Chapter 128: Ciri's Growing Power
POV: Ciri
Five portals opened simultaneously, each gateway a perfect circle of dimensional energy.
The training ground had been cleared for this exercise—Skellige warriors watching from safe distance as she pushed Elder Blood capabilities beyond anything she'd attempted before. Through the soulbond, Adam's presence anchored her concentration, his elemental stability providing foundation for her dimensional chaos.
"Third portal destabilizing." Triss's voice came through the communication mirror, the sorceress monitoring remotely from Lodge headquarters. "Your focus is slipping—feel the edges, don't just visualize them."
Feel the edges. The instruction translated through years of instinctive power use into technical precision. Each portal existed as wound in reality, bleeding dimensional energy that wanted to collapse back into normalcy. Maintaining them required not fighting that collapse but guiding it—holding shape while acknowledging the universe's preference for wholeness.
The third portal steadied. Five gateways now hung in the air, each showing different locations across Skellige.
"Incredible." Triss's assessment carried genuine awe. "You're accomplishing in months what most mages never achieve. Elder Blood truly is—"
"A gift and a curse." Ciri completed the thought. "I've heard variations."
[ Elder Blood: Portal Network (5 simultaneous) ]
[ MP Cost: Significant (continuous drain) ]
[ Tactical Application: Instant force redeployment across battlefields ]
—Scene Break—
POV: Adam
The combat applications became clear during afternoon training.
Ciri opened a portal behind a training dummy, stepped through, struck, and closed the gateway before the practice sword even completed its swing. The dummy's "head" separated from its body—clean cut that would have been impossible from any normal angle.
"Portal strikes." Lambert watched from the sidelines, his usual cynicism absent. "You can appear anywhere, attack, and vanish before counterattack."
"The theory works. Practice against actual opponents..." Ciri let the uncertainty trail off.
"Will be different. They'll anticipate, adapt, try to track your emergence points." Geralt's tactical mind was already working the problem. "But even anticipation requires time. Against enemies who've never faced portal combat, you'll have significant advantage."
"The Hunt has faced dimensional attacks before. Their entire civilization is built around dimensional travel."
"Facing attacks and defending against portal strikes are different challenges." I joined the analysis, feeling Ciri's exhaustion through our bond despite her composed exterior. "They might understand dimensions conceptually, but you're weaponizing portals in ways their combat doctrine probably doesn't account for."
—Scene Break—
POV: Ciri
The phasing breakthrough came unexpectedly.
She'd been practicing defensive applications—shifting strike team members partially out of reality to protect them from incoming attacks. The technique required precise control: too little shift and attacks still connected, too much and the person fell completely between dimensions.
During one exercise, her hand passed through Adam's training sword while she was adjusting his phase level.
The sword continued its arc. Her hand emerged from the other side unharmed.
"Did you just..." Adam's question died as realization hit them both.
"Phasing objects while attacking." She examined her hand, finding no damage. "If I can shift weapons during strikes..."
"They'd pass through armor. Through shields. Through anything solid."
The implications cascaded. Phasing strikes could bypass Hunt riders' spectral defenses—the very techniques that made them difficult to harm physically.
"This is exhausting to maintain." She demonstrated again, phasing a practice blade through solid stone, feeling the MP drain like blood loss. "I can't do this continuously."
"You don't need to." Adam's tactical assessment came quick. "One phasing strike at a critical moment changes the entire engagement. Pierce armor, wound the target, then fight normally while they're compromised."
[ Elder Blood: Phasing Strike (Developed) ]
[ Effect: Attacks bypass physical defenses ]
[ Cost: Heavy MP expenditure per strike ]
[ Tactical Value: Extreme against armored targets ]
—Scene Break—
POV: Adam
The world-walking experiment happened at sunset.
Ciri sat at the ley line nexus, the Navigation Device beside her showing the permanent rift's location. Through our soulbond, I felt her concentration narrowing to a point—Elder Blood reaching across dimensions toward a destination she'd never visited.
"There." Her voice came distant, consciousness partly elsewhere. "I can feel it. Tir ná Lia."
"Don't enter. Just observe."
"I know." A portal opened—not the circular gateways she normally created but a window, a viewing pane into another reality.
The world beyond was dying.
Frozen cities stretched toward horizons shrouded in perpetual winter. Buildings that had once been beautiful now stood ice-encrusted and abandoned. The sky held no sun—just cold light from sources that seemed fundamentally wrong.
"This is what they're fleeing." Ciri's voice carried something between horror and sympathy. "Their world is freezing. Collapsing. Everything they knew is ending."
Through the portal-window, distant figures moved—not Hunt riders but civilians. Elves wrapped in furs, moving between structures that provided minimal shelter, surviving on desperation rather than hope.
"They're not evil." Her realization echoed what the Lodge's research had suggested. "They're refugees. Like the Temerians, like Cintra's survivors. Just trying to find somewhere to live."
"Led by a king willing to commit atrocities to save them."
"Would we be different? If Skellige were dying, if everyone we loved faced extinction—would we refuse to fight other worlds for survival?"
The question had no comfortable answer. I'd asked myself the same thing during our voyage from the Lodge, found no resolution that satisfied both conscience and honesty.
"I don't know. But we don't have to answer that question. We just have to answer whether we'll let them take you."
"And if there's a third option? Something that saves their world without destroying ours?"
"Then we find it. After we survive the assault."
[ XP Gained: 350 (Training, Strategic Planning) ]
[ Level 50: 40% toward Level 51 ]
[ Ciri Elder Blood: Major Advancement ]
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
To supporting Me in Pateron .
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