Wizardly Dude

27. It’s Coarse and Gets Everywhere

“So what’s the plan?” Shia asked as they made their way out of the Sacred Forest. As one last parting gift, Erik had pointed them in a direction that was free of any monsters, so they were making good time as they walked. They’d had to wait a few minutes to allow Shia to run back to her house and grab some essentials like a cloak and a travel bag seeing as she hadn’t known she’d be joining them, but they hadn’t minded the wait.

“Well, I have to return back to my people i...

26. The Giving Tree

Vin couldn’t help but let out a massive yawn as they made their way to the edge of the elven village, earning himself a raised eyebrow from Shia as they walked. The elf struck a far more imposing visage now that she held the minor artifact in hand. So much so that the handful of elves that were up this early seemed to be more interested in the miniature tree she was carrying than the human walking by her side.

Vin couldn’t blame them. After honing his ability to sense magical auras ...

25. Extra Credit

It took two more days for Erik to finally finish his preparations, and Vin hadn’t spent that time idly. With his new Capstone in hand, Vin had delved deep into the few spells he knew and tried to figure out what exactly the different runes did. 

He quickly learned that while Runic Recalibration gave him some innate understanding of an individual rune’s purpose and allowed him to make minute adjustments to a structure after a spell had already been cast, it did not ...

24. Capstone

Vin spent the next hour getting berated by his new magic instructor. Apparently, what he’d done had been ‘idiotic,’ and ‘reckless,’ and ‘liable to get himself killed.’ According to Shia, reverse engineering a spell from an artifact was already a dangerous thing to attempt, and to do so without a more experienced mage watching over him to make sure he didn’t accidentally melt his own eyeballs was practically suicidal.

While Vin didn’t one hundred percent agree with her,...

23. An Elven Opinion

Shia yawned, rolling over with a smile on her face as she realized the dream she’d been having about sleeping on a cloud had been entirely real. She’d been waiting for a chance to try out her master’s fancy shiverwing mattress ever since he’d first bragged about it to her.

She had to admit, it was pretty great.

Not in any rush to leave her own personal paradise, Shia stared up at the interwoven trees making up the ceiling. Her master has always loved shimmer ...

22. Elven Hospitality

As it turned out, the place that Erik had in mind for Vin’s stay was actually the now vacant house that had belonged to the Druid of the Divine before he went missing. The house had been empty for the last three months after all, so Erik apparently saw no problem with Vin using it for a few days.

Unlike the rest of the elven village, where it seemed most elves lived in essentially large apartment buildings with carefully grown walls and floors, the house that Vin found himself standin...

21. Save the Trees

Vin blinked at the Ancient One as the strange tree-like man took another sip of his tea, breathing in the deep aroma before placing the cup down. As though he hadn’t just confessed to Vin that his entire race of God-like beings was dead and he’d soon follow.

‘Well… that’s some confession.’ Alka said, seeming almost speechless for once.

“No kidding,” he muttered, clearing his throat when the Ancient One gave him a curious look. “So, uh… did you like… ...

20. Tree Huggers

The elven village was every hippie’s wet dream come to life. Somehow the elves had managed to grow trees in such a way that they formed the very walls and ceilings of their houses, making every single one of the hundreds of houses Vin could make out a living work of art. Some houses were short and stout, decorated with sprawling root systems while others were thin and stretched up into the forest canopy, allowing plenty of room for their people without having to expand the borders of their ...

19. A Helping Hand

Ignoring Alka’s taunt, Smohl stumbled over to the two elves that had gone down in a tangle of limbs when the Trunkback had thrown one at the other. Dropping hard to his knees, the elf checked their pulses. At least one of them must still have been breathing, as the leader quickly turned and yelled over his shoulder.

“Puwen! Rouse Shia! Eigan is dead but Woad still breathes. We need her magic!”

Vin and Alka watched as Puwen shook off the remains of whatever the Trunkback’s ...

18. An Unexpected Guest

‘Come on, give me the reins, I can take ‘em!’

“You can not take them!” Vin hissed, earning himself a raised eyebrow from one of the closer elves. Clearing his throat, Vin smiled at his ambushers, thanking the System once again for offering him the Polyglot passive. “Hello! I’m Vin, an Explorer-”

“Silence!” One of the elves in the back shouted, pulling his bowstring back a few more inches and raising his aim from Vin’s chest to his head....

17. Welcome to the Jungle

Vin took a deep breath in through his nose, savoring the fresh air and swaths of open meadow before him. After discovering new world fragments and roaming the open landscape, returning to camp had almost felt like he was willingly walking back into that small cell the System had yanked him from back on Earth.

“It’s hard to believe I’ve only been on this world for a couple of days,” he mused, thinking over everything he’d accomplished as he took off toward the unknown fragment ...

16. I’m the Map!

Vin’s next few days on Edregon were spent doing what he probably should have done from the very beginning. Following Spur’s orders, Vin started in camp at the center of their fragment and travelled outward in ever increasing rings in order to map out all of the surrounding landscape.

Realizing almost immediately that the task was going to require him to travel potentially hundreds of miles, he quickly purchased his third passive to help with the daunting task. One that he remembered...

15. So, Funny Story...

“The objective of these council meetings is to decide on the appropriate actions we should take as a whole moving forward, and to ensure each of the three class related factions making up our camp feel like they are being heard,” Spur summed up, looking around the small table that had been brought into the command tent. Just like he’d said, there were now five people supposedly in charge of their small camp of Earthers, and somehow Vin the former homeless vagabond had ended up as one of...

14. Decisions, Decisions

It turned out the answer to that question was the hastily thrown together mess hall. All it took was following the smell of roasting meat, and a few minutes later Vin found himself sitting under a tree with a grilled sqerret on a stick and his System interface pulled up in front of him. It seemed that with just under a hundred people in camp, food was far from one of their current concerns. They’d brought enough rations to last them a few weeks even without supplementing their stores with t...

13. All Hail Democracy

‘This is your camp?’ Alka asked, clearly unimpressed as the two of them made their way through scattered bedrolls and shoddily put together tents on their quest to find Spur. Half of the camp was set up rather well with the tents in rows and all facing the same direction, but the other half looked like the System had grabbed a tiny sliver of Woodstock by accident. Vin knew it hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since they’d arrived in this new world, but he’d kinda figu...

12. The Woes of Leadership

Spur sighed, not even bothering to look up from the dozens of sheets of paper he had spread out across one of the many foldable tables they’d assembled in their temporary command center. He’d been busy trying to determine if it was smarter for them to prioritize being closer to a water source versus setting up their permanent camp in a more defensible location when one of his men poked their head into the tent.

“Repeat that again Thomas,” Spur said, closing his eyes and praying ...

11. Backseat Driver

Despite Alka’s desire to put the town that had trapped her for the last three months behind her, the group decided to spend one more night within the town’s borders. None of them were in any rush to try and navigate through the snake infested grass in the dark. Especially after Vin repeated how he’d found their fourth member to Samtha’s now conscious comrades.

Vin and Alka spent the last bit of daylight experimenting with their strange new bond. First, they confirmed that Alka w...

10. A Little Close for Comfort

“Samtha, do any of you three have the ability to detect secret compartments? Like, if someone was hiding something underground?”

“Yes,” she nodded, looking puzzled. “At least, to a degree. Korey and myself both have the Sense Stone spell. If there is a compartment in the ground, we will feel the absence of stone. Even simple dirt ground is littered with small rocks we can use. But if it’s a hidden spot in one of the walls, we won’t sense anything with...

9. A Small Medium at Large

Vin stared at the glowing woman floating comfortably a few feet above the ground. Slowly getting to his feet, he brushed himself off and pursed his lips. “Sorry… you want me to do what exactly?”

“Kill me,” she said, matter of factly. “You think I want to be stuck like this? A ghost trapped on this mortal plane, never able to rest in peace? I tried to borrow her friend and explain to stony over here,” she thumbed over her shoulder toward Samtha. “…but things get a littl...

8. Head Trauma is no Joke

It only took Vin about a mile of jogging down the dirt path before he stumbled upon the abandoned town. Located between a handful of the massive trees was a lifeless town without a single speck of movement. As he approached, Vin scanned the oddly quiet cluster of buildings, looking for anyone who could help him.

The buildings looked like they’d been constructed from bricks made of pressed-grass; the finely crafted wooden doors and window frames were the only unique features from each ...

7. Death by Noodle

“They headed east from here,” the elder said, gesturing off into the distance. The two of them stood at the edge of the village while a handful of villagers watched them from a respectful distance. Vin wasn’t sure if it was because of how highly these people valued honesty, but not a single one of the onlookers was even pretending to be doing something other than staring at them with hope or interest in their eyes.

Granted it's not like these people had lawnmowers they could use t...

6. Someone Get These People A Thesaurus

The faint sound of someone chiseling rock somewhere within the village was all that could be heard as Vin stared at the elder, trying to wrap his head around her words.

“I’m sorry… when you say, ‘the world ended’… what do you mean by that exactly?”

“It is as it sounds,” she said solemnly, a single tear rolling down her face as her eyes clouded. “A powerful madness slowly crept up out of nowhere and infested the world. People turned on loved ones overnight. Mons...

5. Dónde Está La Biblioteca?

Boy I hope these guys know how to fight and I’m not about to get their entire village slaughtered, Vin thought as he ran down the hill; an actual chance of survival that didn’t involve entering a knife fight with a giant mutant scorpion giving him the motivation he needed to keep his tired legs moving.

From his spot atop the hill he was able to make out the village in pretty good detail. The buildings seemed to be made from crushed stone and some type of mortar, and they we...

4. Death Is A Good Motivator

As Vin walked, he carefully took in the surrounding area, keeping an eye out for anything unusual as he’d been instructed. So far, everything seemed rather… normal. If he hadn’t witnessed the magic of teleportation first hand, he would have assumed he was just strolling through a meadow somewhere back on Earth. The grass was green. The sky was blue. Hell, there was thankfully still only a single sun in the sky that seemed to be moving as expected. It wasn’t until he’d walked for a f...