Artemis nocked the arrow, drew the string back to her cheek and fired.

The arrow streaked through the air and buried itself inch deep into the wood… nearly a foot away from her painted target.

Sighing, she lowered her bow and glared at the wooden wall twenty metres away.

‘This is the reason I never took up the bow,’ she thought.

It was ironic that she had been named after the Greek goddess of archery and hunting. Her distressing inability to hit anything she aimed at with a bow – even a stationary target twenty metres away – had resulted in her selection of the sword as her weapon of choice.

If she was going to be stuck as a close-combatant, then she might as well choose what was touted as the king of near-body weaponry. And after years of practice, she’d gotten pretty good too.

She dropped the bow. It clattered onto the ground before dissolving into motes of purple light.

“This isn’t working,” she told the projection of Hei Lian sitting on a boulder a few feet away and watching her with a bored expression on her face.

Hei Lian shrugged.

“Well, you needed a single-target long range attack. I thought the classics would be the best place to start looking.”

“My javelins work perfectly fine for me, thank you.”

“Too slow. You wouldn’t be able to touch the hem of any self-respecting wind mage with an unwieldy hunk of metal like that.”

“I wouldn't need to. I have my Feather Rain for that. Coverage moves are the most effective against them anyway.”

“Too weak. They could deflect the feathers. Then where would you be?”

“My Aspect of Gravity lends extra mass to them. They’re not easy to displace.”

“Ah, right. There was that. You’ve mastered Gravity, haven’t you? Nifty trick that; being able to alter the mass of an object rather just the pull of the earth on it.”

“It only works on metal, though.”

“Still, I bet you can use it to great effect in battle if you get a bit creative.”

Artemis grinned.

“True. It turns my armour into a force multiplier. All I need to do is punch and, the moment before my fist lands, increase the mass of my gauntlet. Nobody survives a ton of metal to the face. Barriers shatter like glass.”

“Sounds like you speak from experience.”

“I do! And when I couple it with my Aspect of Sharpness, there’s precious little my sword can't cut through.”

Hei Lian hummed thoughtfully. “Speaking of which… what’s the status of your Aspect of Sharpness? Managed to remaster it yet?”

Artemis sighed and brought her thumb and index fingers close together. “I’m this close to mastering it. But I’ve been stuck on that final bit of the puzzle since the war against the Shogunate.”

“Well,” said Hei Lian, sliding off the boulder and getting to her feet. “Let’s see if your abilities are as amazing as you make them out to be. Who knows, I might just end up knocking you past that last barrier to Mastery.”

Artemis’s armour wrapped around her and her sword appeared in her hand.

“Good.”

///

Ceres flipped another page of the book she was reading. It was the last page of the chapter. Reaching the end, she marked her place and closed the book.

“What are you getting out of this?” she asked another one of Hei Lian’s projections who was lounging on a couch near her and reading another book. More books were piled into towers by their sides.

Hei Lian had obtained the knowledge contained in Miyagi Vulpine’s soul fragment after their successful exploration. Using Ceres’ dreamland, she had been able to manifest it in the form of the library they were currently in – a perfect replica of the Kitsune Arcanum from Miyagi Vulpine’s memories.

Hei Lian lowered her book and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I promised to impart any knowledge I gained from Miyagi to you. That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, no. You know that’s not what I’m talking about. Without the strength of your soul, I wouldn't be able to run five parallel dreamlands… let alone make them so realistic… This must be quite the burden upon even you. So, why’re you going so far out of your way to help us train?”

“Haah, well. I guess this question would have come up sooner or later.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Not that its much of a secret or anything. A few probes from a Demigod and it would have been exposed… my comprehension of my Aspects is lagging far behind the strength of my soul.”

Ceres’ eyes widened as her mind went into action connecting facts and drawing conclusions.

“Ah... your main affinity is hellfire. And your comprehension of that comes mainly from Hei Lian, who was just a Tier 3 mage before the merge. The elemental and the witch gave additional affinities to fire and incense flame… but no comprehension of the corresponding Aspects. You regained the witch’s magical knowledge recently, but you have yet to digest it and turn it into your strength.”

Hei Lian leaned back in her couch and nodded.

“That’s pretty much what happened.”

“But,” said Ceres. “How does helping us train help you?”

“I might be lagging behind in comprehension but the strength of my soul is right up there with the best of them… after all, I absorbed an elemental and those have obscenely inflated souls. This means two things: I learn new things really fast, and due to my underdeveloped aspects, my control over my soul is rather shaky. I’m like a child wearing an adult’s clothes. I have yet to grow into my soul.”

“And this dreamland helps you do so?”

“It does. In here, I’m effectively simulating nature. How mana flows, how different elements of it interact with each other, how a mage affects it when he or she uses a spell. I am gaining a greater comprehension of magic every second I’m here. In this shared dreamland, I can draw upon each of your experiences with mana to further perfect my model of the world. And Mars; his understanding of the world is particularly valuable. He is the closest substitute to a Demigod I can find.”

“So, in effect, helping us train is a by-product of your training?”

“Yes. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. And you, specifically, are the biggest winner.”

Ceres closed her eyes and felt the evolution of the dreamland. Her understanding of the Aspect of Dreams was dashing forward like a wildly galloping horse.

Which was logical, as she was in effect mooching off the efforts of a Demigod.

“Well,” she said, opening her eyes. “Can’t say that I’m complaining.”

///

I let loose with my soul sense and investigated the dreamland. It was amazingly detailed. Every stream and every eddy of mana followed the same rules it would in the real world and even the soil and the air felt the same to my senses as it did in reality. It was like an alternate reality.

Well, there were discrepancies. Mostly in how the mana behaved when I tried to affect it with my soul or by drawing a rune. The rune for ‘light’, for instance, flickered instead of producing a steady glow and the rune for ‘fire’ exploded in my face.

But the dream was self-correcting!

No mistake was repeated a second time. any glitches I discovered would be smoothed over in moments. I could clearly feel the illusion growing more perfect the more I interacted with it.

And I was benefitting greatly from the experience.

It was like I had been handed an educational model of the world and in playing with it, I was vastly improving my understanding of it.

Every ‘glitch’ I found that was corrected reinforced my confidence in my knowledge of how the world works. And sometimes the ‘glitch’ wasn’t in the dreamland but in my understanding of the world. Every time I corrected such a misconception, I felt my mastery of the corresponding aspect improve just a little bit.

When I’d entered this dreamland, I had plans for my training schedule in it.

But now, all that had been thrown to the back of my head.

Sitting cross-legged on a rock, on the slope of a volcano in the middle of a lake, with a stiff breeze ruffling my hair and the sun glaring down upon me, I meditated. Runes formed and extinguished around me, wrapping me in a glittering six-coloured halo of magic. And centred on me, intangible ripples spread out into the world of the dream, optimizing it, perfecting it, bringing it one step closer to mimicking reality.

///

Four days later, our train pulled into its final station. One on the border between Egypt and the Caliphate.

There, our guide was waiting for us.

He wore flowing white robes and an equally white skull cap. There was an inverted triangle embroidered on the right side of his chest in red thread. And he had the most luxurious beard I’d ever seen.

“Hello,” he said with a smile. “I’m Karim; your guide and translator for the duration of your stay...

“Welcome to the Trial of Wind.”

End of Volume.