Darius let Xela explore the cottage and familiarize herself with it. Not wanting to rush her, the trio ended up spending the night there.
The next day, Darius stuffed as many chests as he could into the freed-up slots of his inventory.
Unfortunately, one could not place a Bag of Holding in another Bag of Holding, otherwise Darius would have not been forced to leave some resources behind. The trio struggled until they got everything out.
Once done, Darius was about to use a Long Warp scroll to sent them towards the territory which was 10,543 km away, but he suddenly had a thought.
Didn't he need more AP and SP to strengthen himself?
Why not… undertake the Event with Lord Darm's Coffin?
Back then, he and Gunner had not only resolutely left, but had also sealed the cave with the sleeping vampire because they hadn't dared to risk their lives.
Now though, Darius had the Resurrection Stone at his disposal and he and his people were much stronger, even though it was just by one stage.
Even if Gunner and Xela died, he could bring them back with Lunar Dew as long as he had a drop of their blood. The reason he needed the Resurrection Stone was because if he died, it was likely Gunner and Xela would be dead too.
If that happened who was going to use the Lunar Dew on himself for him?
Darius closed the scroll and pondered before smiling. Whatever the case, the homestead was only about 50 km or less away from here. Since he had increased Group Teleportation to level 15, he could jump a colossal 1.5 km each time.
The spell cost 40 MP and with Darius' current pool of 1,680 MP, he could use it 42 times before emptying his MP. That equated to 63 km in one shot, which was quite impressive.
However, one shouldn't forget the various other modifiers. For one, his two passive skills, Spell Enhancement and Spell Mastery, both had been increased to level 5.
The former now increased spell effectiveness by 5%, whereas the latter reduced spell cost by 5%. In other words, his base 1.5 km would actually teleport him 1.575 km and the 40 MP cost would be reduced to 38.
However, this was not all. There was also the newly acquired equipment he got from his third appraisal session with Foldo, some of which had scary effects.
His Gloves of the Mage increased spell effectiveness by 1.5x and reduced spell cost by the same amount. His Dragonscale Staff increased spell power by 2.5x.
As for his Golden Earring and Magic Cloak, they also had some special abilities, yet those weren't relevant to the current situation.
Factoring the increase from the Gloves, his new distance would go from 1575 meters to 2363 meters, or 2.36 km. As for the spell cost, it would go down from 38 to 25.
Adding in the increase from the staff, the total distance was now 5,908 meters or 5.90km. This leap in power was truly horrifying once one thought about it, and Darius' expression became grim.
After all, these items were not unique ones. Many other Journeymen and above stage fellows of notable bearing would have such equipment on their person to boost their power, whether mage or fighter.
Calling Journeymen trash when speaking about the Magical Method was mostly referring to Andrato's standard for Journeymen. In the better empires, things would never be like this and this was why Andrato was capped at the Adept stage.
Of course, given more time, the standard would rise and so too would the cap.
Long story short? If Darius could achieve such a great power boost with equipment, so too could others. This was another reason why he avoided fighting humans or sentients, because they would have more means than mere monsters.
Look at Gunner for example. Even with all these boots, Darius would have a really hard time killing Gunner on his own if someone would have sent the half-giant lad to kill him. If others existed out there like him and he foolishly gained their ire, he would die quickly.
Caution was still needed, but not as much as before. He too had some power and means, so he did not need to debase himself to raise the enemy's morale.
Whatever the case, Darius cast Group Teleportation about 8 times before they appeared outside the homestead. He only spent a total of 200 MP to achieve crossing 50km on his own with two other people with him, a feat unimaginable by any normal Journeymen, perhaps only feasible for top-tier Adepts.
Gunner was surprised by this while Xela simply observed the place. She had learned of it through the infopack but had not yet seen it with her own two eyes, leading to her current curiosity.
Darius happily noticed that the homestead was busy with the leftover residents were packing and putting things into caravans. He didn't bother to enter since Shanks' two kids had long set off for the territory.
It was now left with the rest to slowly gather their things and migrate over which would take a lot of time. The total length of the journey was roughly 1/4th of Earth's circumference.
If the caravans crossed a total of 10 km/h, they would move for about 12 hours a day and rest the remaining 12.
So at a speed of 120 km per day, they would arrive 89 days later assuming everything went well. That was about three months, more than enough time for Darius to expand the territory to its limits.
From here, Darius directly walked towards the forest leading to the Lost River. It took only about 30 minutes for the group to reach the familiar cave which held the likely deadly Event, but this time it was squarely blocked by a huge boulder.
Interestingly, the boulder looked to be on its last legs. It had been beaten, scratched, and charged at over and over by a variety of beats over the years.
In fact, the clearing was full of various corpses, belonging to clearly lower intelligence beasts that had been attracted here by the vampire's aura.
