Now that it was only Lia and me, we decided to see just how far we could push ourselves. We both wanted to know how well we could traverse the mountain if we pushed our bodies to their full attribute-enhanced limits. Thanks to our concealment magic, we didn't have to worry about enemies ambushing us. If I only had to worry about Lia, I was confident that I could lift her out of danger if one of us caused an avalanche. My cloak was a magnificent piece of equipment for things like that, making my inability to replicate its function an annoying failure. Flight was such a game-changer, even the comparatively limited way my cloak bestowed, allowing the user to circumvent and avoid a great many dangers.

I was confident I would eventually manage, but for now, Lia had to rely on her own body or figure out her own way to fly.

It didn't take long for our travel to turn into a playful race, neither of us willing to let the other take the lead. Initially, my ability to read the terrain and judge where to step without issues gave me the upper hand, allowing me to take the lead despite Lia's higher physical attributes. Not that I was a slouch, the lingering draconic touch on my soul bestowed physical attributes easily equal to a fighter at my level upon me, just without a singularly strong attribute. However, Lia had her own traits, based on her status as the First Vampire, which gave her exceptional physical and good, yet limited, mental abilities.

In this case, my affinity for Ice allowed me to feel the way, to know where the snow was fresh and soft compared to spots where it had frozen solid. I could feel where it was slick and where I would be able to push off without any issues, and if there was no place to step, I could simply make my own. Without rules for our competition, it wasn't cheating, allowing me to pull ahead.

That is, until Lia started to get a feel for the situation and began to use her own abilities to the fullest. While travelling, there'd always been somebody with us who limited our overall speed. We couldn't run as we pleased while Luna was with us, simply because her physical attributes were a lot lower. Nor had I been willing to let Lia go off on her own, wanting her to stick close to the group, just in case. Due to those conditions, Lia hadn't pushed herself since we left Apple Gate Farm. Even at Jademoon Tower, Lia's burgeoning relationship with Sam had kept her from making herself seem too inhuman, or maybe Lia had simply been unwilling to spend time away from the woman she had been flirting with; I wasn't sure.

But now, travelling through the mountains at a breakneck pace, she was obviously finding herself and learning just what her body could do in the open field. It was one thing to push her body in a fight, within a limited arena and an entirely different thing to simply run. Explosive strength compared to sustained endurance, different footwork and ways to balance, it all came together to create very different conditions and strained the body differently. She was used to fighting in a limited area; now, we were running across open terrain, the only limits those we decided to put on ourselves.

At first, I only noticed that Lia was getting closer when we had to traverse some difficult, vertical area. Jumping across rocks, climbing up a cliff, things like that. After noticing, I made sure to check the next time just what she was doing and had to briefly use my flying cloak to avoid a misstep, I was that surprised. While I had been envious of the local goats more than once, their ability to run up vertical walls with the smallest of steps was just incredible; what Lia was doing now was even better. She didn't need steps or anything. I had no idea how she managed, but she was somehow able to simply cling to smooth walls and run up even the steepest, most difficult cliff. I could match her by using my cloak, but it looked like she was faster than me, even with my cloak. Just for that, I would have to give her some reward, especially if she could explain to me how she did it.

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And that wasn't the only incredible physical feat she managed to pull out of her hat on our trip. After she demonstrated that she could overtake me in the vertical, it didn't take long for her to do something similar on horizontal ground, despite my Ice Affinity giving me some major advantage in this terrain. Again, I wasn't sure how she did it, but it looked like she wasn't leaving footprints, even on fresh snow. As if she wasn't touching the ground at all, just gliding across it with increasing speed, to the point that I had to dig deeply into my Wind Affinity to augment my speed, or she would have left me behind.

At that point, I had to make a decision. I could barely keep up with my magic to assist me; her agility was simply that much higher than mine, so I either had to accept that I had lost this race or I had to take things further than I had before this point. While I didn't mind losing to one of my daughters, I wanted to give it my all, just in case Lia had some additional tricks up her sleeve. Or managed to discover them, because I was fairly confident that she hadn't been able to move as she did now at the start of our trip.

So, on the next long, vertical drop, I didn't just jump down and use my cloak to catch myself just before impact, I channelled a surge of Astral Power while pulling off my blouse and pants in their entirety. That left only a little fabric in the way to be shredded when my wings manifested, allowing me to immediately go into a dive and pick up a great deal of speed. Lia had run down the drop, showing that her ability to cling to vertical surfaces allowed her to run faster down the cliff than she would have fallen, allowing her to give me a stink-eye as I flew above her head.

Now, the race had changed completely. Lia had to stay on the ground and push her physical body to its limits, while I was comfortably soaring through the air, my speed entirely dependent on my magic. And that was where my attributes gave me the advantage; my magical power was simply superior to her physical strength. There was little she could do about that, but she tried, oh, how she tried.

Her first attempt to match what she likely considered my cheating was to start stepping through the shadows. I could have copied her, but I wasn't sure it would actually increase my speed, as my wings were using the air around me to accelerate. Teleporting would leave me in dead air, greatly slowing me down until I could gather up fresh speed. She, on the other hand, only had to push off the ground, the change in position doing very little in terms of air resistance. The distance she could step here remained limited, maybe some thirty, forty metres, but even that was enough to increase her speed by quite a bit, especially when she used it tactically to avoid obstacles that would slow her down.

It forced me to push my wings even further and to start cheating a little more. With her teleporting, I stopped following the ground closely and took a higher altitude instead. There, I could simply fly over obstacles she teleported around, meaning the difficult terrain slowed neither of us down any longer, which turned out to be better for me than for her. My wings had a higher top speed, though she was holding her own splendidly, moving faster than I had seen her move before. Even in combat, it made me wonder just how she did it.

I could see a few instances in which she accelerated to an incredible degree, using a very different mode of transportation than the shadows. It wasn't teleportation, though I had a feeling it would look to an uninitiated observer like it, especially if they tried to track her while up close. I would have to ask her for a demonstration in somewhat controlled conditions, maybe I could figure out and replicate what she was doing. It certainly looked impressive.

Thanks to our insane speed, we managed to get out of the mountains in a single night. Originally, we had taken multiple days to climb up into the mountains, and now, we had made the return trip in a few hours. Sure, we had been a little reckless, especially near the end, but our speed was pretty impressive regardless. Now, we could go and check on our giant neighbours.

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