddy mentored him a bit more in magic – James’s idea that magic was related to blood and his heart had merit after hearing some of her plans. Maddy was currently playing about with enhancing the beat of her heart to run sound based spells off of. Something about each beat being a thump in the air, each beat being a potential spell?

James described aether a bit to them as a curiosity but they all seemed to have accepted that aether was just a form of magic modified by a domain – they thought it was an interesting curiosity but dismissed learning more.

With how magic seemed to focus so much on self perception, maybe that was for the best? James knew for a fact it was different but didn’t feel the need to push much.

Part way through this week, James realized he had a new use of the quest board, but didn’t quite know what to spend it on. The board was meant as a push for if he didn’t know what to do – a way to find potential achievements or a lead on something that was hard to otherwise know.

Considering the only self goal James had other than grow stronger was to gain a domain – and considering how highly it was pushed as something you should try to figure out yourself…well James wasted his quest use by ignoring it for now. He told himself it was in case it was useful in the dungeon but really he just didn’t know what to ask it.

Despite having a group of acquaintances that were slowly becoming friends, James didn’t quite feel as close to them as he had with Richard. Of the three he felt the most kinship with Troy but they tended to just sit to the side in silence. They listened to the others talk and glanced at each other in comradery when Jess got particularly drunk and loud one day...but that was it.

Finally the second attempt of the dungeon arrived. Despite himself James felt excited as he entered the warped space from the front door this time.

He was going to show the dungeon nothing could jerk him around.

Not even himself.