Chương 164: Chapter 162: The return of Vincent

I get a reply from Vincent while we're talking to the guards at the gate, waiting for maester Cellin to be notified of our return. I'll meet you there. That's all he says. I half expected him to beg for more time to rest, but I guess he recovered a lot while we were in the dungeon. How long were we in there? I sent him the message as soon as we came out. I don't think we were in there for more than eight or nine hours. That's a decent night's sleep, but probably not enough to recover from his trip across the ocean.

Then again, he didn't send the reply right away. He waited until the next day, almost sixteen hours later, before he responded. That means he could have slept a full twenty four. That's more like it. Maester Cellin invites us into the same hall where we last met him, all smiles and congratulations. As soon as he congratulates us, we get the notification that the quest has been completed. And that one hundred thousand experience pushes me up to level 46.

Now I just need another three hundred and eighty thousand more to get to Vincent's level. I take my thirteen points and put five more into agility, bringing me to 300 agility and 402 defense. The other eight points I split with three in willpower and five in awareness. My stamina is almost as high as Gigi's hit points. That's kind of funny. I also get another secret quest for breaking three hundred in a stat. It's worth another 75, 000 experience. Secret quests are great like that.

I'm so glad that the value scales. I'd hate to go through all that just to get five thousand points. I mean, it's five thousand I didn't have otherwise, but at this point, that would just be a drop in the bucket. The maester offers us another meal, which we gladly partake in. I use my purify spell on the wine that we're served, but I have no idea if it actually does anything. I don't really think he's trying to poison us; I just want to cast the spell in case.

"So what are your plans now, great adventurers?" he asks once we've had time to dig into the food a bit. It's another bird creature, and this one tastes like chicken. It's greasy and delicious. I'm half tempted to tear it apart with my bare hands, but what little I know of etiquette stops me. I can see El wrestle with the same decision, and luckily she comes to the same conclusion.

"We are waiting for a member of our party to join back up with us," Ash says.

"Once he arrives, we will probably begin traveling further inland."

"You don't want to stay in our fair hamlet?" the maester seems almost saddened, but I can tell that it's just a mask he's wearing. He probably wants us to get as far away from his people – and his schemes – as possible. I bet he's pleased that we don't want to stay.

"We need to find a big city," Gigi says.

"Do you know the way to the nearest one?"

"Our town doesn't have all that you need?" Now the maester seems a bit offended, but again, I don't think the emotion is real. It's written on his face, but his eyes don't say anger. They still seem pleased.

"Please don't take offense," I say, trying to play my part as the face of the party.

"We don't want to disturb your people any more than we already have. The treasure we received from the dungeon is going to disrupt the local economy when we spend it, and we'd rather spend it somewhere that will be disrupted as little as possible. A bigger pool to add to, if you will." That was probably the wrong thing to say. I basically just told the guy that we have money, and we're not going to give it to his people, which means we're not going to give it to him.

Having a lot of charisma doesn't mean you always say the right thing. Damn it.

"Will you at least look at our local shops before you go?" Cellin asks.

"As a personal favor for me."

"Of course we will," Ash says, shooting me a bit of a glare.

"We wouldn't dream of depriving you of the revenue. We wouldn't have this windfall if it weren't for you, after all." See that? That's why Ash is the leader. That mollifies the maester, though I'm still not convinced he was the least bit upset to begin with. I think he wants us to get out of his territory as soon as possible. We're a variable he doesn't want to have to worry about. I wonder what his spy reported to him. I'm sure she reported that we cleared the dungeon. That alone proves that we're powerful.

The fact that we're all so much more powerful coming back probably gives him pause as well. I've noticed that the natives don't level up nearly as quickly as we do. It took Wrax forever to gain levels, and he was only level thirty. Cellin knows that we all gained multiple levels in the dungeon, which means he knows we gain levels quickly. Which makes us even more dangerous. He won't force us to leave or run us out of town or anything like that. He can't afford to risk us attacking him.

We're wingless barbarian psychopaths as far as he is concerned. He can't predict our actions, so the only safe thing for him is for us to leave of our own free will and take ourselves out of the equation for him. He's got plans for that dungeon, I'm sure of it. And those plans will go ahead without us, probably more safely than they would if we stuck around. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

But did the spy tell him that we were debating becoming gods? Did she tell him that we discussed the idea of divinity as if it were a potential option, as if we knew we were going to have the opportunity? Did she tell him that Ash didn't want to become a god because she felt like she was more powerful without being one? How would he react to that? He might just think that we're all crazy. But there's got to be that nagging thought, that worry that maybe we're not. That maybe we know something he doesn't.

That maybe we have capabilities that are beyond him, and that we might actually pull it off. All the more reason to want us gone. But greed gets everyone in the end, doesn't it? He still wants us to spend some of our money in his town, because spending that money will filter back to his coffers. So he has to wrestle between wanting us gone as quickly as possible and wanting to bleed our pockets dry first. I look around the room until I find the spy. Her name is still all in question marks, but I do find her.

Once again, she's just a few steps away from the maester, ready to step in if he has need of her, or if anyone moves to attack him. She seems a bit more wary of us than she was the last time. Makes me think that maybe she was spying on us in camp. She can't afford to underestimate us. I wonder if she'll suggest the maester just get rid of us as quickly as possible. But not kill us. If she and the maester believe that we'll respawn, they won't dare to kill us. We finish the meal and head back to town.

It's barely noon, and the maester doesn't offer us another night's stay at his castle. I can't blame him. Vincent meets us at the only magic shop in town. He claims it's just for convenience that he headed there, but I'm pretty sure he also just wants to see if there is a new spell for him to buy. We all hug when we see him. It's only been about a week or so, but it feels like a lot has happened since we last saw him.

"You've lost weight," Gigi says as she hugs him. He nods.

"Not much to eat on the ocean crossing," he says. And he really has lost some weight. He's kind of scrawny, actually. I bet if he didn't have his robe on, I'd be able to count his ribs. Maybe even see his heart beating against his chest. He looks like he was on Survivor or something. I guess a week of not eating really takes its toll. You can survive a lot longer than a week without food. Not without water, though. But I bet he had water with him. Or he could summon it with a spell.

Not a drop to drink in the ocean, but he isn't stupid; I'm sure he had something that kept him alive.

"How was the crossing?" El asks.

"Boring," Vincent says.

"But also good. I gained three willpower from it." I haven't gained any stats through natural increases in a very long time. Gaining three points of willpower is super impressive. I wonder if Amanda gained any.

"Did you talk to Amanda much?" I ask. He shakes his head.

"She's really private, and was more focused on the task at hand than on passing the time. We were kind of going too fast for a chat, anyway. And the ocean is a lot louder than you think it'll be." I can see why it was boring. Vincent does a bit of shopping, and ends up picking out a new set of robes for himself. He'll have to sew up the wing slits, but I don't think that bothers him. The bonuses of the robes must be pretty impressive. When he changes robes, his undershirt fairly hangs off his frame.

He's lost more than just a few pounds. But the weight will come back, I suppose. He also finds a spell he wants, but it turns out to be out of his price range. It's a spell that increases his allies' attack speeds by 10%, so Gigi pulls a few gems out of the party fund and buys it for him. None of us argue about that. The other shops don't have much of interest for us, though El does buy herself an extra set of javelins for ranged fighting, and Ash buys herself a functional sword for emergencies.

All in all, we end up spending about five hundred gold in the town. Which should make the maester happy, I suppose. We then head out of town towards the northeast. Maester Cellin gave us directions to a major city, and we have no reason to doubt him. Maybe it's not the closest city; maybe it's just the closest way to get out of his territory. But as long as there's a city there eventually, I don't really care. As we start moving, I take it upon myself to tell Vincent about everything that he missed.

I tell him about the monsters we've fought, about the island, and about our two flights on dragon back. He's sorry he missed out on the dragons, and seems particularly curious about the island.

"Maybe I'll head there some day," he says.

"See if for myself." It makes me wonder if he has gotten a taste for the solitary life from Amanda, and if he maybe wants to pursue it a bit more. Actually, thinking back, Vincent often prefers his own company. He gets to research his spells better that way, I suppose. He's still a member of our group, but by his own desires he's kind of a peripheral member. He asks a lot of questions about the dungeons, but doesn't seem sorry that he missed out on that.

The experience would've been nice, but other than that, he seems glad that he missed it.

"Not really one for all the traps and crawling around," he says.

"Though I could definitely have helped with the pit. I learned a spell recently that allows me to cast flight on someone else. I could have lifted you all out of there one at a time." Another spell? How did he learn that? Maybe there's something he isn't telling us. Maybe he just learned it from watching Amanda. Or maybe he can somehow figure spells out without seeing them, and made up the spell himself.

Or maybe he just advanced the flying spell that he already has to another level of rarity, and that improved spell included allowing him to cast it on other people. I think I'm just being paranoid.

"Can you maintain it on multiple people?" Ash asks. If he can, that would be great; he can fly at ten miles per hour, which is faster than we're all moving now. If he can keep us all flying, we can travel a lot more quickly. But he shakes his head.

"Still one target at a time," he says. That makes me think he used magic crystals to upgrade the spell. Makes sense that it would max out while he was flying. I mean, he had the spell maintained for more than seven days. That's more than 168 hours of non stop using a spell. That's definitely going to level it up. That reminds me. As we travel, I cast Blur on myself and maintain it for a solid hour.

It drains away 3600 of my mana, which is more than half, but it also levels my Blur up to 10, maxing it out and allowing me to move at 95% of my maximum speed. Of course, my maximum speed is still greater than everyone else's, so no one really notices that I'm not moving at full speed. My sneak does not improve.