{Pls read the notes at the end, i have a few important things to say~~}
Narrator POV
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By the morning after the Wave celebration, the four cardinal heroes had already begun to scatter.
Naofumi and Raphtalia were moving southwest of the capital, following the road that wound down toward the village where the Wave had made landfall.
They were not travelling quickly, for they had no reason to. Motoyasu and his party were somewhere west of the capital as well, though by a different road; they would eventually converge on the same village. Still, neither party was aware of the other's direction yet.
Ren had gone east. The mountain range that edged the kingdom in that direction was visible on clear days from the capital's higher walls, grey and distant.
Itsuki had gone northwest. The roads in that direction led through farmland and then forest and then into the quieter provinces, where the way led to large mountain ranges.
Ren and Itsuki, compared to Naofumi and Motoyasu where travelling fast, excited for what this world had to offer.
Four heroes.
The fifth, if he could be called that, had not yet left. Instead, he was enjoying a nice drink while listening to his new travel companion.
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Nihilux POV
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He was sitting in what Zarak had confidently described as the best inn in the capital, watching Zarak get drunk.
The delay had been Zarak's fault to explain. Something about cargo that wasn't ready, a supplier running late, Nihilux had stopped paying attention halfway through the reason.
The short version was they weren't leaving today, and since he'd already told Zarak he'd travel with him as escort, he couldn't exactly turn around and find different transport now. It wasn't even a significant delay.
One night of delay is hardly much.
So here they were.
Zarak, getting drunk. Him just enjoying his drink.
The thing about Zarak being a lightweight was that it made him considerably more talkative than he probably was sober, and surprisingly more informative for it.
Nihilux had learned more about adventurer escort contracts in the past hour than he would have gotten from a week of reading guild pamphlets.
Typically, adventurers doing escort missions registered the job through the guild. The purpose being that neither party could cheat the other after the fact, the guild acted as a neutral record keeper.
But registration wasn't actually mandatory. If a merchant and an adventurer came to a private arrangement between themselves, that was perfectly legal. The trade-off being that if the adventurer got shorted on payment or something went wrong, the guild wasn't responsible and wouldn't intervene.
There was also a general understanding, tho not a rule, just an understanding that during combat or in high-monster activity areas, the adventurer's word was the one that mattered. Routing decisions, threat assessments, and whether or not to push through a stretch of road after dark. That authority sat with the adventurer.
Though again, it was up to the individual parties to agree on how they operated. A merchant who wanted to go through a more dangerous area could ask. If the job had come through the guild, the adventurer could say no outright. If it was a private arrangement, the adventurer had considerably less leverage.
Which meant the guild had quite a bit of quiet power over merchants as well. Adventurers helped to keep trade moving. Any settlement with serious commerce needed adventurers functioning reliably, which meant keeping the guild functional, which meant not making enemies of it.
He should probably read the book the guild master had given him at some point.
Zarak was also, somewhere between the second and third cup, on the subject of merchant guilds or rather, the lack of them.
Unlike adventurers, small merchants in Melromarc didn't really have a centralised guild structure to fall back on.
Apparently, the concept was newer than he'd assumed, and it was Faubley where it was developing not as an open collective of merchants, but as a single powerful merchant family that others gathered around and operated under. Less a guild in the traditional sense and more the early architecture of one.
Give it a few decades, and it might actually become something.
Zarak also mentioned that he'd hired five adventurers for the carriages. They'd meet them in the morning. Escort missions were popular among lower-ranked adventurers: steady pay, relatively predictable work and a caravan of 5 carriages.
He also mentioned that above a certain rank, adventurers became genuinely difficult to hire for merchant escort work. For every hundred silver-ranked adventurers, there were perhaps ten at magic silver. For every hundred at magic silver, five at steel. Past that silver steel, gold, and platinum, Zarak admitted he didn't really know the numbers because he'd never personally encountered someone of that rank willing to take a merchant escort job.
Nihilux looked at his cup.
He was silver steel.
...was that why Zarak had jogged over to him at the south gate? Was that why he'd paid for the inn without blinking?
He turned this over for a moment, then took a sip of his drink.
Hm.
He also learned a bit about Zarak. He had grown up in Faubley.
His parents had both been from Melromarc originally. They'd moved to Faubley before he was born.
Faubley was where Zarak had grown up, where he'd built his merchant operation from scratch, and where his younger brother still lived.
You didn't want to bring him with you.
"He likes it there." Zarak shrugged, not unhappily. "He's got his own life there. I had told him to come with me, but he is still young. Perhaps in the future I might bring him here." Zarak said as he took a big sip of his drink. "I'm not going to pull him away from that just because I decided to come back." He turned his cup on the table. "Besides, someone should stay. In case I decide Melromarc was a terrible idea, and I need somewhere to go back to."
"But hey, if all goes well here. I might just bring him here to stay with me you know. I am sure he will like it here as well. And I'd rather stay here than go back there if I am honest."
Why now?
"My father never made it back," Zarak said it simply.
Oh...
"He always meant to. Always said they'd return eventually, him and my mother, once the business was stable enough. And then it never happened, and then he was gone." He looked at his cup. "So. Now seemed like a good time."
Nihilux didn't say anything to that.
So he lost his parents, and that's why he doesn't want to go back.
Looking around, the common room had thinned out over the past hour. The fire in the corner was lower than it had been, and someone near the far wall had produced a small stringed instrument at some point and was playing slow music.
Zarak had gone quiet. His elbow was on the table, and his chin was drifting toward his hand.
By the time Nihilux looked over, he was most of the way asleep.
One of the caravan drivers, a stocky man who'd been nursing a single drink at the bar for the better part of the evening noticed, pushed off from the counter, and crossed the room.
He looked at Nihilux briefly, then looked at Zarak, then simply pulled him upright by the arm. Zarak stirred, mumbled something, and allowed himself to be steered in the direction of the stairs.
Nihilux watched them go.
After Zarak vanished from his sight, he was reminded of his own family back home.
He quickly waved for a waitress and ordered himself something sweet to eat before going to bed.
He sat with it for a while, not really thinking about anything except his family, and just listening to the music.
Soon enough, he finished his drink and his dessert, and he went to sleep.
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The next morning, he had a quick cup of coffee at the inn and met Zarak at the south gate.
Zarak looked like a man who had slept adequately and remembered less than half of the previous evening, which seemed to suit him fine.
He was already moving when Nihilux arrived, checking harnesses, exchanging brief words with the drivers. He gave Nihilux a nod and didn't mention anything about the night before.
He'd wanted to wake up later. Ever since arriving in this world, his habits had shifted in ways he hadn't fully agreed to, and early mornings were still something he endured rather than welcomed.
But Zarak had given him a time, and the time had been early, so here he was.
The five carriages were lined up near the south gate in the thin morning light. Three of them were stacked with cargo Zarak's shipment, finally loaded. The fourth belonged to the five adventurers Zarak had hired and carried some additional cargo alongside them.
The front carriage was Zarak's, driven by one of his men, and that was where Nihilux ended up sitting inside with Zarak while the city slowly woke up around them.
They soon left the city behind them as the sun was starting to rise in the sky.
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About an hour out of the capital, they came across a small group of people on the road who needed to reach the next village. They didn't have transport. Zarak, being the kind of person he apparently was, offered them a place in the caravan.
The only carriage with room was the front one.
It got crowded quickly. There was nothing wrong with any of them; they were perfectly polite, but the inside of the carriage became warm and small. Nihilux found himself looking at the roof of the carriage and doing a quick calculation.
He climbed up top.
Zarak, from inside, did not comment on this.
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He lay on his back, arms folded behind his head, and watched the sky move.
The road south of the capital ran through open country fields on either side for now, the occasional farmhouse. Clouds drifted. Birds crossed overhead going somewhere. The wheels turned on the road below him and the whole carriage swayed gently with the rhythm of it.
It was pretty relaxing. The sun wasn't to bright, there were plenty of clouds in the sky and a pleasant breeze passing by.
He'd been watching the scenery for about thirty minutes when he found himself thinking about home again.
He thought about his home, his few friends, his parents and specifically his older sister.
Soon it dawned on him just how long it's been since he came to this world.
It had been about thirteen days since he'd arrived in this world.
I wonder how she is doing.
He used to talk with his sister every other week, more or less. Not always about anything important, just the ongoing background of each other's lives, checking in, saying nothing much.
She'd always called him emotionally dead. He'd never argued with her about it because it wasn't entirely wrong.
Does she even know I'm gone? Maybe time works differently between worlds. Maybe no time has passed at all.
He looked at the sky.
I miss you.
He wasn't particularly close with anyone else in his family. His mother, occasionally, every few months. His father he loved his father, but distance and university and time had done what they did, and now they talked rarely.
He hardly talked with his grandparents any more; years of family drama had finally caused a rift in their family. It's like after you grow up and realise you are related to some truly bad and petty people.
His sister had been the one constant. They'd grown up watching the same movies, arguing about the same things, and somewhere along the way she'd become his best friend.
He really did miss her. He even missed how she annoyed him, which was something he would have denied at any prior point in his life.
He stopped thinking about it.
She'd laugh at me for getting sad on top of a carriage in a fantasy world.
He sat up, reached into his bag, and pulled out the book the guild master had given him.
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An hour later, he had a fairly complete picture of how the adventurers' guild actually made its money.
Monster corpses, first. When an adventurer killed a monster, the body technically came back to the guild. Most adventurers had no idea how to properly dismantle a corpse, or how to extract the useful parts cleanly without contaminating or damaging them.
The guild handled that. For common monsters like horned rabbits or balloon creatures, it barely mattered. But for anything larger or more complex a monster bear, a water-type, anything with multiple valuable components, the guild's cut from processing and selling those parts was significant. They paid the adventurer a lump sum. Whatever they made beyond that was theirs.
Second were requests from nobility and royalty. A dangerous beast near a village, a strange new monster near the border, a population spike that was threatening settlements across multiple regions.
The noble or royal body in question could send its own troops, or it could issue a request to the local guild. Given that most of them preferred not to lose soldiers to something they didn't have full information on, the guild tended to get the work.
The royal family maintained standing arrangements like kill quests distributed across the kingdom, paid per completion.
Third was simpler: the guild took a cut of everything. Quest completed, they got a percentage.
Monster corpse sold, they got a percentage. Protection contract registered through them, they got a percentage. The specific rates varied, but the principle was the same.
Those three were the main ones.
There are plenty more like arrangements with merchants, or special requests from nobles or anyone else, and many, many more sources of income.
It wasn't all just the guild taking all that it could.
What did the guild provide to adventurers in return? Low-interest loans for members above silver and magic silver rank. Combat instructors available to anyone regardless of rank.
Funeral arrangements and family support if an adventurer died on a registered quest.
He read through the rank section. Then the quest requirements section.
Quest requirements?
He stopped.
Wait a second.
He had never actually accepted a quest from the capital guild.
He stared at the page for a moment.
Then he closed the book, set it on his lap, and pressed a hand over his face.
I am an idiot.
Oh well.
He couldn't do much about it now. Hopefully, there were monsters between here and the port city. He was going to need something to take his frustration out on.
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The village of Carlop was small enough that they passed through it in less than a few minutes.
It sat on either side of the road a cluster of buildings, a well, a few people who looked up as the carriages rolled through and then looked away again.
Zarak slowed them down long enough to let the people they'd taken on board climb out, exchanged a few words with the village's apparent equivalent of a headman, and then got the caravan moving again before the sun had moved much at all.
Nihilux, still on the roof, watched the village shrink behind them.
He'd pulled out the magic book sometime after Carlop.
It was boring to read, all things considered. The text that expected you to already know things before it explained them, and he'd been working through the first sections slowly, occasionally turning back to re-read a passage that had assumed context he didn't have yet. He wasn't going to get through it quickly.
That was fine.
"Any good?" Zarak called up from the driver's seat.
It's a book.
"Right, yes. And is the book any good?"
Nihilux considered this for a moment.
It has words in it.
A pause from below.
"You know, most people I travel with at least pretend to have conversations with me."
How is that working out for them?
Zarak laughed at that "Fair point." He shifted in the driver's seat, settling in. "What's it about, then?"
Magic.
"Ah." A beat. "Learning anything useful?"
Sure, I also finished the small one I got from the guild.
Turns out I made a mistake.
"Already? We've been on the road for four hours."
Now he knows why the guild master was mad?.... perhaps disappointed in him.
It was cause he utterly destroyed the monster corpses from the wave, which would have originally belonged to the guild for processing.
Soon after not getting a reply from him, Zarak started telling him about his many adventures as a merchant.
"Lost a considerable amount of money on that one," Zarak said.
You bought the fabric.
"I bought a lot of the fabric."
Why.
"He was very convincing." A pause. "Also, I was younger then, and considerably more optimistic about people's taste in textiles."
Nihilux turned a page.
Did you learn anything from it.
"Yes, I did. See at that time I was pretty new to this merchant business. I have learned many things since then, like the value of information. If you know what is going on where, you know where to sell what for a profit. Protection for travelling, you can always afford to make a little less from a run. But if you loss everything to monsters, then you are done for. And ofc how to haggle properly with nobility."
Three lessons from one mistake.
"haha, well, I am a fast learner."
Nihilux said nothing to that but turned another page.
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The sun was lower by the time they reached the river.
It crossed the road from below a big stone bridge. Zarak said something about camping soon nearby as they left the bridge behind.
Nihilux looked back at the river as it disappeared behind them. He was suddenly reminded of fish that Naofumi used to make.
They travelled for another hour, maybe slightly more, as the sky turned the particular shade of pale orange that meant the day was finishing up.
Eventually, Zarak pulled them off the road into a clearing.
The clearing was already occupied. Two other merchant caravans had made camp there, fires going, tents partially up, their were people standing around talking with each other.
There was space enough for more, which was presumably why this spot was used in the first place. Zarak assessed it for about four seconds and decided it would do.
"We're here for the night," he announced, and that was that.
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Soon enough, everyone started unpacking for the night and setting up a campfire nearby.
Nihilux helped in his own way.
One of Zarak's drivers pointed at a stack of supply crates in the back of the carriage, explained what needed to come out and where it needed to go, and Nihilux just lifted it.
All of it, at once, each crate floating out and settling exactly where it needed to be in the time it would have taken two men to carry one. The driver stared for a moment and then very wisely said nothing.
He did the same for Cael's group gear, tent poles, a cooking setup that would have taken four of them to haul across the clearing. Cael gave him a nod. Liara said thank you twice.
They were the same group of adventurer he saw before in the guild, who were now traveling with Zarak and himself.
Zarak stood back and oversaw everyone else.
Once the camp was mostly up, Nihilux stepped back and let things settle down.
Soon he smelled something cooking really nice from the nearby group of people. And he instantly felt hungry as well.
That smells good.
He stood there for a moment.
They had passed a river not that long ago. sixty minutes back, maybe less.
Hmm, I could probably make it to and from back in less than 10 minutes from there, and I remember seeing plenty of fish there.
Cael's group probably had food and would share if he asked and offered to pay but what he actually felt like eating was fish.
Naofumi had cooked fish for the group many times, and suddenly he was craving that again.
Fine.
He walked over to Zarak.
I'll be back in fifteen minutes.
Zarak looked at him, looked at the treeline, looked back at him. "Should I ask?"
I like fish.
"...Alright then."
He moved away from the camp at a normal pace, and once the firelight was far enough behind him that nobody was going to see anything interesting, he went up.
The river was exactly where he remembered it. He came down near the bank, stood at the edge, and closed his eyes.
There's a lot of fish in here.
He could feel them just below the surface of the water. He reached out and started lifting.
He filled his inventory in under five minutes. He took a couple dozen fish, maybe more, enough that most of it could carry over to the next few days without being a problem.
Honestly, the fact that time seems to stop in my inventory is one of my best powers now.
He stopped when he had plenty and flew back.
Those five adventurers spent half the ride complaining about wanting fresh fish in the port city. He touched down at the treeline and walked the last stretch back to camp.
Hopefully that means at least one of them knows how to cook it. Cause I sure as hell don't.
Even Tho he has eaten plenty of fish with Naofumi and Raphtalia, he himself didn't know much about cooking.
Maybe I should try the magic books for everyday magic tomorrow morning.
Hopefully they are easier to understand than the one he was reading before.
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It was early morning, and most of the camp was either awake or in the slow process of getting there.
One of the better things about travelling alongside low-ranking adventurers, I was learning, was that if your own rank sat high enough above theirs, they just offered to take your night watch for you.
Nobody had asked me to keep watch. Nobody had even hinted that I should. The duty had been quietly absorbed by the others before I'd had the chance to wonder whether I was supposed to volunteer, and I'd slept the whole night through without anyone bothering me.
I was also starting to notice something else.
A few of the travellers who'd made camp alongside us the merchants and adventurers who'd happened to share the clearing kept glancing my way like they knew me.
They knew me. Or they thought they did.
There was a younger adventurer too, a boy who couldn't have been more than sixteen, travelling with one of the other caravans, who kept sneaking looks at me wide eyes. He noticed me noticing him, went red, and immediately turned away.
Well.
I jumped and floated myself on top of the carriage, enjoying the morning cold wind.
It does feel kind of nice.
Perhaps I am getting a bit popular.
I reached into my inventory and pulled out a small handful of cookies, then started working through them while the camp came to life below me.
These were really good, it was worth it taking some of them from the party at the castle.
Today was one of those rare mornings I'd woken up early on my own. Back home, I'd been the sort of person who treated any hour before noon as a personal insult.
But I suppose my sleep schedule is changing ever since I came here.
As a eat the cookies, having nothing much to do, as Zarak was just beginning to wake up. I decided to read a magic book.
I had the Principles of Elemental Channelling open across my knees, and I had understood almost every single word of it.
That was the frustrating part. The theory wasn't hard. The theory was almost insultingly simple: magic worked through intention. You aligned yourself internally with the element you wanted, opened the channel, and pushed the intent outward into the world. The book stated all this.
Which was a lot of mumbo jumbo, honestly.
I flipped back a few pages and reread a section, frowning.
Stupid book.
It spent three entire chapters explaining how to cast basic spells and not one paragraph on how you were actually supposed to sense magic in the first place. It just assumed you already could.
I glanced around. Nobody was watching me.
Still. Here goes nothing.
I held out my hand, palm up. Closed my eyes for a second. I visualised an ice crystal forming, try to imagine everything about it. The cold, the size, it's structure and finally I tried to imagine a magic circle appearing in front of my hand.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Held the image longer this time, pushed harder, reached for whatever it was the book kept gesturing at without ever actually naming.
Nothing.
A bird that had landed on the edge of the carriage roof a while back, a few feet away, tilted its head, and gave me a look of frank judgment.
Then it flew off.
...This might be slightly harder than getting it on the first try.
I sighed, set the book down on my knee, and reached for another cookie.
That was when I sensed I was being watched again, and not by a bird this time.
I looked over. One of the adventurers from Cael's group, her name was Liara, the priest/healer, was sitting a short distance away near their fire. It seems she just woke up. and she'd clearly been about to say something and then thought better of it. Her eyes weren't on my face. They were on the cookie in my hand.
I tried moving my hand away to my left and right, and her face followed my cookie.
You want a cookie?
I offered, the bold text drifting across the space between us.
She startled a little at the floating words as much as the offer.
I think people usually took a day or two to get used to my way of communicating.
"Oh- no, I couldn't, I wasn't-" She stopped. Looked at the cookie again. "...Are you sure?"
I floated one across the gap to her without bothering to answer, the cookie drifting through the air and stopping right in front of her face.
She took it carefully and took a small bite.
Her expression changed immediately.
"This is—" She covered her mouth, chewed, swallowed. "Where did you get this? This isn't anything they sell at the capital's normal market, I'd remember it."
Well…. I kind of just took it from the party when no one was looking.
Without answering, I floated a second cookie over to her as a bribe to keep quite and she took it.
She's kind of cute.
"...Thank you," she said, a bit sheepishly. Then, after a moment, eyeing the book still open on my knee, "Were you-sorry, were you trying to cast something earlier? With your hand?"
I glanced at her.
Trying but failing.
"Oh." She tilted her head curiously. "That's strange. You don't seem like someone who'd struggle with magic, of all things."
Everyone keeps saying that.
I didn't reply, and after a moment she went a little pink and turned back to the cookie, evidently deciding she'd pried enough.
Zarak told me the same thing; they all must think my powers are a type of magic.
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Five hours later.
With both parallel minds running, I'd finished 4 of the 6 magic books I'd bought.
The camp had packed up and rolled out somewhere in the middle of all that reading, and I'd ended up sitting up front beside Zarak while he drove, the lead carriage swaying along the southern road with the rest of the caravan strung out behind us.
It was easier to read down here than on the roof, and Zarak made for undemanding company. He talked when he felt like it and let me read when I didn't answer.
That was the one real advantage I had in all of this. What would've taken anyone else a whole afternoon took me under an hour.
I'd gotten through the elemental book on wind magic before the camp was even properly awake, and had absolutely nothing to show for it except a complete, thorough theoretical understanding of something I still couldn't do.
The healing book was shorter than the others, but I found myself slowing down anyway.
The theory here was genuinely interesting.
Healing magic, according to the author, worked through visualisation and not vague visualisation in most cases, either, but specific, detailed mental imagery. The caster had to hold a clear picture of the body itself in their mind: the wound, the damaged tissue, the precise nature of what had to be fixed.
Then they had to picture that damage closing. Knitting back together. The body's own natural repair process, accelerated past anything it could ever manage on its own.
The book had no idea what cells were, of course. It just described the whole thing as imagining the body healing itself, the caster using magic to stimulate the body into fixing what was broken.
There were a few obvious contradictions in it, though, and I kept snagging on them.
The book claimed that higher-level healing magic could close deep wounds without even leaving a scar. But how, exactly, was the average caster supposed to know everything about the body's damaged parts in enough detail to repair them perfectly?
Did the average priest in this world actually understand the difference between types of tissue, between different bones, between the dozens of distinct structures that made up even a simple injury? I doubted it.
I wasn't a doctor myself, but I liked to think I understood a good deal more about how a body worked than the average person born into a medieval fantasy world, and even I would've hesitated to claim I could perfectly rebuild torn tissue from imagination alone.
Then there was the part about limbs.
The book mentioned, almost in passing, that healing magic couldn't restore an entire lost limb.
Why not, though?
If you could close a deep wound with nothing but incomplete understanding and force of will, then why was a whole limb suddenly off the table?
The book never explained it. It didn't present limb restoration as difficult or dangerous or as something requiring a rare technique it simply never mentioned it as a possibility at all, which felt less like an actual limitation and more like an answer given by absence. Nobody had figured it out, so nobody talked about it, so it didn't exist.
I thought about elixirs.
Maybe something like a elixirs exist in this world, which could potentially restore lost limbs aswell.
And if it was possible to forcefully stimulate a body into healing, then with my two parallel minds, even regrowing a limb shouldn't be out of reach.
I could run two full threads of thought at once focus one mind entirely on the detailed biological picture, every structure and layer that needed to exist, while the other directed the healing magic itself.
That was more precision than any normal caster could hope to manage in a whole lifetime of practice.
And the same logic should apply to offensive magic, too. In the time it would take, let's say a mage to cast a simple fire spell, I should be able to cast multiple spells in the same time with higher destructive power as well.
Mental note: check for restorative elixirs in the port city.
And then there was the question I kept circling back to, the one the book never even tried to answer how did the healing actually work?
When a wound closed, what was it closing with? Where was the body suddenly getting all the extra blood and tissue from?
Was magic just... making matter? Out of thin air?
I sat with that one for a moment, and it bothered me more than I expected it to.
The more I read, the more questions I had, and this was only healing magic. I hadn't even started seriously thinking through the implications of the elemental stuff.
I glanced at the book again, flipping to a margin note I'd skimmed earlier.
It mentioned that healing magic users were rare, that while technically any mage could attempt healing magic, their proficiency and skill would be vastly inferior compared to someone born with an innate talent for it.
Healing was its own thing. You either had a knack for it or you spent your whole life being just mediocre at it.
Hm. I wonder if that priest, Liara, can even cast basic healing magic.
I could ask Liara a few questions. She was right there, and she'd taken a cookie from me earlier, which in my opinion should be enough for me to start a conversation with her.
Though, realistically, I wasn't expecting much. She was a low-ranked adventurer on an escort job, not a master of magical theory.
I set the book down on my knee and looked out at the horizon.
The road ahead ran clear and empty into the morning haze, the forest thinning out on either side now into scattered trees and open stretches of grass. The carriage rocked gently under me. Somewhere behind me one of the drivers laughed at something.
The more I learned about magic, the more confusing the whole thing got.
...Should I just stop questioning every little detail about it?
It was magic. It didn't follow the rules I was used to. Maybe a person's imagination was the only real limit, and I was wasting my energy trying to force it to make sense.
I exhaled.
Okay. I've decided.
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Twenty minutes later.
I tried to use basic fire magic.
I ran the chant from the elemental book's third chapter through my mind exactly as it had been written, word for word, holding it the way the text said to.
As source of thy power, I order thee. Decipher the laws of nature and burn my target. Fast Fire.
Nothing.
The problem wasn't that I lacked magic. That was the maddening part. I pulled up my status window with a thought, and there it was, my magic stat was high.
Genuinely, absurdly high. Higher than it had any right to be for someone who couldn't produce a single spark.
My ESP had grown by nearly six times since I'd arrived in this world. My total magic capacity had grown by at least four times over the same stretch. The raw numbers were not the issue. The fuel was all there.
The problem was that I couldn't sense it.
No — that wasn't quite right either. I could sense magic. I'd felt it clearly enough when I was tearing through Wave monsters, plus I remember I sensed magic from the big sphinx windigo looking monster when I was tearing chunks out of its body.
I think the problem is the amount of magic?
Casting a simple fire spell took a small, controlled trickle of magic not a flood, and that was exactly the scale I couldn't seem to perceive.
It was like trying to feel a single drop of water land on your skin while standing under a waterfall.
I tried once more anyway, narrowing my focus as far down as it would go, reaching for the smallest possible thread of the power I knew was sitting somewhere inside me.
For just a fraction of a second, I thought I felt something a faint flicker at the very edge of my awareness, there and then gone before I could close my hand around it. I chased after it but it dissolved completely from my sense.
Trying to grab it had been like trying to recall a word sitting right on the tip of my tongue, but you forget it as soon as your mind wonders to something else for a second.
...Damn it.
I closed the status window, put the book away, and decided to just watch the road for a while.
"Still nothing?"
Zarak's voice came from beside me. The man had an instinct for when to speak.
Still nothing.
"Hm." A pause, the soft sound of the reins shifting in his hands. "You know, I had a cousin who tried to learn fire magic once. It took him the better part of two years before anything happened at all."
Did he get there eventually?
"Oh, he got there." Zarak sounded genuinely delighted to be telling this story. "He nearly burned down half his house the first time he managed it. He even singed his eyebrows clean off, too both of them, gone. Didn't grow back right for months afterwards, either." A short laugh. "His wife was not amuzed, not at all"
I looked down at my open hand.
There is no way I'm waiting two years for this.
If I could just figure out the magic sensing.
I bet Naofumi's having a much easier time than me.
That stupid shield probably just hands him everything. Translates, defends, levels him up, makes magic a breeze meanwhile I'm sitting here failing to light a candle.
That's reassuring
I sent to Zarak about the eyebrow story.
"I thought it might be." Another easy laugh. "So what does the book actually say you're supposed to feel? When it works, I mean."
I thought about how to put it.
Opening.
I sent finally.
It describes it as a kind of opening. Like a door inside yourself that you push through.
"Hm." Zarak turned that over for a moment, the carriage creaking under us. "And you don't feel any door."
I don't feel any door.
"Nothing at all? Not even a-"
Nothing.
He went quiet for a stretch. The slow rhythm of the horses' hooves on the packed road. The creak and sway of the carriage. The wind is moving through the thinning trees.
"Well," he said at last, "I'll be honest, it's a little hard to believe. An adventurer of your rank, unable to use magic, I mean." He turned to look at me. "You were damn popular back in the royal capital after the Wave. People were talking about you. The things they said you did out there."
He continued with a pause. "Maybe you just haven't found it yet. Could be it's already there, sitting right where you can reach it, and you just don't know what you're looking for."
That's essentially the problem.
"Right." A beat. "Though for what it's worth I've watched you do things in the last day and a half that I genuinely cannot explain. Lifting half my cargo without lifting a finger. Whatever it is you do when you talk. So I don't think the issue is that you've got no ability." Zarak shrugged. "Seems more like the ability you've got and the ability the book's describing aren't quite the same animal."
I looked out at the road ahead and said nothing to that.
It was, annoyingly, a fairly sharp read of the situation I was in.
"Hey." He shifted in his seat, his tone sliding into something more casual. "I never actually asked. Where are you from?"
A small chuckle. "Rumor around the camp says you're some sort of hermit. Lived up in the mountains with your parents, kept to yourself, came down for the Wave. That the truth of it?"
My thoughts stopped for a second.
...What?
Where did he get that from? A hermit? In the mountains?
How did he not know I was an otherworlder? Summoned, like the heroes, brought here. He'd been near enough to the Wave to have heard about me; the king himself had congratulated me at the party in front of half the court.
I glanced over at Zarak, who was watching the road ahead with the mild, open expression.
He turned to look at me, waiting for a reply.
So why didn't he know?
Is the king keeping it quiet? Deliberately?
Stopping the truth about my summoning from spreading, letting some convenient mountain-hermit story take its place instead.
But why would he do that? And if he was the one to do that, then why congratulate me in front of the nobles?
I could already feel the start of a headache somewhere behind my eyes, just from trying to picture the shape of whatever political game the king was trying to play.
Should I tell Zarak?
He seems a nice enough person, and I have enjoyed travelling with him so far.
Plus he seems like a good easy going type of guy.
...Hold off for now.
I could always tell him later, if it came to that. No reason to drag him into whatever this was before I even understood it myself. Better to just leave the question alone.
Ahh. What do I even say, though.
I searched for something, came up with very little, and went with the first thing I could come up with.
Nice weather we're having right?
.
.
.
Day two was nothing. We travelled, I read, Zarak talked.
The days passed with no monster or bandit attacks. I spent the day reading the magic books again and mainly listening to Zarak as he told me about his travels.
He was a couple of years older than me, but he travels a lot between Melromarc and Faubley, and occasionally other nations as well.
I never would have guessed he looked at least 10 years older than me, but apparently I was wrong.
He'd seen a lot more of this world than I had, and he wasn't shy about talking through all of it.
He told me about how, due to the waves, travel between nations has been going down for common people.
Monsters are being spotted in greater numbers. Make adventurers needed now more than ever.
Tho merchant it's also a great opportunity for merchants and adventurers to make a lot of money.
Especially merchants who handle the moving of goods between nations.
Day three was going much the same, in a day or 2 more we would be reaching the port city. But before we were attacked by monsters.
It was past midday when the mind I had on the treeline caught movement.
It was something small and fast that was caught by my idle parallel minds near me.
It rushed at the horses from the trees; when it was in the air, I realised what it was. It was a Great Fang Weasel, small dog-sized, all muscle and teeth, going straight for the horses.
I caught it without thinking a dagger out of my inventory and through its skull before it touched the ground. It dropped in the road, and the horses spooked sideways against their harnesses.
Beside me, Zarak swore and hauled on the reins, getting them back under control. He didn't reach for a weapon. He didn't have one worth reaching for, and from the look on his face, he knew it.
"That's never a good sign," he muttered, eyes flicking to the treeline. "When it's just one, it's never just one; it's always mo-"
Two more broke from the trees.
I took care of both of them as well before they could get close to the horses.
"...Right," he said, a touch unsteady. "Good. Good, that's- that's what I'm paying you for."
Yeah, Zarak was jumpy around monsters. I would have thought that for someone who travels a lot, he would be more composed, tho he just seemed nervous and not outright scared.
Then the rest of them came, and there was no more time for talk.
.
.
.
They poured out of both sides at once, hitting the front and middle of the caravan hardest. Behind me, Cael and his group was already shouting, and came up to help out.
I left the open road in the front to them. And focused to make sure all the drivers, Zarak and the carriages were safe.
I didn't move from my seat. I just split my attention: one mind on the carriages, Zarak and the drivers and the cargo, the other sweeping the treeline for anything coming through.
For the next few minutes, I killed many of the weasels that slip passed the adventurer's and came from the forest.
One of them, ran straight for Zarak and the drivers who were standing near me to my right.
I raised my hand and opened my inventory straight above it and fired my dagger at high speed, impaling the little monster into the ground.
Zarak let out a breath. "Thanks. That one was…. yeah. Thanks."
Halfway in, I noticed the daggers were taking a beating.
I called a couple back between throws. Chipped edges, one bent slightly out of true. They weren't built for this; plain blades meant for stabbing, not for being fired through hide like crossbow bolts. A few more days of this and I'd have nothing left worth throwing.
And it's like I was kind to my dagger either. After the last wave I didn't really buy any new good daggers anyway.
Hmm, I should see if I can find some enchanted ones at the port city.
I wonder if I can find some that have a self-repair enchantment on them. If something like that even is possible.
Restorative elixirs. Better daggers. Sweets, obviously.
My list just keeps getting longer each day.
.
.
.
Holding the carriages took about as much effort as a slow conversation.
That left plenty to spare.
So I watched the others fight their own monsters.
It was a mixed group of goblins, a few monster wolves, and more of the fang weasels threaded through the lot of them. For a group of Iron-ranked adventurers, they were handling it well enough.
Cael, the swordsman and party leader, held the front alongside Bern, the tank, the two of them anchoring the line while Seris, the archer, covered their flanks with quick shots. And then there was Mira, the mage, lobbing small fireballs into the mess from behind.
Her magic wasn't anything to write home about.
She launched another fireball at one of the wolves, and I found myself thinking that if she'd been in the Wave, she'd probably have died. Her attacks weren't even strong enough to put down a single goblin on their own every one she hit had to be finished off by Cael or Seris afterwards.
Useful as a distraction, maybe. Not much more than that.
Or maybe my expectations were just off. I didn't really know how strong an average adventurer is, so perhaps I just had misplaced expectations.
And then there was Liara, the healer.
Out of the whole group, she was easily the most useful and the most composed. She wasn't just healing, though not exactly. She kept her staff trained on Cael and Bern, the red gem set into its head glowing as she ran through a chant, and each time she finished, there'd be a brief flare of light and one of them would suddenly move faster, or hit harder, than they had a second before.
I made sure to memorise each chant she was saying for future use.
Enhancement magic for people, maybe?
I hadn't bought a book on enchantment magic, so I had no idea what category those spells fell under. Worth asking about later.
Then a cluster of them from the back peeled off toward the party: two going for Seris, five at Cael and Bern, one breaking for Liara.
To their credit, Cael and Bern reacted fast. One was dead almost instantly by their hands.
This might be a bit much for them.
Their fangs could tear through leather without much trouble, which was exactly what Seris was wearing.
Something moved at the edge of my attention.
I turned and killed four more of the little weasel monsters that had come down out of the trees onto Zarak and the drivers. Two daggers, fired fast, and the things came apart into a mess of blood and torn flesh across the side of the carriage. One of the drivers made a strangled noise and pressed himself flat on the road.
I looked back toward the adventurers.
Seris had already dropped one of her two. The second had gotten in close, though, and it was a breath away from sinking its fangs into her left leg.
I extended a hand and stopped it.
The weasel froze mid-lunge, suspended in the air, legs still scrabbling at nothing. Seris startled, a flicker of shock crossing her face at the monster just hanging there, but she recovered fast and put an arrow through its skull without wasting the opening.
She turned, gave me a short nod, and went to help Cael and Bern.
You're welcome, I thought.
Liara, I noticed, had already dealt with the lone weasel that had gone for her. Her hands were a bit bloody but there was no wound on her.
Huh. She keeps a knife on her too.
After another minute or two of me catching and freezing anything that got too close, and them doing the actual killing the group finished off the last of the monsters.
After a few moments of making sure there were no more monsters, everyone relaxed.
And then they started dismembering some of the monsters for selling them to the guild. Even the drivers joined them to help.
"Bern, remember to take the fangs off the weasels; that's the real bounty," Seris called, already crouched over a corpse of a monster wolf and working the blade.
They talked among themselves to see what could be takes and what to leave behind by the side of the road.
"These pelts are shredded, don't bother. And Bern, quit holding that one up like a trophy."
Yeah, that was me. I should try to make my kills cleaner next time.
I had killed a lot of the little buggers.
"It's the principle, Seris!" Bern boomed, hoisting the dead weasel higher anyway, grinning. "First kill of the day! That counts for something!"
Cael and Mira checked the goblin corpses, something about looking if any were half evolved variant or not. Apparently, some of their parts sell for quite a bit.
And
"It is genuinely never worth it."
Zarak drifted over from the carriages, eyeing the carnage with the practised look of a man doing sums in his head. "You lot are quick. Cleaner than the last group I hired, those lot almost set one of my carts on fire."
"HA!" Bern jabbed a thumb at Mira. "Bet that was a mage."
"It was not necessarily a mage-"
I was also helping move some of the dismembered parts into the carriages to sell later in the city.
Soon I felt something move in the forest. A good 100 meters away from us. It was big, almost twice the height of Bern.
And Bern was a big fellow. Taller than me.
It was coming straight from the direction where Zarak was talking with Cael near the teers.
I quickly used telepathy to speak to them.
{Monster behind you. Come towards me.}
I pushed the words straight into Zarak's and Cael's heads and had the small satisfaction of watching both of them go rigid at the same instant.
And Zarak immediately ran to me.
I had spoken to Zarak this way before, so he reacted a lot more quickly, whereas Cael was just looking around, trying to find the source of the voice.
Then the ogre came through the treeline.
"Formation!" Cael was already shouting, sword back out, putting himself between the treeline and the carriages. "Bern, front now!!"
This thing moves pretty quick.
In just a few moments, Cael and his party were ready to fight.
"Bern, left!" Cael's voice cracked across the road. "Seris, eyes up. Mira, hit it, anything!"
Bern got his shield up and planted himself square in the thing's path, bellowing a challenge to pull its attention. Cael came in low and fast at its flank, blade cutting its skin. Seris loosed arrow after arrow. Mira's fire bloomed against its chest.
The arrows mostly bounced off it, and the fire magic hurt it. It wasn't strong enough to do serious damage to its body.
Cael was doing some serious work on this thing's legs. But he was also cutting it a bit close.
Many times, Bern had to take a hit on his shield to protect his leader.
I was making sure then didn't take any direct hits. By moving them away from the path of it's club.
Soon the ogre swung his giant club downwards at Bern at great speed. Cael was moving to push Bern away from it, but he was just not fast enough.
Shit, if this attack hits, then Bern might be seriously injured or worse; he could die.
He got his shield up on reflex. It wouldn't have mattered; the club would have gone through the shield and him both, and he had no time to move. None of them did.
I caught it a hand's width from his head.
It stopped dead in the air, the ogre hauling against a hold it was trying to pull it back.
With a wave of my hands, I dragged Bern across the ground back towards the others.
Alright. Enough of that.
With a quick look, I saw that there was a giant boulder on the side of the road, behind the ogre.
With a thought, I removed the chunks and, with a snap of my fingers, I sharpened them into spikes.
The ogre had now let go of his club and was beginning to run towards the Cael who was checking up on Bern.
With a flick of my wrist I launched the spikes straight towards the ogre aiming at it's legs.
They then cut through its legs and lodged themselves into the ground, immobilising the ogre.
I moved the other 2 big chunks of rock that weren't shaped into spikes, on the opposite side of the ogre's head.
And finally with a snap of my fingers I accelerated them towards its head with great speed.
Its head popped like a water balloon, sending blood and brain matter everywhere.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
The five of them were staring at the ogre, then at me, then back at the ogre. Bern was still on the ground where I'd dragged him, alive, his shield hanging off one arm, looking at where the ogre's head used to be.
Then he broke the silence with everything he had.
"Did you SEE that?!" He hauled himself upright. "It had me! It had me, the club was coming down and then I'm… I'm somewhere else, I'm twenty feet back, I don't even know how-" He rounded on me, beaming. "That was you! You! I don't care what your fee is, I'm buying you a drink at the port. Ten drinks. Anything you want!"
Mira said, "That's not earth magic; there was no chant, there was no….. what rank did you say you were? Because that is not Iron, that is not Steel, that is not anything I have ever scene"
"Mira." Cael's voice cut through the others'.
"I'm only saying, Cael—"
But Cael wasn't really listening to her. He'd already moved closer to Liara.
"Liara!!, are you alright? I was so worried about you," he asked while looking over her.
"I'm fine." She huffed a small laugh and brushed the dirt off her robes. "You're the one who got thrown, Cael. I stood at the back the entire time."
"Still." He held her gaze.
...Hm.
"Right," Zarak said, a little hoarse, a hand pressed flat to his own chest. "Remind me to never renegotiate your fee."
Cael let out a breath and finally retrieved his sword, frowning at what was left of the ogre. "An ogre this far south. That shouldn't happen." He nodded back toward the treeline. "They keep to the north, mostly… the mountains up that way, and the range east of the capital. You don't see them down here. Something must've driven it out of its territory." He glanced at me.
So the ogres are usually found in mountain regions huh.
.
.
.
It took the better part of an hour to get everything moving again. The adventurers stripped what the guild would pay for off the corpses with the driver's also joining in to help on Zarak's saying.
By the time we rolled out, the sun had started its slow lean toward the trees.
I was back on the front beside Zarak, watching the road unspool ahead of us. We rode in silence for a while.
After riding for ten minutes, Zarak went back to his usual self and told me stories about travels.
"Can I ask you something?" He asked.
Go ahead.
"So, um… I was thinking… what do you plan to do after we reach the port city? "He kept his eyes on the road. "After we get there, after I've offloaded all this. What's your plan?"
I thought about that for a moment.
I was planning to stay there for about a day or two. After that, I was hoping to visit the village where the first wave happened before we were summoned here.
Raphtalia told a little bit about how the lord of their territory was a kind person.
Plus it's not far; it's just west of our destination. Around a day or two of travel with a carriage.
Head further west along the coast. I heard there was a village that was attacked during the first wave.
Should be a good area to go and quickly kill lots of monsters and make some money.
I should remember to pick some quests from the adventurer's guild as well.
Since those locations are close by, there should be a higher number of monsters and plenty of quests as well.
"Hm." He nodded slowly. "Is that so… "
"Well… for whatever it's worth, the offer stands past this."
I glanced at him.
"I'm not stopping there," he went on. "This is just the first leg. I have been running this route up and down the coast for a good while."
Zarak then spent the next 10 minutes muttering under his breath, something about the guild, rebuilding and something about royal commissions.
"And the company's not bad either. Even if half my conversations are with myself." He sounded a bit disappointed.
I looked at the road ahead.
I enjoyed travelling with Zarak as well. he was a fun guy to be around; he always had so many stories to tell about his travels and other things like different nations.
I can tell he is trying to say that he would like to keep travelling with me.
I'll think about it.
I told him.
And well… the company's not bad here either.
Zarak's grin came back. "Was that a compliment? From you?"
I couldn't stop myself from smiling as well.
Don't push it.
"Too late. It's happening. 'The day Nihilux admitted he liked me-'"
Zarak.
"-'a momentous occasion, witnessed by… well me!!'"
I let a small gust of wind knock his hat down over his eyes.
I went back to watching the sky.
So much to do once we reach our destination.
...Yeah. The company's not bad at all.
================================
Author Notes~~~
DAMN, almost 10k words chapter.
i really wanted chapter 13 to start a very specific way. so that's why this chapter is soo damn long.
originally this chapter came out to be around 11k. i managed to trim it down to about 10k.
ok i have a few things to say.
first of all,
the next chapter upload will probably on forums.spacebattles.com
honestly there are a few reasons, for this but the main ones are. I first was uploading on FF.net
but i stopped over there due to basically zero reader interactions, and well the platform FF.net is just doing so bad.
it's like the moderations just don't give a fuck about it.
so i stopped uploading there a while back.
and even Webnovel, it's just filled to the fucking brim with AI slop.
legit i opened Webnovel a few days ago, and the first story on the explore was "Just use your sister"
.... WTF.
LIKE WTF. this platform is seriously going under. And while some authors are fighting back like my frav Cuttlefish.
Praise The Fool!!
it's just filled with slop. Every day i open this app and see story covers with naked ladies and just disjusting titles and i feel like I lose brain cells.
which is sad i do care about this site, it was one of the first places i used to read other's fanfic myself.
and final reason is well.... i have been using spacebattles a LOT, the last few months.
and every day i find myself using it even more.
plus honestly the reader-author interaction is really strong there as well.
i admit i find the site a bit confusing at times. But not much.
.
.
So yeah, I will probably upload the next chapter there, and I'll probably update the story here as well.
but each day i find myself using Webnovel less and less. So it's not a guarantee.
and i will also share the link to my fanfic there, over here.
Still, it will be after a few days, since I am changing houses tomorrow, so i will be busy for the next 2 days.
another thing is well, i am GOING to pick up the pace of the story from now on.
while i LOVE writing this story in my free time. the pace at which thing's happen is kinda slow.
so expect faster story progression.
and i might start doing small omake/side story chapters for the fun of it. i actually have a few written up already.
Tell me would you guy's like those?
(Even you guys could write small side story omake chapters on spacebattles, if you guys wished.)
FINALLY, my exams ended a few days ago, and I was able to finish this chapter today, it's almost 1 am here..
so i will start working on my chapters more from now on as well.
and lastly.
Comments motivate me to write faster, so be sure to comment.
Honestly, I have like 5 future chapter drafts ready.
But they are drafts. just need to fix them up with a lot of editing, and they are good to go.
anyways
bye~~~~