The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith (14 page)

She nodded, laying down
beside me and putting a hand on my chest. “I’d never do
something that could hurt you, Jin. But we were alone when we had
that talk. And.. with all that trouble you went to, you live alone in
your world, right? So… who could have overheard?”

“
You wouldn’t
believe me if I told you..” I let out a dry laugh, having
narrowed the possibilities enough to take a guess.

Denise smirked, and poked
my ribs. “Try me, mister.”

“
Alright, alright. I
think.. that the creator of this world heard me. That’s the
only answer I can come up with. I’ve got no idea how, or why.
But it seems like someone really doesn’t want me reporting back
any secrets I learn here.”

“
The creator..?”
She looked at me, tilting her head. I had to wonder if they even had
something like a creation myth in this world. “So… he,”
She shot me a look, “or she, doesn’t want their secret
getting out, and decided to capture you here?”

“
That.. yeah, it’s
the most likely answer.”

“
I’m sorry…
if you hadn’t told me.. you might not have been separated from
the people you care about… You could still have returned to
your world.”

I couldn’t help but
smile at her, and brought my hand up to brush her cheek. “Part
of me is glad I told you, because it means that I
won’t
be separated from the people I care about.”

She smiled to me, and
buried her head against my shoulder. I had no way of knowing if my
message got through, since neither Rusty or Kevin had a way to
contact me in The Dive. All I could do was wait.

If you’re going
to mate, get it over with already.
I heard a
voice at the back of my head say, and couldn’t help but laugh.
Denise’s look was priceless, staring at me cutely like she
didn’t have any idea what was amusing.

“
Sorry… the
wolf… apparently wants us to hurry up and ‘mate’.”
I forced myself to say the words, shaking my head and grinning.

Denise joined my laughter
immediately when I explained. “Your wolf is a pervert, you know
that right?”

“
I do now!”

She nuzzled back into my
shoulder, and we just laid there for a while.

I blinked at the title
message that appeared in front of me. Apparently Denise had become
friendly enough with a formerly hostile animal that she unlocked an
extra perk. There were probably other requirements as well, but I
didn’t think about it too much.

Chapter
7

When I awoke, I found that
I was still a member of The Dive, so getting stuck in this game
hadn’t been a strange dream. Denise and I quickly got dressed
and packed up camp to continue moving back towards Rosenheim. A part
of me wondered,
Wouldn’t it be safer now
to just stay in the city? I might not be able to respawn anymore…

However, that thought was
promptly crushed. Denise might not have been able to respawn in the
first place, but she still chose to follow me on my adventure. I
couldn’t let myself be more scared of this than her! Besides,
if there was any hope of me returning to my body from this side, it
was only by doing what I originally set out to do anyways, finding
the truth of this world.

With that in mind, I
needed a metric ton of new spells in order to be able to survive
safely in this world. Simply having two mana-intensive attacks and no
defense spells was incredibly inconvenient.
Wait,
don’t I still have that unidentified spell? It was made with
the Shield rune.

Calling up my spell list,
I indeed found that spell, though its name was still ???. I wasn’t
sure how I could go about casting it without recreating the process I
used to create it, so I just pressed the display with my finger. Sure
enough, a ball of mana formed in my hand. Panicking, I quickly looked
around for something to throw it at. No way was I going to test this
spell on Denise!

Seeing my chance, I threw
the spell… at Wolf. As it hit, his skin began to shimmer, and
although he didn’t physically change, he
seemed
bigger.

Immediately, the
description in the spell window was updated, listing the new spell as
well as its chant. Meanwhile Denise, having no idea what I just did,
was on high alert. “Is there an enemy nearby?”

“
No.. uh…
misfire. Sorry.” I sheepishly tried to explain how I just cast
an experimental spell on our animal companion as a simple accident.
She still seemed cautious, but accepted my answer. And with that, I
returned to spamming the Scan spell, casting it constantly until my
mana was down to half, leaving that as a buffer zone in case we got
into a fight.

“
By the way. While
we’re in town, I’d like to stop by the college and see
about learning some new spells. To be honest, I feel wholly
underpowered at the moment.” I sighed, lowering my head.

“
That’s fine.
I should probably grab a few extra arrows as well, and we should
check in with Rusty.” She nodded to me.

“
Right. It’s
been long enough now, he should have been able to get through to
Kevin.” I smiled slightly, hoping that there would be good
news. “Well, let’s take care of our stuff real quick, and
then meet back at the inn later, okay?”

“
Yes, sir~!”
She said with a bright smile, and dashed off down the road. I
chuckled a bit to her, and also made my way around, following my
mental map of the city to get to the college.

Wait.. mental map?
Why
do I suddenly have a map in my head?!
Part of
me panicked, was this from being stuck here? And then, like a splash
of cold water, I remembered my Navigation talent leveled up a couple
times. So… now I had a mental minimap for cities? That was
actually pretty useful. When I focused, I could even tell where on
the map Denise was.

So, now that my nervous
breakdown has passed, I resumed my journey to the college, where the
guards let me in without so much as a word of complaint. I guess
graduating meant I didn’t have to pay the tuition anymore,
thank god. My wallet had already run out on me.

Quickly, I made my way
down the familiar hallways to the library, and looked at the vast
array of books. I needed to find more information on summoning spells
first, and given how long it took me to find it the first time, I
decided to cheat. “In my eyes, all things are as one.”

Right away, my vision
turned somewhat green, zooming in at a dozen different places, seeing
straight through bookshelves and scanning the titles of all the
books. A few I mentally marked to come back to later, while
remembering my primary reason for being here. Just as I was starting
to get dizzy from my vision literally spinning to cover books from
various angles, I managed to identify what I was looking for. In the
far back corner, a dusty tome whose words were almost completely
faded from sight. ‘
Summoner’s
Secrets’
.

“
Okay…
that’ll do.” I didn’t dare cancel the Scan spell
for fear of losing the book, but kept my entire focus on that one
point so my vision didn’t race around. As I made my way to it,
I got a pop up message that momentarily distracted me.

Discovery… I have
actually learned something quite useful. I also learned the existence
of an ability type I hadn’t considered before! Given my
experiences thus far, I had assumed that Talents were this game’s
version of skills, but it makes sense that if spells are different,
so are skills.

Putting that aside for the
moment, I quickly grabbed the book on summoning magic and made my way
to the reading table. Then, and only then, did I open the skills
window.

I was amazed at the large
screen that appeared in front of me, detailing skills I honestly
never knew I had. The skills from Magical Knowledge were really too
much, right? Looking down at the book, I focused on the Speed Reading
skill.

So wait… all I
had to do this entire time was just hold a book? But… I feel
ripped off. Maybe doing it this way doesn’t grant the study
bonuses to Magical Knowledge and Intelligence? Yeah.. that has to be
it.
After that, the subject didn’t seem
good to think about, so I let myself get distracted with my other
skills. I could combine five runes now… and Spell Knowledge
would let me instantly acquire spells? I began thinking, have I even
seen any spells that I really wanted to acquire.

Aside from basic
demonstration spells… there was one. The spell that Luc used
on me the first day we met. He twisted the ground below me, making a
vacuum that pulled me down into the ground.. How would that work?
Would you mix Twist, Pull, and Earth?

My eyes went wide, and I
almost dropped the book.
I really can do it…
With this, I’ll be able to get spells much faster..
I never imagined that all I had to do was focus on it. Maybe the
Spell Creation window was for trial and error, and the manual method
was like really studying, a longer way that gave an extra benefit?

Looking down at the book
in my hand, I saw that it was about halfway done. To pass the time, I
decided to call Denise. “Message.”

By now, she was familiar
with the sensation, and immediately replied. “Oh, hey. Didn’t
expect a call. Are you ready to meet up already?”

“
Not yet, I’ve
got about twenty more minutes and then I should be ready to leave.
How are things going on your end?”

“
Well, I asked
around, and there should be a stable willing to sell us a horse when
we are ready to leave again. After that, I’ve just barely had
time to get to the shooting range. Oh, hey! Yeah, you! Do you have
any more arrows I could buy? Iron, if you could. Thanks.”

I smiled as I listened to
her ordering her arrows. “Didn’t catch you at a bad time,
did I?”

She laughed into the call.
“You? Of course not. Yeah? Alright, I’ll take two
quivers. Oh, Jin, how are you doing with your spells?”