Explorer of Edregon

Despite how tired he was from staying up for two straight days reading about artifact creation, the first thing Vin did as they left the library behind them and returned to the surface of the fragment, courtesy of Slow Fall, was tell everyone all about Ophena Becomes the Sky and his discussion with the librarian.

As he’d expected, reactions were divided.

“Really?” Shia asked, staring wide-eyed at him as they slowly drifted toward the ground below. “I never once considered that there was anything more after hitting level 100, but I suppose I could see that level of progression! What an interesting theory!”

“Please,” Scule scoffed. “Are you missing the part about how half of this is based on a children’s book? I mean seriously, thinking the Gods were once regular people like you or me? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The book was just an example of the Alphadivinity Theory, not what it was based on,” Lumel pointed out, looking curiously back up at the library. “I wonder how many other hidden secrets are contained within those tomes.”

“Eh, doesn’t really change much, to be honest,” Alka shrugged, clearly enjoying having two functioning arms again as she crossed them. “Hitting level 100 was already said to pretty much be an impossible feat. Probably just as impossible as becoming a God, so I believe it. It’s like saying if you ever learned how to fly without magic you’d become a bird. Interesting, but not really possible either way.”

“The librarian did stress that it was all just conjecture and theory,” Vin admitted as they gently touched down and his spell ended. “Though she seemed pretty set on the idea. Talking to someone without any actual emotions is strangely intense. You’d think it would be a more boring experience, but it felt more like I was walking on egg shells, always waiting for her to snap.”

“Well, regardless of all that, the main thing is that she’s cool with us using the library now whenever we want,” Alka said. “I’m not the biggest reader, but I imagine that’s pretty big for you guys, right?”

“It’s definitely huge, but not nearly as impactful as we’d hoped,” Shia frowned. “Most of the things we really want to read about are in the restricted, subterranean section where Groth hangs out. Hopefully the librarian will allow us access to that area one day, but I fear after helping ourselves to one of her golems, she may never grant that to us, despite her acceptance of our apology.”

“I suppose she considers the knowledge stored down there far more dangerous than a single one of her golems going missing,” Lumel said.

While everyone thought on that for a moment, Vin threw together an expanded Sense Dimension, deciding it was finally time to uncover the dungeon tucked away within this fragment somewhere. Yet when he cast the spell, and his mana shot off to search for dimensional oddities within the fragment, he was hit with an unexpected surprise.

“The library has something strange going on…” he said, turning to stare back up at it. “...I think the restricted section is larger than it looks.”

“Oh, you mean the additional space she added via spatial magic?” Lumel asked, nodding along with his discovery. “Yes, I noticed that the first time we came. I’d assumed back then she just had a giant basement she kept her golem-making supplies in, I hadn’t known about the restricted section."

“The fact that she’s enlarged her restricted section with spatial magic is interesting, but not really something that matters all that much, seeing as we can’t get in anyway,” Shia pointed out. “Good call on locating the dungeon within this fragment though. Which direction do we need to go?”

Vin took the lead, and the team began the long, slow trek off toward the location of the dungeon in the crater-marked fragment. The lack of monsters should have made travel rather fast, but having to weave around all the holes and avoid climbing in and out of craters slowed them down tremendously.

Out of everyone, Lumel was the only one that seemed actually happy about them being forcibly slowed down, her face flushed as if still recalling how Vin had been forced to carry her on his back the other day to help her keep up with the rest of the team.

Even with their reduced speed, the dungeon was close enough to the center of the fragment that it didn’t take them too long to reach it.

New dungeon discovered! 5,000 exp gained.

Dungeon Type: Cave

The dungeon type wasn’t anything new, as caves seemed to be one of the more frequent options used by the System when it created dungeons on all the different world fragments. Though the secondary information revealed something he hadn’t seen before.

Primary Monster Type: N/A

Strengths: N/A

Movement: N/A

Grouping: N/A

Dungeoneering increased to lvl 14! 1,400 exp gained.

“Weird. Dungeoneering is telling me that there aren’t any monsters that spawn from this dungeon,” Vin said, scratching his head as he went over his skill. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“I thought you said the neilans or whatever they were didn’t have any monsters in their dungeon?” Scule asked. “Because of their weird ritual.”

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“Even with their ritual shifting all the monsters to spawn in their adjacent fragment, their dungeon was still set up normally according to my skill,” Vin frowned. “This one is just utterly and totally empty.”

“Maybe it’s because the neilans didn’t have their ritual when their fragment was first brought over to Edregon,” Lumel hypothesized. “Think about it. They had to rebuild their giant ritual from scratch, whereas the library was brought over in its entirety. I’d be willing to bet that the librarian did something to her library to subtly prevent monsters from spawning around it. Though as to what that something is I have no idea.”

“If she’s in her fourth prestige, that’s not surprising at all,” Alka snorted, walking ahead of them into the empty dungeon and motioning for them to follow. “Come on, regardless of it being empty or not, we’re not gonna get to Terra any quicker if we just strand around chatting!”

Following her into the dungeon, Vin immediately took note of the uneven terrain and couldn’t help but chuckle at the Gods’ sense of humor. Similar to the space outside, the cave floor was churned up and hard to walk on, and there were floating chunks of earth drifting around within the cave tunnels all over the place.

“They really like to personalize these dungeons, don’t they?” he muttered to Lumel as they headed toward the Underside entrance.

“I like it, it makes each one feel unique,” she giggled, gently dragging her hand along the cave wall. “I have to say, I’m excited to discover this dungeon in particular. Like you said, I can feel that it was made different from the others due to whatever magic the librarian already had in place. I should be able to learn a good bit from studying this one.”

“That’s good! I know how excited you were to finally make it to level 45,” he smiled. “Honestly, it’s impressive-”

“Who the hell are all you people?”

Vin froze at the familiar voice, hearing a gasp from ahead of him as Shia spun around with a frenzied expression of longing on her face that was almost unnerving.

“Master!” she shouted, beaming as she bowed her head. “It is good to see you again!”

Standing a few feet behind their group was a golden, glowing elf in a mildly-torn green suit decorated with countless small leaf motifs. His snow white hair was still tied in a braid so long it needed to be wrapped around his waist like a belt, but parts of it looked to have been singed or potentially even burned off via some sort of acid. He was completely see through, revealing that his physical body was somewhere else entirely, but he radiated such power and poise that the fact was easily forgotten.

Before Vin stood the most powerful mage he’d ever met.

Yawning and scratching his chest like he’d just woken up from a nap on the sofa.

“Been actively hunting for you for the past couple of hours,” Shia’s master said, nodding toward the younger elf as he took them all in. “Quite the posse you’ve gathered for yourself. I like the tiny guy. He’s cute.”

“Cute?! I’ll show you cu-”

“Master, is everything okay?” Shia asked, speaking over Scule and ignoring his indignant grumblings. “You don’t look so good.”

“Oh, you know how it is, yet another epic monster that came at us in an attempt to wipe us all out,” her master said, waving away her concern. “We’re getting a new one just about each day now, though I can’t really complain. Still better than the occasional double spawn I have to fight back.”

“Double spawn?” Vin couldn’t help but repeat. “You’re fighting two epic monsters at once over there?!”

“Oh, you survived!” Shia’s master said, grinning at him. “Glad to see you can learn a spell under pressure. And you as well, sir rat, hope you’re doing well.”

Reginald nodded politely at the grizzled elf, squeaking out a hello.

“Are things truly that bad back in the old universe?” Lumel asked, almost flinching back as the elf’s curious gaze snapped onto her.

“Now you’re an interesting race if I’ve ever seen one,” he said, tapping his chin as he stared at her. “Though yes, to answer your question, things have only gone from bad to worse. The increasing monster spawns have gone up quite dramatically ever since the Gods’ abandoned this universe for your new one. We just passed the six month mark a few days ago. Frankly, I’m shocked that those of us who remained on our world have managed to hold out for this long.”

“Of course you held out, they have you,” Shia laughed, as though there was never even a shred of doubt in her mind. “Are you still working with the humans and orcs of your world? I’m surprised you hadn’t decided to abandon them by now.”

“The few of us still left alive don’t have the luxury of things like caring about race or past grievances," her master said, letting out an exhausted sigh. “We’re down to only a few hundred of us now, and we’re losing more with every passing day. I wanted to come in and let you know I’m about to do something drastic.”

“Drastic?” Shia blinked. “How drastic?”

“You recall how I used to allude to having been to other realms of existence when you were little?” he asked, seeing Shia nod. “Well, I’m going back. Temporarily at least. As the highest-leveled person left alive on our world, I am officially declaring it lost to the monsters and leaving it behind. If I don’t, we’ll only survive a handful more weeks before I end up making a mistake and we all go down. I can’t even remember the last time I slept, I’ve been essentially living off pure life mana for the past two months.”

“You’re going where?” Lumel asked, completely forgetting about hiding within her hood as she stared at the older elf.

“One of the many realms bordering the material, I’m taking what survivors I can and retreating,” he sighed, his golden form finally beginning to flicker a bit as Edregon started to reject his presence. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot out of me to do so, which is why I wanted to check in and let you know not to worry if you don’t see me for a few weeks. It’ll be some time before I recover enough to find another passage back to the material realm, doubly so seeing as I’ve never used this technique to travel to an entirely different world before. Nothing like doing utterly new, impossible magic on the fly, eh? Damn it’s good to be a genius.”

“Alright, just be careful,” Shia said, not sounding the slightest bit worried as she smiled at her master. Vin couldn’t help but blink at the realization that she had complete and utter confidence in her master to accomplish what he said he was going to do. He had the feeling that if the older elf told her he was planning to launch a one-elf war against the entire pantheon of Gods, she’d smile and wish him good luck.

“Come now, having fun is far more exciting than being careful,” the old elf grinned, nodding to them all one last time as the flickering grew so intense they could barely make out his form. “Oh, and Shia’s friends? Be sure to keep my star pupil safe in my absence! If anything happens to her, I’ll show you the horrors of making an enemy out of me!”