Childhood
006. <Grace> Experiment Part 1
After that, Luca strolled around the town as planned. Unlike the village, there were bookstores, and each store was large and well-stocked, so it was fun to see.
He then rented a cheap hotel for the night and went back to the restaurant they had visited during the daytime for dinner. He felt safer at a restaurant where he knew the prices, and he was able to save money thanks to peddler uncle buying him lunch.
The dinner menu consisted of gratin and stewed meatballs, both of which were main dishes. Luca wanted to have gratin because the peddler had it at lunchtime. The meat dumplings were actually as expensive as another main dish, but the lady at the restaurant remembered Luca crying while he was eating them during the day, so she gave them as a freebie since they had broken as they were being cooked and couldn't be served to the customers anyway. The Goddess of the world must be this sister.
With his stomach filled with happiness, Luca quickly went to sleep to prepare for tomorrow. He left the inn before dawn. At this time, there was hardly a soul to be seen. There were signs of people moving in the distance, but since it was in the direction of the market, it was probably people stocking up. There was no sign of anyone near the inn.
Luca proceeded along the road for a little while and stopped. This was a good place.
He marked his current position with a circle with the string he had. He stood in the circle. He always kept a string in the leather bag at his waist, as it is used to bind the intestines of his prey when he dismembers them.
Luca then stared at the horizon and a "wedge" of <Teleport> appeared.
Luca had activated it when he was seven years old, but he had not been able to verify it for the most part. After the boar incident, Wolf did not allow him to walk alone in the mountains until he was 10 years old, and he would always have someone with him.
"It's not that I don't trust you, but I won't put you in harm's way. I'll stay with you until you are strong enough to fight medium-sized beasts on your own." Luca couldn't complain about this.
When he was over 10 years old, Luca hunted a red-eared wolf that had strayed from the pack, alone, under the watchful eye of Wolf. The red-eared wolf is the largest of the wolf species and attacks its prey with great ferocity and flexibility. The hunter is both the hunter and prey when it comes to this beast. It is a beast that keeps one on the tip of their toes. After hunting it alone, even though it was a straggler, Luca was recognized as having improved by a step. And with that, he was finally allowed to walk alone in a restricted range.
But even if he could have some time alone, it would still be too reckless to choose the mountains for experimenting with <Teleport>. It would be too much of a risk if another big boar were to appear... in front of him the moment he set his sights on a distant place. At best, he was able to practice it at a nearby branch.
In addition, since his little brother, Licht, has been coming to visit him for the past year, he decided not to try it out at the cabin under Wolf's watchful eye for safety reasons.
What I wanted to test today was to see how far is the range of <Teleport>. It would be dangerous and impossible to do this in the mountains. However, today, he's in a place surrounded by roads and farmland where he can see as far as the horizon. Further, at this time of day, there is little chance of being seen by others. He's also wearing a hood, so even if someone does see him for a moment, they'll just think of it as seeing a ghost by the time he moves again.
And with that, Luca tried to see how far the "wedge" could go. Just at the horizon was a small building. It looks more like a farm equipment warehouse than a house. As he looked around there, the "wedge" settled as if it were 'magnetized' somewhere.
This is a strange phenomenon. It had been so from the beginning.
When the wild boar attacked, Luca tried to move to a thicker branch because the first one he was on was too thin and he didn't feel secure. But there were branches on which the "wedge" was fixed and others on which didn't. Without a fixed wedge, he could not <Teleport>, so he needed to know what the difference was between the two. If he doesn't know the difference, in the event of an accident, he wouldn't know what would happen if the "wedge" isn't fixed.
(But for the time being, we will <Teleport> there....)
Luca then moved to the small building near the horizon from where he was standing.
(Yeah, this is no problem.)
The building was, as expected, a warehouse for farm equipment, and there was no sign of anyone. When he looked in the direction from which he had moved, he saw that the "wedge" was already in place.
(What is that?)
Was it a coincidence? Or did it really stick to the same place from where he had been from? Luca wondered like this, but decided to put it on hold for the time being, since he was in the middle of verifying the long-distance <Teleport>.
Now, he moved further away from the "wedge" that had been established.
Luca wanted to know if it was possible to <Teleport> even when the "wedge" is out of sight.
As it turned out, the "wedge" did not disappear even though it was now out of sight. Luca had a hunch that he could also <Teleport> to the place that had now disappeared beyond the horizon, where the wedge was, before actually teleporting. It seems as though he could tell by intuition that he could <Teleport>.
So the next step was to intentionally remove the wedge. Could he wedge it back into that same place? In other words.
"Can I wedge it in a place I know, even if I can't see it?"
The result was he could not. He couldn't put a wedge in a place that is not even slightly in his field of vision. So, if he encountered a wild boar in the mountains, he couldn't just put a wedge and <Teleport> into the cabin using the image in his mind and escape...
At this time, Luca turned to the way he came from, a little depressed to find that what he had hoped for was not possible.
However, it was a valuable experience to know how far away he could be from the "wedge". It was not "I know it because I can see it," but "I know it exists even if it is beyond the horizon." It was an indescribable sixth sense that he felt when the "wedge" was generated.
Returning to the farm equipment warehouse, the middle of the road on the horizon, which could be seen from this position, should be where he first stood, i.e., where the string was located.
(Let's go back and retrieve the string.)
The wedge was easy to find this time. <Teleport>
"Where?"
When Luca looked at his feet, he couldn't believe his eyes. There was a small pot of aloe. It seemed placed between Luca's feet.
(No, no...)
Luca's head was in turmoil. There was also no sign of the string.
(Wait, wait....)
Luca was certain that he's not mistaken. If the height had not changed, the distance to the horizon would be the same. He went from the starting point to the farm equipment warehouse on the horizon, and even when he removed the "wedge", he came back to the same place in the farm equipment warehouse.
Luca looked around the area for a while, thinking that maybe he was slightly off, but he couldn't find the string. And the strangest thing of all was the pot. He had been walking along this road all the way from the inn. If there was a pot of aloe in the middle of the road, he would've definitely noticed it.
The place where he was currently standing was probably the right place. Luca has been wandering in the forest for seven years since he was five years old. He has been memorizing the characteristics of trees around him on an unconscious level, it is now a habit. When he was making the circle with the string, he looked around. The trees by his side were the ones he saw. There was no doubt that this was indeed his starting point.
(Unless my seven years of experience is telling lies...)
Looking at the horizon, Luca could see a "wedge" near the farm equipment warehouse.
Luca made a hypothesis. He took the pot of aloe, and walked toward the wedge without using <Teleport>.
And then he found it. He found a circular piece of string lying on the ground near the farm equipment warehouse, where he had been standing before he teleported back.
"It isn't <Teleport>."
Stunned, this thought spontaneously spilled out of his mouth.
[T/N: Any support is greatly appreciated]
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