After some deliberation, I chose the skill [Ghost apparation]. It just had the most future potential. With my new core, the time to focus on mana efficiency had passed. On top of that, I needed a trump card to fight and escape higher-tiered opponents. [Ghost apparition] fit the bill perfectly.

I mentally commanded the skill to be chosen.

Ding! [Shadow apparation] has reached tier 4! [Shadow apparation] becomes [Ghost apparation].

After the notification ended, I gave the skill a try. I headed to a shaded spot under a tree and apparated into Cerion's shadow. I felt a large amount of mana dissipate from my core to power the skill, though my core recovered a few seconds later. When I arrived, I noticed that my body looked like it had become slightly transparent. I could only describe myself as a black ghost. A split second later, the intangibility ended. Cerion was used to my antics, so he didn't react.

Because of my core's nature, its mana capacity was low in favour of higher regeneration, which suited my build perfectly.

The downside was that I was now only able to apparate twice before my core ran out. The new skill sucked up an absurd amount of mana. That being said, with my core recovering about ten seconds later, that just translated into two uses every ten seconds, as long as I wasn't trying to overload. If I used [Ghost apparation] while simultaneously trying to expel mana, my overloading state would be temporarily interrupted. I had been stuck with the overloading problem before I tiered up the skill as well, which forced me to be mostly stationary, so that didn't change much.

Because of this decreased mana efficiency my mobility in combat became severely hampered, though I had gained a lot of survivability against higher-tiered opponents. With some luck, the skill would give me even more intangibility at tier 5. I had high hopes.

Luckily, I had a plan ready to solve my mobility problems. Now that I had gotten some experience in creating new skills, I felt confident in making a new mobility skill of my own. I wanted to make one that drew on overloaded mana instead of internal mana, so that I would be able to use it in conjunction with my other overloaded skills. [Ghost apparation] would then become my trump card. A future skill merge wasn't out of the realm of possibility, either.

I would have to start experimenting.

The next day, we picked up camp and finally entered the Thalia hills. The journey here had been a tough one for me, with my armour heating up under the sun, but now that we had actually arrived, it was even worse. Unlike the surrounding area, the Thalia hills turned out not to have any vegetation at all. Apart from the occasional lizard, which Cerion had described as a leopard gecko, we hadn't found much of anything.

A few monster birds flew overhead every now and then, but they were either scared off or killed when they got too close. I couldn't believe that any animal or even monster could live in an area like this. What did they even eat? I asked Cerion, since he seemed to know so much about everything.

"Where is everything? I thought this area had a lot of monsters in it?"

"Not really. The monster density of this area is lower than that of most other wild areas, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. The ones that do manage to survive here are typical of a higher tier. They live underground and come to the surface at night to hunt. When we get a little closer to the more dangerous areas, we'll probably have to travel at night and sleep during the day for safety."

Cara, who was on her mount a little further ahead, added to that without looking back.

"Indeed, it's not safe here during the night. The bandits know this, and use it to their advantage, by using caves as hideouts and only moving during the night as well. When night falls, I will go scout ahead while you two and Emer stay behind."

That sounded boring. My urge to fight and contribute was clashing with my sense of responsibility at the thought of sitting still. On one hand, I wanted to be out there, doing things. On the other, I didn't want to put others in danger for no reason. I wasn't out here by myself, after all, so I grit my teeth and said nothing. Emer seemed to notice my frustration, because he walked over to me and gave me a pat on the shoulder.

"Don't ya' worry, Arthur! Da time ta' fight will come. Just let Cara do 'er job."

"Sure thing, Emer. Just call on me when you've got someone in need of killing." I said in a nonchalant tone.

Emer's smile turned stiff.

"I'll... keep that in mind."

We continued our journey in silence, heading deeper and deeper into the hilly, rocky terrain. After a while, the surrounding area became deathly quiet. I noticed the sounds of nearby animals fade away, even the wind stopped making noise as it whistled through the cracks in the earth.

Emer immediately became alert and motioned us to remain quiet. He held out his hand, stopping us from moving. Evidently, he wanted us to remain as quiet as possible. In the distance, we saw a large cloud. Strangely, it lingered just above the ground, and had a sickly yellow colour. It was actually made of sand.

All four of us held our breaths, attempting to evade its notice. Whatever monster that was, it affected sound in some way, possibly to find prey. I had a hard time guessing what tier it was, though its size alone indicated at least tier 4.

Like that, we stood stock still, not making any movements. This situation dragged on for what felt like an eternity, until the sound became even quieter.

I couldn't hear my own breath, I couldn't even hear my heart pumping anymore. In the distance, the cloud got bigger and bigger.

Cara turned around and shouted at us.

"It's noticed us! Run to higher ground!"

At her command, the four of us shot back into motion and ran the other direction. There weren't many options as far ar 'higher ground' went, but I could see a large rock jutting out over the ground a few hundred meters away. It must have been at least 30 meters tall, which would hopefully help us fight off whatever was chasing us.

As we ran, I looked around at our pursuer. The cloud was getting bigger and bigger as it slowly caught up to us, and I noticed it didn't actually look like a cloud from close up. It looked like a giant wave of sand, rolling on the ground. I called out to Cerion.

"What the hell is that thing?! It doesn't look like a monster at all!"

"That's a [Sand elemental]! A juvenile, judging from its size. It's tier 4, probably. They don't have weak points, like other monsters do. You need to force them to expend all of their mana to kill them. They use mana every time they reconstruct themselves, so it's a matter of destroying them enough time. Still very difficult to kill, those things..."

"So how do we kill it then?"

"Any attack that uses mana will work on it. The problem is that, even with magic, they're very tough to beat. From the higher ground, we'll be able to defend ourselves more easily!"

Cara intervened.

"Shut up back there and run!"

A few seconds later, we arrived at the rock. We each used our own methods to quickly scale it: Cerion rode a small wave to the top, Cara used wind to propel herself upwards and Emer shot himself up by expelling a large amount of fire from his feet. I didn't even need to make it that complicated and simply apparated to the top in one burst, recovering from the mana use as I landed.

A moment later, the elemental was on top of us. Its impressive size and weight crashed into the rock, making it shake. Thankfully, it held strong. The elemental surrounded the rock on all sides and tried to break it, but failed. It tried to pull itself up to our location, but apparently it couldn't control all the sand at once, because it kept falling apart each time it tried. Noticing its failure, it sent up tendrils made of sand to attack us, instead. Emer shouted out a series of commands.

"Cerion, Arthur, strike down those tendrils, focus on defence. Cara, let's prepare a [Greater Fire cyclone] combo spell right now!"

Both of us shouted in affirmative, while Cara started to charge up a wind-aligned spell. I was momentarily surprised by him dropping his accent, but focussed on the fight a second later.

I started to charge up some overloaded mana into my surroundings, preparing myself for whatever the elemental threw at us.

Cerion and I used a variety of ranged attacks to send attacking tendrils back to the bottom of the boulder. After a while, we realised that our extended sword skills would be our best bet. My [Overloaded orb] was effective, but took too long to form and required all of my overloaded mana output, decreasing its usefulness, while Cerion's attacks were simply not mana effective unless he stuck to the basics. Unlike me, he didn't have tier 3 core yet.

And so we fought. For the next few dozen seconds, I would expel mana, cover my sword with it and send horizontal slashes at whatever sand construct the elemental threw at us. I was prepared to activate my maelstrom if necessary, but I didn't want to limit my range yet, and it hadn't been necessary so far.

I was intimidated by the monster we were fighting, though. Its attacks hadn't hit anyone yet, but each limb we deflected created cracks in the ground when it crashed back down. Each attack we dodged dug a few meters into the solid rock of the boulder we were standing on, gradually destroying it. Any successful attack would leave one of us temporarily out of the fight. I would be fine if I got hit, I thought, but if I fell into the elemental's sandstorm at the bottom of the rock I too would be torn to shreds.

Eventually, Cara and Emer were ready to start the counterattack. The combo skill they used was similar to the one they had used on the swamp centaur, though it was more successful this time around.

Cara created a large tornado around the rock, which Emer used as kindling for his flame. The giant flaming tornado spun around our rock at an incredible speed. If it wasn't for the barrier Cara had set up around us, we would've gotten torched by the heat, because we were right in the epicentre. The unprotected surfaces of the rock actually did start melting slowly.

After ten or so seconds, the storm abated. The elemental down below did not look healthy anymore. There were large chunks of glass scattered around its body from the heat, which it didn't seem to have the ability to control. Now that I knew we could damage it, I felt confident in beating it too.

Apparently, the elemental thought the same about us, because instead of running away like the centaur, it started to writhe in what seemed like rage. It reared back and created a giant tendril, which started spinning. Instead of attacking us, however, it went straight for the rock with its spinning tendril.

Unlike last time, it was actually successful in piercing it. This, combined with the damage its previous attacks had done to it, caused it to slowly start cracking. Emer was the first to take action.

"Cara, take off with Cerion and Arthur, I'm gonna' use [Flame lord]!"

This time, she yelled back instead of obeying.

"Already? You'll put the quest in danger!"

"We don't have a choice! Extending this fight will just leave us even weaker! Now, Cara!"

"Fine!"

Cara huffed in anger and summoned her bird familiar, which reminded me of a sparrow.

"Eron, work with me to pull these two kids into the air!"

Her familiar didn't waste any time and started to create large gusts of wind that picked us up. Cara added to them and controlled them upwards, throwing us into the air. This was my first time ever flying! I couldn't say that I enjoyed the feeling, though maybe that's just because I didn't have any control over my movement, or the fact that I could die any second.

Below us, Emer shouted something at the elemental. A moment later, his entire body was engulfed in flame, which spread until it covered the rest of the rock.

With the sound of the wind soaring past me and my body hurtling through the air, I couldn't really see what happened, but if I saw correctly, the ground below me exploded in a wave of fire and heat. The flame was so massive it nearly reached us as we flew upwards, and it sent cracks into the nearby hills as if it were nothing. I could feel my armour starting to heat up again. The last thing I remembered from before passing out, is the thought that I would have to buy a new suit by the end of the week at that rate.