Chương 341: (334) 5.30. All Together Again

Seeing as it had been about a week and a half since his last council meeting, once he finished up with Abby, Vin grabbed a quick bite to eat before begrudgingly making his way over to town hall. Linda received a warm smile as usual, as he never wanted her to think his reluctance toward these meetings was ever directed at her, but the smile quickly vanished as he stepped into the meeting room.

He knew he was being a tad immature, as most of the other councilors attended these meetings daily, but he couldn't help how he felt. Being cooped up in a small room discussing largely boring topics was not how he enjoyed spending even a small sliver of his day.

"How goes it, Vin?" Alice asked, looking up from a blueprint she was working on and giving him a friendly smile.

"You don't look all that happy to be here."

"Sorry… Just got done casting False Life for Abby," he sighed, taking a seat beside her. Alice was the only other one in the room so far, and he glanced at the Trapper's sketch, blinking at what looked like some sort of giant cannon.

"It always puts me in a weird mood. What the hell kind of trap is that?"

"Oh this? Just something silly Myers and I have been working on," Alice said, closing her journal and putting the sketch away.

"Have to say though, the Drawing skill? Fantastic pick."

"No kidding, one of the best skills I snagged for sure," he grinned. The two of them chatted about aimless things such as the Earthers who had been highlighted in the tabloid yesterday, or which of The Big Three was currently considered to be the true supreme Chef in all of Terra.

According to Alice, the three Chefs from the second wave were supposedly all nearing their second prestige at the same time, which didn't really surprise him all that much seeing as to how much cooking they had to do to feed the thousands of people living within Terra's walls. There were other Chefs from the following waves, but The Big Three had definitely been at it the longest. Just as they were debating what dish they thought would grant a Chef the most experience, the others all filed in.

"Vin. Alice. Good afternoon," Spur said, nodding at them as they all took their seats.

"Been a hot minute, Vin. Glad to hear you got that whole situation with Alka resolved. Half of town was freaking out about it while you guys were gone."

"Ah, sorry about that," he said sheepishly, not having even considered how the town would react about their most powerful fighter sort of… dying without warning.

"We got her fixed up as fast as we could. The good news is that it shouldn't happen again."

"So long as it doesn't happen in the middle of a monster wave, we'll be fine even if it does," Phil said pointedly.

"The combat classes were concerned, but the Slayers were all beside themselves with worry," Spur said.

"How did you get her body repaired? I thought you said you weren't welcome back in the library you took her from?"

"So funny story that…" Vin quickly ran everyone through the events of the past few days, going over both the deal he had brokered with Nohral and the rest of the dwarves, as well as their acceptance back into the library. He briefly debated discussing the Alphadivinity Theory with them as well, before deciding now probably wasn't the best time.

"Alright… As per usual, that's a lot to take in," Spur said, rubbing his temples as he stared at him.

"Why don't we start with the fact that you and Shia invented a magical plant and signed a trade agreement with the dwarves in order to get our combat classes some actual armor. At no point did you ever stop to consider something like that might be wise to run by us first?"

"Do we not need the armor?" Vin asked, looking at Phil in confusion.

"Everyone seems to be running around in nothing but thick leathers. Besides Shredder, of course."

"We need the armor," Phil nodded, turning to look at Spur.

"I get why you're annoyed, but this isn't the hill to die on. That armor will be a massive boon to our warriors for the future waves."

"I know it will be," Spur said, drumming his fingers on the table.

"But signing a trade agreement for the town when you didn't even have the magical plant you promised made yet… Come on, Vin, surely you understand how reckless that was!"

"I was up front that the seeds weren't something I could guarantee," he shrugged.

"Also, it's not like the dwarves could come invade us or anything. They literally live four fragments away and refuse to leave their volcano!"

"That's not the-" Spur caught himself, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

"No no, Phil is right, not the hill to die on. Let's move on, shall we? I suppose congratulations are in order first for managing to retrieve three of the missing Earthers from the last wave. Good job on that front."

"Oh, yeah, of course," Vin said, not really feeling as though they had any reason to celebrate. He was pretty certain around a dozen people could have potentially been rescued, but with how dangerous and large Edregon was, it wasn't surprising that most had either died before he could find them or had landed in fragments he hadn't explored yet.

"I'll keep my eyes peeled for them as time goes on, on the off chance that some of them managed to find ways to survive. Crazier things have happened." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"We discussed this earlier without you, but we've decided forty-eight hours is the maximum time we're allotting them before assuming them dead," Witherson chimed in.

"If they manage to survive that long on their own, then they'll probably survive long enough for you or some other Earther to eventually run into them down the line."

"That seems reasonable," he agreed.

"So that floating library you guys are allowed in again…" Alice said, grinning at him.

"... any chance I could ask for help making a trip over there? I'd love to take a look and see if they have any reference materials I could use for new trap ideas. From how you described it, it sounds like the library has books on practically everything!"

"The more dangerous stuff is tucked away within the restricted section, but yeah, I'd bet pretty much anything there are books related to trapping you could read," he said.

"Does anyone else want to go on a field trip? Lumel was already planning on making a trip within the near future."

"Count me in," Witherson said.

"I can't even begin to imagine the different tomes they must have on various styles of architecture and construction."

"I feel like we should make a new rule that no more than two council members can venture off into the same fragment together. Kinda like how a company can't send all its top employees on the same plane to a conference," Spur said.

"Just in case something horrible goes wrong. No sense in letting all of Terra's leadership perish in one fell swoop."

"I'll second that motion," Witherson nodded, starting a quick round of voting. With five raised hands, the motion passed, and the conversation continued. As they were already on the topic of the library, Vin realized with a start Spur hadn't torn into him about Kym going missing just yet. While he didn't really want to draw attention to the Advisor's disappearance, he felt like waiting until Spur brought it up would just make things worse.

"So… any chance you noticed Kym was absent these past few days?" he ventured.

"What's that? Did I notice how one of our greatest assets followed you out of town the other day and never returned?" Spur asked, giving him a pointed look.

"No, totally must have slipped my mind."

"No need to be a jerk about it," Alice said, turning toward Vin.

"To answer your question, yeah, we all noticed. Everyone in town noticed. We had a council meeting about it immediately after you left. Spur was pissed."" At the time," Spur clarified, glaring at the still-grinning Trapper.

"The others helped me see reason. I'll admit I was rather irritated that you would just up and leave with Kym without saying anything, but then I realized I was treating Kym like our own property rather than the person he is. I can't say I'm all that happy about you helping him leave, but it wasn't our decision to make."

"It certainly doesn't hurt that you regained access to the largest collection of information on possibly all of Edregon," Witherson pointed out.

"In my opinion, a more than worthy trade for a soft-spoken Advisor who clearly didn't want anything to do with us in the first place."

"Strangely enough, Golrim took it a little hard," Spur added.

"He acts like Kym taking off doesn't bother him, but I've been around him long enough to tell when he's unhappy about something."

"They did work together for years," Alice pointed out.

"Even if Golrim tries to pull off the 'unfeeling advisor behind the scenes' role, he's still human."

"It's not like he can't visit the library if he doesn't want to see Kym," Vin shrugged.

"He could even go with you guys on your field trip. I bet there's tons of stuff he'd love to read in there."

"I'll ask later today," Spur said.

"Oh, before I forget, excellent job on the trio I asked you to start teaching magic to. I know you're still waiting to hear from Landon, but Ronald and Wanda achieving magic-based prestige classes is exactly what we were aiming for."

"Please tell me you don't have new students you want me to teach," Vin begged.

"No, we're moving onto phase two," Spur chuckled.

"I wanted the very first magic classes Terra created to be entirely our own, other than borrowing Sakis' training aid of course. The next few students I'm going to let Sakis help with. We need assistance teaching people brand-new to magic, and it just so happens that Sakis has a handful of elderly Stone Mages in desperate need of apprentices. We've already spoken with their elder, and we've come to the conclusion that we can help one another."

"Huh… That's a pretty good idea, actually," Vin admitted. He'd almost entirely forgotten that Sakis had been undergoing some internal strife between their experienced Stone Mages and their apprentices. With the Great Reset, most of their mages had been returned to the same starting point, and the older mages who were supposed to have apprentices to handle their chores for them in exchange for magic help were upset that the apprentices had decided that wasn't fair anymore.

But if Terra was willing to step in and offer up a few potential mages to be taught, that filled a hole quite nicely.

"It won't be a problem that they're all Stone Mages?"

"I've already discussed with their elder, the Stone Mages will be in charge of just teaching them the bare basics of magic theory. The Earthers will be free to learn earth magic if they want, but I'm hopeful that with enough practice they'll be able to simply prestige into something general like Mage and then pick what spells call to them and specialize. This of course only works for people who have been putting points into the magic attribute, so the pool is rather low.

I've got nine volunteers who fit the criteria willing to test the idea out."

"Let's hope it pans out then," Vin said, shooting the Commander a smile.

"And not just because I can pick up any good spells they decide to learn down the line."

"Uh hm," Spur said, staring him down.

"Don't think you're entirely out of the woods, mister. When it eventually comes time to teach some of them how to create artifacts, you're the one we're all going to be relying on!"