Nate teleported across the plains, headed in the direction of where Bordain’s forces faced off against an Asmuisillan army. After spending time talking through his experiences with Aisling and Evindal, and his discovery of the tier beyond Mythic, they had all agreed that their initial plan needed to remain the same. If they were to give Princess Morgane time to get her own forces to the Capital, then they needed to keep Bordain and his forces occupied. The only way they could see to do that was to make the Asmuisillan Champions more competitive with Bordain’s elites. To accomplish that jump in power, they needed Nate. Specifically, they needed Nate’s crafting acumen to improve on the Asmuisillan Champion Armour. Of course, just improving the design and output of the enchanted armour was useless if Nate didn’t also improve the Empowerment Arrays that provided the mana to make the Champion Armour work. Also, that meant they needed to get those improvements into the hands of the Asmuisillans.
So, Nate found himself teleporting across the plains towards an uncertain encounter with the Asmuisillan armies leadership, while evading Bordain, or more specifically, Thierry Crozier. Luc’s half-brother was an accomplished Spatial Mage and Nate was certain that when he got closer he would need to start obfuscating his teleports, or worse, be forced to approach on foot.
That particular challenge was only the start of his problems. Conceptual Spatial Manipulation, according to his Status, would let him teleport a little over a kilometre. However, like any good mage, he also had a secondary Skill to empower his Spatial capabilities. Conceptual Spatial Authority more than doubled his teleportation range. So, in theory, he could teleport a little over two kilometres each time. That was where the good news ended. The first problem was that he had never specialised in reducing the cost of long-range teleportation. His oversight or, he supposed, his choice of focus in regards to Spatial Magic, meant that the cost in mana was noticeable. Normally, mana supply wasn’t something he had to concern himself with. Between his theft of mana from the Etruan Capital and using his Runic Gallery for storing all his ill-gotten gains, Nate normally had enough mana on hand for whatever he wanted to do.
However, while he had gathered most of the mana gems they had access to, he had needed to leave enough behind for Jacque and the apprentices to continue as well as enough to keep Aisling and Evindal supplied for any tasks they undertook while he was away. He was just thankful that Kiri needed basically no mana, given how reliant she was on Soul Energy. Now, all of that stockpiled mana he was carrying could easily cover him to get to his destination in the shortest time possible, but then what would happen when he reached the other end? He needed mana to make the changes to the Champion Armour and Empowerment Arrays. Especially if they were going to modify multiple sets. He also very much doubted that the Asmuisillans would let him use their own mana supplies. Why would they? He was an unknown. More importantly, an unknown who had stolen from them. In their shoes, he certainly wouldn’t have invested in his ideas without more proof he could do what he claimed. The result of that line-of-thinking meant he was pretty confident he would need to fund the proof and pay for the changes himself, at least initially. Which meant he needed to arrive with something resembling a reasonable stockpile.
So, to save mana, he was recharging his own Mana Reserve with the filled mana-gems rather than directly powering his Skill using the mana-gems. The reason for this was his high spatial affinity. With that in play, his mana would stretch further since his own mana reserve would aspect the mana making each drop, or whatever measurement they used to measure mana, more efficient. This would reduce the total cost.
The second issue, which could be considered both better and worse, was his sight range. Conceptual Sight of the Runic Artist, his only Divine Skill, was arguably a game changer for his uncovering of new Concepts and more importantly, how Concepts interacted, a variable he had barely touched on. However, the Divine improvement did nothing for the base Skill. It seemed that improvements in the Divine Tier added effects that used Divine Energy to create a force multiplier for aspects of the Skill. It did not, however, seem to do much for the underlying Skill. There was more there that he wanted to delve into, such as why that was the case. Did that mean mana was less powerful than Divine Energy? The answer seemed pretty obvious, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to experiment with it and see just how much he could learn. What it did mean, however, was that the distance he could use his farsight sphere of awareness hadn’t grown by much. Notably, it was significantly less than how far he could teleport. So, as long as he had a clear line of sight he could make use of the full range of his teleportation. But there were hills among the plains, large copses of trees and other impediments to his sight.
Initially, once he was well and truly beyond the range of the Capital, he had gotten around the sight issue by teleporting himself upwards on an angle, leaving him falling through the sky. His ability to alter his vector meant he was at no risk of splattering himself on the grassy plains. However, it did make him very easy to spot and he had to consider whether Bordain might have scouts out, and if so, how far they might be observing. He doubted it, given what he knew of the way Princess Morgane managed her forces. Bordain was likely even more cavalier, since Nate’s impression of the Second Prince, or King, depending on who you asked, was that he didn’t care a whit for anyone except his elites. Those same elites should be able to take care of themselves and therefore Bordain probably only kept an eye out for an attack from his opposition. That didn’t mean Nate could be careless though. Jorge and Rania hadn’t been secured by Luc yet and until they were, Nate needed to make sure he didn't tip their hand that they had already rejected Bordain’s offer.
Thankfully, once the rescue was accomplished, Nate would be notified. In his Runic Gallery was a small pile of paper, protected from anything else by a barrier. Frick sat inside the spatial pocket that was his Runic Gallery, hard at work on preparing some new gems for what Nate had planned. The paper next to the Goblin Spirit was Nate's own attempt at a communication tome. He had learned that the reason the tomes were quite rare was due to the expense involved in creating them. Each page had to be individually connected to the page in the corresponding tome, or tomes. The latter had been an easy problem to figure out, which would allow you to link multiple tomes together. However, the idea that you couldn’t simply connect the whole book seemed like a limitation that Nate thought he might be able to get around with time. The main issue seemed to be a lack of a Concept for Book. At least, that seemed to be the case for the enchanters of Galle. Nate suspected he could get around the limitation using Subconcepts, but of course, it wasn’t like he had the time to invest into figuring it out. Time, it seemed, was always against him.
Soaring through the sky, he started to fall back towards the ground and slowed his advance so he could pause to refill his Mana Reserve. Landing lightly on the grass, courtesy of his improving control of his Spatial Skills, he sat down and pulled out a mana gem, lamenting his low Mana Absorption. On the upside, the pause gave him a chance to think about the other conversations he’d had before leaving.
The talk with Kiri had been easy. He’d told his best friend exactly what he had felt and what he had done with the Divine Energy to achieve the Skill evolution. There was no doubt in his mind that she would be able to copy him. If anything, his only worry was the kinds of situations she would put herself in to touch upon Divine Energy again. While his own Embodiment related to Concepts, and he had some suspicions about a secondary factor involved, his sister's Embodiment revolved around Rebirth. She was liable to throw herself into very dangerous situations to try and trigger one of her rebirths using her Soul Twins. That was assuming she didn’t just try and see what happened when she tried killing herself. Either path was concerning. He just hoped she would try and be safe, or at least as safe as possible when your Embodiment required you to effectively die.
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Chatting with Kiri had been far easier than the moment he had with Britt. They’d barely been reunited for more than a few hours and he was off again. That alone would have made the situation slightly awkward, but it was compounded by other factors. Nate had left his bed and pillow behind so that Britt could stay in his room, but that left her looking at the two artworks he had painted on the walls. Normally his girlfriend loved his artwork. While she was unlikely to react negatively to the painting of Kiri that Nate had done, which was meant to reflect Kiri’s own Embodiment, Britt might have a different reaction to the other painting. At the time, Nate had simply been painting what he felt, putting his feelings on the wall as he detailed the things precious to him. However, when Britt saw she didn’t warrant her own section in the painting, unlike Kiri, or Nate’s Path, he doubted she would have positive feelings about their relationship. Getting reminded every time she went into the room just made it worse. Nate felt like an ass about the whole thing, but he also didn’t know what else he could do. His mind drifted to his relationship with Britt and wondered if he was already subconsciously creating distance between them because he didn’t see a future for them. The thought left him feeling empty, both because he cared for Britt and had no desire to hurt her, but also because he couldn’t think of a way to fix it. She was his first relationship. He was still learning about being a partner and emotionally available, and he didn’t think he had been a good boyfriend. Now, instead of sitting down and talking through his concerns with her, like an adult, he was teleporting across the plains of Etrua to try and topple a would-be-dictator. The whole situation sucked.
“Stop moping, Boss,” sent Frick. “Nothing you can do about it.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t feel shitty about the whole situation,” Nate sent back.
“Maybe. Never know. Maybe your whole body augmentation stuff will pay off and you won’t have to leave her behind.”
“We both know that’s a pipe dream. It’ll make her better. Maybe even make her capable of fighting up a tier. But it’s not likely to bridge the gap between us. And now I am staring down a transition to Divine in seven levels time. If The System repeats what it did with the Skill Evolution, I am not going to get the option to stay at Mythic. Which means I will either need to linger at level sixty as a Mythic for who knows how long, stagnating my growth, or I will become Divine - and do you think the Law of Reciprocity will just let me do whatever I want to her? I may have only interacted with two Divine beings, but both times they had to exchange things with me, even for basic stuff like my phone. Who knows how far the Law of Reciprocity extends? That’s ignoring the fact that if I lingered at level sixty, I would basically be expecting Kiri to do the same, or no longer staying with my sister if she decided she couldn’t wait.”
“You know Kiri would, if you asked,” supplied Frick.
“Of course she would, but I don’t want her to have to.”
“Sounds to me, Boss, like you would choose Kiri over Britt. So…you’ve kinda answered your own question, haven’t you?”
“I mean, I would. Choose Kiri, I mean. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about the situation.”
“Yeah, I get it. I guess mope a bit, then. But don’t forget we got shit to get done, Boss. So keep your focus up.”
“I will. How’s it going, anyway?”
“Five done. Ten to go,” replied Frick.
Nate nodded and their conversation lapsed back into silence as he drained the mana-gem into his reserve before resuming his journey.
On their first journey out across these plains, it had taken almost two months. That had been driven by the fact that many of the Guild members had been on foot, and while some of them had the Physical Stats to jog all day, not all did. That had limited their rate of movement to the lowest common denominators. He would have guessed that they covered somewhere between ten and twenty kilometres each day, depending on the terrain. With his teleporting, he expected to cover the same distance in a couple of days, while burning through a tenth of his total mana supply. That meant he needed another tenth to return to the Capital, leaving him with the remaining eighty percent for his improvements to the Asmuisillan Champions’ Armour and Empowering Array, as well as any fighting he had to do. The hope was that there would be no fighting on his part, but who knew. In truth, he would have less than eighty percent. In addition to the work Frick was doing, which could be arguably attributed to the fixes to the Asmuisillan equipment, there was one other project Nate was working on. He just hoped Luc would appreciate the gift and put it to good use. With that in mind he set off again, teleporting back into the sky.
*************
Lark hated sentry duty. He understood that it was standard protocol to have sentries out, but was it really necessary against the Etruans? Their enemy initially used their normal methods, or at least what Lark had been told were their normal methods. Conscript waves to try and overwhelm the Empowerment Arrays while their Elites fought the Asmuisillan Champions. However, the Etruan army they faced had barely any conscripts and those they did have had been wiped out within the first few days. Instead, now the Elites of Etrua simply beat on the Asmuisillan Champions, wounding them and wearing away at the Asmuisillan armies’ mana reserves. Lark knew they were being whittled down, and without reinforcements or resupply, they would either be forced to retreat or end up slaughtered. The last was especially true with that beast, the Second Prince. Lark had heard rumours that the Second Prince was now King of Etrua, but his noble rank mattered less than the utter power the man exhibited upon the battlefield. It took three Champions to contain him. Contain him, not beat him, nor force him to retreat. They’d already lost two Champions to the man and were now forced to send their very best against him just to keep him from influencing the rest of the battlefield. That put them at risk against the other Elites and if it wasn’t for the General herself participating in the conflict then Lark knew they’d already be dead or fleeing.
That was why he didn’t see a point in sentry duty. With the way the Etruans were fighting, any Elite that attacked would need to be detected by someone with far more levels than him. He felt like he was just doing busy-work, when in reality he’d rather be sitting around the cooking pot with his squad. Or better yet, in his tent, sound asleep, dreaming of being anywhere but out here in this shithole stretch of land, fighting against the Etruan bastards.
Lark was about to start mentally ranting about the Etruans when the air in front of him shimmered, like starlight parting. From within that shimmer stepped a young lad. Lark would have guessed that the tall blond kid was in his late teens. Maybe early twenties. Normally, Lark could get a sense of how much danger someone represented. Most veils were imperfect, and while they shielded the Class Core, they did nothing for the soul energy or mana within their bodies. Lark’s Skill, Threat Assessment used these flaws to tell him how dangerous someone was. But, from this youthful and unimposing kid, he felt nothing. Coupled with the fancy star-studded robe and the look of intent in the boy's green eyes, Lark was ready to run at a moment's notice and send up the alarm. Only the kid's lack of aggression kept him from doing so.
“Hi, I’m Nate from the Artist’s Emporium. I’ve got a delivery for your Commander and need to have a word with them. Would you mind escorting me in?”
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