Chapter 447: (441) 6.55. Magical Paperwork is Still Boring

After running his three students through some of the basics on runecrafting and ensuring they were on the right track, Vin left them all with a few runic formations, promising he’d do everything in his power to ensure they didn’t go weeks in between lessons this time around. After that, he spent the rest of the day going over what he generally considered the more boring, upkeep stuff that, while important, wasn’t really anything he wanted to spend too much time doing. He worked with Avaline on a new piece of the town newspaper, restating a lot of what he’d covered during his recent speech in the hopes of hammering home the fact that he didn’t want people roaming about in his name and trying to forcefully make others follow whatever beliefs they may have attributed to him. He attended a far-more official council meeting, getting an update on how the town’s defenses and preparations were progressing with the rapid approach of the battle for wave seven. He even grabbed a team of Earthers about to head over into the Sacred Forest and asked them to pass along a message, ensuring that Shia would hear that the cult situation had been resolved.

He didn’t have any method of contacting Scule or Reginald, so whenever those two decided to return to town would be entirely up to them.

In a similar vein, Vin finally got the chance to run his whole dream-based messaging system past the council. So much had happened that the original idea had sort of fallen by the wayside, but Lumel’s recent dream journey sparked it right back up. Anyone Vin marked he should be able to contact at night while they were sleeping, allowing him to give them updates when necessary regardless of his relative position on Edregon.

Witherson and Phil were against the idea of Vin potentially invading their dreams whenever he saw fit. Alice thought the idea was awesome and agreed immediately, and Spur hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before throwing in the towel and allowing Vin to cast Dream Mark on him as well. Two of the four councilors were better than none, and Vin decided that was probably more than enough for the purpose of staying in touch.

Scule had come through a while back with the information Vin had asked for regarding Dream Mark, courtesy of Fria on one of their many dream dates. According to the pixie, while there wasn’t necessarily a limit to how many Dream Marks he could have out, the more of them he placed, the greater the chance he accidentally ended up hitting the wrong dream when he went to contact someone. With that in mind, Vin was planning to keep things fairly light. A mark for each of his dream-capable teammates if they wanted, and maybe one or two more here or there if the need arose.

Each Dream Mark also lasted for about a month after the spell was initially cast, which meant he wouldn’t have to worry about reapplying them all that frequently.

By the time Vin finished up all the busywork he had to do, night was well upon them. After triple checking that their apartment was clear of people and not being hounded by potential cultists, Vin retrieved Lumel from the safehouse and brought her back home. Gently laying her in her bed, he returned to the common room, where he spotted a tiny, petian-sized note lying out on the table.

Vin rolled his eyes, tossing the note out on his way to his bedroom. That at least took care of Scule knowing it was safe to return, and after spending more than a week over in the Citadel with his family, Vin had a good feeling he’d return first thing in the morning once he heard the coast was clear. As much as he loved his little brother and sister, his relationship with his parents was just a touch more strained.

“Now then… I’ve been putting this off long enough,” Vin muttered as he sat on the foot of his bed and took a look at the skills portion of his interface. Following his unexpected second dream journey, Vin now had skills sitting at level 20, and it was high time he did something about that.

Introspection lvl 20

Total Resistance lvl 20

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Sleeping lvl 20

Upon reaching level 20, many skills could then be evolved into a stronger version of themselves at the cost of a skill point. For example, Introspection had originally been Meditation, and Total Resistance had once been plain-old Resistance. The tricky thing was what came after that.

Vin looked at his Manacraft skill, shuddering slightly at the memory of his body attempting to break itself down into pure mana. From what he understood, certain skills could continue progressing even after evolving and hitting level 20 again, but the second evolution was supposed to come more naturally. He hadn’t dared try forcing any additional skill points into Introspection like he had with Runecraft. Even after hitting level 50 and gaining a more firm control surrounding his Beyond the Veil ability, Vin understood certain rules were in place for a reason. That ruled out attempting to force either Introspection or Total Resistance to continue advancing any more than they already had.

But they weren’t the only skills he had sitting at level 20.

Level 20 Sleeping is capable of skill evolution. Spend a skill point to evolve skill?

At this point, having grinded his way slowly but surely up to level 51, Vin didn’t exactly have a lot of skill points to throw around. As was the nature of the System, the higher one advanced, the slower they started to level. That said, he happen to have a single skill point to his name at the moment, and he would be getting another one as soon as he hit level 52. His Running skill had been on the precipice of evolution for what felt like ages now, and Vin wanted to be sure he could evolve the skill the moment it tipped over into level 20. Not to mention Dungeoneering was already up to level 16, and he was interested in seeing what that skill would evolve into come hitting the level cap.

That said, Sleeping had already proven it to be a shockingly useful skill. Communicating across vast distances and practicing magic during the night were no small things, so Vin didn’t feel too bad about making his latest purchase.

Sleeping lvl 20 has evolved into Dormancy lvl 1! 200 exp gained.

“Dormancy?” Vin blinked, raising an eyebrow at his newest skill. “I guess it’s better than ‘hibernation’.”

Naturally, the System didn’t provide him with any sort of additional information regarding the skill evolution. And seeing as his usual fonts of information were all either recovering or off in other fragments, Vin was all on his own for this one. With a shrug, he pulled out his shimmerwing mattress, assembled his stronghold of slumber, and cast Dream Walk on himself. He was tempted to check in on Lumel and see how she was doing, but he figured some true sleep would probably do her good.

The moment Vin’s head brushed against his cloud pillow, he blinked as he found himself standing over his own slumbering body.

Focusing on slipping into his own dream, Vin took a look around at his mana pool, trying to leverage his high focus and tell if there were any immediate differences. It was hard to say, but he thought he had a slightly better handle on the sensation of time passing in the real world. The dilation between waking and dreaming hadn't changed, but if he could get to the point where he knew precisely when he’d be waking up, he could finally start risking working on some more complex spells within his dreams.

His fear of snapping out of his dream while he was in the middle of weaving together a dangerous formation had been the main reason why he was taking things so slowly and cautiously regarding his original plan to devote his sleep time to magic practice. Evolving Sleeping into Dormancy looked like it was going to solve that problem for him, and Vin rubbed his hands together gleefully as his mind raced through all the different spell ideas he wanted to try and work on.

With the battle for wave seven right around the corner, perhaps it was time for him to learn a second tier-3 spell.

Deciding that leaping straight into a new tier-3 spell would probably be a smarter thing to do while conscious, and with at least one of his friends at his side, Vin instead chose to keep things simple. Lumel’s dream journey had in fact given him an idea for a new spell, and one that would be remarkably useful in the event they ever needed to return to her home fragment for any reason.

“But how to go about making it,” Vin muttered, tapping his staff that had appeared with him in his dream on the ground. Luckily, the solution was a fairly simple one, and the moment Spell Weaver confirmed his idea would work, Vin got started.

Reconstructing Whispering Wind and Sense Water, Vin dove straight into the runic formations, picking and choosing what he needed to keep from each spell and what he needed to scrap entirely. Seeing as he wasn’t inventing an entirely new spell from scratch so much as altering an existing one, the work went faster than normal, and Vin felt himself start to enter into something akin to a deep trance as he worked. It was almost as though Dormancy forced him into an even deeper form of Introspection than the skill already did, and Vin took full advantage of that, relying on Spell Builder and his new Capstone to keep him safe from any minor backlashes.

Despite the fact that a full night of sleep translated to only about a single hour in the dreamscape, Vin amazed even himself when the final piece of his formation slotted into place and the new runic formation flared to life. Naturally, as he wasn’t currently underwater, it didn’t actually do anything. But Vin grinned anyway as he opened his eyes and rejoined the waking world, feeling more refreshed than ever as he looked at the waiting notification for him.

Dormancy increased to lvl 2! 400 exp gained.

New spell learned! Tier 1 Water Spell (Whispering Water). 5,000 exp gained.

Introspection increased to lvl 21! 4,200 exp gained.

Already knocking Dormancy up another level was a welcome surprise, but it was the last of the three notifications that caught his breath. It seemed as though that sensation that he was entering an even deeper focus than normal from combining Dormancy and Introspection hadn’t been just in his head like he’d thought. If he could keep pushing that newfound combination and manage to get his Introspection skill up to level 25 and evolve it like he had with Manacraft…

It looked like it was time for Vin to hit the pillows.