The rocky mountain valley had changed significantly since Ada ◮ was last there. What had been little more than bare rock now bore a few verdant patches, as grasses, lichen and other small greens made their way back into the valley. The golden cylinder of magic funneling the [Eldritch] had been replaced with a translucent purple hemisphere with a singular golden ring on the outside and the inside filled with an indistinct darkness.

And, just beside it all, a tree.

No, a treehouse. Indeed, it was a broad, stout specimen of xylem, with the canopy replaced with tightly interwoven set of branches. A trace amount of stone formed a chimney that even now was smoking.

A door in the side of the structure faced Ada, but 20 meters up, right in front of a landing pad. Ada moved down the valley carefully, keeping a vigilant eye on the door. He thought for a moment of just making the jump, but a quick glance at his broad chest reminded him that, at 200 kilograms, he'd be best off not tempting fate to break the branch on landing.

Reaching the trunk, he gingerly began to climb. Though he lacked the eponymous Skill, 137 Ranks of [Elven Grace] almost entirely made up for it, as did a handful of other Traits and Skills ensuring his DEX moving upwards.

He'd known it ever since he had entered the mountains, and especially ever since he crested into the valley. But as he climbed that tree and stood before that door, a string of Skills sequentially reinforced that conclusion to him. The sigh that escaped him ended up as a characteristic [Minotaur] snort.

Shaking his head lightly, he grasped the door handle with a meaty palm and entered.

From the stone stove before the fireplace, a golden-haired and white-winged visage turned and smiled at Ada.

<Welcome home, dear,> Machidiel ◐ greeted.

Ada sat on a woodbump-cum-stool fastidiously picking at his bowl of stew and not looking at Mack. He was pushing the chunks of meat to one side—he may have had a Trait to eat the meat, but his taste buds this life weren't quite suited to enjoying it.

Mack just sat on another summoned woodbump stool, his wings drifting lazily as he watched Ada eat. Mack seemed… older, a few more lines and blemishes, the shifting of subcutaneous fat. A few gray hairs. All nearly imperceptible to others, but Ada's Skills were feeding it all to him and it had only seemed like the battle was yesterday. Or, perhaps, merely, a year ago.

Finally, Ada ran out of vegetables and grains to pick out of the stew. They were meaty and somewhat unappetizing to begin with, so it wasn't a great loss, other than speeding up when this conversation would happen. Setting the bowl down with a huff, he looked straight into Mack's eyes at last.

<So,> Mack spoke first with [Speak with Elves], <you decided to actually Name yourself Ada this time?>

<Err…> Ada was offbalanced. <[Minotaur] tribes are weird. By the time I started heading this way, I couldn't really be bothered with it. And I wasn't going by "Adoel" again, thank goodness.>

<Could be worse,> Mack agreed, and a pregnant pause followed. <So…>

<What happened?> Ada interrupted before they were knocked off track again.

Mack sighed mentally. <Philosophically? We had another Bo-Bella overconfidence fault. Sure, true magic is at least a magnitude stronger, maybe two magnitudes based on the application, and we had a lot of XP in the pool, but it's hard to beat regular magic when it comes to—>

<I meant,> Ada interrupted again sheepishly. <What happened here? To me? At the battle? How long has it been?> He spoke urgently, seemingly emphasizing every other word.

Mack drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment, then sighed. <Ok, easy stuff first. It's been just over three years—>

<Shit.>

<—and, are you going to keep interrupting me?> Mack sassed back.

<Sorry,> Ada replied sheepishly. <I'm a little bull-headed this life.>

The silence was deafening.

Mack coughed softly. <I'm going to ignore that.

Anyways! So, that was a lot of [Eldritch]. And I do mean a lot of [Eldritch]. In a very roundabout way, I did manage to get in contact with the temples and the total threat from just what I managed to identify was at least two orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything else they had on file for Eurial. And we were… underprepared for that. I know you want me to skip it, but it's a key point. We thought we had 13 relatively weak [Eldritch] to deal with. Instead, we witnessed a freaking rift that only opened when we arrived but that let in a platoon of elites. I mean…>

<It was nuts.>

<It was! Absolutely, completely bonkers. And sure, a lot of this I figured out after the fact, but there we were at the top of that ridge, and we had a damned disaster on our hands. It was rapidly escalating to something we couldn't beat. Not at our Levels. Or at least not without a much, much larger pool of XP to draw on. So, there I was, thinking that if we couldn't beat it, maybe we could contain it.>

<Like your [Divine Fortress Walls].>

<Right! Except those wouldn't work. The math was… well, the basic problem was that even if I'm drawing on Adonite's divine magic, the MP cost was way above my baseline regeneration, especially the way they were pounding away at it. This was something I needed to have last for days, at least, and we had less than an hour at the rate the first set of [Divine Fortress Walls] were being hammered. So, I considered, well what if I used my own true magic to create the walls, right?>

<Right, but your XP pool was about the same size as your mana pool. So that'd be, what? A half day minimum. Maybe a few days at most?>

<Bingo. But then I've got no XP. So, I thought, what if I could combine the two?>

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The wind conspicuously rustled the branches of the treehouse. <Say what?>

<So, one thing I had been studying was the way my [Divine] Skills work. The MP is used in part to shape the XP and the true magic being cast. What if I used XP and true magic to shape the MP being cast?>

<…it would be better?>

<Pfft. Better.>

<Hey!>

<Sorry. Yes, it would be better. The true magic—especially if I created an enchantment—would act to guide and conduct the MP. And indeed, was so effective, the efficiency of the magic being cast was at least thrice as strong.>

<Damn!>

<Plus! Since MP is easily regenerated, I could keep it going, unlike with true magic. Of course, I couldn't make it arbitrarily large, and a good chunk of the battle was spent calculating the maximum size I could make the new barrier to make it sustainable.>

<Which is why I had to push them back and clean up on the outside.>

<Right.>

<So what were you were doing in that battle with that twenty million XP?>

<Oh, well, basically I was throwing XP at the problem to get it done faster and make the future MP go further. This was a large scale barrier enchantment done in, what, 10 minutes? Needed a bit of oomph.>

<I get it now. So I'm pushing them back, you have the countdown going. Then I get killed and—>

<—and the barrier clicks into place. We actually had two [Eldritch] outside we both had missed, but they were a non-issue.>

<But I was dead.>

<But you were dead. And I maaaay,> Mack really stretched that word out, <have made a teeny-tiny error, yes?>

<Yes?> Ada raised an eyebrow.

<Well,> Mack scratched his head in embarrassment, <for one, the barrier goes both ways. So, I couldn't attack the [Eldritch] inside for easy XP without taking the whole thing down. The second problem was that the MP reservoir in the enchantment was two orders of magnitude too small, so I can't travel more than an hour away.>

<Oh.>

<Riiight. Anyways, I tried altering the enchantment in situ but that's didn't work at first. And then the team showed up.>

<Our team?>

<Right. Ara, Zeke and Dina showed up about, hmm… three hours after you died?> Mack ended on a questioning note.

<That must have been awkward.>

<Oh, it was fucking hilarious. From their perspective, the five of us were flying back when all hell broke loose over because, well, the battle. That freaked them out. The illusions couldn't cope with reacting to distant sounds of battle, so they were already suspicious. Then the battle ended. But then the illusions ran out of mana. That really freaked them out, and apparently they argued for two hours about whether to investigate the noise. Ara actually had a black eye from Zeke, would you believe that?>

<No way!> Ada gawped.

<Totally,> Mack chuckled. <Of course, they got here, there are [Eldritch] carcasses everywhere, a shiny purple dome thing, and I'm just putzing about trying to fix the enchantment. There was… well, there was some kissing and a lot of confusion, so I pretty much told them the whole story.>

Ada raised an eyebrow. <The whole whole story?>

<Nooo, no no no, no> Mack waved his hands about. <Just the bit where we were intentionally hiding our powers and are basically pantheon-approved [Eldritch] hunters extraordinaire,> Mack grinned, then frowned and spoke softly. <Got slapped for that one.>

<So…?>

<So, basically showed them my Status—you were dead—and they agreed to leave without me and not report about this. Well, they'd report increased [Eldritch] activity along the border, but skip this whole side quest.

So, at that point, I dumped most of the rest of my XP into my levels—I only had a few million as I had dumped everything from the [Eldritch] into the enchantment—built a house to live in while I studied the enchantment problem. Figured out what was wrong to begin with, and started working on whether I could fix it. No luck there. So, it's mostly been quiet. Hunting and foraging the mountain range for food and XP, but it's a fairly XP poor area, so didn't get much.>

<Wait, wait, but how did I reincarnate? You have the Trait.>

<Ah. Well, after about a month, I realized that your soul wasn't moving on and I really wasn't having any luck with this issue. And I had a mat of [Eldritch] inside that were really angry with me. So, after some picking away at the problem, I picked up [Skillshare (Unique)]. And once I triggered that, off your soul went. That was about two and a half years ago, and I've been waiting ever since.>

Quiet—well, mental quiet—settled over the two of them. Ada chewing over this tall tale; and Mack—

<I'm glad you're back,> Mack said, grinning up at his companion.

<Well, of course I am,> Ada grinned back. <But, uh, now what do we do? Clearly you've had a lot of time to think this over.>

<I have, and it's simple: You just need to go gather a bunch of XP. We were too XP rich and level poor last time, so what we really need is a high level, balanced with a healthy reserve of XP for true magics. I'm… stuck here, so you'll have to go get enough for both of us. We can use the bond to balance out the XP, and once we're ready, we take down the barrier, kill the [Eldritch] and seal the rift.>

Ada rubbed his jaw as he thought that over. <[The Goblin's Share] won't trigger. That'll slow it down a lot. I already got some decent levels, so can't cheese the XP multiplier as a Level 1. And I'll have to range really far to kill enough monsters to get that much XP. What level were you thinking of?>

<I think we both need to get up to the third tier. So at least Level 101.>

<Yeesh. That's gotta be 30 million XP, esp. with the cost to be paid. And our XP reserve pool?>

<I think equal measure. So double it to 60 mil. I think that once we start fighting the XP coming in will outpace our usage, especially with the System Levels backing us up, but I'd rather have the pool than risk dying and this getting loose.>

<Egh,> Ada mentally grunted. <Unless I head out to Isla Delos, the isle of monsters, or something similar to the Red Forest, or find a slightly smaller [Eldritch] infestation, this could take years.>

<I'd guess about 7 years actually. But that's alright. The barrier is stable. We have the time.>

<It's a long time to be separated.>

<Hey, doesn't mean you can't visit. Or write. You know I heard they have this new thing called a post-card.>

<A what?>

<It's like a little card of parchment you write on and put in the post.> Mack pantomimed scribbling.

<… how does the ink not just rub off if it's a card?>

Mack shrugged. <I didn't say it worked well. The point being is that the world's not going to end if you take a little time.>

Ada peered out the window at the purple dome of the barrier. <The world might end if that barrier comes down and we're not ready.>

<I'd think even the gods would intervene if we failed. Doesn't mean we should give up anyways.>

Ada huffed, looking off into space. <You've convinced me. Best plan we've got. But before I go,> Ada picked up his bowl and handed it back to Mack. <Would you toss me a salad?>

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.