Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Rith let Evin take a pinch of the Hermium and ordered. "Create a portal between you and me and make it big enough for you to fit through comfortably."

Evin didn't want to take any chances, so he filled his core to the brim with Therae's energies and started creating a portal. He imagined a pair of doors, one right in front of him, and the other next to Rith. Their outlines appeared on the grids that were visible to only Evin (though they weren't yet visible in the real world) and firmly locked itself into position. The grids acted like guidelines, but with some effort, Evin could add some extra options to them.

Anyhow, here came the important part. The doors weren't connected to each other, but they were connected to the World of Space. Therae, according to Rith, was a weird place. In it, distance did not matter. It wasn't that it mattered, it was like there was no concept of distance inside it. It was a special kind of world that did not obey the natural laws of the real world. If you knew what you were doing, you could shorten a thousand-day journey to nothing.

That's exactly what Evin willed to happen for the two doors, though the distance was only a few steps. Since both doors were connected to the World of Space, where distance didn't matter, Evin could just will them to connect inside Therae, effectively shortening the distance between the doors to zero.

Obviously, what Evin was imagining wasn't so simple as this with him needing to fine control Therae's energies to act like he willed, but this was the basic gist of things.What mattered was that it was working.

Evin had practiced this imagination countless times during the past month or so with Rith. She made sure to point out if Evin was imagining anything wrong, and the two of them perfected the process. But they never went past this point. Evin would always imagine the Spell to this point and let it go. But that was going to end today.

Evin willed the doors to absorb a pinch of the Hermium he was holding and opened it.

Finally, a dot of gold appeared in front of him, creating a small shockwave around the room, and slowly began expanding outwards. The same thing was happening next to Rith. They both abruptly stopped expanding the moment they assumed the shape of a rectangle.

Inside the golden rectangle, Evin could see the other end of Rith's room like he was standing next to him. Since the image wasn't so distorted Evin felt very confident that his first portal was functional. It was sucking up the energy in his core like crazy, but Evin didn't care for that. He was barely containing his urge to shout out in excitement.

But he didn't let himself get too clouded with excitement. Evin performed some safety checks on the portal like Rith taught him to and after he was finished doing that, he spoke.

"I'm done."

At that point, Rith's face appeared inside the image, before her body jumped through the portal and appeared next to him.

'She had just jumped through the portal I made…'

The thought made him shiver instinctively.

"I don't feel anything out of place, so… That's definitely a pass from me," Rith said as he landed on Evin's arms. She purred teasingly. "I'm really, really interested in how you're so capable at these things… If I told my fellow teacher that you've managed to create a portal on your first try, they're definitely going to cough out blood."

Evin smiled, remembering the conversation he had with Abe and Rith, and answered simply. "I told you that's my secret and I remember us agreeing to respect each other's boundaries."

"I will respect your secrets… but that doesn't mean that I can't ask about them once in a while, no? Who knows? Maybe you'll talk about it one day?"

<I still don't know how you talking about me to Bella will end up like, so let's not make our situation even messier,> a warning came from inside Evin's brain.

Endra wasn't very happy about Evin confessing to Bella. But he didn't berate Evin too much about it, since Bella didn't seem very focused on Endra's existence as much. Half the time, she seemed to forget about him entirely.

'But that doesn't mean that everyone else will take it the same,' Evin reminded himself.

"Perhaps I'll talk about it someday, but don't get your hopes too high."

"Aw…" Rith sighed and snuggled her head into Evin's chest.

Evin didn't know how to react to her sudden behavior. "I really didn't imagine Cosmic Felines to act like this, you know?"

"We usually don't… but who likes acting all prim and proper all the time? Give me a break."

"Now then… Since I'm done with portals, what are we going to do next?"

"First of all, you're not done with portals. You'll only be done with Material Portals when you can connect Ankelite and Jiha Town. Of course, king Seth is probably going to ask you much more than this, so don't think that's the end of your training. You also have to learn how to use Energy Portals, and after that you'll also get a crash course on fighting with portals."

"What about Storage Rings?" Evin asked.

"About that. I'm not going to teach you how to make that. That's one of our most popular items, so it's very bad for Cosmics if a human suddenly becomes able to create them. But, as a reward for completing my training, I'm going to make gift you one at the end of it," Rith smiled.

"Really? When's that?"

"When you can do this."

Rith jumped out of Evin's arms, and floated. She briefly glowed golden before disappearing from Evin's vision. Another glow of gold appeared a few steps away from him and revealed he Cosmic, maintaining the same posture as before.

Before Evin could register what just happened, Rith resumed speaking.

"This is called Blinking. The ability to instantly reposition yourself using a rather tricky portal."

Evin frowned. "You used a portal to do that? How?"

"You'll learn after you master Energy Portals," Rith said and triumphantly smiled at Evin. "For now, let's go outside and practice longer portals. And we'll work a little on how you can save mana and energy when you're maintaining a portal. I noticed that you were starting to struggle at the end of it back there."

Evin nodded seriously and immediately went to work mode. Sometimes he felt tired of spell-casting all the time, but moments like these gave him the motivation to keep on going.

Then, he suddenly remembered something.

"Hey, Rith... Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Can you keep the fact that I've succeeded in creating a portal? At least until someone else learns to do it."

Rith cocked her head and thought. "Hmm... I guess I could. The higher-ups are expectant of you... but I'm kinda feeling like they're hoping for you to fail, you know? After all, if you're successful, it's bad for our business. So, it wouldn't hurt for me to keep the matter under the rugs for a little bit."

"Really?"

"Yeah. But why are you asking me this?"

Evin chuckled awkwardly and responded. "I just felt like I'll be drafted to the war the moment they know I can create portals, you know?"

"Ha-hah. I suppose that's true. Alright. I'll only tell the higher-ups about your progress when you learn how to blink. I'm not expected to make reports by deadlines, so I won't get in too much trouble, anyway."