Unfortunately, Eithan’s warning around Stone Shape ended up ringing true. By the time Vin was roused from his Introspection to find Shia pinching him on the arm, he’d yet to make any significant headway on learning the spell.

  “Shia?” He blinked trying to figure out how long he’d been away based on how much his body ached. “What time is it?”

  “Dinner time,” she snorted, placing a basket of familiar fruits and some choice meats in front of him. “After I checked in with the elder I swung by the practice grounds, and Eithan told me where you’d headed off to. While you were out, I put in some more work on that new spell I mentioned I was working on. It’s probably not going to be ready in time for our fight, but I’m hoping I’ll have it in a few more days. Anyway, when I came to and realized you were still deep in Introspection, I figured you’d be busy for a while, so I went to the farm and did what I could to help out. This is a gift… from Peter,” she sighed, as if knowing what he was going to say. “…just shut up and eat.”

  “From Peter, you say,” Vin repeated, bouncing his eyebrows and helping himself to some of Sakis’ freshly grown fruits. Popping one of their delicious vatos in his mouth, he grinned. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to share in this bounty?”

  “Sod off,” she grinned, pulling her lips back a bit farther than necessary and showing off her jagged rows of teeth. “Anyway, how goes the spell? I doubt Alice is going to want to be away from camp for longer than necessary.”

  “It’s tough,” Vin admitted, his mirth vanishing in an instant as he sighed. “Eithan warned me, but I was still a bit too cocky. It’s easy to forget that spell complexity isn’t solely tied to tier. Hell, Sense Dimensions is a tier 0 spell, and that took me longer than most of the tier 1’s I’ve learned.”

  “So why is this one so hard?” Shia asked, grabbing what looked like a hunk of mutton and tearing into it.

  “I guess my earth magic up until now has pretty much all been creating stuff,” Vin said, thinking over his spell list. “Stone Shape on the other hand is all about altering existing stone. From what I can tell, the spell involves saturating the stone with my mana, which should allow me to interact with it despite the fact that I didn’t create it myself. It’s just a concept that’s pretty new to me.”

  “What do you mean?” Shia asked, raising an eyebrow as the mutton juices dripped down her chin. “Isn’t that exactly what Entangle does?”

  Vin stared at the elf, his mouth open to explain how it was nothing like Entangle when he froze.

  …Huh…

  “I need to try something,” he said, hurriedly pulling his legs under him and slipping back into Introspection before Shia could stop him.

  Standing within his mana once more, Vin checked on the runic formation for Stone Shape for what felt like the hundredth time. Sure enough, the formation was drastically different from his other earth-aligned spells, which was why it was giving him so many issues. The best way he could describe it was that his other earth spells all felt hard and rigid, while Stone Shape seemed to almost want to breathe.

  Holding his own metaphysical breath, Vin quickly threw together the runic formation for Entangle, blinking as he took in the formation of one of his oldest spells.

  Back when he’d first learned Entangle, he was pretty much blindly copying the runic formation Shia had shown him without actually understanding how any portion of the spell truly worked. Sure, Runic Recalibration showed him how to tweak a few things here and there and how to supercharge the spell with mana, but that didn’t really help with his understanding as a whole. But now…

  Vin’s mind flashed back to the introductory textbook on runic formations he’d found within the library as he observed Entangle in a new light, comparing it with Stone Shape and finding a surprising number of similarities. Immediately, he was able to isolate large portions of each formation, and he nearly sat down inside his own mana in shock.

  Despite being completely different magic affinities and tiers, Entangle and Stone Shape both shared nigh identical portions of their formations. Vin’s focus flicked between his Iron Mind memory of Stone Shape and the formation for Entangle floating in front of him as he compared the two, barely believing what he’d discovered.

  Spells aren’t as reliant on affinity as I thought, he finally realized, suddenly wishing he’d learned Stone Furniture and that it would work in here so he could collapse into a chair.

  Only now that he was looking at such similar spells from different affinities did he realize the truth. It was the affinities that were tacked onto the root spell, not the other way around. The various Sense Whatever spells hadn’t been large enough for him to notice before now.

  “So what does this mean,” Vin muttered, his whisper echoing inside the strange void that was Introspection. He’d felt like he’d just stumbled upon some mind-blowing, magical revelation. Like he’d cracked a secret that should take his Runecrafting to the next level. However…

  It really didn’t change anything.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

  The realization that spells weren’t built from the affinity up didn’t exactly do anything for him at the moment. But now that he understood that the similarity between some spells stretched independently of affinity…

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Learning new spells just got a whole hell of a lot easier.

  Grinning, Vin dove back into creating the runic formation for Stone Shape once more. Only this time, he used Entangle as a reference. Rather than think of this newest spell as a drastic change from the earth spells he already knew, he began thinking of it instead as an alteration of the far more familiar Entangle, not worrying about making the adjustment from nature affinity to stone affinity until he'd recreated the foundation property. In doing so, he came to a final, sudden understanding.

  Spells could theoretically be built off of spells from different affinities.

  Vin gasped as the very void around him seemed to quiver for a moment, as though a powerful, foreign pulse of mana had just wracked his very existence. Knowing that could only mean one thing, he grinned, turning his focus back to the formation at hand. With this new understanding in place, he was able to focus his pool of mana and began constructing the spell in earnest. Before he knew it, the brand-new formation for Stone Shape was floating directly in front of him.

  Vin admired his newest spell, taking in its unique formation. Even after his revelation, it had still taken him what felt like a good amount of time to finish up the spell, which meant who knew how long had actually passed up above. Congratulating himself one last time, Vin cancelled Introspection, waking up with a gasp as he was absolutely bombarded with notifications.

  Runecraft increased to lvl 9! 1,800 exp gained.

  Runecraft increased to lvl 10! 2,000 exp gained.

  Runecraft increased to lvl 11! 2,200 exp gained.

  Level up! Magical Explorer lvl 30!

  +3 Attribute points to spend.

  Capstone awarded: Flexible Formations

  New spell learned! Tier 2 Earth Spell (Stone Shape). 10,000 exp gained.

  His mind whirling at the revelations that had led to his newest Capstone, Vin almost missed the fact that he could hear voices coming from the other room. Shakily getting to his feet, he shoved his three new points into focus and stumbled over to the hide covering the doorway, lifting it and blinking at the sight before him.

  Shia was sitting against the far wall, stroking Blossom and laughing as she recounted how they’d narrowly escaped the swarm of golems trying to rip them limb from limb in the library. Scule stood on her shoulder, interjecting whenever he thought she’d missed an important bit and arguing that his shaking had been because of his passive, not because he was scared. Alka was leaning against one of the other walls, paying rapt attention seeing as she hadn’t actually been aware while any of this was happening. And Reginald…

  Reginald was currently sitting in Alice’s lap, happily snoring away as the Trapper pet him.

  Alice was so enthralled by the story of the library that she didn’t even notice Vin enter the room, which gave him ample time to take in the Trapper.

  It had been nearly two weeks since Vin had last set foot into camp, and clearly a lot must have happened during that time.

  While the quiet and reserved fast food worker had been all but gone after they’d managed to survive the monster swarm that tried to kill everyone before wave two’s arrival, looking at her now, Vin struggled to even compare the current Alice with the one he saw in his memory.

  Alice’s grey fatigues of Project Ark were nowhere to be seen, replaced with more functional attire that was closer to leather armor than actual clothing. Her curly red hair was streaked with dirt, and she had a satchel at her hip that looked full to bursting with what Vin could only imagine were tools of the trade for any Trapper. There were a couple of scars running down the side of her face, and Vin’s heart leapt for her when he realized she was missing the pinky and ring finger on her right hand.

  While Alice didn’t notice him, and Shia and Scule ignored him as they continued arguing over the story, Alka nodded, calling out to him.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  Startled, Alice followed Alka’s gaze, her own eyes widening as she took in Vin standing there.

  “Vin!” She grinned, jumping up and running over to give him a hug. “Damn, it’s good to see you again!” Holding him out at arms-length, her eyebrows shot up as she took in his new arm. “Jesus, think you could introduce me to your doctor? I’ve had a hell of a time trying to find someone that specializes in prosthetics.”

  “She’s right over there,” Vin chuckled, nodding toward Alka. Alice turned, her eyes only going wider as Alka raised her warpick arm and she put two and two together.

  “You gave Vin your own arm?” Alice asked, utterly shocked.

  “I mean, he gave me my entire body, so it seemed like the right thing to do,” Alka shrugged, sounding embarrassed for possibly the first time ever. Vin stared at the Slayer in shock, wondering what the hell that was all about.

  “Way to go Vin, I was just getting to the good part!” Scule pouted, clearly wanting to finish the story about how he’d all but singlehandedly stolen the golem out from under the nose of the library of death.

  “Did you crack the spell already?” Shia asked, looking at him in surprise. “I figured it would take you at least another day.”

  “Thanks to your comment, I managed to come to a bit of a magical revelation. Tipped me over to level 30 and got me my second Capstone as well,” he grinned, enjoying the shocked and envious faces of his friends.

  Though that was nothing compared to Alice’s expression.

  “Level 30?!” She gasped, her jaw practically hitting the floor as she stared at him in a mix of awe and disbelief. “Are you being serious?”

  “Yepp. I’ve said it before, but it turns out being chucked into a patchwork world like Edregon is pretty much an Explorer’s dream,” Vin chuckled.

  “That’s absolutely insane…” she said, looking like she still didn’t quite believe him. “As far as I know, I’m one of the highest levels back in camp, and I’m only level 22. I’m pretty sure you could count the number of people who have managed to prestige by now with two hands. Two of my hands,” she corrected, waving her eight fingers.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Spur, Myers, Phil, and Shredder, make up most of them?”

  “Got it in one,” Alice grinned. “Though you’re missing Witherson. Managed to finally prestige just yesterday.”

  “Wait, seriously? She was part of the second wave!”

  “Yeah, she pretty much worked her ass off to try and catch up to Spur. She’s not there yet, but she’s getting close.”

  “Damn…” Vin shook his head, blown away by the general’s progress. Though he supposed most people capable of achieving the rank of general no doubt had a lot of drive. “With that sort of leveling, I suppose camp must look quite a bit different now then when we last saw it.”

  “You have no idea,” Alice laughed. “Some of our crafters have even managed to recreate concrete, or at least our own version of it, so it’s finally starting to look like a real town.”

  “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it once we finish what we have to do here,” Vin said, his smile fading as he took in the grinning Trapper. “Did Alka and Scule explain why we need your help?”

  “Oh yeah, Alka told me all about the divine warrior,” Alice said, her face morphing into one of anger almost instantly. “I’d be more than happy to help you kill the bastard.”

  “Wait, really?” Vin blinked, surprised by the sudden vitriol from the woman. “I didn’t think you’d be so willing to help us kill someone. Even if they were a mass murderer.”

  “Vin, he tried to kill you and Shia, and he kind of did kill Alka,” Alice said, shooting a sorrowful glance at the Slayer. “Besides, a lot has happened in the two weeks since you left. This wouldn’t be the first time I killed someone.”

  Stone Shape at the ready and they have a prestiged Trapper ready to assist, the team has everything they need to confront the divine warrior.

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