A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

"Two, you with me?" Eldrian asked, noticing that this space wasn't something in his mind. His present felt too real—physical in nature was perhaps the most apt description.

This was vastly different from when he was in the magic abyss, his own mind space, or the realm of souls.

'Mmm?' Came an almost lazy response. 'Sorry, I'm still trying to replay what just happened.'

"Did you actually experience the porting? Travel? What was it even?" To Eldrian, it had simply felt like space had warped and morphed around him. The experience had been such that he had been forced to shut off all his senses to prevent himself from falling unconscious from an information overload.

'Yeah, it was quite fascinating.' Two replied, his answer surprising Eldrian. He hadn't thought Two would be able to actually experience what he himself had failed to take in.

'Is this the difference in our states of being?' Eldrian pondered. "What was it like?" he asked, continuing to talk aloud, his voice echoing in the vast, near empty room.

The only other thing inside this space was Crystoi, stuck in the roof. A hundred meters in the air. It had taken Eldrian several roundabouts to notice it. For the first few seconds, he had worried it had all been for naught.

'I guess it was like the physical world being morphed...' Failing to find the words, Two related instead to their past experiences. 'It was like when you make something in your soul. You can use the fabric that makes space there to create things. It felt similar.'

Nodding, Eldrian felt he understood. In which case, he experienced the morphing of physical space to accommodate/create this room? Or he transverse through the stone into an alternate space? And the travel/porting that nearly fried his brain was the process for this to occur.

"Any idea what this means?" Eldrian asked, but he didn't get an answer.

'At least we found Crystoi.'

"True, but how the hell am I supposed to get it?" Eldrian countered. There was absolutely nothing within this space and he couldn't access his inventory, either.  He could still use magic. In fact, the room was filled with mana.

However, a hundred meters was a great distance. And Eldrian doubted Crystoi was lightly imbedded into the roof. A gust of wind was unlikely to pry it free. Besides, Eldrian had no idea what would happen once he got Crystoi free.

The spear also wasn't in a good condition. While difficult to see due to the distance, when Eldrian enhanced his sight with magic a little, he noticed it was sparking. Eldrian assumed the crystals embedded into it was damaged and the mana was leaking.

It appeared similar to what happened when he damaged mana crystals for his Nova spells. The problem was, this might mean Eldrian was one a time limit. This also made him less inclined to throw spells at it to dislodge the spear.

'Flight magic?' Two offered, but Eldrian shook his head.

They had yet to master the magic. They could use its fundamental to alter Eldrian's fall path, or help him reach greater heights when jumping. But they have yet to maintain it and balance things. Reaching the roof was out of the question. Forty meters might have been doable, but not a hundred.

When balancing failed, Eldrian always tumbled through the air like a rag taken by the wind. Crashing into everything with no way to stop himself. Cancelling the spell only stopped the magical propulsion. It did nothing to stop his momentum.

In a confined space like this, Eldrian would end up getting smashed into the walls and likely die if he crashed head first. He might even impale himself on his own spear.

'Teleportation?' Two offered next, but again, Eldrian shook his head.

"Try channeling it." Eldrian said in counter. And after a few seconds, Two agreed it was impossible.

'What is this feeling? Like a quagmire.'

"No idea, but we can only use teleportation at its most basic. Likely, the area we are in inhibits it in one way or another."

'Then?' Two asked, out of options. If sending spells at the spear was too dangerous, and flight and teleportation were out of the question, what else was there?

"Perhaps I can try to form a hand with ether?" Eldrian mulled. He already used it to help himself gain the advantage in fights. Normally, he applied it as a simple pushing force in a certain direction.

This could trip up his enemies, or help him regain his balance if he was on the verge of falling. But it had its limits. It could only affect so much mass and momentum, being useless before too much of either.

Eldrian also knew how to envelop smaller weapons in it and then take control of them.  However, he had a range limit for this.

Sadly, Crystoi was outside his standard range, and worse, he couldn't first engulf the spear and then let it move. He had to connect to it from such a vast difference. Vastly increasing the difficulty of his standard method. He always first enveloped and then let fly his weapons.

Forming a hand, which he would then focus on controlling instead of trying to envelop the spear, might remove the range limitation.

With this idea in hand, both he and Two started experimenting. However, they quickly ran into their first problem. They could only see the ether hands with magical senses enabled. This was easy to fix, but the other problem was more problematic. They couldn't really test it on anything, since the only things in this space were Eldrian, the glowing walls, and Crystoi.

Ripping his shirt in two, Eldrian practiced on one half and Two on the other. A few hours quickly passed as they succeeded in passing Eldrian's previous range records.

By holding the torn shirt with the ether hand, they were able to now bring it to about 80 meters in the sky before their connection with the spell started to fall apart.

'What about just enveloping the shirt and using it as the hand?' Two asked.

"It might work to get it to the roof, but if we can't keep control, it will be pointless." Despite saying this, they tried it a few times. By enveloping the shirt, instead of holding it with the ether hand, they ended up just a few meters shy.

Attempting to use momentum to wrap the shirt around the spear and then pull it down resulted in two quick failures. His shirt halves now dangling from the spear's back blade's wings. As soon as the resistance appeared, their connection to the spell weakened and broke.

'We can always try to envelop you...' Two spoke next. This would be a mimic of the flight spell, but far more crude.

However, Eldrian weighed too much. His weight limit with ether manipulation after reaching Tier 5 had increased to around 50kg's, but he was around 80. And if the resistance offered by an objection was too great, the spell simply fell apart.

After all, this entire branch of Eldrian's magic wasn't based on actual spells. But Eldrian's own application of ether magic (mana in the form of a physical force). It didn't have any basis outside his own imagination, causing it to lack a foundation to ensure its function.

Sure, it meant he could perhaps do far more with it than with normal spells. But it also meant he had to figure out the limitations for each adaptation through experimentation. And recently Eldrian had been far too occupied trying to master his auras to bother with ether manipulation.

It was certainly an extremely powerful branch of magic, but mastering it would take a great deal of time. And on Eldrian's to-do list, it was near the bottom.

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:)