Chapter 16: The cave.

In a certain clearing in a certain forest, Roman and I had just finished our sparring practice, I took the win, something that happened six times out of ten by this point.

"Hey Avys…" asked the boy, sitting on the ground as he was exhausted.

"What?" I replied while standing, I was as fresh as I could be, I had revitalized my body with magic after all.

"I was wondering, why do you train so much? You've already gotten better than me with a sword."

"Because I don't want to be protected, I want to do the protecting."

"Is that why you focus so much on magic?"

"Nope, magic is different, I just like learning more and becoming more destructive as I progress." I said with a smile on my face, a very happy one as I was remembering all the times I created new spells to use against my lovely meat puppets, the beasts.

Those poor thing had suffered every type of abuse imaginable, hailstorms, cutter spells, ice blades, frozen from the inside, backed from the inside, impaled and so many more.

But for some reason, Roman seemed to shiver at the sight of my beautiful smile.

"Why are you shivering?"

"N-no reason, d-don't mind me." He averted his gaze as soon as I looked at him

I narrowed my eyes at him, but I relented soon enough, if he didn't want to tell me then I wouldn't force him, I didn't really care much anyway.

"Oh yeah Roman, I'm leaving tomorrow, so no practice for a bit." I informed the boy, he pretty much came by everyday, it seemed like he really liked practicing.

I couldn't blame him, having someone at your level to fight against is basically a miracle for us, we were both way too young to actually fight the adult merchants.

Those guys were monsters for the little me at the time, they were killing machines purely honed to kill in the most efficient way possible after years and years of combat against beasts.

Most of them, anyway, there were some younger ones who weren't as impressive, but their fully matured bodies made it so I wouldn't be able to beat them anyway.

But the magical side was an entirely different thing, I was a better spell caster than many, since I succeeded in casting ice blades fast enough I managed to tear apart the beasts as soon as they come into my field of view, even father was distraught by the ease with which I slaughtered them.

I could beat even four at the same time if I use all my mana at the same time, purely theoretically, I wouldn't waste it all just for some beasts when I had backup, namely, my father.

The children were entirely different, many did study both magic and physical combat, but their levels were absolutely far below mine, even Roman was probably the very best after me.

But anyway.

"Wasn't you father's trip to Bonehorn in two weeks?"

Bonehorn was one of the cities farther away from our Icerock, we normally didn't go to those places, but we had taken the responsibility of alerting all the Wild Lands cities about the outsiders coming into our territory.

"The trip to Bonehorn is still in two weeks, we're just going to take a look at something outside, we'll be back in ten days at most."

I didn't tell Roman about what we were going to do outside the walls, first of all because even I didn't even know how to explain it, 'We're going to check out a magical fog filled hole in the ground.' didn't sound great in my head.

And second of all, because it wasn't something for him to worry about, we weren't close enough that I'd tell him about my private things, he was only a training partner.

"Sure, I can't wait for the day when I can leave Icerock too, all your adventures sound great, instead I'm stuck here training and waiting while you leave all the time."

I grinned at the expression of longing on his face, the poor guy sucked at magic, at east by my standards, he'd probably have a challenge just killing one of the average beasts, the really strong ones would tear him apart.

"Then you should train more, let's start right now."

After those words we went back to our sparring, which, surprisingly, ended up in the boys favor.

The next morning I woke up and did my usual routine, a bit of stretching followed by a very light breakfast and two cups of water to energize my body.

The breakfast consisted in a stale piece of bread on which I used water and fire magic to make it easier on my teeth and a meat jerky, the usual meal for the Wild Lands.

But just as I was biting into my piece of bread, Sigmund came into the dining room together with my father, they didn't really seem surprised to see me already up.

"Oh, hey little one, I hope you had a nice night of sleep." he asked with his usual cool and low voice.

"Yeah," I replied, "when are we leaving?"

"As soon as you finish your meal, we're ready at any time."

I hurriedly finished my jerky and said, "I'm done, is the carriage ready?"

They had sat down as I finished my meal so I assumed that they did, but the old man's answer surprised me.

"We won't need a carriage, we're going with space magic, we still need to go through the gates on foot though."

My eyes shined, to this day I had been unable to learn it, but no day passed in which I didn't try to learn even a little bit more about it, it was almost to the point of obsession.

Ufine's papers had become incredibly hard for me to understand, it was jam-packed with way too many things.

I had fully understood only the first ten pages in the last year, the thing had at least fifty, but from those ten pages I created at least two hundred pages of my own notes, I was still stupefied by the woman's ability to pack information in so little space.

I even developed an headache when I tried readying the later pages.

But it wasn't a problem, it was purely theoretical knowledge and I still had a lot more to understand about the basic elements before I could attempt space magic.

The theory was clear, I now needed to understand the magical way of doing it, I wasn't that far off though and this chance to study a warp in first person was an invaluable experience.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" I told them with at least three times more enthusiasm than before.

They chuckled a bit, evidently understanding the reason for my change in attitude.

After all, every single time the old man passed by I asked him about it, so it was no wonder that I would be excited.

"Let's go then." we had now passed through the city gate and left our barrier, it was also made to block all space magics inside of it after all.

The old man stood up and took a deep breath, inhaling, then exhaling.

And the moment he exhaled I saw exactly what I had been waiting for, a pitch black crack appeared right in front of him.

A literal crack in the fabric of spacetime, that's what a warp was, but it didn't end here, there was no way it could have been that simple.

I could feel it, the old man had used a combination of fire and dark mana to open it, but he then created a bridge of metal, wind and water mana to connect it to our destination.

Finally, he used light mana to stabilize the whole thing, leaving a perfectly oval shaped hole from which we could see our destination, in our case, a piece of road to Kilbury, fifty kilometers away from our current position.

"Wow." I said with my mouth open, it wasn't the first time I saw a warp, but it never ceased to amaze me, the mix of so many different mana types was astounding.

The old man chuckled at me, "Come on little one, I don't have infinite mana to keep this thing going."

He was right, I could feel that this thing used up a lot of mana, not really enough to dry me out in a short time, but a prolonged use definitely consumed a lot.

I passed through the warp, and it was then that I felt it, a ripple, very slight, but it was definitely there, it was a spatial interference, typically caused by a warp or other space magics, but that wasn't the reason for my excitement.

No, i was excited because feeling this type of ripple was the first step to learning space magic, after all, if I couldn't even feel it, then how could I affect space in anyway?

But right after that my excitement was gone and the call from the damned cave inside of my head returned way stronger than it was before passing through the warp.

"Now, in which direction do we go?" asked the old man, I was the only one who could feel it after all.

"That direction." I said while pointing north-east, Kilbury was north-east of Icerock and it was also the direction I felt the call coming from.

"Great, let's go." and without dillydallying anymore, he opened another warp fifty kilometers away.

This time I felt the process much more clearly, I didn't know if it was because we were far away from the city's barrier or because of other reasons, but the good thing was I started growing more confident in my chances in using it after a bit more practice.

After two more warps, we finally reached near the damned foggy cave, the buzz in my ears louder than ever.

We were still on the main road to Kilbury, just a few hundred meters away from us stood that damned cave, I could feel it, calling for me to get inside.

'Come… come…' it seemed to be saying, it wasn't a true voice, just a feeling.

It didn't take long for us to reach it, I was spearheading the group.

The more I walked in its direction the louder the call inside of my mind, I even thought that I would go insane because of it.

It had never been like this before, normally it'd be just a buzz, but this time it dwarfed every other time I felt it, by a lot.

But then, it all disappeared.

The moment the crater appeared in my field of view, the buzz, the call, disappeared.

I would have emitted a sigh of relief, if not for the fact that I couldn't take my eyes off that damned foggy cave.

"So this is the thing you were talking about, it is very strange indeed, but from here I can't see any danger, I think that we can get closer to it safely, after that it all remains to be seen though."

The old man's words came into one ear and left through my other, the moment they started walking toward the cave on the other side of the crash-like crater, I followed them by instinct.

We reached the fog and the old man tried touching it, feeling it almost solid, his hand couldn't go further at all, no matter how much strength he used.

"This is very weird, I've never even heard about something like this." he said.

"Yeah, definitely weird, do you think it's something dangerous? Should we seal it with earth?"

Seal it? There was no way they could seal this thing.

"Maybe, let's see a bit more." they got too absorbed in their conversation to notice that I hadn't talked at all since the fog appeared into view.

I stretched my hand to touch the fog to, but I wasn't hindered in the slightest and I kept going until I was fully inside.

I could only hear father and the old man's voices from the other side, shouting my name with panic in their voices.

If only they had managed to stop me.