With the design improvements and the greater length, this baby should be able to hover at 45 to 50 meters in altitude. After everyone climbs onboard the sleek fully enclosed wooden craft, like two longboat hulls glued on top of one another, I pour mana in the levitation runes until we are some forty meters above the central square, then send mana to the propulsion formation.

We slowly gain speed going over the back wall and then turning to the closest spot in the high-level zone. I connect the batteries straight to the craft, and with one less thing to do, the small but constant attention needed to drive the wingless plane becomes the main drain on my concentration.

I look to the others and ask:

“Well, does anyone want to pilot it?”

A dozen hands enthusiastically shoot up and I grin at their reaction, though I don’t blame them, who wouldn’t want to pilot a flying craft. I was only giving it up because I had other things to get in order.

“Ok, you guys can take turns as I meditate. Now let me show you how to direct it and operate the magical compass, it’s a different and much more precise variant than what we were using before. You place a hand here…..” I say putting my hand in the control panel for those who want to interface with the craft without any mana, or who didn’t have the requisite control.

I show how the magical compass and steering mechanisms work before sharing my thoughts on how to keep track of the high-level zone boundary.

I run everyone through the basic maneuvers, paying close attention for the first few minutes as I move to the back. Burges does good work, but it’s prudent to make sure the control mechanisms work just like he intended. They have probably done some testing already on these designs, but I still want to take this small precaution.

After five minutes I relax into the only empty seat, lowering it to the ground and sitting in a lotus position. Though perhaps that is the wrong mental picture, I don’t keep my arms in the correct position, but it’s close enough that I don’t mind calling it that.

Even as I put my feet atop my knees I don’t prepare to meditate, the position is just slowly becoming a part of me and what I do is exercise my perception field. Inside the inner world, outside. Book in hands and then far away. Switch to the reward book from the system, then notes from the village, and back to the book I just bought. Down the drop, the tops of the trees zipping along very fast then all around me analyzing the features and muscles of the scouts trying to figure out everyone's stat distribution, and finally back to the book. Always back to the book.

I had been planning on exploring the high level zone, but with so many people around it feels too dangerous. They don’t deserve me risking their lives, and they would help me a lot with other things like the perception training. At least during most of the trip, I will have some time on my own after I drop the last of them off.

My perception field extends below catching the tops of trees, then goes through the entire volume I can reach looking for small particles floating in the air, before closing on the craft and going over it entirely, down to the minutest details before repeating all over again, each time a little different, sometimes a lot different, but always coming back to the one object that was the focus, the little Introduction to the System book.

Aether spins around me and the faint, but perceptible, current around me starts to become stronger. I don’t dare even nudge it in any direction, only feeding it a thin stream of Aether looking to strengthen it as much as possible. It had dawned on me how bad of an idea forcing it into conforming, while rapidly switching focus was, and I make the conscious effort to not force it to adopt any characteristics except is already there.

It could be the result of my experiments with the Automaton’s Aether but I doubted it, I probably just came to realize something that had always been true.

I smile as I feel something intangible growing in my Aether. It will take a long time to draw it to the surface, but this is a long-term strategy instead of relying on short-term gains. Perhaps even making constructs like what the system’s Aether tends to build is something that I should stay away from. I’m not a robot, I’m an organic being with the needs and requirements that entails.

This introspection seems a little off place, but as the minutes and hours pass, I come to realize that my class is what has changed. Perception may be a primarily physical stat, but it’s also a mental one and straddles the line between both worlds more closely than any other stat. The increase in it and something about my class has changed me.

Perhaps that is exactly what prompted me to feel something was off with using Aether in the direction the system went.

I let speculation fall to the wayside and concentrate on the present. Cycling my Aether and using the perception field.

We pass through the place where I met the black panther, but nobody enters the high-level zone, they just wait as I take part of the root battery on the ground.

A few minutes is all I need to refill the batteries in the inner world to the brim while leaving the rest there completely empty. I could wait a while and take even more of the battery, but it would take too long with the droplets of mana coming from the village to refill it.

We start the longest leg of this journey and before going back to fully concentrating on the book, I take my time to mount a contraption I forgot to include in the original build of our ‘plane’. Growing a few holes I mount it in the middle of the path as it begins to shoot seeds out and the plane starts to spread hundreds of small seeds in a shotgun approach.

My stock will be nearly emptied and I don’t have access to any leftover mana to grow more, but it is worth it. The only caveat is I’m forced to use mostly the smallest variation, seeds smaller than a rice grain to meet the amount of growth I want. Though there are a few bigger ones in the midst, and I pay a little more attention to where they are placed. Most of the time I shoot them in the high-level zone forming little peninsulas with a thin connection to the main circle I am planting.

Pando’s seed wants help with a few experiments of his own and I help him, though he for some reason doesn't want me looking at it and I respect his request by keeping my eyes from his project. The way he is, he will either forget it or tell me anyway.

As time passes interruptions to my training come every couple of hours. Like Pando’s seed wanting something, or Agnis, or one of the scouts, but each time I’m interrupted it somehow doesn’t detract from me progressing at a fast pace.

Each time I'm interrupted, after dealing with whatever needs my attention and resting mentally for a few moments, I don’t head straight back to the book. Most of the time spend a few minutes with my focus on the roots growing within my body. I try to upgrade each of the cells while shaping them as runes so if I’m ever in a position like the first class trial again, I will have a little bit of mana at my disposal.

Even with me living for more than a month in the trial, my skills with the perception field climbed very slowly inside. The conditions in that place were different. Now that I’m back into the special environment of the instance, the insights prompted by the system in the air provide feedback to my actions that greatly accelerate my training once again. I would guess that it uses Aether for this as well, though in amounts so small that I have no hope of feeling it any time soon.

But it isn’t just about the instance, somehow being interrupted seems to improve my progress. So perhaps taking breaks is a more effective way to train, at least for some things. I could just focus much more by taking these regular breaks.

We continue and after reaching a quarter of the way the scouts begin heading out in trios outward in the direction of the villages expanding the map even more before they return. As each group leaves, I hack off pieces of my craft, and make it both lighter and therefore a little less mana-consuming. I had calculated a very tight budget and didn’t want to reduce my 160 kph speed for lack of mana.

Days later, after the last of the scout groups leave, I look to the high-level zone, and daring the creatures there to try something, I enter it. Without anyone else in tow, I start to explore the place tentatively. I don’t take long by following a very similar path to come back to the village as I followed for the last couple of days.

My eyes are beginning to droop even as each of my breaks was starting to get longer and longer, but I didn’t want to stop for sleep because if there is some type of reward with similar unlock conditions to the ones from the map room, I wanted to know.

I move inward ever so slightly, a few meters at a time, and tap the magical compass each time moving the line supposed to represent where the division of our realms is.

Daring the beasts as I try to find the very edge of the high-level zone so I could leave it in moments. In a minute I see one of them pursuing me. I adjust the compass for the next few minutes, before quickly leaving and continuing onward.

I begin to weave in and out before entering again, this time for a few minutes.

I hear the howl from some type of feline a little later. A few seconds after I look and see three monsters pursuing me. Even at my speed, somehow they can keep pace with me. All of them are quadrupeds and given the top speed of some of the animals back on earth toped at over 100 kph, their speed didn’t seem that out of place, though they would also be dealing with similar limitations as myself such as air resistance which made their stamina all the more impressive.

They keep perfect track of the craft flying at a hundred and sixty kph, bearing 261 degrees at a 45 meters altitude.

About fifteen minutes later something changes. As another beast joins in, totaling ten or eleven, I can’t be quite sure of their exact number with them outside my perception field range, they start to do something with their mana. My hands turn clammy and the bottom of my stomach feels out.

They are over a hundred meters away, I shouldn’t be feeling anything, not unless they are purposefully spreading mana around, just like the first attack from the Mammoth after we got to the instance.

But this is not like that, it’s not a sound attack, there is just so much mana being compressed that some of it is leaking and I doubt the effect is as innocuous as simply freezing me.

I send mana as fast as I ever did before, well over a hundred mana per second to the propulsion runic formation while almost breaking the handlebar from tilting it all the way to the right.

Something passes over me, something that shouldn’t be possible and it doesn't feel much like mana. Something slimy that covers everything around me, but also is partially intangible and without weight. As I struggle to make sense of it, the craft is pulled to the ground gently. Even after all the size reductions, it still has a beefy mana shield and the full length of rune constructs.

The mana shield however just pops without me even feeling anything putting a strain on it. Not even with internal mana capacitors feeding it can keep it up and when I think things can’t get worse, the repulsion rune fails.

The resonance I long started to ignore in my mana sense stops struggling and is just gone. Freefall takes hold as the repulsion and propulsion runes completely fail, though thankfully I’m still heading in the right direction, outside of the high-level zone. Just two or three seconds and I will be safe.

I crack my head against the ceiling as my teeth sink in my tongue. Trying to ignore the pain realization hits me as the strange feeling in the air coalless throughout my perception field. The mana becomes almost solid, like a slimy and flexible rope attached to the ground and the craft swings my momentum to the fast approaching ground.

Instantly, I send it to the inventory before sumoming the original flying bicycle and the shield coffin around me. The improved remnant left after Max’s attack surrounds me with another shield and I pump my mana pool to the propulsion runic matrix, not wanting the distraction of pulling mana from elsewhere.

The small flying bicycle, barely fitting the coffin inside, creaks in pain as I push it far beyond what it was intended for. Forced almost to the breaking point, it tumbles from being summoned nearly sideways, but the trick works and as the air rushes past the slight turn becomes a 45 degree heading outside the high level zone.

In another second I’m a good 20 meters closer to safety as another attack comes in.

This time I didn’t even feel it approaching. It’s just suddenly there but even as it tries to solidify to grab hold of me, a giant barrier along the dividing line between safety and the domain of these monsters shows up. Something that my mind screams as my perception field tries to understand it, instantly coming into place and stopping it cold.

I shut off my senses and try to ball up in my shield coffin simply overwhelmed with the sensations the system’s barrier inputs into my brain before I blackout.

After coming to, I look around to realize my bicycle has gently settled on the ground about 300 paces from the invisible line and the source of my troubles.

Forcing myself to return over the pounding headache and adrenaline causing me to shake, I send a little mana into the craft and head over until I’m a good 20 meters back from where the beasts pursuing me are waiting.

Tentatively, I open my perception field and focus only on them, though this time there is something different about them. They are shaking, the way their muscles are contracting, they are ….in pain, a lot of pain.

Why? What could have caused every single one of them to become like this? They are the strongest beasts around, I doubt just running would have caused that.

Perhaps it’s because they tried to attack me while I was on this side of the line.

They could just be tired, and their shaking muscles just be a result of that, but their faces, even they are not human, are still expressive enough, especially the one standing in the middle, the biggest lion I ever saw.

Stripped Lion - Lv 126

His face is contorted. I think of trying to communicate with them through my telepathy skill, but that is one of the skills I can’t use through the root network needing to touch the subject for maximum effectiveness and even the thought of trying my luck again inside the limits is enough to cause my mind to shut down. I distance myself to go over what has happened to my flying crafts.

I hope the damage is not extensive, I want to get back to the village soon where I can sleep as much as I want.