Chapter 1005 Exploring Cloudia
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To move to the Grasslands, we had to take the Crescent River's Path towards the Sunstone Plateau, once there, we would need to climb the plateau and then descend from the other side towards the Grasslands.
We could had gone flying on top of uncle Arafunn's Familiars, but that would have ruined the fun of enjoying a nice trip across the beautiful and lively nature, so we were strongly against that idea.
It might seem a bit excessive, or perhaps useless to some people to walk hundreds of kilometers towards somewhere else if we could easily get there on top of flying familiars, but it was part of the journey to experience our surroundings like this.
The beautiful shining sun, the blue skies, and the greenery adorned our journey across the Crescent River's Path, which was beautifully decorated by the greenery of the Forests surrounding us.
The calming sound of the river as it moved, our parents chatting carefreely, and my friends giggling, jumping around, and exploring every nook and cranny made sure our travel never became boring.
And this walk would also become a nice exercise, as I was constantly reinforcing my own Physique while doing this, all while automatically creating more Runes inside of my Magic Circle.
Even after all this time, it was still quite difficult to do these methods of cultivation passively while doing something, but I was getting there. Especially when the only thing we did was just walk and enjoy the trip.
We could had decided to hunt monsters, but our travel distance was so much that we were better off waiting to find a dungeon or something before hunting monsters, we decided to not disturb the nature of this continent if that wasn't necessary.
"This river is sure long! Just how far does it go?" Lara wondered, following the river with us. "Ah! There are so many River Spirits though… Hi! Oh, hi! How are you?"
As she talked, Lara constantly interacted with every single Spirit she found in the area, we couldn't quite see it, but it seemed like she was already being followed by a couple hundreds based in the Aura coming from behind her…
"It is one of the largest and longest rives in Cloudia, it extends all the way to the Grasslands where it divides into even smaller, and thinner rivers." My mother explained. "Or so I think, I haven't checked the map in a while, we're going mostly blind!"
"Well, it's more fun that way, honey." My father said. "The river ends up drying out once we reach the Dunes. There's an intermediate, drier area between the grassland and the dunes, you'll see how it is once we get there."
"Oooh! I see, I see!" Lara started jumping around. "Hey Luck, what are you doing?
Suddenly, Lara noticed Luck was reading a book rather intensively.
The cover title was "Fist and Kicking Style Combat Arts: Volume II".
"It is a book I was given by Ninhursag…" He said. "I have already read the first one, she said that memorizing it will be good to be able to better grasp my abilities."
"I had no idea that reading books would make your martial style combat somehow better…" Celeste said. "How is that a thing?"
"Well, although practice is essential, learning techniques and methods, alongside philosophy are also essential to master them." Luck pointed out. "I-I've never been someone good at reading books, but these are fun to read."
"I've already read all volumes some time ago." Zack answered. "It helped me a lot to learn how to maintain my composure and the flow of Mana through my body. Also there's this thing called Ki that our body produces, although some call its Physical Stamina or even Life Force."
"Ki?" Wondered Mist. "Is that something we use for techniques?"
"Yeah." I nodded. "I've heard about that name before. According to such books and what my parents have explained, Ki is a natural energy that goes hand-by-hand with Mana. Both are produced by the body to an extent, although Mana is also produced by the Soul, at a much larger scale."
"So whenever we grow physically stronger and suddenly feel a boost of power… Is that Ki?" Zephy wondered, walking by Celica's side.
"Yeah, you've felt it a lot, right? Since you've been growing stronger really fast." I nodded. "It goes along with the enhancement of our Physiques. Similarly, Mana increases as we forge new Runes, and our Magic Circles improve!"
"As long as there's techniques to grow stronger, even a weakling like me was able to get this far. I'm sure you'll get even stronger in the future, Zephy." Zack smiled with a big brother-
like atmosphere around him, patting Zephy's shoulders.
"I'll keep training then!" Zephy was pumped up. "But this trip is a bit boring… There are no fights, are we really training too?"
"Although you've not noticed, we've already walked around a hundred kilometers by now in the last hours." My mother said. "We just move so fast, and we never get tired, so it is hard to tell. People who are over Tier 4 in their Physique usually never get tired of long trips, my son, your Tier is even lower, yet you don't get tired at all, your body by itself is very strong."
"Eh? Really? I used to be very fatigued before!" Zephy was surprised.
"Maybe it's because his Physique is unique among others." I wondered. "Though, we can't really check what it exactly is, it's very strong."
"Yeah, you're amazing, my son." My father praised my little brother. "I bet you have like ten times the amount of Ki another person at your stage would have."
"E-Eh? You're all praising me too much…" Zephy got adorably embarrassed when we were all praising him. He was really the cutest.
"Hm? Oh! Is that the end of the forest?" Suddenly, Aquarina, who had been just vibing with her Spirits while observing the river's relaxing flow, pointed at the distance.
"You're right!" I said.
We ran towards the end of the forest, finding an enormous plateau stretching into the heavens, made of red stone and covered by countless red, orange, and yellow crystals…
Scattered over the plateau, there were many fragments of ancient ruins, and on top, we could the entrance to one of them, decorated by a gigantic red and orange-colored stone in the shape of the sun.
The end of the forest looked quite abrupt, but there was still a lot of grass and smaller bushes here and there, leading towards the drier plateau. We could notice a wide variety of animals in here, mostly living in harmony.
A lot of them resembled giant goats, which seemed to feed off the crystals and stones that grew in here, and looked quite mighty…
"We're here! Welcome to the Sunstone Plateau." My mother smiled. "This is also the home of one of the ruins we've not explored yet… How about we give it a quick look before we continue?"
"Sure!" I nodded. "Are you guys okay with that?" I asked my friends.
Everyone seemed to agree, and even when we asked Pyuku, he didn't seem to mind, and was quite excited to explore the place too.
"I don't really mind taking some detours, let's enjoy the trip together, everyone!" He smiled radiantly.
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