After his entertaining lunch with Weston and Becca, Vin spent the afternoon helping Frank out in the new hospital Spur had put up sometime during the last two weeks. With Shia leading the effort to remove all the monster corpses, the older medic had his hands full helping the wounded, and even through his grumpy demeanor Vin could tell he appreciated the help. Enough so that he was actually willing to make a little small talk here and there.

  “Battlefield Healer,” Frank grunted, washing his hands in a basin of water as they took another quick break. “When we first showed up, I grabbed Warrior because I didn’t know what the hell we were getting ourselves into. But after all the monsters and crap, I realized what we needed was less combatants and more support. When I prestiged, the System offered me a class change to Battlefield Healer, and I took it.”

  “Wait, I didn’t know you’d prestiged,” Vin admitted, raising an eyebrow as he took in the grizzly old warrior. “Does Spur even know?”

  “Of course the idiot knows, he’s our commanding officer. But I asked him not to spread the word. I don’t want people coming in here for every stubbed toe and hangnail asking for magic healing. I’m only telling you because I know you won’t, and I could see the question burning in your eyes.”

  How many people from the first wave have prestiged at this point? Vin couldn’t help but wonder as they finished up their break and got back to work. The members of the first wave had been on Edregon for almost a full month after all. And with all that they’d been through, he had a sneaking suspicion that it was more than anyone thought.

  He helped Frank out for a few hours until he could feel the approach of a mana headache coming on, figuring that was as good an indicator as any to grab some dinner. This time he took his meal to go, deciding he’d earned some time alone after everything he’d done that day. While getting his food, he spotted Alka and Alice grabbing a quick bite to eat in the dining area.

  Or he supposed it was more accurate to say Alice was eating, while Alka was fielding what looked like an impromptu Q&A session from a few dozen new Earthers on how to best kill monsters. The new Earthers practically had stars in their eyes as they hung onto the Slayer’s every word, and Vin even spotted a handful of more experienced members of camp hanging around nearby. He was pretty certain he heard a few hushed whispers about The Slayer going around, and he could only hope that the apparent fame Alka had garnered wouldn’t go to her head.

  With her new darthsteel coating courtesy of Deorer, the dark cloak fluttering behind her, and her blue-black blade strapped across her back, Alka struck quite the imposing image. She looked like a dark knight straight from someone’s nightmare, and Vin was honestly impressed so many people brand-new to Edregon had mustered up the courage to go up and talk to her.

  He was also fairly sure he saw what looked like Theodore casually strolling through the throng of distracted people, subtly snatching a piece of food here or there from different plates while a tiny thumbs up emerged from within his front pocket.

  Praying he hadn’t made a horrible mistake turning the Spy over to Scule for training, Vin brought his food back to his room and dug in. After a quick dinner of what looked like chicken wings and assorted root vegetables, he settled down into a comfortable position and delved deep into his own mana using Introspection.

  The world and all its problems faded away, and Vin found himself standing within a black void filled only with his own misty mana drifting around. Letting out a welcoming sigh, Vin focused on his Iron Mind passive and pictured the runic formation Lumel had shown him right before they’d been forced to sprint back to camp.

  Isolate Dimension was apparently the next stepping stone he needed to conquer in order to progress his spatial magic. Most tier one spells only took him a couple of hours to figure out, but if learning Sense Dimensions had been any indication, he had a feeling this one was going to be tricky.

  Some magical affinities were just plain harder than others, and Vin wasn’t at all surprised to find that messing with the very fabric of reality turned out to be one of the more challenging ones.

  Despite his recent epiphany regarding runic formations and the Capstone that came with it, Vin didn’t think either would be very useful here. Flexible Formations felt like it would allow him to learn spells more easily by potentially building off the runic formations of similar spells from other affinities, but all it took was a quick look at Isolate Dimension’s runic formation to realize none of the spells he knew were even remotely similar.

  Smiling to himself, Vin put all those thoughts aside and began molding the drifting mists of his mana into lines and pieces of the complicated runic structure he was hoping to recreate.

  Isolate Dimension was going to take him a bit to figure out.

  Might as well get started.

  -----

  The next few days were spent in a similar fashion. In the morning, Vin would meet with the members of the Foreign Branch, instructing them about all the different societies he’d discovered throughout his travels thus far and the key things to know in the event any of them ever needed to head to those fragments without him. During these lessons, Vin was introduced to Tom and Vanessa, the new Diplomat and Ambassador from wave three working directly under Kelly.

  Tom was quiet and attentive, seeming to absorb everything Vin said the first time around and rarely asking any questions. On the other hand, Vanessa was far more loud and energetic, asking lots of questions about the different races he’d encountered so far, growing more and more excited with each new race he introduced until she was practically bouncing off the walls.

  It seemed that Myers still had yet to decide what to do with Krystal, as Theodore remained the only member of Foreign Concerns for the moment.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Vin was thankful he’d grabbed the Drawing skill and spent so much time recording his findings in his journal, because the pages of notes and sketches he’d put in for each of the many fragments ended up being massive teaching aids.

  After teaching, Vin would grab whatever delicacies had been prepared for lunch that day before heading over to the crafters at the heart of camp to help with construction. His Stone Wall spell made him quite a bit hit among the crafters, however, the thickness they requested for the walls made it so he wasn’t able to help with too many buildings before he began running painfully low on mana.

  While waiting for dinner, Vin would alternate practicing with his new arm and training with the quarterstaff Shia had made him. The memory of hearing every bone in Kyle’s hand shatter simultaneously drove him to continue the boring practice of picking up and catching things again and again, while the knowledge that he couldn’t always rely on his magic helped him continue to willingly receive beat downs from Alka day after day.

  Now that he had two hands again, Alka really didn’t hold back on her training.

  Evenings were spent working on Isolate Dimension. Just as Vin had predicted, the tier one spell was causing him no lack of trouble. The good news was that the runic backlashes didn’t really seem to do anything other than shatter the formation and force him to start over again. Even so, he tried to continue limiting them as much as possible, because he was well aware by now the dangers that the backlashes held, and he didn’t want to form any bad habits.

  Seeing as he was only working on it in the evenings it took him a couple of days, but eventually, he cracked it.

  New spell learned! Tier 1 Spatial Spell (Isolate Dimension). 5,000 exp gained.

  Introspection increased to lvl 6! 1,200 exp gained.

  Introspection increased to lvl 7! 1,400 exp gained.

  Runecraft increased to lvl 12! 2,400 exp gained.

  Grinning, Vin immediately tried it out, whipping the runic structure together from memory and flooding it with his mana. Sense Dimensions, his first spatial spell, gave him something of a sixth sense, allowing him to feel the different layers of reality all around him. The main dimension, which Lumel had told him was called the material plane, was thick and heavy, like a wool blanket. In contrast, the others were far more thin and flimsy, almost like sheets of paper or fine silk hidden underneath the material plane. They were weak enough that it had taken Vin some practice with Sense Dimensions to even get to the point where he could tell they were there.

  The material plane was far too heavy and solid for him to mess with, but Isolate Dimension allowed him to reach below the material plane and interact with those other, far more delicate dimensions.

  Concentrating, Vin reached out a hand and physically pulled on the dimension he could feel layered directly under their own, grinning like a madman when he actually felt the thin fabric of reality responding to his will. Just like Lumel had warned him, Isolate Dimension didn’t really do anything on its own. He could tell that he held a scrunched up piece of this other dimension in the literal palm of his hand, but he couldn’t actually do anything with it.

  That didn’t put a damper on Vin’s excitement in the slightest however, and he played around with the spell for a bit, gathering up the different underlying dimensions for a few seconds each before letting go and feeling them snap back to normal as if he’d never even touched them. Despite them all sharing the odd, flimsy sensation, even he could tell with his inexperienced touch that many of the different dimensions had unique characteristics.

  Making a mental note to drop by Lumel in the dungeon again sometime soon, both just to check on her and grab his next spatial spell to work on, Vin went to get into bed when he felt a strange tingling sensation travel down the back of his neck.

  Pausing, he turned and looked around the small building Spur had given him. Most of the larger, wooden buildings had been destroyed during the battle for wave three, meaning Vin and his team had been split up among a few tiny stone ones that were little more than a single room with a cot. From what he’d gathered, most of these rooms usually still had up to four people crammed into them, but Spur had given them each their own for the moment.

  Other than Vin and his belongings, the room was entirely empty. His staff was still leaning by the door where he’d left it, and his pack filled with everything he owned was on a small nightstand beside his cot.

  Even so, for whatever reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Slowly, his eyes continuing to scan the small room, he put together the runic formation for Sense Life and silently cast it.

  Nothing. No hits besides the two tiny bugs in one of the corners.

  On a hunch, Vin put together another spell, this time casting Sense Magic.

  Nothing again. Other than the artifacts on his person, there wasn’t a lick of magic in the room.

  Vin frowned. He had the utmost of faith in his magic, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. His focus was up in the forties at this point, and if it was telling him to be wary, then he’d be a fool to ignore it.

  Having one last idea, Vin put together yet another of his many sensing spells, casting Sense Air without a word.

  And immediately detected the human sized chunk of air missing from across the room.

  Launching himself out of bed, Vin dashed forward before the intruder could react. Whoever it was that had broken into his room either wasn’t all that quick or Vin had caught them completely by surprise, because in the blink of an eye he’d managed to grab them by the neck with his brand new arm.

  “You better start talking, and start talking fast. I can crush iron with this thing,” Vin growled, staring at about where the intruder’s eyes should be as his arm flashed a dull, dangerous blue.

  In reality, because of his divine boon he couldn’t actually harm the intruder unless they struck first, but they didn’t need to know that.

  Thankfully, his bluff worked, and Vin blinked as the intruder suddenly became visible, revealing a grinning man with a deep scar running through his missing eye and down the left side of his face.

  “Well, glad to see you live up to the hype,” Golrim said, looking more pleased than worried by the fact that Vin’s marble-like fingers were wrapped tightly around his throat.

  “We need to talk.”

  We need to talk. Hopefully it's nothing bad!

  Sense Air to detect an invisible opponent. Whoever you are, my apologies, this is your shout out that your theory was correct! Excellent job!

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