Chương 51: (50) 2.3. A Brief Debriefing

"Hey Vin!" Alice said, walking over and giving him a quick hug.

"Glad to see you're okay! I was worried when you disappeared after we brought the second wavers back to camp." Alice held him at arm's length, looking him over carefully.

"You holding up alright?"

"Just dandy," he said, offering her a weak grin.

"So… Councilor, huh? Moving up in the world."

"You're telling me," she snorted.

"I was just as surprised as you when Spur came to me and offered me the position. Though I guess it makes sense. A lot of my time is spent waiting to sense my traps activating, meaning I have plenty of time for handling council junk."

"Not to mention you played almost as important a role in our camp's survival as Vin did," Spur chimed in, locking the door behind them and gesturing for everyone to take their seats.

"Everyone from the first wave is well aware that it was your pitfalls and spike traps that bought us breathing room against the horde of monsters. Without those, we would have been overrun in seconds."

"Yeah, I guess I am pretty great," Alice said, earning herself a chuckle from Spur. Taking his own seat at the central table, Vin realized with a start that Phil had somehow managed to sneak into the room while he'd been chatting with Alice. Despite his muscular physique, the leader of the combat classes moved with an eerie silence, not made any less creepy by his seemingly always present stare whenever Vin looked his way.

"Phil…" Spur said, visibly exasperated.

"I didn't say anything at first because I thought it was hilarious, but you're going to have to stop staring at Vin like he's a Thanksgiving dinner if we want this council thing to really work." As if he hadn't even realized what he was doing, Phil blinked, finally looking away from Vin and grunting an apology.

'Man, that guy really wants to fight you,' Alka needlessly pointed out.

"I know, but I don't want to fight him," Vin muttered as quietly as he could. After finally getting the chance to see Phil in all his fighting glory, Vin had absolutely no desire to go up against the man. He didn't know what his class was, but Vin had a sneaking suspicion that Phil was probably the second or third highest level person in camp after himself and possibly Spur. Realizing Witherson was giving him an annoyed look, Vin stopped conversing with Alka, clearing his throat and giving Spur his full attention.

"Well then, I suppose our first item on today's agenda is a quick discussion of the current state of things," Spur said, shuffling through some papers he no doubt got from Lieutenant Myers before picking one and reading through it.

"As of right now, factoring in the casualties from the recent battle, the three crafters we lost early on, and the influx of members from wave two, we currently have 1, 070 people residing in camp. Seven of those people…" Spur paused, his gaze flicking to Vin's missing arm for the briefest of moments.

"... eight, I should say, have received permanent injuries. Luckily, just about everyone is still capable of contributing, although one person was paralyzed from the waist down when a razor sharp quill severed part of his spine." Vin winced at the thought of what that had to feel like, and based on the pained faces surrounding the table, he wasn't the only one sympathizing with the poor man.

"During my briefing you told me Vin and the elf both have healing magic," Witherson stated, raising an eyebrow.

"Why can't they just heal the wounded?"

"From what Shia explained to me, it's not that simple," Spur replied, motioning toward Vin.

"Do you want to add to that? You are our resident magic expert after all."

"There is a lot more to magic than you think," Vin said, wondering where to even begin.

"Spells are essentially cast when the caster carefully directs their mana into a stable runic formation. In order for a spell to work, you need enough mana to power the spell, enough focus to keep the spell in check, and a runic structure that actually does what you want it to do. The healing spell I know and used during the battle, Renewal," he paused, wiggling his fingers and shooting out a small beam of life mana despite the fact that nobody else at the table could sense it.

"... is honestly barely a spell at all. All it's doing is transforming my own mana into concentrated life mana, which naturally works to heal whatever I aim it at."

"So in order to heal a missing limb, you'd have to better understand biology?" Alice asked, clearly interested in all the talk of magic.

"Not just that, but I'd have to expand my knowledge of runes as well," Vin explained.

"The problem with that is learning runes on your own is dangerous. Poke and prod around even a little bit and you risk giving yourself runic backlash, which can be really, really bad. I got lucky that my Capstone skill actually gives me a little leeway there, giving me some innate knowledge of what certain runes do along with a few other benefits."

"What about offensive magic?" Phil asked, tapping the table.

"How easily could someone learn to throw a fireball for example? If we're going to encounter enemies capable of magic in this world, we'll need to learn to harness it for ourselves."

"I don't know, it would depend on their teacher, their magic and focus attributes, discovering the correct runes…" Vin sighed, counting items off his fingers.

"... there's really no way to tell."

"For now, let's focus on continuing to train your warriors as you have been," Spur ordered, getting a brief nod of acknowledgement from Phil.

"Maybe we can look into creating some sort of mage corps once we have a better understanding. Last thing we want to do is help our people blow themselves up after all."

"Enough about magic," Witherson said, pointing past everyone to the map Vin had just finished a few minutes ago.

"Spur's filled me in on the monsters that threaten us, but I'm more interested in our neighbors. Our camp is barely fit to house fifty people, let alone a thousand, and our defenses would make my old drill sergeant cry if he could see them. Even with all our manpower, it's going to take us some time to get things up to snuff around here and turn this campground into an actual fortified base of operations. Are we at risk of being invaded in the meantime?"

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"I don't think so," Vin said, getting up and bringing the map over. It was a little tricky to carry such a large sheet of paper with only one hand, but nobody said anything as he finally got it over and on the table.

"At this point, I've only encountered civilization in three of our six surrounding fragments," he said, pointing to each one in turn.

"The village of stone workers we've already initiated contact with and have agreed to peaceful relations. The elves within the sacred forest I have a personal agreement with, and their beliefs prevent them from leaving the forest anyway. And last is the citadel, which is currently under a self imposed lockdown that isn't going to be lifted anytime soon."

"Wait, what's this about a citadel?" Spur asked, his eyebrows shooting up as he looked at the fragment Vin had drawn, finally noticing just how large Vin had drawn the citadel itself.

"Is that drawn to scale?"

"It's pretty big," Vin nodded.

"At least a few miles wide, containing an entire city worth of people. However, like I said, they enacted a lockdown three months ago when their fragment was snatched up by the gods. Nobody is allowed in or out until one of their holy warriors says otherwise, and they have no idea that their holy warriors are all gone."

"A city that big means quite a lot of people," Phil said, looking like he was running some calculations in his head.

"Hard to estimate when they'll run out of food when we don't know how magic factors into their situation, but they'll run out sooner or later. And when they do…"

"They'll be forced to lift the lockdown whether they want to or not. Flooding out of their city and swarming our camp like locusts," Spur finished, frowning.

"What if we use this opportunity to establish good relations with them first?" Alice chimed in, peering at Vin's poorly drawn citadel.

"Right now we're foraging and gathering food far faster than we can eat it. I don't know how, but it doesn't seem like we're making the slightest dent in our fragments' local resources. What if we offered to trade that excess over to the citadel? Maybe for information, or goods we can't make ourselves yet?"

"Not a bad idea," Spur admitted.

"Vin? Think it would work?"

"Probably. The guards at the main gate were pretty amicable so long as we didn't try and break in," Vin said, thinking back to the bodies they'd found riddled with arrows by the gate.

"Though you'll need someone who can speak their language. Any sort of misunderstanding could turn dangerous fast."

"We've actually had a stroke of luck on that front," Spur grinned, grabbing a notebook and flipping through a few pages in search of something.

"Myers brought this to my attention the moment she heard… here it is!" Spinning the notebook around, Spur placed it on the table, pointing half way down a long list of names and classes.

"One of the newest members from wave two was a civilian who worked in public relations. Ended up picking Diplomat as their class of all things. I'll give you one guess as to their starting passive."

"Polyglot?" Vin offered.

"Bingo!" Spur laughed, grabbing the notebook and putting it away.

"At the very least, we don't have to worry about losing contact with our neighbors while you're out and about on your own anymore. We're planning on instructing a few other classes that we believe will get it offered at level five to pick Polyglot as well, so hopefully we'll have more than just the two of you soon enough."

"Honestly, that's a weight off my chest," Vin smiled, relieved that one of the strongest tethers binding him to camp had finally snapped. As much as he wanted their camp to survive and flourish, he just couldn't stand being bound so tightly to any one place.

"Speaking of our neighbors, I was actually planning on dropping by the stone village before heading out to explore the next ring of fragments," he added, the stone artifact practically burning a hole in his pocket at this point.

"Need me to bring them anything?"

"In fact I do! After you told us about how much they prized information, Myers had the idea to offer them a few of our easier to read books. Obviously they can't read them, but we have plenty of duplicates and it's the thought that counts."

"Wait, you're leaving already?" Alice asked, clearly saddened by the news.

"You only just got back a few days ago, and you spent all that time hiding in the forest!"

"I too am curious how we plan to conduct council meetings with Vin gone for days at a time," Witherson added, pointing out the obvious.

"Especially this early on in our camp's foundation. We'll need to meet frequently, possibly multiple times a day moving forward."

"Lord give me strength," Spur muttered under his breath, his words only audible to Vin thanks to his high focus.

"While Vin is absent, things will function like usual. In the event we need to decide something by vote and end up tied, my vote will count as two."

"That hardly seems fair," Witherson said, crossing her arms.

"You're forgetting the entire reason we have a council is because I want there to be one," Spur said, leaning forward and fixing the general with a cold stare.

"If you don't like it, we'll get someone else to represent the crafters." The military commanders stared at one another for a moment, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. Alice's gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them as if wondering who would strike first, while Phil took advantage of the moment to stare hungrily at Vin once again. Finally, after a few seconds, Witherson sighed and leaned back, relaxing in her chair.

"I'll put up with it. For now. But I plan to revisit this issue once I have a better understanding of this world and I've caught up to you in level."

"Psh, in your dreams sister!" Spur grinned, immediately switching back to his usual easygoing self.

"Anyway, now that that's settled, time for a far more exciting agenda item. Camp disputes!" A series of groans spread around the table as Spur laughed, pulling out a much thicker folder of paper than Vin had hoped for and giving them all a mock look of disappointment as he pulled out the first sheet.

"Shame! Shame on all of you! Keeping our people happy is essential to keeping everything running smoothly, and that starts with intervening in their stupid arguments that they felt the need to bring up to us." Clearing his throat, Spur began reading, seeming to savor every word as he read out the first of many disputes.

"Issue one. Apparently there's a large boulder a half mile from camp that two different crafters both wish to use for a sculpture." He paused, raising his eyebrows as he read through the details.

"Well, the solution seems simple enough to me."

"I call for a vote on whether or not to solidify the rule of dibs into our new government's constitution…"