Master Of None

The unsettling feeling only grew as they moved faster. Walker was able to pull on the light mana. But he found himself struggling slightly. Especially as he began to sense more manas around.

It was like a dark feeling. The same feeling that people would get as the shadows began to lengthen as the sun set. He knew that he could still sense mana, but he was struggling to feel it as clearly.

This wasn’t because of anything wrong with him. It was the way that the manas were mixing here. The manas were not as solid because they had approached an odd border. A boundary that was full of another form of mana that he did not know as well.

Walker was able to sense all the elemental manas and various forms of fused elemental manas. Even the poison elemental mana was clear enough for him to understand to a degree. Yet here he was being caught up with a bit of confusion.

Clearly the immortal king also had trouble here. There were many skeletons that had been left behind. Maby had not moved forward. Something about the mana has stopped them from pushing forward. It made sense though, Walker was unsettled, so undead which could be hyper sensitive to manas would definitely not want to venture in to the area.

The immortal king and his larger undead were nowhere to be found though. Proving that he had willed them to keep moving and left behind a number of skeletons to either stop the party, or because the strain on himself to force them forward was not worth it.

For the immortal king, the world was only available to him as long as he had mana. That was the dela for many undead. They needed mana to function. Hence why ruins often had places where the undead slumbered to gather mana. Why they were found still within stone coffins or stopped against walls standing entirely still. That and they might not have had anything that made them move by bothering them.

”What’s going on? The skeletons aren’t even coming toward us right now?” Since Remey had seen the over fifty skeletons, she had expected a fight. But even now that they were close, they did not move at all.

”I think some of them are trying to move toward us though.” Su’s hand stretched out to point to one of the skeletons, but she yanked it back with a slight gasp. She had felt something wrapping around her hand scaring

her.

”I touched something in the air. Walker, can the appraisal skill see anything? I learned it from the magic scrolls and still nothing” her fear that they were in contact with something very dangerous wasn’t unfounded. Plenty of mysterious monsters existed within the elemental planes.

”Nothing. Just the skeletons. But you’re right, they are moving and in front of us...” Walker trailed off as he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

”What is it!? Don’t just do that to us!” Remey tried to step forward and hit Walker’s shoulder. But when she stepped forward, she was not right next to him, but actually ended up ten steps in front of him. Her confusion was clear on her face.

”Space mana. This is a small space elemental plane right on the border of the light elemental plane.” there was an astounded tone in Walker’s voice. Purely because he had no idea that this was here.

Because the space mana was already everywhere around, he had not focused on it with his senses. Even while he used space mana and light mana to allow them to move rapidly through the light elemental plane. The simple reason he had not realized that this was space mana was due to the fact that it was always around him. Walker had also not spent the time to properly grasp all of the nuances that came with spatial mana. It was a challenging concept. One that he had to take a lot more time to understand.

He had spent a lot of effort to even sense space mana around him. Now that he had a better grasp on it, while also accidentally helping the party gain a spatial storage skill, Walker knew that he should have a better handle over it. He had proven that already with their transportation.

This elemental plane and the boundary it caused though, was warping the area they stood. The skeletons were not moving to their eyes, but when it came to the reality of the skeletons, they were just moving differently. Their movements were pushing them back to the same spot. Therefore, they appeared to not be moving at all.

The only way to break out of that loop was for the entire space elemental plane to shift, causing the space mana to warp again. Or, for them to gain some form of understanding about the space mana that they were surrounded by. Influenced by.

For Remey, she had only been pushed over a small amount of steps from where she had intended to move. She had not been caught in the same place because she had the spatial storage skill due to Walker always influencing them with space mana. It had made her and the rest of the party able to better influence space mana as a whole. Making them more acclimated to it and resistant to the oddities of this plane.

While this helped a great deal, Walker was very unsettled by the fact that the space mana was so dense. He was feeling the resistance and Su had also just felt that. The way that space mana worked was not the same as other manas. It was always connected to other pieces of space mana in a way. As in, they were stubborn but fluid. These pieces of space mana could cause great changes while also being connected to the space mana within yourself too.

Walker could never properly explain it, but he could sense that as he moved around, the space mana was forgiving of him reaching out to it with his mana sensing abilities. Due to that, Walker could gauge that he would not be tossed around the subtle warping effects of space mana as much as others.

He slowly walked step by step to Remey and grabbed her hand. As a result, her frozen in place act ended since she was feeling the lesser pressure on her body when Walker had allowed his mana to buff her. Affinity for space mana itself would not be useful here, just the understanding of space mana would make a great deal of difference.

When he moved back toward the others, he felt Gil and Su both take hold on a piece of his clothing. Midnight wrapped her sail around his other arm. Luckily, Onyx was still meditating silently around his shoulders. That was everyone accounted for.

In the blink of an eye, a skeleton warrior appeared in front of them. But it was missing half of its body. Either the sauce elemental plane was more dangerous than what they had just thought, or something did this. ”There is a monster around, or someone angry that we are here.” Walker could sense the difference in space mana around the broken skeleton warrior. While it was defeated due to whatever happened, this wasn’t a good thing. The different space mana was sharper, More solid as well. Denser than what the elemental plane had in the air so to speak.

Before Waker could start to take another step, three more skeleton warriors were sent to where they stood, all cut in to pieces. By cut, the party was looking at what had been cut using condensed spatial mana. Literal aspects of the skeleton warriors had been severed by space itself. A terrifying concept since none of them believed they could defend against it.

He looked around rapidly trying to see what or who was doing it, but all he could sense was that the space mana was moving ever so slightly. The other skeletons were still stuck in place. Nothing about them had changed just yet.

When he started to take a step back the way they had come, nothing changed either. No more skeletons appeared broken in front of them. Instead, it felt like the pressure from the space mana was lifting slightly. It was only when they had moved backwards for ten minutes when Walker finally noticed something very large. It loomed over the trapped skeletons. Five points of flexible thick tentacles alla thatched together. On one side a large bottom mouth that appeared to be consuming the space mana along with a skeleton here and there. Sometimes pieces would fall down again after it ate them.

”That thing was above us and we didn’t even know it.” Walker knew this was a dangerous place, but this was insane.