“Oh! Here! Here!” Byram jumped from his seat and waved at them when he spotted the three. His yells drowned all the hawkers around, and some looked over because of the commotion.
“Awesome.” Quin chuckled sarcastically. “We’re so well hidden.”
“This idiot’s advertising his mug everywhere for that Shepherd.” Thorin cursed out loud. “It’s a miracle he’s still alive.”
“I’ve been waiting for you three here for so many days,” Byram said with a wide and bright smile when they reached him. “What took you guys so long?”
“You were supposed to go back to Ashfall,” Clay said, laughing. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you all,” Byram said. “When we left that street market, I thought about a lot of things. In the end, I decided I still want to come with you. So, I followed the route you would’ve taken and arrived in this town. I reckoned you have to pass through here if you’re going to that battlefield. So, can I come with you too?”
“You took a risk,” Quin said from the side as the bulls greeted him with their moos and slaps from their tails. “What if we’d already hired a ride and never stopped in this town?”
“Then I would find some way to trigger the spellcard and contact you,” Byram said.
“You do understand the danger you’ll face if you’re with us?” Thorin asked. “It won't be mortals that we’ll face.”
“I understand. My boys understand too,” Byram said, resting a hand on one of the bulls as if to ground himself. “But I don’t have much to go back to. The year I spent with you guys was my best year. I would like to stay with you, in any capacity, if you would have me.”
“Hopeless,” Thorin said, shaking his head.
Clay laughed. “Come with us then,” he said, clapping Byram’s back. “We were looking for a ride anyway.”
“Why did you buy this type of shitty cart again? What happened to all your money?” Thorin asked , eyeing the creaking wooden frame with thinly veiled disapproval.
Byram scratched the back of his head with an embarrassed smile. “I had to pay it to that gang outside the street market. They wouldn’t let me leave otherwise. I still saved your spellcard, but I lost the mana shards.”
Thorin clicked his tongue. “You still had a lot of mortal coins left,” he said. “What happened to them?”
“I saved them in case we had to buy food for the trip,” Byram said. “You can't use mana shards for everyday food.”
Thorin sighed. “Hopeless.”
“Alright, let’s leave now,” Clay said. “We’ll sell our loot in some other town. This place is still too close to the street market.”
“Ah!” Byram exclaimed. “Since I had a lot of free time on my hand, I went around the underground market here and gathered whatever information I could. I found out about a street market that is close to the battlefield we’re going to,” he said. “You can sell all your loot there.”
“Nice,” Quin commented as the four men got to work and prepared the cart for the journey. They had the essentials already packed in the inventory, so they wasted no time and departed once the bulls were fed and ready. When they exited the town, it was the endless view of the forest again, its depth stretching like a frozen sea, with a touch of white from the snowfall. As enough crystals melted on the leaves, the snow finally won the battle and whitened the greenery in steady layers.
The three brothers, however, hardly had the mind to appreciate the scenery. The cart was open. So, along with the woods, the snow whitened them as well, settling into their hair, collars, and sleeves without mercy.
“At least buy a cart with a roof,” Quin grumbled, brushing the snow off his hair for the third time.
“We will survive, but this idiot will die for sure at this rate,” Thorin said, throwing his jacket to Byram, who shivered as he whipped the bulls forward, then soothed them where the lash had landed. A practiced motion born of long familiarity
“I-I’ll be f-fine,” Byram said, wearing Thorin’s jacket on top of his, but his shivers still added a stutter to his words.
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Thorin shook his head and focused on experimenting with the new space bubble in his hand. He forced it, but the space bubble just refused to take the living mosquito in. When the pressure he applied surpassed the inventory’s threshold, the mosquito went in. But a second hadn’t passed and the space bubble collapsed with a pop. The mosquito didn’t even leave a corpse behind and vanished in the chaos of the void.
Another failure.
Since he got Vraak, he’d strengthened the idea of finding a cradle. Vraak could stay in his shadow temporarily, but it wasn’t a long-term solution. Especially if he got more Ghosts and they had to become a physical-type undead. Sooner or later, he would need a space to keep them.
Until then, he was improvising.
Such resources already existed in the world of Magi. The fae-bags that mimicked the style of the Summoner class were one example. But they were expensive and belonged to the category of strategic resources that at least the towns in their region never sold openly.
That was what he was trying to recreate with his
The reason why the space bubbles extinguished all lives, even the undead, was that their fabric was too fragile. They didn’t have the capacity to interact with the real world beyond a few commands that put in and took out the items from them. If they did, the pressure of reality would crush the fabric of the space bubbles. Thus, isolated from everything by the nature of the spell, the space bubbles even denied the existence of time, let alone life. Because of this, nothing rotted inside them. Heat and cold remained frozen in the exact state they entered.
A perfect vault. A perfect coffin.
If he could create a space bubble that was strong enough to connect with the elements of the world outside and still maintain a separate environment, it would solve his problems for the time being.
A space that could breathe.
But how do I strengthen it?
“Thorin,” Clay called him and shook him out of his thoughts. “We’re stopping for a rest, let’s go.”
“Hm,” Thorin nodded and glanced at Clay, then at the campfire that struggled to rise against the snowfall. “This feels familiar.”
Clay chuckled. “Hopefully, the familiarity ends there. There shouldn’t be any Shepherd surprise this time.”
Quin was sorting through their loot by the snow-covered woods. There was a mountain of remains they’d gained from the cave. The overall price estimate was close to six to seven hundred mana shards. Even if they met a stingy buyer, they could still earn a good amount.
“How is it?” Thorin asked when he and Clay took their seats. “Can you use anything?”
“Yeah, the skins and the bones look usable,” Quin said. “I can probably create the most basic storage bag with them, assuming nothing goes wrong.”
“We don’t really lack mana shards right now,” Clay said. “So, use it for practice. Then we can sell what you create for much more. Better profits.”
“I’m more concerned about the street market we sell to,” Thorin said. “What if the market Byram found is the same that we were going to before? It may have problems related to the Shepherds.”
“I didn’t find anything strange about it,” Byram said, cooking food over the campfire.
“We didn’t either when we asked around for it,” Clay said. “But we still got ambushed.”
“We’re different now,” Quin said. “We can find out if there’s really a problem. We just need to contact other establishments where the Magi gather.”
“Why not sell the loot in those establishment then?” Byram asked.
“They won't have the capacity to buy this many materials at once,” Thorin said. “We can sell in batches, but it’ll take time.”
“Well, we can worry about the street market when we get there,” Clay said. “For now, let’s head to the battlefield as soon as we can and get your heart healed. We’ve already delayed for too long.”
Thorin nodded, though his eyes wavered with uncertainty. Could his heart really heal? Hunting the Walkers had already failed him. “We also have to visit the old site of the Aether Guild,” he said, forcing his tone steady. “Maybe we can find some clues about our house there.”
“I doubt it. It’ll be a waste of our time,” Quin said, then pulled back when his brothers clicked their tongues at him. “Fine, I yield.”
“What about your
“Not yet,” Quin said. “I don’t see the point really.”
“Even if you don’t sense other Aethers, at least you’ll be able to sense us,” Clay said. “It’ll be useful if we get separated.”
“Fine,” Quin grumbled. “I’ll start practicing it.”
“Food is ready,” Byram said, approaching with a pot of hot rabbit soup and slices of roasted bread.
“Let’s eat quickly and move on,” Clay said. “I have a trauma about stopping in places like these.”
“Before that,” Thorin said, squinting at the cart. “There’s something I want to try.”
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