The combination of having just witnessed all four of her friends come close to dying gruesome deaths on her behalf, plus the fact that they now had a concrete method of tracking down the divine warrior, seemed to calm Alka down a bit regarding her haste to find their target. Sure, none of them were big fans of letting the deranged warrior slaughter innocent people, but if they faced him before they were ready and lost their lives, who knew how many more thousands of people would die before someone finally stopped him?

  Thus, rather than rushing off right into their next near-death experience, Alka had them camp in the woods for a few days. The party continued their tiresome training, but the complaining slowly began to dwindle as the fruits of their labor eventually became visible.

  By the end of their third day, Scule was a crack shot with his blowgun, never missing a target and rarely poisoning anything he wasn’t supposed to. Reginald had become nearly as slippery as an eel, able to evade Shia’s active attempts at magically snaring him for minutes on end. Shia had practiced using her assortment of nature spells, learning how to take control of a battlefield in an instant, and even hinting that she had something else big she was working on. And Vin…

  Vin fought with magic.

  Thanks to Alka’s guidance, he practiced weaving his spells into his combat style. Because of the fact that he’d painstakingly learned every single one of his spells on his own instead of gaining them from the System, a feat that Shia had mentioned was rarely done, he was actually able to cast every spell he knew manually. Not needing to loudly announce when he was about to cast a spell made his new method of fighting all the more viable.

  He still wasn’t a big fan of fighting in general however, and he wasn't able to utilize his new staff to the fullest with only one hand, so he spent his time with Alka focusing mainly on defense. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t trying his hardest to improve, however. He eventually got to the point that even Alka attacking at almost full speed could rarely land a hit on him through his constant sprouting of stone pillars, though he was pretty certain she was still holding back a little. Thanks to Vin’s incredible endurance he never ran out of stamina, and they often dueled until his mana ran dry.

  At this point, other than the missing hand, the number one thing limiting Vin’s combat effectiveness had become quite clear to him.

  He still just didn’t have all that many spells at his disposal.

  Stone Shot, Stone Wall, Entangle, and a carefully timed Light if his battle with the giant snake was anything to go by, were pretty much the only things he had to rely on in combat. It was while thinking about how to best add to his arsenal that he came up with a devious idea.

  A few hours later and with the help of their resident Druid, Vin had two new spells in his back pocket he’d been meaning to learn for a while now, ever since seeing Shia show one of them off back in camp.

  New spell learned! Tier 0 Air spell (Sense Air). 2,500 exp gained.

  New magical affinity discovered! Air affinity. 7,000 exp gained.

  New spell learned! Tier 1 Air spell (Whispering Wind). 5,000 exp gained.

  Level up! Magical Explorer lvl 25!

  +3 attribute points

  +1 passive point

  Vin already had a few solid ideas for how to utilize the spell, so he tucked it away and focused instead on his latest level up. It pretty much went without saying that he dumped his three new points into magic, bringing it up to 38, but his new passive point was another matter entirely.

  By the end of their three days of training, he still hadn’t decided what to spend it on.

  Though he had narrowed it down to four options.

  Resistant Runes

  Mana Well

  Resilience

  Far Strider.

  Vin leaned back against his tree, tuning out the sounds of Shia and Alka going at it as he ran through his options for what felt like the tenth time. The main problem, as per usual, was the complete lack of information from the System. With nothing but the names of each passive to go off of, and the knowledge that he wouldn’t get to pick another passive for himself until level 35, he was struggling to make his decision.

  First on the list was Resistant Runes. If it did what he was hoping it did, this option was his number one choice. His hope was that it would minimize runic backlashes, lessening the innate danger and allowing him to start working on higher tier spells without so much worry.

  The problem was that he had no idea if that’s what it actually did. For all he knew, the passive might make any runes he physically carved last longer for example, which was completely worthless to him at the moment. Despite knowing that a passive which would reduce runic backlashes existed, Shia didn’t actually know what it was called, as she’d never picked it up before the Great Reset. According to her master, it was a waste of a passive, because if you took your time and were exceptionally careful, you wouldn’t need it in the first place.

  Naturally, Vin wasn’t really big on the slow and steady approach.

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  His next pick was Mana Well. According to Shia, this was a pretty standard pick for just about any mage, as it did exactly what it sounded like. Increasing a person’s mana by roughly fifty percent, the passive only became more and more valuable as you continued to level.

  Even with his dislike of passives that weren’t all that flashy, Vin easily saw the benefit to having more mana at his disposal.

  His third pick was largely due to the most recent of their near death experiences. Nearly dying to radiation poisoning had opened Vin’s eyes to just how dangerous some of these world fragments could truly be. If it hadn’t been for his Resistance skill, he most likely wouldn’t have managed to make it all the way to Madam Trebella and her village. And seeing as Reginald wasn’t capable of carrying anyone larger than Scule, that would have been it for them.

  He was assuming the Resilience passive was similar to his own skill; ideally an even more powerful version of it. The passive hadn’t been on his list before their recent experience, so it was safe to assume he’d only unlocked it by surviving that whole nasty ordeal in the first place. While it wouldn’t help his magic, it would no doubt help keep him alive, which was arguably just as important.

  The last one… Well, Vin had absolutely no idea what to make of Far Strider. Another example of a passive that hadn’t been on the list the last time he checked, he could only assume he’d unlocked it rather recently. Now, if that was due to the sheer amount of distance he’d covered since arriving on Edregon, or the fact that he now had both the Running skill and Distance Runner passive, he had no idea.

  To be honest, if he were travelling alone, he probably would have gone with this option immediately and saved himself the headache of trying to decide. As much as he had fallen in love with magic, his newest flame was still just barely second to his passion for exploration. The thought of being able to run around Edregon even faster, returning to places he’d already been and exploring more fragments at breakneck speeds was more than a little enticing.

  But he may very well have to give up some friends to do so.

  Vin snapped himself out of his inner turmoil, glancing at his party. Shia was in the middle of working on her command of Blossom, giving the cat specific instructions while Alka did her best to dodge and evade, occasionally retaliating with a blunt strike from her sword. On the other side of the clearing, Scule was playing an increasingly heated game of tag with Reginald, trying and failing to tag the rat while Reginald continued squeaking taunts at him.

  As they were now, Blossom was actually still able to maintain a faster long distance pace than he could with Distance Runner active, but not by much. If Vin picked up a passive that gave him a significant boost to his speed, would he be able to hold himself back from sprinting on ahead to the next fragment? Or the one after? And if he ended up parting ways with Shia, there was no guarantee that Scule and Reginald would decide to stick with him rather than her.

  Vin still didn't really understand why Scule had decided to come along with them in the first place. Sure, he made jokes and talked about wanting to rob the world, but the petian always seemed to steer the conversation away from himself when Vin tried to ask about his time within the citadel. All he knew was that for whatever reason, Scule was along for the ride, and the last thing Vin wanted to do was to force Scule and Reginald to have to choose between Shia or him and Alka.

  Vin tried to imagine going it alone at this point in his journey, and he didn’t like what came to mind. He knew one day they’d each go their separate ways of course. He was enough of a realist that he didn’t imagine they’d all travel together forever or anything like that. But until they did split up, he was more than happy going it a little bit slower, so long as that meant he had his companions by his side.

  As he finally tossed Far Strider and Resilience from his list, a large smack of wooden sword on flesh indicated that Shia had lost their bout. Vin glanced up at the cursing elf as she walked over, nursing a fresh welt on her head.

  “I still don’t understand why Alka doesn’t want us to heal our injuries,” Shia grumbled. Taking a seat next to him against the tree, she gave Reginald a wave for good luck as he and Scule swapped in to train with Alka.

  “I’m betting it’s got something to do with building character,” Vin drawled, still nursing his own fair share of welts and bruises. “That or some attempt to make practice feel more real or something.”

  “Hmm..” Shia said noncommittally, her focus clearly on Scule as the petian was made to dodge jabs from Alka’s sword of all things. “You pick your new passive yet?”

  “Nearly there. Deciding between Resistant Runes and Mana Well at this point.”

  “Honestly, if you want my opinion, I think you should take the risk and just go with Resistant Runes,” Shia admitted, gasping slightly as Scule barely managed to leap over a sword jab. Unlike when she’d been fighting them, the tip of Alka’s sword didn’t exactly have a blunt part.

  “Why do you say that? Last time I asked you said to pick whatever!”

  “I gave it some more thought,” Shia shrugged. “Mana Well is extremely useful of course, but mainly in that it helps your mana keep up with the growing cost of higher tier spells. You’re still planning on keeping your mana free of any affinities, right?”

  “Yeah,” Vin nodded. There was far too much magic in the world for him to lock himself down any one path like the Druid had.

  “Then that’s not something you’ll really have to worry about,” Shia said, finally turning to look at him. “You do realize you’ll probably never master any high tier magic with the way you’re progressing, don’t you? If you can only learn a few spells of any one affinity, I’d be surprised if you ever surpass tier three magic, let alone tier four.”

  Vin stared at the elf, realizing the truth behind her words. He hadn’t really given it too much thought just yet, but as soon as she pointed it out, he understood.

  Most spells built on top of simpler spells, meaning in order to learn higher tier magic, you had to learn the lower tier building blocks first. For example, in order to learn Stone Shot, he’d first had to learn Summon Stone. And in order to prepare himself for other earth spells, he’d had to learn Sense Stone as well. That right there were three of his current four available slots for earth affinity spells already taken up unless he wanted to risk tainting his personal mana with an earth affinity, all just to learn a single tier two spell.

  Vin leaned back against the tree, gazing up at the sunlight filtering down through the branches. He watched one of the big bees buzz around the treetops, no doubt looking for some unsuspecting victim to jab with its stinger. After a few minutes of soul searching, he made up his mind.

  “I think I’m fine with that,” he admitted, more to himself than Shia if he were being honest. “I don’t need to learn some eighth tier grand fireball of destruction or whatever. Honestly, I just love learning magic as a whole. If that means I’ll just be running around learning every first and second tier spell known to man, then so be it.”

  “Probably for the best anyway,” Shia grinned, nudging him with her shoulder. “I told you it took me weeks of dedicated study to learn my first tier four spell. That time only gets longer as the tiers increase, and try as I might, I just can’t picture you calmly sitting down to study a new spell for weeks on end.”

  “Oh God, you should have started with that!” Vin said, shivering as Shia laughed at him.

  Feeling more confident in his choice, Vin pulled up his interface and officially purchased Resistant Runes as his newest passive. Seeing as he wouldn’t be able to test it out until he had a new spell to learn, he dismissed his interface, looking up just in time to see a shaking Scule walking toward them, a deep gash in his side soaking his clothes in blood.

  “In case either of you were wondering...” He said, his voice wavering.

  “The pointy end of the sword hurts.”

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