The Dao of Magic

21 - Soar

The mountains I am currently climbing are starting to get impressive. In contrast to the small lumps of rocks I saw when reaching this planet, these mountains are starting to reach more than ten kilometres up into the sky. I have spent the past day scaling these walls of rock, keeping a vigilant eye out for any interesting plants.

Looking inward I check the results of my insect scanner. It gives me a neat little list of every insect type it encountered. My eye twitches as the first animal I killed on this rock tops the list, the big ass wasp. A further look tells me my automated thought process included anything with even a hint of carapace, feelers or faceted eyes. With an internal sigh I limit the maximum size to a basketball, I can't see any car-sized insect going around pollinating everything. That might just happen given the bizarre variety of beasts I have seen around though...

Looking over the rest of the list brings me no closer to any answers. Any form of body parts related to pollination seems to be missing, bigger and sharper mandibles and spikes must have taken their place. The lack of variety is also puzzling, I can only divide the entire insect group into carnivore or herbivore. There is a lack of omnivorous insects for some reason. For now, I decide to figure out how trees have sex at a later date.

Breathing out with some force I stop and take a look around. I am in the middle of a mountain range to the north-west of my starting position. I look back at where I came from and only see mountaintops with the dungeon's tower peeking over. I didn't catch a glimpse of these impressive rocky specimens when I exited the mountains of my beginning valley. That's pretty weird because I should have seen the tops sticking up from the horizon from that location. A lot of energy in the air can do weird things to the horizon, I think it causes air to refract light harder. I'm not sure because I never studied these type of physics, it's mostly guesswork.

The peak I just reached is the highest in the vicinity. It has some spots of snow here and there, proof that I am reaching the snow line. My solid core has almost grown to twice its original size with the help of the Tree. Anytime my core isn't completely filled with liquid qi the growth stops, so I syphon some qi from the Tree at that point. I pump any excess back into the medallion when I'm full up, so it's a net gain for my perennial friend. My core size should allow me to successfully fly though, so I begin humming and burst into song.

"I used to think that I could not go oooon."

The combination of my aerodynamics knowledge and the fact that I'm a mind cultivator, allowing me a huge amount of qi control will allow me to fall gracefully. I breathe out half of my qi and shape it around me.

"And life was nothing but an awful song."

A pair of white glowing wings attach themselves to my arms, my imagination needs a few seconds to form flaps and a vertical fin on my back. I place some more rudders and ailerons on my body and finish it off with two hollow tubes, these will act as engines.

I hum the rest of the tune as I reinforce the entire thing triangular struts. The entire thing goes from a floppy hollow shell to a rigid but flexible structure. I run a small aerodynamic simulation in my mind and change the structure here and there, fixing some minor problems.

"If I just believe it there's nothing to it."

As my voice starts increasing in volume I bend my knees and prepare my heart. At the last moment, I pull Lola from the necklace and place her on my shoulder, tying her down with some bands of qi. With a bellow, I jump from the peak.

"Squeee?"

"I BELIIIEEEVE I CAN FLYYYYYY"

The wind whips past my face and I quickly construct a thin qi screen that acts as goggles. A small squeak is barely audible over the wind and I make another set for my passenger.