Chương 179

The world below looked like an abstract painting of greens and greys, blurred by their speed. They were flying high, far above the intended altitude for a broom, skimming the very top of the troposphere where the air thinned out and the temperature dropped to levels that could freeze flesh in seconds. Here, the winds screamed in a relentless westward jet stream that Asteria had harnessed for their purpose, turning the extreme conditions to their advantage.

Orion hunched low over his handle, his knuckles whitening inside his leather gloves. Even with the SDGs filtering the glare of the unshielded sun, the light was harsh and unfiltered by the thick blanket of atmosphere he was used to, making it impossible to truly enjoy the view. We are traveling at roughly a hundred miles per hour, he calculated, watching the clouds whip past below them like standing steam. And we are maintaining that speed surprisingly steadily.

At this altitude, the drag coefficient should be lower, but the mana cost of maintaining lift in thin air should offset the efficiency gains. He looked ahead. At the front of the formation, his mother was a shining beacon of silver light, carving a tunnel through the sky and casting a massive, teardrop-shaped barrier around the entire army, some kind of deflector shield that stopped the wind from freezing them and kept the air pressure inside breathable. It was a display of power that approached the absurd.

Maintaining such a spell for minutes was a feat Orion doubted he could match, even with extensive preparation; holding it for hours while carrying two hundred fifty witches in her slipstream was the kind of feat that made it clear how alien this world's power scale truly was. Yet, despite her protection, the flight was still brutal. The barrier protected them from the wind shear, but keeping up was still tough.

If anyone fell behind outside the bubble, the jet stream would catch them and throw them miles off course, likely freezing them solid before they hit the ground, which made for a powerful incentive to stay close to the others. After six long hours, Orion felt the strain. His Attunement was usually high enough for anything he set his mind to, but it was proving to be lacking in this instance, as his energy steadily drained just to keep his position in the formation.

To his left, Sola—one of the apprentices who had watched his foot regenerate—fumbled with her belt. Her face was pale, her lips tinged with blue despite the warming charms. With trembling hands, she uncorked a vial of glowing yellow liquid and swallowed it in a single gulp. That was a stamina potion, the alchemical equivalent of an adrenaline shot injected directly into the heart. It was more than enough to help her recover, as evidenced by the sudden flush to her cheeks and the burst of speed she used.

Orion grimaced. He hated them. They tasted like battery acid and gave him a migraine that lasted for days. But looking around, he saw he was in the minority. The younger witches, and even some of the veterans, were all drinking potions to keep from bottoming out. I can't rely on alchemical assistance for thirty-six hours, Orion thought, gripping his broom as a wave of turbulence rattled his teeth. My physiology is improved, but it still remains strictly Tier Two.

If I fill my body with potions now, I'll be useless by the time we land, and it could take me days, if not weeks, to recover. He needed a better way. Looking back at Asteria, he engaged [Hypotheticism], ignoring the blinding intensity of her core and concentrating on the structure of her spellwork. It was a brute-force approach, elegant in its power but not in its application. She's creating a high-pressure zone in front and a vacuum behind, Orion analyzed as the data flooded into his mind.

It works, clearly, but it generates massive turbulence at the edges. That is what causes the drag to be displaced. If she were doing this any closer to the ground, she'd probably cause serious damage, but I guess that's the reason why she brought us this high up. He tapped the Computing Crystal on his neck, activating its internal processors and starting a new project. If I can establish a localized laminar flow zone around my own broom, I might be able to ride the turbulence of her wake instead of wasting it.

Closing his eyes, Orion trusted his peripheral senses to maintain formation and started to visualize the air not as empty space but as a fluid. He pulled out the formula for his standard flight spell and began analyzing it. It was already quite good and very flexible after the last round of changes, but it was too open for the limited maneuverability of his current situation. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I should focus less on acrobatics and more on aerodynamics, he thought. Reynolds number. Boundary layer separation. To create a new matrix, he removed the aggressive thrust components and replaced them with a passive intake system. Then, he programmed the mana to shape the air in front of him into a needle-nose cone, smoothly diverting the flow around his shoulders and legs, and reconnecting it behind the broom's tail to reduce the low-pressure wake. It was delicate work.

Coding magic while flying at such speeds was like trying to thread a needle while riding a roller coaster. Still, he kept feeding mana into the new structure, adjusting the flow as necessary, until his simulations began producing positive results. The moment he first implemented the changes, the effect was instant. The trembling vibration in his broom handle disappeared. The wind's roar, muffled by Asteria's shield, dropped to a whisper, and Orion felt the little resistance that remained vanish.

More importantly, his mana consumption dropped significantly, leveling off at a manageable trickle.

"I guess I'll call it [Cruising Flight]," he murmured as he felt the pieces coming together.

"I don't know how often I'll need it, but it was an interesting thought experiment." SYSTEM NOTIFICATION +37, 600 Exp That's a bit more than I expected. But then again, it is a tier two spell, considering the complex calculations and concepts it relies on. They really are a different beast. The hours blurred together as the sun kept its slow journey across the sky, unconcerned with their sense of urgency. Below, the geography changed.

The chaotic, overgrown delta of the Belt shifted to the dense, dark forests of the Consortium's inland areas. They were turning west in a wider arc than necessary, which would allow them to avoid the Twilight Lands entirely. Previously, they had to ask the vampires questions and couldn't avoid them, but Asteria wasn't risking it this time. Even if the Twilight Lands weren't necessarily hostile, the vampires could always be relied on to cause trouble when least expected.

Orion watched the forest canopy pass beneath them for miles. It looked peaceful from up here, like a carpet of dark velvet, but he knew better.

"Contact!" A witch's voice rang out from the rear of the formation.

"Three o'clock high!" Orion snapped his head to the right. Emerging from a cloud bank was a creature that seemed straight out of a dream. It resembled a stingray made of storm clouds and lightning, about the size of a galleon, and arcs of electricity flashed between its wingtips. It wasn't even the first one he'd seen in the last hour. It was a Storm-Ray, an elemental creature of the third tier that hunted across the high sky as if it were a sea. Under different circumstances, this would have been a boss fight.

The witches would stop, spread out, and execute a tactical takedown to harvest its essence. Not today. Asteria didn't slow down at all, just raising her left hand and pointing two fingers at the monster intercepting her. A beam of concentrated moonlight, as thin as a wire and as bright as a star, lanced out from the formation, covering the mile-long distance in an instant. The Storm-Ray didn't even get a chance to do anything as the beam tore through its center and exploded.

There was a flash of white light, an expanding ring of vapor, and then nothing. Just chunks of strangely dense vapor falling toward the forest below.

"Maintain formation," Asteria's calm voice echoed over the wind.

"Do not slow down for any reason." Orion shivered, and it wasn't because of the altitude. He knew his mother well enough to see how worried she was, and while tinkering with his spell had been a decent distraction, he had now been reminded of why they were rushing across the Magocracy with such urgency. Night fell, turning the sky into a vast, star-filled void, and the cold worsened, biting at the edges of their warming charms.

Orion dozed for brief moments, letting his [Cruising Flight] spell handle the navigation as needed. His dreams were disjointed, filled with flashes of white tentacles wrapping around a dragon's throat, and a man with no face staring at him from across a table. He woke with a start as the sun began to bleed over the eastern horizon.

"I can see it," Pauline called out from beside him. She looked tired, her eyes rimmed with red, but her posture on the broom was still perfect, showing that the bump she got from entering the third tier was no joke.

"The Silverpeak Range." Orion looked ahead. The flat stretch of the Belt collided with a wall of stone, and where it stopped, the Silverpeak Mountains rose like jagged teeth ahead, their peaks shrouded in eternal snow. I heard that the Dragonspire Dominion has an even higher peak, but overall, this is the most impressive in Cyril for a reason. The air here was turbulent, crashing against the mountains and shooting upward in violent updrafts, causing Asteria's shield to flare visibly as it pushed through.

"We'll be passing over now," Asteria commanded.

"Prepare for possible contact." They ascended further. The air grew even thinner, and the sky shifted to a deep, dark indigo, almost black. As they crested the highest peak, a shadow fell over them. It wasn't a cloud. Orion looked up, and his heart skipped a beat. Passing high above them and moving perpendicular to their path was a shape that obscured the stars. It was long, sinuous, and decorated with scales that reflected the dawn light like diamonds.

It was enormous, a creature of the same weight class as Behenien, maybe even older and larger, considering its size. It silently glided on wings of translucent ice, leaving a fog of supercooled air in its wake. Orion held his breath. If it attacked, tired as they were… But the dragon didn't look down. It continued its slow, majestic patrol of the high peaks, indifferent to the speck of mana that was their army. They cleared the peaks. And there, tucked away behind the tallest peaks, was home.

The Lunar Sanctum was exactly as he remembered, carved into the mountain as if by a giant, and dotted with gardens and silver structures. Silver spires with deep-blue veins sat atop the highest garden, forming a kind of crown. Below them, bridges made of woven living wood connected stairs and floors of white moonstone that spiraled upward. The light here was gentle, illuminating the waterfalls cascading down the mountain walls, and the temperature felt immediately comfortable thanks to the powerful wards.

Below the Sanctum proper was the city of Silverpeak. Even from this height, Orion could see the smoke from morning fires. It was beautiful, and more importantly, it remained untouched by chaos.

"Descend," Asteria ordered, unable to hide the relief in her voice. The formation banked, diving toward the coven. Orion exhaled slowly as the inner wards fully surrounded them, easing the tension in his shoulders. He even canceled his new spell, letting his basic flight module take over as they spiraled down toward the landing platforms near the Pegasi stables. They were home.