While Others Cultivate, I Use My Multiverse System-Chapter 175: Lack of speed
Chapter 175: Lack of speed
"Okay, let's make the first stop." After just a few moments of trying to compete with the girl for the speed at which we could travel, I have no other choice but to ultimately concede defeat. But rather than my pride shattering over this loss, I took this defeat as a learning experience.
In the end, my ability to fly was just an effect of my witchcraft, something that wasn't designed to make me fly in the first place. On the other hand, not only was this girl born with wings, making her a natural ruler of this dominion, but she could clearly use some kind of skills or technique, that made her airborne abilities even more fearsome.
"What, little man got tired already?" Openly mocking my decision, the girl still ended up following my words. With the ground near enough, I slowly increased the output of my repulsion vectored perfectly along with my current trajectory. Losing the momentum by each passing second, by the time my feet appeared near the ground, I was basically just floating in the air in a complete standstill.
Drop.
As exhilarating as conquering the skies was, nothing could beat the firm feeling of the ground below my legs. Maybe if I were to get a lot more practice or find new abilities allowing me to fly more freely, this kind of transportation would turn from a chore into a pleasure. But for now, it was just another mean of mine to cover a huge distance in a short period of time.
"You can believe that, you can try to make yourself believe that. I don't really care." Softly landing on the ground, the happy smile on the girl's face soured upon my response. Clearly expecting her bait to work, rather than being angered by the failure of her words to take any effect, she seemed to be just disappointed in the lack of reaction from me.
"Either way, we are not even halfway to the north. Weren't you in a hurry?" Dropping the earlier attempt at ridiculing me, the girl moved on to the actually important matter.
"It's not that I don't want to fly as quickly as you. After launching, I barely have any means to move around midair, so you will have to excuse me this lack of skill." While I didn't reveal all the ins and outs of my ability to fly, just the fact that I revealed anything to the girl was enough to make her put on a surprised expression.
"Don't you even think about it. Even if you have an advantage in the air, I have more means than necessary to force you down on the ground." It wasn't hard to figure out what kind of thoughts appeared in the girl's head. Given her desperation to obtain the sacred core, some attempts to snatch it before I would reach the north were only to be expected.
"Think about what? About you threatening to pin me down to the ground?" Leaning her head to the side, the girl proved that amongst many quirks, she also was quick-witted. "No…!" Wrapping her hands around her upper body, she playfully turned sideways while moaning. "I don't want to be violated!" Screaming painfully as if I was actually in the midst of committing the dead, the girl clearly expected to get some reaction out of me.
And she was actually pretty close to succeeding this time. Sadly for her, with all those times when I nailed Ayda down to the bed, I would no longer get flustered by a small play like this. Rather than that, playing the victim of an attempted rape only made me recall some of the memories I didn't really enjoy.
"Stop it before you hurt yourself. Either way, now you have two options." Disregarding the topic of the girl's provocations, I raised my eyes on the girl, sending her a taxing look. "You can either tell me what kind of magic you are using to fly like that, or refuse and be forced to travel at my current pace."
In the end, that was all there was to it. While moving faster was good for reaching a better position before the enemy could do the same or avoiding his attacks, the same could be done just by wrapping oneself in one of Sander's barrier stones. As such, it only had a little value in my eyes.
Or to be more blunt, if not for my innate drive to obtain every single power that I could to strengthen myself, I would barely pay any mind to the skillset of this girl!
"Not only you refuse to give up on the stone, but now you want me to teach you?" Staring at me with her eyes wide-open once again, the girl uttered weakly. "Are you mad? Did you lose the last semblance of the sanity you had?"
"A simple 'no' would suffice." Since I already refused to be swayed by the girl's antics, I could only hold on to this decision. Thankfully, no greater harm than just saddening me a little was done. On the other hand, it would be the girl that would suffer the consequence of her decision, given how she was the one in hurry to bring the sacred core to where I wasn't willing to go just yet.
"A simple 'no' would suffice if I was dealing with someone reasonable. Don't expect me to act normal when around someone breaking all the conventions of what's considered common sense!" Pointing her finger at me, the girl flapped her wings in agitation.
'Wait, do those wings work a bit like a dog's…' I didn't dare to finish this line of thought, not even safe in the inner monologue of mine. Because the meaning of this realisation would be quite devastating for me further down the line.
"Either way, let's not waste any more time. I might not be in as great of a hurry as you are, but given my slow speed it will still take a while to get to the north." Standing up from a broken tree that I previously sat on, I dusted off my clothes before bending my knees. But rather than amassing the repulsion to eject myself high into the skies, I just waited.
"Ugh…" Clearly conflicted by the problem I forced on her, the girl hesitated. Her wings flapped in agitation, before relaxing as they wrapped around her chest. "Okay then, I will teach you. Just…" Looking around as if she was wary of someone eavesdropping on our conversation, the girl then looked back into my eyes. "Just don't tell anyone about it, okay?"
With both the girl's shoulders and her wings shrinking down, the girl presented herself as a perfect embodiment of giving up.
"First off, you can feel the magic in the air, can you?" Asking this question as if it was the most basic thing under the sun, the girl forced me to nod my head. But even though I was clearly able to suck on the magic from the world all around, even though I was more than capable of moulding it to my desires, I couldn't be sure that it was the meaning the girl had in her head while speaking about 'feeling'.
That was the main problem of travelling between different worlds. So far, the only common element between places I visited, was the existence of magic. But when it comes to the way of using it, every single world I visited so far, would adopt a different approach.
From the court mages in the very first world where I met humans from other worlds, through witches and wizards of Ayda's world, all the way to the mages of humanity and the winged people of the tribe that the girl in front of me belonged to. All of them and likely all the other races I would ever get to meet had different fundamental understanding and idea behind how to use or what the magic is in the first place.
That made it extremely confusing for me, to learn new kinds of techniques or skills. Because if I had a different understanding of the very basic concepts, then the girl's teaching would be worth absolutely nothing.
In simpler words, if one were to be taught that drinking actually meant pissing, they wouldn't understand if someone were to ask them to drink some tea. Rather than enjoying the invitation, they would try to uncover a mean to turn one's piss into a herbal brew.
"Good. Then, I know it won't feel like something reasonable to ask… But you need to let this magic wash off you. Rather than using it for your own means, you need to try to… sink underneath it." Clearly struggling to explain the concepts that she otherwise understood just by feeling it, the girl did her best trying to explain them.
Yet, no matter how hard she tried, even after the next few hours, I was unable to achieve what she later started to call a magical phasing.
In the end, we had no other choice, but to settle on the pace at which I could travel. And as annoying as it was, this speed was determined by how fast I could eject myself into the air, without actually shattering my entire body structure due to the change of momentum being just too rapid.
Even after perfecting the ejecting force and modifying my trajectory to make sure I would be able to still push against the ground even while in the midst of nothingness, the speed that I was capable of achieving was only a fraction of what this winged girl considered to be a standard.
Yet, that didn't mean we were slow by any means. Because for me, being able to reach the north that normally would take at least two weeks by a horse, being able to reach it in just a single day and half of a night, was already a deed worth praise!
