Spiritual Traveler was a skill that opened up a whole separate world.

The first, and most dangerous part, of Spiritual Traveler was that it left my body completely defenseless. My awareness would leave my body, and my body would be unconscious the whole time my spirit was absent. The proximity ward that I set up would let my soul know if someone was close to my body, which would hopefully buy my spirit enough time to fly back and deal with whatever was messing with my body. There were several E-rank Personal Mana Shields that I put into place for additional security.

Once that was taken care of, I activated Spiritual Traveler and began my journey through the Spiritual Plane.

The Spiritual Plane was essentially an overlay of the world as I knew it, with everything reflected in relation to the presence of mana.

A normal rock or boulder would have very little mana in it, the air had a very small amount of ambient mana around me, and plants would have a modest amount of mana.

The real gatherings of mana were the creatures around me. I could guess at their shapes from their mana outlines, even though I could not see their physical characteristics.

It was a disconcerting feeling, seeing the insides of creatures—their hearts, lungs, brain, and core—which were all densely packed with mana, and then I could see the dense threads of mana traveling in mesmerizing webs throughout the rest of the body.

Mana Sensing was essential at this point. Mana Sensing, I already knew, did not require eyes or normal organs to function—it was based around my soul, which was currently outside my body.

Previously, all mana had appeared as white to me. Now, with my C-ranked Mana Sensing, I could now see the attunement of mana, represented in various colors. There were creatures digging through the ground that were Earth-attuned, which had brown mana. There were fish swimming in the a nearby stream that ran from the snowy cap of the mountain that had a light blue coloring to their mana.

Several vultures circling in the sky showed me that Air-attuned mana was white. Most plants around me were green.

Of course, this was a gross oversimplification of everything that I saw. In truth, the world was a vibrant and psychedelic blend of colors. The vultures had streaks of brown mana in their guts, and the plants around me had traces of white in their mana composition as well.

It was like seeing the world in a whole new way—seeing many of the same things, but with a completely different framework.

The circumstances of movement with this skill was one that I had been unclear about until now.

As an incorporeal spirit, it didn’t take any amount of force at all to move my spirit from one place to another.

Samantha said. that fast, because we want to take the time to study this mountain.>

Samantha said, as my spirit started climbing the mountainside.

Why is light gold? Shouldn’t light be white, since white light holds all the colors?

Samantha said.

The way Samantha said it implied that she had already located it. I quickly filtered through my many senses, searching the area for white and gold.

Eventually, I managed to find it. Or, them. There were several underground orbs of condensed gold and white mana planted in an orderly fashion around the foot of the mountain.

It seemed the orbs were just a few inches below the ground, at times.

Samantha said.

Excuse me?

The idea of dealing with weaponized feces was extremely unappealing to me.

So, what should I do? I asked. Would I be able to just use my E-rank Personal Mana Shield to block it?

For once, Samantha’s approach sounded extremely reasonable.

Between my heightened Mana Sensing and my Spiritual Traveler spell, I felt like I was able to get a good sense of what the mountain looked like. I could see dense rows of trees about halfway up the mountain, glowing brightly with green mana, and hundreds of roaming animals—Dire Rats and some kind of cross between birds and dogs made up the majority of the monsters here.

It wasn’t hard to find the Sandman, hiding in an underground cave two thirds of the way up the mountain.

The Illusion-attuned mana inside the Sandman was incredibly dense. The blend of white and gold colors was almost blinding, which made the Sandman’s location even easier to find.

The Sandman was also surrounded by illusion-attuned mana. Or, to be more precise, the Sandman was surrounded by its own shit, as Samantha said.

To my confusion, though, there was another Sandman, just a few hundred yards away from that Sandman. Both setups of illusion-attuned mana surrounding a dense combination of mana the size of a bear were identical.

As I explored in growing confusion, I found a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, Sandman made of mana. Two were roaming the mountainside, and the other was at the peak of the mountain top.

Why didn’t you mention I would have to fight a pack of them?

Samantha said, going into her lecturing tone.

So, what’s the plan?

Samantha sighed.

I sighed. If it were up to me, I would come back when I have a C-rank Personal Mana Shield. Then I could take my time defeating the Zone Lord.

Oh, right.

That leaves three more possible Sandmen, I said.