Another four days.

It takes me that long for all the plans to finalize after I send over the message agreeing to ferry everyone to the castle.

For all I know this trip won’t bring anything that significant, just bragging rights about owning real estate in the middle of the HLZ atop the ‘Main’ mountain of the instance, but that feels like a distant possibility. Even if the gains are meager, it’s worth the chance. Especially given how hard for anyone to get there without flat out cheating the limitations on flight, chances are it should be something good. After all, a low altitude or a ground assault would have us confronting a lot of enemies, many even stronger than what we were regularly seeing on the edge of the HLZ, though we couldn’t guess by how much without poking our head in.

I keep improving on the Portal amongst other projects like my expansion of the inner world and consequently the perception field.

In the middle of my Inner world, there is also another addition. Basically a cube with the new runes I started using. I didn't want to cause trouble for Blackwood, but I needed it and the cat was out of the bag after the judge saw my use of it.

I turn it on and touching the farthest point from the center I can almost feel the meager attention of the system and a loosening of the system’s rules in that spot.

Perhaps I should complete the dome to expand the inner world instead of pushing it to exclude the system from poking its head anywhere inside it. It usually kept it out, but even if it was more tenuous and occasional, every night it still tried to drag the bunnies away to the nether world and I saw indices that my territory wansn’t fully mine.

The system mostly kept out of my business, but if even Blackwood had a full set of runes for his shop, something so much more private like the inner world needs an even better set. And they might even help with stuff like its interference in the trials for my class.

The mana running increases and as the gaze of the system fades from the spot I’m focused on I take to replicating the precise movements I learned from close observation.

I warp space in a rather permanent fashion and appropriate the void around my inner world as a piece of it. The quality of the very make up of space changes with each inch forward, changes I witnessed the system make and that I imitate while trying to make the to the edge seemed less pronounced so future expansion won’t slow down.

Another few hours into his simple exercise and it’s finally time to head over with the others. I take a single quick look at all the changes I brought.

Each inch is hard fought, but like digging a giant sinkhole by hand, it is time just consuming, not a halting endeavor that saw draughts intermingled with spurts of progress.

I mentally map the larger dome. Nearly 160 meters all around after using the extra 50 meter reward I got after my trial, with a nose or flashlight extending to nearly 300. I spin the perception field nose out and find a particular leaf before trying to connect to it.

The details are all there, just like if I was reaching for the leaves a few inches away, as things should be. I’m nearly fully drawn into it, to learn of its history and the meaning of this leaf, but I keep it superficial before shutting off the connection and taking off to the village.

I pull out the latest iteration of the steam rocket with a certain seed that loves to pilot already at the wheel and ready to take off. I don’t disappoint it, the very basic levitating runes push us off the ground just long enough for him to aim the exhausts and gain a little speed. The air pushes against the craft trying to slow us down, but more and more steam shoots out at an angle both downward and backward. The entire effort carafully calibrated to not disrupt the airflow potentially creating more drag.

The craft speeds up even as we gain altitude. Not a lot for a jaunt 20 miles long, we reach just 500 meters so that any small hiccups won't end up with a ground crash at well over 400 km per hour seconds moments after, without time to regain control.

A few minutes later we halt above the village and everyone rushes a portal to the inner world without me even having to land. Though the craft does sit for about 5 seconds hovering around as the last stragglers rush in the portal and we take off again, but this time we fly a lot higher, so high in fact that I have to seal the air vents of the flying craft and recycle the air from the inner world if I want to keep to a comfortable breathing pressure.

We are soon at the highest altitude we can reach skimming some two hundred meters off the ceiling that fakes a blue sky. Nearing 12 kilometers of altitude, we push our speed the highest we dare, slowly approaching it to commercial flight speed for larger airplanes at around 1000 kilometers an hour.

We could risk going supersonic if we didn’t care about the mana consumption, but trusting wooden hulls to survive breaking the sound barrier didn’t sound all that smart, even if they were made with magic to be stronger than anything earthly carpenters could make. We also didn’t want to add another sign that we flying to anyone below in the form of a very attention grabbing sonic boom.

Not even a full hour in and the transition to the HLZ skies comes and with everyone holds their breath. I watch closely with my eyes, mana sense and every other avenue I have without noticing anything out of the ordinary. Even the larger runic camera than the recon craft can’t pick out enough detail to matter so many kilometers below. But even as the wind rushes by and we devour the miles to the hearth of the HLZ, nothing disturbs us and I don’t trust that.

Even if we were heading through a nonstandard way that nobody expected, there should be some reaction from below.

But the remaining thousands of miles, become hundreds then tens until we start dropping altitude aiming squarely at the highest window atop the castle.

The white stone is a little different than what I had come to expect, but it is perfect. The tall towers, one far more prominent in the middle. No beasts or other enemies nearby and nothing to warn me off. In the last few seconds of the free fall, I take full control of the vehicle and turn on the steam rocket again in reverse burning just fast enough to make our stop. The flying vehicle, a thing of sleek lines and functional beauty makes a hole in the glass pane that the original flying bicycle couldn't pass through before we skid on the floor. Without waiting for it to stop, I open a pair of portals for the first and second teams to start exploring.

I go back to my perception field aiming straight down and try to see and feel if there is anything or anyone that I missed at first. But the seconds pass as the others rummage all around the unfamiliar place and I discover little in just those first few seconds.

Decorations, a few runes embedded in the walls and rooms, so many rooms.

A prompt arrives from the system that begs to be seen immediately by everyone.

You have arrived at the highest point of the castle after passing all the puzzles and traps below. Hold it for one more hour so it will be added to your territory and temporarily exempt from attacks.

59min 54 seconds

Melin looks around at every before his eyes cross with mine and I can see the gears turning in his head.

“We may have an advantage from so suddenly getting over here, but we also don’t have any preparations or advantages before reaching this point. Nash, can you go below and start laying down a foundation for us?”

“Yes, a whole bunch of living runic defenses coming right up,” I say even as I turn around and start making my way down.

Each of my steps leaves trails of roots from and seals the weak points in the defense like the broken window, not that the still intact ones provide much protection.

I make a model of the castle I explored so far and even as I move back to the ground floor I see what the system hinted at, though every single one of the traps and puzzles I came across, even the ones I couldn’t solve with just my perception field are deactivated.

No runes to decipher, no feats of coordination dogging swinging blades or anything of the sort still active and I almost feel sorry for the missed opportunity. But a moment later I shake my head.

Not the time to stroll through here.

Sitting down, I reach out underground and I find the perfect soil. Not the hard and rocky mountainous soil I expected at first, though there are plenty of rocks, but supple dirt full of nutrients and perfect for me to reach out and grab fills all the cracks.

Dozens of tiny portals reach from the HLZ and I pull buckets of seed already inside and plant them underground. Qi reads out as the hundreds of intelligent seeds in my inner world and Aspen grow defenses at an unprecedented rate.

I didn’t want to kill anyone but for me to survive more than a second against the attacks coming, I would need a lot more than just good intentions and dreams of something better.

I give myself to the endeavor, reaching and twisting the perfectly carved shapes that grow all around at record speed with a mana consumption measured in the thousands per second with thick roots reaching from the ground and enveloping the castle. Most of these runes I understood well, but as they grow I feel compelled to include a few that Merlin helped me put together even if I only had a basic understanding of them.

I knew at a glance what they did as my eye for magic tended to, but how they worked and the intricacies were the domain of the meta mage.

The minutes pass, even as every shred of the shrubs, grass, moss and lichen is conscripted into biomass for me to mold into defenses, but just that is not enough and I start dropping a good portion of the trees in the inner world given the unknown time frame before the enemy shows up.

A few seeds just expend root tendrils outward for me to get an early warning.

Even as anxiety builds, the skies remain clear, the ground is perfectly flat and a small hope blooms, 30 minutes to go, 20 minutes, 15 minutes. I watch the clock of the inner world, which may not have absolute precision, but is better than a human like myself at telling time. Then I catch something in the distance. Something presses on the ground.

My perception field goes out for me to see a goblin. No a Goblin Chief, larger and taller than any I had seen before. I could feel the power in its limbs, even as it sprints forward and pants like a dog to reach us.

The very world seems to impulse it to move forward to our position, but running up a mountain still takes time.

I call out on the comm network, now much more robust as the runes underground help the effort.

“Enemy approaching.”

The searching and preparing groups outside all take notice of my warning and make their way, even as a few more goblins trail their chief looking even more bedraggled than him but they will all get here in time.

To my side, Merlin skids to a halt and looks at the map of advancing dots before rushing to the outer walls with the others.

A dozen, a hundred, a thousand enemies with the number simply growing, the only chance we have is to either escape or hope we can hold out just a few minutes. To use all our power to delay.

Now I will see if my current course of action really is naive, the dreams of a broken child that didn’t see the world for what it was or if I’m just getting started.

As I feel the mana drawn from miles away, the hundred odd fighters on the walls just stare at the enemy protected by thick stone and root palisades trusting me to protect them and I trust that Merlin knows what he was doing as a sliver of my Qi reaches out to the entire surroundings empowering the mana in the runes.

A mana blade from the goblin Chief bloats out the horizon. It carries more mana than even Merlin, Aspen and I could handle combined, more than any physical fighter would have at their disposal.

But the nearly invisible attack blazes in my mana sense as it hits the runes and it halts. The enormous attack smothered in a blink, gone back to the Aether, or whatever realm mana belonged to and I let out a small smile.

And I don’t need to win, I only need to stall. My plan can work, at least while I have my stores of Qi.