The Third Step: Chapter Seventy-Seven

Dusk drew from the people within her and moved away from me, zipping between the trees at an incredible pace, using spells from three dozen different beasts at once, and occasionally leaning on my Foxstep to move at a truly incredible rate as she headed right toward the centerpoint. My mana senses washed out, covering a huge area, and I immediately dismissed the history of rocks, air, trees, and animals, focusing on trying to find the constructs. I found one, then Foxstepped over, slamming my palm into its ‘chest’ and throwing it into Dusk’s realm. As soon as I’d touched down, my senses were surging outward again. I caught another, Foxstepping through the woods, tapping its shoulder and stowing it away, then vanishing again. I teleported into the air, catching myself on an Immoveable Lock and throwing myself up to where a silver construct was floating, and transported it into Dusk’s realm as well, then flashed down to the ground. 

This was why Orykson had all but insisted I sign up for the event. If I was measured against any of the diviners directly, I would be markedly worse than them. I had less precision, less range, and less experience. If Dusk was measured against any of the fliers, she’d do better, having enough maneuverability to keep up, but she couldn’t match the raw speed of a three mana type dedicated flier. If I was measured against one of this competition’s dedicated spatial mages, then it would look like a tie. I could out-teleport any of them that didn’t have a legacy focused on improving their range and speed, but I couldn’t match any of them in their abilities with demiplanes and pocket spaces. By the measurements, we looked like a team that was bound to lose. 

In that way, it was somewhat emblematic of the very way in which I built my mana garden. It was a mess of spells held together more by theme than by intricate design, and if someone attempted to add it up into a neat equation, I’d look horrifically inefficient and chaotic. But that was because I wasn’t focused on getting the little things to add up nicely and neatly. I wasn’t Orykson, I wasn’t Ikki, and I wasn’t Meadow. I was me. And in a similar way, I wasn’t a standard diviner, I wasn’t a standard spatial mage. It was through the chaos that I built my strength. 

Hannah flagged me, having found a golden construct, and I Foxstepped across from her, grinning. This construct had gotten stuck in the hollow of a tree that faintly glowed with abnegation magic. Not strong, but just enough to stop me from sensing it or picking up on the psychometric trail. But for Hannah, whose dominion had a natural proclivity to look in tree hollows and caves and other places she’d not spent time in life, it hadn’t been enough. 

There was a flash of light in the sky, and I let out a groan. Someone had just turned in a jade construct. I needed to move faster. Before I could, though, I felt Dusk reach out. She’d collected a pair of bronze constructs on her way to the center, but now that she was there, she created a portal and shoved the collected constructs out. Just like that, we leapt from having zero points, to having twelve. I stepped through the portal, my senses erupting outward, and felt the two dozen spatial anchors around me. 

The center was in a natural clearing in the trees, and it was actually a giant teleportation platform of its own, but one keyed to the constructs to remove them. It was an Arcanist level spell, and it felt oddly slippery – I couldn’t latch onto any of the spatial anchors that made up its construction. Luckily for me, I didn’t need to, not in order to implement my plan. We weren’t allowed to attack the other people in the challenge, but interfering with other’s spellcraft wasn’t just normal, it was expected. More than one team used counter-divination to block other scrying spells, people with demiplane breaching or spatial thievery legacies were frequently recruited for the event, and… Well, flight didn’t have a ton that could counter the other fliers without putting them at risk, so it usually went uncontested. 

I stretched out my hand as I created an anchor of my own, connecting it to Sensory Network. I channeled power through my Runelight Lens, casting Impel Senses, and I molded them around each anchor, bringing any attempt for them to use Sensory Network to teleport back here to a close. Then I cast Mass Enhance Plant Life, and called up one of my newest plants, the ones I’d bought from the nursery in Obsidian Forest: null-ranunculus. A spatial lock rushed over the area, and I turned, running away at full speed, and teleporting away as soon as I was in the clear.

What I did wasn’t strictly unique, of course. Similar tricks had been pulled in the past, especially when they had a player with both knowledge and spatial magic. It just wasn’t as common as some spectators thought it might be, since the knowledge mages needed to be out and about, not stashed in a demiplane to get them close. Spatial locks were much more common, as there were three locks here already. I’d ignored them, as the standard spatial lock was designed to block teleportation spells, not the use of a demiplane. 

The spatial locks here were also rather low effort, and for good reason. A spatial anchor in an area with a lock was usually able to provide enough spatial definition and warping to allow for the person who created the anchor to teleport in anyways. Locks were still useful, of course, as ways to block casual teleportation. They just weren’t great if someone had already prepared to teleport. But I’d blocked off the Sensory Network spells of the other spatial mages, and then layered another lock on top of that.

I blasted my senses out around me, this time focusing especially hard on Sky Dragon’s Senses. The last golden construct had been hidden in a spot that made it hard for casual observation, and I was betting that the gold and jade constructs had specifically been made to hold themselves. If that was the case, then the fact that Sky Dragon’s Senses transmitted through light, wind, grit, vapor, and other more physical mediums was going to be the perfect counter to it. I could feel Dusk working on a similar assumption, spreading her dominion out. Her sensory range wasn’t anywhere near as extreme as mine, but with her flight through the forest, she was still able to cover an impressive range. 

I found a shaky ward, one that felt like it was built to prevent mana senses and divination spells, and punched through it, teleporting over and slapping a silver to send it into Dusk’s realm, while she then shoved it out through the portal. Silver, not gold, but it was still something of a confirmation. Hannah grabbed my attention, and I teleported over to a wandering bronze, even as Dusk found another, and my psychometric trail picked up a third. 

I continued to blitz through the forest, my endurance slowly draining away as I maintained my spells. Despite how fast the first jade had been found, I’d collected a half-dozen more points in bronze, when I felt a group on the edge of my mana senses. At first, I thought nothing of it, but the group was holding still. Maybe they were just waiting for a divination to come in, but if not…

I Foxstepped over their heads, catching myself with an Immovable Lock. They were in the process of trying to remove a gold from a series of rocks, each of which glowed with power that seemed to straight up block spatial mana from being accessed within a small sphere – something I learned when I tried to Foxstep over and found I couldn’t at all.

The diviner of their group, who was a telluric and knowledge mage, began blasting their mana senses at me, probably hoping to disorient me long enough to let their teammates drag the construct out of the stones suppression and cast whatever spell they needed to open the demiplane for storage. I blocked them with a shield of Impel Senses, then teleported to the ground, sprinting over, hopping over one of the stones and slapping the construct. It vanished, pulled into Dusk’s realm, since that was not reliant on spatial mana. I continued sprinting until I was out of the field, then vanished as I Foxstepped away. 

Dusk yanked on my brain, and I turned, stepping into her realm, then stepping out next to her. She spoke quickly in a series of bird cheeps, telling me that she needed help. She’d felt something deep within the mud here, but her spell hands couldn’t get a grip on it, and she was too small to go into the mud and get out again – that much mud might not be an issue for my physical strength, but she couldn’t escape it without using her offensive spells to blast the mud apart. 

I probed at the mud with my mana senses. It felt like normal mud… until I turned on my Witch Eyes spell. The mud was real, yes, but I could see streaks of violet light being hidden by illusions. That led to me using Placid Mind, and I was able to push off a mental effect that made my senses slip and slide over the thing at the bottom of the mud pit. Clever – especially since the effect wasn’t active, but rather reactive. It was pushing at me because I’d shoved my senses at it, and if I drew them away, it stopped, meaning that there was rarely any mental and abnegation energy in the air to be detected. If I hadn’t had Dusk’s strange worldspirit dominion to tell me there was something at the bottom of the mud, then I’d have never noticed it. 

Maybe some competitors would balk at diving headfirst into a big mud pit, but I wasn’t. I was of the opinion that dignity was a feature of the wise and arrogant. I wasn’t the first, and I hoped I wasn’t the second. I leapt into the mud and began to shove myself down as quickly as I could, breathing through my connection to Dusk in the way Orykson had shown me by tossing me off the side of a ship. It took me longer than I thought it would, but I got to the bottom, slipped the construct into Dusk’s realm alongside myself, and stepped out next to her. There was a flash across the sky as someone turned in a jade construct. A moment later, I realized that someone had been us.

That was when my spells started to peter out. Maintaining so many different spell effects was draining, and while I was constantly moving across the forest, it did still take time to trace psychomantic spells to their present source, and with my mana channels so damaged, my regeneration was at an all time low. I went to draw from my usual plants, but most of them were dry, having been used just a little bit earlier to help pay off Dusk’s prodigious mana debt from her flying competition.

“Primes,” I muttered, then debated reaching for Burn Future myself. Ikki had told me I could use it, just with caution, but I’d done such a good job not using it for a very long time now. I didn’t want to go back to relying on it every fight, like I once had.