Chapter 451 - White Whale

Five hours of testing my new skill give me some basic ideas of what has changed.

I still can place anchors, and I need to place them either very close to my body or within my activated domain. The same as before, it doesn’t change even with the crown activated.

The change is that these anchors are much more durable, and I think if I use the right amount of mana, they should easily last for weeks and probably even months without crumbling. Sure, they will still somewhat vulnerable against external forces breaking them, but even that will require higher expertise, as anchors placed with my new skill seem to be much less noticeable, more durable, and require less mana.

From what I saw, plenty of people have some basic abilities even without the skills. Nearly anyone with some effort can learn to create mana barriers or simple projectiles, and the same goes for disruption of things like anchors or ability to sense mana.

Yes, everyone can do it, but the difference between how well is huge. I mean really huge. Someone with low-level abilities would have no chance in hell to use a barrier to defend even against my weakest attacks or disrupt my anchors — if they could even sense them.

Still, it’s kind of fun to consider that these things are so common. It’s something akin to plenty of people on Earth knowing how to ride a bicycle or to throw a rock. Hmm, maybe there could be a better example, so what… I pause myself there. I’m getting off track again. I tend to do that a lot when I’m excited or happy, my mind just wanders, jumping from one interesting thing to another.

Who can blame me with so much around to discover!

Anyway, I will need to come up with a cooler name than “anchor”. Maybe I can rename it to “mark” or something similar. Something to think of. Other than vastly improved anchors, [Ley Line] improves the connection between them. I can send much more mana through without worrying about them breaking or having to use too much mana and other ways to strengthen the anchor.

It feels like a line connects me to an anchor or anchors to each other, an invisible and powerful line. The amount of mana it can handle is impressive with how thin it is.

I have a suspicion that it will allow me to place my anchors, marks, or whatever much, much further. Probably not on the opposite side of the planet, but a small country away should be highly possible and probably further with some effort.

The efficiency, speed, and losses of mana sent over such a vast distance are things I need to test.

What interests me the most about the skill is these Ley Lines, as I smartly decided to call them. It seems to be possible to do more with them, something akin to Sophie’s web. There’s a chance they might remain stable even without anchors, but that’s another aspect to test as I level up the skill.

Overall, very good stuff.

Plus, I got my [Mana Manipulation] back just as before, even though it shouldn’t be that easy. It’s obvious me and mana just go together that well, even the system can’t split us.

Jumping off the bed, I head in front of the mirror and examine my face.

Still the same asshole.

I breathe on the mirror, making warm air mist it a bit, and draw myself two cat ears on top of my head.

“Nya,” I whisper, and the reflection repeats.

Such a dumbass.

I then pick up my clothes, something I let the seller pick for me. Some time ago, Maya said that I dress up like a homeless man, so I decided to let the shopkeep pick them for me.

I also remember that when Maya said that, I complimented her shirt and told her it fits older women like her.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t very happy with that.

Anyway, the seller spent surprisingly long picking clothes for me, even made me try multiple ones. We picked pants quickly, a simple, sleek black pair that was very comfortable.

The shirt took a bit longer, as she tried to match it to my eyes. We tried gray, we tried brown, but she wasn’t satisfied at all.

In the end, she picked pale green, which I agreed with because it felt nice to move my arms around in it.

Happy with it, I asked her for multiple pairs of the same pants and shirts, and she looked at me like I did something barbaric.

Isn’t that normal? If you find fitting clothes, just pick as many of the same shorts or pants as you can before they stop selling them a year later when you might want to buy them again.

Even as a customer I got forced to at least pick different colors, so I ended up with gray pants, another pair of black pants, and three shirts: pale blue, burgundy, and gray.

Liking the feel of the material, I didn’t complain much, even as she asked such an outrageous sum from me.

At least the bag was free.

***

When an hour remains, I stop by the blacksmith.

The metal sphere I ordered is here. It’s a bit taller than me, and its surface is very smooth, extremely smooth. The only interruption of that is a circular hole barely wide enough for me to crawl through.

“Don’t look at me like that. The integrity of the sphere will increase if the entrance is smaller. Now get in so I can seal it.”

With a sigh, I do just as told, having already paid.

The weirdness of what I’m doing doesn’t escape me. Willingly entering this weirdo sphere to be sealed inside. If I didn’t have an anchor placed in the inn I used and enough mana to defend myself, I would probably be worried.

I light one of my thermal orbs and examine the sphere as it gets closed, and I end up in darkness.

There is a bit of food, some water, and a lot of rib-like constructions strengthening it.

I asked the blacksmith not to use mana while making it and to try to purge it of mana, which is something he promised to do, seemingly knowing about the effects of the white sand.

Still, I know for sure there will be some remaining, but it’s something I expect, and I need the sphere to hold on just for a second or two.

I start working on my plan as well, while making sure I touch as much of the sphere as I can—I wouldn’t want it to not teleport with me.

Using a bit of my mana, I form the thinnest and most durable mana projectile I can. It’s barely as thick as my pinkie and as long as my pointing finger.

With my new skill, I tie an anchor to it and continue compressing it for thirty minutes, making the projectile turn dark blue with hints of purple and light blue colors. It’s really close to destabilizing and exploding after turning bright white. Then I start storing kinetic energy behind it, ready to shoot. The amount of kinetic energy is nearly the entirety of my vortex core.

Lastly, I wait, watching the countdown and packing my bag, putting food and water into it.

As the timer ticks down, I breathe slowly.

Breathe in. Breathe out, my mind constantly keeping the projectile and kinetic energy in check.

Then the timer hits zero, and I leave Beyond.

Immediately, the sound of compressed metal creaking surrounds me, and I hear the sound of charged white sand even through the thick metal sheet.

A single grain of white sand pierces through the wall, and I tilt my head to avoid it.

So much for there being no mana, but I shouldn’t expect such mastery over mana from the blacksmith.

I throw a spoon I stole from the inn into the air and watch where it falls. Then I shoot the projectile in the opposite direction.

The projectile launches at such speed that a smaller shockwave is created inside, reflecting from the spherical walls to the metal construction.

Losing my hearing and having it replaced with constant ringing, I watch as the projectile easily pierces the metal, also creating a small hole through which grains of sand slowly start falling in.

Waiting for the last possible moment, I teleport away just before a grain of sand touches me.

The teleport is smoother than before, and it feels more stable. I appear near my projectile, which then disappears from my sight, continuing to fly much higher.

Being really high, I let myself fall for quite a while before I start absorbing kinetic energy to stop the fall. It’s all mostly to not trigger whatever aerial defenses are around this moon.

Looking down below me, I see stretches of white sand dunes going on for what seems like forever. The difference from before is that there is a single giga dune right below me.

It’s enormous.

As the sand got pulled toward the Champion, it made the surrounding area nearly flat, and only slowly is the wind creating dunes again.

The white sand now lies scattered, a prison that lost its purpose when Caius died.

A small problem is the huge number of sand particles floating in the air, most likely sent high into the air in the process of killing the champion.

I pop my [Mana Domain] into existence, and every time a few grains enter my domain, I send a small pulse in that direction, the grain of sand following that pulse.

With the number of sand particles in the air, it's difficult, but doable so far.

As I start thinking about what direction the central region might be, the air reverberates, something I can feel in my chest.

Down below, a geyser of sand explodes high into the air, and from it, a massive monster jumps up, just one of its eyes multiple times my size.

[Dustveil Whale - lvl ???]

It has three eyes on each side, each of these eyes yellow with a red pupil in the middle. The whale is massive, even bigger than the Gaiahtra I met before, and its color is pure white, even whiter than the sand it jumps from.

The air reverberates again, and this time it's an attack targeted at me.

My body shakes wildly, and my mind blinks on the verge of passing out. Dustveil Whale also moves its huge tail, flinging a massive amount of sand toward me, the particles flying my way.

Okay, let's keep a distance and then shoot it with some huge attacks.

Redirecting more kinetic energy, I fly at high speed away, even at the cost of some grains of sand passing through my domain and burrowing through my body. I start concentrating a javelin near me, its color quickly turning tricolored, soon about to destabilize as I compress and feed it more.

When I turn around to shoot, the whale is nearly below me. The monster, the size of a skyscraper, is moving at a speed comparable to mine.

I don't think I’ve been so surprised in a long while.

Still, I shoot my javelin, and it breaks the sound barrier, a boom sounding in the area as it disappears from my sight.

The whale twists, opens its mouth, and eats my javelin.

Its six eyes watch me as I count down to the explosion, and when the javelin explodes, there is no sign of it. No mana escapes the monster's mouth, nothing seeps through the skin. Instead, the whale buries itself deep under the white sand, swimming and then jumping into the air, its massive body twisting in the air like a dolphin.

Another attack slams into me, and my flight altitude lowers before I fly higher again.

FINE then.

Instead of a single powerful attack, I start forming dozens of mana projectiles that look like nails, with flat ends so they don’t pierce too deep.

I shoot them at the whale, dozens of these projectiles in a few seconds, and I speed up, adding more until hundreds of them fly through the air like bullets shot from a machine gun. A huge number of them stab into the skin of the whale that follows me even as I fly at high speed.

The mana on the projectiles charges the white sand, which starts attacking the whale now, the grains moving wildly around in the air.

Burrowing under the sand, the monster appears on the surface soon again. The wounds scarring its massive body, but too little to take it down.

When I repeat, the whale burrows under the surface and jumps back up, only to unleash that acoustic mental attack against me before burrowing again.

The monster follows me for hours, soon joined by two more whales, and later three more.

Six giant monsters, two of them slightly smaller and even faster, constantly following me and throwing their attacks against me, draining my mana that hasn’t restored fully from a day in Beyond. But the desert is now smaller and shallower at the edges.

I think they weren’t lying when they said the entire mana desert would attack the Champion if a grain of sand touched him. All the sand, charged by mana batteries scattered around, kept attacking until the Champion died, only stopping then. A huge pile of sand built up in the center, but the desert is slowly returning to its former state.

Soon the sand isn’t deep enough for the moby dicks to follow me, and they stop there, their sad cries music to my ears.

It’s still not considered being out of the desert, since my mana isn’t restoring, so I guess the edges aren’t defined by where the sand is.

With the promise of revenge against the white whales, I fly longer, and when my mana finally starts restoring, I land on the rocky ground, typical of the 6th floor. It’s night, and the purple nebula shines in the sky.

My next steps are simple.

Finding out where the fuck I am, either in the central region or back where we came from.

Finding out the way to go back and grab as much sand as I can to make and sell items to the system shop.

Lastly, resuming my training with RTE and orbs and then regrouping with Group 4, or at least with the twins, Lily and Biscuit, as we have planned before.

***

Next Chapter