Explorer of Edregon

Vin blinked as he took in the nervous pulmon sitting on the edge of his hospital bed. His initial reaction had been shock at her unexpected change in color, but it wasn’t nearly so jarring as it first seemed. Her skin wasn’t the same dark, rich purple as her eyes, which took after the color of her mana. No, the blood flowing under her skin and the flexing of her facial muscles that he’d grown so used to were now hidden under skin that was a soft, lavender color. As he stared, she cleared her throat, snapping him out of his trance. It was clear that she was waiting for him to say something, and he gave her a quick smile as he hunted for the right words.

“Sorry, I was just surprised!” he admitted, realizing that probably wasn’t the best start. Reaching out, he took her hand in his own, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Just as he’d felt earlier, her cool, gel-like skin was the same despite the change in color, and his smile widened. “I wish I was better with words, but I think the most important thing I can say would be that I still think you’re beautiful, no matter what you look like. Lavender looks good on you.”

Letting out a relieved sigh, Lumel slouched over, as though the act of sitting up straight had taken everything out of her. Looking up at him, she matched his grin. Rather than say anything, she scooted closer on the bed and gave him a soft, tender kiss, her unique lips cool to the touch against his own.

“You always say you’re not good with words, but that was exactly what I wanted to hear,” she said after they’d broken away.

“I have my moments,” he shrugged, earning a giggle from the mage. “Alright, my curiosity is burning away at me. What’s the passive?”

“It’s called Adaptable Camouflage," she explained. “You remember Waltz, the beastkin Scout with the twin crossbows from the Bands? He has the same one.”

“Oh yeah,” Vin nodded, remembering how the beastkin had surprised them by seeming to emerge from the very grass in front of them, his fur having changed color to flawlessly blend in with the terrain around him. It hadn’t been the only time he’d seen the beastkin shift color either, and the Scout was very good at using it to surprise his enemies. “So you can change into any color?”

“It’s actually even more impressive than that,” she said, her grin widening. “I can use the passive to change the color of my skin at any point…” she paused, a light blue suddenly rippling across her skin until presumably her whole body hidden under her robes had taken on the cool color. “Or, if I’m standing still and not moving…”

Vin gasped as her entire body shifted to match the same beige color of the hospital walls, including her thick robes. The color match was so perfect that if she’d been standing against the wall and he hadn’t known to look for her, he was pretty certain he never would have been able to pick her out.

“That’s incredible!” he laughed, clapping as she returned her robes back to normal and became a soft lavender once more. “So if you’re moving, you can only keep the effect on your body, but not your clothes?”

“Exactly. When I went to Kym to ask for his help with suggestions, he immediately gave me the idea for this passive and pointed me in Waltz’ direction if I wanted to ask questions. According to Kym, there are quite a number of passives that do similar things, but Adaptable Camouflage is unique in that I can basically set a color of my choosing and the passive will keep it up even without my focus.”

“That sounds like an extremely useful passive,” Vin admitted, thinking about all the different Earthers he knew who might be able to benefit from it. “Can anyone take it?”

“No, but as it turns out, I already had the passive listed among my options without having to do anything,” Lumel said excitedly. “There might be other methods of unlocking it as a potential option, such as prestiging with the Scout class, but there’s one very specific one I just happen to have already fulfilled after getting banished from my fragment. Obtaining the Survivor title.”

“Of course!” he said, punching a fist into his open hand. “That makes sense that such a useful passive for surviving would be linked to the Survivor title. Huh, I guess that means I actually have access to it as well. The thought of camouflage never really interested me, which explains why I never even noticed that one.”

“As soon as I realized that it was already on my list, I decided to put my head down and grind my way to level 45 even if it killed me,” she said, suddenly looking pained. “My desire to get my next passive point was the whole reason I didn’t go with you on your latest adventure. If I’d been there with you…”

“Hey now, I haven’t even talked about what happened just yet,” he said, squeezing her hand again. As cute as he found her new lavender-colored face, it was honestly a tad strange being able to see just her facial expression rather than the twitching in her actual muscles that usually came with them. “My time away wasn’t nearly as bad as it must have looked from the condition I was in when you found me. I was perfectly fine right up until the very last few minutes. Even got a fancy new tier 2 gravity spell out of the whole ordeal.”

“You did?” she blinked, clearly caught off guard. “Alright, maybe you should give me a run down on what happened.”

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“Probably for the best. And I know I missed the whole thing with Mary and the warana, but I was still gone for quite some time. I’d appreciate it if you could fill me in on anything else of note that happened while I was gone. Otherwise I’m going to have to track down some of those newspapers and get my intel the old fashioned way.”

“Have you already forgotten you have an actual Spy working under you?” Lumel giggled. “Theodore is essentially built for that type of thing.”

“He’s not nearly as pretty,” Vin shot back, enjoying the sight of her blushing. He’d more than gotten used to seeing her physical blood pooling around in her cheeks, but it was cute seeing her pale lavender cheeks turn a slightly darker shade of reddish-purple.

“You first, then I’ll go,” Lumel decided.

“Alright, fair enough,” he said, wondering where to even start. “So… have you ever thought about what society would look like if everyone was assigned a number based on how good they were at stabbing something?”

The rest of the day was spent explaining everything that had happened to him during his time in the rankers’ fragment, as well as catching up with Lumel on all the other things he’d missed during his time away. He’d been surprised to learn that on top of the five days he’d been gone, it had actually taken him a full day to recover in the hospital, which also explained why it had only been Lumel waiting for him to regain consciousness instead of all his friends. Apparently, despite Frank confirming that his body had been fully healed, he’d simply refused to wake up, similar to the last time Beyond the Veil had knocked him into a coma. Expecting it to take a few days again, his friends had gone off to do their own things, trusting in Lumel to wait here for him.

Vin had a sinking suspicion that the additional day he’d slept in the hospital was related to his ‘hearing’ the mana making up his body speak during his near brush with death. Comprehending the mana once again must have done a number on his mind before whatever strange barrier the Goddess had given him slid into place again.

Other than Mary getting kidnapped by the warana and the strike team being sent out to bring her back, there had been a few other notable things that happened in town during the past week. First and foremost, at the suggestion of many, Witherson had finally added a brand-new attraction to help with the issue of the town’s lack of entertainment.

The colosseum.

At least, it was called the colosseum. But in reality it was barely more than a large dirt field out beyond the town’s outer wall with enough seating to support a few hundred people as they cheered on their favored fighters. The fights were heavily regulated and required one of the town’s three Healers to be on standby at all times, but they were a huge source of enjoyment for the Earthers, and the colosseum was often packed from sun up to sun down. They didn’t have actual currency to bet with, but that didn’t stop people from putting things such as favors on the line, or trading preferential hunting spots.

Because that was one other new thing that the council had implemented while he’d been gone.

At this point, with the absorption of the fifth wave, Terra was beginning to get a bit large. There were close to four thousand people living in Terra now, if one included the Bands, which was quite the increase over the small, one hundred members of the first wave that had first come to Edregon. According to Golrim, each fragment contained about ninety-three and a half square miles of land within it, which was more than enough to house everyone and meant they wouldn't have any issues with the remaining four waves, including the massive wave of ten thousand people at the very end. However, that was only factoring in the entire fragment.

It came as no surprise to Vin to learn that the majority of people, combat classes and support classes alike who dealt with things like hunting, preferred to stick close to Terra. Few people wanted to jog four miles away from town just to go hunting. Because of that, there were a handful of preferential spots much closer to town that were so popular, things were beginning to get a tad heated between groups who didn’t want to share with others. Rather than let things turn ugly, the council had come together and created a ticket system for the most common spots within a mile of town. Groups who wanted to hunt in those favorable spots had to sign up at the town hall ahead of time, or risk losing the privilege altogether if they were caught fighting or hunting in the area by a team that had signed up via the proper procedure.

According to Lumel, this solution had caused a lot of grumbling about bureaucracy from just about everyone, but he understood why Spur and the others had implemented it so quickly. Back on Earth, he would have found such a system restrictive and unnecessary, but Edregon wasn’t Earth.

When any random warrior was almost certainly capable of cleaving someone in half with their sword if things got heated, and the town Guards who kept the peace had functionally no presence beyond Terra’s walls, a fight could turn deadly fast if a fight broke out. The larger the town got, the more conflict would begin brewing, and the more bodies Vin had no doubt would start turning up as others with dispositions like Kyle but with the intelligence to stay under the radar would start popping up. Abby was doing a fantastic job keeping crime low with her guards and access to the truth-gem, but even they couldn’t be everywhere at once.

All in all, while the addition of the colosseum and the implementation of hunting spot reservations was interesting, it sounded as though Mary’s kidnapping and her subsequent rescue were the biggest things that had occurred in his absence. Near the end of their discussion, Frank poked his head in and grunted out an order for him to get out of his hospital if he wasn’t playing dead any longer, which led to Lumel warping them back to their apartment.

“You know I could have made the walk myself,” Vin chuckled as she helped him sit in one of their common room chairs. “I’m fully healed!”

“I’m pretty certain Avaline, the Writer in charge of the newspaper, was waiting out front,” she explained. “I know you mentioned being interested in doing a piece at some point, but I figured you weren’t in the mood right now.”

“I will have an interview with her soon enough, but yeah, now isn’t really the time,” Vin nodded, sighing as he came to terms with what he had to do next. “What I need to do is let all our friends know I’m okay, and then have a chat with the council. There’s a pretty significant threat to the west, and we need to figure out how to deal with it.”