Chương 251: (246) 4.25. Flame On?

As they'd discussed in the council meeting, there were a couple of different problems the infernals were currently facing. Picking a spot to settle down. Constructing a village to replace the one they'd lost. Staying close by to their new allies while still maintaining a healthy distance from those who would see them harmed. A number of problems, all solved by one simple idea that had popped into Vin's head.

There was a fully constructed town in the fragment directly north of them that was currently empty and ripe for the taking. Alka's old hometown that had once been home to a few thousand people was currently a ghost town. Everyone who had been living there had followed the mayor over to their distant burial ground, purposefully kept far from the town to help combat the rampant issues with undead that were common on Alka's world.

When her fragment was snatched up by the Gods, Alka had been the only one home to be brought along for the ride. It had more than enough space. It was close, without being too close. And it was already constructed, which would save countless hours of labor and materials. Not only that, but it was quite possibly the best fragment they'd ever come across in terms of friendly, or at least unthreatening, neighbors. It was surrounded by the Earthers, Sakis, and the Aernae Forest, filled with the happy meriders.

It also bordered Lumel's fragment, which was filled with people who would never leave the water, and Forpurt's arctic fragment. While they had yet to actually visit the snowy fragment, Forpurt had made it clear that his people didn't like leaving the cold, so they probably wouldn't bother the infernals either. There was only one fragment bordering Alka's that they hadn't visited at this point, which meant Vin finally had his next destination picked out.

But first, he had to actually run all this by the one person who actually had a claim as to what happened to the abandoned town. Agne and the entire council had ended up being sold on the idea, but Vin had convinced them to hold off on planning any grand migration of people until he could check in with their resident Slayer. Thankfully, after leaving the town hall, it wasn't hard to track her down.

"Come on, you want to be Slayers, don't you?!" she shouted, her head spinning around this way and that to take in the dozens of fourth wavers currently running circles around trees for whatever crazy reason.

"Push yourself to the limit, and then push a little harder! Don't stop!"

"Alka, are you trying to kill the new Earthers?" he asked as he walked up to her. Already, there were nearly ten people sprawled out on the ground, panting and dry heaving as they took a break.

"Just a little test I like to run to see who has what it takes to become a Slayer," she said nonchalantly, keeping her eyes on the applicants as they ran. This time around, it seemed she had nearly fifty people taking her little test, the large group no doubt emboldened by the fact that she'd already proven she was capable of turning anyone who worked hard enough into a Slayer.

"What's up?"

"The infernals lost their own village, and we just had a council meeting to try and figure out what to do with them," he began, wondering how to word this delicately. Despite not acting as if she had any ties to her old village, Vin knew Alka kept a lot of things close to her chest. He wouldn't be surprised to hear she didn't want anyone living there, but it was the perfect answer to their problems.

"I was thinking-""Yeah, they can take my old village," she said curtly, as if she'd expected this.

"Just make sure to warn them about the snakes and the monsters that descend from the trees. In fact, I might actually stay with them for a few days just to help them get settled. I do technically owe Madam Trebella that favor, after all. Seeing as she's not around to collect on it, this seems more than fair."

"Well that's a load off my mind," he said, letting out a sigh he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"How are the new potential Slayers holding up?"

"A bit early to tell, but not bad," she admitted.

"They've been running around trees for almost half an hour now, and only a handful have totally given up. That said, plenty more will drop out before hitting level 20. I'm hoping to have at least ten make it to the end this time around."

"Sounds like a solid goal. Any word on Tiffany?"

"Not yet," she said, a slight edge appearing in her voice.

"I'm planning to swing by the meriders' place within the next few days to demand some answers. I don't even care if Tiffany decides to stay there with them, but that girl better still be her when she comes out of that merger."

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Vin reassured her.

"Well, I guess I'll give Agne the good news and prepare to help lead them over to your fragment. But before that, I was planning to do a quick check of the fragment directly to the north of yours. Just to make sure it's not anything too lethal. Any interest in checking it out?"

"You know how much I like lethal stuff… But no, I have to pass this time. The beginning of the Slayer program is the most critical part. I need to handle it personally, or the whole thing might fall through. Once we've gotten started, I'll be more comfortable handing it off to the other Slayers, but not yet."

"How are you going to run them through the program if you're helping the infernals get settled in your old fragment?"

"What do you mean? They'll be coming with me, of course," Alka said, her eyes flaring with mirth.

"Which reminds me, I should pick up a few antivenoms before I go. They're Bill's latest creation." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. The news that the timid Alchemist had already come up with another useful potion was unexpected, but quite welcome.

"Wow, Bill's really making a name for himself. I should ask Scule how he's doing sometime."

"Why not check in on him yourself?"

"I think he's a bit scared of me," Vin admitted sheepishly, scratching the back on his neck.

"Remember, my first interaction with the man ended with him seeing me crush Kyle's hand in my grip."

"Oh yeah!" Alka couldn't help but laugh, which strangely made all the potential Slayers shiver and begin running even harder around the trees.

"That would probably leave an impression alright."

"Guess I'll go check in with the others and see if any of them are interested. Good luck with… whatever it is you're doing."

"Thanks," she said, her head whipping back around to look at the exhausted trainees once more as she shouted.

"Change!" While the few-dozen Earthers finally stopped running around their chosen trees and desperately tried to find a new tree to run around instead, Vin merely shook his head and left them to their fates. Obviously, Alka knew what she was doing, but it was still hard to watch. Finding Shia was easy, as the elf was meditating near the edge of the forest dungeon as she tended to do in her free time.

She was all for checking out the newest fragment, and even more excited when Vin mentioned how Lumel would be joining them for this one. Scule and Reginald were a tad harder to track down. In the end, he was forced to rely on wide bursts of Sense Dimensions to locate them.

Terra was finally getting to the point where there were a surprising number of magical signatures here and there, making Sense Magic a bit less useful, but only he, Lumel, and Scule had methods of messing with the fabric of reality, which made Scule's cape the perfect marker for finding him. To his surprise, he found Scule busy planting some curious-looking seeds in an isolated section of the park Witherson had included within Terra's walls.

The petian was hard at work and covered in dirt, and appeared quite surprised when Vin showed up out of nowhere. His friend Casper, an Herbalist Scule had befriended a while back, was down in the dirt with him. Scule had refused to tell him what the seeds were for, but he did agree to join them in checking out the fragment above Alka's come morning. Deciding he'd just get it out of Reginald sometime later, Vin chose to ignore the seeds for now, heading off to work on his own magic.

He had an entire evening to kill, and he knew just how he wanted to spend it. Having already blown himself up a number of times now, Vin finally felt as if the secret to making Fireball work was just at his fingertips. The fact that it took 'killing' himself so many times in a row was a tad humbling, but he'd even gotten permission from the Goddess of Benevolence herself to utilize her boon in this manner, so he wasn't going to complain.

He spent the next few hours taking his time, tweaking small parts of his improvised formation here and there. It helped that, while the minute details of the spell were naturally quite complicated, the desired effect he was trying to achieve really wasn't. He wasn't trying to mess with the fabric of reality or partially bring a corpse back to life in order to question it. He just wanted to summon a ball of fire and shoot it off into some decent-sized explosion.

Finally, after spending all evening working on his formation, he felt something he hadn't experienced up until now. A sense of confidence as he put the finishing touches on his spell, the runic formation only missing the connecting bridge between the portion of the spell that summoned the fire and the portion of the spell that launched it as a projectile.

Through much trial and error, and entirely thanks to his divine boon, he'd been able to pick out exactly where his spell kept going wrong and what adjustments he needed to make in order to fix it. Every time he'd blown himself up he'd narrowed down what the problem was and made the appropriate fixes. Finally, after his many painful 'deaths,' he was ready.

Uncrossing his legs and getting up, Vin held that slightly unfinished formation within his mana as he walked across the meadow and turned to face the tree he'd accidentally destroyed earlier with his faulty spell. A decent chunk of the trunk was still standing, but the branches and leaves were no more, having been burned up or knocked down by the force of his explosion.

"I'll have Shia plant a new one in your honor," he called out to the tree, mentally preparing himself for what was about to happen. For the fourth time, he carefully raised his hand and finally connected to two halves of his runic formation. As his mana flooded through the runes, transforming chaos and endless potential into one specific action, he focused on his target and spoke." Fireball!"

Despite his confidence, he flinched back as the runic formation he'd crafted all by himself flared to life within him, and a sphere of fire about the size of a softball spawned in his hand. The moment it appeared, it shot forward, as if fired out of a cannon. Vin's eyes widened as the ball of flame flew across the meadow, impacting directly against the trunk he was aiming at and exploding, sending wooden chunks everywhere.

The force of the detonation didn't seem quite as powerful as the couple of times he'd blown himself up, but it was definitely nothing to sneeze at.

"Yes!" he shouted, laughing up at the heavens as he flopped down onto his back and stared at his hand, his skin still tingling slightly from the mana-turned-fire that had shot out of it. It had been harder than anything he'd done up until then, but after blood, sweat, and tears, he'd done what everyone said was all but impossible except for the truly gifted, like Shia's master. Even if it was only a lowly tier 2, he'd finally managed to put together his own spell. And the System rewarded him appropriately.

New spell learned! Tier 2 Fire Spell (Fireball). 10, 000 exp gained. Runecraft increased to lvl 20! 4, 000 exp gained. Introspection increased to lvl 17! 3, 400 exp gained. New Title Unlocked! Spell Weaver. Reward: Gain an innate sense of which runic formations can be combined into new spells, and which ones are impossible for you to merge. Warning. You have filled 5 out of your 4 allotted title slots. You have twenty-four hours to choose which title to be removed from your interface.

Continue prestiging to unlock new slots. Vin could only stare in shock at the notification of yet another title he'd managed to pick up. Yet there were two final messages from the System that made all the others fade into the background. Something he'd been looking forward to for quite some time, and he was more than ready for what came with it. Level up! Second Prestige Requirements Met! Please Select Class Evolution.