Chapter 78: Intersteller Picnic

Breakfast went the way most meals with the Rezvolts tended to go, warm and a little chaotic, Vina peppering Isolde with questions about space travel while Daniel and Garen fell into an easy conversation about nothing in particular.

It wasn’t until the plates had mostly cleared that Isolde actually got to the real reason they’d come.

"We’re taking you somewhere today." She said it plain, no preamble. "Somewhere a bit further than the usual trip."

"There’s someone we want you to meet." Garen’s own tone shifted, just slightly, something more careful underneath the usual warmth. "Extremely strong. A master swordsman, properly trained rather than self-taught the way most players end up. He’s looking for an heir to his sword art, and we think you might actually have a shot at it."

Logan’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

’An heir. To an actual sword art.’

"A real sword art." He said it slow, like testing the words for weight. "Not just a Class skill set, but a collection of sword techniques that uses MP?"

"Indeed. The genuine article." Isolde smiled.

"How strong is he?" Logan curiously asked.

Isolde’s smile turned awry. "Very strong. Far stronger than us. Well, there’s no need to hide from you. He is not an Earthling, though he is a human. And he is a Tier-11 player."

"He’s difficult." Garen’s smile also turned wry. "Difficult doesn’t really cover it, honestly. He’s turned away everyone who wanted to learn his sword from Earth without a second thought. However, we thought we should give you a try as well."

Logan grinned, the last of his breakfast forgotten entirely. "When do we leave?"

They left within the hour, the whole family piling into Garen’s own Tier-9 spacecraft together, Vina practically vibrating with excitement at the idea of leaving the planet for the first time in her life.

Billy and the rest of Logan’s own roster turned into cards and went into his summon inventory.

Garen’s own Tier-9 spacecraft turned out to be something else entirely compared to anything Logan had flown in before. It was sleek. It was impossibly quiet.

The hull was a deep matte black, dark enough that it seemed to swallow light instead of reflecting it. Thin lines of pale blue ran along its length, pulsing slow and steady, almost like a heartbeat. Inside, the seats shifted to fit each of them the moment they sat down, no sound, no visible mechanism, just a perfect fit a second after touching down. The air smelled faintly clean, cool, like the moment right after rain.

"Buckle in, if that’s still a habit for you." Garen grinned from the pilot’s own seat, hands moving over controls that seemed to respond before he’d even finished the gesture. "This next part tends to catch first-timers off guard."

The stars outside smeared into a single unbroken line the instant the drive engaged, and for one disorienting heartbeat, Logan’s whole body felt like it existed everywhere and nowhere at once.

Vina let out a sound somewhere between a shriek and a laugh, both hands gripping the edge of her seat. Even Daniel, normally the steadiest person in any room, looked faintly green until the sensation passed.

Then it was over, and the readout in front of Garen confirmed what Logan’s own eyes had already suspected. They weren’t in their own solar system anymore. They weren’t anywhere close to it.

A single jump. That was all it had taken.

Logan opened his status panel out of curiosity and saw that he could still enter match-making for a game even here.

Soon, a planet swam into view through the viewport a few minutes later, and Logan understood immediately why they’d bothered bringing the whole family along just to see it.

Three moons hung low over the horizon. The sky around them was painted in colors that didn’t have proper names, deep violet bleeding into a green too vivid for anything Earth had ever grown.

Forests the size of continents covered most of the surface below. The canopy was so thick in places that whole mountain ranges vanished underneath it.

No lights broke the darkness on the night side. No roads cut through the green. Nothing built. Nothing paved. Nothing that showed a single intelligent hand had ever touched the place.

"It’s beautiful." Helen’s voice came soft, pressed close to the viewport beside Vina, both of them equally transfixed.

"Ilyndrath," Isolde said the name as if it belonged to an old friend. "Untouched, as far as anyone’s ever confirmed. No civilization ever took root here. Just wilderness, and beasts born here and learned to survive in it."

Something massive moved beneath the canopy far below, visible only as a ripple through the treeline, gone again before Logan could make out any real shape to it.

"Woah! I saw something big!" Vina’s eyes sparkled.

"There are many big animals here." Isolde smiled. "You remember dinosaurs from our planet’s past? There are similar ones here, just bigger."

After traveling a bit, the Tier-9 spaceship landed on a massive mountain’s peak.

There, on the northwest side of the peak where a pond lay, an old man looking in his sixties with a thick beard and long hair sat atop the water, cross-legged, with his hands resting on his knees, with his index finger and thumb touching each other.

If one looked even deeper, they would see a harmonic flow of energy between him and the pond. And if one looked even further, they would see he was in synchronise with the flow of energy of this entire mountain, not just the pond.

His eyes opened at the same time as Garen, Isolde, Logan, and his family stepped down from the spaceship.

"How’s life, Senior Rishin? Everything good?" Isolde asked with a light tone and a matching smile.

Old man Rishin vanished from his spot and appeared at a simple hut with stone benches and stuff at the center of the peak.

"You came here for a picnic? I’m sure there are better places out there than this for that." He grabbed a stone bowl and added some kind of light green-blue water before heating it on a mudstone stove as he spoke, his voice calm and low, yet still seemingly ringing in their ears as if he was talking to them while standing across them.

’Tier-11 Player. Just how strong is he?’ Logan was curious, but also a bit nervous. ’Will he be willing to teach me? Maybe he’ll put me up for a test. I’ll have to pass it, no matter what.’