Explorer of Edregon

The most apparent and somewhat distinct feature of the new fragment they found themselves walking through was that moss was clearly the name of the game. There was no grass, no trees, no shrubbery of any kind. As far as Vin could see, moss was the only vegetation. A fact that their resident Druid was more than a little annoyed by.

“Moss is such a boring conversationalist,” she complained, grumbling to herself as she stood back up from a particularly moss-heavy rock located near one of the small geysers. “It barely pays attention to its surroundings, doesn’t really have any aspirations for the future, and half the time doesn’t even bother responding to me when I try to engage it in conversation!”

“That’s crazy, it almost never bothers to respond to me either,” Scule snorted, holding up a hand expectantly. With a small, high-pitched sigh, Reginald scurried out of Vin’s pocket and onto his shoulder just to give the petian a high-five with his tail before shaking his head and returning to his post.

While the others began a positively riveting argument about moss, Vin tuned them out, taking advantage of their calm surroundings to take a look at his interface. He’d been excited to see how his newly evolved title would play with his stats, but the results were a tad lackluster.

Vinnie Stone

Adventurer of the Arcane: Lvl 55

Titles: Human Vessel, Common Ally (Lesser), Survivor, Epic Monster Slayer, Spell Weaver

Exp. 1,495,260/1,540,000

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 30

Endurance: 81

Vigor: 28

Focus: 91(5)

Magic: 91(4)

Attribute Points: 0

Skill Points: 2

Passive Points: 1

Class Ability: Beyond the Veil

Vows/Boons: Vow of Benevolence/Grace of Gods (Boon)

Capstone: Runic Recalibration, Flexible Formations, Friend of Mana

Passives: Mental Map, Polyglot, Distance Runner, Threat Detection, Iron Mind, Mana Well, Artifact Extraordinaire, Magical Adept, Spell Builder

Skills: Tracking lvl 14, Manacraft, Introspection lvl 23, Dungeoneering lvl 17, Total Resistance lvl 21, Running lvl 20, Cartography lvl 12, Drawing lvl 12, Swimming lvl 17, Dormancy lvl 12

Tier 0 Spells: Sense Stone (earth), Sense Life (life), Sense Magic (neutral), Sense Curse (curse), Sense Air (air), Sense Dimensions (spatial), Sense Vibrations (vibration), Sense Death (death), Sense Fire (fire), Sense Water (water), Sense Soul (soul), Sense Gravity (gravity), Sense Dream (dream)

Tier 1 Spells: Renewal (life), Entangle (nature), Replenish (nature), Light (light), Summon Stone (earth), Concealment (neutral), Familiar Pheromones (nature), Whispering Wind (air), Create Water (water), Isolate Dimension (spatial), Tremorsense (vibration), Decay (death), Neutralize Poison (life), Detect Truth (soul), Create Flame (fire), Enhance Gravity (gravity), Create Air (air), Slow Fall (air), Protection from Fire (fire), Extinguish (fire), Still Wind (air), Firm Water (water), Vibrate (vibration), Create Dream (dream), Dream Mark (dream), Soul Mark (soul), Whispering Water (water), Shift Earth (earth)

Tier 2 Spells: Stone Shot (earth), Stone Wall (earth), Stone Shape (earth), Stone Furniture (earth), False Life (death), Dimensional Sheath (spatial), Aqua Sphere (water), Redirect Gravity (gravity), Fireball (fire), Create Cloud (air), Magic Lock (spatial), Self Destruct (fire), Replenishing Breath (air), Warmth (fire), Mage Hand (gravity), Tremorsight (vibration), Dream Walk (dream), Comprehend Languages (neutral), Wind Wall (air), Mass Vibrations (vibration), Excavate (earth), Rust Touch (air)

Tier 3 Spells: Binding (spatial), Meteor (fire), Neutral Skin (neutral), Deconstructive Touch (death)

At this point, thanks to Human Vessel, he should have been receiving a whopping thirty percent of Ovord’s stats for himself, compared to the ten and twenty percent he’d gotten from Alka back in the day. But to his surprise…

“Ovord,” Vin muttered quietly, noting how Lumel perked up as she listened curiously to at least his side of the conversation. “I know you said you were all but destroyed, but they really did a number on you, huh? I can’t imagine an Arch Mage or anything only having focus and magic attributes in the teens.”

“I did not hide what became of me from you,” Ovord said, his voice sounding far more tired and old than it usually did. “I am but a fragment of my former self. Perhaps appropriate for this new, fragment-based world I find myself in.”

Letting his hand trail along one of the mossy boulders, Vin wondered what might happen if he tried using Human Vessel’s active effect. Alka didn’t have a magical bone in her body, so that portion of her taking control of his body had never really mattered. But if he gave Ovord a minute to run around and do as he pleased in the physical world once again, there was no telling what the mage might try to do with access to Vin’s own mana pool. At the very least he was certain the man would be stuck working with his own focus attribute, which meant he’d be rather limited in the spells he’d be able to cast.

But what would happen if Ovord tried casting a spell Vin didn’t know using his own body? Would he get it automatically from the System?

Vin was dragged from his thoughts by the sound of a powerful clang somewhere off in the distance, and he summoned his staff into his hand without hesitation as he prepared himself for anything. Lumel hopped off his back and readied her own magic, prepared to warp away at the first sign of anything threatening.

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“What was that?” Shia asked, his friends having put their moss-based debate on hold in response to the sound as well.

“I’m not sure,” Vin said. “It sounded like—”

Another powerful clang reached their ears, and he shrugged, pointing in its direction. “Well. It sounded like that. Like someone striking a metal piñata with a metal bat.”

“What’s a piñata?” Scule asked.

“I’ll explain later. We should probably investigate,” Vin said, turning to look at Lumel. “It’s not a scream, but we might have another incident like we did with the capillans on our hands.”

“Someone being attacked by a monster?” Lumel asked, her eyes widening. “Should I warp some of us closer?”

“If we start hearing screams, yeah. For now, let’s just pick up the pace a little. Maybe go scout it out? Carefully?”

With a plan in place, Lumel vanished in a flash of purple, and the rest of them started running faster toward the repeating sounds. Vin had never heard anything quite like it, and he struggled to visualize what could possibly be making such an oddly hollow, ringing noise as they moved. Before they’d even gone more than a few hundred feet Lumel reappeared before them, her face a mask of confusion as they halted.

“It’s an elite monster striking something with its tail. I don’t know why it’s so obsessed with this one big rock, but it seems determined to get inside.”

“There’s only one reason why a monster would ever do anything,” Alka said, her glowing eyes narrowing. “There’s a person inside that rock.”

They’d been moving quickly before, but they double-timed it after that, electing to keep running rather than having Lumel warp a few of them closer and leave Alka behind. While the clanging was certainly loud, the lack of screams made it seem as if whoever or whatever was inside that rock was still holding out fairly well for the moment. It wasn’t much longer before the monster came into view, and Vin had to admit it was a rather curious sight.

The monster looked like some sort of giant, slender mammal, like a huge otter or prairie dog standing on its hind legs. It had a thin, powerfully built tail nearly as long as its large body was tall, and just as Lumel had told them, it was currently striking said tail down into a large, moss-covered rock again and again as it smashed it into the ground. As soon as they appeared, however, the monster paused, turning and hissing at them as it bared a set of large, pointed teeth.

New elite monster discovered! 500 exp gained.

“Woah, that thing is pretty nasty looking,” Scule said, eyeing up the monster warily as he held his blowgun at the ready. “Alka, you want—”

The monster shocked all of them when its tail shot out, wrapping around another one of the large rocks nearby and hurling it directly at them with the force of a professional pitcher.

“Wood wall!” Shia shouted, barely managing to summon a dense wall of wood out of the ground in time to block the speeding boulder before it flattened them. But before any of them could retaliate, the monster shocked them yet again by grabbing the original rock it had been desperately trying to break open and dropping down onto all fours as it began running away from them.

“What?” Scule said, blinking in shock as he lowered his blowgun. “...Has anyone here ever seen a monster run away from a fight?”

“Elite monsters play by their own rules, and this one already has its prize! Stop gawking and start shooting!” Alka shouted, chasing after the monster as fast as her golem body would carry her.

“Lumel, can you help us head it off?” Vin asked, deciding that would be a lot smarter than trying to flip gravity around or chase after it.

“Easily,” she said, placing a hand on him and Shia before casting Mass Dimensional Shift. A purple bubble spun into existence around them as the world shifted, and Vin grinned when they suddenly found themselves facing down the large monster sprinting right at them.

Without needing to be told what to do, Scule brought up his blowgun and fired a quick trio of darts directly at the running monster. While it managed to leap out of the way of the first two, the third caught it in the chest, and Scule pumped his fist as he let out an exhilarating cry.

Within seconds, the monster started stumbling as the flesh directly around where the dart landed turned black and began rotting in real time. Even so, it didn’t go down without a fight, and it hissed as it utilized the only ammunition it was already carrying, whipping its tail forward and hurling the mysterious rock directly at all of them like the world’s largest slingshot.

“We don’t want to hurt it!” Vin shouted, jumping in front of them and tensing as he prepared to try and catch the large projectile with his golem arm. But right before it could crash into him, the entire rock froze in place mere feet in front of his body, before falling to the ground, its momentum entirely erased.

“What…” Vin managed, before he heard something else crumple behind him and he turned to find Lumel unconscious on the moss-covered ground. Realizing what had happened almost immediately, Vin cursed as he dropped to his knees and began actively pushing his own mana into Lumel.

“She cast Dimensional Lockdown and drained herself stopping that thing!” he said, glancing up at Shia and Scule. “Can you guys finish off the monster?”

“Easily, you just worry about Lumel,” Shia said, morphing Blossom into cat form and ordering it to go head-to-head with the weakened monster. “Entangle!”

Leaving the rest of the fight to his friends, Vin focused on Lumel, shaking his head at her recklessness as he continued carefully pushing mana into her core a little bit at a time. She knew Dimensional Lockdown pitted her own mana against the strength, or in this case, velocity, of whatever she was trying to freeze in place. Of course a large boulder being hurled at extreme speeds was too much to try to lock down.

While he worked, Vin opened up his own core, turning himself into something of a conduit as he borrowed mana from his surroundings. He could taste the wet nature of the air, feel the soft touch of the moss as he took in the mana of the world and filtered it in his core before passing it on to Lumel. Thankfully, running out of mana was an easy enough fix, and the pulmon’s eyes fluttered open after only a few seconds.

“Vin?” she asked, jerking back awake as she remembered where she was and tried to sit up. “The monster?!”

“Currently being melted from the inside out by the looks of things,” Vin said, glancing over his shoulder and confirming the elite monster had already been taken care of. Creeping tendrils of moss had grown up from the ground to restrict its movement, giving Scule an even easier target to hit and finish it off. Turning back to Lumel, he raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Using Dimensional Lockdown on a boulder being hurled at us?”

“Alka said there was probably a person inside,” she argued weakly, giving him a sheepish smile. “I didn’t want us to accidentally hurt them.”

“That rock stood up to an elite monster banging away at it for who knows how long. I doubt we could crack it even if we wanted to.”

Helping Lumel to her shaky feet, Vin turned and examined the rock in question for the first time. Reaching up to the top of his chest, the five-foot-tall boulder was pretty impressive. Despite most of the moss growing on its surface having been stripped off from the monster's blows, Vin couldn’t see so much as a crack or chip anywhere. Just as he was preparing to try casting some magic, part of the rock cracked and shifted, and Vin nearly leapt back when an almost reptilian head of all things slowly emerged from the top of the rock. The being’s large, deep eyes blinked heavily before turning to focus on him.

“Oh… hello,” they said slowly, looking him up and down as they smiled. “How are you?”