could fly, too fast

The truth was, I’d learned how to fly a long time ago, at least to an extent. Ever since I’d first summoned Levant, I’d been capable of at least some degree of flight and had used it a little during the White Whale incident. It wasn’t something I’d been willing to rely on at the time, when Levant’s part in that mission was so vital, but I’d been capable of it.

Or rather, Levant and I had been capable of it—and that distinction was important. Flying, it turns out, was pretty complicated, a series of endless balancing acts to stay in the air, and I’d need both Levant’s power and more intense focus to make it possible. When the only thing between me and a thousand foot drop—or worse, a high-speed collision with something less yielding than the human body—was my ability to keep everything together, flying was a monumental task.

Or, at least, it had been at the time. I’d come a long way since then, for all that it had only been a few months ago. Physically, my defensive abilities had skyrocketed, to the extent that I didn’t have anything to fear from hitting the ground at high speed or making a mistake and running head long into a mountain—but more than my body, my other skills had grown in leaps and bounds. Where keeping constant track of everything around me would once have been an effort, now it was just something I did all the time. The strain of lifting and supporting the weight of my body was marginal at best, thanks to the growing power of my Elementals and my vastly improved MP supply and regeneration. Further, whatever difficulties remained in regards to making calculations had been rendered trivial by the Mathematician’s Answer. Now, flying would have been a simple task. And yet, I hadn’t truly flown since the day I’d learned the White Tiger’s Five Hundred Years, for one, simple reason.

It was far, far too slow.

The nature of drawing upon Levant’s power to fly was that I could only move as fast as Levant could move me—as fast as her winds could propel the full weight of my body. Which was fast, especially with my Elemental’s ever increasing power; if she needed to, Levant could whip up winds that went hundreds of kilometers an hour and craft storms fierce enough to shred houses. Her power was great and it would only grow as I kept drawing upon her.

But even so, I was far faster. From the day I’d first learned Bai Hu’s penultimate technique, there’d been little point in having the winds carry me anywhere—to say nothing of when I’d mastered the White Tiger of the West and gained other ways of enhancing my speed. Acceleration, for instance, affected only my personal time and left even my Elementals moving at sluggish paces, though that never seemed to get in the way of our ability to communicate. Still, as my speeds grew faster and faster, the use for flight dwindled. When I needed to move in three dimensions, I simply created platforms of air for me to Lunge between or addressed it in some anyway; there was no point to truly flying if it reduced my speed that much.