Mythshaper

Chapter 61: Levitation

Telekinesis was an easy art to grasp, however, its difficulty only increased when the object I telekinetically wanted to connect with was something beyond my capabilities. The heavier the object became, the more difficult the task grew. And when the object turned out to be the very ancient rock upon which I was standing, the art became practically impossible.

No, I was not boneheaded enough to think I could move the planet to my whims with the few measly essence threads I had.

I was trying the opposite. Since I couldn’t move the planet (yet), my whole desire revolved around using the repelling force to thrust me upwards into the air. It wasn’t quite flying--like we see birds gliding through the wind, flapping their feathery wings--but it had about the same effect.

The trick was not to target the entire globe, but to push the weight of my essence against a sizeable chunk of the ground. Before, with only 24 threads of essence, I mostly failed at the task, always levitating barely a couple of feet in the air with no power to sustain it for more than a few seconds.

But now I had eight more essence threads to utilise, not to mention my Weight practically doubling. So, while my classmates sparred and trained on one side of the institution grounds, I shot 16 essence threads into the ground beneath my feet, connecting with it. Satisfied, I collected half of my essence Weight and thrust it all through kinetic waves.

The ground was immovable, but as Magus Infecius had proposed, that force had to go somewhere. Since I was standing straight, with the kinetic power thrust at a right angle, the opposite force thrust me straight upwards. In no time, I was a couple of feet into the air.

The result was no different from any of my previous tries, although it was far more sustainable now with half of my Weight remaining to be employed.

A few of my classmates pointed at me, calling to others. Some of their eyes widened in awe, but I was far from content.

Dividing my attention, I wove the rest of my free essence threads into the weave of Empower, linking it with the other simpler weave and creating a new weave. The moment it completed, a terrible force jerked against my essence seed, wrenching an indignant yelp out of my mouth. But that wasn’t all; the force had propelled me several metres higher in the air.

Wind curled against my face as the yelp soon transformed into a squeal, partly of joy and partly of horror. I thought Empower would only be able to raise the height by a metre or two. Unbeknownst to me, however, the force had more than doubled. That upward thrust had been so powerful that it flung me beyond the reach of my influence. Unless I stretched it to a straight line.

But I didn’t have time for that. As soon as my essence thread was cut off, my body plummeted down, the weave dissolving. My heart thumped with heightened excitement as my thought process soon expanded.