The days following Clammy, and Bishop’s departure were incredibly… Boring. It would be hard to get him to admit it, but Max missed both of them. Without either of them, there seemed to be a missing link of the homeliness of the mansion. Where jokes and sly comments were usually found, there was simply empty silence as for the one to make these jokes was absent. Similarly, where the charm of innocence and humility usually make an appearance there was simply Vel to make a sarcastic comment.

Clammy had been together with Max almost every day during his time on Nava. She was the first person on this world that he met after all, the disembodied voice of Iris withstanding. She had taught him much about culture and life on Nava, even if she never fully realized it. It was slightly ironic, honestly. Clammy, a Princess, was not arrogant or entitled. She was the least Princessy Princess, Max had ever met. Granted he had never met a Princess before. Her homelife was a shrouded mystery to Max. All he and Reep knew was that she had a falling out with her father and chose to run away. In doing that she inadvertently got her most trusted wards killed and she only died because of their sacrifice. But still, Max was glad he had met her and fully understood her need to mysterious. In all honesty Max preferred it that way. She would talk to him and Reep about her family one day, if ever.

Bishop was the closest thing to a best friend Max had. He understood Earthen references, terms, phrases, and jokes better than anyone else Max knew. It was understandable though; Lester was best friends with the man. Since Esmel Bishop had been a little timid around Max, but slowly receded back to his lazy endearing self. Without the two, Max found very little reasoning to leave the mansion. Reep and Celenia both arrived home rather late, compared to Clammy and Bishop. This led Max to spend more time with Vel, Belopi, and Icarus, but there was only so much Max could handle in the way of interaction with those three. There was nothing wrong with any of them, but together they were a masterclass of boredom. Icarus would launch into lectures about safety of magic and the imperative need of preparation. How without preparing, he and Lester would have surely died over their tenure on Nava.

Which usually turned into Vel yelling at the bird for misremember facts. Which, in and of itself, was entertaining but got old, fast. Max wouldn’t be supposed if most of the conversations he had with the both of them ended up in a screaming match. Planning verses flowing, a battle as old as time. These arguments usually ended with both Belopi and Max leaving the room together. Again, Max didn’t dislike Belopi, but he couldn’t help but find his time with her awkward.

During their travels to Lesterwood, Belopi almost worshiped Max. She brought her out a deep hole when he told her about Celenia. She wanted to know everything about Max and that seriously made him uncomfortable. Sometime during their travels, Vel pulled her aside and explained her obsessive behavior to her. At first Vel thought it funny and even played into the joke but ended it fast when she figured it was time for the joke to die. But since the intervention the air between Belopi and Max drew ridged.

And that led Max to spending most of his time, all of his time really, on experimenting with space magic. After he walked with Celenia and Reep to their respective morning obligations, he would situate himself in the underground training facility. He brought in chalk boards, tables, chairs, and even a potted plant. One that Celenia grew for him. The room was a bland stone warehouse, why not try and spruce it up a bit.

His experiments had been progressing well, even though they were all failing. After observing the Space Gates, Max had begun to try and implement a tunnel in between start and end points of Teleport Item. He was tempted to test the concept using himself, but after the first experiment ended with a large stone exploding, he shied away from that idea. Max vividly remembered the feeling of traveling through one of these tunnels. How could he not? The succulent fried hen he had just before was already memorable, but the taste of throwing it up was even more.

When he was in the tunnel he felt as if he was weightless. He was in a perfect world where there were no forces. No friction, no air resistance, gravity, or even normal force. It was a world devoid of movement and action except for the occasional streak of color that provided Max with the knowledge that he was actually moving.

Through a lot of trial and error, Max was able to recreate what he considered to be a very rudimentary tunnel. Between the testing rock and the end point, a small stream of space seemed to be glittering in the air. It was obvious to him that if he sent anything through this tunnel it would collapse and destroy anything inside. But it was a start. Under the assumption that tunnels were not supposed to be visible, Max started working towards smoothing and perfecting the channel.

[Arbor] Xylem had first shown Max how to properly smooth and manipulate space, granted he was only being taught the bare basics, it was a major help in understanding what he was doing wrong. The key concept was that space does not like to be moved. Anchors and stabilization frames had to be created first as a bridge to connect primary points of manipulation. Similar to how an actual bridge has support or a roof has load bearing pillars. With that in mind, Max started with very small tunnels. After a few hours he found that he could successfully make a nonvisible tunnel. It didn’t work, but again it was progress.

And that was how Max spent the last few days. Test after test, small change after small change. Occasionally Vel or Icarus would check up on him, providing experienced guesses and drawn-out theories. By the fourth or fifth it was obvious that neither had any clue what the true answer was or how to progress any further. Max was on his own, but he was fine with that. It would only make victory that much sweeter.

Today, was a big day in the way of testing. Max had finally solidified an understanding of tunnels that he felt confident that the rock was not going to simply explode. As he poured mana through his body, space started to bend into a straight line. Findings from previous attempts confirmed that using the system spell would be useless. There was no way to anchor the rock to the tunnel, instead the rock would just appear at the end location. That led Max to devising a way the rock could glide along the tunnel and pop out at the end. The answer was a simple as it was elegant, if it worked that is. Wrap the rock in a protective layer of space in such a way that it repels other instances of manipulated space.

The first test was a complete failure. The wrapping was too tight and crushed the rock. It had only been a week since Max received the system box for Jump. He mentally berated himself for forgetting the proper distance a wrapping had to be. The next test gave him some hope but ended in failure. The rock didn’t move. It stayed stuck in mid-air, as if an invisible pedestal was under it. It was an interesting effect, however. If he could hone in on why this happened, maybe he could teleport into the air and stick himself there. But ultimately the idea was cast aside for now.

The next series of tests ended with the rock being launched at incredible speeds in different direction. The rock found blemishes in the tunnel and ripped right through them. To combat this Max recreated the tunnel under harsher scrutiny. Something interesting happened after the rebuild, the rock disappeared. One moment it was sliding down the tunnel, the next just gone. It wasn’t at the end of the tunnel, it wasn’t in the training room, he even searched above the training room. Icarus also confirmed that he saw no sudden rock appearing.

Well, wherever it is, I hope I didn’t hurt someone, he thought.

After some troubleshooting, Max found the issue. While the previous errors were caused by the rock hitting weakened areas of the tunnel, this time the rock must have moved at high enough speeds to rip the boundary layer. Note to self, don’t teleport too fast, he wrote in his journal. The next several testes were all about slowing the rock, eventually he was able to key in on the correct speed. Too fast and the rock would go missing, to slow and the rock out stop.

But, on his last attempt the rock landed in the designated end point. It was a moment of pride but as he thought more and more about tunnels it became abruptly apparent that they were utterly useless in their current form. To test his realization, he slid his chalk board in the path of the tunnel. When the board didn’t instantly disrupt the tunnel, Max thought himself to be wrong but the fresh hole after sliding the rock bashed him back into humility. He felt close with the concept of tunnels if he could just skip terrain and obstacles…

Max slapped himself in the forehead. How could he have been this dumb? He is literally manipulating space, who says he can’t simply anchor the start of the tunnel to the end? If the idea was correct, he would essentially cut all of the work out of the spell. The meticulous scaffolding holding the tunnel would be dissolved to almost nothing, thus making the spell more mana efficient and increasing the distance. But that lead to another problem. How was he going to test for distance if he could set the anchors correctly?

As far as he could tell, Teleport Object had a limited range only dictated by mana. Meaning that with enough power, the object could appear anywhere. If distance hardly mattered for objects, then how was he supposed to test the addition of tunnels. But what is considered an ‘object’? The simple answer was anything that wasn’t a person. But does that include animals? Emi? Plants? The answers were simple enough to find, so he spent the next few minutes testing various objects. The results were that anything living was considered not an object.

I guess that make sense. It would be pretty great to trick the system into thinking a person was an object though… He grumbled internally.

The only real way forward would be a practical experiment using himself as a lab rat. Max spent hours trying to finagle away around this, but every avenue of a new ideas eventually led him back to the same place. It was a gamble. One that could kill him. Was it really worth it? Was he that selfless to bet his life on this? Were the outlying villagers really that important. The memory of the memory statue came to him. Healing the boy and bringing him in from the cold. People were important and who was he to put his own safety before the masses, his conscious would never let him sleep if he backed out now.

Anchoring the start and end points, which Max mentally referred to as nodes, together was trivial at this point. He had started with the much harder version of the idea, simplifying it was child’s play. He tested it with the rock a few times, confirming that it did in fact leave the rock intact. The waters of the infinite beach were calm, signaling to Max that Tiodepth thought this course of action was fine, or that Max’s purpose had been served and he didn’t care what happened to the lowly Human. But thinking like that would get him nowhere.

Emi, I’m about to do a practical test. Just thought I should let you know. Max said to Emi who was off hunting.

Explode? She asked with a hint of nervousness.

I don’t think so, but there is always the possibility.

Careful. She said back. Max could feel her change course back towards the house. He decided he would wait for her; he couldn’t leave her out of something like this. Not again, anyways.

“Hey Icarus, I’m ready to test on myself.” Max said to open air. “Just thought I should let you know.”

“I’ll get Veline.” Icarus’s disembodied voice said.

A few minutes later Vel and Belopi arrived in the training room, followed by the materialization of the owl familiar. It took Emi a bit more time, but she arrived as well.

“You know this will work?” Vel asked.

“No, but it worked on the rocks. But that spell works differently depending on people, so I don’t know how it will effect me.” Max answered.

“But the results are going to be worth it, right?”

“Again, I don’t know. Nothing could change with the approach I’m taking, or everything could change.”

“Are you sure this is wise?”

“No, but I’m doing it regardless.” Max said, causing Vel to sigh.

“Well get to it then.” Vel huffed.

Like his previous testing using himself as the object, Max double and triple checked his work. The space wrapping was the correct distance and thickness. The anchor points were lined with each node correctly. There was no dents or obvious holes… The spell was as perfect as he was going to get it, now it was time for him to fuel it. And he couldn’t. He wanted to; he really did. But fear had gripped him, and it was showing no signs of letting go. It took him a few minutes to physic himself up and with a clear picture in his mind, he teleported.

And appeared across the room as expected. It was an unholy anticlimactic moment. The teleport looked exactly as any of his others. One moment he was there, the next he was not. But he felt it. The same feeling of weightlessness in a perfect world. It was only there for a fraction of a moment, but he was sure of it. The tunnel had worked. There was no system box congratulating him on his success, however. He needed to fine tune the spell work, but it had worked.

“Well?” Vel shouted from the other side of the room.

“It worked. No box, but the technique is there.”

“What about mana cost?”

“Oh right…” Max recreated the last attended and jumped back to Vel and the others.

“Let’s see…” He said reading his mana bar. “Three. THREE!? What? How-?”

“If I may, Max?” Icarus said after a moment, grabbing Max’s attention. “What exactly did you do?”

“I created a tunnel from one node to the other. As an anchor I attached each node to each other, making the tunnel almost nonexistent… Oh…” His palm soon found his forehead. “The tunnel makes the jump as short as the tunnel itself… Meaning the mana cost is equally small…”

“How much does a jump the size of the tunnel cost without the actual tunnel?” Icarus asked.

Max tested, moving about a foot to the side. “Two.”

“Well, there you go. The spell, while incredibly amazing, does cost more than its counterpart.”

“But, but… It just seems like I’m missing something. Like I skipped a few steps.”

“You probably did, Max.” Vel said. “That is the way of mages who are not formally taught. In this case the magic you are using is rare and very misunderstood. This tunnel concept could be a completely basic idea but since [Space Mages] are incredibly rare, it may not seem that way.”

“But where do I go from here.” Max asked hesitantly. “With water there always seems to be a next step. Ice bolt to Ice spear to Ice Lance. Easy and obvious. How can I make a spell that is already infinitely more efficient, better?”

“If there is a way, then you will find it. But if not, then you have an amazing spell. Simple as that. Start working on a different spell. Maybe you’ll learn something during those experiments that helps leads to a breakthrough on the previous.” Icarus answered.

“Max, this is literally what the Mage Guild will be teaching you. How to progress a spell, efficiency, mana, and magic. It is what the Guild was originally created for, and it is what causes so many to flock and gather. Welcome to the World of Magic, Max.”

“Oh, come now, Veline.” Icarus said. “You can’t introduce him to the World of Magic now. It is much too early.”

“The what?” Max asked obviously missing something.

With a sigh and ignoring Vel’s smirk, Icarus answered. “The World of Magic is a concept created long ago by [Magic Emperor] Rizja. He stated that for a mage to truly become a mage they had to open the door to the real World of Magic themselves. The ones who couldn’t were not true mages and were shunned during the Time of Magic. It had been a long time since then, and no one truly believe in it anymore.”

“So, there is a different world where magic is-“

“No, no. Sorry let me clarify. The World of Magic is simply the reference to the continuous cycle of magic. Rather than an actual world made of magic it is the idea that once you make the realization that magic will never truly be complete, you enter the real World of Magic. Total hogwash if you ask me, but other like Veline…”

Vel rolled her eyes. “The point is, you are at a point where you are already seeing the end goals of spells. Sure, it’s pretty obvious when you learn that it is an already established concept, but as you just found out it is a harsh and confusing realization.”

“But why not just tell me? Seems like a pretty standard concept to me…” Max said.

“It is a concept that any young mage must find by themselves.” Vel answered plainly.

Max shook his head thinking it was just one of those strange things about Nava culture. This world seemed to be much more ‘thrown into the deep end’ than Earth. But then again, Nava was also riddle with monsters and other deadly things. Did Max think sharing information like this would prove more beneficial in the longevity of magic? Sure, but he also though that simply sharing details would also skyrocket the speed in which magic was developed. Max was about to say something, but the distant sound of bells stopped him.

Vel perked up, “Come on Max.”

“What? Where- What do the bells mean.” He said falling in line with Emi behind Vel as they strode to the door.

“You are about to see your first winter migration wave.”

And with that, they made their way to the northern wall.