The cart rolled on the snowy path again, but the air it carried had grown dense. Apart from Byram, who drove the cart, the three brothers assumed their meditation position and felt the influx of mana rushing in from the surroundings. The floor of the cart glimmered with a spell array that ran on the mana shard sitting in its notch.
Yet even then, the density of mana gathering towards them failed to reach the threshold. The shard pulsed faintly beneath the array, its glow uneven, as if it struggled to justify its own existence in such thin air. The cart creaked onward, wheels crunching through frost, carrying more expectation than mana.
“It won't work like this,” Clay said, opening his eyes.
“Hmm, the density is too low for all of us to meditate together,” Thorin said. “We have to take turns.” The spell array that he’d carved into the body of the cart was part of the dowry that the old man Rayliegh had given him. It only had one function—gathering the surrounding mana and locking it within a controlled area. But even with its efficiency, it had little to work with. The mana out in the open world, without a mana spring nearby, was too meager to create any substantial effect. Still, meditation wasn’t optional. Even scraps had to be taken.
The three looked at each other and decided the order after a simple match of rock paper scissors. Thorin came in last while Quin went first.
Since they had nothing else to do, Thorin and Clay maintained and sorted their equipment. Despite its promised durability, Thorin’s chained blades had taken some damage. The edges had dulled, and one chain had a crack that ran along its length. Given the abuse he’d put them through, their structural integrity still satisfied him. Now, if only they had some more functions beside just being tough…
His greed stirred, then settled. The chains rested heavy across his palms, familiar in a way that bordered on intimate. They weren’t elegant, nor clever. They endured. For now, that was enough. He honed the edges again, realigned some twisted links, and ignored the crack after polishing it smooth. Unless he re-forged the chain, there was nothing he could do about it. Perhaps Quin could fix it once he got the hang of Artificer methods.
For Clay, since his Onyx Shot was a blunt-force artifact and was essentially a lump of metal, it only carried surface scars. After cleaning and polishing, the red-and-black metal ball shone like new again. He also filed and sharpened dried bones from their loot to use as projectiles, though he grumbled about finding a spell that would let him pull them back after firing. Single-use weapons were beginning to test his patience.
Quin’s combat style relied on weapons the most. Even his choice of class, Berserker, included the Weapon Arcana. Yet among the three, he was the only one without a mana artifact to his name. When his basic weapons shattered from long-term use, he’d relied solely on the
“What kinds of booster rings did you get from that old man?” Clay asked in a whisper, careful not to disturb Quin.
“There are several,” Thorin said, matching his volume as he scoured the stack of rings in his inventory. Because of the lack of time to organize and the watchful gazes of the three Haden cousins, he’d ignored the entirety of his dowry till now. “Which ones do you want?”
“I’ll take one for either spirit or mana regeneration,” Clay said.
“There’s one for both,” Thorin said and tossed him two thick rings identical to the ones he wore.
“What will you use?” Clay said, sliding the new rings onto his free fingers.
“I’ll use one for ‘Acuity’ and one for ‘Heightened Perception’,” Thorin said, stacking two more rings onto already occupied fingers.
“I’ll take ‘Resistance’,” Quin butted in.
Thorin clicked his tongue and kicked him while Clay chuckled. “We were whispering because of you, fucker. Meditate already.”
“Don’t distribute the treasures without me,” Quin grumbled. “I must participate. Is there any ring for enhanced recovery as well?”
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“There’s one for ‘Blood-Activity’,” Thorin said, checking the stock. “It should be for stamina and increased healing.”
“I’ll take it,” Quin said and wore the two rings on empty fingers. Even his pinky was bulky enough to fit the wide band. With his increased ‘Vitality’, the knucklehead was only getting larger.
“You’re wasting the mana shard,” Thorin scolded. “Go back to meditation or switch with me.”
“No way,” Quin said, shutting his eyes tight as he dragged free mana towards himself in a visible swirl.
After dealing with the inventory, Thorin and Clay occupied themselves. Clay helped Byram drive the cart and studied the route on the map, while Thorin experimented with space bubbles again.
Though the cold winter had sent most of the insects into hibernation, he still found plenty of Snow Spiders hiding beneath the white powder. The biting cold was their paradise. Their poison froze the blood of those they bit, but it was deadly mostly to the mortals. So, Thorin scooped them from the snow and tested new theories on his space bubbles with their sacrifice. After hundreds of Snow Spiders died for his cause, patterns began to emerge. They weren’t solutions, not yet, but consistencies. The failures stopped being random. He finally found a direction.
The foundation of what he was trying to achieve lay in the integrity of the space bubble’s outer shell. When he applied a section of the
spell model into
Thorin held the spider’s crushed corpse and grinned. Every failure until then had left him with nothing. The void had devoured everything he threw at it. This time, his failure left something behind. It gave him an intact corpse. He finally had a thread to follow. It was thin, fragile, and easily lost. But it existed. For the first time since touching the void, Thorin wasn’t guessing anymore.
As such, they rotated meditation, camped in the wild when the bulls needed rest and food, and continued their journey. By the time they crossed the first manned border into the Whitebridge Kingdom and turned west, Quin succeeded in crafting a crude storage pouch. He’d burned through materials, but the base was complete. Thorin helped attach an inventory space bubble to the bag, finalizing the artifact. It would sell for a decent number of mana shards.
The days blurred together after that. White roads, grey skies, and the steady rhythm of wheels and hooves. Progress measured itself not in distance, but in what they learned to carry. A few days later, Thorin also achieved a breakthrough of his own: the core space of a fae-bag. When he placed a spider inside, it merely entered hibernation, just as it would in a standard fae-bag. The space could only hold insects, but it was enough for Thorin to stop in a town and party with several pints of ginger ale.
After that, he focused on increasing the size of the new space bubble, though progress was slow. Quin continued producing storage bags, earning them a steady flow of shards. In the end, those repeated days carried them to their destination without any hiccups. No bandits appeared, and the Shepherds stayed away.
The dark gloom and the eerie whispers reached them long before the Southern Whispers battlefield cleared the horizon. The air carried a biting chill unlike winter’s cold. It seeped into bone and spread through blood. The trembling wasn’t from the cold anymore, it was dread. Fear was becoming an instinct. Even breathing felt different there, each breath weighed and measured, as if the air itself judged whether it belonged inside them.
Thorin and the two could shrug off such ambience. Even Byram endured it for now. But the bulls refused to move forward. Byram forced them with whips and coaxed with words. He persuaded them with promises, yet they didn’t budge. At best, he kept them from panicking. In the end, they had to seek refuge in a nearby town—Moonstead—where the gloom’s reach was faint.
Magi and the mortals mingled within the town. Since much of the population inside could ignore the gloom, the streets buzzed with vigorous voices. Laughter clashed with whispers, steel rang against steel, and every conversation seemed one breath away from turning into a hunt. The Magi who stayed here, hunted in the Southern Whispers. They were all hunters, and so, they thickened the air with the stench of blood.
“We can rest here for the night and move out tomorrow,” Clay said after booking rooms at an inn that allowed the bulls into its stable.
“You’ll have to stay here when we leave,” Thorin said to Byram. “Just stay put, there shouldn’t be much danger. I doubt any Magus will bother hurting mortals.”
“It’s all right,” Byram said, setting his baggage on a wooden shelf. “I haven’t slept properly in days. I’ll just sleep. You guys go ahead, don’t worry about me.”
“Well, this is it,” Quin said. “Tomorrow, we heal your heart. No sword hanging over your head from now on. You won't start panting after exerting yourself a little either.”
“That is if hunting higher level undead works,” Thorin murmured.
A pessimistic thought rampaged through his mind, one that he’d kept at bay until now. Back in the cave, he’d already hunted the Walkers. Yet, his heart remained the same, as weak as ever. The only hope he held on to that helped him move forward was the fact that his heart was of the Ghost. It had always leaned towards the specter-type undead rather than the physical ones.
So, perhaps, if he hunted stronger Wraiths and their ilk, his heart could finally heal. Or fracture beyond repair.
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