Chương 274: (269) 4.48. Go. Be Free!

While Alka headed back to her old fragment to check in with the infernals, Vin took a few minutes to check in with Chance, the man from the first wave who had part of his spine severed during the battle for wave two. The newly formed merider seemed fine and happier than ever, and Vin was able to use Beyond the Veil to confirm the difference between his and Tiffany's souls. He somehow understood that looking at people's souls wasn't just something he was capable of doing now.

He wasn't so much viewing the soul as he was viewing the aftereffects of the recent merger. Beyond the Veil was definitely the weirdest ability he'd picked up on Edregon thus far, but it sure had its uses. Even if using it like this gave him something of a mild headache that thankfully faded rather quickly once he was done. After confirming that Chance was going to stay in Pendet as a permanent residence, Vin steeled himself and headed over to Neurol's nest.

As much as he didn't want to open up this can of worms again, the merider deserved to know what truly happened to his clan. Last they'd spoken, Vin and Shia had delivered the horrible news to the merider that the blue fur clan, Neurol's people, had all been killed. Overrun by monsters in his absence. As the intended future leader of his clan and one of their stronger members, Neurol had taken the news understandably hard. Now, however, Vin knew the true culprits for his people's deaths.

The neilans and their fragment-spanning ritual. In order to protect themselves from monsters, the neilans had redirected all their monster spawns over into the blue fur clan's fragment, including the additional monsters that would be spawned just from the sheer quantity of magic used in the ritual itself. It was this dramatic increase in monster count that led to the blue fur clan being overrun.

Vin was a bit worried about bringing the topic up once again, as he didn't know what he'd say if Neurol asked him if he'd done anything to avenge his clan in response to learning all this, but the merider had a right to know. To his shock, Neurol was largely indifferent.

"I appreciate you coming to tell me, but in the end, it makes no difference," Neurol said, giving him a sad smile.

"Either way, my clan is dead, and I have no way of knowing if my presence would have changed that." That had been more than a little depressing, but at the very least, Vin was glad Neurol hadn't asked him to personally rip out the spines of each and every neilan in some bloody form of vengeance for his people. That task done, he then swung down to the warriors camping out underneath Pendet who had been in charge of delivering the two Earthers safely to the hanging town.

Other than being a bit bored out of their minds without anything to do, they all seemed like they were fine. They were beyond excited to hear they could finally head back to town come morning, though one of them, probably a fourth waver by how worried he still looked around at the surrounding forest, spoke up while the others started packing up their things.

"Spur ordered us to stay here until the two of them were ready to come back…" he said, glancing nervously at his companions.

"Shouldn't we wait?"

"That's The Roamer, idiot," a woman with a curved sword said, smacking the question-asker on the back of the head.

"If he says we can go home, we can go home." Not wanting to be dragged into anything, Vin quickly took his leave. He'd missed dinner by this point, and darkness was already settling over the land. As much as he wanted to take a quick dungeon-trip back to Terra, the meriders' dungeon was filled with hidden monsters that were fast and dangerous. He vividly recalled the speedy monkeys that had gone after them, and even Alka had recommended none of them try taking that dungeon solo.

With a sigh, he turned and began the long trek back to town. By the time he reached Terra once more, after a quick run through the infernals' new fragment, night had truly fallen, and his stomach grumbled as a reminder that he should probably put something in it sooner than later. After a quick pit-stop at the mess hall, he finally headed back to his apartment.

"Oh, hey Vin," Scule said, nodding his way before going back to cataloging what looked like an upturned fantasy salad spread out over the entire dining room table.

"What's up?"

"Just got back from checking in on Alka and the infernals. Swung by the meriders as well," Vin said, peering at the different materials.

"What are you doing?"

"Casper dropped off a bunch of new stuff for me to take a look at," Scule explained, scribbling notes down on a small notebook.

"Now that I'm actually immune to poison, I can start getting a bit more reckless with my experiments."

"Maybe you should use one of the rooms over in the Support Guild," Vin ventured, looking around and taking note of their apartment's minimal ventilation.

"No offense, but I've seen you fill a room with poisonous smoke on more than one occasion."

"Don't worry, I won't do anything that dangerous out here," Scule snorted, not even looking up from his notes.

"I'm just happy my new class grants experience for discovering new variations of different poisons. So long as I keep practicing, I'll keep leveling, albeit probably more slowly."

"Well good luck with that," Vin said, walking by and giving Reginald a few quick pets. The rat was lounging around on the edge of the table, taking one of his famous power naps. Knocking on Lumel's closed door, he called out.

"Lumel, are you in? I was hoping to bring Landon over to the necromancers today now that the sun's down, but I need your help to bypass the Underside corridors!" Rather than her door opening, there was a flash of purple, and a smiling pulmon was suddenly standing beside him. She was already dressed and ready to go, with her hood up and mostly covering her face.

"Ready when you are," she said, taking his hand and nodding toward Scule. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Vin and Lumel chatted about their days as they made their way through the darkened town over toward Landon's apartment. While Vin had been out and about running around, Lumel had spent her entire day working on magic.

He absolutely got doing that every now and again, but it seemed the mage spent more days than not isolated within either her room or the Underside, studying magic.

"It's the downside of trying to learn higher tier spells," she explained, shrugging when he asked if it ever got boring.

"You don't suffer from that seeing as you mainly stick to lower tier magic, but as a more standard mage, it's just something I've gotten used to." Once again, Landon's roommate opened the door for them and let them in, looking even more nervous this time around now that Vin had a hooded and dark-cloaked figure with him. After letting them inside, he quickly ran off to his own room, slamming the door behind him. Rolling his eyes, Vin walked over to Landon's room and rapped on the door.

"Landon, it's Vin. Spur told me you were interested in learning necromancy? I'm here to take you to their compound." There was silence for a few seconds, before he heard someone moving around in there. Finally, a voice called back out.

"Is it nighttime? I boarded up my window ages ago."

"Yes, it's nighttime," he called back, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. According to Frank, Landon suffered from a legitimate phobia, or at least a strange combination of two. He couldn't very well get mad at the kid for something outside of his control. There were a few more sounds of things being moved around and someone scrambling, before the door finally cracked open and Landon squeezed out.

As he'd expected from the voice, Landon looked to be only seventeen or eighteen, and was a bit on the scrawny side. He had long, bedraggled hair that covered most of his face, and his eyes darted around furtively as they scanned the room before landing on him and Lumel.

"How are we going to get there?" Landon asked nervously, clutching a small sack that presumably held his meager possessions.

"I don't do super well with being outside, even during the night."

"You've got two options," Vin said, holding up a blindfold in one hand and a small vial he'd been given by Scule at his request in the other.

"We can either blindfold you so you won't see anything, or you can take a sedative that will knock you out for about an hour. What would you rather?" Landon seriously considered his two options for a moment, before scanning Vin and Lumel up and down, frowning slightly.

"If I take the sedative, are you two strong enough to carry me where we need to go?" Lumel couldn't help but giggle at the question, and Landon blinked in surprise at the girlish sound coming from within her dark robes.

"You really haven't spent much time out of your room, have you?" Vin asked, letting his golem arm flare with blue light and causing Landon to stumble back against his door in surprise.

"Strength isn't something you can tell just by looking at people anymore. I know Spur said you dumped every single point you earned into magic, but you should be careful. Some people put them in strength, and someone no larger than you or I might be able to lift a boulder over their head." According to Spur, Landon had taken the Poet class, which definitely didn't provide him with any additional strength per level.

With his strange phobia, it was lucky the kid had picked up a class capable of leveling without really interacting with the world around him.

"Alright, I'll take the sedative," Landon decided, reaching out and accepting the vial.

"Do I just drink it?"

"Yep. Drink that, and when you wake up, you'll be safely inside the necromancers' compound, ready to learn."

"Okay…" Landon looked nervously at the vial for a moment before uncorking it and downing its contents in a single swig. As expected from a twice-prestiged Rogue of Poisons, Scule's poison kicked in almost immediately, and Vin barely managed to catch Landon before his body hit the ground like a sack of rocks.

"Whelp, that was easy enough," he said, smiling at Lumel.

"Let's go drop him off." Despite it being rather late at night, there were still a number of people out and about here and there. It really said a lot about how much trust The Roamer had earned from the people of Terra that not a single one of them moved to stop him when he walked by with an unconscious man slumped over his shoulder and a dark, hooded figure walking beside him. Even the guards at the front gate merely nodded to him, wishing him good travels with wherever he was going.

Once they got closer to the dungeon, Lumel warped them straight to the entrance to the Underside, letting them bypass all those annoying monsters. With her help, they peeled back the barriers preventing Landon from traveling to portions of the Underside mirroring the above fragments he hadn't been to, and they made their way over to the necromancers' fragment. Again, Lumel warped them straight to the exit of the dungeon, and in almost no time at all, they found themselves standing before the large compound.

"Traveling with you is almost too easy," Vin remarked, earning a blush from his companion before he called out.

"Hey there! Sorry for the late night visit, but we have someone who wants to learn death magic!" Just as he'd hoped, only a few minutes later the front gate to the compound was opened by two pristine-looking zombie warriors, and out walked a familiar face.

"It's going to be difficult to learn necromancy while unconscious," Groth said, giving them both a small smile. He was the Resourceful Necromancer who had originally met with Vin and Lumel the last time they were here, the one who had given him his handful of death-aligned spells.

"I presume you have a reason for dropping him off like this?"

"Good to see you again, Groth. This is Landon. He suffers from a severe fear of open spaces and daylight," Vin explained, nodding toward Landon's unconscious form still slung over his shoulder.

"He can't really go outside much."

"Then the compound is the perfect place for him," Groth said, somehow directing two more zombie warriors to join them without so much as a twitch of his finger. The two undead warriors gingerly took Landon from Vin before bringing him back inside.

"I hope you are aware that I'm taking quite the leap of faith in trusting you had good intentions bringing him here like this. If he wakes and reveals that he in fact does not wish to learn from us, we are not going to hold him captive or anything like that."

"Trust me, he wants to learn," Vin reassured him.

"He's been putting all his extra attribute points into magic ever since he first got his class, and I'm pretty certain his class levels have been awarding him points into focus."

"Well now, that does sound like the perfect combination," Groth said, giving the two of them a warm smile.

"In that case, take this. I can use it to let you know when he wishes to return home." To Vin's surprise, Groth reached into a pouch at his side and pulled out a tiny skull. He didn't know what creature it was from, but it wasn't even the size of his fist. It didn't appear to be an artifact, but if he looked for it, he could just barely make out a thin tendril of invisible mana stretching back from the skull straight to Groth's core.

"Thank you… I'll try and keep it handy," he said, tucking it away in his own pack.

"See that you do," Groth said, turning and motioning for his zombies to lock down the compound once more.

"And thank you for providing us with another student to share the secrets of death magic with."