Explorer of Edregon

Vin spent the next few days out and about across Terra, doing what he could to help with the aftermath from the battle for wave seven and keep spirits high. Even if this latest battle had resulted in their fewest casualties to date, there was plenty of structural damage and cleaning up to be done. The colossal dragon had smashed through a significant portion of Terra’s new outer wall in its attempt to kill Scule and his poison corps, and a handful of flying monsters had flown over all their defenses and into Terra itself. Thankfully, all the noncombatants had been thoroughly secured and nobody who wasn’t fighting was injured.

Not physically at least.

The general mood in Terra following the large-scale battle was somber for a change. Rather than celebrating their continued survival and looking toward the future, it was almost as if a dense gloom hung over everyone’s heads, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why that was. Terra had gradually fallen into a fairly simple cycle. Clean up and rebuild after a monster wave, train for the next one, survive, and then gather the new troops in order to start the whole thing again. Only for the first time since setting foot on Edregon, they weren’t going to be receiving new Earthers this time around.

Vin had been surprised to realize just how important that injection of fresh blood was for Terra as a whole. Life still went on, as there was plenty of work to do, but feet seemed to drag and the atmosphere was tinged with depression and hopelessness.

And Vin didn’t mean that metaphorically. While opening his soul to manually refill his mana pool by borrowing from his surroundings, he could feel the gathered surface emotions of those around him.

“Something needs to be done,” Vin said, casting Stone Shape and smoothing out a crack that had been left in Terra’s main wall. Before the infernals could go about restoring all their rituals for the next wave, they had to ensure that the wall was fully repaired and structurally sound once again.

“Done about what?” Myers replied, hard at work repairing one of the ballistae a dozen feet to his right. Shia had already finished using Regeneration to regrow the crafter’s missing fingers that she’d blown off during the battle while testing a belt-fed, explosive crossbow of her own design.

“Done about the town!” Vin said, turning and gesturing toward Terra. “Don’t tell me you can’t sense the atmosphere. I’m not even a people person and I can tell something’s wrong. It feels like everyone tried to throw a joint birthday party and none of the guests ended up showing up.”

“Morale is certainly lower than usual,” Myers admitted, putting her tools down and sitting up, giving him her full attention. “What do you propose we do?”

“I don’t know… But we need something to try and counteract this. Otherwise everyone’s going to be in the wrong headspace for the next few months, and then the battle for wave eight is going to be a slaughter.”

“Golrim has expressed the same concerns,” Myers admitted. “And I agree. We’ve been brainstorming some potential solutions, and the current front runner is a rather fun one. Golrim believes Terra should start up a celebratory tradition.”

“Tradition? What do you mean?” Vin had witnessed plenty of small traditions from various towns and villages he’d wandered through on Earth and Edregon alike, but he was curious what Golrim might have in mind. Any plan the former advisor came up with always seemed to have a subtler, hidden intention at play as well.

“Sort of like a holiday,” she explained. “Something to bring everyone together and take their minds off the fact that we’re missing seven hundred people. Nothing raises spirits like a celebration.”

“So… what are we celebrating? Surviving the battle for wave seven?”

“Actually, it’s one of my suggestions we’re probably going with. Humanity having survived their first six months on Edregon. That way we can make it a bi-annual thing and celebrate it twice a year going forward. Anything related to the monster waves wouldn’t really work once the waves are over.”

“Wow, it really has been almost six months, hasn’t it?” Vin muttered, thinking back and doing his best to crunch the numbers in his head. “Don’t we still have a couple of weeks left?”

“Today marks our one hundredth and seventieth day on Edregon,” Myers nodded. “Seeing as Edregon’s unique makeup removes things such as seasons or the changing of the moon, assuming we’re going with simple, thirty-day months, we have ten days until the six-month mark. Roughly a week and a half.”

“Isn’t waiting ten more days to try and fix this weird mood a bit long?” Vin asked, glancing over the wall at the lowered faces walking by underneath them. “It feels like everyone needs some sort of kick right now.”

“That’s the beauty of it. There is only one thing that gets people more excited for an upcoming holiday than the holiday itself,” Myers said, smiling as she followed his eyes and looked down at all the Terrans walking about below. “Preparation for it. We’re planning to announce the upcoming festival tomorrow. That’ll give people just over a week to figure out how they want to participate and grow excited for it.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“So it’s a festival? What exactly are you guys planning?”

“That’s still in the works, but at the moment, we’re thinking about making it a full-day event. A chance for crafters to show off their most impressive works. For combat classes to display the skills they’ve been honing all this time. An exhibition for the support classes to reveal what they can do. Chefs coming together to compete in a giant cooking competition and feed the public dishes they’ve never experienced before, Bards and Dancers stages to perform from and keep everyone entertained. Golrim used to aid in the planning of some of his former city’s main festivals, so he’s largely taking the lead on this.”

“Honestly, that sounds like a fantastic idea,” Vin admitted, imagining thousands of Terrans laughing and dancing through the streets as they enjoyed the festivities. While such rowdy events weren’t really his style, he thought it was exactly what the down and dreary Terra needed. “Anything I can do to help?”

“I’m sure Golrim will come to you if he has any ideas,” Myers said, turning to her damaged ballista as she got back to work.

Sure enough, only a few hours later, Golrim did just that. Vin was in the middle of wandering the fields with a few dozen others, utilizing his high focus to track down arrowheads that had been fired so that they could be repurposed for the next wave, when Golrim walked up to him.

“Nice to see the Roamer working among the people, searching through grass for shiny bits of metal rather than fighting dragons one-on-one,” Golrim grinned.

“It’s certainly a lot less stressful,” Vin chuckled, waving at the others that he was taking a break and for them to go on without him. “Need something?”

“Would you be so kind as to throw up Still Wind for me? I have a similar effect I can utilize with my left pointer finger, but I’d rather not burn through my limited mana if I don’t have to.”

Vin rolled his eyes as he did just that, summoning a bubble around them that would prevent anyone from hearing what they discussed. Golrim was unique in that, prior to coming to Edregon, he’d leveraged his power and resources as the king’s advisor to gather up a team of powerful enchanters and healers in order to transform his entire skeleton into a dense array of runic objects. By running his mana through different bones, he could do quite a number of different effects. Vin was slowly compiling a mental list of all the things Golrim was capable of, but the body had a lot of bones, and Golrim still managed to surprise him a lot of the time.

“There you go, no eavesdroppers now.”

“Thank you. Now, Myers tells me she already spoke to you regarding the upcoming festival, right?”

“She gave me the general gist,” Vin nodded. “Need my help with the preparations?”

“Not so much the preparations as during the festival itself,” Golrim said, giving him his usual sly smile. “I’ve helped plan hundreds of city-wide celebrations in my time, and no festival is complete without some sort of giant, main event. That’s where you come in.”

“I’m not going to do a song and dance number, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” Vin drawled, crossing his arms as he waited to hear the pitch.

“As amusing as that would be, I had something a little more up your alley that I was hoping to get your help with. The festival is going to be thrown in order to celebrate your people having been on Edregon for six months now, which was an excellent idea on Myers part. Though it got me thinking. What better event to act as the capstone for the entire festival, other than something to signify just how far you all have come in that short time?”

“Are you planning to unveil a new building in Terra?” Vin asked. “I’m confused where my help comes in with this.”

“I thought about something like that, but no, I came up with a much better idea,” Golrim said, his smile growing as he pointed toward him. “What better way to show how far you’ve all come than the unveiling of a giant map in the town square? One displaying not just one, or two, but three full rings of fragments surrounding Terra? Not only would it be an excellent reminder of all Terra’s capabilities for having mapped this dangerous land to such an extent in such a short time, but we can highlight and display our various allied fragments as well.”

“That’s a pretty cool idea… though there’s just one glaring problem with it,” Vin admitted, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t have a map of the full third ring yet. And admittedly, I’m not exactly all that close to finishing it either. I’ve still got two or three fragments in the south east, and the entire northern portion of the ring. That’s roughly ten fragments you’re asking me to explore in the next ten days.”

“I don’t suppose asking you to do one day per fragment would be an option?” Golrim asked, all but batting his eyelashes at him as Vin snorted.

“No. And not just because I don’t want to be rushed, but because of my class. The last time I tried briefly poking my head into a handful of fragments just to get the experience, I felt my own class warn me that I was treading dangerous waters. I’m an Explorer, I need time to explore each fragment I head into. I’m all for unveiling some grand map, but I’ll need more time than a week and a half.”

“Alright… how about an extra month?” Golrim asked, scratching at his stubble as he thought. “Rather than celebrate six months since your people first arrived on Edregon, we can celebrate six months since the official founding of Terra itself. Honestly, that was my original idea, but I wasn’t sure if waiting that long would be such a good idea. However, that would give everyone far more time to prepare their greatest displays of work and skill at the festival, and less time for the morale boost to wear off before the battle for wave eight arrives.”

“I can’t make any promises, but that is a lot more doable than ten days,” Vin agreed. “Roughly three or four days per fragment… Assuming nothing too wild and crazy pops up, I can try my best to finish up the third ring in that time.”

“Then it’s a good thing nothing like that ever happens to you or your friends,” Golrim said, laughing to himself. “In that case, I would recommend you gather your friends and see about getting started. You’ve put in your time helping out around Terra over the past few days, enough people have seen the Roamer working among the common folk to assist with your image.”

“What are you, my agent?”

“Something like that,” Golrim said, grinning as he gave him a wink. “When it comes to your public image, just leave everything to me.”