Chương 404: (397) 6.11. Time to Hit the Road

Vin was wrong. On multiple accounts. The good news was that their experiment yielded success. Vin was in fact able to work on magic within his own dream, and the strange thickness of his mana didn't actually end up being entirely a bad thing. While it slowed him down a good bit, it also forced him to be far more careful than he normally was. Combined with his Spell Builder passive that helped him sense minor runic backlashes before they occurred, and he was able to avoid runic backlashes almost entirely.

And then he woke up. Vin blinked as he stirred, sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes as he realized he was back among the living once more. Thankfully, his mana had seemed to understand he was waking up faster than he had, as the spell formation he'd been working on went inert out of nowhere, preventing any sort of backlash from occurring as he lost his concentration. The only thing that didn't make sense was that he'd only been working on his spell for what felt like an hour.

"Did it work?" Lumel yawned, waking up beside him and giving him an excited look. The sleep vanished from her eyes almost instantly as she awaited his answer.

"Could you practice your magic?"

"Yeah, it worked… but time flows differently in a dream. We already knew that of course, but it was something else to really experience it," Vin said, thinking about all the progress he'd made.

"My cloud pillow vanished, which means we slept the whole night. But I'm pretty certain I only got about an hour to practice the spell. Maybe a little more. So not nearly as much time as I was hoping for."

"We did spend the first chunk of the dream talking and experimenting with Create Dream," Lumel pointed out.

"And still, an extra hour of spell work each night is huge! I mean, that's practically a full day dedicated to spell work every single week! And I bet you'll get even better at doing it the more you practice, this was just your first attempt!"

"Well I'm glad one of us is excited," Vin snorted, laughing as Lumel blushed.

"Does that mean we're not going to see you for a few weeks while you go on your dream journey?"

"I guess that depends on Fred and Fria," Lumel admitted.

"Fred might not want to go on another dream journey so quickly, and Fria seems pretty enraptured with Scule at the moment. If they're both busy, it might be a while." It wasn't until that moment Vin remembered what Fred had witnessed within his own dream journey, and his face paled. If the pixie let slip that Vin had freaked out at the dream-version of Lumel proposing to him…

"I definitely get Fred wanting to take a break. Let's give him some time to recover if we can," he said, hopping out of bed and going about the usual morning prep as he grabbed his clothes.

"That's fair. I guess I'll check in with Fria then and see if she'd be willing to take me," Lumel decided, happily watching him from the bed as he got dressed.

"What are your plans for the day?"

"Honestly? Despite how many things are piled up on my to-do list like always, I was sort of thinking about checking out a new fragment," Vin admitted.

"I'm not sure if it's fair to count the almost two weeks I spent in the dream journey, but even without that, it's been over a week since my last venture into the unknown. I can feel the itching in my bones to get out there."

"You might want to see Frank about that. Or the Necromancers," Lumel teased, earning a snort from Vin as he secured his pack.

"I could come with you I guess…"

"I'll be alright. You should check in with Fria. It was pretty obvious how excited you were about all this, and the sooner you link your mana pool with your subconscious, the sooner you can benefit from dream spellwork."

"Please tell me you're at least taking one of the team with you," Lumel said, giving him a slight frown and then wincing as she caught herself.

"Sorry. I know you're more than capable. It's just after you went missing—""Trust me, I get it," he said, leaning down and giving her a quick kiss.

"That's on me for being such an idiot. I mean, seriously, going all on my own to meet with the martial king who ruled over a few thousand skilled warriors? I know I was eager to rescue the missing Earthers, but I shouldn't have ignored common sense like that."

"Well. As long as you don't plan on doing something like that again," Lumel nodded, finally getting out of bed and summoning her dark robes into her hand with a flash of purple. Looking at them with pursed lips, she hummed.

"... Maybe I'll swing by Becca's place before long as well. I'm not really one to dress up, but I can't imagine the robes are doing a lot for my reputation around town."

"Whatever makes you happy," Vin said, giving her one last hug before heading into the common room. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it"Morning," Shia said, waving at him with her shears before going back to trimming some of the leaves on her staff. During their fight with the ranker king, Shia's staff had been reduced to little more than a handful of sticks when she'd been forced to use her class ability to save her life.

She could divert damage she would normally take into plant life that had been imbued with her mana, which was a fantastic ability when facing off against an opponent who could create craters with a single blow, but it had its downsides. Luckily, her master proved why he was regarded as a magical genius yet again when she revealed she could simply plant some of the sticks and regrow the staff good as new.

"Seriously, I don't understand how that is only a lesser artifact," Vin said, not for the first time as he took a seat at the table.

"You'd have to ask my master," she shrugged, clipping another leaf from the staff.

"Not like he would actually reveal any of his secrets."

"Actually, have you heard from him lately? It's been about a month since he popped into the dungeon we were walking through and told us he was about to do something crazy, hasn't it?" The first time the team had brought Alka back to the library to get fixed up, on their way home, Shia's master had appeared out of the blue and informed Shia he was declaring their home world officially lost.

The old universe sounded like it was in pretty rough shape now that the Gods had abandoned it, and he'd let slip that he and the other high-level survivors were fighting an epic monster a day, sometimes two at once. Because of that, he was planning on taking the few hundred people who were left and traveling to another world, using one of the apparently many realms of reality as a highway in order to do so. The whole thing sounded absolutely insane to Vin, but according to Lumel, it was theoretically possible.

As a mage specializing in spatial travel, she'd done plenty of research on the subject just for fun. Though she remained adamant that the spell Shia's master would need to utilize to bring a few hundred people with him between realms would have to be tier 7 at a minimum, which should take a regular mage a good couple of years to put together. Vin figured Shia's master probably whipped it up in a few weeks.

"Thirty-three days, to be specific," Shia nodded, not even looking up from her staff as she kept clipping away.

"He warned it would take him a while. Might be another month or two before we hear back." Vin could only stare at his teammate in wonder, blown away as always by the complete and unyielding faith Shia had in her master. She didn't have so much as a speck of worry on her face, as though the thought of her master potentially falling while traveling between realms in order to pick out a new world like some sort of magical hermit crab wasn't even worth entertaining.

"Anyway, what's up?" Shia asked.

"Are you heading out to a new fragment today?"

"Actually, yeah, I was planning to. How did you know?"

"Because it's been more than twenty-four hours since your last one," she snorted, putting her shears away as she stood up.

"Want a companion? I should have repaired Blossom correctly, but I'd like to do a test run before any other emergency pops up. The last thing we need is trying to summon her and my staff just falls apart."

"That would be bad," Vin chuckled.

"Where are the others? We should probably at least offer."

"Alka is making up for lost time by throwing her Slayers around now that she's patched up. I think Scule's still in bed, probably still on a dream date with his new girlfriend." A mischievous smile slowly stretched across Shia's face, and she nodded toward his closed door.

"... Want to play a prank on him?"

"Shia, that would be incredibly irresponsible," Vin said, already casting Mage Hand and unlocking the petian's door even as he answered. But before the two of them could take so much as a step into Scule's room, their path was blocked by a ferocious guardian. Reginald stood in front of the doorway with his arms crossed and a disappointed look on his face that hurt far more than any physical blow.

"Don't worry, he's not actually disappointed," Shia said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a hunk of cheese.

"We do this all the time." Reginald took one look at the tiny chunk of cheese, his eyes darting between the two of them. Rather than accept it, he actually sat back on his haunches, shaking his head and letting out a few squeaks.

"Huh… he basically said 'not this time,'" Vin translated, getting a thankful nod from the rat.

"It sounds like Scule really doesn't want to mess this up with Fria, so Reginald is doing his best not to let anyone interfere."

"Well dang, I didn't realize Scule was this serious about Fria," Shia said, handing Reginald the cheese anyway and giving him a gentle pat on the head.

"Sorry, Reginald, we won't mess with him on his dream dates then." Happily taking the cheese, Reginald gave them an appreciatory nod, before turning and squeaking up at Vin. Blinking at the rat, Vin raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure? I mean, I won't say no."

"What did he say? Broken branches, I hate that you can speak rat and I can't," Shia grumbled to herself.

"He said he overheard us. He wants to know if he can come along," Vin admitted, giving Reginald a curious look." Without Scule? You're sure?" Eating the cheese in almost a single bite, Reginald shrugged and squeaked again, and Vin translated his answer for Shia. Even if he could only get the general gist of the rat's squeaks from the weird state his experience with Manacraft had left him in, it was enough to hold a conversation.

"It sounds like Reginald doesn't want Scule to feel guilty about wanting to spend time with Fria on his own, so he's trying to show that he's happy doing his own thing sometime as well, away from him," Vin explained, shooting Reginald a questioning look.

"Did I get that correctly?" Reginald tilted his head back and forth, making something of a 'so-so' motion with his tail.

"Shame we can't just outfit him with one of the translation artifacts," Shia muttered, tapping her chin as she stared down at the patiently waiting rat.

"Eh, a problem for another day. But yeah, of course we'd be happy to have you, Reginald. Looks like it'll just be the three of us then!" Letting out an excited squeak, Reginald scurried up Vin's clothes, hopping into his favorite pocket on the front of Vin's shirt and poking his head out.

"Guess that means we're ready," Vin chuckled.

"Come on, let's grab breakfast to go. No need to keep Edregon waiting!"