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1889 Words
“What?” She didn’t take her head out of the pillow as she asked.
“Liz, could Luna be watching us right now? I just had the thought. If she made notes about us having s*x, that means she’s really watching us at all times.”
Liz yawned as she cuddled Aster. “Yeah, so?”
“That’s an invasion of our privacy. It’s creepy.”
He looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Liz, to his irritation, seemed unbothered. “Yeah, that’s what it means to live with high Tier people. They always know what’s going on around them unless you block them out.”
Matt latched onto that. “How do we do that?”
Liz pulled him back down to curl into him. “Reach a Tier near hers. Or super expensive formations which don’t really stop dedicated snooping. Or live in a building higher Tier than she is. She’s going to watch us all the time, but we can still ask her to leave us alone when we sleep.”
Without opening her eyes, she called out, “Luna. Please, don’t pay attention when a normal person expects privacy. Thank you.”
“That’s it?”
Liz mumbled, “All we can do. And I really doubt we’re the most interesting thing going on. She wants to train us not watch us poop.”
Matt, still unsettled, snarked, “I don’t know. Maybe she has a notebook about how we can poop better.”
Luna looked into her piles of notebooks and threw two out.
The next day, they mostly relaxed as they watched the planet pass under them until they arrived at their destination. It was a large but under construction city, which housed the teleporter that would take them to their next destination.
As they traveled, they settled into a routine of self-training where they could and relaxation when appropriate. It lasted a week before they all got bored and started to spar when they could. They even bought out rifts when they had longer wait times at the teleporter cities.
The sparring was good for all of them.
Matt had to admit that his friends had improved greatly, and even their AI simulated full contact spars were much harder. He was now unable to defeat them even a quarter of the time. Between Vinnie and Tara, they usually had him quickly pinned down and taken out.
Their coordination was much better, and Kyle and Mathew kept him from attacking the more vulnerable backline. It usually spelled his doom once Tara or Vinnie hit him or pulled him underground. Tara was able to place shots though his armor if he wasn’t concentrating the extra layer on a single spot, and he hadn’t had the chance to absorb his new [Earth Manipulation] skill to counter Vinnie.
He was proud of them for specifically countering him, and once he started to change tactics, things settled back into an even split of wins and losses.
With Liz and Aster helping, they still utterly dominated, but each round got slightly harder as each side learned to contend with each other. They never lost, but they occasionally had one of them taken out by the end of it. All and all, it was good training.
Matt also spent a lot of time absorbing the skills he had bought.
[Water Manipulation], [Earth Manipulation], [Air Manipulation], and [Fire Manipulation] were all Tier 8 Manipulation skills that, while common enough, sold for a premium because of how useful they were. The cost of one on the open market was usually above a Tier 14 skill just because of how practical they were.
He had also gotten some of the Tier 14 variants, [Lightning Manipulation], [Mud Manipulation], and [Lava Manipulation]. Those were the only three Tier 14 manipulation skills left in the point shop when they left. They were mostly useless in the day to day as he needed the element available to actually be able to manipulate them.
Matt found that, for all his training, he had relatively awful mana control. Where Liz could weave masterful shapes out of her blood tendrils, Matt was lucky to get water to do more than splash in the direction he wanted.
It caused him to spend more time with his mana control orb, though he used to think that he had gotten quite proficient with it. Apparently, it wasn’t good enough. He found the dexterity needed for the manipulation skills was on a completely different level. He was used to sending mana to spells inside his spirit, which was automatic for him at this point. But manually controlling spells once they were out of his body was another matter entirely.
Manipulation spells were weird. They had an initial mana cost, and for the Tier 8 skills, it was only 50, which he could easily afford with the use of a mana stone. Then, they turned into channel skills, where the skill just needed mana per second to function. That cost was based on the quantity of the element that one wished to move and how intricate the desired movement was.
The casters’ mastery of the skill also increased those limits, while also reducing the mana cost, as he found out when talking to Vinnie and Liz. Even with Vinnie’s innate skill, he had to practice a ton to be fluid with his control. Liz had things slightly easier with her Talent, but water was also just an easier element to move in general.
Matt found his ability to move earth even weaker than his ability to move water. He found air and fire easier but, apparently, most did.
Even with his apparent lack of skill, Matt found it fun to train. Everyone spent time together honing their skills in a single chamber, so Matt could keep them topped off with mana, which allowed them to grow that much quicker. The time together felt less like work and more like busy playtime.
It was like when they were with Annie, Emily, and Conor. They were able to progress the mastery of their skill in a short amount of time when they could practice with zero mana worries.
Matt was pretty sure that he had given Melinda an aneurysm when he asked her for help with the healing skill that they bought.
He couldn’t even cast the spell yet, with the initial cost being 150 mana, but he wanted to learn how it worked.
Apparently, “Cast and send mana” was not how it worked. Melinda had started giving him anatomy lessons every day.
Matt tried to commit it all to memory but knew that he would never amount to much of a healer by the second day. Melinda refused to give up and even took him to a few hospitals where he shadowed her.
That impressed him. Melinda had a deft touch with the patients, and it wasn’t just her Talent. She got people to open up and talk to her about their lives and worries. She put them at ease and usually made her patients leave with a smile, no matter the horrific condition some of them came with. Baxter was always there, watching in the background but rarely interfering. Matt thought he saw pride on the older man’s face more than once as he watched Melinda work.
When Matt needed a change of pace, he used the rune library that he had bought to practice his enchanting with various items. He had even finally convinced Melinda’s team to let him make them a few items that suited them perfectly.
Melinda was the only one with a very minor subaspect to her mana, but as it was death-themed, she flatly refused any item with it. She went as far as to get Baxter to tell her how to remove it. Matt thought it was a waste but kept his mouth firmly shut.
According to the older man, it was mostly an effort of not wanting to aspect your mana with your Concept. Matt listened with the opposite idea. He wanted mana with the endless subaspect. That would be amazing for his enchanting work but, sadly, he had zero progress in that area, where Melinda quickly cleaned her mana.
He made a note to ask Luna about that when he saw her next, but they were left alone as promised for their remaining break.
Still, he had good practice enchanting everyone’s remaining bits of mundane armor before their halfway mark.
It was around that point that Matt got a message from Kelley, complaining about how someone had stolen the planet.
“Some crazy asshole stole the planet and rift from us, Matt. They just up and swapped planets. We lost it all! And, worst of all, she gave everyone a mana stone fifteen Tiers above them, and the Pathers got screwed there, too! We just got notes to collect when we fell off. I don’t want money! I want my rift back!” The crafter was obviously distraught, while Matt was bewildered.
Liz, on the other hand, started cursing.
“Those idiots! They stole another planet. I can’t believe them! They said they weren’t watching. If they weren’t watching, how did they know about what I did there! I’m going to beat my mom when I see her. I’ll turn her into a chicken!”
She devolved into grumbles about punishment after punishment she would inflict on her parents when she saw them next. Each one became more and more outlandish as she worked herself into a huff.
Matt just found it hard to imagine that her parents had stolen a world. He wanted to ask how that was even possible but refrained as he saw how angry Liz was.
Kelley and most of the other crafters, with no reason to stay in Queendom territory, were moving back into the Empire proper. There, they intended to use their newfound knowledge to advance their craft and make money.
To Matt’s irritation, he actually wasn’t able to pay off the debt during their travels, with nothing to add the mana to. It would have been nice to be able to do it during his down time, but when he asked, he was told to wait until they arrived.
Three months later, they arrived in the Empire proper, but to a world that was at the edge of inhabited space.
It was a Tier 9 planet that, while useful, was new enough to be crawling with monsters. It only had two cities currently settled and secure. Otherwise, it was an untamed wilderness, though generally hotter than the normal planets.
When they arrived, they were given coordinates deep into one of the continents and were directed to fly there.
They found themselves in a vast desert that slowly turned into an oven that irritated them all. Even Matt, with [Cracked Phantom Armor], was affected. He had to feel Aster’s misery. His arctic fox was not suited to such dry and scorching environments.
Once everyone was in a bad mood, they spotted a flying house that hovered over the treetops of an oasis, to find a man waving at them.
“Well, hello. I’m Wrangle and glad to meet you. Come inside. I’ve heard so many interesting things that I simply must see for myself!”
- Writer
