We kept traversing across the coast until we were ready to call it a night. We had no real goal until Vee's quest revealed sothing, or we stumbled upon this mysterious Leon by accident. Either that, or we discovered civilization or other travelers.
While Vee was the master of close-range detection, my whole repertoire of [Soul Sight], [Soul Sense], and [Soul Vision] ant that I could scout ahead for any threats.
If we detected soone approaching, that gave more than enough ti to shapeshift into sothing less conspicuous. If they were friendly, we could ask them for directions to the nearest town, or if they'd spotted any rn.
I wonder if rn are like elves and dwarves, or like goblins and orcs? In retrospect, I should have asked the elves about them.
I didn't dare ntion that to Vee, or I'd never hear the end of her teasing. It wasn't my fault that my usually good mory was partially selective based on what was more interesting to .
As I magically crafted our shelter for the night, I received endless complaints from the picky spider about my lack of imagination. Naturally, I proved her wrong by holding perfect sli replicas of various structures I'd seen or been in during my travels.
My [Sli Mastery] boosted [Chiric Mimicry] allowed to replicate pretty much anything at a glance, especially when combined with my plethora of Soul traits. If I gave the order to my [Sub Cores], they could probably replicate a building down to the cobwebs in the corners or cracks in the walls.
"So if you can make it out of sli, why not out of magic?" Vee asked.
"Because sli is better and easier."
"I bet if you took [Mana Shaping] you could do it."
"I'm quite happy with [Mana Weaving], thank you very much. Once I finish my groundwork on new templates, magic will be a breeze. Plus, I'm sure I'll get [Mana Dominion] eventually."
"Hopefully that's the best of both worlds," Vee agreed.
I could create a solid chunk of earth and then use [Acid Sli] to lt it into a shapely structure. But now I don't want to. It would give Vee too much smug satisfaction. I lived in hollowed-out trees. She's gotten way too spoiled recently!
We exchanged watch duty, although technically it wasn't needed due to my [Sub-Cores], but both of us wanted to be better safe than sorry. But despite our beach fortress cube, nothing disturbed us.
We continued our journey, occasionally hunting monsters and fishing for food. This ant I got my hands on so basic aquatic creature profiles, but none of them really had anything I'd want. I needed a powerful monster to grant sothing amazing like [Enchanted Fins].
We could have travelled faster, but since Vee had yet to get any extra exclamation marks added to her "Urgent!!" quest, we figured there was still plenty of ti to have our vacation.
I spent most of my free ti creating a good template for my spells so I could slot in my different affinities and get a result while Vee was trying to use [Mana Shaping] and [Dinsion Magic]. I tried asking her what she was doing, but she kept saying it was a surprise she was working on.
Of course, I did peek a few tis, and all I could tell was she was trying to do sothing with either [Pocket Space] or [Rift Door]. Most of the ti her targets were pieces of food, but other tis she seed to be casting it on nothing at all. It was very peculiar.
The monsters we encountered during our hunts were surprisingly low level, aning that even with my distribution maxed out towards my class, I'd yet to gain a new level.
Fishing, hunting, and basking in the sun, our days were quite pleasant with no elven politics or assassination attempts. We were simply minding our own business and wandering.
Then, one day, Vee exclaid with joy and rushed to approach .
"I did it! I did it!"
"Congrats, now what exactly did you do?" I asked.
"It would be easier for to show you. Also, can I have a heavy rock?"
I pulled out one of my ultra-dense mineral orbs that I was using as a makeshift weapon with [Geokinesis] and placed it before her. Vee enlarged a bit before tying it to her back with thread.
"Here goes nothing!" she cried out and used [Warp] to teleport herself out into the waves.
I nearly cried out in surprise, not expecting her to be so reckless as she plumted into the water, and rather than floating, sank like an anchor.
"Vee!?"
She didn't respond. I used [Blink] to follow her, and then I used [tal Sli] to sink to the bottom after her. When I reached the bottom, I found her slowly scurrying along the seabed, radiating smugness across our bond.
"Are you crazy? You don't even have [Bubble]!" I cried out in anger.
Vee giggled. "Don't need it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I don't need it anymore. I think I can hold my breath for weeks now."
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Her declaration was brimming with confidence, and I had no idea how or why. Rather than try to puzzle out what the spider had done, I demanded an answer.
"Sure. It's actually pretty simple, I'm surprised you haven't figured it out."
"Please spare a guessing ga…"
"Okay, okay. So, do you rember that most of my organs are stored away?"
"Vaguely… Mostly, it lets you eat things bigger than your entire body."
"Yeah. So that trait has naturally been increasing, enhancing the efficiency of my organs, allowing to store more of them, and enlarging their size, among other benefits. But that got thinking, where exactly are they? I'd certainly thought about it a few tis, especially after we first unlocked [Pocket Space] and especially with [Rift Door]."
I thought back to her previous actions over the last few days.
"Are you teleporting food in and out of your dinsional stomach?"
"Ew, I'd never teleport it out," Vee quickly denied it. "But yes. And while I don't enjoy teleporting stuff into my stomach, as that takes away the joy of eating, I can do it. I figured I'd start small, you know?"
"Okay…"
"Anyway, I used [Mana Shaping] to kind of brute force finding the coordinates for my organs. Naturally, they overlap with , but on a different axis… or sothing like that. I'm not really sure since I'm mostly going on feeling and force of will with [Mana Shaping]."
"Go on…"
"So first I found my stomach. Once I confird that it was working, I moved on to my next target—my lungs."
"You teleported air into your lungs?"
"Well, that was the idea. But that kinda didn't work. Even with their increased size, I could never store that much in them. So instead I enlarged the space where my lungs are first and then filled the 'room' with air."
"That's crazy talk."
"Compared to so of the stuff you've done? I think I've barely scratched the surface."
"You're using magic to manipulate a trait… I've never done anything like that before."
"I an, I'm using [Dinsion Magic] in conjunction with [Transdinsional Organs]. It's like when you combine your sli traits together, don't you think?"
"So because they both have the word 'dinsion' in them, they work together?"
"Exactly!"
"Sure… okay, whatever," I replied, giving up.
"I thought you'd be happier. I now kind of don't need to breathe if I periodically empty and refill my breathing room."
"Sure, I'm happy for you. I'm not happy about the headache you've given trying to understand it."
"Oh, and I reached level five in [Dinsion Magic]!" Vee boasted.
I was dumbfounded. I had the combination of [Prodigy] and [Elven Legacy] while Vee only had the latter. I'd originally surpassed her in [Dinsion Magic] and now she'd sohow turned the tables.
Did I really spend that much ti ssing with [Mana Weaving]? Or is her accomplishnt so huge that she got a ton of bonus experience?
"I can see I've stunned you into silence," Vee snickered. "Let's go back to the warm beach so I can show you the new spell."
I agreed and we returned to the warm afternoon sands. Vee's wet body was imdiately coated with layers of sand on her arrival.
"Want to clean you off?" I offered.
"Surprisingly, no. I think this is the perfect opportunity to show off the new spell!"
I watched as Vee began slowly casting a new spell. I knew she was trying to help understand it, but even though it was entirely unmodified, I had no idea what she was doing. The best I could tell was that it was a personal targeting spell and that it used Dinsional Mana.
Vee finished casting the spell, and her body instantly beca slightly translucent. The sand covering her began to slowly sink through her and fall to the ground. A few brief monts later, she beca fully opaque again, with not a spec of sand remaining.
"Ta-da!"
"Isn't that [Phase Out]?" I asked, noticing the similarities.
"More like the bastardized version of it, but yes. The spell is called [Spatial Phase]," Vee answered.
"Why bastardized?"
"Because, unless I'm misunderstanding the spell that they installed into my noggin, it isn't a full rendition. It's why I didn't start sinking through the ground and why the sand slowly fell through . [Phase Out] puts on the other side entirely. [Spatial Phase] is probably… fifty percent at best, if I had to take a guess?"
"And if you empowered it?"
Vee cast the spell again and began flooding it with excess Mana. I stared with a bit of envy as the spell construct started to swell in size to accommodate the extra fluctuations with no deviations to its form. Vee cast the spell again, closely examining the results on her body after it went off.
"Nope. Empowering it only increases its duration. So my judgnt of it being the bastardized version still stands."
I shrugged. "Well, considering I can't use [Phase Out], I'm pretty excited to get it."
"I guess rather than negating all damage, you'd take half instead?"
"Half is better than full."
"Well, except for Dinsional or Rift stuff. I think you'd take extra damage."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. I have to be super careful when using [Rift Threads] and [Phase Out]. It's the only thing I can interact with from the other side, but it's also the only thing that can hurt . If we get dinsional attack spells later, I bet it would do the sa."
"It's kind of weird we haven't yet. But I guess if it's anything like your [Rift Threads], I can understand why it would be locked behind a high-level spell."
"Yeah, cutting across dinsions is usually reserved for final bosses only," Vee chuckled.
"Where did you hear that? More secrets from the spider queen dungeon?"
Vee sighed. "No, not dungeons… Ugh, forget it!"
"Sure… more importantly, if you've got level five, that ans your next class level up should unlock Riftmancer!"
"Oh. Yeah, I kind of forgot about that since I thought you'd get it first. I guess I'd better quickly swap away from racial experience for a bit to confirm it."
I nodded excitedly. "Do it and let's go hunting. Maybe if we teleport inland for a bit, we can do so quick level grinding."
"Not out to sea?"
"I'd rather not until I get so better water traits. Even if we use [Blink], our maneuverability isn't as smooth down there."
"Yeah, you're probably right. Okay, let's do it."
We saved our beach coordinates and headed out, doing a series of rapid [Warps] looking for prey. As we moved away from the coast, Vee inford that her quest had been updated to "Urgent!!!" Clearly, Unc wasn't pleased with our slight detour.
We just want to get one quick level up, then we will get back to your quest. If it were really urgent, you would have given us better directions!
With Vee handling our rapid transport and detecting anything with a pulse, we began a bit of monster extermination. It was definitely a quantity over quality approach, that was, until I detected a rather large gathering of sothing underground.
I inford Vee and headed in that direction. Landing and activating the [Tremor Sense] portion of my [Soul Sense], I noticed a small cave deep underground with a tunnel that headed out to the ocean.
"Oh, that sounds cool. I think that's called a tidal cave?" Vee replied excitedly.
"I have no idea. But if it's connected to the ocean, hopefully that ans it's full of monsters with water traits."
"Or maybe it's a pirate lair!" Vee chid in. "So, how are we getting down there? It's too deep for my [Spatial Sense] to get coordinates."
"I think that's my cue."
"Oh no… I shouldn't have said anything," Vee groaned.
"It's ti for—"
"Giant stupid worm!" Vee interrupted.
"—[Acid Sli] digging..."
Vee was silent as I felt her many eyes accusing . "You set up."
"I did no such thing," I replied, suppressing my desire to giggle like a mad sli.
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