Once Scott finished with his call to Ashton, he returned to the dream. He would need to report into work again the next day, but his shift ended before Ashton's began earlier. That left him at least two days in the dream to begin wrapping things up in the Argent area. It would soon be time to move on and he wanted to be completely done.

Sonja was not in their room. No doubt she was still out hunting at the graveyard.

"I have the time. I should make sure I have everything." Blackthorne set about searching through his sack of food and equipment.

"Rope. A torch stone. Food. Water. Notebook and pencils for mapping. Bags within bags for carrying stuff..." He stopped for a moment then quirked an eyebrow. "Bagception?"

He chuckled at his stupid joke. Someone had to say it after all.

Their first excursion would be short. There was no way to know where the underground tunnel would lead them once they entered the mine entrance. Blackthorne could easily drift downward through the ground to find the plateau from before in order to search for his draconic butt loot, but he could not take Sonja with him. They would need to spend some time in search of a different pathway while they mapped the area underneath the grassland. If they did find a good vein of ore, he wanted to be able to access it again quickly.

"We're good on supplies. I can eat the critters down there no problem, and Sonja probably could as well. Enough water to last a week between us, and I can phase up through the ground to help us find our way back to the entrance if we get lost." Blackthorne tapped his lips lightly with his finger.

There were other considerations as well, however. Aside from hunting for raw materials, there was also that map he had gotten from Isera and Saelil. It felt to him like a lifetime ago, but not much time had actually passed. In truth, that map was how he found the mine entrance in the first place!

"A hidden underground temple... Wonder what I can find there?" he asked rhetorically. He expected no answer, and received no answer.

Once he was certain everything was in order, he flopped down atop his bed for a moment. Everything would change again soon. After a few weeks in this town, it had begun to feel like a second home. They had to leave it, however. There was only so much that they could do in the area. Gather his precious butt loot, search for a temple, and possibly hunt a few catfish to see if they had any good drop items or parts.

"A major city, huh? Wonder what it will be like." Blackthorne spent an idle few minutes trying to picture it in his head. A port city in a fantasy world. There would be a lot of different races, food, gear he had never seen. Argent had things like pack lizards that pulled carts, and screaming onions. What could he expect in an entirely new city?

"I wonder if the ocean here is as blue as those on Earth?" Blackthorne smiled slightly to himself. He had not seen the ocean since he was a small child. It would be nice to see it again, even if it was in another world.

He took in a deep breath then snorted. Thoughts of the ocean had turned to a brief thought of his new friends in incredibly small bikinis. A niggling voice in the back of his head tried to shout at him. He did not deserve to have such an enjoyable day at the beach. He was scum, a degenerate, so on and so forth.

Blackthorne shoved a finger in his ear and wiggled it around as though he had an annoying itch that he could not scratch. The voices had grown stronger over the course of the last day or so, but they were still nothing more than aberrant noise in his skull. A constant reminder of his fragile grip on sanity, but he could withstand them to a far greater degree now.

Everyone once in a while, a particularly loud voice would cut through his mind. Typically, it was because he'd managed to have a lewd thought. As long as he kept his mind away from sexy happenings, the voices were weak and quite manageable.

"I wonder if I'll ever be completely free of them?" he asked himself quietly. The increase in charisma and his growth spurt had helped a lot. His own drive to bulldoze his way through them more often recently had helped as well.

Stats were one thing, but the most important factor was one he had come to understand slowly in recent weeks. He no longer felt that the voices were right. He was not a bad person. He did not deserve to be tormented by guilt. He had done everything that he could, and still strove toward bettering himself. With less personal guilt to latch onto, the voices were not able to hold as tightly to him as they once did. His new friends, something he never thought he would actually have, had helped him simply by existing.

Part of him remained concerned that it was all too easy. He had suffered through those voices for over a decade. They would just stop now? No, there had to be something coming. Something big. It was the fear of his own mind, paranoia and nothing more. Yet, he could not shake the disquieting feeling that something terrible would happen soon. Things were just going too well for him of late.

Eventually, he became tired of his mental masturbation and rose from his bed. Blackthorne began practicing his spells in earnest. There was enough room to cast the short range spells in his repertoire and he needed to advance their skill levels if he hoped to unlock words of power to use.

His life force regenerated at an incredible rate when he was uninjured. At this point he could easily cast one of his spells up to a hundred times before he would feel the need to stop and let his energies fully recharge. Of course, doing so would come with a hidden cost. There would be a massive headache coming in his future if he tried to do such all day, every day.

No. The best way to grow his power was to train like a normal person. Cast a few spells, wait a short time, and then do it again. If he ever reached a point where a headache began to set in then he would be done for the day. Pushing beyond that could lead to stress injuries that were hard even for him to heal quickly.

Quite some time passed while he practiced. He did not gain a skill rank in any of his magical skills, but he did not expect that he would. As things stood, he would need to practice a few hours a day for several days to make his basic skill ranks increase through the use of his weaker spells. Mostly, it was just something to do at the moment.

Blackthorne ceased his training then frowned. Sonja was still gone? What time was it? He left his room and headed down to see Scraggles. He could get a bite to eat and find out if he knew anything about Sonja.

As luck would have it, there was no need to ask. Sonja walked into the tavern just as he finished walking down the stairs. He waved to her, and she nodded to him. She would have waved back, he was certain, but she was carrying several bags bursting with goods.

Scraggles eyed the slightly smelly bit of loot, but she had washed them thoroughly before she brought them inside. It was not like they would make his patrons vomit.

He went with her outside and they sat down near the cleaning station. Neither spoke for a moment as they sat together, but slowly they both began to smile in unison. It was a nice day, really.