Chương 322: (315) 5.11. Water Under and Over the Bridge

As they skimmed across the water, with Vin pumping as much air into the sail as his spell could handle, they explained to Alka what had happened since she'd been gone. The plan to escape the warana had been simple, yet shockingly effective.

"We knew the Sailors blew air into their sails to propel the pads, so we came up with an idea to prevent that from happening," Shia explained.

"While Scule caused a distraction, I went to the two sails of the ships we'd be leaving behind and cast Still Wind on them both. Normally we use the spell to keep our conversations private, as it creates a bubble which air and sound don't carry through, but it works perfectly for keeping a sail from inflating as well!"

"Reginald cut through the algae ropes connecting the three pads, and Vin used Create Wind to get us out of there," Scule finished, looking more than a little smug. After all, it had been his performance and alchemical reaction that started everything off.

"Honestly, I'm shocked it all went so smoothly."

"You and me both," Alka snorted, the wind in their faces as they moved doing wonders for drying her off." I spent the last day being dragged around underwater in the tentacles of a monster with it gnawing on my head. With my limbs pinned, there wasn't much I could do."

"How did that even happen in the first place?" Vin asked, glancing over from where he was controlling the spell.

"I don't think I've ever seen a monster get the better of you, not even in a surprise attack."

"I don't have much experience with aquatic combat," Alka muttered, sounding annoyed and strangely concerned for some reason.

"Is Epli alright?" Shia asked, peering worriedly at her helm.

"The schlime didn't get hurt, did it?"

"Epli's fine," Alka said, tapping at her head.

"It doesn't need to breathe, and it feeds off the excess mana from the gem powering my body, so it just hunkered down and stayed out of sight the whole time."

"Speaking of Epli…" Vin started, deciding now was as good a time as any.

"Do you want to talk about why you decided to pick up a straggler and take them home with you? Not that I have anything wrong with that per-se, I just don't understand why you hid it from us."

"If you don't recall, you and Shia were pretty set on finding Epli and bringing it home to safety," Alka said, crossing her arms defiantly.

"While the two of us were waiting for you lot to come back, we discovered Epli could feed off my mana gem rather than the fragment's lightning strikes. After that, Epli asked me to take it with us, and I didn't want to risk you guys arguing with it."

"That doesn't seem like a great reason to keep such a secret," Shia frowned.

"We're supposed to be a team."

"Scule has all sorts of crap hidden away in his cape that he's never told us about," Alka snorted, earning a sheepish look from the Rogue.

"Shia, I'm sure you've got secrets your master told you about that you're keeping to yourself. And Vin… alright Vin is mostly an open book, but he does have knowledge from the Gods he hasn't told us. I'm pretty sure even Reginald has a stash of cheese hidden somewhere back in Terra. We're a team, but we've all got our own secrets."

"Under penalty of me dying if I do," Vin said dryly.

"The point is, I'm my own person, and Epli is a sentient being as well," Alka spoke over him.

"If the two of us decided to work together and keep it to ourselves, what's wrong with that? You said it even helped during the battle for wave five, right? Then what's the problem?"

"Alright, I think we're getting a tad heated here," Scule said, looking just as surprised as the rest of them that he was the one ending up playing peacekeeper.

"Alka's right in that we're all entitled to our secrets, but Vin and Shia are right that something as big as adding another member to our party is probably something that everyone needs to know, even if said member is a magical slime that spends all day tucked away within your helmet. Can we all agree on that at least?" Silence stretched across the boat for a moment before a chorus of nods and grunts rang out, and Scule clapped his hands together.

"Fantastic! Wow, is that what being mature feels like? No wonder you guys do it so often."

"Does Epli have anything it wants to say about this?" Shia asked, staring at Alka's helm.

"It feels weird talking about it like this when it's right here."

"Epli is actually nocturnal. Or at least only likes to move around at night, under most circumstances," Alka explained.

"It's pretty quiet during the day unless something happens or I directly try to talk to it."

"The schlime's fragment was in near total darkness from the constant thunderstorms," Vin pointed out.

"That makes sense."

"Anyway, if you guys are that interested, you can chat with it later tonight once it gets dark," Alka shrugged, looking like she was done with the conversation.

"What's the plan now? Are we heading back to Terra?"

"Yes, but we're making one last discovery along the way," Vin admitted.

"We didn't know how much of a lead we were going to get on the warana and we had no idea where we were going to find you, so we decided ahead of time once we had you onboard we were going to head straight for the nearest fragment and get out of the water. It just so happens in this case that said fragment is the final one in the second ring we've yet to venture into." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"The one bordering the citadel, swamp, and the trogums' place?" Alka asked.

"Wonder what's in store for us."

"We're not planning on staying for long, as Lumel is waiting for us back in Terra, but we figured we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to check it out," Shia said.

"Vin can use 'sense Earther' while we're in as well, just to check it off the list."

"Let's hope it's nothing absurdly deadly that forces us back into the waiting arms of the warana," Scule muttered, always the optimist.

"Can't help but feel like it's been too long since our last dance with death." The rest of their trip was made in silence, and Vin couldn't help but continue to glance over his shoulder, expecting to see the warana catching up at any moment and launching an attack on them. Maintaining two separate spells was no easy feat, especially not at range, so Shia had only been able to buy them a sizable head start before informing them that her dual casts of Still Wind had finally come to an end.

Her Split Focus passive had allowed her to keep it up far longer than Vin would have been able to, but she still hadn't managed to hold it until they were out of the fragment. Thankfully, the next fragment came into view before they spotted any angry warana coming up fast behind them, and Vin let out a sigh of relief as he realized they were going to make it.

He still felt more than a little bad that they essentially tricked the warana into helping them retrieve Alka and then stole one of their pads, but they didn't really have any other options. Given the choice between angering a few strangers and rescuing his oldest friend in the whole world, the answer was an obvious one. At least after everything that had happened they managed to get out of the fragment without physically harming any of the warana.

That would probably make paying them back in the future a hell of a lot less awkward. Pulling the pad up to the edge of the fragment, Vin stared at the unusual sight before him, with his teammates staring right alongside him. He'd been excited to get out of the water and back onto dry land, but it seemed as though that was only going to be half the case. The next fragment was a rather flat plane with short grasses growing here and there, but that wasn't the strange part.

No, that was the thousands of floating bubbles of water, stretching out and up as far as the eye could see.

"What the hells are going on in there?" Scule asked, squinting at the closest bubbles.

"It's like the floating library all over again!"

"No… for one, the bubbles aren't moving around. They're stationary," Shia said, flicking out her tongue and blinking in surprise.

"There's gravity magic at play somehow, and quite a lot of it. But it almost tastes… natural. No idea what that means, but I don't think this was the result of a spell like with the library."

"There's a lot of variety in the bubbles," Alka said, hopping into the next fragment.

"Some are crystal clear, while others are- woah!" Alka had intended to jump from the pad into the next fragment, but the moment she passed through the border, she simply continued drifting upward, as though gravity no longer had a hold on her. Laughing, she windmilled her arms and tried to keep herself upright, before splashing into one of the closer bubbles. Poking her head out, she called out to them.

"No gravity in this fragment! Like, at all!"

"Oh boy, I don't know if I like the sound of that," Scule muttered.

"Floating through the sky sounds like easy pickings for a bird."

"You and your birds," Shia said, rolling her eyes as she picked the petian up. Ignoring Scule's shouts, she turned and lobbed him through the fragment at Alka, smiling as the screaming petian flew in a straight line directly into the same bubble of water.

"You monster!" Scule sputtered, swimming out and crouching on Alka's exposed head as he wiped the water from his eyes. He had to reach down and cling to her helmet to keep himself from drifting off, but that still left him with one fist to shake at Shia.

"I will have my revenge!"

"I'd sleep with one eye open if I were you," Vin warned Shia, before hopping into the new fragment himself. Second ring fragment discovered! 1, 000 exp gained. Second ring fully discovered! 10, 000 exp gained. Level up! Adventurer of the Arcane lvl 45! +3 attribute points to spend. +1 passive point to spend. Unlike his friends, Vin didn't go drifting off into a nearby bubble of water.

As soon as he entered the zero-gravity space, he felt his boots activate, connecting his feet to the ground as if everything were totally normal.

"Huh. I never actually thought about it, but I guess my gravity boots just nullify something like this," he said, peering down at his feet.

"Well that's no fun!" Shia said, laughing as she flew past him and landed inside a different bubble than the others, this one twice as large and a bit darker than the rest of the bubbles. The floating bubbles that reminded him so much of his own Aqua Sphere spell differed in both size and clarity. Some were crystal clear, like they'd been pulled from a fresh mountain spring, while others were murky and dark, to the point where anything could be hiding within.

Some of the bubbles did in fact have plant life growing within, and if there were plants, that meant there were most likely animals as well. And probably monsters.

"Be careful not to leap into any of the darker bubbles!" Vin warned, smiling at his friends as they swam about and played in the lack of gravity. It was sad to say, but thanks to his own gravity magic and his swimming time with Lumel back in Terra, Vin wasn't nearly so enthralled by the fragment as the rest of his team was. Though that didn't mean he wouldn't join them.

Mentally deactivating his boots, Vin kicked off the ground and shot past them, sailing nearly fifty feet up before hitting one of the clear bubbles with a splash. The water was a tad cold for his liking, but not to the point of bringing on hypothermia. Peering up, he couldn't help but stare in awe at the sheer number of bubbles floating all around them. He couldn't see an end to them, and he wondered just how high one could float going from bubble to bubble. Surely sooner or later they had to stop.

They couldn't just go up into the sky forever. … Right?