The Third Step: Chapter Thirty-Four

As the days on the boat ticked by, I focused in on my training, both in general magic, and in combat specifically. 

When it came to my general magical skills, the biggest thing I did was bring my new trees up to power and establish the Stone Gates in Mossford, Crysite, and outside of Delitone. Between the Stone Gates, the fairy circle mushrooms, and my overall increase in power, it was becoming increasingly easy to country hop. It still wasn’t fast or cheap on mana, but it went from the kind of thing that I needed to use full concentration and all of my mana on to the kind of thing that simply took a good bit of effort. I wasn’t able to ingrain the Stone Gate spell with only three uses, and I didn’t want to use a pill on it – not that I had the money anymore – so I left that spell as mastered within my spirit.

More importantly, at least to me, was that it freed up a tremendous amount of the spiritual burden on Dusk, and assisted in her connection to the world. She had already altered her fourth gate ascension to improve her ability to connect to Ddeaer, rather than purely expand her internal plane, but she was still a worldspirit, not a spatial spirit. Space was a part of her, but only a part. With the Stone Gate serving to lift some of the burden, she was confident in her ability to establish many more gates without limiting her Dominion or future Authority, or even to increase her internal size more during her ascension to Arcanist. 

It was interesting that Dusk seemed entirely unconcerned about her ascension to Arcanist. It was still some ways away for me, but I was increasingly worried about it. I was filled with anxiety about basically every aspect of it – the fundamental loss of free will, the fact that I wasn’t sure I knew myself well enough for it, the unknown and apparently variable way each one worked, and the fact that so many people either got stuck or burnt out their future potential in order to make the step. When I asked Dusk why she wasn’t concerned about it, she just shrugged and whistled that if she failed to ascend, she’d just have to try another time. If it stopped her from ascending again, that wasn’t ideal, but she could live with it. Even as a peak fifth gate, she’d be as powerful as most guild leaders back in Mossford, and capable of traversing wherever she wanted to see the world. 

“And the loss of free will?” 

Dusk frowned and made a cat-like ‘burr’ sound, saying that she didn’t see what the big deal was. I spent a while trying to explain why it was such a big deal to me, but she genuinely didn’t seem to see why it weighed so heavily on me. It was a good reminder that, for all that Dusk was more human and comprehensible than Dawn, she was still fundamentally not human. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t a person, she absolutely was, but her mind was fundamentally different from mine or most people on the planet. 

Still, my future ascension was something I stewed over as I returned to working on my general mage training. Meadow ran me through a lot of alchemy, in particular focusing on the effectiveness of fourth gate potions. We were able to create a variety of potions of haste, reflex, flight, and alchemical bombs at fourth gate, each with slightly different effects. 

“One of the biggest things you’ll want to look into when you get the chance is purchasing plants that can be used for transformations,” Meadow explained as we worked over the cauldron. “Potions to turn yourself into a bird, or a mouse, or anything else are quite useful, and you’re well suited to them. You also have abundant access to creatures that you can use the feathers or fur of for their creation. You just lack the fundamental ingredients.” 

Though I might lack those, I was still able to improve my skill to the point where I felt confident in brewing most fourth gate potions in some regard: battlefield concoctions either on the fly, and more complex things with a recipe. With Orykson’s help, I even started to get a hold on soul alchemy. The potions made with the soul mana infused ingredients were extremely effective when they were used on me, like healing and self-boosting effects, but tended to act more like generally overcharged mana when used for things like alchemy bombs. 

Given the way that each potion locked down at least half of my soul mana to create them I didn’t think I’d be using them all that often, but it was something to consider as my overall reserves grew. Orykson seemed insistent on making sure my ability to form soul mana into delicate shapes grew, and when I asked why he was so insistent, he made a few oblique comments about ‘unique applications of pre-Occultist soul mana within the core function of spells’, then took more spiritual measurements on me.

The Stone Gate and alchemy weren’t the only parts of my general mage training that I worked on during the boat ride, of course. Thanks to how much practice I had in Obsidian Forest, I ingrained Antburden quickly, helping me teleport with more things. Sensory Network followed not too terribly long after, and with its effect, I was able to project my full mana senses out of my anchoring spells, and even send them through the Stone Gates with some focus. Gemstone Loupe was the last of the general mage spells I ingrained, but it was arguably the most important. With it, my mana generation in my beastgate jumped, and I was able to reassign a bit of the excess power to instead flow into my now-empty Ephemeral Rebirth. 

Of course, while my general mage training progressed swimmingly, the real advantage was in my combat training. Being locked on the same boat as Ivy and Jinwei meant that I had a pair of opponents with significantly more power than I had to train against. 

Jinwei’s tricky fighting style gave me more appreciation for what it must be like fighting me. The older huli jing was never where she seemed to be, her movements flowed like water, and while none of her strikes were shockingly powerful, all of them were annoying. Each of her attacking spells were like Foxfyre, trading away raw damage for the ability to do something weird. Some of them contained illusionary paths to obscure their movement, others burned through forged mana, others seemed to strike against my brain as much as they did my body, and more effects besides. Witch Eyes and Placid Mind helped, but they weren’t a hard counter to her, even when she lowered her own power to peak third gate. 

Ivy, on the other hand, was a totally separate sort of challenge. He was a forest dragon, and none of his spells departed too heavily from that. Some dragons would intentionally go out of their way to learn spells that they could only barely cast, to keep as a surprise, in the same way some werewolves learned ice magic. Ivy never pulled out anything like that, though. It was possible he had them, but if he did, he never needed them. Every Forest Dragon’s Claw was strong enough to punch through Briarthreads and the Ivy Cloak, each cast of his Rooted Armor was dense enough that Foxfyre had trouble burning through, and even the most casual use of his Forest Dragon’s Breath was stronger than even a four-cycle Mantle Dragonfyre. 

While fighting against them was frustrating, it paid massive dividends in my growth. The bouts with Ivy helped me draw out a lot more of my physical power, even if I needed to spend a good bit of time recovering. I wasn’t near the point where I was overflowing with the spell’s full potential, but I was still further along than I had been before. 

My use of Kludde’s Weight against Jinwei alone was enough to nearly knock the tricky fox out when she was suppressing her power, and when it ingrained, it only grew more potent. That particular upgrade to my mana senses was a strange one. It didn’t improve the range, nor did it enhance the quality, or even add a specific new sense, but it seemed to improve the power of the senses nevertheless. I was better able to shove other people’s senses aside with my own, and Impel Senses grew much harder to break.

The improvements from Ivy Cloak, Mycelial Spread, and Fungal Siphon were a bit less dramatic, but every bit as useful. Each of them improved my plant or fungal spells respectively, and thanks to the mycorrhizal effect, as well as my kirin spell, each one of my plant and fungal spells grew more mana efficient, while also becoming more potent. 

Above all, the simultaneous worst and best thing I managed to do was training with Ikki. I’d missed several, so I felt no shame in pushing the simulacra enchantment, and getting in all of the time I had missed.

Fighting Ikki was frustrating in a way that was entirely different from both Ivy and Jinwei. While Jinwei was tricky and Ivy was powerful, Ikki was perfect. Every step he took was measured, every cut with his blade was used to the maximum possible effect, and every spell he cast lasted exactly as long as it needed to and no longer. Even when Ikki suppressed his power down to second gate levels, I wasn’t guaranteed a win against him. I usually won, but it was closer to sixty or seventy percent of the time than every time. When he increased his power to early third gate, I began to solidly lose. I pulled out a win every once in a while, but he still was able to beat me nearly every single time. 

When I eventually asked Ikki to fight me with everything he had, things went horribly for me. I knew that his blade’s domain effect was the ability to impart time into things it cut, but I hadn’t ever really understood just how potent that could be, even when restrained to peak third gate power. With one swing, he split my Tortoise Time spell in half, cutting into the slowed time and adding the accelerated time stored within the sword. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he immediately split into a second copy, and both of them rocketed forward at incredible speed, leaving trailing sword echoes in their wake, all of which began to converge on me. My defensive spell lasted for a moment, but the blades always seemed to find the exact gaps where they were weakest, and I was forced to concede within seconds.

I went back to fighting him at low third gate after that, and in time, I ingrained Combat Echo. That ingrained effect was probably the most complex out of all of my new ingrained spells, as it allowed me to charge up an echo that would last permanently. Using Hudau Heart to split my regeneration and feed both Combat Echo and Ephemeral Rebirth did slow my recovery quite a bit, but I did it anyway. There was too much utility in the spell and ability to not make use of them. 

Even with the general mage training and the spars against Ikki, Jinwei, and Ivy, I still had more to do, and as months ticked by, I started to shift my focus onto those new tasks.