Chương 402: (395) 6.9. In Your Dreams!

Vin did in fact all but drop Landon off, explaining what happened to Linda and letting her know if he didn't wake up in the next hour or two to feed him a mana potion. Vin would probably check in on him soon enough, just to touch base and hear what life had been like down in the Necromancers' compound, but he had a hunch Landon would want some time to himself after being gone for so long. The man was definitely an introvert, and it couldn't have been easy being surrounded by people for weeks on end.

He was curious if there were any new death spells he could learn from Landon as well, but he had enough on his plate as it was. If he got distracted with other magic, it would take him even longer to get Dream Walk figured out. After he got cleaned up and gave Lumel her promised hug, Vin spent the rest of the evening helping out around town.

There were always buildings that could use a quick cast of Stone Shape to help repair cracks, or warriors with injuries not quite bad enough to land them in the hospital who would happily accept a hit from Renewal. As much as he wanted to throw himself straight into his magic once again, Vin knew it was important for him to pull his weight around Terra, doubly so after having missed the battle for wave six.

Spur had made it quite clear to everyone at the time precisely why Vin and his team were missing, but even if everyone knew they were gone in order to deal with an even deadlier threat than the monster swarm that had attacked, the simple fact was that he hadn't been there to help defend Terra's walls. Vin didn't want even the slimmest of shards of resentment to grow in people's hearts, so he did his best to help out where he could.

By the time he crashed into bed, he was thoroughly exhausted from having burned through so much of his mana, and he passed out almost instantly. If everything went according to plan, the next time he went to sleep, he'd have a far more productive night. After a quick breakfast the next day, Vin got to work. Locking himself in his room, he turned his attention toward Dream Walk, picking the runic formation right back up where he'd left it. It was a difficult spell, and a tier-2 one at that.

But Vin had already gotten a good couple of hours of practice in yesterday while waiting on Landon, and he was determined to figure it out. By the time he emerged from his Introspection, his eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light once more, it was nearly time for dinner. But that didn't bother him in the slightest. New spell learned! Tier-2 Dream Spell (Dream Walk) Rubbing his hands together gleefully, Vin dismissed the notification.

He wouldn't actually get a chance to try the spell out until it was time to sleep, which meant there was no point in stopping now. By the time Vin emerged from his room, the sun had long since set, and he'd almost certainly missed the dinner rush. That was fine, however, as it had been time well spent. New spell learned! Tier-1 Dream Spell (Dream Mark) Dream Mark was a far simpler spell than Dream Walk, and therefore it had taken him a lot less time to figure out.

Even so, it had been some time since he'd spent an entire day from sun up to sun down working on magic, and Vin yawned as he rubbed at his eyes. Hilariously, he was ready to hit the hay now and test out his skill, but he needed to get something in his stomach before that.

"Welcome back to the land of the living!" Vin jumped slightly as he realized he'd missed Scule standing on the center table, the petian hard at work scribbling notes down in a journal almost as large as he was. Reginald was nestled up in one of their merider silk blankets off in a loveseat, happily snoozing away.

"Long day of spell work," Vin said, and Scule nodded as if he figured as much.

"What are you up to?"

"Taking an actual inventory of all the stuff I've shoved in my cape over the past few months," Scule said, reaching a hand over his shoulder into his dimensional bag he wore as a cape, making a strange face at whatever it was he touched before scribbling in his journal again.

"It's a weird process, seeing as I have to actually remember what I put in there in the first place. Because of that, I'm trying to go day by day and think about each fragment we hit and what I took from them. I mean, take these for example. I totally forgot I even had them!" Scule yanked out a gleaming blue pair of scissors, and Vin blinked as he stared at the shining metal.

"…Are those a pair of pure mithral scissors?"

"Yeah! I took them from the dwarves in the Crater when I snuck into their central building while you were checking out their dungeon," Scule nodded, chuckling to himself as he swung them around.

"They were in one of the display cases, and I completely forgot about them! And that's just the start! I've got so much crap in here you wouldn't believe it!"

"As intrigued as I am, I need to go grab something to eat before they close up shop for the night," Vin said, shaking his head as he wondered just how deep Scule's bag actually went. The petian did primarily keep petian-sized stuff in there, seeing as he needed to be strong enough to get things in and out of the bag. But even so, he'd had that bag for months at this point. It was pretty surprising he'd never hit any sort of limit with how much junk he snatched up wherever they went.

"Oh, before I go. Any chance Fria might have mentioned to you how long a Dream Mark actually lasts? Or how many of them I can put on people? I figured seeing as she keeps visiting you in your dreams, she might have mentioned it." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"No, though I can ask her tonight," Scule said.

"But at least a few weeks, seeing as we haven't met in person in all that time and her own Dream Walk is still working just fine."

"Got it, thanks!" With that, Vin headed down to the mess hall, where he was pleased to discover that at some point the council had decided the mess hall would remain open twenty-four-seven with a skeleton crew. There were a number of Earthers who worked through the night, and they needed food just as much as everyone else. Vin enjoyed the far calmer mess hall, nodding toward a few folks who seemed to be enjoying the quiet just as much as he was.

He'd expected to see more bleary, tired-looking eyes, but in a world where a few points in endurance largely solved that problem, he supposed it made sense everyone looked like they were doing just fine. Some people even went a step further, such as Myers, who he knew had taken the Night Owl passive for herself. By the time he made it back to his room, he was excited to find Lumel waiting for him, the pulmon lounging in one of the chairs in the common room and reading a thick book without any writing on the front.

"If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?" he asked, deciding to skip the preamble.

"Oh, you figure out Dream Walk?" she asked, looking excited as she closed the book and made it vanish in a flash of purple.

"No need to start with anything too crazy… how about the library?"

"You could go literally anywhere at all … and you pick the library?" Vin asked, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

"That is a terrible lack of imagination."

"I just want to make sure you have a handle on the new spell before you try anything crazy," Lumel giggled, grabbing his hand and leading him to the bedroom.

"So how does this work?"

"For starters, you need a Dream Mark. Technically, I think I'd be safe so long as you're sleeping close to me, but Fred said searching for distant dreamers is dangerous unless they're marked." As he explained, Vin squeezed Lumel's hand and silently cast Dream Mark, making sure he'd have a beacon to travel to in just a moment. He needed to place similar marks on all his friends and ideally the different members of the council, but he first wanted to make sure there wasn't any sort of limit he was going to hit.

Until Scule got back to him on that, he didn't want to risk making a mistake.

"Now, you just need to fall asleep. Because I have the Sleeping skill, if I cast Dream Walk while I start sleeping, I can hop into someone else's dreams. Or I can hop into my own dreams, which sounds weird, but Fred said it's basically how I go about practicing my magic in my sleep."

"Normally I'd say falling asleep on command is no easy feat, but your stronghold of slumber is no joke," Lumel admitted, shrugging off her robe and throwing herself onto his shimmerwing mattress.

"Come on, let's hurry up and sleep!" Laughing at the absurdity of the statement, Vin eagerly joined her, just as excited to finally give dream magic a shot as she was. According to Fred, this was the first step to practicing his magic in his own dreams, which should drastically reduce the amount of time he needed to learn new spells.

Seeing as the long time commitment was the only thing really holding him back from working on any more tier-3 spells, this could very well open up a whole world of opportunities for him. Using Create Cloud to conjure up a pillow and Warmth to fill their stomachs with a pleasant and calming warm sensation, Vin wrapped them up in the merider-silk blanket and passed out almost instantly.

His Sleeping skill worked so fast he nearly forgot to actually cast Dream Walk, barely whipping the formation together in his mana in time before he lost consciousness. Suddenly, Vin was standing. Blinking in surprise, he looked around the room, noting how everything seemed even quieter than usual. A quick glance down showed that his body was currently ethereal, almost like that of a ghost. And directly before him were himself and Lumel, wrapped up tight in the merider-silk blanket and snoozing away.

He got the sense some time had already passed between him actually falling asleep and his spell triggering, which was curious, and he made a mental note to try and figure out how much time passed later on. Though at the moment, he had more interesting things to focus on. A quick glance at Lumel was all it took to understand the importance of Dream Mark. Unlike the rest of the world, which was quiet and almost wavering slightly like it was underwater, Lumel stood out to him.

Her form was crystal clear and practically glowed, drawing him toward it. He had the feeling if he tried to walk over to a different room in the apartment he would have some trouble, but heading toward a Dream Mark was simple enough. Seeing no need to waste time, he stepped toward her, his head whipping back as he was yanked forward and down. Vin blinked as he suddenly found himself in the Underside, sitting on his usual stone chair that he'd created ages back.

A quick glance around showed him that the Underside was even bigger than normal, the floor and ceiling stretching out so far he couldn't even make out any of the walls. Off in the distance, Lumel was sitting in her chair as usual, though rather than meditating, she had an intense look of concentration on her face. In her hands were physical runes, almost like pieces of a puzzle, and she was carefully trying to connect a few of them together.

Vin watched her for a minute out of curiosity, not wanting to interrupt her dream just yet. I guess it makes sense Lumel would dream of constructing spells in the Underside… It is what she spends most of her days doing after all. Despite him trying his best not to interrupt, it wasn't long before Lumel spotted him. As soon as her eyes landed on him, she smiled, her concentration wavering as two of the physical runes she was trying to click together touched in the wrong way.

Instantly detonating directly in front of her face.