"What do you think?” Max said looking at a crack in the grass of his Pocket World.

It wasn’t so much a crack but a stretch. The spherical constitution of the pocket didn’t really allow for cracks as the movement of the sphere itself scaled rather than elongated or widened. In the case of the dirt and grass, the stretch of the two looked closer to patchy grass as if it hadn’t been watered lately.

But there was definitely promise, something of which Max was proud of.

Celenia shrugged, “I can grow the grass to cover it up a bit more.”

Max frowned, “No, well yes. But that’s not the point. The stretching of the grass and dirt means the Pocket World is larger.” He raised his eyebrow up and down a few times.

Emi looked at the grass then to her bond then to the far wall of similar grass then to the ceiling of grass. They were all technically the same field of grass, but the way they bent into a sphere along with gravity made using relative terms like wall and ceiling almost needed to describe places within the miniature world.

“Is it larger?” The little monster said.

Max looked crestfallen, “It is… I can feel it… and the grass stretching proves it.”

It had been a few weeks since his lesson with Goddess Sahhgen, but every day the Lost Lord had tried pushing at the fabric of the Pocket World to stretch it. It was very slow progress, but this confirmed that his daily routine had done something.

Celenia actually looked a bit impressed now that deal was actually pointed out. “Space magic is very interesting. I don’t understand any of it, however. Can you do something similar to normal Pocket Dimensions?”

Max went to reply, but instantly stopped. That was… a very good idea and question. The harmless musings of his girlfriend caused him to realize something, something that has been his bane since leaving on this vacation.

It wasn’t much of a vacation at this point. It never had been, but at this point, with everything that has happened already, it was even worse than before.

Three days had passed since Max and Emi’s battle with Nix and the attempt on Max’s life. Things were rough the day after, mainly because the [Water Mage] duo were incredibly tired and those that missed the fight while being in the Pocket World had many questions.

Trying to juggle teleporting vast distances, answering questions while evading some, being sleep deprived, and pondering the existence of stretching space, caused more than a few annoyed glares. But in the end, Celenia, Alia, and Isaac knew the answers would come and that they needed to let their taxi service cool off.

Once Max deemed them in a safe sleeping spot, somewhere very far from New Mundo and hopefully a week’s travel from any nearby [Trackers], and after a long nap, he was ready for whatever. It seemed that in that time Emi gave the others a play by play recounting of the battle, so they were content about that.

The real questions were about the assassination attempt in the Healer city.

“Ice and water beats fire, simple as that.” Max had said at the time, receiving a frown from everyone.

Alia spoke up, “You killed an [Assassin Mage] while protecting a [Head Priestess]… How is that simple?”

He saw what she was getting at but chose this was a time to elude rather than fully explain the extent of his magic and power, “Teleporting is a great way to catch people off guard. Creating a dome of water and ice is something I’ve had extensive practice in. Ambushing someone from inside a dome of ice is not something the normal fighter would expect. I guess I took a risk, but I trusted myself.”

“And he needed to see if it was Salae.” Isaac added.

“That’s about it. The rest was grabbing Lusia and stepping into here.” Max finished.

After that the conversation changed to what was next. Something of which no one had any idea. Two big events happened one after the other, and the group didn’t know how to proceed. If it were normal circumstances, they would contact many notable parties to alert them of the development, something of which Max delegated through letters to the mansion.

He didn’t know who these important people were, let alone if Nix’s death and Salae’s potential war against the Church of Healing was something to be spread. Maybe secrecy was best in this scenario.

Alia knew of a few people to contact about Nix’s death, but even more about the Church fiasco. She wrote a multipage journal about who to approach and what to say, wear, bring, or even extort. If God Subuntu was denouncing Eden, then now was the time to gather allies. Max teleported the journal to the mansion with a short letter explaining to Clammy her role in this.

Alia hated to admit it, but she was useless right now. All of her schooling, political and social networking, philosophy, and renown was all moot. Hopefully Clammy could appreciate some of her information.

Isaac in the meantime wrote his one guide on how to stage a coup. While his original view for Vast Empire was simply to create a world where people were treated equally, his time in captivity had bore plenty of ideas. Some less savory than others. A coup was rather simple in principle. The knowledge and networking of a few key aspects were not, however.

Still, he wrote plenty of ideas down about how to overthrow the government starting at different levels of political capital. He decided he would update it as time went on, changing things and raising points with the others.

Whether or not his ideas were needed was going to be up in the air. But if it was decided that Eden needed to go, and assassination and war were not an option, he’s work would hopefully be helpful.

That was a big if as well. Eden was a new King, if his only bad policy was to actively look for Max’s head, Max could live with it and Salae wouldn’t experience a revolution. Truthfully that would be a blessing. It would suck for the Lost Lord, but all those people of the Kingdom would essentially prosper.

But if Eden wasn’t perfect, something of which that was looking to be closer to the truth, people were going to need help.

In fact, all Isaac wanted to do was help those who needed it. It was actually a teaching of the Church of Ofes, something he learned in a past life – Help those whose hands are below. Help those whose are without reach. Help those where the Light does not touch.

The immortal was thinking a lot about his past beliefs. Even if he didn’t believe in the God who wrote such scripture, he still believed in the goodness and messages they represented.

A day and a half past rather slowly after that. Max continued to teleport the group around, making sure to find packs of dangerous monsters for Celenia to practice on. The added danger was always within the grasp of the more experienced mages and caused the Elf to think on her feet.

But she was happy to report that non-lava aspect monsters were much easier to kill, netting her several levels.

In the meantime, Max and Emi took a break from magical combat training, the battle with Nix straining their tolerance for fighting. It would come back and eventually the two would spar again, but in the meantime they each independently studied.

In reality the duo were constantly bouncing ideas off each other, creating and forming spell ideas. Spell ideas was reaching a bit. They didn’t intend to create System spells. When it happened, great! But it also was usually less powerful, slower, and with some negative effect that just didn’t stack up to pure manipulation.

For example, one of Max’s newest spells, Splinter Shower. While it was nice to see a definite mana cost and damage output, the [Water Mages] were never going to use the System version. They could create the spell in the same amount of time as relying on the System and they had the added bonus of enhancing the splinters of ice themselves.

Splinter Shower was a templet base of what the spell could be. With pure manipulation, while a bit more straining, also allowed much more flexibility. Each individual splinter could be detailed thus adding to potency, they could be melded into other spells with ease, they could even fire out faster.

Avoiding spell boxes was not always the correct avenue of progress, however. Every spell Max tried to create he wished for a box, something that was rather rare. Space magic, when compared to water, was incredibly difficult. If he tried to purely manipulate space while creating a Pocket Dimension or teleport, bad things were going to happen.

Sure, he had done both when first creating the spells, and he could do it again if needed, but the risk to reward simply was not worth it.

That was why he was hesitant with the speed he could stretch the Pocket World or forcing pockets into rings or pendants.

But Celenia’s musings had made him think of something, “I’ll be right back.” He told her, leaving the Elf and little monster staring at the stretched grass.

Max arrived outside the Pocket World and a safe distance away from the entrance. They were somewhere in the wilds of the northern peninsula of Salarin, a few hours of teleportation travel and they could be in a different continent.

The Lost Lord started out testing his, Celenia’s rather, idea. He didn’t create a fold in space like how [Arbor] Xylem taught so long ago, instead straining a single spot of space. He pushed the spot in two, creating a small rectangular gap.

The gap was incredibly small, manipulating space like this was rather intensive, forcing Max to start out very minute. He pushed on the gap again, stretching it into a three dimensional shape. It wasn’t quite a box or cube but closer to a weird oblong shape.

Moment of truth. He thought while pulling against the outer edges of the gap as well as pushing from the inside out.

The quick manipulation of space mimicked blowing up a balloon while someone pulled on it. But unlike a balloon, the gap continued to grow. It never popped like a balloon because space couldn’t pop.

It could collapse or snap, but popping was something Max had yet to see. That didn’t mean he was rushed with his experiment. In fact, the whole process took several minutes.

In the end, he was left with a uniquely shaped Pocket Dimension. At least, something that looked like a Pocket. When he went to store something inside, the construct fizzled, snapping back to its original state and breaking the testing stick in the process.

That raised the question of why couldn’t Max’s space spells effect other beings. If he could simply collapse space around someone, killing them instantly, that would be great! But through previous testing, along with getting echoed by this experiment, space magic didn’t seem to work on living things besides Max and plants. Case in point being Anchored Portals, they just didn’t work as he intended.

The [Space Mage] could get lost for hours on theories and possibilities, but he wanted to continue with stretching a Pocket into existence.

He tried again in the same way but added real folds of space to act as a pseudo barrier between the gap in space and space itself. The idea was to create a sort of shocks system as the stick had rippled through the gap like a rock being thrown into a pond. The shocks would spring the ripple back, hopefully canceling itself out.

It worked.

Sort of.

The shocks could only handle a certain level of stress before snapping themselves. In the case of the test gap, six sticks were the limit. Max wished he had a better tool to measure this phenomenon with, but last he checked space magic tools were few and far between.

But he had items that were similar in size and weight. Coins to be specific. Copper coins to be more specific. There was no way he was gambling gold coins on his magic, if the gap broke, he’d eventually become bankrupt.

On the third attempt, Max focused more intently on the shocks themselves, making sure to complete the folds and creases with added strength and perfection. He actually ran out of copper coins before the shocks failed. He resorted to more sticks.

About a half a full branch later, the construct broke. This left a massive smile on the Lost Lords face.

He pulled out a cheap, worn, scrap iron ring and got to work. After completing the runic work, Max slowly began to create the Pocket Dimension for the jewelry using the method he had just laid out. He made extra sure to create everything with finesse and pride he would be proud of selling. The extra work wasn’t very much in the grand scheme of things and if he were to start mass producing inventory rings, he would need to get into a consistent rhythm.

The runic dial flared as he connected the Pocket to the metal. The rune melted into the outer casting along the crafting lines, taking his mind back to the Mage Guild classes. After seeing the ring didn’t explode upon completion, Max took his time putting the potential bomb on his finger.

He used his fake watery arm for the initial test in case of damage, but as he found while fighting Nix, his artificial arm was still his arm. He would feel everything, there just wouldn’t be any damage.

Slowly he pushed sticks into the ring. It looked weird, like he was injecting his finger with a massive splinter, but the odd imagery never caused Max’s smile to falter.

The next part did, however. Retrieving the sticks.

He made a very simple mistake in his experiments. He had never actually tried to take anything out of the new found process to make Pockets. But Max was a healer, meaning any damage could be fixed… if it wasn’t too severe.

This line of thinking was reckless, he knew, but he felt his magic would hold. No, that wasn’t right. He knew his magic would hold.

With caution to the wind, he swapped the ring to his real hand – while he was confident, he still didn’t want to lose his hand in a collapsing construct of space. A ring exploding on a finger was much more manageable and reforming a wrist of water was child’s play.

He also knew he could just create another test Pocket, but he was excited. So, without any fanfare he slowly stuck his artificial arm into the inventory ring. He slowly removed it, keeping an eye on the ripple and shocks, and returned with a handful of sticks.

It worked.

It had worked!

Max celebrated with a small fist bump and a smirk that conveyed dominance over a near month long problem. He was one step closer to sending a pack of rings back to Lesterwood for Elliot to sell at Leviathan Works.

But… not before more testing. He would hate to sell a product with an upper limit of size and or weight that blew up if passed… That would be less than ideal. He had the concept and method, however, and that meant promise. A lot of promise.

Idly he thought if this was how all inventory rings were made and decided that the answer was probably not. This progress of creating a Pocket was rather odd and he wasn’t really sure if it was the correct course of action. A normal Pocket wouldn’t break like the stretched ones did, which made it seem like a strictly worse method.

Even if it connected to rings better.

… On the other hand, however, if he could figure out a way to create unbreakable shocks, then he would have a Pocket of unbelievable size and structure.

But that was for later. Now was the time for celebration. Max teleported back to Emi and Celenia and showed off his new bling.

Vel was tired. She, as of the last week or so, had been traveling through the wilds. It wasn’t a difficult journey per say, but the traveling itself was tedious. Being bored in low-level lands put a damper on moving long distances. Not having monsters to kill or having students to teach removed all semblance of fun.

But that was expected as she was traveling alone… to a random city she had never heard of.

The city of Lullin knew very well that they had encountered a murderous problem. The guard captain Vel spoke to only had negative things to say about that matter. Which was expected but as the city was still finding bodies… it would only get worse.

The captain also told the elderly mage that something happened to a neighboring city and a few villages along the way. He didn’t know what, but from preliminary and untrusted reports, a major fight broke out. Apparently against a Dragon of all things.

Traveling towards the city of Zulin was more eventful. Rumors and gossip had spread through the villages on the way, letting Vel get hints of a bigger picture. But it wasn’t until she got to the city itself that everything fully form.

[Stone Mages] and [Masons] worked in tandem with [Stone Shapers] and [Wall Reinforcers] to repair Zulin’s wall when Vel had arrived. It was relatively early in the day, which made the rows of stationed armed guard all the weirder. They lined the nonbroken portion as well as flanked in the nearby forest.

Healers from the Church hunkered around, a small group crouching over a patch of grey grass. They were using odd devices and magically treated gloves to pick at the ground and grey gunk that littered around. Oddly enough, these Healers were hesitant. They kept stealing glances at the city’s gate where plenty of noise and movement arose.

A full platoon of Salaen [Knights] argued at the gate, demanding entry and introductions of some kind. They used their Kingdom’s name like a common noun, basking in the authority it was supposed to give.

The guards were not having any of it – which caused a smile to draw across Vel’s face.

She walked to and waited through the line into the city, easily by passing the [Knights] as they continued to argue. It was time to find out what happened to this city and it just so happens that, as a Magestone plate, Vel was privy to certain information.

After speaking to the [Receptionist] at the local Mage Guild branch, Vel was headed to meet with a certain city guard captain. Apparently, at least as the representative of the Guild knew, only the captain truly knew what happened. Sure, some of the guards and mages present could tell the tale well enough, but it was only the captain that knew the internals of it all.

The captain’s office was sporadic, filled with crumbled papers, and looked like someone had been sleeping there. It took an hour before the captain showed, but when he did he looked like death. It was obvious that the man hadn’t truly slept or eaten a proper meal in days.

“Veline, the Shadows Deluge, to what do I deserve the honor? Captain Algar, at your service.” The man did a proper salute.

Vel smirked at the gesture, “No need for that, captain. I am here as a humble adventurer and concerned mentor, not as a Major for a war against some conniving God or power hungry Eldritch. “

“I see. I see. A concerned mentor… Your apprentice wouldn’t happen to be Max Fowler?”

“And Emi, yes.”

“Of course, the bond as well.” Algar shifted his eyes to a wanted poster pinned to the wall, “Your apprentices are wanted… but they didn’t seem to be concerned. Or at least Max didn’t. Emi didn’t speak much.”

“Sounds like them. He said he could walk out of here without you stopping him, huh?”

The captain nodded, “I didn’t believe him at first. But he seems like a good kid. This city would be hurting a lot more without him and his partner’s involvement.”

Vel pursed her lips, “And what exactly was their involvement?”

“Oh, did you not get his letter? No matter, I think I have a large enough grasp on the situation to explain things. Well, it all started with the Lost Lord bringing news of murders in Lullin…”

The next several hours were filled with captain Algar talking about the battle and the events that led up to it. He made note to mention every time Max seemingly appeared out of nowhere or disappeared after what looked to be a fatal attack.

As a city guardsman of a small city, Algar didn’t often see rare and or unique classes or spells. Teleporting like walking was something that eluded him and most of those on the wall that night.

The captain ended his recollection of the event with the fight against the Dragon. He spoke about the harpoon trap his guards and the city mages put together. He talked about the odd heat of the green flames and the thrashing of the giant lizard’s tail that broke most of the nearby wall. But finally he talked about the mammoth-sized shard of ice that seemingly appeared out of nowhere and suddenly killed the great beast.

“Yup, sounds like Max and Emi. Always theatrics with them.” Vel said smiling.

The captain didn’t know if that was a joke but smiled along with her, “Then he healed our wounded, after making sure I wasn’t going to arrest him. Then, and I preference this with that these are rumors from exhausted men, he was reportedly seen speaking to invisible beings. ‘Ghost’ was the word that kept appearing in the reports.”

Vel nodded, that was weird, but who knows what Max was actually doing. Lost Lords were weird sometimes and she wasn’t overly concerned. But something else did pique her interest.

“What about all of the [Knights] that are trying to get into the city? What’s up with them?”

The captain turned serious, “They are trying to get to me and my superiors. I let the wanted Lost Lord walk out of the city, or so they say. But we both know there was nothing I could have done to hold him until Salae arrived.”

“Say you have more wounded to heal, he would have stuck around.” Vel chided. She said it in a way that was sarcastic but she also knew that it was probably true. At least, for a little while. Salae catching him before he teleported was a different story, however.

Algar shook his head, “I’m not even sure that if I had the power to hold him, I would have. Yesterday’s news was rather broadening.”

“News?”

“Oh? You haven’t heard? There was an assassination attempt on the Lost Lord and a [Head Priestess] of the Church of Healing. Max apparently protected the Healer before killing one of the [Assassins]. After that, he disappeared and the city of New Mundo went on lock down.”

Vel was confused, “Why would that make you think twice about Max’s status of a wanted man?”

The captain caught the elderly woman’s eye, “Because the [Assassin] was traveling with Salaen [Knights], which made God Subuntu, and subsequently the Church of Healing, denounce Salae. They’ve already ceased operations in the capital, something that has been causing uproar in those who need healing.”

That was… rather important news. It was unheard of for the Church of Healing to refuse services within a prominent capital. Maybe if the city was ran by [Thieves] and [Murderers] that would make sense. What was Subuntu playing at? The city is going to demand answers… which Eden will be forced to answer.

Vel smiled. She knew that something more sinister was happening below the surface, removing access to healing was something Subuntu would only do under substantial thought. Hurting a kingdom because of their King’s decision was always something that always left a lasting effect.

What did Eden do that caused such a reaction from a God?

Now was the time to plan Eden’s downfall with Clammy and the others in Lesterwood. Max was fine, more than fine actually, he was powerful. Killing an enemy such as Nix was proof enough. Having him around might cause more issues, however. So it was best he stayed away.

But Vel’s worries about her apprentice had been quelched, even if she didn’t see him. It was time to head home and prepare against Salae.