VIRION POV
Below the balcony I was standing on, a huge battle that would determine the future of Dicathen was happening.
Two female scythes were overwhelmingly winning against four lances, blurring with even the smallest movement.
Princess Kathyln walked next to me, watching over the battle to intercept any stray attacks with the power of her new, shiny white core.
She softly spoke, "I hope Art makes it in time."
"Me too, child, me too."
Suddenly, Bairon failed to dodge a jab to the ribs by the scythe, tumbling on the grass floor with a big hole in his chest.
Princess Kathyln put on a determined face.
"I'm going to fight too."
She was about to jump down, when I stopped her.
"I'm sorry child, Arthur would kill me and then go on a rampage in Alacrya if you got yourself killed here." I said with a laugh, eliciting a laugh from the princess as well.
KATHYLN POV
With my mana enhanced eyes, I spotted a white dot in the distance, closing in with extreme speeds unreachable for anyone other then Arthur or an Asura.
"He's here." I said, my expression turning into a slight smirk.
The scythes suddenly threw a big crystal on the ground, and flew away at full speed.
It seems Virion noticed the immense amount of mana stored in it, shouting. "I-It's a bomb! Back away!", as he tried to grab my hand and run.
I stood in place, unmoving. It was futile, if that bomb exploded, the entire castle would go up in flames.
The bomb, however, disappeared, and there stood Arthur in its stead. The bomb proceeded to blow up 500 meters behind him, creating a huge crater.'
He looked at me with a piercing gaze.
"Where did they go?"
"C-could I go with you?" I asked hopingly
"No"
"Please, I don't wann-"
"No, it's too dangerous. now, Where. Did. They. Go."
I pointed, and he shot off towards the direction, but I went after him.
After a minute of flying, Sylvie stopped me.
"Please, let me go with-"
"I've managed to convince him to let you come with us, sit on my back." She said with a cheery voice.
We reached a large Alacryan cavern, landing next to Arthur who was standing beside a big portal.
"They've definitely already gone through the portal. I'll follow them, you stay here."
"What, that's ridiculous! If you're going, we're coming with you, Arthur!" I said with a slight blush
"No, you'll both be in danger if you go."
He tried to step closer to the portal, but Sylvie blocked the portal with her body.
"Either you let us go with you or you don't go at all, there is no other choice. Stop trying to do everything alone!" said Sylvie in a fierce tone.
"It's too dangerous! I will just kill the scythes and come back. Easy as that."
I stepped forward, and now stood only a few dozen centimeters away from arthur.
"And what if you don't! What if something happens!" I yelled with uncharacteristic loudness. "Please, let us come with you." Tears slowly dripped from my face.
Arthur pulled me into a hug, letting out a sigh.
"You are right, I'm sorry. I trust you, let's go."
blushing, I said "thank you"
Creating a barrier around ourselves, we stepped through the portal.
ARTHUR POV
We found ourselves in a totally abandoned cave with a water fountain and a huge door with various runes carved upon it. It was most likely a trap, but I couldn't stop thinking about the previous conversation.
Turning around, there were no traces of the portal to be seen, nor any traces of Alacryans or Scythes like I feared.
"Arthur, I think our only option is to go through the door." said Sylvie, morphing into her human form.
Activating Realmheart, I noticed there was an overabundance of Aether particles floating in the air.
"Could we stay here for a week? This environment is perfect for my training, and I have enough food for months stored in my dimensional ring."
Getting the green light from both Kath and Sylv, I brought out Uto's horns, throwing one to Sylv and absorbing one for myself while I played with Aether particles.
After a few hours, I had decided to do something I had never done before. I tried to absorb the aether into my body. The aether poured into the runes on my body, as if they were made for this, and while the absorption was slow at first, it was speeding up as I was able to influence more and more aether particles.
Another hour passed, and my runes were completely filled with aether. They were glowing purple, allowing me to have my own personal vast aether supply, allowing me to influence the aether at will throughout my body, but not outside of it.
This meant that I could now safely infuse dawn's ballad with aether, thus making it able to cut through and disperse magic, or coat myself in aether.
I noticed the aether in my runes had a reddish tint to it, while pure aether was purple. I figured this was because of impurities.
and like that, a week passed.
I had learned how to shape the aether into a solid construct, which was as easy as filling the orb with even more particles, along with shaping said solid construct into some basic shapes. Every time they were touched, however, they either dispersed or broke.
My absorption of mana from Uto's horn was futile, however, as the mana was all funneled inside the little stone Wren had buried in my hand.
During the last day, I had been working on upgrading my mana rotation and starting on learning aether rotation.
The former went well, while the latter got minimal results. I could now use aether rotation during walking, but that wasn't much.
Kathyln woke up along with Sylvie who was sleeping on top of her.
"Good morning, Arthur." she said while stretching out
"Good morning" I answered with a smile
Sometime in the afternoon, we packed up, and finally opened the big stone door.
We found ourselves at the edge of a floating island about 50km in diameter surrounded by more floating islands with diameters of tens of meters to a few kilometers. Each of the floating islands contained a different structure, the one we started at contained a tiny hut whilst the rest contained either houses, caves, small forests or lakes. Some, however, contained pools of lava, or a pedestal with an orb of pure aether. The biggest island by far contained a giant castle, comparable to the one on Epheotus.
All in all, there were about a hundred islands.
There were also mana beasts ranging from about C rank all the way to beyond SS rank from what I could see, as well as normal animals for food.
Kath stepped forward, looking at the scenery ahead of us.
"This is beautiful"
"Yeah, I wonder if the exit is inside that castle. Let's first take a look at the hut, then some of the other houses and then the purple orb of aether." I said
When we arrived at the hut, I could tell it had a sheet of aether around it with Realmheart. This seemingly shabby shack had a door with a complex lock made out of aether, and was coated in it to such extent that I couldn't break through using force.
We'll need to find a key somewhere.
"Alright, our next destination is the large building resembling Helstea auction house." I announced
When we came close, I breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the unlocked doors of the building. Getting inside, the interior looked like an average small house with hundreds of handprints on the walls.
Using Realmheart, I saw aether coalesce around a singular handprint whenever my hand came close. Upon touching my hand to the handprint, nothing happened. It was only after I willed aether into my palm that something happened.
Realmheart truly is akin to cheating, normally this would have taken like an hour.
The building slowly disappeared from existence, and we found ourselves in a storage room of a luxurious building. I looked for various swords, but found merely empty handles without a blade. Something told me this was intended, and I willed aether into the handle. Suddenly, a dull blade shot out from the handle, ending at a perfect length for my body.
Kathyln looked at me with a confused look on her face.
"These might be training tools for aether, to learn how to create a sharp edge using aether." I told her.
It was the same story with the armor, it was merely an outline of the actual armor, and you were supposed to create a sturdy armor using aether. I took two of the sword handles I liked along with two armors, intending to study them later.
After an hour of searching for something worthwhile, Kath found herself some warm clothing to prepare if there was cold, along with a new staff.
Sylv also found something, a small orb that would damage itself, that she could then heal with aether, thus practicing her Vivum.
We had expected a puzzle, or an enemy, or anything really to appear and keep us from leaving, but surprisingly, we were allowed outside without problems.
Kathyln tugged on my sleeve, her face shone like an excited child.
"Let's go see the orb of aether now."
I nodded, and we slowly flied towards the aether orb.
While getting close to the orb of aether, however, it sent a tiny amount of aether inside the castle, disappearing through a small hole in one of the towers.
As I was wondering why it did that, I suddenly heard a ghastly roar come out of the castle.
Instantly turning towards the source of the sound, I saw an abomination.
It looked like a bird with stone spikes most prominent on its back, with some small ones on its head, looking at its jaw, its lower jaw was filled to the brim with razor-like teeth while the upper jaw was empty. It is extremely skinny, to the point where its ribs are fully visible and its stomach has pretty much disappeared. Its tail looks like a cloth cape, with small holes and tears visible. The wings were similar, although looked much more like skin, with sharp hooks at their ends. Its back had a yellow, almost orange color, while its shoulders and underbelly had a slightly reddish tint. Its tail along with the underside of its wings were all dark cyan.
Its intelligent, bright orange eyes were scanning around the area, finally locking onto me.
For the first time in a long while, I felt fear.
Author's note: let me know how you liked this chapter in the comments, I decided to do something a little crazy and unexpected. Thanks for the support as always.