Chương 323: (316) 5.12. Dirty Bubbles

"Whatever you're thinking about, don't do it!" Scule cried as he swam through the air, splashing into the same bubble Vin was in and turning to poke his head out.

"You've got that stupid look on your face that always gets us in trouble!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Vin argued, still staring up into the sky.

"I'm just wondering how high up those bubbles go."

"Knowing our luck, there's probably some horrible flying monster that lives up there. You really want to risk that? Have you even searched for your missing Earthers yet?"

"Oh, yeah, good point," Vin said sheepishly, turning red as he cast his spell. Sending out a wide pulse toward the rest of the fragment, he waited for it to bounce back before shaking his head.

"No souls without any magic in the fragment. If any of the missing Earthers landed here, they're either dead, or they leveled up and threw some points into the attribute."

"I suppose that's not the most efficient searching spell, huh?" Scule pointed out.

"With how dangerous Edregon is, surely you have to figure most of them have died by now, right? I mean, it's been days since they first showed up. The fact that you managed to recover three of them is already amazing."

"I'll admit, I'm not a fan of their chances… but it doesn't hurt us to try casting the spell whenever we enter a new fragment. Maybe we'll get lucky and find another one or two."

"I'd say 'when rats fly,' but would you look at that," Scule snorted, pointing at a flailing Reginald as the rat soared from one bubble to the next. It seemed Reginald was not a fan of the zero-gravity fragment, and the rat squeaked his annoyance rather loudly.

"Glad to finally find something he's not naturally good at. Gotta tell you, it gets annoying real quick how much of a natural he is at everything."

"What are you two talking about up there?" Alka asked, launching herself toward them, but aiming for a darkened bubble even higher up.

"What do you think is inside the darker ones?"

"I'm betting a monster. That seems more up Edregon's alley," Scule said.

"Can't have a fun, peaceful fragment without something trying to kill us, right?"

"Guess we'll find out!" Alka laughed, splashing headfirst into the murky bubble and vanishing from view. The two of them waited, listening to Shia laughing down below as she chased an angry Reginald. After a few seconds, Scule cleared his throat.

"…At what point do we go in after her?" Thankfully, they didn't have to come up with an answer to that question, as Alka poked her head out moments later. Along with a fist clutching some sort of dead eel with jagged scales running down its spine.

"Scule was right," she called out, wiggling the eel back and forth.

"Monsters in the dark bubbles."

"I think we all saw that one coming," Scule drawled, peering curiously at the eel.

"You mind tossing that my way? Something like that just screams'I'm filled with deadly venom.'" Snorting, Alka did just that, sending the eel soaring slowly toward them. Hopping onto Vin's head, Scule opened his bag wide and actually managed to catch the entire eel in it, laughing at his latest find.

"Where do you think the people are?" Shia asked, finally soaring up to meet them with a splash.

"Do you guys think this one is an abandoned fragment?"

"It wouldn't surprise me…" Vin said, looking around.

"So far it seems most of the abandoned fragments are ones that had nomadic people. People who wandered outside of the pre-selected fragment boundary before the Gods pulled the trigger and formed Edregon. This place definitely screams 'nomad' to me."

"Yeah, if random bubbles hold plants and animals, I imagine whoever lived here was always on the move, hunting for new bubbles and letting the old ones replenish," Shia nodded.

"Shame. I bet Lumel would have loved to meet another aquatic people. You know, ones that didn't want to stab us with their primitive spears."

"Damn, I'll have to bring Lumel back to this fragment at some point," Vin muttered.

"We should try and find the dungeon while we're here."

"Absolutely! This place is perfect for Slayer training!" Alka said, her eyes flaring in excitement.

"Oh man, I've got so many different ideas!" Sending the future Slayers of wave five a silent apology, Vin gave the bubbles reaching upward one last glance before kicking back down to the ground. As curious as he was, Lumel was waiting for them back in Terra, and it would probably be wisest to wait to explore such a fragment until he had her with him. Both for her incredible swimming skill, and her ability to get them the hell out of dodge in the event of an emergency.

Hitting the ground, Vin let his boots do their thing as he used Create Air as a makeshift blow-dryer, smiling at the realization he could make the air he created warm as well. Reginald was the first one to join him, scrambling to catch onto his shoulder as he nearly missed his target. The rat let his desire for a hit of the warm air known with an annoyed squeak. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Sorry, buddy, I know you're not a fan of this fragment," Vin said, hitting Reginald with the warm air and snickering as the rat's hair went all poofy.

"You're welcome to chill in my pocket until we're out of here." Reginald nodded his thanks, giving one last shake of his body before climbing into his front pocket.

"You guys going to stay up there all day, or join me down here?" Vin called up, watching his friends continue to float from bubble to bubble. At this point, Alka was purposefully aiming for all the darker ones, discovering not only the occasional monster, but actual animals hidden within as well. Vin blinked as tiny schools of streamlined fish shot out of one of the bubbles she went into, shooting from one bubble to the next like a hail of arrows and bouncing their way off into the distance.

"We'll follow from up here!" Scule called down, flipping through the air like a maniac as he went from bubble to bubble. Grinning at their fun, Vin turned his focus inward, eager to try a new magical idea he'd thought of. Now that he had the ability to expand his sensing spells to cover an entire fragment, there was one other thing he just had to try. Tweaking the runic formation for Sense Dimensions, Vin blasted out his spell, holding his breath as the mana went out in a pulse.

At this point, he'd been in enough dungeons that he had a pretty solid understanding of how they differed dimensionally from the rest of Edregon. In theory, seeing as each fragment only had one dungeon, if he honed in his spell just to sense solely for that change in dimension and sent it to cover the entire fragment… Vin laughed and pumped his fist as the spell returned to him, highlighting the one location in the entire fragment with the dimensional reading of a dungeon.

Finally, he'd found a way to pinpoint precisely where dungeons were within fragments.

"I've got a lock on the dungeon!" he called up, motioning for them to follow him from above.

"This way!" Making sure not to run so fast that his friends couldn't keep up, Vin began jogging his way across the fragment, thankful for his magic boots that kept him locked on the ground. Scule, Alka, and Shia followed far more slowly up above, but the sounds of them laughing and shouting at one another meant he couldn't rush them. He was a little tempted to try his hand at flying up there once again, but he didn't want to do that to Reginald after the rat had gotten all dried off and tucked away.

Date night idea with Lumel for later… Swimming in the bubble fragment. Snorting at the concept of heading to a part of an entirely different world for a fun evening out, Vin grinned at the sheer ridiculousness of life on Edregon. He'd been on this world for three months at this point, and it was insane how quickly he'd come to call this place home instead of Earth.

"What do you think, Reginald, are you a fan of Edregon overall, or would you have preferred the Gods having left the citadel as it was?" Reginald poked his head out of his pocket, contemplating the question in silence for a moment before squeaking out an answer.

It was only thanks to Vin's horrifying experience the other week when he'd unintentionally pushed past the protective mental barrier the Gods placed on people, exposing himself to the truth of the universe being nothing more than barely constrained mana given structure, that he could partially understand what the rat was saying. He didn't pick up on the exact wording of Reginald's squeaks so much as the overall concept.

"You're glad Scule made friends and got to leave the citadel like he wanted… but you're not a fan of the added danger?" Reginald nodded, squeaking happily at the reminder that someone other than Scule could actually understand him now.

"That's fair. Edregon is chock full of danger," he said, glancing up in time to see Alka pull out yet another one of the weird eel monsters from within a dark bubble, this one still thrashing in her hand. New monster discovered! 200 exp gained.

"Don't worry, we'll do what we can to protect Scule," he reassured Reginald.

"I know you took your boon of loyalty because you were worried, but you're not going to have to use that anytime soon." Reginald gave him a tiny smile, nodding his thanks before dipping back into his pocket. Reginald's divine boon would allow him to trade his life for Scule's in the event that the petian ever ended up dying, and it was not an ability that Scule had been pleased to hear he'd taken. If anything did ever happen to Scule, and Reginald gave his life for his companion's…

Vin didn't even want to think about how Scule would react upon waking up. Eventually, Vin reached the source of the strange dimensional reading, pleased to discover it was in fact a dungeon. The only issue was… From what he could tell, the dungeon was inside a massive sphere of darkened water.

"That's going to be a problem…" he muttered, keeping his friends down on the ground with him with a cast of Redirect Gravity.

"I can head in and see what we're dealing with, but yeah, unless you've recently grown gills, I don't think you're making it through this dungeon by the looks of things," Alka said, peering up at the floating bubble.

"It's probably bigger on the inside, similar to how forest dungeons expand the space," Shia said, tapping her chin.

"I guess we could always just make our way out of the fragment and back to Terra the slow way."

"Honestly, I've been meaning to take the time to learn some sort of water-breathing spell for awhile now," Vin admitted.

"I can't keep Redirect Gravity up for long, which means you guys are going to have to drift and swim your way out of this fragment if we turn around. It took us some time to get in this far, I might as well take a crack at the spell and see if I can't figure something out."

"I'll admit, floating through the air has gotten old a lot faster than I thought it would," Scule said.

"I'm all for taking a break and using the dungeon to get back to town."

"I'll grow some plants we can hold onto and keep ourselves down here," Shia decided, giving Vin an encouraging smile.

"Don't worry about us, just focus on your magic."

"I'll be in there!" Alka shouted, launching herself into the dungeon and vanishing from sight.

"…She's probably fine," Vin sighed, taking a seat and giving his friends a thumbs up.

"Thanks for the confidence in me guys. I'll let you know if I think this is going to take too long and we should take the slow way home."

"You're crafting a brand-new spell, take your time," Scule said, motioning for him to move farther away.

"Just do it way, waaay over there, far from us, before you blow up again."