Chương 16: I'm The Map!

Vin's next few days on Edregon were spent doing what he probably should have done from the very beginning. Following Spur's orders, Vin started in camp at the center of their fragment and traveled outward in ever increasing rings in order to map out all of the surrounding landscape. Realizing almost immediately that the task was going to require him to travel potentially hundreds of miles, he quickly purchased his third passive to help with the daunting task.

One that he remembered seeing on his list that sounded perfect for what he had in mind. Distance Runner Thankfully, the passive did exactly as advertised. It didn't make him any faster, but as far as Vin could tell the new passive combined with his higher endurance enabled him to functionally run forever; his muscles never seemed to burn or get too sore. It didn't work for sprinting, but he could now comfortably run at about ten miles an hour for as long as he needed.

Even with his new passive in tow, it still took Vin two days to fully map out their fragment. Regardless of how far he was able to see, his Mental Map only extended about a quarter mile to either side of him as he explored. That meant in order to map out everything, he had to run nearly a dozen full laps around their fragment; each one significantly larger than the last.

Vin was able to keep track of the mileage rather easily thanks to his continuous small experience gains, and by the time he fully mapped out the fragment, he had run just over two hundred miles in two days' time, even after stopping for meals and getting a full night's rest. With his new map firmly locked in place inside his mind, he was now able to confirm that the fragment the System had dropped them off on was fairly consistent all throughout.

Large meadows and scattered forests made up the entirety of their starting fragment, with a couple of small rivers trickling through here and there into assorted ponds. On top of that, while monsters were going to be an issue for sure, he was pleased to find that they weren't nearly as dense as he'd originally feared. During his entire 200-mile run, he'd only ended up encountering a few dozen monsters. Though each and every one of them had done its best to chase after him the moment it detected his presence.

His tally included a few more of the annoying scorpion monsters like the one that had chased him out of the fragment that first day, a couple freaky looking bear things with too many arms that had tried loping after him despite their muscular build, and some scattered packs of far less threatening looking monsters that were similar to foxes back on Earth, albeit with purple fur and spiny quills running down their backs like a stegosaurus.

The foxes had honestly been cute enough that he'd been tempted to stay and watch them for a bit, though that cuteness factor had diminished slightly when they'd caught wind of his scent and came after him like a pack of rabid dogs. That was the one thing each of the monsters he encountered seemed to have in common. Regardless of their size or shape, the moment a monster sensed him it dropped whatever it was doing and came after him with the intent to kill.

Only unlike his first monster encounter, now that he knew what to look for and had improved his focus, he was usually able to pick out the monsters before getting too close to them. Combine that with his shiny new passive, and he could outpace and escape most of the angry monsters with relative ease.

His first encounter with the giant scorpion had worried him that monsters on this world were like freaky terminator creatures that would never stop chasing you once they started, but it turned out they would in fact give up if you managed to put enough distance between you and them. On a more positive note for Alice and their hunters, he'd also discovered a good chunk of new animal species scattered throughout their fragment during his two-day run.

The creatures mostly consisted of different types of birds with a few ground critters thrown in here and there. And while none of them were nearly as cute as the sqerrets, any new food source was a big deal, and he made sure to make mental notes on his map about where the best hunting grounds could be found. His final surprise of the run had come at the very end, after he'd finished his final lap and officially completed his mental map of the fragment. Fragment Fully Explored! 5, 000 exp gained. Level up!

Explorer Lvl 6. +3 Attribute points to spend. +1 Skill point to spend. Not only was the massive experience boost for fully exploring the fragment more than enough to knock him up to level 6, the rewards he got for exploring over two hundred miles of land and finding some new monsters and creatures put him dangerously close to level 7 already. Having made so much progress in only two days' time, Vin was feeling pretty good about everything.

After learning how much trouble his night-one disappearance had caused Spur, he'd been feeling a bit guilty, and this was a chance to make things up to the colonel. Now he just had to put his Mental Map down onto paper for Spur, and with his conscience clear, he could finally put some much needed space between him and the steadily improving camp.

Finally making it back to camp, Vin headed straight for the command tent. On his way, he pulled up his System interface, dumping his newest three points from hitting level 6 into magic and glancing once more at the biggest surprise he'd gotten over the past few days. The section immediately below his class was no longer empty. Vinnie Stone Explorer: Lvl 6 Titles: Human Vessel (Minor) Exp. 19, 590/21, 000 Strength: 13(5) The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Dexterity: 14(3) Endurance: 25(2) Vigor: 15(2) Focus: 14(1) Magic: 9 Skill Points: 1 Passives: Mental Map, Polyglot, Distance Runner Skills: Tracking lvl 4, Spellcraft lvl 5 Spells: Sense Stone Shortly after finishing up their first council meeting that second day on Edregon, Vin had received quite the shock from the System. An unexpected message had come out of nowhere and interrupted his attempt at finding a spot to sleep that second evening. New Title Unlocked! Human Vessel (Minor).

Reward: 10% of inhabitant's stats added to your own while serving as a vessel. Allows inhabitant partial body merger for one minute each day. Honestly, Vin had been more surprised to see an actual explanation about something given by the System than he had been to gain the title in the first place. Either titles were more special than skills and passives, or the System had simply decided to finally throw him a bone after so long.

While the System didn't explain what he'd done to earn the title, it hadn't taken Vin long to realize it had been about twenty-four hours since he'd willingly taken the magical sword and accidentally become Alka's new anchor. That night, Vin had also allowed Alka to try out the partial body merger aspect of the title, and she'd been ecstatic when they discovered what it entailed. For a single minute, the two of them had flipped around and Alka found herself in the driver's seat of Vin's body.

Not only that, but the 10% of her original stats Vin now benefited from doubled during that time, making her an even more fearsome warrior than she already was. Vin couldn't say he'd really enjoyed watching someone else take over his body, but even he'd had to admit watching Alka use his body to run through a few combat drills with her sword was terrifying.

On top of the attribute buffs which had been a godsend for his 200-mile run, his new title gave him a fantastic trump card, even if it was only usable for a short time. And seeing as the title was called Human Vessel (Minor), he could only assume it would grow stronger the longer he and Alka remained connected. Pushing his daydreams of becoming some sort of professional medium to the wayside, he tried to focus on the here and now as he made his way across camp.

He couldn't help but make note of all the work that had been done over the last two days. The once disorganized and hastily thrown together camp was beginning to look like an actual defensible position. Small wooden palisades had been erected, paths were dug into the earth, and he even made out what looked like foundations being laid for permanent structures. The crafters had clearly been busy, and he couldn't help but smile at the thought that he had a large role to play in that happening.

Striding into the command tent, he found Spur in what was quickly becoming his natural habitat. Hunched over a dozen different papers and surrounded by white boards.

"Vin! Welcome back!" Spur grinned, pushing the white boards away and walking around the table to clap him on the back.

"That was fast! Finally ready to give me that map you owe me?"

"I'm no artist, but I'll do what I can," Vin nodded, letting Spur lead him over to a large canvas already spread out over its own table.

"I don't need every tree and rock. As long as you can mark the big stuff, it should be fine." Once Vin confirmed he had what he needed, Spur let him at it, returning to whatever the heck it was he did all day. Pencil in hand, Vin stared at the canvas, briefly contemplating dropping his new skill point into Cartography before deciding against it. He hadn't sunk low enough for that just yet. Instead, he picked a corner of the canvas and got to work.

The canvas was large enough that he could include quite a lot of detail in his admittedly poor drawing, and he quickly felt the effect of his newly buffed dexterity courtesy of Alka as his fingers worked to sketch out the myriad of forests and borders of meadows all around the fragment. He included possible hunting grounds, known sightings of monsters, locations of rivers and ponds, and even made notes of what animals he remembered seeing in what areas. With plenty of corresponding pictures of course.

The sun had already gone down by the time he finished. When he finally put his pencil down and took in the map in its entirety, he was pleased with how it turned out.

"God damn," Spur's voice sounded right behind him, causing Vin to jump in surprise and earning himself some mocking laughter from Alka. The man had snuck up behind him while he'd been focused, and now was looking at the map with his brow raised.

"That's some impressive scouting you managed to do in only two days. How did you cover so much ground?"

"A ton of endurance," Vin said, maybe a tad too quickly. He'd almost mentioned his new Distance Runner passive before remembering he'd already told Spur his level 5 passive was Polyglot. He could have tried to pass it off as having already hit level 10, but he felt like that would be a bit of a stretch to believe. Thankfully, Spur was too engrossed in the map to notice Vin's near slip up.

His eyes flickered over everything Vin had included, and in practically no time at all, he slammed a finger down on a spot only a few miles away from their current location in the center.

"That's the spot!" He said, his smile growing wider by the second.

"That's where we'll start building our new empire!" Vin looked at the spot the colonel had chosen with such confidence. It was located in the middle of one of the largest meadows, but was still fairly close to multiple sources of water and had surrounding woodlands they could use for materials. On top of that, some of the possible hunting grounds Vin had indicated weren't too far away. There was only one issue that stood out to him.

"Spur…" Vin said, slightly concerned by the fire in the man's eyes.

"That spot is pretty close to some of the monsters I ran into. Are you sure building so close to them is a good idea?"

"For starters, we don't know how monsters actually work in this new world yet," Spur shrugged, never taking his eyes off the map.

"They might suddenly manifest in completely random locations, or be birthed from some giant underground hive for all we know. We shouldn't base our selection off of the fact that a few monsters were seen close to that spot. And even if that area is higher in monster density for some reason, you said it yourself it's important for people to level, right?" Spur finally turned to look at him, his wide grin almost infectious.

"We've already figured out that killing monsters gives a much larger amount of experience than killing animals does. Risk and rewards, and all that I guess. I know for a fact that a good chunk of our combat classes will be clamoring all over themselves trying to be the first ones to react to any future monster sighting. I'm not too worried about them just yet."

'I hope he's able to keep up that attitude when the monsters break down his village walls and slaughter scores of innocent people,' Alka all but spat as Spur turned his focus back to the map.

"Thanks again for putting this together Vin. It'll be all hands-on deck for moving the camp tomorrow, but you've got a more important mission on your hands."

"Figure out what we're dealing with when it comes to the fragments immediately surrounding us," Vin nodded, remembering the council meeting.

"Exactly. With the directions you gave us, I already sent a few guys over to the rock village. Obviously the language barrier makes things difficult, but they already returned to camp and confirmed what you said. The villagers seem pleasant enough and seem willing to work with us in the future, but there's no guarantee any other people you find will be the same. Your job is to make sure one of the other fragments isn't inhabited by this world's version of Attila the Hun, got it?"

"I know, I'll see what I can do."

"And when will you be back by?" Spur prodded, giving him one last glance over his shoulder.

"Wave two," Vin rolled his eyes, the colonel's insistence on the matter fresh in his mind.

"I'll be back before wave two begins, like you asked."

"Six days, Vin. We only have six more days." Vin thought he saw a troubled look on Spur's face for a moment, before the man's usual smile returned.

"Let's have a brand-new camp and an even bigger map ready and waiting for humanity when they finally show up, alright?"

"Sounds good," Vin said, returning the colonel's smile.

"Wonderful! In that case, you better go hit the hay and catch some Z's. You've got some exploring ahead of you!"