The road to the city grew more dangerous with each passing day.
What had begun as the occasional shadow beast encounter quickly became routine. Every few days, like clockwork, the group was forced to halt the wagon and engage in battle. The beasts were persistent, always emerging from dense underbrush or silently stalking through moonlit woods.
Even Thorne and Bran—seasoned and level-headed—grew uneasy.
"This many attacks this frequently?" Thorne muttered one night, inspecting a freshly cleaned blade. "It's not normal."
Bran nodded. "Something darker is stirring. Shadow beasts are restless."
Erion didn't say much, but his tight grip on the reins and the constant glances over his shoulder told Kael everything he needed to know.
By the third week of travel, Kael began pushing himself even harder.
One evening after setting up camp, he sat by the fire, eyes distant, brows furrowed.
Mira approached with a soft smile. "Still thinking about your teleport skill?"
Kael looked up. "Yeah. I can use it well, but I don't… understand what it is. Not truly."
She sat beside him, brushing ash off her skirt. "That's what separates mastery from raw power. I learned that when I tried shaping light—it doesn't obey unless you understand what it is."
Kael fell silent for a long moment, her words echoing in his mind.
Understanding.
That night, he activated Omni-Vision and focused on his magic like never before. He tossed a pebble into the air and prepared to teleport it—but instead of acting, he watched.
And what he saw left him breathless.
Magic unfurled from him like mist, spiraling around the object. It didn't just wrap around the pebble—it connected to it. On an atomic level. Every particle, every quark was accounted for. His magic memorized it all.
Then—a rift opened.
Not visible to the naked eye, but to Omni-Vision, it looked like a shimmering scar in reality itself. Spacetime split apart, revealing two locations at once—the pebble's origin and its destination.
At the destination, the magic reshaped the space into the exact form of the pebble. Like a mold. Then, with the faintest hum of energy, the original object was yanked through the rift, instantly existing in the new place as if it had always been there.
Kael's heart thundered.
He did it again. And again. Teleporting pebbles, twigs, even small leaves, watching each step unfold in perfect clarity.
There were no gaps in his understanding now. He had seen the very mechanism behind teleportation—and understood it.
A surge of energy coursed through him.
His interface shimmered faintly.
---
[Minor Teleport: Master Stage Unlocked]
---
Kael stared at the glowing message in awe.
He had leapt past the advanced stage—not by grinding, not by trial and error—but by witnessing truth itself.
"I get it now," he whispered.
He looked up at the night sky, the stars distant and cold, but somehow… closer.
He still couldn't teleport himself, not yet—not safely. But now he knew how it all worked.
And knowledge, here, was power.