Drakys looked at Jared, who took the hint and left.

"Are you ready?" the Exalted asked.

Lev shrugged. "As ready as I can be. There is still plenty I want to work on, though those things are a matter of weeks or months."

"You got rid of the cannon constructs in your bubbles," Drakys idly noted. "Why?"

"They were redundant."

"Or perhaps you just hadn't found the right ones yet."

"Maybe," Lev agreed. "That's one of my upcoming projects. We'll see how that goes."

Drakys nodded and changed the topic. "You're in charge of the first train, as Alina likes to call them now. Out of the seven carts, the first, third, fifth, and seventh have mostly stone in them, and the rest have cores, metals, wood, and other materials hidden inside the stone. If it ever comes down to it, ditch the ones with only stone to run away."

Lev mentally noted the details and nodded. "Are two horses going to be enough for pulling the train, though?"

"I was getting to that. Another thing you need to look out for is the enchantments. The underside of each cart is enchanted with weight reduction. You only need to provide strong cores to keep them powered and let the non-combatants deal with the rest.

"Lastly, here's the communication device," Drakys said and summoned a flat crystal. It was enchanted to the brim, nearly glowing with mana. "It has two modes: active and passive. You can mess with the controls later. Everything has been tested several times, but send me a few messages to ensure that it's working correctly."

"Will do," Lev replied and took the crystal, momentarily surprised by how heavy and durable it seemed. "Anything else I should know?"

"Keep your head on a swivel, I suppose," Drakys mused, and went silent. Both he and Lev just looked as the final preparations were completed. Two workers slotted large, third-threshold cores in the front cart, which powered up the formations.

A chain reaction took place. Before anything, mana concealment runes were activated, hiding much of the feedback from his mana perception. Lev focused harder, tracing the flow of mana with some difficulty.

Weight Decrease came next, using the lion's share of the core's regeneration. The best he could observe was some interaction with the wooden structure of the carts and gravity, though there was no actual gravity mana involved.

[

Advanced Mana Perception has reached 2nd Level 5

]

It left the plating and reinforcements alone, he noted, dismissing the notification. Are the horses powerful enough to carry the remaining weight?

Out of curiosity, he identified the larger-than-usual horses.

[Horse - Level 121]

[Horse - Level 125]

… I see.

Lev wasn't even aware that horses could evolve. In hindsight, that should've been obvious.

"How many of these cart chains are we dealing with?" he asked Drakys.

"Yours will be the first and the trial run," the Exalted answered thoughtfully. "Both to see what your presence does and the technicalities of transferring so many materials through this slow and steady method. After that, if things go to plan, there will be another six or eight carts before we can send the construction crew over."

"And I'll have to protect the materials in the meantime," Lev added. "How long will it take for us to get there?"

"A month, if things go well."

He tilted his head. "What about the remaining two months of guarding, then?"

"Once you get to your destination, your job will change to patrolling. The remaining trains will be dispatched together and will also attract way more monsters."

"So I'll have to fly back and forth and remain prepared for any alerts," Lev sighed. "It's gonna be difficult to fit sleep in that schedule."

"You'll manage," Drakys commented, unpreturbed. "Good luck, Lev. Test the communication tablet once you're a few hours out."

The man vanished after saying that. Lev summoned the tablet into his hands and sent some mana into it while walking towards the front of the cart chain. Three workers were keeping tabs on the stored materials, their arrangement, and their quality.

Four functions in the tablet. One to receive a message, one to send a message, one to track the location of those features, and another for a direct line to Drakys.

There was more nuance to them, something to test later. For now, he stored the tablet again and walked up to the highest-leveled woman with a notebook in her hand. She was so absorbed that Lev had to step within a few meters for her to take notice, oblivious to the aura he kept revealing at all times.

"Hunter Lev," she stammered out, fixing her glasses and bowing lightly. "Is there anything I can help with?"

Lev debated asking her not to be so formal, then dismissed the thought. It would be annoying to ask every new person the same thing, so he might as well just live with it. In time, it would only become harder for people to treat him casually.

"Just curious about the progress," he replied instead. "How long do you think until we start moving?"

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"We're actually done here," she answered, finding her bearings quickly. "The stone had to be shifted around to best absorb impacts with enchanted plates and bindings. The cores inside will help with that. I also personally made sure that the cores aren't congregated, so the concealment enchantments are as effective as they can be…"

The next ten minutes turned into an impromptu tour. Lev learned a lot of things about how to best maneuver the carts in sticky situations, where to aim explosive attacks for the minimum damage, and how to overload enchantments by forcing control over them. There were inputs installed in the formations for that specific scenario.

It took a bit of back and forth before he was able to extract himself from the woman's excited ramblings. His bubble quickly scooped him up, and before long, he was hovering a few hundred meters above ground.

Final checks took place down below as he played with his orbs. True to his expectations, each passing minute made the exercise marginally easier. Less lightning was wasted in each loop, though he had to constantly input more of it due to the large waste.

Dividing his attention two ways, Lev repeated the exercise while watching the people go about their business. A total of twenty-one folks were going to accompany him and the carts, twelve of them combatants belonging to three teams.

Lorin, the barrier mage, was helping everyone quickly get into positions. Each cart with cores hidden inside the stone had a team of combatants inside to prevent any disasters.

Ten minutes later, Drakys appeared on the wall, along with Mel and her team. The Exalted glanced at Lev and nodded, which the Master team besides him took as the sign to get a move on. All four of them jumped off the wall, riding an invisible gale to shoot off with a boom. Within seconds, they were too far to be seen by the naked eye for most people.

Lev noted how subtle the wind manipulation was, lowering his bubble close to the ground. Stepping out of it, he waited until the driver, a short woman with a straw hat, took notice of him.

"Is it time, lad?"

Lad?

"The Runic Warlord just gave the signal for us to begin," Lev nodded, glancing at the horses. "How long can they carry us for before we need to let them rest?"

"These beasties," the woman grandly waved a hand, "can run for two weeks straight without trouble. Their classes are specialized to last for as long as possible during marathons."

Marathon by whose standards? Ours or the horses?

"So, no rest for about what, a week?"

"Something along those lines," the woman smirked. "I shall deal with these matters, hunter. You will be informed about when we need to rest."

Lev nodded and jumped back into his bubble, internally wondering if he had just been told off like a kid. Just to make sure, he turned around and identified the driver.

[Warrior - Level ???]

… I'm not even going to question it, he thought to himself, shuddering slightly when his eyes met the driver's before the bubble went invisible. At least Drakys didn't put all the responsibility on my shoulders.

Whoever the woman was, she was strong enough to sap away a lot of his worries. Having a capable helper was going to be a huge boon.

Returning to his position high above, he watched as the horses started moving. Another set of formations was powered up by the automatically detected movement, this one aiding in acceleration for easier buildup of speed.

Contrary to his expectations, the horses did not struggle at all. Their hooves sent small tremors through the ground for the first push, quickly picking up speed after a few seconds. Within moments, their speed outclassed all horses on Earth, rivaling cars after a minute of steadily ramping it up.

Not bad, he mused, noting the small amount of mana leakage from the movement. The enchantments were too large to be perfectly stable, especially because each cart was linked together.

A row of spectators watched from the wall as the horses and carts glided across the grassland without problem, slowly dispersing after a few minutes. Lev remained a bit behind the carts, within a kilometer of them, to keep track of everything in the surroundings from his vantage point.

For half an hour, he simply enjoyed the scenery rapidly passing by. Sitting in his usual, cushioned seat, his brain kept repeating how this was going to be his reality, maybe even after his team joined the operations.

Shaking his head, he shook away the downer thoughts and brought one of his orbs close to his face. Still running lightning through the other four, he planned the fourth layer for the exercise.

So far, most of the exercise is becoming willpower training instead of helping me push the limits of my mana manipulation, he thought, glancing at the currently carved layers. There's little I can improve in these right now.

While the third layer was still fairly challenging for all five orbs at once, it wasn't quite mind-bending. Lev wanted to aim higher— or at least, try to aim higher and see how that ended up.

Focusing deeper into the orb, he created a fourth layer and started enchanting. Similar to the second, this one had channels too. The spiraling channels served a different purpose, for there was plenty of overlap in them.

If the first three layers could be done with mostly willpower, the next one was impossible to complete the same way. His task was to make small lightning bolts cycle through the channels ten times, five of them at once. That way, they would be at risk of colliding due to the sheer speed, the exact scenario he had to avoid.

Rolling his shoulders, he leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes. Visual feedback provided little, so he slowly made the channels as complex as possible, utilizing every bit of space available in the layer to accomplish that. After half an hour of tinkering, the end result turned out to be a mess of spiraling noodles without any rhyme or reason.

That's the easy part done. He breathed out and sent a bit of lightning into the initial layers. A bit of focus saw over two-thirds of the blue mana reaching the fourth layer, where he had to manually shape it into long, thin chunks from each entry point.

Each bolt was launched with a small time gap in between, and it didn't come as a surprise when several of them collided with each other in the first second.

Hmm, he observed with a tilted head. I should start small for this one.

Forgoing the previous exercises, Lev stopped training with the other four orbs to focus fully on the one in front of him. Lightning was teleported directly into the fourth layer and was shaped into two bolts, which he fired at lower-than-usual speed inside the channels.

Without any runes trying to disrupt the lightning under his tight control, both of the bolts cycled through the whole layer without slamming into each other. After that, he slowly ramped up the speed, using both mental and visual feedback to track the blue light zipping inside the orb.

Two more cycles were completed before his rapid calculations faltered. Both of the bolts collided during a small overlap, too fast to stop in time.

This is fun, he grinned and took a deep breath before trying again, this time with three bolts instead of two. The speed was kept the same, and seconds quickly turned into long minutes as he got lost in the exercise, paying half a mind to the humans and carts present below him.

An hour later, he was juggling five bolts inside the orb at fifty percent higher speed. Each new bolt made the exercise almost exponentially more difficult, and by now, his mind was keenly feeling the stress of such a prolonged exertion. Tiredness was a sign of progress, and as much as he wanted to keep going, there would be time for more practice later.

Instead, he summoned the communication tablet from his ring. Feeding it some mana, he made use of the isolated function meant for contacting Drakys and powered it up.

The message required little mana and worked similarly to the crystal he used with his team.

"Testing."

A few seconds passed in silence after the message was sent before a reply came through.

"Loud and clear. Anything unusual, Lev?"

"No, sir. Nothing but grass so far, not even monsters."

"Alright. Keep an eye out."

Lev shrugged and put the tablet on a table that rose beside his seat. Drakys being rather informal was nice, meaning nobody else could tap into the communication line. He preferred it that way, too.

Given the quality of the communication, Lev also deduced that they were still well within the range of the relays, or perhaps many had been installed in advance to ensure that communication was not disrupted or interrupted.

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