Chương 386: (379) 5.75. Rude Awakening

Vin's eyes fluttered as he slowly opened them, his vision taking a second to focus before he could make out the trees swaying overhead in the breeze. Groaning, he went to rub his eyes, surprised by how heavy and lethargic his arm felt.

"Take it easy," Fria said, flitting in front of his face and giving him a look of warning.

"You were asleep for thirteen days. That takes a toll on a person's body."

"Just under the wire, huh?" Vin asked, coughing as his voice came out weak and scratchy. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he reached for his waterskin, taking a much-needed drink and letting out a sigh of relief.

"You're probably happy you don't have to stab me, I'd imagine."

"I can't say I was looking forward to that," Fria admitted, fluttering off to the side. Following her path, only then did Vin spot Fred yawning as he stretched, getting up off his own cloth he'd been sleeping on.

"Told you we could make it in under two weeks," Fred said, grinning at his sister as she huffed.

"It was reckless to even attempt such a thing!" she snapped.

"Reckless?" Vin asked, looking between the two of them.

"How so?"

"You weren't in any danger or anything, but you actually completed your dream journey rather quickly compared to most," Fred admitted.

"On average, it takes about three or four weeks. Though the majority of that time is actually getting your mana to listen to you once you make it to your core. I figured you were skilled enough that you'd adapt fairly quickly once we got there."

"I appreciate the faith," Vin chuckled, summoning the many notifications he had waiting for him. Sleeping increased to level 2! 200 exp gained.

Sleeping increased to level 17! 1, 700 exp gained. New spell learned! Tier 0 Dream Spell (Sense Dream). New magical affinity discovered! Dream affinity. 14, 000 exp gained. New spell learned! Tier 1 Dream Spell (Create Dream).

"Damn, nothing power levels the Sleeping skill like dreaming for nearly two straight weeks," he laughed, dismissing the notifications. Turning to Fria, he asked the first thing on his mind.

"Anything important happen while I was out?"

"Your friends swung by a few times to check up on you, and your girlfriend's come almost every evening to make sure you were still in one piece," she reported.

"Last we spoke, Scule hadn't mentioned anything particularly noteworthy happening with Terra beyond some frantic prepping for the next wave of monsters, and all has been relatively calm in our fragment. The orcs and beastkin are settling in nicely, having decided to combine their people and construct one large town for all of them to share."

"Last you spoke, huh?" Fred asked, crossing his arms.

"When was that, dare I ask?"

"Last night in fact," Fria replied, narrowing her eyes as if daring him to say anything more.

"Why do you ask?"

"Simple curiosity," Fred sighed, the fight draining out of him as he shook his head.

"Never mind. All that sleep has made me tired. I'm gonna go take a nap. And have some normal dreams for a change," he muttered as he flew off.

"Wow, that must have been some dream journey," Fria said, watching her brother leave.

"He's rarely that tired after finishing a journey."

"Apparently I've got some interesting dreams," Vin said, pushing himself to his feet and stretching out his legs.

"You should take it easy. Most mages require a few days to recover before they can leave," Fria warned, floating up to head height.

"Yeah, but I bet most mages don't have endurance attributes as high as mine," Vin grinned, hopping up and down a few times. His body was definitely heavy and tired, but he could move it around just fine.

"Thanks again for watching over me while I slept. I hate asking so soon, but is there any chance I could snag a few runic formations from you before I go? I have Sense Dream and Create Dream now, but I really want to learn your Dream Walk spell as well. That's the whole reason I learned dream magic in the first place."

"I don't mind showing you, seeing as you're a friend of Scule's. Just be careful," she warned, sketching out the runic formation in the air.

"Attempting to use Dream Walk to venture out of a dream entirely and into the waking world is beyond dangerous unless you know what you're doing. We only used it to watch you because you'd tripped one of our mushrooms and were marked, and we are actual dream mages. You don't have the passives or abilities we do, so stick to dreams for now. I'll give you the formation for Dream Mark as well, use that preemptively on anyone you want to visit in their sleep."

"Stick to dreams, got it," he nodded, eagerly taking in the two new formations and committing them to memory.

"By the way, I had a bit of a chat with your brother in there about you and Scule. No promises, but hopefully he'll take it a bit easier on the two of you."

"That alone is worth giving you these spells," she said, giving him a warm smile as she twirled about, sprinkling pixie dust everywhere.

"You're more than welcome to come back if you ever want to learn more dream magic!" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I probably will," he admitted, thanking her one last time before heading back to the dungeon. Despite having beaten his self-imposed time limit of two weeks, he couldn't help but hurry as he made his way back to Terra. He'd really been hoping to get the whole dream journey done in only a single week, but he supposed that was too much to ask for. He and Fred had gone through a lot of different dreams on their way to his core, and then wrangling his limp mana into submission had been a whole new challenge.

The good news was that he hadn't been awoken by a dagger to the chest, and he'd succeeded in learning a new magical affinity for his efforts. Walking into the Underside, Vin was surprised to find Lumel sitting in her comfy chair, meditating by the looks of things. He had a momentary flash of seeing her in a white wedding veil while holding out a golden ring for him to take, before he dismissed the memory.

Thankfully, he was pretty certain the actual Lumel didn't have any intentions of proposing anytime soon, and he smiled to himself as he walked over and tapped her on the arm. As much as he wanted to pull her into a hug, as a fellow mage, he knew the last thing one wanted to wake up to from meditating was the sensation of being grabbed by someone. Opening her eyes, Lumel gasped and jumped to her feet, grinning wildly as she threw her own arms around him.

"You're finally back! How did it go?"

"It was definitely an experience," he chuckled, feeling the tension in his tired body flow out of him as he sunk into her embrace.

"Dream journeys are one hell of a drug."

"Did you manage to learn the spells you wanted?" she asked, pulling back and giving him a look that was half amusement, half annoyance.

"Also, I found your note. I know you wanted to try and get it done before the next wave arrived, but really? A note that you'd be gone for at least a week or two? Right after everything with the ranker king?"

"Sorry... I had a feeling I'd need every hour," he admitted, scratching his head sheepishly.

"And it worked just as I'd hoped! I've got a few dream spells under my belt and a few more to study while we wait for the sixth wave to arrive. Not only that, but I've gained the ability to potentially practice magic in my sleep, which should be huge for learning new spells!"

"I'm glad it worked out," she admitted, squeezing his hand.

"And to be honest, I can't really be annoyed about the note. I'd run off to do some more research on that monster-free dungeon in the floating library fragment and lost track of time myself. You'd actually been gone for nearly two days before I even got back."

"Well that's a relief," he said, pretending to wipe sweat off his brow.

"Guess that means I don't have to take you on that dream date after all!"

"I didn't say that," she giggled, doing her best to glare at him, which really was more cute than anything.

"A dream date sounds fun!"

"Tonight then," he promised, giving her a quick kiss before deciding he might as well ruin the mood for now.

"Do we have any updates on the upcoming battle?"

"There are a couple of things," Lumel said, her expression turning serious at the change in topic.

"With only thirteen days to go, everyone is already beginning to prepare. You should go talk to Spur, he asked me to send you his way when you finished up your little 'dream vacation,' I think he called it."

"It was pretty far from a vacation," Vin snorted, thinking back to the sheer number of fights and challenges he'd had to overcome during his dream journey.

"But thanks, I'll go check in with him and see if he needs anything specific from me." Wishing him good luck, Lumel gave him one last kiss before returning to her meditation. With a stupid smile on his face, Vin ran back to Terra, making a beeline straight for town hall. With the battle quickly approaching, he figured that was where he was most likely to find Spur. When he wasn't accosted by Theodore in some weird disguise, he realized things had to be even more serious than they appeared.

There were Earthers and Bands rushing all over the place, ferrying ammunition along the wall or running materials to different workshops. He passed groups of warriors training with one another, and support classes honing their individual skills everywhere he looked. Most surprising were the handful of golden-eyed infernals hard at work along the outer wall, sketching out individual rituals and finally giving Terra the layer of magical defenses Vin knew Spur had always wanted.

He even spotted a group of what had to be Sakis' Stone Mages hard at work finishing up what looked like a moat of all things around the outer wall, and he shook his head at the realization that he'd missed quite a lot while he'd been dreaming these past two weeks. Almost as surprising as the town improvements was the fact that Linda wasn't at her desk, obviously off working on something important no doubt. Instead of checking in with her, Vin headed over to Spur's office, rapping on the door.

"If you're important, come in. If you're not, go away!" Rolling his eyes, Vin stepped into the Commander's office, spotting Spur hard at work pouring over a whole mess of paper as he muttered to himself. Spur didn't even look up at the sound of the door opening.

"What is it?" he asked, his eyes boring into the different papers as if they held the secret to eternal youth among their pages.

"Hello to you too," Vin said, laughing as Spur dropped the papers in hand and spun around, staring at him like he couldn't believe it.

"Vin! You're back before the battle!" he said, rushing around and actually pulling him into a hug.

"Thank God!"

"Sorry to worry you, I was—""Busy learning dream magic from a bunch of pixies, because of course you were, I know," Spur said, speaking quickly.

"And I can't even be annoyed with you because I approve of your reasoning, being able to communicate with us via dreams from across Edregon is going to be huge. I'm just happy you're back, things are going to get ugly."

"We already knew that, didn't we?" Vin asked.

"I mean, the last two waves each had epic monsters in them. It makes sense this one will too."

"You don't understand," Spur said, returning to his papers and pouring over them once more.

"We have something this time we didn't have the last couple of waves. We have John."

"John? The super-paranoid missing Earther I brought back?" Vin asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What's so special about him?"

"His Watcher class, for one," Spur explained.

"Unlike the other two Earthers you saved from the rankers, John actually managed to level up a bit during those two weeks they were locked up. And during the last two weeks you were gone, he managed to hit level 10 and received his first Capstone. Doom Watch."

"Alright, that sounds ominous as all hell," Vin admitted.

"What does it do?"

"He's able to sense devastating events before they occur, along with some details about them," Spur said, finally stopping what he was doing as he fixed Vin with a grave look.

"As expected, he picked up a few things about the upcoming monster wave. Things that are more than a little troubling."

"Like what?" Vin asked, his stomach sinking from how serious Spur was being about all this.

"Like the fact that it's happening in two days' time, and that unless something changes, all of Terra will be utterly destroyed."