Explorer of Edregon

It had only been a few hours ago that Vin had gone head-to-head with a giant dragon intent on destroying Terra and slaughtering everyone within its walls, and he really wanted nothing more than to lie down and call it a day. But despite the fact that they were well into the evening and lights were being lit all across town, he had a job to do.

Vin got even more nods and double takes thrown his way as he walked through the streets of Terra over to the edge of town where most of the new construction was taking place. Most Terrans already looked at him like he was some sort of force of nature due to his reputation and the rumors of his exploits spiraling out of control, but after his battle against the giant dragon, he had a feeling things were going to get even weirder for a good while. Even if he hadn’t even been the one to land the finishing blow against the dragon, he’d been the one who directly faced off against it and took it out of the sky. As far as the thousands of Terrans who had looked toward the heavens and watched their battle were concerned, that was all that really mattered.

Still, I should ask Golrim to introduce me to the archer who made that crazy shot. Who knows what might have happened if he hadn’t finished it off when he did.

Jotting it down in his to-do list, Vin kept walking, returning a few of the calmer nods he had thrown his way. At the very least, the Earthers from the first, second, and third waves still treated him like a regular person for the most part. It was mainly waves four, five, and six where things started getting out of hand.

Such as the cult that had briefly formed a few weeks back in his name while he’d been busy rescuing Lumel from her dream journey. Somehow they’d managed to gather up almost a fifth of Terra’s entire population, right up until Vin had come home and put a stop to all that.

Shaking his head of all that madness, Vin realized he’d managed to reach the place of worship Witherson had mentioned. The building was one of the more impressive ones, and it had clearly had a lot of care put into it. Symmetrical carvings had been etched into the stone on either side of the main door, and stained glass windows that had been colored gold gave the building a look of true divinity. The interior was lined with simple pews with cushions on them, all facing a wall with a rather striking statue hanging from it.

A weeping, naked man from the torso up stuck out from the wall, his hands clasped in prayer as he stared up to the heavens. The statue of rebirth was just as prominent and breathtaking as it had been the first time he’d seen it, and Vin couldn’t help but stand there in the center of the aisle for a moment, taking in the sheer craftsmanship. It looked as though each of the man’s tears would drip off his face any moment now, despite the fact that they were carved from solid stone.

The Bands had used this statue to pray to the Gods in order to have the classes from their old lives removed and their past sins washed away. The former prisoners had gone from a group of Thieves, Bandits, and other such classes to things like Bakers or Farmers. Vin had no interest in giving up his class of course, but the statue’s connection to the Gods could be used for more than just that.

Noting how the building was empty, Vin approached the statue, taking in a deep breath before letting it out as he prepared himself. He’d only just spoken with the Gods a little over a week ago when he’d used his Friend of Mana Capstone to convince mana itself to transform a single one of its fragment-wide barriers completely solid, saving an entire town of people from being overrun by a swarm of trogums. The act had inadvertently killed him and stripped the God of Contracts’ divine chains from his chest, resulting in Benevolence and Contracts both showing up to rectify each problem.

Placing a hand on the statue, Vin didn’t even get the chance to close his eyes and pray before he found himself standing in that familiar black void. Blinking, he looked around, waiting for someone to appear.

“Hello, Vin,” the Goddess of Benevolence said, smiling at him as she manifested out of nothingness and took a step toward him. As always, she looked like a beautiful woman wearing some form of toga, with long, brilliant hair that drifted all around her head as though she were underwater. Yet somehow, the strands never got in her face, which Vin always thought was a rather interesting application of divine power. “It is nice to see you again so soon after your last visit.”

“Good to see you again too,” he replied, glancing around the void. “...I don’t suppose anyone else is coming to join this discussion?”

“Contracts is needed elsewhere at the moment,” Benevolence said, her smiling growing just a tad as she leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “Sadly, I cannot discuss with you most of what I would like to… but I am more than happy to have a pleasant chat with just the two of us.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Mhm,” Vin hummed, looking pointedly at the glowing, golden chains that briefly manifested across Benevolence’s chest before flickering away.

He wasn’t the only one who’d gotten on Contracts’ bad side.

“Anyway, there’s really only one thing I came to ask about, and I’m sure you know what it is,” he started, waiting to see if she’d say anything. When Benevolence simply stood there and kept on smiling silently at him, he continued. “...The ritual that the Gods use to bring Earthers over to Edregon? It getting yanked elsewhere for a split second? Right at the perfect time to deposit the seventh wave somewhere else on Edregon? Any of this ringing any bells?”

“Yes, I did witness the same thing,” Benevolence said, nodding sagely, but saying nothing more. Vin just stared at her as she went silent yet again, refusing to elaborate further. The fact that she wasn’t saying anything else in itself was a pretty big tell, but the problem was that he didn’t know what it actually meant.

“...Did the Gods change the ritual?” he asked, deciding to just come right out and say it. “We were sort of relying on these last three waves of Earthers to help bolster Terra’s population. We even built a giant, secondary wall to increase our living space and expand as more people came in. Yet all of a sudden, it’s looking like we’re going to have a lot less people coming to join us from Earth than we originally expected.”

“We had no hand in altering the ritual,” Benevolence said, her voice turning almost robotic as though she were reading off a distant teleprompter. Though as she spoke, she gave Vin a pointed look, her golden, glowing eyes boring into his own as if demanding he read between the lines. In an instant, Vin picked up on what she was trying to tell him, and he gasped as the most likely conclusion came to him.

There’s only one piece of information I know that Benevolence can’t discuss with me. Well, other than the origin of the Gods themselves, and that’s the other Earthers scattered about Edregon. If she can’t elaborate on what happened…

Earthers from one of the other countries must have altered the ritual.

While he had come to think of Terra as the last bastion for humanity regarding people brought over to Edregon from Earth, Vin knew that wasn’t actually the case. They had discovered back from the third wave that the Gods had picked more than just a single country to draw people from, which made perfect sense. They didn’t know the full extent of which countries had been chosen as many refused to collaborate with the others, but last Vin had heard, the list of confirmed countries with people vanishing had grown to nearly forty in length.

Admittedly, Vin didn’t really pay attention to any of that talk around Terra that always seemed to reignite with the arrival of each wave as people asked questions and shared news. News about religious wars that had broken out back on Earth in lieu of Sender X’s mysterious messages and people vanishing in the streets, or how certain countries had closed their borders until they’d gotten this figured out, were largely background noise to him at this point. Edregon was his home now, and he had more than enough already on his plate with all the craziness of Edregon for him to waste any time worrying about what was going on back on Earth.

That said, knowing that there were a few dozen other fragments where Earthers had been deposited on Edregon similar to their own was quite relevant.

“I know you can’t say anything. I’m just going to talk out loud to myself and gather my thoughts,” Vin said, getting a warm nod from Benevolence as she gestured for him to continue. “We know that you Gods picked a handful of countries back on Earth for some reason and started bringing their citizens over to Edregon in waves. You use a giant, stupidly powerful ritual in order to do this, which results in a massive, matching wave of monsters to end up spawning in turn. You all tried to make it so that the giant monster wave spawned long before the Earthers in the hopes that they would dissipate or kill one another before they arrived, but you messed up, because you were somewhat pressed for time and threw all this together at the last minute in order to save as much of the old universe as you could. Instead, the monsters ended up spawning only a few hours ahead of each wave, which resulted in the vast majority of Earthers dying out across Edregon when they popped into existence as frail, level 1 people with no real way to defend themselves. Our fragment is the only exception because there just happened to be a grand artifact in the citadel adjacent to us that was capable of redirecting monster spawns, giving us a clean fragment to start out in.”

Benevolence spent most of Vin’s speech watching him in silence, her usual, soft smile plastered on her face as though nothing were out of the ordinary. Yet when Vin got to the part about the citadel, a strand of godly hair drifted into her face, and she shook her head slightly, brushing it off her cheek. The moment she did so, he froze, staring at her as he got her message loud and clear.

What did I just say? Our fragment was the only exception because the grand artifact that the Relic Guardian was watching over stole all the monsters and gave us a fighting chance. I know that’s what happened, which means the only thing that she could be trying to point out to me would be—

Vin gasped, his eyes going wide as Benevolence’s smile only grew wider. All this time, due to their incredible luck with the Relic Guardian and his grand artifact, Vin had thought they were the only people from Earth who had managed to survive and prosper as a whole. But if what Benevolence was insinuating was true, that would mean they weren’t the only exception from what happened to all the others. That there was another fragment of Earthers somewhere out there on Edregon who had managed to stick together and grow strong, just as they had. And while Vin could make a thousand guesses as to why they had ended up doing what they did, all that really mattered was the end result.

For whatever reason, that other bastion of humanity somewhere who knew how many world fragments away, had stolen their people right out from under them.