Chương 413: (406) 6.20. The Shadow Council Grows

Vin couldn't help but laugh at the look on Shuvo's face as they approached Terra's main gate. Having grown up in a small hunting village with no more than a few hundred people, discovering the large town of Terra that was now home to roughly four thousand people had to be a bit of a culture shock.

Even just the massive, rune-covered walls and newly dug moat surrounding the town had to put the small wooden-spiked walls of his village to shame, and Vin pulled them up short, directing for Blossom to run off and find Shia again as he took Shuvo aside.

"Alright, listen up. Like I already explained earlier, you're welcome to stay here in town and I'm happy to give you a few runic formations to work on, but this isn't going to be the master-student relationship you were hoping it was going to be. For starters, I don't care what you call me when it's just the two of us, but don't go around shouting 'master' where other people can hear you."

"But why?" Shuvo asked, his brow furrowing as he managed to tear his gaze off Terra's walls and look at him.

"It is a title given only to powerful mages. It's a sign of respect."

"Trust me, I don't need any more signs of respect," Vin said, wondering just how much to tell him. Seeing as Shuvo was going to be living in Terra for a while, he'd probably figure everything out for himself soon enough. Of course, the issue of the language barrier might buy Vin a few days, but he was planning to help with that before long.

"Look, I'm not just some wandering mage. I'm also technically one of the five people in charge of the entire town."

"You are?!" Shuvo gasped, his eyes going even wider.

"None of that," Vin snapped, grabbing the Alchemist's shoulder and stopping him before he could get down on his hands and knees. Already, people wandering in and out of town were giving them some strange looks, and Vin wished he'd thought to have this conversation before getting to the Earthers' fragment at all.

"Look, I don't want deference. I'm just a guy who likes playing with magic and exploring new places. If you start bowing or prostrating yourself, I'm bringing you right back to your village."

"Understood," Shuvo said, frowning slightly as a hunting party walked by.

"Master, I can't understand what others are saying. I didn't think about it before now, but how do you know my language?"

"I don't, I have the Polyglot passive," Vin said, motioning for Shuvo to follow him.

"Just try and bear with it for a few days, I'm going to try and help with that. It's another one of those projects that's been on my to-do list for ages now, I might as well take the opportunity to get a jump on it."

"Roamer," the guards said in unison, nodding respectfully to him as they headed into town. While Vin wasn't sure of their names, he at least recognized them both, and he gave them a smile in return. Seeing as it was just after lunch, the town was bustling, and people were wandering around all over the place. Not wanting to attract any more attention than necessary while he had Shuvo in tow, Vin took out his cloak and made sure to hide his golem arm within its folds.

If he could just make it to Linda and the town hall without anything strange happening—"Master…" Shuvo said quietly, staring off to the left with a concerned look on his face.

"... what is that?" Vin half expected to turn and find Shuvo staring at an infernal or a beastkin and was already preparing himself to explain about the different races. But as he followed Shuvo's gaze, Vin sighed as he spotted what had the elf looking so worried. A second Shuvo was striding toward them with a broad grin on his face, his attire and giant pack matching the Shuvo at Vin's side perfectly.

Rolling his eyes, Vin waited for the copycat to reach them, figuring it would be faster to just let things play out.

"Nice to meet you, I'm you!" the second Shuvo said, holding out a hand and waiting for Shuvo to take it. The understandably confused Alchemist just stared at the outstretched hand, and Vin shook his head.

"The people of his world don't shake hands, Theodore. Bit of a rookie mistake for you."

"Can you blame me? I had a whole other bit prepared involving a penguin outfit and a gallon of cooking oil I stole from the chefs. Then I saw you had a follower and thought this would be funnier!" With that, the second Shuvo spun around and shimmered, eliciting a gasp from the real one as his doppelganger transformed into a well-kept man with a sharp goatee.

"Shuvo, this is Theodore. Technically he works for me, but he pretty much does whatever he wants."

"That's a tad rich coming from you," Theodore said, his perfect teeth shining as he beamed at the still-confused elf.

"I'm probably one of the few people you can actually understand thanks to my own Polyglot passive, so allow me to say it first. Welcome to Terra!"

"Thank you," Shuvo said, doing the strange double salute his people seemed to use as a form of greeting.

"You were me! How?! Am I going to learn how to do that?"

"No, that one is a Theodore exclusive," Vin said, noting how Theodore was looking at him.

"I agreed to teach Shuvo some magic. Figured it was about time for my second class of mages now that Ronald and Wanda are on their own. Speaking of, how is Landon doing since I dropped him off?"

"Not bad. He's actually taken over the morgue in the hospital basement," Theodore explained.

"Witherson already had her crafters dig out and construct a small suite down there so that he doesn't even have to go outside to get to work. His prestige class, Lone Necromancer, is a rather unique one."

"No kidding. I haven't heard 'Lone' as an add-on before for the first prestige," Vin admitted.

"Anyway, glad to hear he's found a place for himself. I'm going to get Shuvo situated and then do some magic work. Let me know if anything important pops up." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"As always!" Theodore said, flawlessly mirroring Shuvo's double salute before vanishing into the crowd once more. With that encounter out of the way, Vin led them both over to town hall, surprised to find an actual line of people waiting to speak with Linda. With a shrug, he directed Shuvo to take a seat before getting in line himself. The elf clearly didn't have a ton of points in his physical attributes, and lugging around such a large pack couldn't be easy.

While Vin could have just walked straight to the front of the line and asked Linda for her help, he was still wearing his semi-disguise and didn't really feel like making a scene at the moment. He was also trying to limit how highly Shuvo viewed him at the moment, which meant he didn't mind waiting a couple of minutes.

"Hey. Haven't seen you around yet," the man in front of him said, turning and holding out his hand to shake.

"I'm Nick. Just came in with the sixth wave about a week back. Special forces."

"Vin," he said, shaking the man's hand and giving him a curious look. The vast majority of Earthers Vin interacted with were those who had been selected at random by the System, but half of everyone who was brought over were hand-picked by the government. Nearly all of them ended up going the combat-class route, which was why he rarely spoke with them. As Vin would have expected from special forces, Nick was tall and had a rather muscular build.

He had a ring of chains tattooed around his extended forearm, and a standard longsword strapped to his back. He carried himself similar to how Vin would have expected an Edregon veteran to, which meant Nick had presumably seen some actual life-or-death battles back on Earth as well.

"Vin?" Nick repeated, blinking as he reassessed and gave him another look from head to toe.

"As in The Roamer?"

"Yeah, that would be me," Vin admitted, glad everyone else in line seemed to be having their own conversations.

"I'm surprised you know my actual name having just gotten here. It seems most people just know me by the moniker."

"I make a point of trying to gather intel whenever I touch down in a new location," Nick said, crossing his arms as he stared at him.

"Why are you waiting in line? Aren't you one of the five counselors?"

"Yeah, but I'm not really a huge fan of throwing my weight around, and Linda is incredibly efficient," Vin explained, motioning for Nick to step forward with him as someone finished up at the front of the line as if proving his point.

"We'll be up next in no time. I'm assuming you're one of Phil's?"

"Warrior, level 14," Nick nodded, and it was Vin's turn to blink in surprise.

"Level 14? Haven't you only been on Edregon for six days?"

"Combat classes level as fast as you can kill," Nick shrugged.

"After I got the tour and figured out how this world worked, I headed off on my own and started fighting. Spent some time in the forest dungeon, in the half not occupied by the Slayers that is, and here we are. I did get a nasty injury or two the first few days, but nothing Frank wasn't able to patch up." Wow, level 14 in less than a week… Vin thought, curious to see how the Warrior was going to end up. I knew combat classes leveled fast if they kept fighting, but that's pretty remarkable.

Of course, things are only going to get harder after his first prestige.

"Are you thinking about joining up with the Slayers? Alka would love to have you."

"I did hear you had a unique connection with the Slayers," Nick said, raising an eyebrow.

"Something about their leader being a chunk of your disembodied soul?"

"Ah, that one's an old rumor, and it's not true. She used to be a ghost who I helped out and let share my body for a bit. Now she animates a golem and is her own person again."

"Of course. That makes much more sense."

"Next," Linda called out, actually looking a bit tired for the first time Vin could remember. As she looked up to greet Nick, she spotted Vin standing behind him, and she blinked.

"Vin? Have you seriously been waiting in line all this time?"

"Yeah?" he said, not seeing what the big deal was.

"I mean, it's only been like what, two or three minutes?"

"That's not the point," she sighed, shaking her head.

"As a counselor, your time is important. You shouldn't be waiting around in line, regardless of how long the wait is. And don't you say that your time isn't more important than anyone else's, I know you by now. What exactly were you planning to do once you finished up business here?"

"... Start working on deconstructing the Comprehend Languages spell and see if I couldn't turn it into an artifact," Vin admitted sheepishly, realizing she had a point. As much as he liked to try and pretend these days like he was still just some ordinary person like everyone else, he was also smart enough to know she had a point.

"Right. Sorry, I won't do it again."

"Maybe she really does run the shadow council," Nick muttered, eyeing up Linda cautiously as the Scribe motioned for Vin to step forward.

"So, what do you need?" Linda asked, giving him a warm smile.

"I've got a tagalong from another fragment," Vin explained, motioning to Shuvo who was thankfully sitting quietly off at one of the side tables.

"Any chance you could find somewhere to put him up? I'm going to be teaching him some magic, so I figured I'd check in and see if there were any other potentials Spur picked out."

"At the moment, we've got a few learning with the Druids in the Sacred Forest, and some learning with the Stone Mages in Sakis," Linda said, flicking through papers faster than Vin could even read.

"We even have two who are trying to study under the infernals to learn ritual magic, but they've got their work cut out for them, seeing as they don't have the golden eyes that the infernals' Witches and Warlocks have. Oh, we do have one Earther who has distinctly expressed interest in becoming a mage and has been placing points into magic. And his apartment actually has an open room, so I can place your new friend in there.

I can coordinate getting them both Sakis' training artifact the next time it's free to get them primed and ready for lessons."

"Thanks, Linda, you're the best," Vin said, returning the woman's glowing smile.

"Sorry again for the added stress."

"You've got nothing to apologize for, things are just getting a bit busier with each wave of Earthers," she admitted.

"Things will die down a bit once everyone gets settled. In fact, we actually have another Scribe who will be helping me before long. Currently, he's power-leveling by helping transcribe a few important books."

"Another member for the shadow council, huh?" Vin asked, getting a chuckle out of Linda.

"That much remains to be seen," she said, giving him a sly wink.

"We don't let just anyone rule Terra from the shadows you know!"