Chapter 7: The Ocean

As father anticipated, mother came to my room that night and attempted to cradle me like I was a newborn. She’s a lovely mother, but I’m thankful I have siblings who get most of her attention. Oliver, Sara - I’ll pay you back for this someday.

A few days later I set out towards the mountains south of my family’s estate. The estate is at the southern tip of my father’s territory and the country. North to south it’s about a week’s carriage ride to cross the country, but east to west is significantly longer. The mountains aren’t well mapped, and according to my father, there are more mountains and a rocky coast line past what we can see. Ships occasionally take that route, but there aren’t any beaches so that edge of the ocean is hardly used.

I haven’t snuck out as much at night recently because my magic routine has been taking longer. Maybe because I keep spatial storage activated all the time my body has responded by massively increasing the amount of magic it makes. Or maybe it’s just part of getting older.

Running magic through my body then dispelling it in a controlled way takes a while, and I can’t drop it down to zero anymore because everything will fly out of my spatial storage. I started draining all my magic to the limit at night because I thought it’d work like a muscle and give me more the next day. But it might not work like that. Either way I’m glad I practiced containing how much flows out of me, if I let it go naturally, I glow like I’m irradiated.

A thirty-minute jog into the forest is my typical training grounds and is out of site and sound range from the estate. Which means I can pick up some speed. I haven’t been able to get far enough away to test my max speed, but if I get past the first mountain I should be able to cut loose. I’m wearing slightly beat-up black clothes so anyone who sees me shouldn’t think I’m a noble’s kid.

I’m take off. It’s hard to judge speed, and until I’m past the mountains I don’t want to jump between tree tops, but I’d definitely get pulled over for how fast I’m going. I can use wind magic and move the air in front of me to act like a shield, so I don’t feel much resistance. It reminds me of being on a motorcycle.

I run at a brisk pace and it takes about an hour to reach the other side of the first mountain. I could move much faster, but until I’ve got a handle on the area, I’m taking things slow. There’s a slight valley with plenty of trees before the next mountain which is roughly 2km away. This is a good enough spot for tonight, I should be able to train in the valley to my heart’s content.

Building a little wooden lodge wouldn’t be hard, but the stone of this mountain seems to be layered by density. The denser the earth the harder it is to use earth magic to manipulate it, but I should be able to work with the layer around 20 meters above the vegetation of the valley. I carve out a little area roughly five meters across and five meters deep, but just three meters high. I shape the roof into a triangle so it looks like a little house.

The carving of earth magic makes a sort of creaking sound in the stone as I slice the floor, walls and finally the roof. I manipulate the energy in the space created from carving and visualize it sliding out of place like a jenga piece. It's suspended in the air by magic just outside of my new living area.

Do I just throw this down the mountain? Hmm..

I slice the front face of what I pulled out and place it in the entrance, then make a human sized entry way instead of leaving the area open to wind. The rest I break up, first into two platforms, one for a bed and one for a table then place them inside. With the remaining I roughly break up the stone and place it on either side of the house entrance.

It’s not bad, but this’ll be a pain to do everywhere I want to make camp.

I head down to the valley and clear away a number of small trees to set up a training ground. The space is roughly half a football field in size with large trees all around it. The perfect isolated training ground. I use earth magic to create a small hole in the ground at the edge of the training area and fill it with water. Peering down it’s like having a mirror in the forest. I manipulate my magic and the energy around me and direct it towards the top of my head to use as healing magic. On contact my hair starts to grow longer until I have enough to fully push back or tie into a ponytail. My disguise is complete.

I want to test out my speed when running, jumping between magic footholds and using different methods for flying. I kick off the ground in my training area and cross it in an instant. I make magic footholds on either end of the training grounds and jump between them like a rabbit when my ears nearly blow out. I found the sound barrier. 

I start again, this time with more wind magic flowing around me - but my ears nearly bleed all the same. There's one other option. I condense magic into a shell around my body and leave only an opening below my nose for air to breathe. My rabbit imitation starts again and thunder roars as I accelerate myself past the speed of sound, but the shell dulls the noise to an acceptable level.

I maintain the shell and create a violent wind at my back to push me along, it's what I always imagined flying would be like. I cut the wind and stand on a foothold a few meters above the ground then I move the foothold and my body moves with it. I'd topple over at high speeds, but that gives me an idea.

I condense magic behind my shell and move it to push myself along. Slowly, then quickly, then too fast for comfort. It's hard to balance compared to using wind blowing at my ass, but it's faster. I raise myself higher into the sky, but my hands start sweating profusely. I've never been a heights guy.. this will take some practice.

If I ever want to zip around above the tree line or near a populated area I’ll have to refract the light around me so I’m not seen. Though, it won’t do anything about the wind pressure or noise I make.

I return to the cave house, satisfied that I understand where my current limits are, and it isn’t bad. If I was going to stay longer, I’d make a little bathing area. The floor is the harder stone material that would’ve been difficult to cut or move with earth magic. The magic that radiates from me bounces off of it a lot more than it does the walls or ceilings.

That reminds me of Sophie, the sin of lust, and looking at jewels in the capital. Hmm I wonder if there are any precious metals or gems in the mountain. I did want to go to a mine and try throwing magic at the rocks to see if I could sense anything. I’ll try it here.

I sit down on the stone floor and place both my palms down on it, then I let the magic I’m normally holding in flow out through my hands. With my eyes closed I can sense my magic working its way down into the stone with some resistance. 20 meters, then 30, now 50. It’s definitely denser and there are little spots where it feels like my magic won’t penetrate totally, but nothing that feels quite like what I felt in the jewelry shop. I push magic deeper and focus harder on sensing any irregularities. Around 100 meters below me there’s a small spot roughly the size of a baseball that my magic is barely penetrating.

It’s pretty far, and the stone is pretty dense. I don’t think I can manipulate the earth around it with enough force to yank it up to me. Even if I could, I might destroy the foundation for my house. I focus all the magic I’m pushing into the rock into a straight line between me and that chunk of rock, then I visualize my magic condensing to a number of small points like a water cutter used to slice through metal. I push it back and forth to break up the rock between me and that chunk into something like sand.

I reach down to the point just below me to feel the rock I was trying to break up and grab a handful of it. It falls through my fingers like sand.

I can move a rock 100 meters away through sand.

I manipulate earth magic to start pulling the chunk of rock through the sand tunnel I’ve created and sand starts to pour out of the top. In the next instant, a rock flies up and into my hand. It’s shiny. I make small ball of light and can clearly see chunks of gold.

I typically push magic into objects to strengthen or gauge things in a very slow and controlled manner so they don’t explode. Plus gold and other precious metals seem to reject my flow of magic. If I push magic less delicately, I might be able to destroy the rock and leave just the gold.

I put a condensed magic barrier in front of my body and start indelicately pushing my magic into the mix of gold and stone. I ramp up my output until.. BANG.

The rock explodes, taking most of the skin on my right hand with it. If I wasn’t so diligent about infusing my body with lines of magic every night my whole hand would probably be gone. Most of the stone turned to dust in the explosion, but lodged in the floor and wall in front of me are two fairly large chunks of gold.

I use healing magic to recover the skin on my hand then pull the gold pieces from where they’re lodged. The first chunk is roughly the size of my thumb and the second is twice as big.

I don’t know how much this is worth, but I’m going to need to check every mountain I stop at. If I can find gold, gems or even spell stones, my life will get a lot easier.

After cleaning the nearly destroyed room I pull my bedding from spatial storage and the cooked boar roast I placed in it. It’s basically room temperature despite being hot when it went in, but it’s not spoiled and smells fine. I eat it as is and lay back. With a clean room and full stomach I turn in on my first night in the mountains.

Day two, with my planned training out of the way, I’m free to explore as much as I want today. I fly up into the air until I find the height that makes me want to vomit and get a layout of the land between camp and the ocean. There are a few more mountains before I hit the water, which means a few more chances to find gold. I spend most of the morning searching the rocks and have some great finds. Two more little pieces of gold, a small diamond and on the last mountain I find several small spell stones.

I’ll have to make trips further east and west to better search the mountains, especially for this last peak, with enough spell stones I can make something incredible even by my old world’s standards.

Satisfied with the haul, I make my way to the last mountain before the ocean. The view is breathtaking, below me is a rocky coastline stretching to the horizon on either side. And in front, nothing but pure blue ocean. It doesn’t smell that salty either, it’s probably like the west coast ocean I knew in my last life.

If I remember correctly that means this ocean water is going to be cold. But that doesn’t matter, I’m going for a swim.

I dive from the cliff into the water with a splash. The water isn’t frigid, but it isn’t comfortable. I swim down to about 15 meters and across the ocean floor when I run into something unexpected – a crab. There’s no practical method for transporting meat and fish great distances in this world. The rich have spell stones with ice magic in them, but of the common affinities ice magic is the least common, and no one can maintain ice for significant journeys. The only seafood I’ve seen in this world have been pre-cooked, dried or salted to keep.

With the ocean so close I’ll need to develop traps to catch crab. If I go further out maybe I’ll even find lobster. I don’t remember what kind of areas shrimp are found in, but I remember traps are used to catch them, so I’ll have to make the trap well enough to hold shrimp too. Oh man I love the ocean.

I set up camp on the oceanside mountain that night, but I make my house area a little smaller on the off chance a boat passes by near the shore. I even brought my little crab friend back with me. He’s getting cooked in some boar fat I brought, so I don’t think this friendship will last.

I haven’t really made any friends in this world. I have my family, and when Oliver is a little older maybe we’ll be friends. Shayna and I are close, but she’s like my third mom or a very involved aunt. I blame class society, unless family visits or some noble is in town to see father I don’t get the chance to meet many people.

I thought nobles went to swanky events? Eh maybe not in this country, or maybe father doesn’t like leaving his territory. It’s fine.