Ceaseless Horizons [A LitRPG Progression Fantasy]

"Jared," Lev stepped out of his bubble and addressed the mage. "How good is your mana manipulation?"

The man barely even hesitated at the odd question. "Pretty good, considering my element is difficult to control."

"Good, come here for a moment," Lev summoned one of his disk prototypes, one meant to be used as a training tool.

[

Razorwhirl - Rare

]

The concealments work, at least.

"This here," he continued, "is an aid I'm developing to help mages train their manipulation. Can you decipher the purpose of the enchantments?"

Jared leaned forward, his interest apparent. "I… can. One of them is to control the flight, another is to make the disk spin, and the last one is to power up the remaining enchantments and also overload the barriers."

Lev nodded. Those three were the only meaningful inputs, and the supportive functions had all been automated.

"Give it a go."

A stream of mana exited Jared's right palm and dipped into the sharp construct. The mana was caught and channeled into a durability and sharpness formation, one primarily affecting the edges of the disk.

Befitting the man's experience and talent, he quickly got the hang of controlling the disk's movements. It zipped around the two hunters at high speed, enough so to attract the undivided attention of the team's archer.

"Is it intentionally like this?" Jared asked, quick on the uptake. "I can feel that my control is disrupted both passively and in bursts."

"Correct," Lev answered and summoned another disk while glancing at the archer. She happily skipped forward and took control of the new construct. "As I said, it is meant to practice mana manipulation and also serve as a good weapon for the workers. Right now, I don't think any of them can use it, but it shouldn't be too difficult to change that."

The man nodded slowly, now seeing a clearer picture in his head. "You can also transmute a core and slot it inside. I know it's a lot of effort, but if these things are permanent, then all of it will be worth it. I can already feel how dangerous these are when spinning at full speed."

"From my testing, they can cut through monsters up to level two hundred rather easily…" Lev trailed off, both he and Jared turning to look at the archer.

Her wind domain was reacting oddly with the disks. Instead of increasing resistance, the disk was spinning faster, moving quicker, and also possessed more sharpness than before.

That is a very strong class, he noted, happy to see someone could use his creation with such effectiveness. I wouldn't be surprised if the disk is suddenly her strongest close-range method of attack.

She turned to him, her eyes borderline begging to let her keep it.

Lev chuckled. "It's all yours."

A wide grin split her face as she took a few quick steps away, moving to the other end of the large cart to further test her new tool. Lev debated removing the control hampering, but decided against it. The added practice wouldn't hurt.

"As I was saying," he said to Jared. "Without any supportive skills, they can fend off even weaker second-threshold monsters, provided the user has good mana manipulation. Since the enchantments are independent, they will always be effective."

"And this should be extra effective against the centipedes because of the nature of their armor," the gravity mage suddenly realized, giving him a curious look. "Should I gather the non-combatants?"

"Only the first group," Lev answered with a smile. It was good to have others do mundane jobs for him.

Ten minutes later, he had created another five disks, leaving the first with Jared. The man clearly wanted to test his own mana manipulation and see if the disk was going to help him further level it.

"Jared has already explained why you're here," Lev began, stepping out of the bubble and landing on the first cart's roof. The group of workers he had first met was arrayed there in a line, waiting for him to continue.

Above him, a medium-sized lance took form as he spoke. "I have these five neat tools that you guys need to test. If possible to use, they can become extremely strong methods of attack, but I will only allow them after you guys have an adequate degree of control to not hurt each other."

They nodded, paying half a mind to him, and the rest to the lance that was swiftly infused with lightning and fired. It impacted the ground a few hundred meters away in a blink, tearing multiple centipedes to shreds.

Lev ignored the seven notifications and cut through the awed silence. "Come closer and put some mana into the disk in front of you."

A long barrier tray formed in front of him, on top of which the disks were arranged. As ordered, the workers stepped up and reached out with their mana, managing to make it enter the constructs with varying levels of proficiency.

… Not the best start.

"Now, all of you should be able to feel three different inputs," he explained, noting their reactions. They could feel the inputs, at least. "Good, now follow my lead."

Slowly, he trickled mana into the first input, one responsible for sharpness and durability. The disk he was using for demonstration lit up slightly, shimmering at the edges.

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The workers did the same, taking considerably longer for the same result. Within ten seconds, all of them had powered up the enchantments, waiting for the next order.

It doesn't seem like they have trouble keeping up the mana channeling, Lev observed, idly taking in their levels of stress, excitement, and exertion. They seemed to be at ease.

Wordlessly, he channeled mana into the next two inputs. Both of them easily consumed the fuel as the disk brightened a touch again, now holding enough mana that even the workers should be able to feel the amount with their Perception.

Just this much was enough to make them struggle. Evidently, they didn't have a lot of mana, but that was fine. The disks were created and enchanted to be hyper-efficient and could be used for hours once the enchantments were filled at a low cost.

"How are you feeling?"

"Slightly drained," answered the youngest, his voice bright with curiosity. "What do the enchantments do?"

His enthusiasm was met with a few smiles from the older people in the group. Lev also explained patiently.

"The first we filled up was a sharpness and durability formation. After that, we formed a connection with a disk to move it around with our mana manipulation, and the last one was to make it spin to further improve its sharpness and penetration power."

"Penetration power…?" the boy wondered, not questioning it further. The relation wasn't that hard to deduce.

"Next up," Lev spoke, gathering their attention. "The task is simple. Make it float."

His own disk rose smoothly, coming to a stop next to his head. The movement was accomplished solely by the enchantment without utilizing his own barrier manipulation, and yet, his expertise was enough that both of them would seem seamless to an outsider.

Predictably, that was where the workers faltered. Most of them were using mana in such a manner for the first time, and their wobbly disks told him just how much work still needed to be done before they could use the constructs reliably.

At least we have the time…

****

One more day passed without incident before the peace was finally shattered. A deafening boom suddenly assaulted the humans, knocking the workers off their feet with its sheer intensity.

Lev just smiled as even Melvine tensed. Her apprehension turned into a flat stare when she saw Sherron hovering above them, grinning down at both of them.

"Sherron," Melvine greeted, unable to hold back a smile.

"Melvine," the Exalted nodded back.

Between them, Lev watched the exchange in muted amazement. Melvine not bowing or even dipping her head for Sherron could mean a lot of things, but he was becoming more and more certain that former was an Exalted, or at least, close to becoming an Exalted.

Sherron then turned to him, so, after creating an opaque wall to block the sight of the works and platinum hunters, he spread his arms out.

Melvine snorted behind him somewhere, and he ignored her like the reasonable adult he was. Sherron also shook her head and landed in front of him before giving him a tight hug.

"You've done something again," she remarked with squinted eyes. "Spill."

"Evolved two general skills," Lev replied, exasperated. "How can you tell, even?"

"Finally getting rid of that Arcane Archery skill?" she commented, ignoring his question. "Well done. Only took forever."

"Ha ha," he rolled his eyes and summoned a chair for both of them. "Aren't you early?"

"I ran away."

Both Melvine and Lev could only blink dumbly, making the Exalted burst out laughing. Sherron glanced at them, laughed even harder, and then took some deep breaths.

"Hakim…" she giggled again. "You two should've seen your faces. Priceless. Hakim is taking a more active role for the next month, and Alina is temporarily handling the guildmaster business because of divination."

Lev tilted his head. "Mara learned something?"

"You know her?" Melvine unexpectedly questioned, a brow raised.

"We've met," Lev answered, unsure of what else to say. That question was pretty random.

"Mara rarely shows up in public, let alone meets hunters," Sherron explained. "You two being acquainted is definitely unusual. Anyways, she was performing her usual sets of divination, and when she got to you, there was apparently something that terrified her about to take place. No concrete details, of course, just that we should be tense and prepared. The danger should be minimal to none, however. I just arrived early to make sure that nothing goes wrong."

Great, Lev thought with pursed lips. Another reality-shattering event is on the horizon, one that even an Exalted can't predict.

Naturally, his mind tried to connect the dots. The next two or so weeks were going to be spent in the hills, and Drakys had ensured that there was nothing truly dangerous here.

After that, there was going to be a lot of back and forth to guard the supplies and build the strongholds. Three of them were going to be in the middle of nowhere, simply to attract and kill monsters.

The border two, however, were going to be at the edge of dangerous regions. Those locations were the most logical assumptions for the divination's events to take place at.

"I'm still unsure about the Deadlands," Lev sighed, shoulders slumping. "Wraith-like monsters, and an unpredictable number of them. How am I supposed to contend against that?"

"There aren't that many," Sherron reassured him. "Sure, some of them are extremely strong, but I've never even seen anything above my level."

"Hmm," Lev dropped that topic and asked the question on his mind. "Aren't you here very early, then? The first supplies are for the middle stronghold, right in the middle of nowhere."

"Yes and no," she answered. "I'm here for my usual rounds and will return when this stronghold is under control. Drakys, Melvine, the scouts, and I will accompany you to the Deadlands after that to see how the region reacts to you."

That's one hell of a force just to escort me, he smiled to himself, quickly getting lost in thought. I'm important now, huh?

"Sure," he voiced, bringing himself back to the present. "What about now?"

"For now, go kill that monster."

What monster? He thought, looking around warily. Melvine was similarly confused before her expression hardened, and it took another few moments for Lev to notice the approaching adversary.

Immediately, he knew that he was out of his depth. The monster was way stronger than the gecko and the previous centipedes, more comparable to the Ebonwalker he had seen during WhiteFall's wave.

Going by Orianna's estimates, this monster is above level 600.

That was not ideal. He couldn't hope to kill anything above level 550 by himself, let alone something that much stronger.

"… Are you sure?" he asked Sherron, just in case she wanted to interfere.

"Yep," she quickly dashed his hopes. "I know you've been preparing since that last… encounter. It is time to put all those additions to good use."

"Additions that haven't even been tested, let alone perfected. What am I supposed to do when they all don't hold up?"

"Exactly what your class is meant to," she threw back, looking at him intently. "I'm sure you can feel it."

Feel what?

Lev knew she wouldn't bring up something without reason. There was indeed something odd he could feel with his barriers, especially when firing his cannons.

The first time that happened was when I used the Flameforged Constitution on my barriers. Orianna did say the rune was doing something more, and it makes sense for her to gloss over the details if she wanted me to figure it out by myself.

In the end, he decided that going ahead with his usual plans was more beneficial.