Chương 412: (405) 6.19. One Level Away

The joint party for the destruction of the deranged ones and Shuvo being accepted by a 'wandering master' went on late into the night. Shia eventually ran out of room in her stomach and joined in the rest of the festivities, her outgoing self having no problem leaping into the thick of the dancing as though she'd known these people her whole life. Vin and Reginald hung off to the side of the party for the most part, simply enjoying the atmosphere and munching on snacks.

Though it wasn't long before Vin lost his own party buddy. The moment Reginald spotted the shadow of a female rat scurrying around looking for food on the fringes of the party, he rubbed his face clean and vanished into the night. It wasn't long after Reginald left him to his own devices that Vin decided to turn in for the night, not really one for giant parties. As much as he loved running around Edregon and meeting new and interesting people, he preferred doing it one at a time when possible.

Large crowds weren't really his thing. He tried to find a villager who looked relatively sober to ask where he could spend the night, and found himself blinking barely a few seconds later as the door to what appeared to be the village chief's house was closed behind him. Apparently, as a 'wandering master' who had deigned to accept a new magic student from their tiny village, he was functionally being treated like he was traveling royalty.

Well now I really can't mess up Shuvo's training, he thought to himself as he conjured up his stronghold of slumber. He briefly entertained the thought of trying to reach Lumel with Dream Walk before deciding against it. For all he knew she'd already started her dream journey with Fria, in which case him butting in would be the last thing she needed. Instead, he used Dream Walk to enter his own dream, spending the night working on his earlier in-progress soul spell.

He was still getting used to the desync in time between dreams and real life, as he felt like he only got about an hour of work on his spell before he awoke the next morning when his cloud pillow finished dissipating, marking a full eight hours had passed. Still, that was functionally another free hour he got to spend working on his magic, and Vin was all smiles as he got up. Only to find a passed out Shia and Reginald lying sprawled out on the village chief's bed next to him, snoring away.

"Are you two planning to stay in bed all day?" he asked, laughing as Shia stirred and covered her eyes with a hand.

"Went a little too hard last night… Drank a bit too much…" With a groan, she swung her legs off the bed and rubbed at her face." Neutralize Poison." Just like that, she sat up straighter, grinning as she blinked and looked good as new. Well, her braid was disheveled from a night of dancing and she still had what looked like barbeque sauce stains on her chest from her feasting, but at least she wasn't hung over.

"You might wanna…" Vin said, gesturing toward her torso.

"Hmm? Ah, yeah." Grabbing the offered cloth that the villager who led Vin into the house last night had handed him, she wiped the sauce off before casting Cleanse on herself. Cleanse was a useful spell that was the magical equivalent of hand sanitizer from how Vin understood it. It only killed germs, so it wouldn't make any sort of mess vanish, but it would at least help sanitize something once it was manually cleaned up.

"So, are we snagging Shuvo and heading back to Terra?" Shia asked, hopping out of bed and stretching as she worked the kinks out of her muscles from sleeping in the awkward position.

"We only ended up hitting two of the third-ring fragments down here."

"I feel like dragging him along would be irresponsible, so yeah, let's do a trip back to Terra. I want to check in and see if Lumel got started on her dream journey as well. I figure she probably left a note if so."

"Oh yeah, she mentioned she was thinking about doing that the other day," Shia said, poking at Reginald and snickering as the rat weakly batted her finger off with his hands before rolling over.

"Sounds like it would be an interesting experience."

"Are you thinking of attempting it yourself? The extra time to work on spells is pretty nice."

"Eh, with my Split Focus passive, I'm pretty much passively working on spells throughout the day already," Shia shrugged.

"And I like dreaming naturally. Besides, I don't think I'd want to intrude on the two of you and whatever it is you'll be getting up to in those shared dreams of yours."

"We're planning to practice magic," Vin drawled, not rising to Shia's obvious bait as she grinned at him.

"Please. Scule's already told me all about some of the dream dates he's had with Fria. Maybe you guys just lack creativity."

"And on that note, I think it's high time we headed out," Vin said, scooping up Reginald and dumping him in his pocket. Surprisingly, Reginald continued snoring away, curling up in his pocket without a care in the world. How much did he drink last night? Shaking his head at his companions' antics, Vin headed out into the village with the intention of hunting down Shuvo.

Which made it all the more surprising to find the Alchemist literally sitting on the ground by the front door of the chieftain's hut, scrambling to his feet the moment he saw Vin.

"Master, I've been waiting! Are we taking our leave of the village?" Vin was half tempted to close the door and go back to bed, but he couldn't bring himself to do so with the full force of Shuvo's excited face staring at him. Doing his best to hide his sigh, Vin nodded.

"Yeah. No sense in sticking around for Reginald to have to face the consequences of his actions. Do you have everything?" This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"All on my back!" Shuvo said, hefting a bulging pack that looked almost larger than he was.

"Morning, Shuvo," Shia said, grinning at the excited man.

"Ready for your first day with your master?"

"Don't you start," Vin muttered in her ear with a silent cast of Whispering Wind.

"I can always tell Kelly the locations of your favorite meditation spots in the Sacred Forest."

"Let's be off!" Shia added hurriedly, cutting off Shuvo's return greeting as she turned and made a beeline for the village entrance. Ignoring Shuvo's confused look, Vin motioned for him to follow as they went after her. While Shia didn't exactly have anything against the Elven Diplomat, Kelly could be a bit much when it came to talking about elven culture. Especially when one was trying to focus on something like meditation. Once the four of them were out of the village, Shia turned to look at Vin.

"So, preference on how we get back? The long way, or the short way?"

"We don't have a choice," Vin pointed out.

"Without Lumel, we can't get Shuvo through the Underside corridors until he walks through the actual fragments, so dungeon-travel is out."

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting that's something we have to deal with," Shia admitted.

"Not like we make a habit of bringing tag-alongs with us through the Underside, and we pretty much always have Lumel with us anyway."

"Master, what are you talking about?" Shuvo asked, his eyes going wide as Shia shifted Blossom into cat form.

"Dungeons? Underside?"

"I'll explain in a bit," Vin said, frowning as he only just realized he hadn't considered the logistical issue of taking Shuvo with them. They had three entire fragments they needed to cross to get back to Terra from here, and Shuvo didn't have any method of long-distance travel like the rest of them. He could just tell the man to get on his back and carry him like he did Lumel, but it would be much more awkward physically with the massive pack weighing on the Alchemist's back.

Lumel kept all her belongings in her Dimensional Pocket, and pulmons were naturally on the frailer side.

"Shia, I know you said before that Blossom was only designed for one person. Could you at least take Shuvo's pack with you so I can carry him on my back?"

"I can do one better," Shia said, snapping her fingers and causing Shuvo to yelp as Blossom darted over to him. Shoving its head in between his legs, the wooden construct practically threw the Alchemist onto its back, and Shuvo grabbed onto the branches like his life depended on it to keep himself from sliding off.

"You two can borrow Blossom for a few hours. Just bring me over to the dungeon and I'll walk back to Terra on my own through the Underside."

"Thanks, Shia, that makes this a lot easier," Vin admitted, focusing on his Dungoneering skill and noting the location of the dungeon in this fragment.

"It's not too far, only about two miles to the east. Want a quick ride?"

"I always was curious what Lumel's travel experience was like," Shia grinned, taking him up on his offer and hopping onto his back. Shia was definitely a little heavier than Lumel, but with his strength attribute, it was nothing Vin couldn't handle, and they took off in the direction of the dungeon without wasting any more time.

Shuvo eventually stopped screaming at the pace they were moving at, learning rather quickly that the best way to avoid getting slapped in the face by low-hanging tree branches was to keep himself pressed low against Blossom's head. It wasn't long before Shia hopped off his back and Vin poked his head into the new forest dungeon. He also gave her the measurements he'd taken of the shrine of rebirth, asking her to bring them to Witherson so she could get all that sorted out while he dealt with Shuvo.

Shuvo proved he could follow directions easily enough as the elf waited patiently at the entrance for Vin to explore a bit of the dungeon to keep the Gods happy, and it wasn't long before Vin came back for his new pupil, taking a look at his newest and quite exciting notifications as they took off. New dungeon discovered! 5, 000 exp gained. Level up! Adventurer of the Arcane lvl 49! +3 Attribute points to spend. One more level…

Vin thought, more than a little excited to finally reach the point where he could start actively using Beyond the Veil again. The speed at which he and Blossom were running made conversing with Shuvo pretty much impossible, as the Alchemist was devoting all of his focus to offering prayers to the Gods and desperately trying not to fall off, so Vin focused on his interface.

Vin's focus, magic, and endurance attributes eclipsed his strength, dexterity, and vigor attributes by a huge margin at this point, and he was tempted to try and balance himself out once more. At one point, he'd thought about keeping his less-important stats at roughly a 1: 2 ratio with the ones he really cared about, but he'd pretty much thrown that idea by the wayside with how much more important focus and magic were for him.

Every point in magic added to the size of his mana pool he had to draw on, and every point in focus allowed him to create new spells and master runic formations more easily. His strength, vigor, and dexterity were all already at or beyond peak human levels, and he was in no rush to bump them up even further. Similarly, his endurance was already so high Vin could basically run for multiple days without stopping if he had to.

And seeing as he'd continue getting a free point placed into it with every level, he decided it was time to really start focusing on magic and focus, so he placed two points into focus and one into magic. The fact that he'd only been on Edregon for about four and a half months now and was already on the precipice of reaching level 50 put a massive smile on his face.

While this unique world was absolutely the optimal conditions for an Explorer to level within, that didn't take away from how hard he'd been working all this time. The speed at which he was leveling was definitely slowing down with every prestige, but Vin was confident that he'd continue getting stronger and stronger with every passing week. Who knew. Maybe he'd even end up reaching level 100 one day like the librarian was counting on.

Vinnie Stone Adventurer of the Arcane: Lvl 49 Titles: Human Vessel (Lesser), Common Ally (Minor), Survivor, Epic Monster Slayer, Spell Weaver Exp.

1, 179, 460/1, 225, 000 Strength: 20 Dexterity: 30 Endurance: 75 Vigor: 25 Focus: 78 Magic: 77 Attribute Points: 0 Skill Points: 1 Passive Points: 0 Class Ability: Beyond the Veil Vows/Boons: Vow of Benevolence/Grace of Gods (Boon) Capstone: Runic Recalibration, Flexible Formations Passives: Mental Map, Polyglot, Distance Runner, Threat Detection, Iron Mind, Mana Well, Artifact Extraordinaire, Magical Adept, Spell Builder Skills: Tracking lvl 12, Manacraft, Introspection lvl 20, Dungeoneering lvl 15, Total Resistance lvl 19, Running lvl 19, Cartography lvl 12, Drawing lvl 12, Swimming lvl 17, Sleeping lvl 17 Tier 0 Spells: Sense Stone (earth), Sense Life (life), Sense Magic (neutral), Sense Curse (curse), Sense Air (air), Sense Dimensions (spatial), Sense Vibrations (vibration), Sense Death (death), Sense Fire (fire), Sense Water (water), Sense Soul (soul), Sense Gravity (gravity), Sense Dream (dream) Tier 1 Spells: Renewal (life), Entangle (nature), Replenish (nature), Light (light), Summon Stone (earth), Concealment (neutral), Familiar Pheromones (nature), Whispering Wind (air), Create Water (water), Isolate Dimension (spatial), Tremorsense (vibration), Decay (death), Neutralize Poison (life), Detect Truth (soul), Create Flame (fire), Enhance Gravity (gravity), Create Air (air), Slow Fall (air), Protection from Fire (fire), Extinguish (fire), Still Wind (air), Firm Water (water), Vibrate (vibration), Create Dream (dream), Dream Mark (dream) Tier 2 Spells: Stone Shot (earth), Stone Wall (earth), Stone Shape (earth), Stone Furniture (earth), False Life (death), Dimensional Sheath (spatial), Aqua Sphere (water), Redirect Gravity (gravity), Fireball (fire), Create Cloud (air), Magic Lock (spatial), Self Destruct (fire), Replenishing Breath (air), Warmth (fire), Mage Hand (gravity), Tremorsight (vibration), Dream Walk (dream) Tier 3 Spells: Binding (spatial)