She almost forgot why she was even doing this, she was just so absorbed in the practice and the slow but steady improvement.
With each try, she got noticeably better when got she snapped out of her trance by an especially frigid breeze touching her skin and sending a shiver down her spine she managed to make a small ring of mana orbiting her body.
Unfortunately along with the shiver went her focus and the glowing blue ring dissipated into the air.
Right, the Core! Stupid!! How could you forget it?
With the practice still fresh on her mind she she easily managed to find the Core of her erstwhile foe, it was glowing brightly to her mana sense and made the otherwise beautiful field of ambient mana dull. She picked it up and summoned a bucketful of water with a quick cast to clean the gore off of it.
It was a little thing barely bigger than her thumb and its surface was rugged, compared to the Core she got from the wolf this one looked flimsy and rather underwhelming but to Kali, it was just as beautiful. The previous was a bit weird, all books describe monster cores as being rather small and rugged-looking crystals with only mythical beasts like gryphs and such having ones as large as a human head.
She stared at the little crystal, wanting to absorb it right then and there but she remembered what the last one made her experience. She didn't want to writhe on the blood and entrail-soaked snow if she could help it so she walked over to a nice-looking tree not too far away which had most of its branches close to the ground burnt off.
She huddled in close to its trunk so the higher branches would give her some cover of the took long. She never once removed her gaze from the glimmering crystal since she first touched and she continued staring at it as a small tendril of mana extended from her Core and got pushed into the crystal.
She felt a rush of emotions run through her as her mana sense expanded into the crystal, she began to giggle a little as the emotions washed through. The essence that began to trickle into her carried with it a sense of accomplishment which made her thrilled for some reason but soon the trickle turned into more of a steady stream and the pure joy of accomplishment transformed into the addicting pleasure she experienced previously.
"Hmmmm," she hummed in satisfaction as it washed over her but the scale of it all was nowhere near her previous experience. She didn't care about that at the moment, she was much too occupied with the moment that ended all too quickly.
She opened her eyes languidly and stared down at the crystal which was surprisingly still there.
"Huh?" she blinked at it, her mind still a bit muddled but she recovered herself in a few seconds. She got two handfuls of snow and smeared them over her cheek before giving them a light slap.
"Alright~" she was still giddy from the afterglow of the experience but she was also curious about why the crystal didn't dissipate like the other one.
She extended a tendril of mana just like before into it and felt that while no more Essence was forthcoming the thing was still filled with mana. Not a small amount either as it felt five times as much as her current maximum stores which she'd still have to test to know exactly how much she improved.
"Hmm, don't most people use mana as a currency?" she remembered that little tidbit from her economics lectures even though she tried hard to wipe all lessons from her memory maybe some of it was useful to her now.
Of course, large transactions were always in heavily regulated coins enchanted to be irreplicable because mana was far too unstable of a currency to use but it worked for day-to-day stuff and most people even preferred it after all mana was strength and strength was safety.
She sprung to her feet, feeling reinvigorated from draining the core of its essence, she pocketed the crystal and headed towards the mountain peak. She still had a mountain to scale.
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She hiked up the mountain with a spring in her steps and a smile on her face, being especially sneaky went out the window with that fight. When she glanced back once she saw burned and demolished trees in a 200-meter radius around where she killed the hare.
She was only a few hundred meters down from the peak in altitude when she decided to check how much her Core has grown, she sent her senses into it and focused on that feeling just like she's done when she searched for the core.
She remembered how her Core felt before absorbing the crystal and compared it to how it felt now, hmmm, around a 60% increase overall, that's nowhere near the previous one but that's still crazy.
She could understand why people risked their lives to get these Cores, compared to waiting months for her Core to transmute mana into essence stealing it from others was much faster. Even if she tried to keep her mana as close to full as she could since her 15th birthday when she first learned the Mana Gathering Rune, her levels only increased a handful of times since the Ritual.
I need a way to measure it more accurately, it would be great to know how far I am from the first milestone.
Level 200 would be great to reach before entering any settlement, but she didn't know if that would take only a few more hunts or hundreds. The Frost Wolf should not be the norm and even the hare gave so much essence, climbing through the levels should be a slog, not a sprint.
She didn't exactly know why it was such an important milestone but she knew that mages beyond it were leagues beyond those that weren't and it was the same with the other two milestones at level 300 and 400. It had something to do with their mana becoming more potent but that is as much as she managed to glean from her teacher's convoluted tales.
The last trek of her journey proved to be more boring than she expected, up here the trees were only spots in the distance and only a few bushes could grow here and even those looked just like mounds of snow at the moment. Said snow was reaching her thighs now and she opted for traveling with short jumps instead of waddling through it.
She slipped a few times but quick casts of the Arcane Foothold always caught her in time when she was about to become a snowball rolling back down the mountainside.
An hour later she stood proudly at the top of the world, or so she felt at least.
This is great!
She could see so far away, valleys, smaller peaks, rivers, and forests. The picturesque view almost made her feel like she should have become a painter just to immortalize the moment.
The skies were clear with only a few clouds swimming along up there and she could even see the twin moons. The deep blue moon floated in the front, clearly visible even in the midday sun with the smaller crimson moon only peaked out from behind it like a little brother hiding behind his dependable elder sister.
They were called Aerendilith and Thalorandor in the ancient elven tongue, standing for graceful sister and wrathful brother. The old language went out of use some centuries ago but Kali thought it sounded much more beautiful than the 'common' that most nations used today.
Some secluded villages and tribes still only spoke that elegant language and Kali hoped to meet one of those one day, 'common' was a human language but she had to admit that it was simple, even the dumbest farmer could learn to speak it with a bit of effort in a month or so if only to sell his wares and not much else.
Even the kingdom's old name of Golad'kar was going out of use and the common translation took its place, even the elven history books mostly refer to it as the Kingdom of Winter or the Mountain Kingdom. In her opinion, it was a sad state of affairs, but what could she do?
From up there she could see how in the direction the valley was going the peaks were steadily getting smaller and smaller. She couldn't see the end of the snow-covered landscape, she'd have to travel far to reach Karstirien.
She held herself back from shouting to check out the famous echo of the mountains, she'd have to get back into hiking soon but for the moment she let herself be captivated by the scenery.
She glanced behind her, the peaks grew taller and taller that was. They stood strong and unyielding, the high mountains were as frigid and ruthless as those inhabiting them and when those same people made use of said nature nobody could contest them.
The history of the kingdom was littered with hundreds of failed invasion attempts but the humans never learned. If the Spring Elves from the Primordial forests combined with the Autumn Elves of the plains failed to take the peaks from her ancestors during the ancient wars how could the humans do it?
Smaller raids were a constant according to her knowledge and every half a century the Black Army of the Emperor would march into the mountains only to return with a fraction of its size a year later. The Winter always prevailed.
Somewhere far behind all these sky-reaching mountains stood two peaks that eclipsed all others and between them stood the castle she had given up on ever seeing again. She wasn't the epitome of patriotism just like her running away from her preordained role showed but she still loved the country and her kin.
Her forlorn gaze recorded the majestic landscape of her homeland, she sat there on the peak until night arrived and the white snow gained a blue tint in the moonlight.
She stood up with a sigh and turned towards her destination, the slopes in that way were more gentle and not as unforgiving and lifeless as the large mountains behind her. I wish I could fly or even glide, it'd make traveling so much easier...and fun.
She huffed a bit but she resolutely began her long hike, keeping the direction in her mind so she wouldn't get lost even in the high snow while the trees obstructed her view of the horizon.
She stayed alert throughout her travel, she concealed her tracks and sometimes even backtracked to make it harder to follow her should anyone try to. When she found rivers she traveled alongside them on the frozen ground, most animals were no the wiser to her passing and the few that noticed her trusted their instincts enough to stay away from her.
She hunted once a week just before she'd sleep for eight hours before going back to traveling, her clothes kept her clean and repaired any damages and any accidents she had could be fixed with her healing bracelet.
She went on for weeks and despite never once sensing pursuers she stayed alert and ready to hide at a moment's notice. At first, it was taxing and she was collapsing by the time her weakly sleeping time arrived, but it became natural by the end.
The snowstorms grew fewer in number and gentler as she went on, the thigh-high snow blanket covering the mountains slowly grew thinner and the forests once again started to grow denser. Along the gentle slopes of these mountains whose top was the only place still covered in snow the many plants thrived unlike up on the frigid mountains.
The hardy spruce, fir and pine were starting to get mixed with trees favoring the more temperate environment. The temperature, the plants, the greenery, shrubs bushes and grass were all new sights to Kali and she felt her progress stall but she couldn't feel it bother her.
She's been diligently hiking and traveling, alert and ready all the time for more than two months. She didn't know the mountain range was this large but she knew she was getting closer to her first destination. The Winter Elves' domain ended where the snow no longer fell and with it already only gracing the mountaintops she knew she was close.
Along the way, she only managed to hunt two other magical beasts but she realized her luck must have been something else when she stumbled upon her first two as these barely increased her mana capacity by 10% each.
From here on out she'd have a much easier time concealing her tracks and if any would-be pursuers aren't already close on her train the constant snowstorms in the mountains would cover whatever she left behind before long.
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LY'RIEL
Ly'Riel looked up as she heard the doors to her room slam into the wall, the thud resounding throughout her room like a thunderous echo. There, in the doorway stood her brother, the usually composed Crown Prince seething and heaving like a beast.
"How did it go?" she asked, "What did he say?"
He took a deep breath and walked towards her, crumbling down onto the couch right next to her.
"The usual," he said distastefully, "'I'll handle it, keep to your duties'", he quoted, mimicking the Winter King's dry voice.
He grabbed at his lock of silvery hair like he was going to rip it out from the frustration, "But she isn't here, is she? She would be if he could handle it and yet she isn't."
Ly'Riel pulled her brother into a side hug, waiting for him to calm down a bit, "She'll be safe, you know how resourceful she is."
"And you know how naive she is," Rhy'Lanor glared at her, "not to say how little she knows about the world, for all, we know she will head into the damned Corvus Empire and ask for help from them to annul her engagement."
Ly'Riel flinched at the accusing tone, she knew her brother resented her choosing their father's side in almost every argument.
"That can't be," she said listlessly, "how could father have not found her yet?"
"You spent so much time with her and yet you know our sister less than I do?" asked Rhy'Lanor, more amused than anything.
"What do you mean?" she frowned at him.
"You know she had that obnoxious old Eldar as her tutor for the last five years right?" the Prince's lips curved upwards.
"...yes..." She didn't know what he was saying but she didn't like that smirk.
"You ever wondered who he was?" he asked, turning to look up at the ceiling, "I didn't, I thought Father just hired random people until one managed to stay with our little hellcat for more than a month."
"Get to it already," she said, glaring at her brother.
"Well," he sighed dramatically, "Turns out the old man came to teach her himself and had a huge fight with Father about wasting someone's potential and such," he smiled then, "I just now learned who he was from Father, he was agitated enough to curse him out with me being present."
"Brother," Ly'Riel buried her elbow into his side making the man jump.
"Humpf," he snorted at her temper, "Well, turns out our darling little sister had the Arch-Mage Zadkiel as her tutor for the last half a decade and he shat on father's regulations as often as he could."
Ly'riel's jaw dropped to the floor, "bullshit," she said which only made her brother smirk again.
"Coincidentally, he left while the Castle was in chaos after Mythral returned."
Arch-Mage Zadkiel, one of the oldest living elves in the world and the second highest level one after the ruling Winter Kings, but unlike them he didn't cheat. He achieved his power through many millennia of study and combat and not a Ritual.
He was born back when the High Elves still ruled Iasira and lived through all the cataclysmic wars that followed.
"He didn't," Ly'Riel's eyes widened as she realized where this was going, "He wouldn't!" she nearly shouted, "Right?"
"If Father is right he most certainly would," Rhy'Lanor said calmly, "He is the foremost master of Divination on the planet, if not he then who could hide her from the sight of the Royal Divination mages?"
The Princess grit her teeth, did that old fool know how much trouble he was causing?
"Why are you so calm?" she glared at the now thoughtful Prince.
"Hmm," he brought his fingers to his chin, " why indeed? It couldn't be that now that I'm more clearheaded I find myself quite liking these circumstances we found ourselves in?"
"No," he shook his head resolutely, "I'm most certainly not happy that my little sister has a chance at freedom while protected by the most power mage of our race, that would be treasonous wouldn't it?"
"But the Alliance," Ly'Riel retorted, "and Kali could be in danger, her convoy was attacked by a Feathered Serpent of all things, you know as well how dangerous the wilds are."
"I do," he sighed, "but unlike you, I have access to our spy network too," he turned to look at her deeply, "including the one in Kashgar."
"What are you saying?" Ly'Riel frowned.
"That Kali was disturbingly on point with her thoughts about her husband-to-be."
Her face darkened, she was faithful to her Father and followed his orders. The Winter King always knew best, the Ritual made sure of that but Ly'Riel wasn't the mindless slaughterer most of their enemies thought her to be, she loved her family and her only little sister occupied an especially large part of her heart.
"How sure are you of that?" she asked, her voice as frigid as ice, "Is that information dependable?"
"Yes," the Prince whispered, his glowing blue gaze colliding with her own, "I made sure of it."
"May the ancestors guide her," Ly'Riel whispered.
Her brother snorted, "May she be finally free, ancestors be damned."