It’s not Vednar, it’s not Vednar… Ranvir chanted to himself as he tossed a lump of rock vaguely disguised as a spear. The rock tore through the torso of the six-legged rat creature. Around him, multiple corpses of similar animals twitched as their bodies were remade by Amanaris.

It’s not Vednar, it’s not Vednar… Ranvir glanced across the creatures, summoning another spear, taking a little more time with this one. It came out looking mostly fine, though the tip chipped off as it shook back and forth. No more creatures showed up, however.

He let the spear dissipate as Amalia appeared next to him in a smear of watery blackness. Whereas space mana was incredibly loud on the lines, her murk mana was very nearly invisible, even in a limited area like this fold.

The fold seemed like someone had cut a slice out of a forest and a flat field and mashed them together. There was no gradation, just a simple wall of tall brown barked trees and a deep green canopy in front of them. All around them was simple low grass lands, nothing higher than mid-calf.

“I’ve never seen this variant before,” she muttered, kneeling next to a dissolving monster. “Nine eyes…” she shook her head and grabbed the katapetra before straightening.

The marbled blue and yellow rock didn’t register to his stone senses, despite its outward appearances. This also meant he couldn’t simply manipulate all of them to him and he had to go play fetch.

“Have you considered getting a close combat Ability?” Amalia asked as he filched the rest of the corpses.

“I have,” Ranvir said, pocketing the last of the katapetra. “But I’m not exactly sure which one to get. I have a few options according to my calculations. Rockstrike seems decent, it’s similar to Stone Heart as a full body boost.”

“Have you considered something that adds a bit of extra power to your normal strikes?” Amalia asked, miming her idea by using her Absolute to generate murky water that traveling along her arm as she threw a punch.

Ranvir sighed, “Yeah, but stone’s not great at those types of Abilities. They don’t have a lot and they’re rarely ever as good as the water variant. Usually, stone’s better for simple Abilities.”

“Hit and get hit,” Amalia replied with a nod. “I’ve met enough to know the type.”

“Stone’s decent, but it’s really simple.”

“You don’t really sound happy about that.”

Ranvir shrugged. “It’s fine. Space can be as complicated as I want it to be. They make up for each other.”

Amalia gave him a skeptical look before changing the subject. “Why are you so moody?”

Ranvir paused in his steps, ranging with his tether-sense as he hesitated turning to Amalia. Ranvir already knew no other rat creatures were in the area. He hadn’t heard them; he hadn’t smelled them, and he hadn’t picked anything up with his extra sense.

He swallowed once. “I found another plane.”

“Oh?” she licked her lips. “Is it Vednar?”

Ranvir frowned in annoyance at the sparking bright and vivid light igniting within him. Unquenchable hope. “Probably not. According to Latresekt, suspect as that information is, there are uncountable planes in the Liminal.”

“But it’s Second Order energy?”

Ranvir nodded.

Amalia rubbed at her jaw as she looked around. “What are you doing here, then?”

“Making money. I’ll sell most of the katapetra. I need some equipment if I’m going to enter another plane.”

“Like a translation stone.”

Ranvir nodded. “Among other things,” he turned his attention back to the forest, as a branch snapped nearby. He frowned and turned in the direction, realizing he’d let his tether-sense falter.

“I sense it,” Amalia said, wrapping herself in murk and vanishing into the shadow, like a drop of water disappearing into a puddle.

Ranvir closed his eyes, centering in on the approaching creature with his other senses as he gathered a Stone Spear. The fold was only mid-Kistios in power, which meant it was appropriate for Ranvir in rank, if not power. He summoned forth a spear as well made as it he could.

Amanaris

***

Stone Spear Ability Score increase: 102 -> 103

Grinning slightly, Ranvir blasted the spear into the trees. It was flying mostly straight, but he still had a little chance of actually hitting the creature from this distance. Thankfully, he didn’t plan to.

The spear hit a tree in front of the rat. Both tree and spear ripped apart, sending shrapnel in every direction, ripping up bark and flesh in the same stroke. Ranvir took a step to the side as a splintered piece of wood spun past him. It probably wouldn’t have hurt, but there was no reason to take such a risk.

He waited for a moment, but sensed no other monsters approaching. Creatures were close by, he could sense them now, but they hesitated after seeing he ripped apart the tree. Deciding to be brazen, Ranvir activated Stone Heart and let power bleed into it.

He tempered the flow of his mana, something he was getting better at much faster than he was his Abilities. A tingling sensation rose from Ranvir’s feet and flowed through his legs, chest, and into his arms and head. He tapped his lips together, feeling oddly unyielding.

Ranvir didn’t ready his hammer, even though he suspected he could simply defeat the entire fold with Stone Heart and the weapon. There were only two times where he really saw great strides of improvement with his Abilities. Well, three times really, but one of them didn’t count.

One was when he sat down for dedicated, mindful, and deliberate practice. Instead of going through the motions by rote, he went through them slowly, step by step. Ranvir knew that was actually how you learned something. Doing it fast came after once your spirit and body knew the requirements instinctively.

The second was when he was using them in combat, fighting for his life as it was. Even Stone Heart wasn’t perfect, the Ability could only strengthen him for so long. Eventually, he would tire and he would be forced to retreat. Even from this fold, despite his Draw being closer to someone on the cusp of Urityon rather than Kistios.

The third method was constant practice, but he couldn’t improve Stone Spear like that, as it was liable to explode everywhere if he held it for long enough. It had happened before. Thankfully, he’d suspected as much and hadn’t been close to anybody when it happened.

As he entered the forest, he heard the creatures move as much as he sensed them. Ripping spears from the ground, he sent them flying as fast as he could. One after another, ripping trees and animals apart. With him throwing them as rapidly as he could, even his accuracy suffered. This was only further compounded by the lacking trajectory of his spears.

Growling to himself, Ranvir struggled to make the stone bend to his will. He threw them out faster, earning another score increase, and yet the creatures kept coming. More were approaching now, and tiny pin pricks of brown and yellow light were emerging around Ranvir as he sloppily drew stone mana into himself. The spill over was manifesting as tiny bits of stone in the air before dropping to the ground.

He whipped around, sending a spear through a ratling that had crawled across the canopies to get at him. The spear ripped right through it before smashing into the trunk of a tree, bringing it down, killing another two on the way to the ground. Gore showered off the first ratling. Ranvir tried to close his nose to the scent, turning his attention even more strongly to firing out the Stone Spears.

Amanaris

***

Stone Spear has—

“No!” Ranvir growled. The air shook with the chittering cries of the ratlings, overwhelming even the wind rustling the leaves. Ranvir could only hear their shrill voices, smell their animal stink, and sense the ground rumbling as they kept rushing towards him.

Drawing fully half of his prodigious power through Stone Heart left him glowing with spill over light as gravel and sand were blasted off around him with each thrown weapon. He’d dug himself into a pit of the height of his knees as he ripped the stone up from the ground.

The stone spear he’d been pulling together had shaped into two smaller forms, but at Ranvir’s cry, their form broke and reformed into a single spear. It flew through three of the creatures, even as the next impaled four, before slowing down too much.

His spears were growing faster with every toss, more solid, but the ratlings were growing closer. Ratlings were infamous for their horde tendency, which was why Ranvir’d picked this specific fold. Sure, each of the katapetra they made would be worth less than a regular creature from a mid-Kistios fold, but they would leave enough of them to level entire villages multiple times over, sometimes.

This fold hadn’t been touched in nearly five years. It had just been moved to the emergency clearing list when Ranvir saw it. Now, as the ground shook with their paws, and his ears rang from their screams, and his eyes burned from their stench, he regretted that particularly choice.

The first one reached Ranvir after another thirty-seconds. The second only moments later. Ranvir kept launching spears, even as they started gnawing on his flesh. They tore and ripped at toughened skin, only leaving red marks for their trouble.

The distraction faded to the background as Ranvir focused on his mana, on his spears, and on his senses. His spears went from taking three or four to five, then six. They went began flying exactly where he wanted them as he pointed each target out.

It wasn’t enough. Despite his Stone Spears rapid advancement, he could not keep them away with such a singularly focused Ability. More crept around him, getting at his back, at his legs, weighing him down. Ranvir tried shrugging them off, which let another jump from the lip of the pit to land on his chest.

Ranvir had now descended to so deeply as to no longer be ripping the stone out from below his feet, but from in front of him as the pit grew to chest height. Sweat pebbled his skin and his soul burned with all the mana he was throwing around. Ranvir was slowing down, but so was the horde.

He could sense the end now. Ratling hordes didn’t have powerful leader creatures, instead they had a higher concentration of creatures, a hive. But they’d all come to Ranvir now. The skin over his shoulder ripped as teeth finally found the purchase they’d long been seeking.

His own cries lost in the screams of the masses, Ranvir ripped the ratling off his back and tossed it to the ground. It was immediately replaced by three more and Ranvir fell down to one knee as another nipped his thigh. Ratlings were piling on him so rapidly that he was forced to close his eyes to not have them gouged out by accident.

They lay on him so heavily he was forced to the ground and he heard multiple bones break as he fell on the much smaller creatures. More claws and teeth found purchase as Stone Heart failed to keep up with the constant pressure. Ranvir had severely underestimated the size of the horde.

He groaned, struggling to heave a single breath in as he drew from another source of immense power. The back of his eyelids were blasted with purple light strongly enough that it reflected at him, as he stifled a groan. Ranvir’s spirit shuddered as bore the strain of drawing on both his powers so strongly. But not fully. Not yet.

Reaching through Flesh, Ranvir slipped himself into a pocket-space, then emerged thirty meters away on top of a fallen tree. Gasping for breath, his eyes burning from the sweat and stench, limbs trembling, Ranvir didn’t bend over to catch his breath. He couldn’t pause to recover for even a moment, no matter how much he wanted to.

He could see the entire horde milling at the center of the pit, where he’d been. This was his chance. There had to be hundreds remaining filling the entire hole up with furry multi legged bodies.

Ranvir dropped Stone Heart as he summoned the mother of all Stone Spears. Stone mana gathered at his hand, an orb of brown and gold energy flashing powerfully enough to catch the rats’ attention. Ranvir drew all of his power into the Stone Spear. It bled so much stone mana. His eyes were flashing like he’d been looking at the sun for too long. The ground rippled and ripped clumps of soil, sand, stone, and sediment ripping free to pelt him and his Ability.

Ranvir threw before the horde could attempt to leave the pit, then he dove back into his tiny pocket-space. He waited for as long as he could before letting it dissolve and dropping onto his knees next to the tree he’d originally landed upon.

Spikes of stone had ripped up from the ground all around the hole. At the closest, they were taller than he was, though they quickly tapered off to smaller than his knees. Even thirty meters away, Ranvir could see a small spike, shorter than his pinkie, rising from the ground.

“I suppose I’m going to be the one picking up all the katapetra, huh?” Amalia asked, as she approached the stone crunching under her feet.

Ranvir looked up at her with exhausted eyes. “If you could, that would be nice.”

Amalia shook her head. “Get an area Ability,” she pointed to the crater where the loose dirt and soil had been transmuted to stone. “That doesn’t count, just so we’re on the same page.”

Ranvir chuckled as he fell back against the trunk behind him. All the trees in a decent area around where he’d fought had been felled, making the forest look like a giant had taken a huge bite out of it. He chuckled. You’re almost as dangerous as a warp Sword now, he told himself.

Amanaris

***

Name: Ranvir

Age: 3 Years Old

Element: Stone

Tier: 5 (40)

Level: 1

Statistics:

Mana: Draw - 184

Perception - 20

Unspent points - 1

Abilities:

Stone Spear - 138

Stone Heart - 163

Ability Slots - 2 / 5