“I’ll think about it,” I reply to Klaman’s rechallenge. “There are some people I want to consult first.”

Plus, I want some time to prepare and try to cap my [Sense Magic], although I’m not entirely sure I should accept. I doubt he can guarantee me a legendary point.

“How do you intend on getting me a legendary point, by the way?” I ask.

“By uniting all the Lunaleyan lands, of course. You don’t have to personally be on the front lines; you just have to be the one making all of the decisions and leading the war efforts. However, with me, winning is all but certain, and Forren and Vocana will exhaust themselves.”

I’m not entirely sure that would be enough; however, doing it through peaceful means would definitely be enough. Countries like their sovereignty, so it’s incredibly hard to convince them to willingly give it up. And besides, uniting the countries doesn’t necessarily mean conquering them all; it could mean making some sort of union or united states.

It would be a long-term thing, though, regardless if it’s done peacefully or not, and I already have one of those in the works. Besides, operating so many clones all over the place will quickly drain my mana.

“When we next arrive to trade, I’ll give you my answer,” I say before turning to leave.

It will be at least another month before then, so I have time to prepare. I also want to dedicate more time to training my Bond and Class levels again. I have been slowly gaining Bond levels, especially from all of these international affairs, but fighting monsters has always been the quickest way.

Once the meeting is over, we fly the delegations back to their homes before returning to another Vocanna city to build another market. I have plenty of time to talk to Kayafe and Safyr about Klaman, so I am not in a rush; plus, if I want to talk to Kayafe, I have to be there in person, and I think Safyr would want to talk to the real me if she has to talk to me.

Since we are only halfway into our trade mission, I spend this time training. I still don’t know if I’ll accept Klaman’s offer, but it’s not a bad idea to cap my skill anyway. I can try to look for other lands while I am here, but I and everyone else already have our hands full. Other lands aren’t going anywhere, so we can get to them when we get to them.

The thirty-fourth and forty-first breakthroughs, sensing magic beings and apotheosis seeds, are going to be very hard to level up, so capping my skill is probably not going to happen any time soon, but I can get close.

Of course, there are some breakthroughs that I’ve reached max level in without focusing my training on them. Ones like passive sensing and sensing other’s perceptive field, I’ve gotten during my time with the Lunaley, and I’ve trained to sense when I’m being tracked with Ruluna. Then there are ones I’ve capped from crafting, like sensing super-solid mana and solid vitality, so I am starting my new training session at level eight-hundred ninety-five, almost nine hundred.

I start with training my perceptive eyes, seeing how many I have, which is a staggering one per skill level, so almost nine hundred; and that’s not factoring in my race bonus, so it’s much higher than that! This means that an unenhanced skill would only have one per ten levels.

Needless to say, I won’t ever need to use all of them, but it’s nice knowing my options. Perceptive eyes aren’t actual eyes but rather a source of perceptive vectors, as in they are the things that emit and receive the vectors. This means I can use them to really fool Klaman, as there is no way to trace them back to my body. Once the eyes receive the information, it sends them back to me not via vectors but through a link that can’t be traced through the same methods vectors can, but they might be tracked through other means.

I don’t think they can normally be damaged, but my experience with the Rachnoid proves that they can be if the enemy has a special skill. I will still have to be wary of special perceptive traps and perceptive-harming abilities.

Now that I think about it, Isn’t it just impossible for Klaman to track me? Unless he also has the ability to track links, which is possible, but he literally would be unable to track my perceptive beyond my perceptive eyes.

Still, as an assassin, and a legendary one at that, I wouldn’t put it past him to have a link tracking ability or magic item.

I spend the next few days fine-tuning my control over my perceptive eyes, but it isn’t until I got around to seeing how perceptive pressure works with them that I gain new insight into them. 

The eye feels as if the higher I raise my perceptive pressure, the more it opens, but I can funnel this pressure, so it’s not omnidirectional, and I can do it with only one eye if I want to. This means that I can have one eye attract the attention of someone or have multiple eyes target different trackers to split them up.

But there’s one thing I’ve been wondering about. What happens if I funnel my strongest perceptive pressure with all eyes into one beam? I doubt it will hurt anyone, but maybe it can be used to overwhelm someone else’s perceptive eye?

The theory is that people can sense my high perceptive pressure when I use it to scare others, even when they don’t have a perceptive skill. This means that they must have a perceptive eye or something else that can feel my perceptive vectors, and if that’s the case, then I may be able to overwhelm that. This also explains how I can feel someone else’s perceptive field, even if it’s only for other people with [Sense Mana] or [Sense Magic]. Theoretically, I may be able to sense all perceptive fields in time.

I require a test subject and a tracker to see if I can’t blind their tracking ability too. Fortunately, I know someone who is both a scryer and a tracker.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

 

Archmage Holuna Ruluna sits on a bench, happily munching on her lunch. After the incident with the thief, she is exhausted. The damn teleporter has been going around robbing all the wealthy households they can, it’s a good thing he stayed away from the Runalymo while they were here, but he instead used that opportunity as a distraction to rob many more people.

She managed to set up a trap and catch the guy, but he did injure one of the new recruits. Everything would have been smoother, and they would have caught the thief sooner had the best people not been sent to the frontlines.

Normally Orders don’t help in wars, but Forren wants to abolish the Orders, and the Order of Flame wishes to maintain good standing with Vocanna as the nation they call home.

“How are you feeling?” Ruluna asks the recruit.

“Horrible, I’m all shaky and feel like I’ll throw up” He sits with his head in his hands.

Potions can save one’s life but whatever they put in them makes it a bad experience. What few healers they have are off to war, and most healers end up joining the Order of Healers, so they are currently stuck with potions.

“It won’t be the last time you’ll need to drink one,” Ruluna says. 

She had her own fair share of the muddy liquid, so she won’t spare any sympathy for the recruit; it’s just another part of the job.

They finish the rest of their break before separating; she has to file a report on the thief mission.

Just as she finishes the report, the receptionist knocks on her open door.

“Alysara is here to see you,” she says.

“Bring her in,” Ruluna says, hoping Alysara can free her from this boring task.

The familiar three-tailed girl shows up, with her usual air of elegance around her.

“I have something I need to train; it can help you, too, I think.“ Alysara says.

Great, more training. This girl is always thinking of ways to counter-tracking skills, but she has to admit that it has helped her vastly improve her own skill. Having someone genius enough to master a scrying ability and able to come up with crazy ways to defeat tracking means she can get a lot of breakthroughs. Not to mention someone of her skill level makes it very easy to level up her own skill.

“You think?” Ruluna asks.

“If anything, it may grant you a very rare resistance skill.”

A resistance skill? Is this even related to their normal training?!

“I highly doubt this is related to tracking” Ruluna eyes the blue-haired prodigy with suspicion.

“Yes, most likely. It is a means that may, theoretically, temporarily, damage your ability to scry, maybe even track, depending on if they work through the same mechanism.”

“Damage my ability to scry?! You can’t damage skills; that’s impossible… right?” Ruluna had to remember who she is talking to. If it was anyone else, she’d think they aren't in their right mind.

“Yes and no, I’ve once faced a monster who attacked my perception, so I know it can be done, and I know it’s only temporary. It isn’t damaging the skill itself, that should be impossible, but rather your perceptive eye, which is, to put it simply, a metaphysical eye which allows you to scry and maybe track other’s perception.”

“Fine, But you’ll have to help me train a resistance to whatever you want to do.”

A moment later, Ruluna recoils as a blinding sensation overwhelms her as if she stared at the sun. She tries to use [Sense Mana] but can’t see a thing with it! She can still see physically, thankfully, but now she is left with a feeling of vulnerability.

“Can you track me?” Alysara asks.

“You have to raise your [Sense Mana] pressure first,” Ruluna says, trying to get rid of the sudden feeling of vulnerability.

“Interesting,” Alysara mumbles. “I’ve raised my pressure to the max, but you can’t feel or track anything?”

“This is temporary, right?” Ruluna asks, double-checking.

“Yeah, it will take a few hours to days to recover.” Alysara, before mumbling something else as she thoughtfully puts a hand on her chin, “hmm, perhaps…”

A soothing feeling washes over her, and slowly her vision recovers.

“I’m nowhere near a proper healer, but at least I know where you need to be healed. I wonder if Lanya knows about this and, if not, how much will she pay for it?”

“I didn’t know you could heal,” Ruluna comments.

“It’s a function of my Bond. Technically, it’s not healing; it’s a return to a previous state, but it’s not time manipulation, either. Did you get a resistance breakthrough or skill?”

“No, you can’t get a resistance skill from overwhelming attacks like that; usually, it has to be something weak enough that I have hopes of resisting.”

They train for the next several hours and continue after Ruluna obtains the resistance skill, earning several breakthroughs with Alysara’s help. She doesn't know if she’ll ever need this skill, but she can probably merge it with another skill or something on her next Class evolution; if anything, it will help her scrying and tracking Class.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Safyr flies around the Nexus admiring the view. The Runalymo have adapted well after the recent disasters that befell them, they are surprisingly hardy people, but then again, they always have been. 

They will do well once she’s gone; they will have Alysara. And Kayafe, once Alysara acknowledges that she already has the means to free her.

For ten thousand years, Safyr has watched over the Runalymo, dutifully keeping her promise to Kayafe, and soon, maybe in a few more years, she’ll finally be freed from her promise, and she’ll be able to seek a new home, a new territory.

However, that can wait. Alysara has much more to discover, and someone like her only comes once per realm. She should be nearing level one thousand in her [Sense Magic], a feat she has only heard of before.

Will Safyr finally get the ability to upgrade her racial [Mana Sight] into [Sense Mana] after hearing so much from Alysara? Her recent racial evolutions have already vastly improved her [Mana Sight]; it’s honestly a little scary how one girl can be so beneficial just by teaching someone else.

It’s not impossible to upgrade racial sight skills into sense skills, it’s hard, but by specializing into perceptive abilities, one can do it; it’s just Safyr preferred abilities that improved her combat potential.

Safyr checks her race evolution choices hoping for a better improvement, but no luck yet.

She’s close to obtaining a title too.

Perhaps when she has completed her oath, she’ll give Alysara a gift, well, partially to pay Alysara for her knowledge and partially so she can get stronger and be more capable of defending herself. After all, when she finally frees Kayafe, she’ll need something to replace it.

Just then, Safyr notices three large shadows of writhing tentacles floating in the air. Around them are hundreds of smaller shadows buzzing around the larger ones excitedly swarming in the skies above the Nexus.

A strange chill creeps down her spine as whatever these things are slowly descend onto the villages below.

“Not on my watch!” Safyr zooms to one of the large ones and unleashes her Bond, pulling it out from the Layer it’s hiding on.