Just like the long wait before the battle for wave four, the next week was simultaneously remarkably productive, and boring as all hell. For Vin at least. There was no end to the preparations that needed to be made prior to the next wave of monsters showing up, and the energy around town seemed to only grow stronger and more frantic with each passing day.

  Spur began conducting the monster attack preparation drills once more, randomly ringing the bell tower in the center of town and requiring everyone to react as if the monsters were beginning to pop up for real. Vin was thankfully excused from many of them as it would have been far too dangerous to continue yanking him out of Introspection while working on the delicate runic formation of a tier 3 spell, but everyone else got to the point where they could probably don their armor and weapons and make it to their designated area without even fully waking up.

  Alice had mastered the art of making magical claymores, and had gotten to work dotting the surrounding meadows with her traps. Naturally, such an action would have been beyond dangerous, seeing as hundreds of people wandered through those same grounds every day. But her brand-new, level 30 Capstone took care of that problem quite nicely. Remote Safety meant that her traps wouldn’t trigger until she decided she wanted them to, which was a massive game changer for her preparations. She was finally free to throw her favorite pitfalls and all sorts of traps all over the outskirts of town, knowing that unsuspecting Earthers wouldn’t be blowing their limbs off or falling to their deaths left and right.

  Vin had been surprised to learn that Alice wasn’t actually the only Trapper they had at this point either. One of the Bands and a member from the fourth wave each had taken the Trapper class as well, and they worked side-by-side with Alice to help her prepare. Seeing as they didn’t have the same ability they had to be far more cautious with their own traps, but it was still nice to have additional hands helping out.

  As a result of all the aerial monsters that had bypassed their defenses and rained attacks down from up high during the last battle, Witherson had come up with the genius idea of transforming the underground farm that Sakis had assisted them in creating into a virtual bunker as well. Large enough to hold over a thousand people, the farm was heavily reinforced and capable of withstanding just about anything shy of an epic monster. Those who were still in the single-digits for level or had particularly valuable, non-combat classes were now being ordered to retreat to the bunker the moment the alarm sounded.

  Bill outdid himself yet again with another one of his alchemical creations. Adding to his health and mana potions, he worked with Frank and Scule to devise what was now being called a ‘potion of temporary death.’ Horrifying name, but appropriate for what it did. Health potions weren’t all powerful, and each potion gave less healing than the one before, meaning a serious wound could still be quite fatal if a warrior had already dumped a potion or two down their throat. The potion of temporary death worked a bit differently. Rather than heal someone’s injuries, it magically knocked them unconscious and slowed down their entire system, to the point where a heartbeat couldn’t even be felt. This strange stasis effect prevented blood from flowing out of any open wounds and bought the drinker time to be brought to Frank for the Healer to work his magic, but it was risky. While normal monsters tended to ignore anyone who went down in favor of attacking active threats, elite and epic monsters didn’t share that same instinct. If an elite monster stumbled upon someone in one of those false comas, nothing would stop them from happily transforming their ‘death’ from temporary to permanent.

  Still, the potions were deemed useful enough that most squad leaders carried one or two on them at this point, in the event of a true emergency.

  Myers worked with Golrim and Waltz to improve upon the designs of both her crossbows and the ballistae lining the outer wall. Vin hadn’t seen the work himself, but he’d been informed that the Expert of Numbers had run some intense experiments and calculations involving physics and tensile strength. Combined with the beastkin’s knowledge from constructing and maintaining his own dual crossbows, they were able to upgrade the town’s ranged weaponry quite significantly. Repeating crossbows that were able to fire multiple times before needing to be reloaded from a cartridge full of bolts were now standard issue for any ranged combat classes that didn’t use a bow, and they put in hour after hour of practice learning how to use them.

  Shia devised a unique work around for extending her time within Living Giant. By planting a large field of miniature trees in the portion of the meadow she’d be protecting, similar to what she’d given Scule’s family just the other day, she created an ankle-sized forest that she would be able to fight within. The additional nature granted her a sizable boost to her mana reserves thanks to her Capstone, and she nearly doubled the amount of time her spell could remain active, so long as she stuck to her zone.

  Alka worked double-time with Trod and her Slayers to get her latest recruits up to snuff before the wave hit. As expected, more and more of them began giving up as the training ramped up in intensity, but Alka didn’t let that deter her from continuing to push them. While Tiffany hadn’t quite yet grown brave enough to fully return to town just yet and show off her merider body, choosing instead to camp out in the adjacent forest dungeon for the time being, she did join Alka in training the newer recruits. Each and every one of them that managed to hit their prestige prior to the upcoming battle would be a massive boon.

  Everyone was doing their part to prepare and hone their skills for the inevitable battle, and Vin was no different. Only his preparation looked a tad different from everyone else’s. Tucked away in his apartment, Vin functionally spent eight straight days working on a new spell.

  A new tier 3 spell.

  Though in typical fashion, rather than try his hand at learning Dimensional Shift like he’d originally planned, Vin decided to leave the more advanced, teleportation-based spatial magic to the Dimensional Mage, turning his focus instead toward something even more ridiculous.

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  He was going to create an entirely new tier 3 spell. An entirely new spatial spell.

  He’d had an idea for the spell he wanted to create ever since Lumel had first shown him Magic Lock, and now that he actually had some time to kill where he wasn’t allowed to run off and get himself wrapped up in any adventures, it was finally time to put his magical skills to the test. Thankfully, there were a handful of things he had going for him.

  For one, he had his very own twice-prestiged mage who specialized in spatial magic helping him out. When he first explained his idea to her, informing her that his Spell Weaver title told him it should work, Lumel was more than happy to put her current spell on hold and collaborate with him on his idea. Having someone working with him who actually understood the inner workings of most spatial magic was the biggest factor in his plan working, but it wasn’t the only one.

  Unlike Fireball, the newest spell Vin wanted was purely utility-based. And while that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any runic backlashes as he worked through the runic formation via trial and error, it meant that they should be remarkably less lethal, despite going up a tier in complexity. His intention was to spend just about all day, every day, working on the spell, so he didn’t want to be triggering his divine boon if he could help it, as that would require him to take a break and wait for it to recharge.

  The spells he was intending to combine with one another were Magic Lock and Entangle. If his newest spell did what he was hoping it would, it would be an absolute game changer, and quite possibly one of his most versatile abilities.

  The issue of course was getting the runic formation to do what he wanted.

  Other than within the Underside, Vin had long since learned that the world around them was actually filled with layers of different dimensions. Magic Lock isolated two of these many layers attached to two unique objects and tied them together in a knot, making a single point where the two objects couldn’t be detached unless the dimensions were unraveled. However, due to the concepts used in the spell’s creation, it only worked on locking things such as doors and containers. And even if it worked on other things, a single point of connection would still allow for quite a lot of movement in different directions.

  But what if there were more points of connection?

  Entangle was one of the first spells Vin had ever learned, and to this day, it was still one of his most useful. It had saved his life on more than one occasion by slowing down monsters and giving him some breathing room, so he knew better than anyone the benefit of tying something up. Shia herself had actually improved upon the spell as well, creating Entangling Thorns awhile back. She hadn’t created a new spell so much as gotten lucky that Rapid Growth and Entangle were basically two puzzle pieces that clicked together to form something even greater. It was one of the things that led him to believe his newest experiment might bear fruit as well.

  The days before the next wave of monsters ticked by one after another, and he and Lumel worked tirelessly on putting together the newest runic formation. Thankfully, Lumel found the concept of creating a new spatial spell exciting and fun, as he’d been afraid she might get frustrated at all the trial and error.

  The biggest issue with trying to create a tier 3 spell were all the different root spells to worry about. Despite Fireball coming from Stone Shot and Create Flame, it was more complicated than that. Stone Shot itself was constructed off of Summon Stone, meaning Fireball was actually built from the runic formations of three separate spells.

  Vin’s newest idea would be built off the back of five.

  Entangle utilized Sense Life, and Magic Lock relied on Sense Dimensions and Isolate Dimension. Vin needed to figure out a way to make all of these spells play nicely together, which was no easy feat.

  Thankfully, they had an entire week with nothing to do but experiment.

  Vin made alteration after alteration, tweaking bits here and completely changing other bits there. The spell didn’t actually need to worry about life, so he realized early on that he was able to scrap Sense Life almost entirely. But getting Entangle and Isolate Dimension to work together was a nearly impossible task.

  Vin experienced somewhere close to sixty or seventy runic backlashes during that week of training, but very few of them were immediately fatal, as he wasn’t trying to move anything between dimensions such as with Dimensional Shift or Dimensional Sheath. At worst, his backlashes grabbed a few of the dimensions attached to himself and knotted them up, giving him horrific cramps or paralyzing parts of his body as they were prevented from moving.

  Luckily, he had Lumel at his side at all times, and she was always quick to unknot the dimensions that got tangled up inside him. There were three instances where the runic backlashes locked up parts of his heart, which would have certainly been fatal, but his divine boon kicked in each time and saved his life. Thankfully, each of those times had been close to the end of the day anyway, so they hadn’t lost too much time and were able to simply call it a night and get right back to it in the morning.

  It was long. It was arduous. And it was incredibly painful at times. But after an entire week of hard work and dedicated study, they pulled it off.

  Just in time for the battle for wave five.

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