“Well, you have me until noon,” she giggled, hugging me back. “After that, I’m ‘Lia the Teacher,’ and she doesn’t have time for cuddling.”
“I guess I can make do with that.” I gave her one final squeeze around the waist. “Okay. Let’s go find out if we remember how this works.” We walked out onto the deck and sat down on the dew-coated wood. Once my legs were comfortably folded beneath me, I took a deep breath and pulled on the mana in my core, beginning our well-practiced routine. The response I felt within my body took me by surprise; while I could tell it was proportionally the same amount of energy as I always channeled, the rush of mana down my arm felt as if a sluice gate had burst within me. Have my reserves really grown this much?
A soft gasp from my right told me Lia was experiencing the same sensation. I drew the mana up and down my limbs in time with my breath, marveling at the feeling of power it gave me. I suppose it has been a few weeks since we last took stock of ourselves. After keeping watch day and night, our fight at the Mountain Gate, and all of the work on the house, it shouldn’t be surprising. Even so… I grinned as the mana swirled more powerfully with every breath, tingling over the surface of my skin.
After what felt like an eternity of channeling, Lia’s aura flashed and engulfed me as she reached out with Detection. I eagerly followed suit, bringing the house and surrounding landscape to life in neon detail within my mind. Lia and I sat perfectly still at the center of our world, brilliant beacons of gold and blue light watching over our ever-expanding dominion. Even though our scan reached out in all directions, we were able to cover the distance to the Corells’ house before Lia’s reach began to slow. My mind continued to soar as miles of forest lit up on my mental map, reaching all the way to the Mayaan edge of the forest before the strain set in.
As my Detection range increased, the energy required to power my Combat Acceleration increased as well. Despite the cool air around us, I had beads of sweat lining my brow by the time Marten’s wagon appeared at the edge of my vision. I continued my meditation until the wagon entered Lia’s shorter reach, then pulled the energy back in an exhilarating rush. “Wow,” I managed to say, wiping my forehead with the back of my gloved hand. “We really were rusty.”
Lia leaned back on her hands and laughed. “That was awesome! I can’t believe how different I feel now compared to the last time we did this.” She looked over to me with an amused grin. “Do you think we’ll just keep growing like this forever?”
“As long as we keep exerting ourselves and pushing our boundaries...yeah, I think so. I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise,” I answered. “It’s all uncharted ground from here on out.”
“I like that.” After hopping up and planting a kiss on my forehead, she turned towards the forest. “I guess I should go retrieve my pupil now. It would be a shame to set a poor example by being late to our first meeting,” she said in an affectatious voice.
“Ah, Lia the Teacher has arrived,” I chuckled. “I’ll be here when you get back with Marin.”
She froze in place and turned her head back towards me. “You aren’t going to just slack off all afternoon while we train, are you?”
“I would never!” I exclaimed with faux indignation. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our house is lacking in the furniture department. I’ve got a thousand projects in mind to occupy my time, thank you very much.”
“Just checking!” she called out over her shoulder before she jumped down from the deck and jogged off into the woods.
I stood up and stretched when she was gone, taking a moment to think over the tasks ahead of me. While furnishing our home was the most obvious and immediate goal to pursue, I had a series of larger projects I was more interested in. Since I wasn’t familiar with the climate in our area of Lybesa, I planned to make a greenhouse that could protect any delicate plants from particularly strong weather. My end goal was to create a system that would make our homestead entirely self-sustaining, which would require growing vegetables and grains as well as potentially raising livestock.
Despite the importance of those plans, my focus landed on a passion project: building a forge. While it would certainly be beneficial to have metalworking capabilities, it was clearly less important than a sustainable food source, but I couldn’t help but grin as I began to envision where the forge would be built. A grouping of three trees near the back of the clearing caught my eye; with the trio removed, the vacant spot would leave enough space to build a workshop while leaving plenty of room between the burning forge and the surrounding forest. I knew the building process would take days, and it would require stone in excess of what we had on hand, but just the thought of clearing a space where it could someday be built excited me.
Approaching the nearest tree, I placed my hand flat against its wide trunk and suffused mana into a large wedge at the bottom of the opposite side. When I invoked the Shatter rune, an explosion of wood chips sprayed out from the trunk, and the tree let out an echoing groan as it began to sway from
