The older shrine maiden, Setsuna, had just finished taking the plates and other dishes away to the kitchen.

“I’m done bringing everything.” She was balancing many plates with the use of gravitational magic in order to keep the ceramic dishes from falling and shattering. “Tomoe, could you give me a hand? I’m still not as accurate as dad when it comes to letting go of things.”

The thin horned waitress bowed slightly with a kind smile on her face.

“At once, my lady.”

After setting the plates in the rather modern looking sink. Setsuna exited out of the kitchen back to the main hall—where she started to look around for Leona, who was nowhere to be seen.

“Huh? Where did she go?”

She walked around for a little bit but after going around the entire hall, she didn't see signs of Leona nor her father. Without anyone else in the hall, she decided to ask the only person that was there.

“Kaeli.” The shrine maiden called out to her. “Do you know where Leona went?”

“Oh…” The high elf turned to her with a bead of sweat forming on her forehead. “She and Master went for a ‘stroll’.”

At first Setsuna's expression showed surprise before she sighed while shaking her head.

“Why is Father always like this…?”

The moment Robert snapped his fingers, the entire world seemed to twist and turn. Reality was bending in Leona’s eyes as a head splitting pain assaulted her brain which blurred most of her vision.

“Argh!”

Her instinct was to hold her head and that brief moment of impulse—she couldn’t feel her body or rather, she had no body. Her corporeal form was taken away for a split second and the next time she blinked, she was standing atop a field of grass overlooking a walled city.

“Phew…” Robert let out a relieved sigh. “It’s good that they didn’t expand here. Otherwise we might have ended up inside a wall or something.”

The dizzying sensation was subsiding as her eyes started to focus. The previous blur of light was now becoming a clear sight of a coastal city which had its perimeter walls lit by torches placed at random intervals around the stone construction.

“What the… where are we?”

“Astera, didn’t I tell you we’d be coming here?”

“Huh?” She looked at him in shock. “Astera is… on the other side of the ocean! Is that even possible?!”

“Never ask a woman, her age, a man, his salary and a magician, his incantations.” She raised an eyebrow, though the shock was still apparent in her expression. “It was a joke.”

He stretched out both of his arms and let out a satisfied grunt. “It has been a while since I’ve done any long range teleportation like this, with another person besides. Hooray me.”

Leona looked behind her and she could barely make the outline of the forest she went into to hunt kobolds with Charlotte’s personal squad.

“How is this…?” She turned back to him. “We took a month to reach Nara and with a snap of a finger, you’re able to bring me all the way back here? How?”

“If one has the required knowledge and mana, anyone can pull this off.” He scratched the side of his neck. “It’s not like I can accurately teleport someone inside a specific building or anything remotely close to it. That would require way too many calculations in my head in order to not phase someone into a wall.”

“Calculations? I thought you’d just swap places with whatever the destination was.”

“The spell ‘Greater Teleportation’ does that.” He snapped his fingers and the air seemed to distort around him. “‘True Teleportation’ is what can make you travel extremely long distances like this. But there is a caveat, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up in unusual situations like phasing out of existence.”

An intense pang of pain hit her brain as she tried to comprehend the words he spoke. However the flash of pain, while extremely intense, only lasted for a split second.

“Ugh…” She kneeled with her hand clutching the side of her head. “What the…”

“Oh? I thought you’d be at this level of comprehension but apparently I was wrong.”

“What… what happened just now?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“This is what I like to call: ‘Causality Paradox’. Most often when dealing with magic theory, if you do not possess the required knowledge to understand a principle, yet you try to learn it, you end up with a terrible headache. Don’t ask me how it works, I’m still trying to comprehend it myself.”

“Is that the reason why you taught Yuna and Setsuna general knowledge before teaching them about magic?”

“Hmm? I wasn’t expecting you to connect the dots like that.” He seemed amused as he scratched the underside of his chin. “Yes, that is exactly the reason. Addressing this esoteric problem is most troublesome, you see, I don’t know the patterns that dictate what ‘knowledge’ you need to possess previously to learn a new spell or technique.”

“So basically-” She stood up, though some of the pain still lingered in between her eyes. “-there is no shortcut to learning magic. Is what you’re saying?”

“Pretty much yeah.” He flicked his hand and the distortion disappeared. “If there were shortcuts in learning magic, I assure you, both Yuna and Setsuna would probably be the strongest mages in the world.”

“They are that strong huh…?” Her eyes wandered back to the walled city—a few buildings had slow burning torches placed outside of them. “I wonder if I can ever reach their level.”

“You can. I’m sure of it.” He chuckled. “You are the great granddaughter of a dragon after all.”

“I can’t begin to fathom how my mother came to Arcadia after such a long time. Though I can’t ask either of them anymore now…”

“What made you think that?”

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. In turn, she glanced at him with a puzzled expression.

“What do you mean?”

“Your great grandmother is very much alive.” He scoffed at her misunderstanding. “What are you talking about?”

“Huh? Isn’t Sylphia already long gone from this world?”

He reeled his head back with visible confusion before said confusion turned into amusement as he started to laugh.

“Wait. You thought you were a descendant of the Silver Dragon?”

“Aren’t I? You told me Krieg and I were related-”

“Not by blood, at least, not humanoid blood. Your great grandmother is the Platinum Dragon that still lives up to this day in Nara.”

“What… what’s her name?” He brought his right hand close to his mouth as he was trying to hold the laughter in. “Hey! Why are you laughing?! This is a serious question!”

“You can connect two seemingly nonsensical things like knowledge and magic theory but you can’t even take a guess on your grandmother’s own name. If that’s not funny I don’t know what is.” After laughing it off he wiped off a few tears that formed on the corners of his eyes before finally answering. “Frostleaf. Your great grandmother’s name is Frostleaf.”

Leona felt her chest tighten a bit as she curled her bottom lips.

“I wonder if my mother wanted to remember her, or be remembered…” She grabbed the pendant on her chest and squeezed it slightly. “Then again… if she ran away from home…”

“Dwelling about it won’t change the fact that she traveled through the same places as you have been before.” He placed his hand around his neck while twisting and cracking it. “If you want answers, you might as well ask them personally.”

“Do you think I can meet her?”

“As long as you’re strong enough to survive encountering her, yes, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m better off showing you rather than explaining.” He took half a step back and turned to face her. “Brace yourself.”

Leona’s muscles tensed when she noticed him raise his open palm and close it into a tight fist. She was expecting him to physically attack her but instead he just stood still.

‘What… what is he going to do?’

With her legs slightly bent, she was considering whether to create some distance or not before a flock of birds flew from the forest nearby away from them.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, she felt an extreme amount of pressure from inside of her chest as if her body was dumped with freezing cold water. She instinctively took a sharp and deep breath as her legs gave away from the oppressive outburst of mana overflowing from him.

“What… is happening to me…?!”

Try as she might, she couldn’t move her body at all. It was as if an invisible force was pushing down on her from inside out. She couldn’t breathe, in fact it was hard to even keep herself conscious from the pain she was feeling.

At that point, Robert kneeled beside her.

“This is aetherial pressure. Though not unlike the dark element’s gravity manipulation, it’s still not quite the same.” He opened his hand which stopped the strange force being exerted on her, which allowed her to desperately gasp for air. “You probably already realized this but every living being exudes a certain amount of mana from their bodies through either their mana gates or from radiating mana. What I did just now was to increase that output to the point that it turns into aether.”

“Then…” Leona brushed some drool that formed on the side of her mouth with her arm before continuing as she stood up. “I can assume that is somehow related to how dragons operate…?”

“Yes. Even the youngest of dragons radiate enough mana to burn the air around them. In fact, if you were to meet your great grandmother now, you would probably be reduced to a bloody pulp the moment you enter in range of her aura.”

“How am I even supposed to meet her then…?”

“By becoming stronger. Your body’s natural resistance to aether will increase with the amount of mana it can support.”

“Ugh…” She looked at her own trembling hand. “Am I really that weak?”

“Hah! It’s not a matter of if you’re weak and more like your grandmother is too strong. For her age, she is almost equally strong as Akantor in his prime.” He adjusted his robe and took a step closer to her. “Shall we return? It is quite late and you should get plenty of rest for tomorrow.”

“Hm.”

She nodded with frowned eyebrows. That pressure wasn’t unlike when she had first met Lastraeous and Eleonora, but it was much more oppressive than either of them.

While the void god’s aura unsettled her and the goddess’ felt like a warm caress, Robert’s aether made her body feel like it was being crushed from within.

“Robert, mind if I ask you something before we go back?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you personally teach me magic?”