Explorer of Edregon

“Wait wait wait, I got it, I got it!” Scule said, ignoring everyone’s laughter as he scrunched up his face and wracked his brain in thought. “Pixies are an obvious one, and I remember the goblins. So if it’s not trogums… Dwarves? Are dwarves one of them?”

“Nope. I already had a bond with the dwarves when I first got my title,” Vin said, laughing at Scule’s string of curses as the petian failed yet again to correctly guess the ten new races Vin had allied himself with in order for his title to upgrade from minor to lesser.

Common Ally was an interesting growth title in that it required the person holding it to have not necessarily befriended a bunch of other races, but to have established some sort of mutually beneficial deal that both sides felt reasonably happy with. He’d first earned the title months ago, funnily enough while consoling a sobbing Lumel after she’d been banished from her own fragment. That was long before they started dating, but Vin had helped her realize being kicked out of home wasn’t the end of the world, offering to give her a place to live in town with them if she so chose.

The original ten races that Vin had formed bonds with during his time venturing across Edregon were human, elf, petian, ghost or golem, pulmon, dwarf, trogum, infernal, dryad, and minotaur. As they made their way to the first of the six fragments on the north-side of the third ring, his friends were entertaining themselves by trying to guess what the ten new races were to cause the title to upgrade.

“So we’ve established pixie, goblin, neilans, hilariously enough, and the avisul,” Shia said, ticking them off her fingers while Blossom galloped along underneath her. “Beastkin weren’t in the first group of ten, so they have to be in the second. I’m going to assume schlimes is one, because of Epli… the meriders?”

“Yep, those are all on the list,” Vin said, laughing harder as Scule started cursing anew. During his time running around and helping make up for lost time within Terra, Vin had managed to piece together the ten new races easily enough. “Any other guesses?”

“Orcs,” Alka added, running robotically beside them as she shook her head. “How could you all have forgotten about Trod?”

“Actually, I think it was Grunt that added orcs onto the list, not Trod,” Vin admitted. “Trod is more your guy. Grunt and I worked together to save his whole people.”

“Fair enough,” Alka shrugged. “I still got one.”

“That only leaves two,” Scule muttered. Before he could make another guess, Reginald chimed in with a squeak, and Vin nodded.

“Yep, I was surprised as well, but I’m pretty certain capillans are on the list now. I know we didn’t really have a great time meeting with Forpurt’s people, but I have a hunch us going to his settlement like he wanted and following his people’s customs, and then leaving without throwing a fit when they refused to teach us, left a mark with Forpurt. It probably helped firm up his status as one of their Trusted Ones.”

“Fair enough,” Shia said, taping her chin as she thought. “Oh, you never told us Ovord’s race! That’s cheating!”

“Ovord is one of them, but even I don’t know what his race is,” Vin admitted.

“And I appreciate you not asking again,” the mage muttered. Despite listening in, his focus was clearly elsewhere, and Vin wasn’t surprised. After taking a trip through the dungeon to the neilans’ fragment, they were now running along the edge of the crystalline fragment, with a wall of magical darkness nothing could pierce through to their left. For someone who was still getting used to the whole concept of world fragments being connected to one another to form a new world, it was quite a sight to start with.

“Head up, we have incoming,” Alka said, pointing with her sword at the crowd of rampaging monsters heading their way. There had to be nearly forty large, raging bulls covered in crystalline armor stampeding toward them, causing the millions of tiny crystal shards beneath their feet to start shaking.

“Should I bust out Living Giant?” Shia asked, peering at the approaching swarm.

“I think we’re okay,” Vin said, pointing a finger and throwing together his strongest spell. “Meteor.”

Once it finished forming, the large ball of flaming stone blasted down from overhead, crashing into the center of the crowd of monsters and killing a few of them instantly while knocking others off their feet. Their crystal armor and dense muscles made them quite robust, but Vin had already accounted for that, having begun casting a second Meteor while the first one was still partially forming. Continuing to fire off a new Meteor every other second, his friends watched as he single-handedly reduced the swarm of raging bulls to little more than bloody chunks of crystal and flesh before they could even get within a hundred feet of them.

“Not bad,” Ovord admitted while Vin regulated his breathing and borrowed from the mana around him to replenish his pool. The hard, sharpness of the crystals surrounding him and the slippery chill of the darkness to his left washed through his body as he borrowed their mana, but he ignored the sensations, allowing it to filter into his own pure mana as he wished. “I still don’t understand how you are able to refill your mana like that. Such a technique didn’t exist on my world, as far as I know. I got around mana issues by creating mana pockets within my own soul that I could open and access as needed. Far less unpleasant feelings, I might add.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That’s a pretty neat solution,” Vin admitted, making sure to press a finger against his temple as he spoke. Doing so didn’t do anything, but it was the signal his team had agreed upon him using while he spoke with Ovord so they wouldn’t get confused. “Souls can do that?”

“Souls are remarkably flexible things. They can bend and twist, expand and contract… How do you think I managed to survive my own soul being torn to shreds?”

“We’ve got to figure out a way to get that dude a voice,” Scule said, frowning as he stared at Vin’s chest. “Now I get why Alka hates the trogums so much. Only being able to hear one side of a conversation is really annoying.”

“We’re working on a few ideas,” Lumel admitted. “I have to admit, I’m pretty curious to speak with a former Arch Mage myself. Vin, has Ovord mentioned what his level used to be?”

“No, he refuses to talk about it. Apparently, all that stuff was considered extremely private on his world. Levels, skills, the whole thing. Arch Mage wasn’t even his actual class, just a title he’d been given.”

“The fact that you all go around sharing that information…” Vin sensed Ovord shudder, as though the very idea was utterly incomprehensible to him. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much that bothers me. It would be one thing if you’d accepted my offered soul bond, but as you rejected my fealty, I refuse to share that information with you.”

“And I am quite fine with that trade,” Vin muttered.

It had only been a few days since striking his deal with Ovord, but already, Vin was beginning to get a decent feel for the man. While the mage had the occasional comment here or there, he didn’t tend to speak up too much unless magic was involved somehow. If it was, he was always happy to share his own opinions on how something could be done better. While the rest of the council didn’t take the news that Vin was helping out the soul mage all too well, Vin was feeling pretty alright with the whole thing, largely thanks to his Common Ally title.

Before, his title allowed him to simply know a handful of common things about any race he met. These random bits of information were largely focused around physical traits, such as how orcs could heal themselves simply through consuming copious amounts of meat, or how pulmons could breath through their skin and would die within minutes outside of the water without any sort of magic. Now that it had been upgraded, he was able to dig a little deeper.

Curiously, whatever race Ovord was, not even his title allowed him to piece together its name. He didn’t know if that was because the man didn’t have a physical body left to him, or if the Arch Mage had done that good of a job of camouflaging his soul that not even his title could pierce through it. When he tried to think about Ovord’s race or their physical biology, all he got was the magical equivalent of static. Even so, there was one thing he knew for certain.

Ovord’s people believed heavily in the weight of one’s words. Verbal promises, while not necessarily binding, were still very important things to them, and to go against one’s word was incredibly shameful. The fact that the soul mage had sworn he was willing to play nice meant a lot, and seeing as he hadn’t done anything beyond watch the world around Vin and comment here and there since then was a point in his favor.

“We should be coming up on the new fragment soon,” Vin said, getting everyone back on track as they continued running through the crystalline desert. “We don’t know half of the fragments bordering this one, but we do know they’re adjacent to the locust swarms that can strip a body clean in seconds, the crystalline desert littered with rampaging monsters, and the fragment filled with magical darkness. It’s not surprising anyone potentially living up here hasn’t managed to come south.”

“We’ve got enough going on down here that I don’t blame them,” Scule nodded. “Still, I’m curious to see what we find. I’ve been holding out hope for a fragment of petians one of these days.”

It wasn’t long before the border of the next fragment came into view, and Vin peered through into the land beyond the edge of the crystalline sand as they approached. Wet, mossy stones ranging from pebbles to boulders stretched out as far as the eye could see, while numerous geysers erupted all over the place one after another. Each blast of water only went up about twenty or so feet, before coming back down as mist and droplets of water.

There were creatures that looked like a blend between fish and lizards crawling around the wet stones, munching on moss and occasionally fighting one another when any two of them got too close to one another. Birds that reminded Vin of pelicans drifted through the air with heavy flaps of their wings, opening their beaks for a quick drink without even touching down and occasionally trying to dive and snatch up a quick dinner.

“It’s always birds,” Scule grumbled. Already having gotten out his new blowgun, he narrowed his eyes at this new threat. “Seriously, did the Gods have to put birds on every world? Lack of creativity, that’s what it’s a sign of.”

“I’m sure Contracts would love to hear that,” Shia snorted, causing Scule’s face to pale slightly as he began backpedaling. Shaking his head at their antics, Vin stepped into the new fragment, noting how wet and humid the air was.

Third ring fragment discovered! 1,500 exp gained.

“This is nice,” Lumel smiled from his back, taking a deep breath and letting out a content sigh as water misted down onto her face. “I like this fragment a lot.”

“We haven’t even gone two steps into it,” Vin chuckled as he helped her down. “Though it would be nice to find a fragment that wasn’t a secret death trap for a change.”

“Well, we’ve got about two weeks to get through six fragments,” Alka pointed out, stepping into the fragment beside them and peering at one of the nearby critters. “That should be more than enough time to figure out if there are people living in each one and if there are any unknown threats. Even with all the random detours we tend to take along the way. Shall we?”

“Might as well,” Vin said, cracking his neck as he summoned his staff and started walking forward into the unknown. “No time like the present!”