Chương 256: (251) 4.30. How Dense Are You?

The next few hours were spent leapfrogging from cloud to cloud across the sky fragment. The group slowly made their way toward the center of the fragment, keeping their eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. While they didn't find any bird-people, they certainly stumbled upon a few strange things here and there.

The question of what exactly the birds soaring by over their heads or down under the very clouds they walked upon ate was answered when they found their first cloud with life hidden deep within the fragment. Upon landing on the cloud, tiny insects that were almost transparent and with fluttering wings erupted out of the cloud in all directions, scaring the hell out of them and nearly causing Scule to stumble off Vin's shoulder and into the abyss.

After collecting themselves, they watched as the nearest flock of birds instantly diverted course, shooting through the swarm of insects that were desperately trying to find another cloud to hide within. In a way, it almost reminded Vin of videos he'd seen back on Earth of sharks going after schools of fish. The swarm of insects was so dense that the birds barely even had to try in order to snatch up entire mouthfuls of them as they flew.

After that, they made sure to brace themselves before each warp, not knowing what might come out from within the clouds. They encountered a couple more harmless insect swarms, clouds that had tiny pools of water formed on the top, and finally, they even managed to find some mysterious plants, much to Shia's excitement. In one of the pools floating atop a rather large cloud, they spotted what looked like seaweed growing within the water, gently swaying back and forth.

After scaring off some more winged-insects that had been busy nibbling on the weeds, Shia spent a good hour or so doing what Wild Druids do best and conversing with the unusual plants, before nodding and telling them to continue on. While traveling across the sky via cloud hops was certainly one of the more unique methods of travel Vin had ever experienced, they had a decent amount of down time as well.

Mass Dimensional Shift was a rather mana-intensive spell, the cost of which only went up the farther Lumel had to transport them. Because of that, they started having to take breaks after each warp in order to let her recover her mana. None of them were willing to let her get too low, as she was still their back up plan in the event that someone accidentally fell off one of the clouds.

While Shia and Lumel meditated, Reginald napped, and Scule ran the odd material making up the clouds through some of his alchemical equipment to see if he could somehow turn it into a poison, Vin spent his time focusing on his latest spell. Drifting over a potentially eternal drop was not exactly the best location to risk creating another brand-new spell, so he instead turned his focus toward another dimensional spell Lumel had lent him. One he'd been looking forward to learning for some time. Magic Lock.

At first, he'd been surprised to learn that Magic Lock was a spatial spell. But when Lumel explained to him how the spell worked, it made sense. One couldn't realistically force a door or container to remain sealed shut via magic, as maintaining that magic would be a constant drain on the mage, which would only increase the more effort that was put into trying to pry it open. While other magical affinities may very well have their own version of the Magic Lock spell, Vin thought Lumel's was rather genius.

By isolating two different dimensions, one on the door and one on the frame, the spell could connect them and functionally tie them together. Once they were tied off, it was the dimensions themselves that maintained the lock, leaving the mage's mana entirely untouched. Casting the spell a second time would untie the two dimensions, unlocking the container or door.

Because of this, the root spell for Magic Lock was the tier 1 Isolate Dimensions, making it a new tier 2 spell, and something he could conceivably learn within a few days. Vin knew he should be starting to devote his time toward slowly chipping away at Dimensional Shift, the runic formation for which he had stored in his Iron Mind, but the thought of spending an entire week's worth of time on a single spell was just too daunting for him. He'd get to it. Eventually.

For now, as they hopped their way across the sky fragment, he put time into figuring out Magic Lock. By the time the sun started to set, indicating they'd either soon need to turn back or decide to camp on a cloud for the night, he'd managed to get a couple of hours of scattered practice into the runic formation. He only even suffered a single backlash, which hadn't done much more than temporarily lock two of his fingers side-by-side as if he'd glued them together.

Curiously, that runic backlash actually gave him a rather interesting idea. Something he jotted down in his journal for later under a new section he'd recently created that he'd titled 'New Spells.'

"So what's the plan?" he asked as he closed his journal and tucked it back into his pack.

"Do we head back before it gets dark?"

"Is it even going to get dark?" Shia asked, squinting up at the setting sun.

"It gets dark because the sun hides behind the ground. But this fragment doesn't have any ground. Maybe it just gets a bit dimmer?"

"I guess we could stay and find out," Vin shrugged, looking at their companions.

"Thoughts?"

"I'm fine to keep going!" Lumel said quickly, clearly excited by the prospect of continuing her first adventure.

"I still can't believe we're actually walking on clouds!"

"Me neither," Scule snorted, finally looking up from some instrument that reminded Vin of a microscope, albeit with paper-thin gemstone shavings used as lenses.

"I think I can actually make something out of these magic clouds, so I'm fine to stay a bit longer. So long as you guys keep those birds off us."

"Then I guess we keep going!" Vin grinned, taking Lumel's hand and pointing toward their next destination. The group spent another hour or two hopping a few clouds further, until something new caught their attention. Just as Shia predicted, it seemed true darkness didn't actually come to this fragment. Instead, everything just grew somewhat dim, as if there was a screen placed between them and the sun. Though while the light level didn't drop too much, the temperature sure did.

With every passing hour, it felt as though the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Though while the change in temperature was strange, they were a bit distracted by other things. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Such as the massive cloud way off in the distance that had to be nearly half a mile long, complete with a silhouette of what appeared to be buildings.

"The bird people!" Lumel gasped, her eyes locking in on the distant village as if she could drag it closer with just her mind.

"We found them!"

"I guess we had to sooner or later. According to Mental Map, we're nearing the center of the fragment," Vin said, trying to figure out just how far off that village was. The downside of having such high focus attributes was something at the edge of their vision could still be a pretty significant distance away. Especially when there was nothing but empty space between it and them.

"I don't suppose you can get us there in one shift?"

"No, I can't jump nearly that far," she admitted with a frown.

"Definitely not with all of us together. Scule and Reginald don't add too much strain to my spell, but you and Shia do."

"It's not as if we're in any rush," Shia shrugged, already sitting down and crossing her legs in anticipation of Lumel needing a break.

"At least now we have a good target to aim for. We should be able to get there within another few hours, right?"

"I think so… I'm pretty sure the village is actually drifting toward us, or we're drifting toward them, so that will help even further," Vin said, deciding it was pointless to try and guess.

"Then we keep doing what we've been doing a little longer," Shia said, closing her eyes and going back to meditating.

"Let me know when it's time for the next jump." While Shia went back to whatever spell she was working on and Scule pulled his equipment out of his cloak again, Vin stopped Lumel before she could sit down.

"Do you need me to cast Aqua Sphere for you or anything? Even if it's not getting that dark, that doesn't mean night isn't still approaching, and I know you haven't soaked since yesterday."

"Thank you, I appreciate you looking out for me," Lumel smiled, taking his hand and squeezing it. Her eyes furtively went to Shia and Scule, confirming that they were distracted with their own things, before she leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss.

"This fragment actually has a surprising amount of moisture in the air, so I think I'll be good to skip a day. If I'm wrong, I'll let you know and you can just give me a quick spray with Create Water."

"It has been rather humid, huh?" he asked, taking a deep breath and letting it out, noting how it had finally gotten cold enough to see his own breath. His Total Resistance allowed him to shrug off the cold, and their endurance attributes helped make them more resilient than regular people. But if it got much chillier, he had a feeling his friends were going to start shivering.

"Honestly, it's strange. I always associated humidity with warm temperatures. Yet despite the temperature dropping, the air still feels just so wet. I haven't had to take a drink from my waterskin in hours."

"The moisture in the air has been decreasing a bit since the sun went down," Lumel said, trailing her bare hand through the air like she was waving to a distant friend.

"I can actually feel it on my exposed skin."

"Well that's even weirder… Wouldn't that make it rain? Or snow? I mean, all that water in the air has to go somewhere, right? I might have dropped out of high school, but we learned about the water cycle way before that."

"Oh, I read about that in our library when I was researching famous Airwalkers!" Lumel said excitedly.

"One of them had an amazing story about how they lost their artifact that allowed them to travel across the surface and was saved at the last second from drying out by a surprise rain shower. I think the concept of rain is so interesting, though unfortunately, it's not something taught in our general education. We learn about undersea currents and hydrothermal vents instead."

"That makes sense. I doubt your people really need to know how water turns into rain or snow," Vin chuckled.

"Snow… That's like ice, right? I read about it as well, but I haven't encountered it yet. I've seen rain by now, of course, but no snow."

"Yeah, it's when rain freezes part way, but not all the way," he said, blushing slightly as he realized he didn't actually know why rain sometimes became snow and sometimes became hail.

"Forpurt, the capillan I told you about, lives in a fragment filled with snow. It's actually right next to this one, and we've been meaning to visit it for sometime now. Want to tag along and see some snow?"

"Of course! That would be amazing!" Lumel said, gripping his hands in her own and actually jumping in place slightly in her excitement. Strangely enough, despite the soft cloud they were standing upon, it was only because of Vin's incredibly high focus that he picked up on the softest of crunches coming from beneath them with every hop. Lumel must have seen the look on his face as she stopped, immediately turning all business.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," he admitted, crouching down and poking at the cloud layer. Unlike before, where the cloud had been soft and malleable, now the cloud was harder and more rigid. Picking up a chunk of it, he quickly noticed that the material felt a good bit more… Fragile.

"Scule!" he snapped, startling the petian out of his latest experiment.

"Have you noticed any changes in the cloud stuff since we arrived on this fragment?"

"Gods, don't scare me like that!" Scule said, clutching a hand over his heart.

"Yeah, the material has been getting a bit more rigid over the past few hours. Less malleable. Same physical makeup though, nothing to worry about."

"What's wrong, Vin?" Shia asked, getting to her feet and frowning as she heard the same soft crunching he had picked up on.

"What's going on?"

"We might be in trouble," he warned, looking around at their cloud again.

"... Has this cloud gotten larger since we first landed on it?"

"Come to think of it…" Scule said, quickly storing his equipment as he looked around.

"Yeah, I think it has. Is that bad?"

"Maybe… Maybe not… Lumel noticed that the moisture in the air has been dropping, and that got me thinking about the temperature. The cloud we're on is filled with water and air-aligned mana, right? What do you think happens if it freezes?"

"It would change to ice-aligned mana?" Scule asked, scratching his head.

"Is that all? It's already magic that's keeping us up here, there's no reason to think that magic would stop just because the mana type changes."

"But ice expands," Vin said, trying to get his point across.

"My parents would always get extra angry whenever one of our pipes would burst in the winter due to the water freezing. The cloud is already loose and airy and feels like it barely supports all our weight. If it's slowly turning to ice, stretching itself out further and becoming less and less dense…" As if to prove his point, Shia took a step closer toward them, and there was a far louder crunch this time around that stopped her in her tracks.

They all stared down at the unknown material beneath their feet, silently holding their breath. Slowly, Scule spoke up.

"Alright… maybe we all just stop moving and try-" Whatever he was going to suggest was lost, as the cloud shattered underneath their feet and all five of them were sent tumbling into the sky.