The weird feeling of wind not hitting his body as he traveled at the same speeds he flew at normally made the entire world feel like a videogame. The only worry Elijah had was if it was possible to cross the mana barrier. Elijah's body began to ripple, and was forced onto the other side of the barrier once past the halfway point. The exact same feeling of when butterflies are in his stomach, was what he felt throughout his traversal of the barrier.
Elijah had crossed into a blizzard of epic proportions to the point of not being able to see fifty feet in front of him. Swiftly, he flew close to the barrier, and traversed to where he thought the west side of the outer region was. This was his chance to see the state of the outside, and based on his experience with the government in his past life, every disaster that threatened the lives of the entire population of the world was always downplayed. It was obvious the exact same scenario was taking place again…
The supposed fields were covered in multiple inches of snow, which made it hard for Elijah to discern if there was any damage done to the farmland. However, one thing was for sure. The only beasts in sight were the familiar and deadly ice bears that sent shivers down his spine.
Abel was in the dimly lit cave, and noticed a slight tremble of Elijah's body.
Elijah manipulated the environment, and split the space on its neck with ease, and watched the ice bear tumble to the soft snowy ground. A commotion from the ice bears around them caused mighty roars to be absorbed by the snow, which then caused a couple of humanoid beasts to peek outside the burned doors of the houses so nicely made for them.
Goblins!
Goblins were quite a rare beast to see, and came in the colors of gray, green, and purple. These goblins were a mix of mostly gray and green with only a couple purple beasts, which made Elijah assume the purple beasts were quite powerful.
With curiosity flowing through his soul, he once again split the space of a purple goblin, and watched its head tumble to the ground. Inaudible laughter was coming from Elijah as he watched the goblins scream and run around in fear. Spears and different simplistic and complicated spells of many different types of elements were being thrown everywhere with some of them passing straight through Elijah's body! The feeling was weird as the moment he opened his eyes, he saw a ball of fire in front of his face, only to feel nothing as it passed through his body.
Elijah flew into the air and headed for the outer wall. Suddenly, an excruciating feeling began washing over his body. At first he didn't notice it, but slowly, it grew into a feeling that caused him to wince with pain. A purple ethereal trail of something unknown was seen in the distance of the blizzard.
A shadowy and humanoid figure with multiple squirming protrusions was walking toward Elijah who was intently trying to figure out what was happening.
What kind of beast is that? How is i-it h-hurting me me?!
The pain grew as the creature walked closer. The sight of a smile full of disfigured teeth, glowing dark purple eyes, and tentacles coming from its back sent Elijah into a daze.
Instinctively, Elijah tried conjuring magic, but to no avail. His only option was to fly, and with the knowledge of Astral Projection, he focused on his ethereal string that seems to be tinged by purple energy, and flew straight through it while his speed increased drastically. The pain slowly waned, but that did not mean in the slightest that Elijah had stopped. A POP noise was heard in the ears of his body, followed by the voice of a familiar man.
"You are awake."
Elijah quickly stood up and walked backwards while gripping his soaking clothes at his chest. The image of the creature that seemed to defy everything he had learned about this world and his own, played back in his mind.
"You seem to be distressed. What happened?" Abel asked.
"Have you ever heard of Astral Projection? Elijah asked once his heart calmed.
"Never, but it sounds like something rather complicated.Tell me about it."
Elijah knew he probably shouldn't trust this man as he doesn't know his background, however, something like this won't cause him any problems. Abel is stuck here. "It is when your soul or consciousness leaves your body, and you gain the ability to move any which way while being invisible to the world. You enter a different plane of reality."
From Abel's expression, he knew he didn't understand it fully. "So your soul leaves your body, and you can fly around like a bird without anyone seeing you?"
"Yes, that is a simple way to think about it. I just did it accidently when I went into the area past the whirlpool. I flew outside the mana barrier, and observed the environment."
"Haha! That's incredible! What did you find?"
"The lands are filled with beasts, although right now, they are all hibernating because of the blizzard. I suspect if I somehow projected again, and searched every house. I would find beasts in each one…"
Abel stayed silent for a while with his hood draped over his head and a smile on his face. It seemed he was waiting for Elijah to ask a question to the man with more answers than he can imagine.
"What do you know about coursing mana through your body to strengthen it?"
"I hope you didn't try it yourself. Most people don't realize what they are truly doing, and overdo it ending up with their body being torn apart into tiny specks of matter. Haha, what a sight to think about."
"You sure are creepy old man. Fortunately I didn't go that far, but the right side of my body felt like it had thousands of tiny fractures spread evenly. Is there a way to use this power without inflicting damage on myself?"
"That's a great question. Honestly, I have some memories in the back of my head, scattered memories that I can't seem to make sense of. I think before I came to this cave, I was someone else. One of those memories is me, or someone using this power that caused the destruction of my body. That's why I think nothing about me is symmetrical. The only way I can think to control this power would be to use small amounts of pure mana, or maybe use it outside of your body? If that's possible of course."
"Do you mean to push the pure mana outside my fist to emulate the same amount of damage it would do if my fist was coursing with the pure mana." Elijah had already thought about using this new way of magic in small amounts, but using this power outside his body wouldn't give him the speed of the punch even if the strength of the punch was there. His movement would not be able to be enhanced with this potential method.
"Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Again, that is just a theory, so it might not work at all. Now, can you show me some of your space magic, I want to see some of the spells you have come up with."
Elijah nodded with a smile as his hands rose to a central height. The ends of several dripstones fell to the floor one after another with different spatial spells. All of them were spells Abel had seen before besides his spatial shift spell, which he decided at that moment that it should be considered its own from spatial split.
"Wow! I've never seen that before! Instead of simply splitting the space, you are shifting it! Have you ever thought of separating space?"
"What do you mean?"
"Imagine your space splitting spell as two lines that sit on top of each other. If you separated those lines, or moved them away from each other in a nonparallel fashion."
"I think I know what you mean."