Foster slowly opened his eyes, seeing Aster pull on his finger to try and get his attention. With a smile, he looked at the spirit, “Thanks for waking me up.” He said, turning his head to wait for the message windows to pop up.

— 

[Due to consistent usage of a high-quality Mana Breathing technique, your mana capacity has permanently increased by 1]

[Due to the consistent melding of mind and spirit, your understanding of your own mana has risen]

— 

“Awesome, it rose again.” Foster said with a grin on his face. It had been a few days since he first started actively meditating like this, and nearly every time he did, his mana capacity seemed to rise by a single point. He didn’t know how much his ‘understanding of mana’ actually rose, though, it wasn’t something as easy to keep track of. It was easier to manipulate his mana by now, though. Either way, overall, his mana rose by five points now. When he did it last night, although he meditated for the same amount of time as he did now, his mana capacity didn’t increase.

After speaking to Octer about this, he simply explained that his mana wasn’t going to increase the same amount each time he did it. It only rose this often because he just started using this technique. If it rose once for every time he meditated, this time next year he would have a capacity of nearly 400 mana, and that didn’t even include the increase in points he would get from leveling up in that time. While 400 mana wasn’t an unrealistic amount for a mage to reach, it wasn’t something you could get to simply through meditation. But well, Foster didn’t mind. He was using meditation to replace his sleep, so he would probably get some more mana every once in a while, and that was enough for him. Chilling touch didn’t use that much mana in the first place, and that was the only spell he actively used up until now.

Foster grabbed the small, portable hourglass that he bought, and pushed it into his bag. The biggest downside to the meditation was that, if he wasn’t woken up, he probably would meditate forever and eventually starve. So, he used this five-hour hourglass, and asked Aster to wake him up when the time ran out. Aster did spend most of his time asleep, but he did tend to wake up every once in a while, so when he then noticed that the time on the hourglass ran out, he could just wake Foster then.

It would probably take another couple of hours until all the others were going to wake up, so for now, Foster could just look around this settlement for a bit. After getting fully dressed again, he climbed out of the capsule and locked the hatch-like door behind him, and then started to make his way through this inn to get back to the settlement’s streets.

Despite the fact that it should be night around now, this place was just as busy as it was when the party got here. And that made sense, since daylight obviously couldn’t affect this place, so people just did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. But even then, the vibe of this settlement did feel a little different. A lot more relaxed, but somehow far louder than before. A lot of people were drinking, it seemed.

“Urgh… I really want a drink right now…” Foster sighed, although he knew that Lynol would kill him if he decided to drink even though they were going to head out to kill the boss in a few hours, “…I wonder how Jon’s doing… Gammy’s birthday should’ve already happened as well. I hope they’re not worrying about me too much.” He let out, but quickly tried to find something to distract himself with. Usually he would just sit down somewhere and try and find random constellations or planets, but considering that everything that could be seen above him were rocks, that obviously wasn’t possible right now.

So instead, he just chose to take a walk to see if there was anything interesting around here. As he did, he happened to walk past a particularly busy place. It was a bar set up outside by the streets instead of inside, although there really wasn’t a proper ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ in this place. A few people were gathered around a table, apparently listening to some random story. Curious to hear what was so interesting about it, Foster leaned against a nearby wall and decided to listen in.

“…and then, luckily, Kris came to our rescue! We really needed a third, and he did pretty well during the first round. With his help, we got through the next round easily enough! The three of us were actually the top three in the whole thing, heh!” A quite cocky-sounding, and drunk, voice exclaimed. It seemed eerily familiar, though, “And then, when the tournament was over, right? Guess who was there? The asshole that just dropped out of the tournament’s first round! We announced that we were going to form a party to go dungeon-diving, and he was just trying to leech off us, that cowardly bastard! Literally begged us to join our party!”

“…” Foster silently turned his head toward the place where the story was being told. Part of that sounded familiar, again, but the rest of it was something he hadn’t heard of before.

After the drunk guy stopped yelling, the girl sitting next to him smugly continued for him, “What was his name again? Frank, something? Well, it started with F, anyway… I wonder what that fool is doing now.” She said in a cheeky tone. It was a voice that Foster recognized a lot more easily than that of the other guy. He had been a lot more quiet and held-back before, but alcohol did bring out certain hidden parts in people.

Considering that he had a few hours to pass, Foster figured this was a good was to spend his time. Playing around like this was always fun, “Heey~! So, what did you say the guy’s name was? Something with F?”

“Huh?” The girl replied, not able to see Foster through the crowd, “Yeah, I guess. Fabian, Felix, Finn, whatever.”

“Eeh..? You don’t even remember his name? Must be a real loser, huh~?” Foster said, barely able to hold his grin back. With a loud laugh, the drunk guy replied, “Hahaha, that’s right! He was just completely forgettable! And you wanna know what the worst part is? The guy was wearing martial arts clothes, but he was fighting like a complete moron, as if he never learned how to fight properly! His attributes were probably just super high or somethin’! Total amateur, I tell you!” He exclaimed, and the people in the crowd all started to laugh together with him. Once they settled down a bit, Foster asked his next question.

“Does that mean that you would be able to beat that guy in a fight?”

“Obviously! No way would I lose to someone like him! He just got lucky!” He yelled out in response.

“Really now? I quite vividly remember him telling you guys that he could beat the three of you all together in a fight every day of the week!” Foster replied quickly, slowly starting to push his way through the crowd. The drunk guy started squinting, and tried to find the person that was just talking, “What? Something like that never happened?”

“Oh, really? But I’m pretty sure that’s what just happened.” Foster pointed out, finally making his way to stand directly in front of the group of three. He was right, it was really them. The two other people that won the first round of the Red Riverside Tournament. Turns out one of them won the whole thing, huh?

Foster grinned lightly, as the drunk guy, Argo, flinched and took a step back, “H-Huh? Foster?”

“Great, seems like my face jogged your memory a bit.” He replied, slightly turning his head to lock eyes with Jasmin, the girl next to Argo, before simply winking at her. The other guy with them, clearly a lot more quiet, with a sword sheathed on his hip, was just standing back and watching everything unfold.

The crowd that had formed around these three as they were telling their stories about fighting in, and winning, that tournament, seemed rather confused. So, to make it a bit more obvious, Foster continued on a bit, “So, now that I managed to remind you of who I am, how about you remind me of when I begged to join your party?”

“Th-That…” Jasmin stuttered, but before she was able to say anything, Foster saw a spearhead suddenly being pointed at his throat. It was waving back and forth, since that drunk guy was holding it, but it was still a quite sharp weapon, “You wanna fight, huh?” Argo asked, “Come at me!”

With a smile on his face, Foster shook his head, “I don’t think you really want to fight me, man. Especially not now, you’re drunk as shit.”

“I-I’m not drunk! Now fight me!”

Rolling his eyes, Foster played along. He didn’t actually feel like fighting these guys, he just wanted to mess with them a bit. And even though Argo exclaimed his own will to fight that much, he somehow let Foster casually grab onto the wooden shaft of his spear, “You really think you should play with this right now?” He asked, and Argo started to glare at him, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, nothing much. Just that you’re probably going to regret doing this later on.” Foster pointed out.

“And why’s that?” Jasmin asked, with a broad smile. She seemed a lot more confident after Argo grabbed his spear, so she probably wanted to play along with this and embarrass Foster a bit more. However, there was one thing she didn’t expect.. And that was for Foster to snap Argo’s spear in half with just one hand, “Because one of you just lost their weapon.”