I looked around the asteroid.
It was quite large, around a hundred meters across. Dark grey in color, like wet cement that had been sitting out in the cold for centuries. Rough and uneven on the surface, with small craters scattered across it like someone had been throwing rocks at it for a very long time.
Hundreds of other asteroids of different sizes floated around me at various distances, all the same dull shade. Some were close enough that I could make out the texture on them. Others were so far away they looked like specks of dust hanging in the dark.
It made me wonder if this was some kind of planet graveyard. Like whatever used to exist here had been broken apart so long ago that nobody remembered it anymore.
I leaned over the edge and looked down, and the moment I did, something cold shot straight down my spine. There was nothing below but pure darkness. No bottom. No end in sight. Just an infinite drop waiting for anyone unlucky enough to lose their footing.
For the sake of my sanity, I looked away immediately.
I turned to face the direction I thought I had come from and squinted into the dark. "I came from the left, I think. Or was it the right?"
Yeah, no. I was completely lost. Not even a little bit oriented. I had been spinning for so long out there that every direction looked exactly the same to me now.
"Great. Now how am I supposed to get back to Virgil if I have no idea which way to go—"
⌈Kid, can you hear me?⌋
Speak of the devil.
Virgil's voice came through directly into my mind, clear as if he were standing right next to me.
"Yeah, I can hear you."
⌈Good. Look to your left and start moving in that direction until you find me. But this time, use the space element. What you are going to do is close the distance between us. It is called distance compression, or blinking.⌋
"How do I do that?"
I knew the space element could cover long distances in theory. I had seen what teleportation could do when Virgil demonstrated it earlier. But knowing it existed and knowing how to actually pull it off myself were two very different things.
⌈Think of it this way. Imagine you want to reach a certain place, but the only path there is long and winding. You do not want that. You want a shortcut, a different path that gets you there in far less time. That is exactly what the space element does. When blinking or teleporting, you are covering a long distance in almost no time at all. In this case you will be teleporting rather than blinking since you do not know the spell for it yet. And that is one of the advantages of the martial arts path over the mage path. You do not need to stop and cast a spell to teleport. You just do it.⌋
That was one of the reasons martial artists were so feared and respected. They did not need to waste precious seconds reciting incantations or building magic circles in their heads. They could simply trigger their abilities at will, mid-fight, mid-step, without breaking their rhythm. That alone tipped the odds heavily in their favor against a mage. If a martial artist could move faster than a mage's casting time, the mage was finished before the spell even left their hand.
Virgil continued. ⌈Now, concentrate. Pick a point nearby that you want to teleport to and hold that location clearly in your mind. Do not lose it for even a second or you risk ending up in a spatial limbo. And since you are only at the first rank, you cannot cover a very long distance in one jump, but with your dual path mana reserve you have more than a single jump in you. Keep teleporting in short bursts until you reach me. And if you run out of mana before then, I will come and collect you.⌋
"Understood." I nodded inwardly.
I just hoped I would not accidentally kill myself in the process. Teleportation was genuinely that dangerous and I had heard enough from Virgil about what could go wrong with it to know that overconfidence here was a fast way to end up as pieces.
I stopped hugging the asteroid, reluctantly, and shifted into a crouch. I kept the gravitational pull running so I would not drift off the surface the moment I moved. I looked left as Virgil had said, scanned the open space ahead of me, and picked a point about twenty meters out. A clear patch of nothing with no asteroids in the way. I fixed it in my mind and held it there.
I activated the space element. The familiar dark purple energy wrapped itself around my body, and I felt that quiet hum of it settling against my skin. I looked once more at the exact point I was aiming for, making absolutely sure I had it, then let go of the gravitational pull anchoring me to the rock.
Before my feet could even leave the surface my body blurred and disappeared in a flash of dark purple.
The teleport happened so fast I barely registered it. One moment I was crouched on grey stone and the next I was floating exactly where I had been looking, right on target, nothing missing. My stomach lurched sideways and my head spun for a second, but I kept it together.
"I did it!" I said out loud, the satisfaction impossible to hide.
⌈Good. Now keep going, straight toward me. If you get disoriented, I will release my energy as a beacon so you can track my position. I am not that far.⌋
I picked another point and jumped. Then another after that. The disorientation was still there with each one, that same queasy tilting feeling right after landing, but it was dulling with every jump. Getting shorter. Something my body was slowly starting to accept as normal rather than fight against. I kept going, building a rhythm, until a pillar of cosmic latte energy suddenly erupted from somewhere ahead of me, shooting upward and sending a visible ripple shuddering through the fabric of space around it like a stone dropped in still water.
Virgil. I had asked him to do it after losing my bearings for the third time and realizing I had been jumping slightly sideways the whole time.
I locked onto the pillar and kept teleporting towards it. Jump, reorient, jump again. If anyone had been watching from somewhere outside all of this, they would have seen a figure wrapped in dark purple energy flickering in and out of existence across the black, like a candle flame in a draft. Appearing, disappearing, appearing again slightly closer each time.
Eventually, as I had expected, my mana gave out.
One jump short of having enough for another, the well ran dry and I was left drifting again with the pillar still a noticeable distance away.
"Huff, huff. I am out, Virgil." I said, floating in place like a puppet with its strings cut all at once.
⌈That is fine. I did not expect you to make it all the way anyway. The distance was too great for your current level. A beginner would need the mana reserves of a late second rank, or a third rank dual path at minimum, to cover something like that in one go.⌋
"So you had low expectations of me from the start." I said with a short laugh despite everything.
⌈Not low expectations. Just an honest assessment of what is possible.⌋
Then my vision blurred and Virgil was simply there. Right in front of me, standing in open space as if the vacuum of it was just another room to him. His black starry coat and long hair moved slowly around him, drifting on nothing, absolutely unbothered by any of this.
"This guy never stops aura farming." I muttered under my breath.
Virgil's cosmic eyes settled on me with that calm, steady look he always had. ⌈So. How did it feel using the space and gravity elements for the first time?⌋
"The space element made me dizzy and disoriented every time I jumped, though it got better the more I did it and I think I could get used to it with enough practice. What scared me the most at the start was the thought of getting stuck in a limbo somewhere, or teleporting and arriving without my lower half still attached." I said honestly.
⌈If that had happened I simply would have stitched you back together.⌋ Virgil joked.
Yeah, no. I had absolutely no interest in being stitched back together like some kind of broken doll. I just needed to train more and that particular fear would become a non-issue.
"As for gravity, it felt much more natural compared to space. More intuitive. All I had to do was create a pull toward an object and let it do the work." I paused and then reconsidered. "Actually, now that I think about it, it was just as dangerous in its own way. If I had accidentally increased the pull even a little too much I would have hit that asteroid at full speed and turned into something nobody would want to look at."
Just the mental image gave me the chills.
⌈Precisely. That is why control matters above everything else in situations like this. One wrong move and it is over.⌋
Virgil raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
The world folded.
We were back inside his dimensional space.
The moment my feet touched solid ground I dropped straight to my knees and pressed my face into the earth without a second of hesitation.
"Oh, ground. You have absolutely no idea how much I missed you. I am so sorry for every time I walked on you without appreciating it. Whoever said we only value things once they are gone was completely and entirely right." I said, arms and legs spread out wide like I was trying to make a snow angel in the dirt.
Virgil stood above me looking down with a deeply puzzled expression on his face. ⌈Kid, are you sure you are alright in the head?⌋
"Yes. I am perfectly fine."