Explorer of Edregon

“…And that’s why the three of you were accidentally sent scattered into different fragments instead of our main one,” Vin explained to the three missing Earthers currently sitting in stone chairs he’d summoned. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, I have one,” Jess, the woman with the large earrings, said as she raised her hand. “…What’s she doing, exactly?”

Vin glanced to the side at Garni, who was currently tapping his golem arm in different spots with some sort of tiny hammer while listening to the echo with her pointed ear physically pressed against the limb. Earlier she had wrapped the entire arm in some sort of black tape and asked him to flash his mana gem a few times, and after that she’d had him squeeze a few different balls of metal, measuring the indentations his fingers made in each one. She’d run test after test during his lengthy explanation for the missing Earthers, and she didn’t seem like she’d be stopping anytime soon.

“I ended up striking a deal with the goblins,” he explained. “In exchange for temporarily opening their wall and letting the beastkin and orcs travel through their land, I’d let them examine my prosthetic golem arm.” Seeing the wide eyes on the three Earthers, he chuckled. “Trust me, this kind of thing happens a lot.”

“And the rankers aren’t going to come after us?” John asked. He was rather fidgety and always glancing over his shoulder at every little noise, but seeing as he’d just been held captive for the past few weeks, Vin couldn’t really blame him.

“No, they have enough on their plates at the moment,” Vin said, earning a sigh of relief from the man that he knew by now was more for show than anything. John always seemed scared or worried about something, regardless of what he was told.

“Did you end up killing him?” Thomas asked, his fingers moving quickly from one sign to another as he ‘talked.’ “The ranker king, I mean.”

“No, I was forced to rip his hand off in order to escape with my life, but I didn’t kill him,” Vin said, earning confused looks from Jess and John, neither of whom could understand sign language. Thomas had been ecstatic when Vin mentioned his Polyglot passive, and Vin had been surprised to discover that the passive not only let him understand spoken languages, but sign language as well. He even got the sense that he could respond in sign language as well if he wanted, though with Garni currently messing around with his left hand, he stuck with simple English. Thomas was mute, not deaf, so there weren’t any problems there. “I even dropped him from a few thousand feet up, but he was strong enough that the fall wasn’t enough to kill him.”

“So are all the people from Project Ark super-wizards, or whatever you are?” Jess asked. “And who was the lavender chick you kissed earlier? Some sort of alien?”

“No, I’m a bit of a unique case,” Vin chuckled. “And that was Lumel, she’s my girlfriend. And she’s a pulmon, not an alien. You should get used to interacting with different races, we’ve got a handful back in Terra where the people from Earth live.”

“We have to live with people who aren’t even human?” John asked, shuddering at the thought. “Is it safe?”

Vin briefly thought about mentioning how the Bands were technically rehabilitated, hardened criminals from their old world, before deciding someone else could be the one to bring that up to him. “Yes, they’ve all been vetted via truth gem. The town is safe.”

“When can we see it?” Thomas asked, looking excited. “I’m super curious what—”

“So you’re going to get us back safely, right?” Jess asked, not realizing Thomas was signing as her eyes stayed glued on Garni and her strange experiments. “Just asking, because after this whole crazy ordeal of getting kidnapped by the ranker king, I’d rather not be sent off on our own again.”

“Yeah, I’ll get you guys back safely,” he said, nodding toward Thomas. “Sorry, you were saying?”

“I’m just curious what a fantasy town looks like,” he repeated, giving him a warm smile. “Do you guys have dragons guarding the gates? Or floating buildings?”

“We’ve only been on Edregon for a few months, there is a distinct lack of floating buildings at the moment,” he said, biting back his laughter at the saddened look on Thomas’ face. The man had to be only a year or two below Vin in age, but he really wore his emotions on his sleeve. “One of the council members has the Durable Architect class though, and she’s probably nearing her second prestige by now. Maybe she’ll be able to whip something like that up before too much longer.”

“Who are the other council members?” John asked, looking hopeful. “Are they strong? You didn’t talk about them.”

“Yeah, every member of the council is pretty tough,” Vin said hesitantly, spotting the knowing look on Thomas’ face. The man raised an eyebrow, as if saying ‘do I really have to ask?’ and Vin sighed. “We are all pretty tough. I’m one of the five council members.”

“Really?! But you’re like, what, twenty?” Jess asked, looking him up and down as if reevaluating her image of him.

“Age doesn’t really matter here on Edregon,” he shrugged. “It’s all about levels and abilities, and I’m the highest-level Earther in town.”

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“The ranker king said you were an Explorer,” Thomas pointed out. “Do the other Earthers roam between fragments like you do, or is that too dangerous?”

“Yeah, I’m basically the only one that makes a habit of doing so,” Vin admitted. “Edregon is a dangerous place. None of you should try venturing out on your own without someone who knows what they’re doing watching over you. At least not until you get a few levels under your belt. Speaking of, what classes did you guys even pick?”

“I’m a crafter with a specialization in jewelry,” Jess said, hooking her thumb at John. “Scaredy cat here is a Watcher, and we have no idea what Thomas picked. He tried to charades it out for us at one point, but we couldn’t understand.”

“I’m a Student,” Thomas signed, rolling his eyes. “They kept guessing ‘Reader’ or ‘Book Lover.’ I don’t think they’re that smart.”

“Those are some interesting classes,” Vin admitted, managing to turn his laughter into a slight cough. “What does a Watcher do?”

“Keeps an eye out for danger,” John said, puffing up his chest a bit. “I figured wherever we were going it was bound to be dangerous!”

“That might actually be huge,” Vin said slowly, thinking about how the Watcher class might be the perfect early-warning system Terra was missing when it came to the surprise monster waves. “If your class works like I think it does, you’re about to make some powerful people very happy. Thomas, what does Student do? I actually had the option to swap over to that base class during my first prestige, but I don’t know of anyone who started with it.”

“It comes with bonus attribute points in focus with each level and the Fast Learner passive,” Thomas shrugged. “Not sure what that does yet. I was working toward a degree in history when Sender X sent me that message. Seeing as I was already a student, I figured why not just go with the Student class as well, you know?”

“I don’t blame you, I think that’s what a lot of us ended up doing,” Vin admitted. “Certainly what I did, anyway.”

“Man, I wish we could understand what he was saying,” Jess said, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I felt really bad the last few weeks that we couldn’t talk to him all that well. We only even knew his name because he spelled out the letters in the air with his finger for us.”

“The rankers wouldn’t give you a notepad or anything?” Vin asked.

“The rankers could understand him no problem,” Jess shrugged. “So no, they didn’t really care that we couldn’t understand one another.”

“Right, I forgot their strange soul brand gave the ability to understand other languages,” Vin muttered. “Speaking of magic, you guys don’t need any magical healing or anything, right? Sorry, I guess I should have asked that sooner.”

“They didn’t hurt us,” John confirmed, shaking his head. “They just refused to let us go anywhere while that beastkin woman studied us. It’s been a weird few weeks.”

“Well, as soon as Garni here is finished with my arm, I’ll get you guys back to Terra in no time at all,” Vin promised, smiling at the relieved looks on all their faces. “Speaking of… Garni, do you have a lot more you’re planning to do?”

“Nope, that just about does it,” she said, pulling back on the chisel and hammer she’d been doing her damndest to chip off a part of his arm with. “Thank you for letting me run all the tests! We should be able to make huge improvements to our golems!”

“Maybe I’ll come back sometime and see how your new golems fare against my arm,” he said, laughing at the glint of excitement in her eyes. “You and I can have a one-on-one.”

“You’re on!” Garni said, scampering up onto her golem’s shoulders and waving at all of them. “Try not to die out there!”

While Vin waved goodbye, he heard John muttering quietly to Jess, clearly trying to keep him from hearing, but not quite understanding how the focus attribute enhanced a person’s senses. “If this guy is one of the council leaders, I’m a little afraid of what the town might be like.”

Thomas must have heard as well, as the man frowned and went to step forward, but Vin shook his head slightly, taking advantage of having both his hands freed again to quickly sign to him.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve heard far worse than that during my time here. Truth be told, I’d be terrified if all the other council members were like me as well.”

Thomas silently laughed at that, his chest shaking but no noise coming from his mouth as Jess and John looked at him like he was crazy.

“Follow me you guys, let’s get you back to Terra,” Vin said, turning and leading them toward the nearby wall. Garni had been kind enough to conduct her experiment outside, near the wall separating the goblins’ fragment from the pixies’. The fact that none of them could fit in the goblin’s home probably had something to do with that as well. “Okay, this is going to feel a little weird…”

Once they were in position, he raised a hand solely to indicate he was about to use magic, before casting Redirect Gravity. John and Jess screamed, and Thomas did so as well, albeit silently, as the four of them flipped upside down and fell upwards. Before they could freak out too badly, however, Vin cut the spell, allowing their momentum to bring them near the top of the wall. Just as they were about to start falling again, he cast once more. “Create Cloud.”

A large, soft landing pad appeared under them, and the three missing Earthers landed in a heap of limbs. Naturally, Vin flipped around and landed flawlessly on his feet, but he had weeks of experience messing around with gravity magic and quite a lot of attribute points under his belt.

“Please never do that again,” John moaned, clutching his stomach as they got to their feet. “Falling into the sky… not a fun sensation…”

“I don’t know, I thought it was pretty fun!” Thomas said, already over his initial fear as he hopped up and down on the cloud, testing its bounciness. “Magic is pretty cool!”

“We’ve got a few other Earthers learning magic already, I’d be more than happy to recommend you to Spur if you’re interested,” Vin said, motioning for them all to hop with him over to the wall. “Okay, on three, everyone jump. I have a spell that will let us drift down gently to the ground.”

“Jump?!” John scoffed, looking at him like he was mad. “Look how high up we are! There’s no chance in a million—”

Thomas leapt forward, grinning like a maniac as he grabbed the others’ hands, pulling them off the wall and plummeting to the ground right beside him as the two of them screamed. Chuckling, Vin leapt off right behind them, casting Slow Fall before the three Earthers splattered against the ground.

It was still a bit early to say for sure, but he had a pretty good feeling that Thomas was just the right amount of crazy for diving headfirst into the magic of Edregon.