I finished looking through my Titles and paused to think, my thoughts going to Head in the Clouds and Into Orbit.

Head in the Clouds

Feat: Equip a flight accessory.

Passive: Grants knowledge of application of flight accessory while flight accessory is equipped.

Active: Allows 5 hours of unaided survival and operation at high altitude, cooldown 12 hours.

Into Orbit

Feat: Reach the edge of the stratosphere, 50km above the ground.

Passive: Extends lifeforce and mana channels into flight accessory allowing for lifeforce boosting and magic casting. Applies the passive strengthening effect from total health on the flight accessory.

Active: Allows 4 hours of unaided survival and operation in space, cooldown 12 hours.

“Hmm. I wonder if I can do that...” I vaguely remember the minimum altitude and velocity from the work Dad did with satellites while we were living on the Canadian Orbital Plate, so as long as this planet is a similar size and mass it should work. The height of the stratosphere was similar so there was the distinct possibility that it was.

I headed down to the room just above the mana artery and meditated, shutting down my lifeforce countercurrent, then returned to my Tower, to the empty floor above the guest rooms. Close to the far wall, I placed a Portal Gun Station and activated it, a murky oval of red-purple blooming against the obsidian. I then flew up to my room, walking out onto the ledge. I equipped a Soaring Insignia, the accessory which, in the game, provided infinite flight and added manoeuvrability, but now increased all things related to flight.

I then actively infused my wings with lifeforce -they thrummed with energy, restlessly waiting to be released- and dropped into a crouch, the obsidian ledge cracking under my feet as I blasted into the sky.

Mere seconds later, I pierced through the dark rain-laden clouds, streamers of mist clinging to me for a brief instant, falling behind in moments. I activated Head in the Clouds as my breathing became laboured, the slight darkening in the edges of my vision clearing instantly.

The sky above me darkened and the dark widened, the blue of the sky shrinking towards the horizon. I kept an eye on my altitude: 47,000… 48,000… 49,000… 50,000!

I activated the newly unlocked effect of Into Orbit, my breathing once again returning to normal.

The darkness deepened, the speckling of countless stars appearing. I kept ascending, pushing higher, but also now horizontally, heading directly East, into the sun, my visor darkening automatically to protect my vision.

The world spread out below my feet, a great continent becoming visible, a great swathe behind me still in the shadow of night, but I didn't have time to stop and appreciate it; I had reached the height I had wanted, but I wasn't at the speed needed yet. I shifted my direction to accelerate completely horizontally, keeping an eye on my altitude and velocity and constantly adjusting. as I was doing that, I noticed the time readout tick up an hour; I guessed I crossed into a different timezone. Soon enough I reached the required velocity and stopped flying.

I didn't have time to stop now; I pulled the Ice Rod from my inventory and created a temporary chunk of ice floating in space in front of me. I then pulled out some glass and used the ice as a core to build a sealed, small cube with 2m thick walls that I could float easily in. Once the magical ice had vanished without trace, I teleported into the cube using the Rod of Discord. On the 'floor', I placed a Portal Gun Station and activated it.

A teal-coloured portal snapped open against the glass wall, linking my little space box to the base station I placed in the Abyss Tower before I left, air flooding through. I took a deep breath from the filled space, and finally allowed myself to appreciate the view that spread out through the mostly clear glass.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

On one side, the glowing jewels of stars shone in the ocean of darkness, on the other, the world glowed, the crescent darkness of night falling over the curvature as I orbited. By now, I was back roughly over where my Tower was, looking down at the Central Continent. The Beast Forest covered about 1/5th of the top of the continent, a huge area of sand -a desert- immediately below it, the desert transitioning into snow-capped mountains which stretched diagonally across the continent, forming a long peninsula reaching toward the Western Continent.

I smiled, floating peacefully in 0G like this really was nostalgic.

Tear walked past, heading down the stairs, and I called out to her.

She approached, then stopped and stared at the sight of me floating just through the portal.

“Come on, have a look at this!” I called.

She came closer again and looked over the edge of the portal at the world below. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropping. I laughed then reached out and pulled her into the small station.

“Hey! Whoa~!” she cried as she floated out into zero gravity.

I pushed off her gently, cancelling both her movement towards me and my reactionary movement towards her, such that we both floated, looking down in the world.

The station was quite low down in terms of space stations, a mere 300km above sea level, so I could see the planet turning, slowly descending into darkness, shadows lengthening and filling valleys far far below. It was quite spectacular. As the light faded, the majestic sea of stars overhead became even easier to see.

I yawned; while staring at the starry abyss was incredible, it didn't change much as time went by, and I noticed Tear kept looking at the portal, so I gave her a light push, also flapping my wings once.

We drifted through the portal and I stumbled as the pull of the planet suddenly reasserted its hold on me. To my chagrin, Tear had alighted perfectly and was chuckling at me. I decided I'd simply ignore the whole thing.

“If you come back in around half an hour, we should be able to see the sun rise again,” I recommended.

“Half an hour?!” she exclaimed. “But the sun just set.” She paused “Scratch that, it’s morning now! Where were we?!”

“Umm,” I took a moment to think then pointed my finger towards the floor at an angle. “The satellite is that way, I'd guess. Though that's probably highly inaccurate.”

“What?”

“In orbit.” When the catgirl’s look of confusion didn’t change at all, I decided I'd explain a bit further. “One moment,” I said, pulling a piece of paper and a pencil from my inventory and drawing a concentric pair of almost perfect freehand circles representing the planet and the orbit of the station. I then launched into a highly simplified version of why satellites orbited, then went off on a tangent to try and explain gravity, then had to simplify it down from ‘curvature of space time’ to ‘force which pulls you to the middles of things’, then struggled back up to the topic of orbits, and, after a long and tedious attempt to explain, received a blank look and a “Yup, I still have no idea.”

I sighed. I was going to have to use my trump card. “Basically, satellites fall and miss continuously.”

“How?”

“To explain it quite poorly,” I fished around in my world storage for a moment, pulling out a wooden yoyo a moment later, “I am the world, and the yoyo is the satellite.” I indicated that Tear pull on the yoyo while I held the end of the string. “The tension in the string acts as gravity: the force pulling us ‘downwards’ or more correctly, ‘towards the centre of the world’. If you let go of the string-” she did, the wooden yoyo swinging back and whacking my calf “-things fall back to the centre. The gravity acts similarly to a tether, just as the string does between the yoyo and me. However,” I lifted my arm over my head, whirling the yoyo round and round by its string, “if I do this, the string-gravity- is pulling it in towards me, but it is constantly missing. In this case it’s a little inaccurate; gravity is pulling the yoyo downwards so I have to actually put effort into keeping it up. That’s why it falls downwards when I stop spinning it.”

I stopped, the yoyo falling to wrap around me. Disentangling myself, I handed it to an intrigued Tear, who started spinning it round her head.

She noticed something almost instantly. “When I stop spinning the string, it doesn’t just fall down, it also slows down. Why doesn’t this… ‘satellite’ of yours do that?”

“There’s nothing to slow it down. Down here, there’s air in the way. It’s like when you move your hand through water; it is resisted against, but when you do it in the air you feel it a lot less right? Well up there there’s no resistance. If you throw a crumpled ball of paper down here, it’ll slow down horizontally. If you throw it up there, it’ll just keep going until it hits something. The station is like that ball of paper, except it’s also attached to the world by a ‘tether’ so it keeps forever swinging around the world.”

“I… think I understand,” the former street urchin said hesitantly.

I hummed slightly to myself. Tear was my charge, I felt responsible for her education, but I also had no idea how to go about teaching someone. For now… “Check the library index for ‘Beginner Science’ or ‘Physics textbooks’. I believe there were a few.” I checked my internal clock, “Actually, you can do that later, the sun’s going to come up in a few minutes.”

I hopped back into the rudimentary space station, instantly drifting in the lack of gravity. Instead of joining me, Tear lay down on the floor outside the portal and stuck her head through, kicking her legs into the air cheerfully.

As we watched, light began shining through the atmosphere just past the edge of the world, creating a golden crescent on the side of the black circle. Gradually, the sun rose higher and higher, streaks of light spreading across the land that was coming into view, before full illumination was reached, and the world's full glory came back into view.