For the next week, everything went smoothly. The ship sailed steadily across the open sea, far from land, with nothing but water stretching in every direction. Briva had been bursting with curiosity the first few days, constantly exploring the ship, peering into barrels, asking the crew questions, and watching the sea life dart beneath the waves. But the novelty soon wore off. By the fourth day, her enthusiasm had given way to boredom. Every morning now, she groaned about the salt in her hair and complained endlessly about not having a proper bath.
Leo, meanwhile, kept himself occupied from morning to night. He began each day with physical training, spending hours with his sword under the blazing sun. His body ached, but the progress was steady.
Later, once his energy had shifted from physical to mental, he moved to a quiet corner of the ship. There, surrounded by scrolls and old books, he focused on a different challenge—his teleportation spell. He poured over theories, trying to visualize spatial folds and break down the principles behind instant movement. He etched experimental runes onto scraps of wood and small stones, activating them with controlled bursts of mana, but the results remained inconsistent. Sometimes they fizzled out. Other times, they simply did nothing.
When his concentration faltered or his eyes grew too tired to read, he turned inward and focused on his domain. He pushed himself to go deeper into it, to make the connection something stronger than a distant awareness. When he reached a trance-like state above that realm, he kept part of his attention on the three candidates selected for his eventual meeting, quietly observing them from afar, studying their behavior and presence without revealing his own.
Out of everything he worked on, the combination spell involving his sword had shown the most improvement. Day by day, it grew sharper, more refined. Eventually, it became a spectacle that drew attention. Crew members began gathering at the edge of the deck, murmuring among themselves as they watched him train.
Right now, Leo stood near the bow of the ship, where the wind hit strongest. He held his sword loosely at his side and closed his eyes. The dull hum of mana began to vibrate faintly around the blade, invisible to the eye but heavy in the air. Slowly, he began to feed blood into the sword. It slithered out from within it, wrapping around the weapon in dark, curling tendrils. The familiar shape of the blood slash began to form—first as a thin outline, then growing thicker, pulsing with life.
But Leo didn't release it. Instead, he poured more blood into it, compressing it, forcing it into a tighter and tighter space. The blood twisted violently, trying to break free from the blade, but his mana held it in place like a cage. The strain was visible. The entire sword now glowed a deep, angry red, trembling slightly in his grip as if it were about to explode.
The crew, sensing the rising tension, instinctively stepped back.
Leo opened his eyes. In a single fluid motion, he raised the blade and unleashed the attack. A crimson slash burst from the sword, racing forward across the sea like a jagged ribbon of blood. It carved through the water for nearly a hundred meters before fading into mist. A deep trench was left behind in the ocean, a long gash that lingered for several seconds before the waves slowly filled it in again.
"Looks like your spell is finally ready," Moritz said, stepping up with his arms crossed, watching the sea return to normal.
"Yes. But it takes too long to prepare," Leo said calmly, lowering his sword. "And it can still be stronger."
"Stronger?" Moritz arched an eyebrow. "You could slice a ship in half with that. Easily."
"I'll be satisfied when I can cut through a mountain."
That earned a round of laughter from the nearby crew. Even Leo allowed himself a small smile, but inside he wasn't joking. He knew how serious he was. Power wasn't his main concern anymore—what he truly needed was speed. The spell took minutes to charge, and in real combat, those minutes could get him killed. He had to make it faster.
After more training, Leo turned his attention back to teleportation. This part was slower, more frustrating. He experimented with sigils, visualizations, and mana displacement techniques, but progress was painfully slow. Briva appeared beside him and sat down cross-legged with a familiar sigh. She rested her chin in her hand, watching as he activated another magic circle. She had been doing this on and off throughout the week—quietly observing. There wasn't much she could contribute; her people rarely needed long-distance travel, and teleportation wasn't something they studied in the forest. If any records of such spells existed, she had never seen them.
Once he was finished with his training, Leo returned to his cabin. The final part of his routine was always the same—he waited until the ship was quiet and the crew had gone to sleep before working on his domain. Nighttime gave him the silence he needed. He'd sit on the floor, close his eyes, and focus on sinking into that otherworldly space. Only Arthur knew about this part of his training, and Leo had asked him for advice more than once. He trusted him and didn't want to hide too much.
That night, after another long day, he finally managed to keep his connection to his domain stable for a few minutes. It was the longest he had held it so far. It faded just as he drifted off to sleep, the sound of the ship creaking gently beneath him.
…
Leo woke up like always. Today was the day of the secret meeting. Instead of spending the morning refining his Blood Slash technique, he decided to devote the day to working on the teleportation spell.
He already had several versions of teleportation spell circles, ones commonly used in teleportation towers and others like the one that linked his master's mansion to her tower in the upper city of Aclisa. The basic design was made of two primary enchantment circles, each connected to another pair of smaller one-circle formations. There were also multiple words of power inscribed between the layers of each part.
Leo had spent days studying the spell structure, adjusting its components to match his vision. His current version was designed to connect two places through a mana link. However, for it to work, the spell had to be drawn in both locations. Each version of the circle required a gem to anchor it. The second crystal had to be placed first in one of the one-circle formations on the original spell so it could make a link with the first crystal, and it would later be transferred into the second version of the spell drawn at a distant location. Once the crystals were in place, the two versions of the spell would connect and allow travel between them.
The principle was clear. The spell connected itself to its twin through a continuous mana flow. If Leo could send his mana to the second location without needing a second drawn circle, he could eliminate that requirement. Fortunately, he had already developed a method to send mana through space.
But there was another issue. He still needed a way to activate the spell from the second location without physically being there. He began thinking of ways to modify the spell so that only one version—on his side—was needed. Since he could already see his destination through the Mirror of Truth, it meant a metaphysical connection between the two places was already established.
He started by removing one of the one-circle sections and focused on the remaining parts. The remaining one-circle formation was responsible for absorbing mana from the crystal and didn't need any modification. His attention shifted back to the double-circle structure, which was still essential to the teleportation effect.
Leo had already tried several combinations of words of power inside the circles, but none of them had worked. This time, he decided to go further and draw a third circle around the structure. He had read about similar configurations in some of his books, but nothing this complex had come up in his training. Still, he had recently learned several new words of power, and he was eager to experiment.
Inside the third circle, he drew a variety of combinations throughout the day. As the hours passed and the sky darkened, he finally settled on three key words: Power, Force, and Connection. The spell still didn't activate.
He rearranged the words. Again, nothing happened.
On the third attempt, the spell finally responded. A faint blue light spread across the circle before it violently burned out, leaving a scorched mark behind.
Leo immediately closed his eyes and whispered a small prayer to himself. Then he entered his domain. Once inside, he brought himself before the Mirror of Truth and activated the spell again.
This time, the spell succeeded. But it was unstable. It was collapsing on itself.
Leo reacted fast. He used his domain's energy to stabilize it, wrapping it with his mana and force to keep it open. On the mirror's surface, a small black hole appeared. With a subtle motion of his hand, he expanded the mirror's boundary, and the hole grew wider along with it.
Using telepathy, he focused on a small piece of wood lying near him in the real world and guided it through the hole. The wood floated through the portal and dropped at his feet inside the domain.
He picked it up and examined it. A smile formed on his face. The spell had worked.
He threw the wood back through the portal and returned to his physical body. When he opened his eyes, he saw the piece of wood back in its original place.
His smile widened, but just as he was about to celebrate, a sharp pressure built behind his eyes. Sweat began to drip from his forehead. Murmurs echoed inside his head—at first quiet, then quickly rising in volume.
Within a minute, the noise became unbearable. He dropped to the floor, holding his head tightly between his hands.
He considered escaping into his domain but was suddenly overwhelmed by fear—fear that something might follow him in if he did.
Instead, he forced himself to use the new method he had been practicing to connect with his domain from the outside. The pain made it hard to focus, but he endured. After a long struggle, he finally managed to establish a thin link.
He whispered another short prayer, and with the new connection he had managed to form with his domain, he pulled in as much mana and power as he could handle. Slowly, the murmur in his head began to fade. Within five minutes, the noise was completely gone.
Leo sat on the floor, breathing heavily. His clothes clung to his sweat-drenched skin, and the cool air against his face was the only thing keeping him grounded.
The spell he had used was clearly more advanced than he had anticipated. And chances were, he would need to use it again soon. That meant one thing—he had to deepen his connection to his domain, and fast.
Thinking about it logically, teleportation required bending space and forming a bridge between two distinct points. Even in scientific theory, such a feat would require manipulating an enormous amount of mass or energy—something considered impossible without advanced technology or a deep understanding of physics.
But he had just done it with magic. For now, though, Leo chose to rest. The secret meeting was only a few hours away, and he needed his strength. Still, he had achieved something important—something that had seen the least progress until now. A major step forward had finally been made.
With a deeper connection to his domain and a fully refined Blood Slash, Leo believed he would finally qualify as an A-minus ranked mage—or at least, that's what he thought. After reaching this milestone, his next goal was to focus on developing protective and preventive techniques to better defend himself in the encounters ahead.
While thinking about all of this, his eyes grew heavy, and before he knew it, he slowly drifted off to sleep.