After lounging on the ground for a while, Vin finally retreated back to Terra to reveal the good news. To his shock, he didn't make it two feet into his apartment before Lumel spotted him and her eyes widened.

"You prestiged!" she exclaimed, warping over to him in a flash of purple and grabbing his hands excitedly. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you," he said, laughing as the usually reserved pulmon all but hopped up and down. "How could you tell?"

"Magic Eyes," she explained, tapping her temple. "Remember how I can see traces of magic now? As it turns out, different people have different densities of magic in their bodies based on their prestige level, separate from the mana within their cores. I can't tell the difference between someone who's level 21 versus 39, but I can pick out the different levels of prestige."

"That sounds like a useful trick," he said, glancing around. "Anyone else back for the night yet?"

"Shia said she wanted to have another meeting with her master and was planning to camp out in one of the dungeons they hadn't spoken in yet, but she asked me to let you know she'd be back in time for breakfast, and that she wanted to come with us into the next fragment. I haven't seen Scule or Reginald, however."

"Those two are probably off stealing shoelaces or something," he said, waving the matter away. "Alka's sitting this one out, by the way. She's busy running those poor fourth wavers with dreams of becoming monster hunters through the wringer. I certainly don't envy them."

"That's a shame, I was looking forward to getting to chat with her some more," Lumel admitted, frowning at the news. Even so, she quickly remembered why she'd been so excited only moments ago, and she smiled once more. "That's fine though! We should do something exciting to celebrate!"

"Hold on there, what about your own prestige?!" he asked, laughing at the embarrassed look on her face. "Come on, we can do some sort of joint celebration at the very least. Before we even get into that though, don't you want to hear what I ended up going with?"

"Let me guess… Something like Wanderer of Whimsy?"

"That does sound like something I'd pick, but no, it's a lot cooler than that. Try Adventurer of the Arcane."

"Of course you would get a specialized prestige class offered to you," Lumel said, her annoyed tone betrayed by the excitement in her eyes. "That's even better news! I don't know the inner workings of the class of course, but it sounds perfect for you. What passive and class ability did you get?"

"The passive is called Magical Adept, and I have no idea what it does. The class ability is odd, something called 'Beyond the Veil?' It didn't really come with any additional information, so your guess is as good as mine as to that bit of the class as well. And speaking of class abilities, why didn't you tell me second prestige classes had some sort of extra bonus effect? I had no idea!"

"Sorry, I honestly don't know," she shrugged, looking a tad confused herself. "I guess it just slipped my mind entirely."

"Don't worry about it," he decided, not wanting to harp on the question and make her feel bad. "What's your class ability as a Mage of Discovery?"

"I get bonus experience for discovering things associated with magic. The fewer people who have interacted with said things, the more experience gained. That's going to be pretty huge, because from what I've heard, leveling gets far harder after hitting level 40."

"Yeah, Deorer, the dwarven smith we met back in the Crater, said the same thing," he nodded. "I don't really know how my new class differs from Magical Explorer, but it sounds like our classes are going to have some decent overlap when it comes to earning experience."

"It would be nice getting to remain relatively close to one another in level," she said, blushing as she squeezed his hand. "Do you want to try out your new passive and see how it works?"

"That would probably be a good idea… But how exactly do I go about doing that? Most of my passives have been pretty obvious, like Distance Runner or Mana Well. Magical Adept sounds like it might just make me more skilled in magic, but I'm not sure how I'd even go about noticing a difference."

"Trust me, I think you'll notice," she giggled. "Why don't you try casting a spell? One you've used plenty of times before? But do it manually."

"If you say so," he shrugged, mentally going down his list and deciding on one of his favorites. Beginning to throw together the runic formation within his mana, Vin froze as the benefits to the passive immediately became clear to him.

In a way, it was almost similar to how the System injected knowledge from skills into one's head when they were purchased using skill points. But rather than a crash course on tracking or running, it was almost as if a future version of himself, one who had spent a solid six months devotedly working on his magical control, had condensed his mana-muscle memory and sent it back to the current him here and now. His control over his mana and how easily he was able to manipulate it was noticeably better. It wasn't anything utterly ground breaking, but it was a massive improvement for someone who had only been practicing magic for the past few months.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Woah," he muttered, laughing as he played around with the mana within his core, shaping it from one rune to the next with an ease he'd never experienced before. "Alright, not a bad passive at all."

"What did it do?" Lumel asked, smiling as she watched him mess around. From her perspective, he must have just been standing there with a glassy look in his eyes as he fidgeted with his mana, but she didn't say anything. "I've read of similar passives in the palace library, so I have a hunch, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure."

"I think I just gained something like half a year of dedicated practice in an instant," Vin admitted, beaming as he finally completed his spell. Even the amount of mana his runic formation required to use seemed a tad smaller than it used to be, and he laughed as a stone bench sprung out of the ground. "Casting that spell was easier than it's ever been."

"That's about what I was expecting," Lumel nodded. "You should try casting a spell that has a hard limit on it. Lots of spells grow with a mage over time as they become better at manipulating mana and grow more efficient, so you might have a few that are better than they used to be. My Dimensional Pocket has grown larger since I first learned to cast it, for example."

"Really?" Vin blinked, excited to hear that. Deciding to try out his own dimensional spell first, he cast Dimensional Sheath, summoning his staff into his hand before making it vanish once more. The moment he did so, he could somehow feel that his ability to maneuver the clumps of isolated dimensions being dragged along beside him had improved, to the point where he was pretty confident he'd now be able to store four different items with his spell instead of three.

"Wow, that's fantastic!" he said, quickly explaining his findings for Lumel's benefit. "Alright, I'm going to have to mess around later and see if any other spells had such notable improvements. Granted, I don't think any of them really have similar hard limits like Dimensional Sheath does." Realizing Lumel was still just standing there, watching him mess around with his newest passive, he gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that, I got a tad distracted there! What do you want to do for our joint celebration?"

"I don't know… I didn't really do all that much celebrating back home," Lumel admitted, looking a bit embarrassed. "I spent most of my time by myself. How did you normally celebrate stuff?"

"Well, the go to on my world was usually cake or drinks," he admitted, scratching his head as he thought. "I will say I'm not a huge drinker, and I don't think cake is something we really have access to…" Yet even as the words left his mouth, he paused, struck by a sudden thought. "Huh. Actually, I recently met someone who used to be a baker back on Earth. If anyone would have some sort of cake or dessert for a celebration, it would probably be him."

"I'd feel a bit bad about going to him so late in the evening and asking him to make something," Lumel pointed out. "And we're leaving for the fragment above Alka's in the morning. Why don't we put a hold on the whole celebration thing? We can do one big group one or something once Scule and Shia prestige as well."

"That's a great idea! I'm sure Ronald would appreciate having some advanced notice anyway."

"How did you meet a baker in the first place?" she asked, looking justifiably curious.

"Believe it or not, he's one of the people Spur chose to try and learn magic," he said, smiling at the confused look on her face. "Yeah, he wants to be a magic baker. I'm pretty interested to see how that's going to turn out. I've got him working on fire magic at the moment."

"High level Chefs often get passives or Capstones that add effects to their food… But I've never heard of anyone going about it from the magic up. I hope it works out for him!"

"Me too! You should see my other student, she wants to become a magic fisherman," he said, finally unable to withhold his laughter as Lumel's face scrunched up even further. "What, you disagree?"

"It's just… Why? I mean, I understand the benefits of fishing better than anyone. A large portion of my people's diet is based around fish, naturally. But if you have a talent for magic, I just can't understand why someone would devote it toward fishing specifically. I guess that's just such a mundane profession in my eyes. Not that there's anything wrong with that!" she added hurriedly, looking at him with nervous eyes. "It's just surprising is all."

"Don't worry, I get what you mean," he said, grinning at her relieved sigh. "Anyway, who are we to tell people what to do with their lives? If she wants to become a magical fisherman, I might as well do what I can to help, right? Oh, before I forget. Would there be any issues if she went and tried fishing on the edge of your fragment? I just want to make sure that's not like a declaration of war, or something."

"So long as she keeps close to the surface, she'll be fine. My people rarely even visit the top half of the lake, so they won't even notice. Just make sure she knows to cut the line if she snags any monsters. They might yank her in and attack if she's not prepared."

"Good to know, I'll relay the message. I doubt she's in any rush to try fighting a monster while submerged underwater."

"Speaking of water, I still need to soak before I go to bed," Lumel admitted, her hand tightening slightly around his. "Any interest in joining me? With your Runic Recalibration, you're able to make a much larger Aqua Sphere than I can with just my artifact. The added warmth is always nice, too."

"Sure! More levels in swimming certainly couldn't hurt," he said, smiling at her as another thought struck him. "You know, now that I finally have Fireball under my belt, I should start thinking about what spell I want to try making next. I bet trying to make a tier 1 would be even easier, so maybe Create Air should be my next project! I already have Sense Air and plenty of simple 'Create Whatever' spells, I bet I can combine two of them without too much work."

Even as he spoke, he felt a strange sense of understanding in his core that his idea had merit, which he immediately recognized as his newest title, Spell Weaver. It didn't give him any sort of hints as to what he needed to do to actually create the spell, but it was nice to have confirmation that his efforts wouldn't be totally wasted.

"I don't want to sway your decision as to what to work on next, but I'd certainly love it if you found a way to breathe underwater with me," she said, returning his smile. "But that's something to worry about later. Right now, just having a swimming buddy to keep me company is more than I could have ever hoped for."

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