The first place I went after leaving Larence’s building was the mess hall. I wasn’t sure if it was another symptom of my recent illness or not, but I was ravenous.

I was fortunate enough to have arrived while they were still serving lunch. Between meals, there were always snacks available, but I needed something much more substantial. The hearty stew they were serving suited my needs perfectly.

“Oh, you’re up and about again are ya, lass?” A familiar, red bearded cook remarked as he ladled out my food.

“Yes Robert.” I responded to the man from Martin’s party.

“Just as long winded as ever I see.” He joked. “You had many of us worried there for a while.”

“Move it along. The rest of us are hungry too.” The worker standing behind me grumbled.

“Shut up and leave the girl be.” Robert snapped at the worker.

I was a bit taken aback at the normally jovial Robert’s unexpected hostility. The worker wasn’t exactly polite, but he didn’t do anything to deserve such an aggressive retort.

This wasn’t my first time seeing one of the workers getting mistreated this way. For whatever reason, many people in the camp seemed to view those who handled their construction and maintenance with disdain.

The way the builders responded to this animosity was even stranger than the mistreatment itself. Never once did I see any of them stand up for themselves. Instead, they would always exert themselves to do exactly as they were told. It was unnerving to watch.

This time was no different as the man immediately clamped his mouth shut and took a step away from me.

“You no need do that.” I muttered, feeling distinctly uncomfortable about what sort of compulsion drove the man to obey.

He didn’t reply, though his face grew a touch less resentful.

Rather than force the poor man to wait any longer, I hurried to gather the rest of my food and get out of his way. The room was quite busy, but there were still a few open seats at some of the tables. Deciding to sit next to people I knew, I headed over to where I could hear Cathrine arguing with one of the other rune carvers.

“-just need to send out two teams at once.” She argued. “While one team distracts the beasts, the other should have a clear shot to the gold.”

“I can see three major problems with that plan.” The other woman remarked, holding up three of her fingers one by one. “First, nobody would agree to be the bait. Second, these are mindless beasts scattered all over the place. Distracting a single group would be rendered pointless when you inevitably bumble into another pack further in. Finally, you don’t even know that there is going to be anything out there to find.”

“Bah! I don’t hear you coming up with any better ideas. I still think it would be worth- oh, hi Kyo. The doc finally cut you loose I see.”

“Yes?” I didn’t know exactly what ‘cut me loose’ implied, but I felt like I could guess by the context.

“About time. I was afraid you were gonna waste away in there for a while. You looked like death when Lorence was checking me for the pox.” She remarked.

“You are better right? I was already chewed out by Lady Halrand for letting a sick person in the water shack. I would rather not repeat the experience.” The other rune carver remarked while casting me a worried glance.

I couldn’t blame her for worrying. Getting chewed on by that woman sounded like a punishment that would be almost as unpleasant as it was unusual.

“That not fair. Yes, I better.” I assured her.

“That’s good. Now let’s get back to figuring out how to get rich.” Catherine cut in. “What do you think Kyo? Any bright ideas for how we can slip past the beasts and find ourselves some gold?”

“You want gold?” I asked. Did these people know about gold weaving after all?

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“Wouldn’t have come all the way out here to Galvinia if I didn’t.” She remarked with an enraptured look in her eyes.

“Galvinia?”

“It’s the name of the continent.” Other woman supplied. “It was named after an explorer named Galvini who returned with a boat full of gold and stories of an untamed land.”

“Can you imagine it? Piles and piles of gold, just sitting there waiting for us. Please tell me you have some special local knowledge that can lead us there safely.” Catherine pleaded mirthfully while casting me a hopeful look.

I did actually know where a few gold mines were. Unfortunately, only one of them would have survived the destruction of Sanctuary Valley and it was a long way away.

“Know where gold is. It far. Not safe.”

“Wait, really? You actually know where the gold is?” Catherine asked excitedly as she opened her interface’s map in front of me. “Show me!”

Seeing her large and detailed map of the area, I noticed that a slender part to the south was much more poorly defined than the rest of the map. It took me a moment to realize that the area matched my journey from Sanctuary Valley all the way up to when my system first sensed Martin’s party.

Pulling up my map to compare, I found that it looked totally different. It showed some sort of lake with a few islands in it. The islands themselves were covered in odd lines and written names. The least detailed of the islands was labeled ‘Galvania’.

As I focused on it, the island expanded to fill the map. After a few moments, it matched Catherine’s map perfectly.

I stared at it in dumbfounded astonishment. The path I had traveled was minuscule compared to the enormous stretch of water to the east. How could a lake be so incredibly huge? Was there something wrong with the map or was the water really that impossibly vast?

I was pulled out of my musings as a hand waved in front of my face.

“Hello? Were you going to show me where the gold is or not?”

“Y-yes.” I was still a bit shaken by what I had just seen. That didn’t stop me from pointing at a spot a little to the side of where my journey began. “Here.”

The moment I said that, a little red circle appeared on Catherine’s map. It roughly matched where I had pointed.

“I need to bring this to the expedition leaders!” She exclaimed happily before leaving the table and rushing out the door.

Many conversations around the room paused momentarily to watch the woman running out the door. As conversation picked back up, I noticed that she had left almost half of her stew uneaten.

To my delight, nobody made any moves to stop me from adding it to my bowl.

----------------------------------------

After a much needed lunch, I was finally feeling up to practicing my magic again. Sitting by the camp wall, I began to cast.

I started with a few simple spells. Strangely, I felt an odd impulse while casting my first spell. It felt similar to how I inherently knew how to use different aspects of my system. I ignored it as I cast my light spell to make sure I could still cast things normally. Unsurprisingly, the rock I had targeted with my spell started to glow.

Reassured, I tried weaving my spell using the new quirk that I was pretty sure was my supplemental mana boon. I immediately felt the difference.

Normally, casting spells with mana from my mana pool came quickly and easily. The lower ambient mana inside the camp made things a bit more difficult, but not by much.

With the boon, things were much, much harder. I could only clumsily nudge the mana about into almost the right shape. It didn’t take long for me to slip up and lose control and have my half-woven spell fall apart.

I was feeling quite frustrated as I tried again. This time, I tried to only partially use my boon to see if that would help at all. To my relief, it did.

The mana was still a little unruly and uncooperative, though not nearly as bad as it was during my first attempt. I was able to push and prod it into another functional light spell.

The experience reminded me of the time I had nearly given myself mana poisoning by eating a winged snake. The mana I consumed back then had been similarly hard to work with, even if it did provide me with much more to work with.

Taking a quick look at my interface I decided to experiment with the boon a bit more.

Mana Pool: 198/200

Pushing five points of mana into a normally cast force spell, I sent a rock shooting across the ground. Focusing on a similarly sized stone, I cast my force spell again. This time, I used the boon and pushed the rock with a similar amount of force.

Taking a glance at my mana again, I was very pleased with the result.

Mana Pool: 191/200

Only partially using the boon had cut the mana cost of my spell by over half. It was a staggering improvement, but it wasn’t without drawbacks. Even weaving a relatively simple spell took me much longer than normal. There was also going to be a pretty strict limit on how complex I could make my spells and still benefit from the reduced mana cost.

That didn’t stop me from being a little excited though. What would happen if I dumped my entire mana pool into a single, boon-enhanced force spell?