Chapter 446: (440) 6.54. Keep The Forest Clean

Once Vin finished speaking, the rest of the council and Abby took the stage as well, ironing out all the things he’d forgotten to say and making it clear under no uncertain terms how things were going to go in the future. Vin was pleased to see that the vast majority of people understood rather quickly that things weren’t quite as they’d originally seemed. As soon as Vin made it clear that they in fact did not have the backing or blessing of the man they thought they were following, they made themselves scarce, rushing back to their apartments or going back about their days. For the remaining few fanatics, which thankfully appeared to be only a dozen or so people, Spur shifted to the ‘scared straight’ tactic, making it clear under no uncertain terms exactly what would happen to them should they try anything like this again. Vin had a bad feeling they hadn’t seen the last of some of them who were still staring at him with almost religious fervor in their eyes as they left the theater grounds, but that would be a problem for Abby and her guards.

And throughout all of this, Grant continued shouting. One of the wonders of Still Wind was that the person within the bubble of air could hear their own words just fine. If he’d ever stopped shouting at the top of his lungs, he would have realized he wasn’t able to hear anything Vin or the others were saying, but it seemed Grant had quite the set of pipes on him, because the man was screaming, waving his hands about and most likely preaching the word of Vin as loudly as he could manage. It wasn’t until the rest of the crowd had filtered away and been dealt with, leaving the lone man standing there screaming to himself, that Spur turned toward Vin and raised an eyebrow.

“So… Any chance you can make that permanent?”

“Theoretically I could, but I hate making artifacts,” Vin admitted, frowning as Grant just kept going.

“Forget that, shouldn’t you be more worried about those two guys you threw into the sky?” Alice asked, gazing upward. “Don’t they have to, you know, come down at some point?”

“I actually threw them at an angle, and slapped them with Slow Fall. They should have landed a few minutes ago.”

“I think he’s realized something is up,” Witherson said as she nodded toward Grant, who had finally stopped his pointless shouting. The man was doubled over with sweat dripping off his face, and Vin blinked as he realized there were flecks of blood covering the ground before him and dripping from his lips.

“Uh oh, that’s not good,” Spur muttered, frowning as he spotted the same blood Vin had. “Obviously this guy had some problems, but I think they might run even deeper than we thought. I’ll have Myers give him a more thorough screening to pick up anything we missed about his time back on Earth. And maybe schedule him with the therapist to see if she can’t help him. If not…”

Spur left the answer unsaid, but Vin heard him loud and clear.

It wasn’t hard to envision Grant snapping and doing something no amount of healing magic would be able to fix.

“We’ll get him all the help we can,” Alice said, offering Vin a small smile before giving him a light shove. Or at least, she certainly tried to. The Trapper blinked as Vin didn’t budge in the slightest, standing steady and firm as though he were a physical part of the stage itself. “What in the world? I was going to tell you to leave this to us and go apologize to your students, but it felt like I was trying to push a . What kind of magic is that?”

“Something new I picked up,” Vin chuckled, removing his staff from the stage. He’d briefly lifted his staff earlier in order to cast his magic before planting it right back down to help him finish his speech. It seemed even if having the staff planted prevented him from casting new magic, it thankfully didn’t end any of the spells he’d already thrown together. “You guys sure you’re good to take it from here without me?”

“Oh yeah, I don’t think this guy can start healing until he gets some serious separation from you,” Spur said. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of getting Sean back his book and returning all the things that were taken. Thanks for helping with all this. You know, even if it was sort of your fault.”

“Spur,” Witherson frowned, and the Commander sighed.

“I know, I know, that’s not fair of me. It’s not like Vin asked to have a cult made in his name. Sorry, I’m just on edge after walking on egg shells around these people for the past week.”

“I still think we should have crushed them from the beginning,” Phil said, still standing by the side of the group with his arms crossed, not having said a single word since taking the stage.

“We’re all well aware of how you wanted the situation handled, thank you very much,” Spur drawled. “Anyway, get out of here, Vin. Good work.”

Deciding that was exactly what he wanted to do, Vin cast Redirect Gravity and shot upward, soaring up into the sky as he looked upon just how far Terra had come in only a couple of months. It looked as though Witherson’s crafters were making excellent work preparing the town for expansion, creating a new set of walls to help prepare for the new people that would be arriving soon enough. Even with the Gods’ ritual breaking down and the new waves being reduced one after another, the ninth wave was supposed to have people coming along with it. Assuming they all managed to survive the insane monster wave that would assuredly strike them just before, they were going to need to have quite a lot of space prepared for all those fresh faces.

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, Vin thought, realizing he’d never really given all that much that as to what would happen the ninth wave. Obviously, life would go on. It wasn’t as if he’d run out of fragments to explore any time soon, so he didn’t really have to worry about that. But without any new influx of people from Earth, Terra would inevitably change. They wouldn’t be able to rely on constant injections of new people. They would have to make do with who they had, and better learn to live with one another. Vin was glad that they’d managed to solve this latest issue without any violence, even if it had been a rather minor one, all things considered. Hopefully, it would be good practice for the future.

Flipping himself around, Vin aimed for where he’d tossed his students, gently coming down close to the forest dungeon. To his surprise, he didn’t find just Shuvo and Thomas, but Alka waiting for him as well.

“It’s not nice to throw your trash into another person’s workspace, for the record,” Alka said. “How would you like it if I threw all my Slayer rejects at you while you were studying magic?”

“Pretty bad,” Vin laughed, all his earlier worries about the cult situation melting away as he grinned at his oldest friend. “The whole cult thing should be resolved, for the record. Or at least, if you see any more of them causing problems, feel free to smack them around a bit.”

“Took you long enough. Shia let us know where you’d run off to, but I didn’t think it would take you that long to rescue Lumel. Pick up the pace next time, would you?”

“I promise you the next time I have to enter someone’s dream journey in order to save them, I’ll try and do it more quickly,” Vin smiled. “Any idea where the others have gone off to?”

“The cult stuff didn’t really bother me, but Shia and Scule quickly grew tired of dealing with the crowds whenever they wanted to get in or out of the apartment,” Alka explained. “Shia said she was going to do some more research in the library and then hang out in the Sacred Forest for a while, and Scule is in the citadel, helping his brother. Copi ended up taking a crafter class, with a specialization in fermentation. Wants to make ‘mushroom booze’, as Scule called it.”

“Oh, really? Good for him!” Vin was pleased to hear Copi ended up going with what he wanted to do after all. His father had been trying to push him toward becoming a Farmer and help with the mushroom fields, but this was adjacent enough that he imagined their father couldn’t be too annoyed with him.

“Anyway, I’ve got heads to knock together, but let me know when you’re heading out next,” Alka demanded. “The window for the next adventure is quickly closing before we need to stick around for the battle for wave seven, and I want to stretch my legs a bit before that.”

“I owe the two of these guys a magic lesson before that, but absolutely, wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

With that, Alka wandered back into the dungeon, and Vin turned to his two students. Both of them had been waiting patiently for him to finish his conversation, but now that he was done, both began ‘speaking’ at once.

“Master, thank goodness you’re okay! Your Druid ally came and informed us of what was going on, I can’t believe you were running around in another person’s dreams!”

“”

Thomas’ fingers flew as he signed just as fast as Shuvo’s tongue flapped, and Vin held up his hands, stopping them both.

“First, let me apologize for all but ditching you two for the last two weeks. I’m glad you understand it was a genuine emergency, but that still wasn’t very fair to either of you. Before I head out again, I’ll give the two of you and Jess another lesson. We’ll get started on a new runic formation, and maybe go over some of the fundamentals we haven’t really talked about just yet. What we really need is for you guys to get the Iron Mind passive. Once you have that, then I’ll be able to show you a couple of formations at a time, and you can work on them as you please.”

“” Thomas signed, grinning at him. “”

“Seriously? Alright, that makes this much easier,” Vin admitted, wondering what spells he should leave the three of them with. Thomas would have to master the runic formations first before he could sketch them out for the other two to work on, but it was still a massive improvement over their current system of Vin dropping by whenever he was in town and giving them a single spell to try to learn. “And to answer your question, yes, dream magic is incredibly complex and dangerous. Maybe I’ll introduce you to a few pixie friends of mine down the line who can help with all that, but for now, we’re going to be keeping things on the simpler side. Same goes for gravity magic, let’s wait until you’ve gotten your magic and focus to at least… I don’t know, , before we start with that.”

Vin ignored the groans and complaints from his students as he chuckled and began heading back to their apartment with them to hunt for Jess. He still wasn’t really sure about teaching magic to other people, and he wasn’t comfortable with the whole ‘master-student’ relationship Shuvo continued to insist they had. But at the end of the day, it was nice to spread his love of magic with other like-minded individuals. After everything that had just happened, a little magic practice was exactly what he needed to take his mind off of things.

Who knew, by the time he was ready to head out on his next adventure, maybe his friends would have even returned to Terra.