Chapter 27 The space between spaces.
A small purple portal appears in front of our inn, with an old man carrying a cup of something warm coming through it. The steam drifted in the cold air as he walked into the inn's small back yard we used for training. We had just finished our morning drills, everyone practiced with a blade except Alice, she punched things, a poor tree having taken much of the abuse over our stay. She was trying to get the ‘iron knuckle’ skill since she was a variation of pugilist it should be possible.
“Quite an active bunch aren't you? As a mage I never learned how to fight like this, I just focused on blowing stuff up.”
He guffaws as he recalls something.
“Now, I heard that Xion and Sarah wanted to learn, so come on over and I'll get the lesson started.”
I hand him the 2 gold for his services and he launches into a lecture.
“Now, Spatial magic isn't conventional in any way, at higher levels it's like making more space between two spaces, for your use it's like using your magic to punch a needle sized hole through space and then following it. Space tries to fix itself and during that small tear it sticks together, allowing teleportation. Punching through space is the easy part, holding it while it sticks is the hard part. Watch closely and I'll show you how basic teleportation works.”
I watch closely, feeling his mana turn sharp and feeling like something is fundamentally wrong with where it disappears to before the coin he was holding disappears into nothing then reappears into his other hand.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Until you've gotten the basic skill,or more preferably the regular version of the skill, I soundly recommend not moving living things through it. I once heard of an apprentice who teleported one of his arms and legs into a nearby lake because he wasn't focused, don't worry though! He's all right now.”
Jean laughs as the rest of us look on with unimpressed expressions.
“Anywho… go ahead and start practicing, you might get the basic skill by the end of the week.”
A few hours pass on by as we practice, we both manage to thread mana through space but damn, he wasn't exaggerating, holding space together is like trying to catch a fish with a sock. We had destroyed a few pebbles with our practice, apparently the reason why spatial magic wasn't used offensively was because once something gained enough Endurance it would resist harmful changes to its body. Now that's not to say Spatial magic can't be used offensively, it's just inefficient against strong opponents as you have to use lots of mana to nullify their endurance. We continue our practice over the week, each time we finish our training sessions it feels like our minds are squished flat, on the second day I manage to teleport an apple 2 feet, on the 5th day I get the skill.
[New skill learnt! Basic Spatial magic- teleport items and learn to feel spatial distortions more accurately, you can also now feel the layers of reality vaguely]
After gaining the skill I sat down for a bit before going back to training. I doubt it'd be able to teleport anyone soon but at least the skill would grow faster under the teacher. At the end of the week Sarah barely manages to get the skill at the end of training for the week. All of this magical training also ended up boosting our mana by a little bit.
[Mana 116 -> 122]
As I rubbed my forehead from the strain I had put myself through, I could feel it. The different layers of reality were there, only just barely, like listening to someone whisper from a room away.
“Can you feel that Sarah?”
“Yeah. Only if I pay attention to it though.”
We wouldn't teleport anything alive until we had the normal version of the skill. A part of spatial magic and more specifically the gate spell, requires you to be able to visualize your destination. So if we were close enough and could remember the place we could make a temporary gate. So making a gate right now was a big no. But in a month or two….
