Almost two kilometers in, Veronica was beginning to regret every confident word she’d uttered earlier.
Her boots struck the dirt path in a relentless rhythm, breath burning in her chest. Trees blurred past her vision as she forced her legs to keep pace. Truth be told—everything was blurring in her vision, not just the passing trees. Even the sky seemed a bit fuzzy.
Full speed; as fast as she could. That is what the quest demanded. No easing up. No pacing. No mercy.
A soft green glow pulsed faintly beneath her skin as she maintained a Path of Blooming spell, threads of restorative mana knitting muscle and tendon back together even as they tore themselves apart. A basic reinvigorating spell. It was useful; one of the two blooming spells she knew how to use.
But it wasn’t omnipotent.
Five minutes.
She’d been doing this for five straight minutes. She had actually already failed once, earlier on after overtaxing herself.
“This is stupid,” Veronica gasped. “Who designed this quest? Martin? This is ridiculous!”
[To be fair, although the quest notes that you need to run at your fastest speed, that is normally not possible for over one minute. You need to continue running at top speed, in consideration of inevitable stamina fatigue. For this quest, I need to evaluate your limits at all points of fatigue. I recommend staying above at least 75% of your initial burst speed for minimum passing results. You’re right now running at 78%.]
“So I’m already running slower than expected and about to fail the quest,” Veronica heaved. “Thanks for the encouraging words.”
[You’re welcome. I can give you more encouragement if you’d like.]
Veronica was about to respond, but her brain just couldn’t come up with a rebuttal. Everything was spent just focusing on not toppling over. To maintain her speed and not waste her efforts.
“Sage… if I get near 76%, can you force my body to keep going?” Veronica asked.
[I can. However, it may damage some of your muscles and cause soreness. The stimulation may prove to be vastly uncomfortable. This will also affect your quest reward and diminish results.]
“Do it,” she huffed. “’Cause I’m not doing this again. Fuck this quest.”
Step after step, she felt the burn.
Was this how non-mages trained? Warriors, sword masters, and fighters? Doing such intense muscle exercise?
She’d run through the forest while chased by mercenaries—at night—for nearly the entire night.
But sprinting, the act of running at one’s fastest it was akin to her pouring mana out into a bucket as quickly as possible. Much quicker than her mana regeneration could keep up. That was the agonizing sensation she felt right now.
This is hell, she thought, panting.
Another kilometer passed in the blink of an eye—her thoughts empty, forgetting the passage of time, yet enduring an eternity of burn all the same
Almost… done…
She wouldn’t stop. Stopping meant admitting defeat. And Veronica loved a challenge. She’d never give up on something willingly that tested her.
Not her curse—not an exam—and especially not a stupid quest created by Martin.
Veronica slowed as she finally reached the area that her guild quest had described.
A river embankment.
The wide bed of water was reduced to several small ribbons that cut through pale stone and gravel before expanding back out to a large stream headed west. Ahead rose a sheer wall of stone and dirt—the exposed side of a larger elevation—a cliff face roughly fifteen meters tall.
At its base, half-shadowed and surrounded by jagged rocks, was a hole. A cave entrance, wide enough to fit a large wagon.
Her quest target.
“Wow,” she said, exhaling. “I made it.”
She spun around, looked back briefly, and then faced forward again, a weary smile appearing. “That was… much quicker than I expected.”
Her breathing was steady. Not shallow, not strained. After the hellish nightmare of an endurance sprint fitting those of trained soldiers—she finished her quest after roughly fifteen minutes. After restarting, that was.
Looking down, Veronica raised her hands and slowly flexed her fingers. She looked at the front and back of her palms, before curling her fingers into a fist. Her body felt… clean. Refreshed, even. This was a new sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time. Athleticism, unrestrained control, and the ability to move.
She raised her heel, digging the front end of her toes within her boot into the dirt, applying some pressure. She gave the ground a few taps.
Full stability, no wobble, no resistance.
“So… this is how Ascension mages feel all the time?” she murmured. “Maybe I chose the wrong path after all. This is amazing.”
Veronica rolled her shoulders and threw a few quick punches into the air. Nothing fancy or grandoise—just some quick jabs to test the mana flowing in her body.
“Sage, this might be the best reward yet.”
[You have completed a quest: Run 3 kilometers at top speed]
[Reward: Tier-2 Ascension Body Enhancement]
-
I will describe the explanation of rewards of this type in a standardized format.
-
[Spell: Ascended Body]
[Discipline: Path of Ascension]
[Equivalent Tier: 2]
[Effect: By regulating and converting excess mana your body creates, you are now able to activate the equivalent of a Tier-2 Path of Ascension spell, increasing all of your physical capabilities, including speed, strength, defense, and stamina. Excessive usage or sustained damage will overtax this ability and cancel the effect.]
Duration: 30 minutes.
After the painstaking run, she had completed her quest. But that meant she still needed to travel another eleven kilometers to reach the cave. It took fifteen minutes to run three kilometers. Going that by estimate, it would’ve taken her over an hour more just to make it, if she factored in fatigue and rest.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
But thanks to the Sage’s reward—it didn’t even take her another thirty minutes.
Her body was much lighter, quicker, and even stronger. Just a few light punches in the air let her know she could probably dent a metal post if she really felt like it.
“Sage. I have a question,” she asked aloud, skipping over a few rocks between the split streams.
[Ask away.]
“Why is it only a Tier-2 equivalent spell? Surely, with me being Tier-3, and with both my mana cores generating excess mana, you could bump that up to Tier-3 too? Or are you just too weak to do that yet?”
[Incorrect assumption. The spell effect is only equivalent to a Tier-2 ascension spell, as that is all your body can handle at the moment. You completed the quest with subpar results, much lower than the average I calculated. Due to this, the reward was downgraded by a tier, and duration reduced from two hours to thirty minutes.]
“Wha—?” she barely managed to say, looking up with mock offense. She finished one last jump across the riverbank. Her shoes crunched hard on the gravel. Her brow furrowed, and she tried to form words, but they wouldn’t come.
“D-did you—are you saying I’m that bad? That you’re giving me a pity reward?”
It took Sage a few seconds longer to respond than usual.
[With the intent and meaning of your question analyzed—Yes. You were given a downgraded, pity reward, instead of what was originally planned.]
Her mouth dropped open for a few moments as she just simply stared into the clouds.
It wasn’t her fault that she essentially lived with a debilitating condition that restricted heavy movement and physical activities.
“You better tell me that I can retake the test,” she said finally, eyes fierce with the will of competition.
[Naturally. If you can further improve your body’s condition and improve your limits, the reward will improve. However, the best reward will only be available on first-time completion as that is when I can collect the most necessary, unbiased data.]
Veronica put her hands on her hips and gave a long huff. So she missed out on a perfect one hundred percent score, and was left with pity make-up points. “Fine. If that’s what it takes, I’ll do a morning jog every day, along with my stretches. Will that help?”
[Incrementally, yes. Engaging in physical activity of any type, with my assistance, will naturally improve your body’s stamina and endurance.]
Having regained her full range of motion and freedom of mobility, it had now somehow become a training regime. Her mouth creaked to the side, as if she was about to click her tongue.
She decided against it.
“Let’s just get this stupid commission over with.”
Veronica walked across the gravel and approached the cave. At the entrance, she flicked her finger, forming a small ball of light that hovered near her. It followed her, hovering at her shoulder, as she slowly went inside.
The cave swallowed the sound of nature outside. Every step she took was amplified, a crunchy footfall onto hard rock. The surrounding walls were uneven and jagged; the air filtering in was heavier than outside.
It went deeper than she expected.
Much deeper.
The ground beneath her wasn’t just simple, solid rock. It was a thin layer of grit, powdered stone that shifted around softly as she stepped. Fine dust clung to the walls around her, and she could see the small particles linger in the air with her mote of light. The place was dry, despite the damp moisture in the air that lingered.
It must have rained recently, she assumed.
Her gaze turned downward as she slowed for a moment. She noticed it before, but things were more prominent here.
Along the ground, scattered apart, blurred by dust—were markings. Shallow depressions—disturbed patches where the dust shifted around.
Footsteps.
Someone had been here.
Of course, the adventurers came to mind. The quest detailed as such. Multiple parties had come to slay the monster—only to go missing.
They were presumably dead.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Veronica murmured. “Sage, is this what I think it is?” she asked.
[Is it that you suspect these footprints are too fresh?]
Veronica gave a slow nod without speaking. She stood, gaze turning back ahead.
The adventurers being dead wasn’t the problem. The trails they left behind weren’t either.
The problem was that the tracks were too recent. With her enhanced eyesight and senses, the variations in the patches were undeniable. Given all the dust that she saw in the air, two-week-old footsteps like these would have been much more blurred, if not completely covered.
“Someone came here recently,” she said quietly.
Continuing forward, it wasn’t until another five minutes passed that she saw a luminous blue shine wash over the stone walls ahead.
Light? she thought.
She advanced slowly, approaching the soft glow. As she maneuvered past a short bend, the tunnel opened up into a wide cavern.
It was vast—far larger than the passage and entrance had suggested. An entire noble’s estate could fit in the swath that opened here.
Along the walls were clusters of crystalline rock. They all glowed softly, a muted mix of pale blue and white light, casting an ethereal sheen across everything. Inside here, the air was much cleaner, and the space void of any familiar stone dust.
Veronica looked around, examining it all. “Sage. Do you know what these are? They look almost like mana crystals.”
[These appear to be Sasphere crystals.]
“Sasphere?” She tilted her head. “Is that a type of mana crystal?”
She approached the nearest wall and reached out, brushing her fingers against one of the glowing formations.
The crystal was cooler than the surrounding stone, but it wasn’t cold. Its surface was smooth in places, jagged in others, as though it had grown organically rather than been shaped or refined.
And more importantly—it didn’t react.
There was almost no mana in them, despite the glow.
If they were mana crystals, then they were all inert.
“…Empty?” Veronica asked, frowning.
[Sasphere crystals are naturally occurring mana-reservoir minerals. They resemble mana crystals in appearance, but do not cultivate or amplify magical power. Instead, they store unrefined ambient mana and tend to grow in places dense with that type of mana.]
“Reservoirs,” she repeated slowly. “So… storage?”
[Correct.]
“Are they valuable?” she asked, gesturing toward the walls. “There’s a lot of them.”
[They absorb ambient mana at extremely low rates and are unable to hold refined mana. I do not assess their intrinsic value as high, though they may have niche applications in alchemy or as a primitive power-source for constructs.]
Veronica withdrew her hand and looked more closely at the clusters lining the walls. There were dozens, possibly hundreds embedded at irregular intervals. Some were as small as her hand, others were as large as her body.
She stepped toward one jutting from the wall, tall as her.
“How long would it take for something this large to fill?” she asked.
[Several years. Possibly a decade at current cave ambient mana-levels.]
She blinked. “That long?”
[There are too many crystals inside this cave, so they are all sharing the same ambient mana in the air. Otherwise, the process would be much quicker.]
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
These things were practically useless then. A regular mage could draw in ambient mana by themselves. Of course, they would have to refine it, but even if they didn’t—holding the mana for a while wasn’t much of an issue. These crystals, despite their looks, were nothing more than expensive-looking rocks.
She sighed. Just when she thought she had stumbled upon a treasure vault. A hidden fortune waiting to be cracked open.
It was just junk.
That was when her ears pricked up. The world muted slightly as her senses picked up on something.
[A large entity is approaching from deeper within the cave. Warning: may be hostile.]
Veronica began accelerating her mana rings. Whatever it was, it was large. She could hear its footsteps—at least four legs—moving past the bend of the cavern further ahead.
She narrowed her eyes and slowly stepped away from the wall, taking position in the open. There wasn’t much space to hide, so instead, she needed as much room as possible.
Her eyes widened as the thing she had detected came into view.
It was massive.
A four-legged beast, its body built low and broad—larger than an ogre, but with the frame of a stone bear or a rock golem. Its hide was a dark, obsidian-like color, layered and ridged, as though the cave itself had birthed it—much like the Sasphere crystals.
Along its back rose crystals. Not the same blue-colored ones embedded in the walls, but large, white, translucent spikes. They pulsed weakly, emitting a faint luminescence that ticked in time with the creature’s breathing, like a heart.
It had two large eyes like a wolf’s, its jaw rigid and wide enough to bite her in half.
A deep rumble came from beneath its chest as its gaze locked onto her. The stone along its body—what Veronica presumed to be muscle—tensed as it growled.
Veronica’s expression turned serious.
This thing wasn’t on the same level as an ogre or a fellabear.
It was much stronger.
“Looks like we found the bounty target.”
She lifted her hand, two wings shimmering behind her palm, ready to strike first, before—
“Wait!” a voice cried out.
From behind the beast stepped a girl. She looked a little younger than Veronica—maybe sixteen or seventeen—with long black hair, dressed in a red-and-white blouse.
“Please—wait!”
It seems like she can acquire "pseudo"-spells from other Paths as some of her quest rewards. What's a path you'd like to see her gain a spell from? Feel free to comment type of spell you'd like to see her acquire!
