City of Sin Book 8, Chapter 29

A Demiplane In The Storm
Behind the portal was the vast void. Richard felt suffocated the moment he stepped out, having to create half a dozen barriers before he felt even a little better.
“Look, this is a great place to build your demiplane. Mine is nearby, and the place is only a little better than this!” Sharon said with delight, almost like a little girl showing off her toys.
Even as she spoke, a loud boom rang out as three of Richard’s barriers were destroyed in tandem. Richard’s mana rushed to repair them, but in only half a minute the outermost one was flickering once more. In the end, they managed to last only one full minute before they broke apart again.
Even as he was looking around at the area, Richard calculated the rate at which his mana was being depleted and found that he wouldn’t last ten minutes in this place. What sort of great place was THIS supposed to be?
Every single book he had read about forming one’s demiplane said the void had to be stable and calm, the energy storms as gentle as possible to minimise the impact on one’s defensive arrays. Sometimes demiplanes even had to be relocated if their location grew particularly chaotic, the move’s cost measured in multiple beyslace spider crystals. And here Sharon was, saying this extremely aggressive energy storm was great!
Richard was new to the legendary realm, but his power was anything but. As someone who controlled multiple laws with three sections to his truename, his defences were worlds apart from that of an ordinary mage. Schloanruven even allowed him to recover faster than basically any other mage his level, but he could still only last ten minutes here. Ordinary legends wouldn’t make it past three; only beasts like Sharon could be comfortable.
From what he could tell, the power of the energy storm here was almost as violent as known spike points around Norland, areas where most legends would die instantly. Was she really planning to have him build his demiplane here?
When he asked that question, Sharon looked at him like he was stupid, “Why not? This is the strongest unoccupied energy storm near Norland. The next closest one needs me to teleport ten times to get there, you won’t manage it at all. Even ignoring that it isn’t much stronger than this, how will you build your demiplane if you can’t even get to it?”
‘What the hell is she talking about?’ Richard couldn’t make heads or tails of her words. Every book he’d looked at, every one of the half dozen legendary mages he’d consulted with regards to the topic, even the Mage Association, the answer had been uniform: he had to look for a null point in the void that had been calm for a few centuries for a good demiplane.
“Shouldn’t a demiplane be built where it’s calm?” he asked testingly.
“What idiot said that?” Sharon immediately glared back at him, rendering him silent immediately. Even the answer he wanted to give of everyone got stuck in his throat. Her glare quickly turned to disappointment and she waved her hand imperiously, “Stop listening to fools. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
The legendary mage touched one of her spatial rings, covering the surroundings in light as a boulder was left floating in the void. With a wave of her hands, an aquamarine shield protected the land from the energy storm.
Looking at the boulder that was maybe ten square metres, Richard didn’t know how to describe his emotions. How could one consider this a piece of land? Was this the so-called demiplane she was giving him? Many legendary mages truly did have tiny demiplanes, but that was because they were made of extremely pricey materials like jade stone that could boost their mana absorption. Those special demiplanes could have a diameter of only ten metres, but their material was worth more than a demiplane that was hundreds of square kilometres in area. However, Richard was quite familiar with the kind of boulder that Sharon had thrown out; it looked like a random piece of rock from Floe Bay.
While he was immersed in thought, the legendary mage had already flown down to the “land” and was looking around with satisfaction. She took out a few shoots and plunged them into the rock, the seemingly fragile plants displaying terrifying might as their thin roots dug into the rock like needles entering cotton. They anchored themselves in only a few moments, those roots showing the power of a saint as they burrowed out through the other side. The ten plants quickly started growing new leaves, starting to wave around in joy as they grew incredibly quickly.
Just how terrifying were these things? This wasn’t the sunny Norland, it was the void where even legends couldn’t survive! Richard watched in shock as the roots continued burrowing out the bottom of the land, waving happily in the skies. The plants grew to a metre tall in a single minute, thin branches pushing out from their trunks and growing towards the skies. The violent energy storm around them seemed to warp, strands of energy being pulled away and absorbed.
The energy quickly entered the branches and pulsed down all the way to the roots, forming motes of yellow light that quickly solidified into pellets of soil. Richard immediately flew over and picked up a small granule, Insight quickly confirming his suspicions that it was elemental soil.
Elemental soil was an extremely rare material, and at this purity, it could be sold for dozens of gold a pinch. Looking at the hundreds of motes of yellow coalescing around the roots like gold, he was rendered speechless. In only two minutes a fistful had been added to the boulder, and it continued to grow. He almost forgot about the energy storm around him as he watched it grow into a clump of earth that was a cubic metre in only fifteen minutes.
Having lost himself in analysing the soil, Richard took a while to realise the implication of what was happening. His entire demiplane would be made of elemental soil! This was an idea that anyone would dismiss immediately, but it took root in his mind just as powerfully as the plants that had now grown into small trees.
Green leaves unfurled on the vertical branches that started to stretch more than ten metres out, waving in the energy storm of the void and absorbing it without pause. They seemed incredibly fragile, but waving around amidst the storm that could shatter legendary armour they didn’t seem to be affected at all.
Richard suddenly realised that the intensity of the storm had dropped around him, growing more gentle right around the growing demiplane as it spiralled towards the branches. He thought of something and immediately flew a hundred metres away, confirming that the storm grew even more aggressive than before at thirty metres before returning to the original intensity. From this far away, he could clearly make out the energy vortex. The vicinity of the trees had turned into the gentler eye of the storm, while everything else had grown even more intense.
In the middle of this land, Sharon’s face was filled with hesitation. She looked at Richard’s fascinated face a few times before taking out a few more shoots and planting them in the ground. This time, however, the heartache was clear and she looked like she would cry.
Richard landed back on the ground, “What trees are these?”
“Energy-absorbing trees!” Sharon grunted.
A cursory attempt to recall the term proving fruitless, Richard went through all the rare plant species he had heard of to no avail. This was clearly a species of plant that was incredibly valuable; given the kind of literature he had access to, it should have been impossible for him to not know about them. There was only one conclusion he could come to that made sense: this was a species that was considered beyond the legendary grade, so rare that only a handful of Norlanders had ever come across them.