26 – Return

Vivi escaped after a short meeting with Marcus. After [Blinking] onto the city wall and gathering another point of data for how the dimensional fracturing seemed to be healing—slowly but steadily—she had officially completed her errands.

Before setting off, she double-checked Saffra’s necklace was where it belonged. The silver locket rested in the same inventory slot. Not that it could have disappeared. Just paranoia. Pleased, she closed the screen and began casting.

“[Greater Warp].”

A disorienting hurtle through space later, she stood in a starkly different scene, the sounds and sights of Prismarche’s busy urban life replaced with a gentle breeze swaying tall pine trees. Her eyes sought the track two dozen feet away, cutting a path through the forest.

When she had first [Blinked] off the Convoy, the first thing she had noticed was how fast the fortress of metal had screamed away, carriages flickering across her vision. She didn’t know how fast the Convoy moved, but it probably equaled or surpassed a normal train on Earth.

How much distance had it covered since the…hour and a half, she estimated, since she’d left? More than what a few [Blinks] could cover. Or a hundred. Thankfully, she had enough mana to chain them without end. And also had top-tier mana potions on standby if she should for some reason need them, which she wouldn’t.

“[Fly].”

Floating into the air, she watched the pine forest spread below her. As she rose, the horizon slid backward in all directions, revealing more and more of the world of Seven Cataclysms. Hovering below the clouds, she came to a stop and admired the sight.

Even an inferior version of this world had captured her attention—and the rest of humanity’s—when VRMMOs exploded into the mainstream. Being present in the flesh as she floated thousands of feet in the air, admiring the gorgeous landscape and feeling the wind flutter through her long white hair, took her breath away. After five minutes, she shook her head clear and dragged her attention back to reality, though she could have hovered there for hours.

Spotting the train tracks, she pointed her staff in the correct direction and declared, “[Blink].”

From her current height, the spell didn’t seem to move her far. The same way even an airplane might seem like it was trundling along when looking out the window from the clouds.

“This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” Vivi sighed.

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

She’d done this once before, when questing out to the Hoarfrost Plains. That said, she hadn’t needed to use that many. A few dozen?

[Blink] was a short-range teleportation skill. For normal mages, it was used to reposition on a battlefield, not as a means of travel. Vivi’s absurd stats meant the spell moved her much further—but she could hardly [Blink] miles with each cast.

She also discovered a devastating side effect. Spatial relocation wasn’t kind on the metaphorical stomach. Even one [Blink] could be disorienting, and not just from the sudden shift in landscape, but how it spawned some deeper sensation, her body being swallowed into whatever existed between, or inside, or outside of physical reality before being spat back out.

As an experienced spellcaster, Vivi was resistant to that sensation. But after her fiftieth [Blink] in a row? Like how spinning in a circle a few times might be fine, and if someone had a strong stomach, even dozens, but eventually queasiness came for anyone.

In a handful of minutes, she’d shifted landscapes entirely, an impressive feat considering how many miles she could see in each direction.

“Okay. No more of that,” Vivi mumbled to herself.

Lowering her altitude, she relied on [Fly] instead. She picked up velocity, and soon blurred by. A conical shield broke the wind so her hair and robes didn’t flail around, and after that—well, the trip became pleasant. Who wouldn’t love flying?

Though, she acknowledged she wasn’t moving fast enough. She needed to catch the Convoy, not match it.

“[Stride to the Horizon].”

That did the trick. If before the trees had been a blur, now they were a single paintbrush smear.

Was it as fast as rapid [Blinks]? Probably not, but also not too much worse, and a hundred times easier on the stomach. She could manage spamming [Blinks] if there was an emergency, but Saffra would be sitting in the comfortable Lounge and studying. There was no rush. She climbed in altitude, slowed slightly, and enjoyed the scenery.

However quick the Convoy might be, Vivi’s leisurely flight was many times faster. In less than fifteen minutes, she spotted the train in the distance.

…The train that wasn’t moving.

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The train of which only half remained standing, the other half derailed and curled away, as if the front had been picked up and thrown.

A siege was underway. Hundreds of monsters swarmed the stranded iron fortress. Mounted turrets blasted magic through thick barrels in explosions of lightning and fire.

The sight struck her dumb. She failed to immediately process the chaos.

A part of her told her she should have expected this.

Everything slowed as her adrenaline kicked in. Something similar had happened in her fight against Lailah and Dominic, not that it had been much of a fight. While Vivi went through most of her day with one second being one second, when combat kicked in, or otherwise when needed, her perception sharpened and a second turned into ten—or a hundred.