I stood in a sand pit in the amphitheater where I had won the Silver Sea Tournament. Alik was watching from the stands and eating a snack. There were some soldiers and random people who had seen me and Veena enter with a retinue of guards.

There were eight of them standing around me wearing spears of two different lengths.

Four guards with shorter spears of seven feet, and four guards with longer spears standing further back.

And of course Veena with her short sword. She was narrowing her eyes at me.

“You are telling us all to attack you?” she asked. “At the same time.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You do realize all us have a Class? I think Teruko here has an Evolved class.”

“Got it last month, young miss,” Teruko said proudly. He had spiky brown hair and a beard. “It’s called Honorguard.”

The men hooted and clapped their gauntleted hands at that.

I turned to Teruko and bowed. “Be gentle with me.”

I had seen Teruko around and even shared a snack with him in the manor’s kitchen so he wasn’t shy with me.

“I know better than to give you slack, Little God,” he said and smirked.

“Good,” I said, smirking back. “I was just making sure we were on the same page.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Veena said.

“I’ll be fine,” I said and waved a hand. “Just don’t use Class Abilities on me… yet.”

The men chuckled.

“Let’s start with just the shorter spears attacking me,” I said.

“Should we attack in tandem or with our own rhythm?” Teruko asked.

“Do what you want,” I said. “Just have fun with it.”

And so started my toughest training day with the barrier yet. All nine of my training partners being Classed Warriors meant that my barrier was experiencing a lot of stress. In fact, I couldn’t cast a single barrier that could withstand such an amount of attacks.

But what I could do was layer barriers!

I started with a big one that I cast carefully, just to get into the rhythm. This one was as strong as I had used against Ranok, so I knew it could withstand even Class Abilities. The only thing I added was the Lingering Casting effect. Just a simple symbol in the middle. It took a miniscule amount of mana, but changed my casting completely. I could literally just conjure a barrier and remove all of my attention from it.

How freeing! It felt absolutely amazing. I was normally holding two or three magical effects during combat, weaving cultivation, structured spells and Mana Augmentation into my fighting style. This was akin to solving a Rubik’s Cube while piloting a fighter jet. Pretty intense.

The mental bandwidth released was the difference between night and day. Like I had literally upgraded from crawling to walking. As an additional bonus to the Perk, I did feel a connection to the spell, which was innate to the spell formula. I could feel how strong the barrier was and when the lingering effect would end.

The men started hacking at the barrier, and I immediately started casting another one .Layered barriers! My quest towards a 360-autonomous-eggshell-barrier-of-indestructability™ was coming along!

Veena growled as her shortsword sliced at my barrier in quick motion, while the men had decided to heave-ho in a rhythm, creating pulses of pressure for my defenses to handle.

Speaking of pulses, one weakness Lingering Casting had was that, once the spell was cast, I couldn’t modify it. When I cast a projectile like a Water Bullet, the spell formula was absorbed by the spell and I naturally couldn’t affect it anymore. If I cast a spell with Continuous Casting, like I usually did with my barriers, I could adjust them and create additional effects like the Barrier Pulse.

But that was exactly why I was perfecting this layered barrier technique.

Each time my lingering barrier broke, I immediately emitted a strong Barrier Pulse from my secondary barrier, throwing everyone’s attacks off, which bought me time to cast another lingering barrier.

[Mana Absorption level 17!]

[+2 Magic Power]

[+2 Focus]

We continued this kind of training from early morning to late at night. The soldiers were absolutely ragged, and we had to have a runner call more boys from the barracks to smack me down. The warriors came eagerly, hoping to test their prowess against the famous sorcerer.

Only Veena persisted throughout the whole day, most likely out of sheer will and spite. 

Once she collapsed into a wet puddle on the sand, did I release my final two-layer barrier and tumble on my butt as well. There was a metaphysical feeling to using mana. It wasn’t exclusively mental. There was also a sense of having used a muscle that didn’t exist for lack of better imagery. However the hell all that worked, that muscle wasn’t sore.

It was raw.

I was extremely spent. I had grown used to grinding out all kinds of training my mother considered madness, but this had to take the cake. The latest batch of warriors around us also clattered around the sand pit and threw themselves on their backs.

“Did you two really do this since the morning?” one of them asked. “I’m dead.”

“Maybe using magic doesn’t tax him all that much,” another suggested.

“Fool,” Veena said. “Look at him. He is entirely spent. He just doesn’t know how to quit.”

Despite my rawness, I cast a large water sphere above us, and then adjusted the spell formula slightly, to make the sphere leak.

We were doused in a soft and cool local little rain. Everyone groaned and muttered thanks to me.

Despite my rawness I continued this training for two more days. Veena was absolutely ragged by the end of it, and I have to admit, this was my limit as well. I did gain some levels during this, which was very welcome too.

[Magical Trance level 27!]

[+2 Perception]

[+2 Focus]

[Mana Manipulation level 25!]

[+2 Mana Flow]

[+1 Magic Power]

After all this training, I was truly so spent, that I had to rest. I spent some time with my family and baked bread with mother, and chatted with father and Alik as they stood guard for Danek’s stalls. 

Danek himself was exhausting his wares and turning everything into cash. Then he arranged with the governor to turn his money into a writ, which I found interesting. He would be able to turn it back into cash on Baros with the Salakin Family. I asked him why.

“It is much safer this way,” he said to me. “Carrying a full cargo instead of a piece of paper? There are pirates in those waters.”

“Won’t the pirates just take your writ instead?”

Danek shrugged. “It’s worthless to them, unless they want to go ask Sandor Salakin for the money.”

“But you’ll lose money by not using the opportunity to transport goods, right?”

Danek grimaced. “It’s true. But there isn’t much here that the mainland wants anyway. I used my Skill Discernment and asked around, ran some numbers and arrived at the decision, that it is not always ideal to take a risk. Besides, much of the money I have earned, I have invested in books. It will be good to take some time off from trading and learn more.”

“True,” I nodded sagely. “I try to alternate between studying magic and practicing magic as well.”

Danek gave me a suffering look. “You should just take time off. Period.”

“I think I heard my mom calling me,” I said quickly.

“I didn’t hear—”

“Byeeeee!”

As it was, I was done with Aligapa. The trading ship we were to aboard finally arrived. We said our thanks and goodbyes to the governor and the house staff, as well as the guards that had helped me train. It was a lot of damn goodbyes, but these people had made my stay in the city pleasant, and deserved a kind word before I left.

Danek released his goons from their indenture. They were very grateful, although during their time here, they had grown into their role, and become quite diligent workers. They were a far cry from the brutish bullies Danek had adopted, or tricked, depending on your stance.

They were now more composed and reserved, and actually had some sense in them. I hadn’t paid much attention to them at all, but I was glad they had grown.

We set up an escort for them back to Asaid. The governor’s own guards would make sure they would get there safely. Additionally, me and Danek loaded them up with a bunch of stuff to take back to the village. Coils of well made rope, stacks of planks made by an actual Carpenter, fine, exported fabrics, barrels full of dried fruits, cans of resin for boats and rafts, and even the said Carpenter to stay in the village for a while to teach someone the Class.

Mother and father were extremely happy about this, and beamed with pride and that night when we went out, father had a bit too much to drink and proclaimed to the whole restaurant that he had the best son ever.

I tried telling him that it was mostly Danek who made the arrangements, and I had just demanded stuff from the governor. 

Danek said my contribution was larger than his, which I didn’t quite understand. This I explained to the dinner table and they all laughed at me. Hmph.

Either way, our little fishing village would be richer than they could imagine, and I hoped they would use the resources to improve the lives of everyone in that beautiful little beach.

When all that was done, the ship finally arrived and unloaded, and it was time for us to continue our adventure.