Midnight and Inasyah were still trying to gather information as they could during the day- apparently the angel had convinced some people to give her a tour of more areas, and Midnight could sneak about. Unfortunately, he couldn’t open magically locked doors… without causing a ruckus.

  Along with additional recon to try to find whatever the residents of the castle didn’t want us to find, bedtime was the time for experiments. I got the sleep I needed and all of the rest of the time was used for important things.

  Like checking dimensional connections. I looked at Ignis standing in front of me on a rug. It was fine though, because he had little ice cubes on his feet so it wasn’t burning.

  “Good job,” I said, giving him two thumbs up. I had literally no idea where this guy came from, except some vague elemental plane(s) that Vilhelmiina had portals to in her lair. Lab. Whatever, the only difference was how legal it was pretty much. It was good to know I had a connection to outside things, and a low level Summon Elemental was less likely to get picked up than something like Gate. Especially if I was specifically dedicating extra mana to make it not obvious.

  Nobody came running, so it seemed like it was fine. And I would recover the mana pretty quickly. That was one thing I could say was good about this world.

  -----

  I was surprised when Yamaha showed up to our training session with wooden training swords. Were we finally getting to self defense lessons? Surely casters would need something like that. Nobody wanted Meter to die on the battlefield. They might want me to die on the battlefield, though nobody had really said too many negative things about orcs. They were probably just thinking it. That was the vibe I got, anyway, but maybe they just hated me because I wasn’t an impressionable teen or something similar.

  “Today, we’re thinking about the battlefield,” Yamaha said.

  Excellent. I wasn’t that good with a sword but it had been included in my weapons training. The Power Brigade was well aware that many supers used swords, and sometimes you had to take a scavenged weapon if you didn’t have another option. They didn’t want us to be useless in any circumstance.

  “Thus, we will be delivering weapons.” He gestured with one of the training swords, then started a short chant, forming somatic components with his free hand. A moment later, I had a sword in my hand.

  I didn’t like it. I hadn’t chosen for that to be there. Could he just force that?

  No, I hadn’t actually rejected it. And it easily fell to the floor when I loosened my grip. Still, I hadn’t anticipated any sort of body manipulation to come out of this fellow. Was that still spatial magic? It was difficult to say that shifting my arm and hand didn’t fall into that category.

  I could do so many incapacitating things to people with similar manipulations.

  “Awesome!” Meter seemed excited, but probably not for the same reason as me. “We get to teleport swords?”

  I guess I shouldn’t look down on him. Teleporting swords was pretty cool, actually. Even if it was pointless. Anyone who was supposed to have a sword could just pull one out of a sheath. They wouldn’t need us to send them one.

  This spell was also at the very limits of what Meter could do. The teacher didn’t seem concerned about his lack of mana, even though I thought he should have already leveled up. Maybe twice, which would have given him some more wiggle room. I couldn’t say for sure that he hadn’t, though. These spells would still be pushing his fatigue limit, and I had to remember that he’d only been using magic for a few days. Riding that line wasn’t natural to him yet.

  Well, maybe this form of magic worked differently in that regard. The sounds and gestures might help somewhat, or they might make things worse. We were pretty far from anything that would be even close to my fatigue limit.

  “The spell won’t work if the target rejects it,” Yamaha commented. “In that case, nothing will happen.” That might be true, but being surprised by it meant you couldn’t properly reject it. “If their hands are full, the object will fall safely to their side.”

  So I could trip people with it, if I did it right. Maybe if I could pick out which components targeted a person and instead just aim for a point in space. I also had the feeling I could get it to swap weapons with someone. That might be a significantly higher level form, but I was thinking about disarming villains and the possibility was worth exploring. Random thugs would probably be easy, though.

  By the end of the day, Meter actually managed Spatial Step- which effectively made the caster move faster- and the spell they were calling Gift. He looked so woozy, but he did it.

  I spent most of my time trying to practice the one handed gestures with my off hand. Partially to sandbag, but mostly because I could swing a sword with my right hand before I delivered it. Would it retain momentum? I wasn’t going to experiment here, but maybe Inasyah would be up for it. I could use my staff in one hand and see how that worked.

  “Very good,” said Yamaha. “You’ve been doing well.” I knew he was mostly talking to Meter. I also happened to be here, and the kid was better at the local form of magic. I had to rely on mana manipulation experience as a crutch, though I was starting to get it. “Tommorow, you will be ready to depart on a training expedition.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “What do you mean, High Mage Yahaya?” Meter asked.

  “It’s quite simple, young Mile. You and your companions will travel throughout Zuresh, seeking to engage in battle with some of the weakest monsters available. That way you can grown in experience and improve your power.”

  “We can level up?”

  “Ah… I do believe that is the words people have used in the past,” Yamaha nodded. “So I believe it would be correct enough to say so.”

  They didn’t even know about levels here. Then again, they didn’t seem to have status windows, as far as I was aware. They hadn’t told us about them if they were supposed to be a thing, and mine didn’t look any different. It also didn’t include the new spells I learned, but most of them would have been subsumed into Advanced Spatial Magic anyway.

  -----

  Inasyah shook her head. “A sudden journey? I like it not at all.”

  “Yeah, sounds dangerous,” I agreed. “Meter doesn’t even know a real combat spell. We’ll have to look for an opportunity to extract the kids on the road. Maybe we can make people believe the group was slain by monsters or something.”

  “Or,” Midnight said. “Abducted by the Demon King. Because apparently that happens.”

  I frowned. “This guy doesn’t sound nice at all. On the other hand, nobody here is really.”

  Midnight’s tail flicked. “Millicent is a wonderful lady.”

  “One of the kitchen staff?” I surmised.

  “Some people don’t know what the good bits of food are,” Midnight said. “I’m eating better than the rest of you right now. Though… I miss hot dogs.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Not tuna?”

  A tuna can fell on my head. “I have so much tuna,” Midnight said. “How could I already miss it?” He had a good point. “Anyway, I got into the room of the high priest.”

  “Do we know who that is?” I asked.

  Midnight shook his head. “He wasn’t around for the summoning. It’s this one on the map,” he said, his suit projecting the map we’d put together. “I found some interesting books. I couldn’t risk stealing them, but I managed to scan some pages. The short summary from what I gathered is that summoning heroes is a generational thing for the Six Countries.”

  He’d found some information about those countries previously. They were arranged in approximately a hexagonal pattern around a central country. The Demon Lands. They all had names, but I didn’t need to know any of them except Zuresh right now.

  Inasyah pondered. “So the summoned heroes defeat a Demon King every generation?”

  “Officially? Yes,” Midnight said. “But really, they seem to all die. Some of them got really far into demon lands and killed a lot of enemies, though. Enough to protect the Six Countries for a while. It does appear that the heroes tend to grow strong quickly…?”

  “Except for those guys that died,” I commented.

  “Well, yeah,” Midnight said. “But if they lived they probably would have.”

  “And that guy in the dungeon.”

  “Is he still there?”

  Mana regeneration was pretty good here. Might as well check. It was difficult without a proper Scrying orb, but we were also in the right world.

  My phone screen displayed that one guy. Ray or something. “Well, he’s alive at least. And relatively healthy. I think he’s actually less wounded than before?”

  We didn’t have access to the recordings here to compare for certain, but Midnight seemed to think the same. At the very least, he had some wounds that were healing. If there was healing magic in this world, they clearly didn’t bother with it.

  At dinner, the kids had been worried about the journey. I wasn’t good at making people feel better, especially while concealing my true abilities. Inasyah was a bit better, as she was not a scary tusked man. Probably if she turned into her angelic form they would have felt more relieved, but she wasn’t any more truly angelic even if she had wings.

  But that was okay. I didn’t need to know tons of paragons of truth. Malaliel was sufficient. While angels that could lie and create illusions was somewhat antithetical to Malaliel’s whole thing, to me they were more or less people. And a good reminder that different worlds had different rules. I really hoped Gate worked here and I didn’t need rooftop ritual circles at night.

  If I did, I’d have to make sure not to hit that part of the castle with Meteors. No way was I going to give them a fair fight. I’d chuck those suckers from a mile out then Teleport a hundred miles away, only to return to the castle at some random time in the future.

  But Gate would probably work.

  -----

  If the squad of knights hadn’t been closer to the sort of escort prisoners would get than heroes, our journey might have been the first time people were properly treated like heroes.

  Except nobody important bothered to come with us. Maybe the knight captain, but it was hard to tell because he rarely said anything. He just trod around in his enchanted gambeson and full helmet, his posture grumpy. Maybe he didn’t like otherworld heroes. Maybe he didn’t like his leadership. Maybe he didn’t like anything.

  Though every once in a while he would glance at Midnight and stop frowning for an instant. Nobody had really said much about my ‘cat’, but that was for the best. Since they didn’t think they’d been paying to feed him and had no reason to believe he was causing trouble, they were fine with ignoring it.

  The best thing I could say about this journey was that we got to ride in a wagon and all of us heroes were properly equipped with enchanted gear. Were the enchantments good?

  Look, I’d spent most of my short enchantment career on esoteric anti-teleportation equipment with enchantments meant to just keep them functioning normally. The armor felt kind of durable and the weapons sharp. They were probably fine. Not as good as what the knights were wearing, though.

  Apparently, the people of Zuresh were the sort that thought wizards should be wearing robes. I was like two seconds away from ripping apart the lower half so I could have some mobility.

  At least they didn’t insist on putting women in skirts. Lana had sturdy pants and long sleeves. Including gloves. Maybe acid resistant. I was slightly concerned. Ayat’s setup looked comfortable, like a lighter version of what the knight captain was wearing. Ramen was sort of in between, though he really wasn’t supposed to be up close to the frontlines. He probably didn’t need as much mobility chucking javelins as the swashbuckler, though.

  I wondered what sort of monsters we would find, and if I could sneak people away before we did. I would be fine fighting them alone.