Lumel hadn’t been exaggerating.

  Dimensional magic was hard.

  Despite losing his sense of time while using Introspection, Vin somehow knew before he’d even let the skill drop that figuring out how to replicate Sense Dimensions had taken him quite a while. He’d gotten so used to being able to figure out tier 0 spells in only a few hours, that he was shocked when he finally came to and realized it was already morning.

  Introspection increased to lvl 4! 800 exp gained.

  Introspection increased to lvl 5! 1,000 exp gained.

  Runecraft increased to lvl 8! 1,600 exp gained.

  New spell learned! Tier 0 Spatial Spell (Sense Dimensions). 2,500 exp gained.

  Groaning, he dismissed the notifications as he forced himself to his feet, wincing all the while. Sitting on a hard metal couch for the better part of ten hours wasn’t exactly comfortable, and while Introspection did give his body a little bit of rest, it was nothing compared to actual sleep.

  “Finally finished?”

  Rubbing his tired eyes, Vin squinted at the yawning elf, surprised to see her sitting there as if she’d never left.

  “Yeah,” he croaked, clearing his throat and taking a quick swig from his waterskin to soothe his throat. He supposed at this point he could just summon water for himself to drink with Create Water, but old habits died hard. “For a tier 0, that was one hell of a runic formation to get down. Even with the System telling me I pulled it off, I’m still not quite sure what I did.”

  “My master always said that the farther removed an affinity is from the physical world, the harder it was to learn,” Shia nodded. “Guess it’s hard to get any farther from the physical than dimensional magic.”

  “Speak of the devil, how was the dungeon? Did you manage to find him?”

  “It took him a few hours, but yeah, he showed up eventually,” Shia grinned, practically bouncing in her seat. “Oh Vin, thank you so much for all your help until now. It was so good to finally see him again!”

  “Hey, not like I did all that much,” Vin chuckled. “What did you guys talk about?”

  “Well we only had a few minutes before the dungeon kicked him out like the last one, but that was plenty of time to check in and hear how the other was doing,” Shia explained, her smile only getting wider as she spoke. “Like we suspected, he got left behind when the Gods grabbed the Sacred Forest for Edregon, but it gets even crazier. You ever wonder what they left in its place?”

  “The thought did cross my mind once or twice,” Vin admitted, trying to picture it in his head. Were worlds just missing a giant chunk where these fragments had once stood? Had the Gods merely duplicated everything, and everyone Vin had met until now were actually just magical clones of the originals? He’d had all sorts of crazy theories, but no way to prove one over the other.

  Until now.

  “Nothing,” Shia said, giggling at his surprised expression. “According to my master, the Gods basically grabbed the edges of reality and just yanked them together, tying them all up in a hastily done knot. His words, not mine. He said it’s jarring as all hell to walk through, traveling miles in only a few steps, and it’s actually the place he goes to cast the communication spell he invented in order to reach me. Apparently, the Gods did such a poor job of fixing their fragment removal that the fabric of reality is especially weak there, making it perfect for his spell.”

  “The Goddess did mention they were a bit pressed for time,” Vin muttered, remembering his conversation from back in the citadel. “Granted, it sounded like ‘pressed for time’ for the Gods was still a few centuries at a minimum, so I don’t know if that excuses their shoddy handiwork.”

  “I think it really just came down to the fact that the Gods have truly abandoned the rest of the universe,” Shia shrugged, her mirth quickly fading away. “My master said that ever since the Sacred Forest vanished, the Gods have been silent, and the monsters have been worse than ever. He hasn’t lost his divine power thankfully, but the Gods have refused to answer any of his attempts to commune with them. It seems like everyone not on Edregon is on their own.”

  The two of them were silent for a minute as the weight of Shia’s words truly sunk in. Vin had never been much of a religious person, but it wasn’t hard for him to imagine just how painful it would have to be to have a group of seemingly all-powerful beings capable of creating entire worlds that you looked up to and prayed to your entire life, just up and vanish on you one day.

  Trying to change the somber mood, Vin nodded toward the door, raising an eyebrow. “So uh… Those two guards you knocked out earlier. I’m assuming they’re awake and back in action by now?”

  “Oh, yeah. When I came back I made sure to rouse them and pull back the thin branches I put in place to support them,” Shia confirmed. “Honestly in hindsight that entire plan was rather reckless of me, but I panicked when I realized Scule was gone. It’s a miracle Nohral didn’t notice anything.”

  “Yeah,” Vin chuckled nervously, still not so sure their actions were going unnoticed. A miracle, or just a calculated move?

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Vin hadn’t spent too long around the leader of the dwarves, but Nohral struck him as a rather cautious man. Not to mention his focus attribute had to be decent if he was capable of casting magic. Vin found it hard to believe Shia had managed to pull the wool over the dwarf’s eyes, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything that had happened up to this point had been allowed to happen for some reason.

  Regardless, either way they weren’t in trouble, and they’d managed to accomplish every goal they’d set for themselves before entering the Crater.

  All that was left now was waiting for Alka’s sword to be finished.

  Shia broke off to meditate and work on her own magic, leaving Vin to his own devices for the morning. He briefly contemplated grabbing some actual sleep, before deciding there were better things to do with his time.

  What was the point of having such a high endurance if he didn’t pull the occasional all-nighter after all?

  Curious what his newest spell actually did, Vin walked to the other side of the room so he wouldn’t disturb Shia and gave it a shot.

  “Sense Dimensions.” Immediately, Vin’s eyes widened, and he tried to make sense of what he was detecting.

  Unlike his other tier 0 spells, Sense Dimensions just felt plain weird. It was like he was reaching out into the world around him with his mana and sensing how thick the world was.

  I guess this is what the ‘fabric of reality’ feels like, he thought, frowning as he tried to get a feel of the weird feedback. The base spell was only a small chunk of space around him, and seeing as he had no other baseline to work with, he could only assume this was what the regular, unaltered fabric of reality felt like. I suppose the next order of business is casting this near or in a dungeon and seeing how it differs.

  While Vin struggled to comprehend his new spell, the door to Scule’s room flew open, slamming into the wall and making Vin jump. Turning just in time to see Reginald dash out of the room, Vin gasped as he realized the rat was dragging a coughing Scule behind him.

  “Scule!” Vin exclaimed, rushing over to check on the two of them.

  “The door!” Scule coughed, barely able to get two words out as he doubled over, doing his best to hack up a lung. “Close… the door!”

  Following Scule’s finger, the blood drained from Vin’s face as he spotted what the petian was so worried about.

  The room he’d been in just seconds ago was rapidly filling with bright red smoke erupting from a set of regular sized alchemy equipment. Right before it could spread into their main room, Vin leapt forward and slammed the door shut. As some of the smoke began leaking out from under the door frame, Vin grabbed some old rope from his pack and did his best to jam it into the opening, trapping the smoke inside.

  “What the hell is that stuff?!” Vin asked, quickly backing away from the door and turning to the Rogue for answers. Thankfully, Shia had come over and was already checking up on him. No doubt she’d found it hard to meditate with all their noise.

  “Nothing… lethal,” Scule coughed, waving away Shia’s concerned face. “I’m fine!” The petian tried to explain what had happened, but immediately broke into another pained fit of coughing. Holding up a finger for them to wait, the two of them were forced to wait nearly five minutes for his coughing fit to finally die down.

  “This demon smited heat is the worst,” Scule coughed one last time, clearing his throat and welcoming a swig from Vin’s waterskin. Sighing, he leaned back against Reginald, shaking his head. “Sorry to scare you guys. I decided to replenish some of my poison stock and make a rookie mistake.”

  “Rookie mistake? You nearly gassed all of us with your poison!” Shia frowned, clearly upset with the Rogue.

  “First off, I said I was sorry,” Scule smiled weakly. “And second, not poison. It was just a mild irritant. Well, it was. Suppose it becomes a bit worse than mild in gaseous form.”

  “How about you just explain what happened?” Vin offered.

  “Not much to explain,” Scule shrugged. “Remember when I had Reginald poison those three guys creeping on Shia back in your fragment, giving them all a nasty rash? That was frogal extract. It’s a super-fast acting irritant that wears off remarkably quickly. I was extracting some more of it from some plants I gathered way back when, and I forgot to take the extreme heat down here into my calculations. Honestly I’m an idiot for missing something so simple.”

  “Why would the heat matter?” Shia asked, still not following.

  “The art of poison making is a delicate one,” Scule coughed, taking another swig of water. “There are all sorts of things to consider, with one of the biggest ones being temperature. Like I said, I made a rookie mistake. The drastically increased heat within the Crater made my reaction far more volatile than I expected, and rather than extracting what I needed in liquid form, it began evaporating instantly, flooding the room with gas before I even realized what had happened. If Reginald hadn’t yanked me out when he did, I might have suffocated. I got a huge lungful of the gas when it first erupted.”

  “I’m starting to lose track of how many times Reginald has saved your life in the last few weeks,” Vin said, giving the proud looking rat a quick scratch on the head.

  “Yeah… I talk a lot of smack, but clearly I knew what I was doing when I made him my companion,” Scule smiled, resting his head back on Reginald and sighing. “Thanks for saving my butt yet again, buddy.”

  Squeaking, Reginald wrapped his tail protectively around the petian, pulling him into a tight embrace.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re alright,” Shia said, glancing over at the poorly sealed room. It turned out rope was not exactly the best emergency sealant, and even now small wisps of red gas were leaking out from around the door frame. “I suppose we should probably do something about that gas filled room. Unless we want to leave it for the dwarves to find.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Vin sighed, wondering how they were going to clear the room when this house didn’t have so much as a single window. “How long can you guys hold your breath for anyway?”

  Before he could get an answer, the front door to their house slammed open, startling the four of them. Turning to see who was barging in on them, Vin’s blood froze as he took in the black knight standing menacingly in the doorway.

  Based on their height, the knight clearly wasn’t one of the dwarves. They were clad from head to toe in metal armor that was blacker than night. And rather than reflect light, the dark metal almost seemed to absorb it instead, giving the knight the illusion that there was a humanoid shaped hole in the fabric of reality rather than something solid. They had a longsword strapped across their back, and a full plated helm obscured nearly all of their face, leaving only two bright, glowing pinpricks of green light to mark the location of their eyes.

  While the four of them were still taking in the menacing knight’s dark aura, the armored figure strode over to them, stopping but a few feet away and fixing them with a chilling stare. Before Vin could ask what they wanted, a familiar voice burst forth from the knight’s helmet.

  “Hey guys!” Alka exclaimed, gesturing to her metal clad body. “Check out my new look!”

  that slow. Eithan's finally got some competition for best magic instructor (other than Shia of course).

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