Before heading out the next morning, Leo took care of two final items on his agenda now that they were in an actual town. Picking up a fairly basic map of the nearby planarverse with the last of their coin, as well as finally aligning his core to Nexus time. Having the ability to know how much time was passing once more was a huge relief, and Leo could barely contain his glee as he and Taylor left the town behind them and headed toward the first rift Gordon had indicated they needed to take in order to reach the new colossal plane.

  “So we have a map now?” Taylor asked, peering at the paper in his hands. “...Seems sort of small.”

  “That’s the problem with trying to record the planarverse on any sort of map. There’s not really a great way of doing so,” Leo tried to explain as he angled it toward her. “There’s little rhyme or reason as to what plane connects to any other plane. Trying to think of the different planes as permanent structures in space just doesn’t work, because the connections are all random. When it comes to things like maps or models of the planarverse, Cartographers simply pick a location and stick with it, drawing the connections as they see fit. It’s why no two maps of the planarverse are anything alike.”

  “That seems annoying.”

  “Not once you get used to it. So long as the connecting points between planes are indicated clearly, you can use the maps to travel the planarverse, it just requires a bit of training,” Leo explained, pointing at the map and Gordon’s route he’d sketched for them, which he had side-by-side. “Gordon’s sketch is good information, but we’re not actually going to follow it all that closely.”

  “What?” Taylor blinked, frowning at him. “Why did we pay for it then?”

  “We paid for the location of the colossal plane, not how to get there. Now that I know where it is, I can alter the course a bit and have us journey through planes we’re more interested in. Gordon assumed we were lower soul ranks and gave us a relatively safe path to take. Well, as safe as wandering through the planes ever is. But we need to keep cultivating our souls and grow stronger. In order to do that, we need to hit some harder planes with much deadlier magical beasts present.”

  Leo scribbled out his own quick route, nodding his approval once it was done. In fact, it actually ended up having them cross through less planes than Gordon’s suggested route did, but that was because the planes Leo was planning to have them go through were far more dangerous.

  “Deadlier magical beasts sounds like fun,” Taylor grinned. “Let’s go!”

  With that, Leo put his maps away, and they focused on the task at hand. Getting through the exit checkpoint was a lot simpler than entering into the plane, as the guards didn’t care too much about who was leaving compared to who was coming in. Leo walked out of the rift with Taylor at his side, and he took a deep breath of air as his soul snapped back to regular size, reinflating in his core.

  “Finally,” Taylor grumbled, stretching and cracking her neck as though it had been her whole body that was scrunched up rather than just her soul. “Soul dampening is the worst.”

  “It’s unavoidable for Cartographers… but yeah, that was awful,” Leo agreed. “Let’s try and avoid it wherever we can from now on.”

  The first plane on their stop was a medium desert, tier 14 plane. The rift they exited didn’t have any shade to offer them, and Leo used his hand to block the harsh sunlight as he peered around at what they had to work with. Coarse, squat plants he recognized from books as cacti dotted the landscape that consisted of little more than burning sand as far as the eye could see. There were a few camels trudging along here and there, and some birds flying far overhead, but no magical beasts in sight as of yet.

  “This plane has an incredibly rapid day-night cycle. Roughly an hour of each. I figured we could take shelter during the day and do some hunting at night as we trek through it. The rift we need is a good eight miles away.”

  “Take shelter where?” Taylor asked, clearly not a fan of the blinding light as she squinted all around them. “No trees. No water.”

  “Yeah… I realize that now,” Leo admitted, following her gaze and confirming there wasn’t so much as a single scrawny tree to hide beneath. He’d read all about desert planes during his studies, but he hadn’t quite understood just how little refuge was offered from the powerful sun. “Well, at least it won’t last very long. Let’s just try to grin and bear it for now. Worst case scenario, we can set up our new tent if needed.”

  And so the two of them found themselves trudging across the blistering sand, doing their best to keep their eyes shaded from the sun as they looked around for approaching magical beasts. The good news was their soul ranks were high enough that they wouldn’t suffer from sunburn like a non-gem holder would, but it was still remarkably unpleasant. On top of which, Leo was quick to discover his Minor Tremorsense skill didn’t work well in the desert at all. The constantly shifting sands gave him false hit after false hit that something was approaching them, and he quickly grew frustrated with the skill.

  This is a prime example of how experienced Cartographers would shift the skills in their core around based on the plane they were planning to enter… he grumbled to himself. Good to know Tremorsense skills can be tricked, though.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The heat had to be affecting Taylor just as bad as it was him, as she didn’t even run off to kill one of the nearby camels and demand he try cooking it. Thankfully, the day cycle had been half-finished when they entered the plane, and it wasn’t too long before the burning day was replaced by the cool of night.

  “Let’s use the tent during the day,” Taylor suggested once they came to a stop, basking in the frigid air that was now cold enough they could see their breath. “I don’t like the heat.”

  “No arguments here,” Leo nodded, taking a hearty drink from his canteen. Sighing in relief, he went to put his water away when movement off to the side caught his attention. “What’s that?”

  Taylor’s eyes followed his finger, and the two of them watched one of the distant camel herds. The camels had all taken off running for some reason, their gangly legs galloping as they fled as one. Before Leo could spend too long wondering why they were running, the reason made itself known.

  As a massive bird with a wingspan more than twice his own height plummeted to the ground, snatching up one of the camels in its sharp talons and flapping as it took to the sky once more. Leo watched on in horror as the camel called out in panic, its legs still desperately trying to run as it was carried away.

  “Leo!”

  Leo turned, recoiling in fear as Taylor launched herself at him with her claws out, snarling with murder in her eyes as she went for his throat. Yet rather than rip out his jugular while he was frozen in shock at her sudden betrayal, she knocked him to the ground, sending the two of them tumbling across the sand and out of the shadow he hadn’t noticed he was standing within.

  The second giant bird shot straight through where he’d been standing moments before, screeching as it failed to grab its meal and attempted to bank up, only for its wing to give out and the beast to crash hard into the sand. As Taylor jumped off him, Leo finally noticed the fresh blood dripping from her claws, and he realized she’d actually managed to land a hit on the beast even while saving his life.

  Crouching like a cat mid-hunt, Taylor lunged at the downed bird, sinking her teeth into its long neck as she tried out her newest skill. Back at Gordon’s, Taylor had picked up the Grade 2 Weakening Bite skill to add to her core. It came from a particularly weak ant-like beast that would swarm its victims with numbers, draining their stamina with repeated bites of its mild venom. It wasn’t exactly a popular skill, seeing as it required the gem holder to literally bite their opponent to get it to work, but it fit perfectly for Taylor’s fighting style.

  The bird flapped and screeched, trying and failing to bend its neck low enough to peck at Taylor, who doggedly hung onto its neck with her teeth as she began slicing through the dense muscles with her claws. But while she was busy doing that, Leo’s blood went cold when he realized a dark shadow had fallen over Taylor and the bird, and he cursed as he spotted yet another magical beast angling toward them.

  Unsheathing his sword, Leo darted forward, relying on his movement-enhanced body to beat the diving bird to its target. His Darkvision skill made the darkness the birds hunted in irrelevant, and he timed his strike just right as he leapt.

  The bird was focused solely on Taylor, which meant it wasn’t prepared in the slightest for Leo to come flying in from the side and slice clean through one of its two wings.

  Blood splattered all over the still-warm sand, soaking into the dry grains as the magical beast crashed to the ground. Trusting Taylor had her own beast taken care of, Leo rushed over to finish off his own.

  Nearly losing his head in the process.

  Leo barely managed to get his sword up in time to block the powerful thrust of the bird’s head, its sharp beak scraping against the metal of his blade and nearly knocking it out of his hands. He hadn’t expected the beast to right itself so quickly after losing a wing, and that mistake had almost cost him his life.

  He and the bird stared at one another, both twitching as they waited for the other to make a move. Leo had the advantage, however, as blood continued to pour from the beast’s severed wing. It would pass out from blood loss soon enough, and the beast seemed intelligent enough to know that, as it finally screeched and lashed out at him again.

  Leo was ready this time, and he twisted to the side, letting the beak jab past him as he brought down his sword and sliced clean through the magical beast’s outstretched neck. As its head fell to the sand with a wet thud, he turned to find Taylor ripping out her own bird’s neck with her teeth, turning to give him a blood-stained smile.

  “That was fun!” she said, spitting out a mouthful of flesh, blood, and feathers. “Much better than walking through hot sand!”

  “I’m sorry, I should have tried to get more information on the magical beasts we’d be facing!” Leo said, embarrassed he’d nearly been killed less than an hour into this new plane. If Taylor hadn’t reacted in time to save him… “Gordon marked the more dangerous ones along the route he suggested, but because I decided to take a different path, I don’t know what we’re going up against. The map I got is too basic, it doesn’t include information on magical beasts.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Taylor scoffed, walking over to him and plucking a few feathers from her teeth as they morphed back to normal. “I like the unknown. It’s much more fun.”

  “It’s much more dangerous,” Leo corrected.

  “I like danger,” Taylor shrugged. “Good practice for being a real Cartographer as well.”

  “Yeah… I guess I can’t argue with you there. Cartographers need to know how to leap into completely unknown planes. How to survive without any prior knowledge of what they’ll be facing.”

  “See? Good practice," Taylor repeated, punching him in the arm. “Just keep your eyes open. You’re relying on Minor Tremorsense too much.”

  “Yeah, I think it might be time to replace that skill before long,” Leo agreed, peering at the downed birds. “...Want to see one of our potential options?”

  Patreon

  Discord