One Last System

Vaner stopped only when he finally reached the outskirts of the lands of the sect that he spent the majority of his life at.

"It still stands," he muttered when he noticed the characteristic outline of the natural formation that housed the skyladder sect.

He was still too far away to see any details of the place, even with his insane eyesight.

'Still,' Vaner thought, bitting down on his lips. 'If thee rock formation still stands, the chances are, someone survived the culling,' he thought as he hurried up and picked up the pace.

At this point, there was no reason to run.

If the monsters managed to reach the sect and penetrate its natural defenses, then it would be already all over.

'If they were still fighting, I could tell, even from a distance,' Vaner thought, slowly progressing forward.

Step by step, second by second.

He was simply too tired to run. Sure, if the need arose, Vaner was ready to output his newfound power to kill anything that would stand in its path... But it didn't mean he actually wanted to do that.

And before the sun could hide behind the horizon and announce the end of the day, Vaner finally reached his destination.

Or rather, a place just a few hundreds meter away from the sect's main hall, due to the one and only path that connected the sect to the nearby town and thus the outside world, being blocked with an array of massive boulders.

'Did someone collapse the tunnel or what?' Vaner thought, placing his hand on the nearby, huge stone.

He then closed his eyes and focused for a little, scanning for the leftover traces of spiritual energy.

'Just like I thought.' Vaner opened his eyes before taking a step back to get a better perspective of the strange rock formation that the sect was built on.

He could clearly feel residual spiritual energy all over the stones, indicating they didn't appear to block the path on their own as a result of a natural collapse of the tunnel.

'Should I just smash my way in?' Vaner thought, seriously considering the option.

For the current him, a blockade made out of several huge rocks could very well not exist at all. It was an obstacle too insignificant to even earn the right to be called that.

"No, I don't think this would be a good idea," Vaner muttered, voicing his thoughts out.

The monsters that descended upon this world likely operated on an extremely limited amount of intelligence, even if the humans were actually at their core.

As such, this simple obstacle that those monsters could evaporate with a single breath... actually could prove to be the greatest gatekeeping measure against them.

After all, no monster or animal would bother using its strength just to smash a random mountain!

"But I'm not sure if I can climb it," Vaner spoke to himself as he looked up towards the tip of the rock formation.

Even for the standards of a former royal like him, scaling those nearly vertical slopes would be a massive and dangerous challenge. In the end, no matter how strong one would reinforce their body, falling from even a tenth of the total height of the formation would be, without a doubt, lethal.

"I guess I don't really have much choice," Vaner muttered before cursing under his breath.

It was already a bother to reach this place without giving himself any time to rest. And now, he had to climb one of the highest objects he saw in his damned life!

Vaner took a moment to release all the pent-up anger and annoyance... But then, he shook his head, clasped his hands together, and approached the massive stone wall.

'If I want to climb, I need to start climbing,' he thought, infusing spiritual energy into his fingers before sinking them into stone.

Instead of trying to look for support for his hands and legs, Vaner simply carved them out right in the stone of the formation.

And so, Vaner's climb began.

At first, the job was relatively simple. By always keeping three points of support, Vaner didn't need to worry about the risk of falling at all.

Yet, as the distance that separated him from the ground continued to grow and grow and grow...

Vaner could feel his body tensing up, its efficiency falling due to the fear that continued to grow within his soul.

'I can't let the height get to my head,' Vaner thought, refusing to look down at all, focusing on climbing higher and higher instead.

Yet, to the former royal's surprise, it took him only about an hour before he reached a place he never expected to reach.

An edge.

A dent in the formation allowed for a small rest before he would have to pick up the pace and continue climbing higher.

'It's a surprise, but a welcomed one,' Vaner thought, falling powerlessly to a more-or-less even surface of the mountain's ledge.

He then laid down, using this unexpected resting spot to actually let his body regenerate a bit.

'I can only come so far relying on the spiritual energy,' Vaner thought, glancing up, towards the top of the mountain he was climbing.

'Yeah, there is no way I can scale it without a proper rest,' he thought, realizing what should be obvious before he even began his ascend.

Yet, as one moment of rest turned into two moments, and those two moments turned into a while, Vaner realized that there was no actual way for him to scale this mountain.

It was just way too damn high!

"Maybe I should just dig through it?" he muttered, looking at the rock to his side.

At first, this sounded like a stupid idea. Yet, the more Vaner thought about it, the more plausible it appeared to be.

"Yeah, that's a better idea than risking my life to climb it," he uttered, making his decision.

Vaner then stood up, carefully balancing on the mountain's ledge to ensure he wouldn't just slip down.

Even if he were to fall right now, he still wasn't high enough for the drop to be lethal... but it wouldn't be pleasant either.

And so, Vaner readier himself for the annoying but a bit more safe task than what he aimed for before.

He closed his eyes and focused on his energy, accelerating the flow of both of the types of mana that he could wield right now.

Once the energies within his body reached their maximum momentum, Vaner pushed a tiny little bit of his energy to the point where two of his flow met.

BOOM!

As if thunderstruck the side of a mountain, a devastating roar of nature shook the air. The rocks before Vaner simply evaporated when met with an overaccelerated piece of his power, unable to stand up to its might.

"Huh?" Vaner muttered when the dust settled, allowing him to peek inside the hole he had just made.

It wasn't super deep. Evaporating rock took a lot of energy, after all. Still, what used to be just a roughly meter-deep ledge, now tripled in size.

'This place could make for a great guard post,' Vaner thought as he took stock of his achievement before turning his attention back towards the hole he made.

And then, he blasted it with his overaccelerated energy again.

And again.

And then some more.

Bit by bit, the tunnel of Vaner's making continued to deepen. Yet, even when it became roughly ten meters long, it was still only a fraction of the total depth that Vaner required to drill through to the other side.

​ 'Maybe I should climb a bit higher first?' Vaner thought when his body cried out in protest due to the overuse of its physical ability.

Even though Vaner was simply pushing his mana to the point where both of his flows mixed, it still took a serious toll on his physical state. Sadly, though, there was hardly anything better that he could do.

"Well, let's try a few more attacks first," Mathew muttered to himself, feeling the loneliness of the past several days slowly get to his head.

'Am I actually talking to myself?' he thought, bitting down on his lips in frustration.

And to fight that frustration off, he sent yet another attack into the hole.

"Huh?" Vaner suddenly stopped.

He looked into the hole of his making. He then blinked a few times before slapping his hands against his cheeks, worried that he was getting dizzy to the point of hallucinating.

Yet, no matter what he did, the thing that he saw inside the hole remained the same.

And it wasn't a rock. It was too smooth, too even, for it to be a natural creation.

And most importantly of all, Vaner's attack had no effects whatsoever on it.

"What is this thing?" Vaner muttered as he approached the strange wall and placed his hand on it, hoping to understand a bit more by looking at it as if it was a magical object.

Yet, the very moment he infused a tiny part of his energy into the wall...

It disappeared.

'Wait, that's not it,' Vaner corrected his observation as he looked around the place, refusing to direct his eyes at the cave he suddenly discovered.

'This wall didn't disappear... but slid to the side?' he thought, having trouble accepting what seemed to be the solution.

Even though Vaner saw it with his very own eyes, he refused to believe it.

He then finally gathered his courage and looked into the room formerly hidden by the wall...

And then, his body froze.

"This doesn't look like the buildings of the sect at all," he muttered before swallowing a gulp of his saliva and stepping inside the mysterious building that he accidentally discovered.