The soldiers seemed to appear out of thin air, flanking the carriage on either side. The carriage itself was moving faster than any Titanias had ever seen and these bandit soldiers held pace with it with what looked like ease.

    If Titanias could have seen their faces, which were hidden behind hooded mask, he would have noticed the intense effort the bandits were applying to move at such a high speed. Even with the Amazon Cloud walking technique that the bandits were utilizing, they were at their limits. The movement technique had been designed by the House of Walking Palms as a means to corner the delivery market in the capital. By expelling mana beneath your feet in a thin layer you could reduce the friction until it was almost non-existent, allowing the human body to reach previously unheard of speeds with relatively little effort. Had a single one of them mastered the Amazon Cloud walking technique they could have overtaken the carriage in their stride, but then they would have been a swift technique master and have no need to be a mercenary pretending to be a bandit chasing after a carriage for an unknown artifact.

    Such is life.

    The unit leader made obscure hand movements but all his team understood and knodded. “Laughing hyena formation.” His hand signals gestured. They were only going to get more exhausted at such a strenuous pace, the unit leader knew this and chose to sacrifice some of their members to possibly slow down the carriage’s momentum. The mercenaries spread out, giving wide berth to the road and its occupants, all but four who stayed astride the vehicle.  

    In practiced cohesion, they began to draw up on their diminishing reserves of mana, folding it upon itself to create a barrier. They released the spell in front of the coach creating four gates one after the other, and then having no strength to continue, fell back. Titanias, being an expert in barrier magic, recognized the spell immediately as “the four gates of ruin,” a particularly tricky barrier as each gate repelled intruders in a different manner.

    Titanias grinned wolfishly as he realized he could use the gates to his advantage.

    The first gate, the gate of envy, activated as they neared it, suddenly blowing hurricane force winds against them. Titanias erected his own barrier, one in the shape of a spiraling screw. The tip cut through the wind with its aerodynamic shape while the grooves caught the wind in their spiral. The trapped gust spun the screw harmlessly and blew out the back giving the carriage another burst of speed. The carriage lurched forward through the first gate without missing a stride.  

   The second gate, the gate of lust, created whirlpools of eddying wind that suctioned anything coming toward the gate towards either side. Titanias was moving so fast now that he had no time to erect another barrier, instead he focused on keeping the carriage in line and hoped that the previous barrier would hold.

    It did not.

    Ripped at from multiple angles, it wasn't long before the screw shield fell apart. The carriage veered dangerously close to being sucked into the whirlpool but the optimized strength of the horses pulled them through. They passed the second barrier but the tarp that covered the passenger seat hung in tatters from the constant bombardment.

    The next gate, the gate of gluttony, hung open like a gaping maw. Everything in front of it began to get sucked into its hallowed entry. Titanias held the reins lightly in one hand as he gathered his own magic. His inherent magic, and that of most of his family, was of the element of earth and the first spell he cast was an basic spell taught to all students who specialized in earth, pillar, but instead of causing the earth to extend straight upwards he angled it at a slope so that a ramp was created where the road once had been.

    The carriage took the ramp at a gallop, barreling over the third gate and into the sky. The fourth gate, the gate of pride, would have released perfumed mist that caused hallucinations so that instead of going forward as one thought one was going, one would be turned around and head back to the beginning of the gates, but being two meters above it flying through the sky the gate had no effect on Titanias or his horses. They soared above the forest like Santa Clause and his reindeer returning to the North Pole.