Explorer of Edregon

Vin blinked as he stared at Lumel. The pulmon was still busy examining the Underside corridor and didn't seem to notice anything was amiss. Similar to how he could sense his own artifacts, he got that same feeling from the Dimensional Mage, and could tell from where he was sitting that she had an artifact around her neck; the one she'd explained allowed her to survive outside of the water. However, that wasn't all he was feeling. Besides the amulet, his new passive received some dull feedback actually coming from the general space around her.

This sensation probably wouldn't have made any sense to him if he hadn't already figured out how Dimensional Sheath worked, but with that spell under his belt, Vin quickly realized he had to be detecting artifacts within her own dimensional storage.

"Hey Lumel, you totally don't have to show me anything if you don't want to, but is there any chance you have any artifacts within your dimensional storage? I just picked up Artifact Extraordinaire for my level 35 passive and I'm pretty sure I can feel the artifacts you have in another dimension."

"Oh, I didn't realize the passive was quite that powerful," Lumel said, turning around and giving him a quick smile. "I certainly don't mind sharing." With a flash of purple, Lumel suddenly held two new objects in her hands, which Vin's new passive honed in on immediately.

The first looked like some sort of fancy watering can, made out of what appeared to be coral of all things. The second was a simple bracelet made of a white, marble-like material that he recognized immediately.

"Did you take that bracelet from the library?"

"Unintentionally," she admitted with a sheepish smile. "It's one of the library's translation artifacts. I didn't actually have one myself, so I borrowed it, and then I didn't really have a chance to give it back before everything went down. I don't bother to wear it while talking to you because of your Polyglot passive."

"Well at least I know we're not the only ones the librarian is probably still mad at," Vin chuckled. "What about the weird watering can?"

"This is something I grabbed from the treasury back home before I started using the dungeons to explore Edregon," she explained, raising the artifact and aiming it to her right. "Watch."

Vin felt the mana in the air stir as she activated the artifact, and almost instantaneously, water began gushing out of it. Yet rather than fall to the ground, the water actually floated in midair, quickly forming a giant sphere as more and more water poured out of the artifact. Within seconds, there was a giant sphere of water floating just off the ground. As soon as it was large enough that even Trod could stand within the sphere completely submerged, the artifact stopped.

Giving Vin a wide smile, Lumel stepped directly into the sphere of water, the surface of which rippled but maintained its shape as she passed through. Once inside, she turned and waved at him, her robes gently billowing as she hung there.

"This was used by one of our greatest Airwalkers many years ago," she called to him, her voice warbling and difficult to understand from within the sphere of water. "I have my amulet I borrowed from my mother's collection that allows me to actually survive on dry land, but even with it, I need to spend at least a few minutes each day rehydrating my body. This artifact means I don't need to find natural bodies of water to make that happen."

"That's such a cool spell," Vin laughed, stepping forward and sticking a hand into the ball of water. The liquid was pleasantly cool to the touch, neither warm nor cold. "It's like you have your own portable 'bath' spell you can use whenever you want. Though I guess your people don't actually need to take baths or showers if you're already submerged in water your entire lives…"

While Vin wondered if asking Lumel about her people's bathing habits was too personal a question after only a week of dating, Lumel reached forward and took his hand in her own.

And yanked him into the sphere of water.

"Gah!" he shouted as he crashed through the wall of water and suddenly found himself floating there, entirely submerged within the sphere. Lumel floated right in front of him, grinning mischievously.

"Very funny," he said, surprised to realize he could actually make out the words despite being under water.

Huh. I guess that's another benefit of a high focus I never considered.

Vin went to swim back out of the sphere before he started drowning, but Lumel's hand was still gripped around his own, and she held him in place. Raising an eyebrow at her, Vin pointed at the edge of the spell, trying to mime that he needed to breathe. Even after learning they could talk within the water, every word from his mouth wasted air, after all. Rather than let him go, however, Lumel shook her head.

"Do you actually need to breathe that badly?"

Having been caught off guard before being yanked into the water, Vin didn't even have a full lungful of air on him at the moment. But as soon as those words left Lumel's mouth, he blinked, realizing what she meant. While he could definitely feel an ever so slight burning starting in his lungs, it was building far slower than he expected. He was confused for a moment, but it didn't take him long to figure it out.

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

My endurance is 55. I can probably hold my breath for what, three or four times longer than a regular person?

"Huh," he said, his words warbling through the water as Lumel giggled. He still couldn't talk much as every bit of air was important, but it was strange to realize he could functionally hold his breath for minutes without even trying.

Granted, that was far from long enough if he ever needed to actually enter Lumel's fragment for any reason, but it was still a nice discovery!

Seeing that he'd come to the realization that she was trying to show him, Lumel finally let go of his hand. Drifting closer to him, she wrapped her arms around him and surprised him with a long, tender kiss. After a moment, she pushed him forward, carefully helping him step out of the sphere of water and walking out beside him. Once they were both on dry land once more, the sphere of water crashed to the ground, splashing everywhere.

"Alright, that's a pretty cool artifact," Vin grinned, doing his best to shake the water off his limbs. While floating within the sphere was pretty cool, walking around in soaking wet clothes was less than fun. "Do you mind if I take a look at it? I could always use the experience."

"You get experience just from examining artifacts?" Lumel asked, looking surprised. "Vin, you should have told me! I would have let you look at these ages ago!"

"Whoops," he laughed, realizing he never had actually told her that function of his class. "Better late than never!"

One after the other he picked up the artifacts and received the welcome notifications. Each of them were lesser artifacts, which meant a nice boost of experience for him.

New lesser artifact discovered! 5,000 exp gained.

New lesser artifact discovered! 5,000 exp gained.

"I'll admit, I'm kinda curious how my new passive's strengthening effect would work on either of these," Vin said, scratching his head. " I mean, I could see that big ball of water just getting bigger. But how would one strengthen a translation spell?"

"Most likely, there are plenty of artifacts your passive just won't have any effect on," Lumel shrugged. "I'd be willing to bet you could withhold the strengthening effect as well if you focused while using them."

"I know you just gave me quite the project to work on, but would you mind if I borrowed these at some point? I'd love to try and get my hands on the spells within."

"Other than the fact that I sort of need the water artifact to live, I don't mind. So long as you're careful. I'm pretty certain I recall you mentioning only having learned spells from minor artifacts thus far, and these are both the next step up."

"Oh, right," Vin said, grinning sheepishly. He was so excited by the prospect of learning new spells, he'd forgotten that this artifact was essential to Lumel's ability to survive away from her fragment. "Living is rather important after all."

"Just a tiny bit," Lumel giggled. "I will say, I'm surprised by how nice it was to have someone swimming with me again... I wish I had some sort of underwater breathing spell I could give you."

Realizing she was starting to look a little depressed, Vin took her hand and squeezed it. "An underwater breathing artifact of some sort is on the top of my list of magic to look out for while running around. I'm sure I'll find something like it sooner or later!"

"Thanks, Vin. I appreciate the thought," Lumel said, giving him a sad smile. "I try to keep myself occupied with my research, and of course spending time with you has helped tremendously. But I still find myself missing my fragment every now and again."

Vin tried to keep the frown off his face as the pulmon sighed. It was easy to forget that Lumel had been exiled from her world for the sole crime of having been born a bastard child of the king. If she didn't have royal blood flowing through her veins, there would have been nothing wrong with her leaving her underwater kingdom, and she could have become a famous Airwalker like she'd always dreamed of as a child.

Instead, she'd been exiled from her home, and could never see her people again without the penalty of death if she was discovered.

"Once I figure out some form of water-breathing magic, maybe I can pay your fragment a visit and see if I can't do something to help," he offered. "I know you said you need both the king and the queen to decide to undo your banishment, and that the queen hates you just because you exist, but who knows. It's at least worth a shot, right?"

"Maybe…" Lumel muttered, not sounding all that optimistic. "Regardless, that's not something we need to worry about for a while. Even if you gained the ability to breathe underwater, you'd need to come up with some way to fight while submerged as well. I don't think I actually mentioned this, but the dungeon that connects the Underside to my fragment? It's entirely underwater. The perfect environment for the monsters within my fragment."

"That… does sound rather difficult," Vin admitted, trying to imagine himself desperately swimming away from some sort of shark monster. Hell, he didn't even know if his Stone Shot would even function if he tried to cast it underwater.

"For now, you just worry about your people and the magic you already have on hand," Lumel said, squeezing his hand and giving him a small smile. "We've still got a few hours until dinner. Did you want to try your luck with either of the artifacts, or get started on Dimensional Shift?"

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still a bit intimidated by the prospect of spending the next week studying a single spell," Vin chuckled nervously, turning toward the artifacts instead. "Could I start with the water sphere artifact? It would be kinda nice knowing I'd be able to help you if something ever happens to it."

"Aww…" Lumel grinned, looking both embarrassed and pleased with his comment. "That's very sweet of you. Sure, I don't mind if you take a look. And I'm sure this goes without saying, but please make sure you're careful. It's not exactly the end of the world if you unintentionally destroy the artifact, but it would make things a lot more inconvenient for me."

"I promise I'll be careful with it," Vin nodded. "On the plus side, you said my new passive would probably help with this as well, right?"

"I'm pretty sure it affects just about everything artifact related, so it should."

"Then talk about perfect timing," Vin laughed, picking up the watering can and growing excited at the thought of learning some new magic. "With the new passive to help me, I'm feeling pretty confident about taking the plunge into learning from a lesser artifact."

"You can feel as confident as you want, just be careful," Lumel repeated, storing the translation bracelet with a flash of purple. "If you break it, I'm going to expect you to help me find water each night going forward."