Vin’s successful adjustment of Sense Soul was a fantastic revelation, but he quickly discovered things weren’t going to be quite as easy as he’d hoped. He spent the next hour doing a loop of Terra’s fragment, casting ‘Sense Earther’ in a cone at each of the surrounding fragments. To his dismay, he quickly discovered that none of the missing Earthers had been scattered in any of the immediately adjacent fragments. Or if they had, they were already dead.

  Technically, he could try and push the range of his spell even farther, but he was a tad intimidated at the thought of harnessing so much ambient mana at once. Unlike Xaril and Madam Trebella, he had a more personal understanding of exactly what mana and magic truly were. He couldn’t shake the feeling that casting a spell wide enough to span more than a single fragment worth of distance would anger the trapped magic of the world, and he wasn’t about to put that weird feeling in his gut to the test.

  For once, he was going to do the intelligent thing and play it a little safer.

  “Vin! What a nice surprise,” Lumel said, smiling at him as he approached her in the Underside. “Feeling better after the battle yesterday?”

  “Much better,” he said, returning her smile and pulling her in for a warm hug. The pulmon was not one for physical contact with most people, but seeing as they were dating, or lovemates, in her language, he was a special exception. “I have a favor to ask, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course, just say the word,” she said, growing more serious.

  Vin quickly explained about the missing Earthers and his newly altered spell, and Lumel immediately picked up on what he wanted to do. The two of them ran around the Underside, hitting each and every one of the dungeons linked to fragments they’d already been in. Lumel cast Mass Dimensional Shift to warp them past all the monsters to the dungeon entrances and speed things up. Once they were in the fragments proper, Vin was free to cast ‘Sense Earther’ and sweep the fragment for souls containing zero magic.

  Vin hadn’t expected too many hits, but as they went from fragment to fragment via the Underside and his spell failed to detect any new Earthers again and again, he began to grow concerned.

  Exactly how far had the missing Earthers been thrown?

  Finally, just when he was getting ready to give up, they got a hit. They’d been working their way outward from Terra, which meant the hit was from one of the last fragments they tried.

  “I can sense one!” he gasped, startling Lumel who was already preparing to warp them back to the Underside after so many consecutive failures. “There’s a missing Earther here!”

  “That’s great!” she laughed, pausing as she took in where they were. “…What was your relationship with the dwarves again?”

  Sure enough, the first fragment where he finally got a hit on a missing Earther was the Crater. According to his spell, the Earther was actually within the Crater itself, meaning either they stumbled their way in from the top of the volcano, or they had the luck to appear directly in the dwarven town.

  If that was the case, they ended up being really lucky, as the center of town was a giant vat of molten lava, slowly swirling away and hot enough to melt through just about anything in seconds.

  “It’s been a while, but the dwarves and I left on good terms,” Vin said, glancing at the newly repaired cave wall. It seemed after Forpurt had punched his way into the dwarven town and Vin explained that the Gods had created the dungeons, rather than put the flat wall back up and go back to hiding the dungeon, Nohral had installed a metal door. “Fair warning, when I open that door, we’re going to get blasted by quite a lot of heat. A lot of dry heat. Your artifact should be enough to protect you, right?”

  “It should, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to a certain mage offering to cast Protection from Fire on me,” she teased as she took his hand. Vin noted how she’d placed the translation artifact she’d accidentally stolen from the library on her wrist, ensuring she’d be able to understand the dwarves.

  Chuckling, Vin did just that, adjusting the spell slightly to make it even stronger and to keep Lumel as comfortable as he could. He still remembered how unbearable the heat had been down at the bottom of the Crater, and there was no reason why Lumel had to suffer through that like they had.

  “First things first, we need to find Nohral,” he explained as he opened the door. Even with his artifact, he felt the temperature rise a couple of degrees as he was blasted in the face with hot, dry air. Thankfully, it was more like standing in front of a warm air vent rather than throwing himself headfirst into a crackling fireplace. “Nohral should know-”

  Vin paused as he stepped out onto the edge of the dwarven town, only to find himself face to face with a half-dozen loaded crossbows. He’d forgotten just how tight the dwarves kept their security, and he blinked as he realized what this meant.

  “Have you guys just been standing here with nothing to do… for weeks?”

  He wasn’t sure if they recognized him, but a few of them certainly remembered his arm, as two of the crossbows slowly lowered.

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  “It’s him,” one of the dwarves said, their voice low and rumbly. “The one Deorer worked on.”

  “The Hero?” another asked, looking surprised. She looked Vin up and down, seeming unimpressed with what she saw. “Are you sure?”

  “No, not the Hero. He was in the Hero’s party,” the first explained, motioning for the others to lower their weapons. “Nohral said if any of them came back to bring them to him.”

  Finally, the other crossbows were put away, and the first dwarf nodded at them. “Follow me,” he said, motioning for them to fall in line behind him. As they walked, Lumel leaned closer and whispered.

  “The dwarves are a bit… serious, huh?”

  “That was nothing. You should have seen the welcoming party we got when we walked down the stairs into the Crater for the first time,” Vin laughed, recalling the nearly three-dozen heavily armored dwarves that had met them. “Do you remember me explaining how we got them to make Alka a new sword?”

  “She waded through lava? That’s their insane ‘trial’ Heroes have to pass in order to have a sword made for them, right?”

  “Yep. The dwarves won’t make weaponry for anyone other than Heroes,” he confirmed, tapping his left arm. “Luckily for us, they’re still willing to do things like give someone a prosthetic arm, so long as they don’t have to make the parts. Although Deorer himself said he was just doing it for the easy level.”

  “I kinda want to meet the Smith of Relics,” Lumel admitted, sounding excited at the thought. “Do you think we will?”

  “I mean, I know where to find him,” Vin said, glancing over at the lava within the center of town as they walked past an opening between buildings. In the heart of the molten pool, with lava up to his waist, stood Deorer, busy clanging away on his darthsteel anvil as he made who knew what relic for his people. Vin had been somewhat drunk during his sole experience with the dwarf, as he’d had to remain conscious during his surgery but still wanted to dull the pain, so he couldn’t say he really knew him all that well. Most of what he’d heard about the dwarf had been through Alka.

  The dwarf they were following led them to the familiar central building Vin and his team had been in the last time they were here, before depositing them in the identical conference room as well. Vin could tell it was the same room from the burn marks that some poor dwarf hadn’t quite managed to clean up on the ground from when Deorer had stormed in and dripped lava everywhere.

  “Nohral will be in shortly,” the dwarf said, before closing the door and leaving them to their own devices.

  “So what’s the plan?” Lumel asked, her excitement building with every second they waited. “Do you know where the missing Earther is?”

  “They’re actually in this very building,” Vin said, barely having to expand the spell’s radius to find the magic-free soul. “Specifically, they’re in one of the basements. As to the plan, we’re going to explain to Nohral what we came here for, and then I actually have a follow up question I want to run by him.”

  “Oh? I thought we were just here for the Earther.”

  “They’re definitely the priority, but I was planning on coming back to the Crater sooner or later anyway,” Vin admitted. “After the battle for wave five and seeing just how much harder each consecutive wave was getting, I realized it’s not just enough for us to keep advancing on our own at this point. We need to start relying on some of the other fragments as well, and the dwarves are a perfect starting point.”

  “You said they wouldn’t be able to make weapons…” Lumel said slowly, her eyes lighting up as the answer came to her. “So you’re going to ask about armor?”

  “Exactly,” he grinned. “Other than Shredder and the armor Myers made him out of that elite snake monster after the battle for wave two, everyone else is stuck with leather armor. We’ve got a few shields here and there, but one of the things our fragment is lacking above all else is metal. I haven’t really asked about details, but I know there’s not much. The weapons we have are all the basic ones given to warriors by the System upon arriving on Edregon. We have a small number of Smiths, but due to the general lack of metal, they can’t really waste any when most of what we have needs to go toward buildings or ammunition. If we want to outfit our warriors in actual armor, we need the dwarves’ help.”

  “That’s a lot of warriors,” Lumel muttered, running the numbers in her head. “You think the dwarves would even have enough Smiths for all that?”

  “Yes,” Vin said bluntly, thinking back to the near-hundred Smiths stalking them through the town as they walked, all desperate to try and get a peek at Alka’s unique body. “Yes I do.”

  Nohral didn’t keep them waiting for long, and Vin smiled at the scrawny dwarf as he entered the room with a book under his arm, nodding respectfully toward them.

  “Vin, thank you for inadvertently testing our new checkpoint,” Nohral said, popping a few copper chips into his mouth and grinding away at them as he took his seat and placed the book in front of him. The dwarves actually ate metal as part of their diet, often in the form of small chips.

  Curiously, it seemed as if the different metals carried different flavors, and Vin recalled how Nohral had explained that copper was his favorite.

  Vin and Lumel mirrored him by taking their own seats, and Vin had to contain his wince as he recalled one other unpleasant fact about the dwarves. Due to their stony, tough skin, they didn’t believe in any form of cushioning, preferring to make their furniture out of pure metal.

  After all the time and effort he’d put into creating his stronghold of slumber, they were his natural enemy.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Nohral continued, getting straight to the point. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the confused human who somehow ended up on the edge of town, would it? By the time someone spotted her, she was half delirious from dehydration.”

  “That’s the main reason why I’m here,” Vin said, letting out a sigh of relief that the Earther hadn’t caused an incident. “It’s a long story, but they were subjected to a teleportation experiment that went wrong. Is she alright?”

  “Our healers are tending to her now, but she should be fine,” Nohral nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you could take her off our hands.”

  “Don’t worry, that’s why I’m here,” Vin said, mentally pumping a fist and trying to contain his excitement. One down, potentially thirteen more to go. “Though I did have a question I wanted to run past you.”

  “I’m all ears,” Nohral said, looking curious. “Go ahead.”

  “The number of monsters attacking my people has continued to go up,” he started, deciding to get straight to the point. The dwarves were a rather blunt people that didn’t beat much around the bush. “I know your people won’t make weapons, but is there any chance you’d be willing to help us make some armor? Or perhaps trade for the metals we’d need to make our own?”

  “I see no reason why we can’t help you with some armor,” Nohral said, tapping his chin thoughtfully as Vin and Lumel exchanged quick grins.

  “For the right price, of course.”

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