I was a little shocked at his answer to be honest.

“You can go the speed of light…?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Can you go above it?”

He paused for a second to think about it.

“Well I haven’t tried since I could get stuck… well theoretically…”

He could get stuck?

“How…?”

“Um… well… at the point where light moves… It's a-almost like time stops. No- actually to be more accurate, time does stop.”

Levin’s voice became clearer and more sophisticated.

“The other theoretical thing is that if you move faster than light… Then how can you see? You can see because of light, but if you outrun it… then what? Now let’s assume both are true. How do you escape? You can’t just run fast enough to escape since you’re already going fast to get to that point, but slowing down isn’t an option either since time is now frozen right?”

It’s like his personality completely switched. I couldn’t see an ounce of him being shy now.

“Well, yeah…”

<He never really goes to his limit though, it’s completely unnecessary and destructive.>

“Destructive? In what way?”

“It’s my running speed. Once I reach a little over Mach One I start rippling sonic booms.”

Huh-? Sonic booms?

“Doesn’t only one occur?”

“Nope~”

He shrugged and then refocused.

“Sonic booms will continue occurring for as long as the sound barrier is broken, you only hear it once because of the build up in sounds hitting you all at once.”

“Okay… but how is that destructive?”

<It’s the booms themselves, it’s air under a massive amount of pressure that builds based on how fast he’s going.>

“So it destroys the area he runs on if he goes fast enough?”

<Correct.>

I feel like I’m the one lacking in abilities now…

Each variant I meet has some sort of broken power in their own sense.

I need to actually deep dive and make a bunch of spells, I’ll just do it after we’re done with Chroterr~

“Cyn…”

“Hm?”

I looked down.

Ah-

“Could you let me go?”

“S-sorry about that haha…”

I was still holding Esther throughout that conversation… though she didn’t really try to resist at any point. She kind of just accepted her fate for a bit- Wait now that I think about it, I did feel her squirming a little bit…

Risible then stood up and stretched, he then dusted his sleeve off with a quick brush of his hand.

“Now what do we do? The Elven continent is at the bare minimum a thousand miles away.”

“Um… I could run it, it’ll take a few hours though since I should move at a safe enough speed for you guys-”

As Levin was talking another variant orb shot out of my body. It was dark red and the yellow-gold carving ‘04’ was on it. It warped, the slime expanding and warping into Four who was now standing on our makeshift boat with us.

“Hey~ Cyn, how’ve you been~?”

I sighed and face palmed before looking him in the eyes.

“Why are you out here?”

<I sent him out.>

“Well then why Ode?”

<He’s being sent off to the beastmen continent, Viantis. While you search the Elven continent I’m having him go out and collect variants on another. We still only have seven out of nine hundred ninety-nine afterall.>

“What about Six and Deadeye?”

<I’m keeping them as backup for both of your groups. It would be extremely stupid to send all of our backup out on solo missions.>

I then stared at Four for a moment before sighing again.

“Fine… but how are you going to get there? Levin’s going with us.”

Four stepped onto the edge of the boat.

He turned around, looking toward me, his sharp shark-like teeth in a wide smile.

“Just watch~”

Four’s eyes started glowing a dark red color as he dropped himself into the water. He started swimming down into the depths as his scythe formed in his hand.

||BLOOD ARTS||

||WALL OF CHAIN||

After around a minute of us watching the spot he dropped into, we felt the waves picking up. Out of nowhere this giant whale came flying out of the ocean around thirty feet to the north of us. It didn’t look remotely normal though, the entire front of it’s head was this bright red. Its eyes looked almost possessed and they appeared extremely hostile. It was wrapped in these red chains and a scythe was slammed into the top of its head. Following suit after the whale was this long red chain that was pulling something out from under the water.

Four emerged from the waves, he had this slime surfboard-like thing attached to his feet. He landed on the water and the whale started slamming its tail into the ocean which accelerated them.

“Bye bye~”

Four waved back to us as the whale started pulling him north.

…

“Wow…”

“I didn’t expect that-”

<Maybe I should relook into everyone’s abilities…>

We rested for a few more minutes before we would begin our long journey to the Elven continent, and of course by ‘long journey’ I mean roughly an hour and a half trip.

After talking a little more with Levin, we decided that the best thing to do would be to cover up the boat and have him run faster than earlier. We’re assuming that Chroterr is at the bare minimum a thousand miles to our east. So while we rested up in the fully inclosed boat, Levin would run at… I think he said Mach Three?

Which for a bit of reference, I think is a little over two thousand miles per hour.

Levin started off by running back the way we came from to get a good starting point. I closed off the boat as he started looping back toward us, I then placed my hand against the wall opposite to where Levin was. My slime expanded and created a yoke on the front of the boat, big enough for him to easily drag us along. 

Oh- just so you know, a yoke is this hitch type of thing that usually a horse or an ox would use to pull a cart. Just in this case I’m using it for him to drag our boat along.

Levin’s speed ramped up a few hundred miles as he almost ran straight into our boat. His slime suddenly warped and split, his body was now three separate entities that rushed around the rowboat. Two of them went on either side of us while the third went up and over. His hands started reforming on the railing of the yoke in almost an instant. I watched as his body reformed, one foot pushing down into the water. Light-blue and white electricity shot out and circuited around us causing us to boost forward abruptly. The more Levin ran, the higher his speed became. I looked behind us to see the water splitting and shooting up, and soon enough, sonic booms started rupturing behind us. We couldn’t hear them though, probably because Levin was moving us at the same speed as himself. I watched for a few moments as the artificial waves lapped out, then I laid back down on the boat and decided to take a small nap. The next hour or so was going to be insanely dull anyway, so I might as well.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

I don’t know when I woke up, but I know it’s not how I went to sleep.

I looked down…

On my right was Esther, she was using my chest as a pillow since she was still sleeping, and I guess I was the most comfortable thing. Then… on my left was Risible. He was in his slime form and was in between my arm and my torso. I sighed and looked up, we were still moving and the sun seemed to be quite a bit up now. I looked through the front to see Levin still running. I couldn’t see how far we had to go though because of the absurd amount of lightning bolts though…

Suddenly he tried slamming his feet in the ocean to slow us down, water splashed up onto the walls of our boat… we hit… turbulence? Would it be turbulence or is there a different term?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter.

The boat came to an extremely rough stop which abruptly woke Esther and Risible up. Risible shifted his body back, they both quickly got on guard while frantically looking around.

I opened the boat’s bubble up and pulled Levin inside. He sat down and sighed.

“What happened?”

“Huh? Oh… um… we’re here.”

I took down the slime windshield, behind it was this giant continent.

It was all metallic and had these cybernetic vector lines pulsing across it, there were massive skyscrapers which I never thought I would see in this world.

It was very similar to a cyberpunk city, and at the center was this massive tree. It was covered in heavy armored plating and biomechanical parts, it was hard to even call it a tree anymore. The leaves looked like they were made of some form of metal and they stretched across nearly the entire continent. The tree’s trunk spiraled upward almost like a double helix. At the center point of the tree was this giant green sphere. It pulsated this radiant energy and glowed slightly… it was something you couldn’t miss. Especially among the gray, white and neon streets. There were even airships flying around the buildings…

“Cyn.”

<Cyn.>

“That’s Cyconis.”

<That’s a variant.>

…

What?