New Life As A Max Level Archmage
26 – Return

Vivi escaped after a short meeting with Marcus. After [Blinking] onto the city wall and gathering another point of data for how the dimensional fracturing seemed to be healing—slowly but steadily—she had officially completed her errands.

Before setting off, she double-checked Saffra’s necklace was where it belonged. The silver locket rested in the same inventory slot. Not that it could have disappeared. Just paranoia. Pleased, she closed the screen and began casting.

“[Greater Warp].”

A disorienting hurtle through space later, she stood in a starkly different scene, the sounds and sights of Prismarche’s busy urban life replaced with a gentle breeze swaying tall pine trees. Her eyes sought the track two dozen feet away, cutting a path through the forest.

When she had first [Blinked] off the Convoy, the first thing she had noticed was how fast the fortress of metal had screamed away, carriages flickering across her vision. She didn’t know how fast the Convoy moved, but it probably equaled or surpassed a normal train on Earth.

How much distance had it covered since the…hour and a half, she estimated, since she’d left? More than what a few [Blinks] could cover. Or a hundred. Thankfully, she had enough mana to chain them without end. And also had top-tier mana potions on standby if she should for some reason need them, which she wouldn’t.

“[Fly].”

Floating into the air, she watched the pine forest spread below her. As she rose, the horizon slid backward in all directions, revealing more and more of the world of Seven Cataclysms. Hovering below the clouds, she came to a stop and admired the sight.

Even an inferior version of this world had captured her attention—and the rest of humanity’s—when VRMMOs exploded into the mainstream. Being present in the flesh as she floated thousands of feet in the air, admiring the gorgeous landscape and feeling the wind flutter through her long white hair, took her breath away. After five minutes, she shook her head clear and dragged her attention back to reality, though she could have hovered there for hours.

Spotting the train tracks, she pointed her staff in the correct direction and declared, “[Blink].”

From her current height, the spell didn’t seem to move her far. The same way even an airplane might seem like it was trundling along when looking out the window from the clouds.

“This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” Vivi sighed.

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

She’d done this once before, when questing out to the Hoarfrost Plains. That said, she hadn’t needed to use that many. A few dozen?

[Blink] was a short-range teleportation skill. For normal mages, it was used to reposition on a battlefield, not as a means of travel. Vivi’s absurd stats meant the spell moved her much further—but she could hardly [Blink] miles with each cast.

She also discovered a devastating side effect. Spatial relocation wasn’t kind on the metaphorical stomach. Even one [Blink] could be disorienting, and not just from the sudden shift in landscape, but how it spawned some deeper sensation, her body being swallowed into whatever existed between, or inside, or outside of physical reality before being spat back out.

As an experienced spellcaster, Vivi was resistant to that sensation. But after her fiftieth [Blink] in a row? Like how spinning in a circle a few times might be fine, and if someone had a strong stomach, even dozens, but eventually queasiness came for anyone.

In a handful of minutes, she’d shifted landscapes entirely, an impressive feat considering how many miles she could see in each direction.

“Okay. No more of that,” Vivi mumbled to herself.

Lowering her altitude, she relied on [Fly] instead. She picked up velocity, and soon blurred by. A conical shield broke the wind so her hair and robes didn’t flail around, and after that—well, the trip became pleasant. Who wouldn’t love flying?

Though, she acknowledged she wasn’t moving fast enough. She needed to catch the Convoy, not match it.

“[Stride to the Horizon].”

That did the trick. If before the trees had been a blur, now they were a single paintbrush smear.

Was it as fast as rapid [Blinks]? Probably not, but also not too much worse, and a hundred times easier on the stomach. She could manage spamming [Blinks] if there was an emergency, but Saffra would be sitting in the comfortable Lounge and studying. There was no rush. She climbed in altitude, slowed slightly, and enjoyed the scenery.

However quick the Convoy might be, Vivi’s leisurely flight was many times faster. In less than fifteen minutes, she spotted the train in the distance.

…The train that wasn’t moving.

The train of which only half remained standing, the other half derailed and curled away, as if the front had been picked up and thrown.

A siege was underway. Hundreds of monsters swarmed the stranded iron fortress. Mounted turrets blasted magic through thick barrels in explosions of lightning and fire.

The sight struck her dumb. She failed to immediately process the chaos.

A part of her told her she should have expected this.

Everything slowed as her adrenaline kicked in. Something similar had happened in her fight against Lailah and Dominic, not that it had been much of a fight. While Vivi went through most of her day with one second being one second, when combat kicked in, or otherwise when needed, her perception sharpened and a second turned into ten—or a hundred.

Red eyes flicked around the battlefield as she digested the situation, trying to make sense of it all. Off to the right, two or three miles away, a gigantic two-headed crow was pecking at the engine car, which had somehow been torn from the Convoy. She recognized the monster. Ghul-Feather. Probably one of the Umbral Regent’s creations, somehow survived over the years. There was a crypt nearby if she remembered the map right.

Level twelve hundred wasn’t anything to shock her, but from what she’d learned, it was nigh unbeatable to the majority of the populace, including orichalcums. Thankfully it was only interested in the engine car—probably because of the dense magic coming from it?

How had the beast not broken in? The people of this world were somewhat competent, then, having built a structure resistant to a level twelve hundred.

As for the monsters streaming through the flowing red, orange, and yellow grass of the Emberblade Fields—there were a frightening number, but the defenders were doing a good job holding them off. The situation had looked worse at first glance than at closer inspection. Those gun turrets took apart even orichalcum-rank monsters in a few shots, and the mithril-rank ones in a single. Anything lower turned into red mist on impact.

Despite the distance—these eyes of hers were keen when she needed them to be—she spotted Saffra standing atop a train car, next to the ranger adventurer. Shock, then disgruntlement washed through her.

Why? Why had she left the safety of the Lounge? Wasn’t that the entire point of that exorbitant price she’d paid? Her irritation, she knew, stemmed from relief. She’d feared the worst. But no, there the redheaded catgirl was, seeming uninjured. And foolishly contributing to the fight instead of keeping herself safe.

Obviously, the Ghul-Feather needed to go first. She didn’t want to announce herself to the entire Convoy, but now was no time for subtlety. Her desire for anonymity took a far, far distant second place to potentially saving lives.

So, she lowered her staff and started to cast.

***

Saffra knew the exact moment Lady Vivi returned, as did any man, animal, or monster that could manage even a shred of mana detection. The fine hairs on her arms rose to attention, and a feeling not unlike dread filled her, a pit opening in the center of her stomach.

Something is coming.

That same thought rippled through the plains like a physical blast. The aether cannons stopped firing. Jasper’s stream of arrows froze. Even the charging monsters faltered, skidded to a stop, and started pivoting their heads left and right, trying to identify the source of that tightening in their guts. A few—the smarter ones—tucked tail and ran.

Saffra almost did the same. Because whatever gathered in the distance provoked emotions that preceded logic. Like seeing a tornado tearing toward her. Emotions that kept people alive when they were still learning how to bang rocks together triggered inside her. Death. Death was coming. Maybe not aimed at her, but…time to run.

The spell activated.

A column of white and violet, a molten bar of energy twice the width and height of the Convoy, seared across the sky, its full length born instantly. Her hand shot up to shield her eyes, but even the afterimage left in her memory of that crackling scar carved into the air made her skin go cold.

Then the noise. Heavens Above and Hells Below, it was like last night—that firework spell. Saffra thought the world had ended. That the God of Sky and Rain had descended from his pearly halls to clap his hands right above her. Thunderous didn’t begin to describe it.

Blinking out the blackness, then the lingering white streak across her vision, her attention snapped to the origin of the titanic beam of—of what? Some variant of lightning magic? Like always, Saffra didn’t have a clue.

There, suspended in the sky, a barely visible dot, hovered her mentor.

Saffra’s attention drifted to the destination of the spell. She knew what she would find before her eyes landed on the engine car. The Ghul-Feather was gone. Those two gray stumps attached to the carriage were probably its feet, all that remained of the creature. It was hard to tell from this distance. The rest of the Titled rank monster—the above-Titled rank, being two hundred levels higher than that minimum, essentially a full tier—was simply gone.

Stepped on like a bug.

She had no chance to come to terms with the outrageousness of the spell. No chance to confirm in her head, yet again, that the woman she’d apprenticed herself to was undoubtedly as strong, if not stronger, than the archmages at the Institute. Maybe all three of them combined.

Because another spell formed, equally as powerful to her senses. Golden pinpricks alighted in ones, then twos, then fours, then dozens, appearing like burning stars in the sky. The dazzling radiance of the dots grew brighter and wider by the second, and Saffra realized it was because they were getting closer. She almost dove for cover.

Like an entire battalion of archers loosing their bows, hundreds of giant spears flocked the sky, then descended in golden streaks. Mithril-rank monsters and orichalcum alike were skewered by the hundreds, the radiant weapons picking targets at random. The ground thudded in a rapid-fire thump-thump-thump-thump that fountained huge plumes of dirt with each impact.

In total, the display—both spells—lasted all of ten seconds.

The Emberblade Fields fell into utter silence. Every last monster had died. Not one of the horde remained.

The defenders also were quiet. Nobody could comprehend what they’d seen. They stood in mute horror. Because that was what any bug would feel, even if they were the bugs that had been saved this time: horror. Nobody enjoyed understanding, so suddenly, their place in the hierarchy.

All gazes slowly turned to the speck in the distance.

Only Jasper was insane enough to speak. “So she’s a show-off. A suspiciously dragonlike trait, if you ask me.”

“She…she isn’t a dragon,” Saffra whispered. But she couldn’t rule it out anymore.

The speck disappeared and materialized. The process repeated several times before, all of a sudden, Vivi popped into existence in front of Saffra.

“I was gone for two hours,” she said flatly. “How? How did this happen?” She frowned at Saffra. “And why aren’t you in the Lounge where it’s safe? What’s a silver-rank going to contribute to this? The weakest of those were in the five hundreds.”

Saffra wilted, her shoulders hunching forward. “If I can help, I’ll help,” she said defensively. “Even if it’s not much.”

Something passed across the demon’s face, but while Saffra was getting better at recognizing that inexpressive face, she couldn’t read every emotion.

“Yes, I suppose you will,” Vivi sighed. “Explain. Start from the beginning.”