I sat down pretty high up on a tree.
With my head angled to the back and my eyes raised high, I continued to just observe the small violet dot on the sky.
It wasn't another planet. That I could say for sure. Even though stargazing wasn't my quirk, it wasn't the first time when I relaxed by just looking up at the sky. But it was definitely the first time for me to notice such a striking color!
'And there is no denying its aura,' I thought, swallowing down a gulp of saliva.
Just thinking about it caused a cold shiver to travel up my spine.
'I'm not even sure if I can apply the big-scale physics of earth to this world,' I thought, bitting down on my lips.
I used to be passionate about the cosmos and the universe at large.
An unknown. An unexplored space so vast it was hard to even comprehend.
But was this world the same?
Was the ground I was standing on an actual planet? Or maybe for the first time in history, flat-earthers would make some sense?
'I don't know anything,' I thought, refocusing on the meteor far off in the distance. 'And I can hardly recall what tools I would need to study it, not to speak about making this kind of equipment.'
My mood instantly worsened.
I already had my hands full, trying to get stronger and reunite with Mia. There was simply no time for me to busy myself with elaborate and time-consuming topics like astronomy.
'Maybe once I reach the royal rank, I will be able to retreat in peace,' I thought. 'Given how royals are powerhouses, I bet someone would give away a single ranch to avoid getting trouble of fighting me,' I thought, finally finding some positives about the situation.
I was aware that Royal rank could be just another beginning to the same story told over and over again. There was a chance that I would just face a wall of different names and techniques, but one that would ultimately boil down to the same principle of endless growth.
But nobody could deny this hope of mine. The hope that once I would reach that royal rank, I could claim to reach the peak of the world.
Then and only then could I be sure to ensure Mia's and my safety.
'Still,' I thought, raising my eyes back from my hands on the meteor again. 'Without knowing shit about this world, I can even judge how far it is,' I noticed with a grim smile on my lips.
It was unnerving. To just sit and wait for the disaster that was bound to strike in an unknown future.
I was so used to have everything happen relatively well on time that being unable to set a schedule for the problem made me insanely anxious about it.
'It might hit in a minute but also in a month,' I thought, only to release a deep sigh. 'At least if it happened way off in the future, someone else would be there to take care of it,' I thought, closing my eyes to give them some rest.
'Yeah, I won't be able to figure out anything about this meteor right now,' I told myself, fixing the position of my pouch before starting to simulcast my warden and bolt.
If there was anything that I could do right now, with the threat of the meteor hanging right above my head, it was to prepare. Silently training would also help me organize my thoughts and calm my mind, bringing another set of benefits.
"And while I'm at it," I muttered to myself, taking a deep breath before adding the next spell to my combo.
The shatterstone skill turned out to be an evolution of my previous skills. It simply skipped the steps of summoning the warden and bolt separately, making a formation stone shatter all on its own.
Yet, despite being extremely useful for springing some formations, it had an even more important quirk.
The stone itself didn't hold any energy in it. Sure, it could be infused with some, but that process was just too time and focus consuming for me to even bother.
Yet, what this skill allowed me to do, was to infuse one of my formation stones with energy beforehand, turning it into an explosive.
'Rather than an explosive, it could serve well as a mine,' I thought, creating a shatterstone and playing with it in my fingers.
This also answered the question of why it was the only skill with a plus marker on it.
As something that I was doing already on my own, my system had likely an easier time developing that skill for me. As such, the energy and effort saved could be used to turn this skill even stronger than it originally was.
The other two skills turned out to be more tactical than offensive.
The first one, mist gates, allowed me to set up warden stones to act like small-scale teleporters.
I would create semi-permanent portals leading from one place to another by placing two of them and then activating the skill. The distance that separated the two gates would then depend on the amount of mana I was willing to sacrifice for the skill.
Lastly came the aiming warden. I decided to choose it from the trio of aiming warden, timing warden, and precision warden. And my reasoning was simple.
Normally, it didn't matter at all. Without my Mage's Tower raised, there was no need to support my aim whatsoever. After all, I couldn't cast my bolts quick enough to be unable to follow the target with my eyes.
On the other hand, when my Mage's Tower would be raised, the rate of my firepower increased drastically.
And there was a physical limit to how many bolts I could guide directly.
That's why I didn't go for the more-useful sounding precision. Because in order for the shot to be precise, it has to be aimed first. And at the peak of my capability, I was simply unable to track all the shots I was capable of unleashing.
'With those abilities, someone would have to absolutely overwhelm me with just the intensity of their magic. Otherwise, I can't see any way for me to lose,' I thought, taking proper stock of what I was capable of now.
This was the result of me wasting an entire day just to discover my new limits.
Were I to enter a fight just a day ago, I would be no different than an enlightened with just a bigger pool of mana. But now, with my spells firmly explained and lodged in my brain, the range of my capability widened by a massive degree.
"In a sense, I turned into a mobile fortress," I talked to myself with no better listener anywhere around to hear me boast. Yet, this mobile fortress thing...
It still needed a bit of verification.
'I guess I don't need to watch it at all times,' I thought, jumping down from my spot.
So far, I have managed to understand all my new abilities and the new range of my old ones. But there was still one thing that I was missing in my tests.
I had yet to figure out how my new abilities would evolve within the influence of Mage's Tower!
'Well, there is nothing wrong with some more testing,' I thought, standing in a position out of habit alone before summoning all my wardens necessary to lift the Mage's Tower up.
'On the other hand,' I thought, allowing the formation stones from my pouches to flow outside, forming a mind-boggling number of formations at once. 'I wonder if I could watch Mia perform during the tournament?'
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺