The four horses that rode in to the sleepy town of Inverness caused quite the uproar. Inverness was behind the border provinces of the Inath federation and therefore quite safe, with only the occasional wild pack of Rekis to worry about. It was also built on the slopes of the Inver mountain range, as a feeder town for the various iron mines scattered across the nearby mountains, and so was considered very remote in Inath politics.
Strangers would have been talked about for days at most. But these four were not just the run of the mill knights but in fact the very Hero and his party that had been the all talk of the nobility. Honestly though, being saddled with the expectation he would save everyone in Inath wasn't welcome to Morey.
Morey brushed down his Reki and fed it slowly. Reki riding took some getting used to, and not even in his varied experience did Morey ever have to ride a horse. But he was learning to take care of them and Rekis were a little bit like horses if you squinted and ignored their bounciness. Ok, they were a bit more like really huge dogs but still.
"That got too much for you?" Etani said as she came into the stable.
Morey sighed, "Yeah, I didn't think children could be so terrifying. "
"So Morey, do you mind taking care of my Reki too? I've got to go rescue Ereli before she accidentally kills someone by falling on them," Etani handed him the reins.
"I just hope we can finish preparing," Morey said.
"Come on, the Tsar research facility the documents pointed to is right under our feet. It's not going anywhere. "
"Keep up that attitude and we'll be here for a month," Morey shook his head, "I say we go in two days. "
"That should be enough time. "
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It didn't turn out be enough time. Morey was quite sorely wishing he did ask the party to spend a few more days preparing wands. But who would have guessed that such a creature would live inside the ruins?
He drew out another firebolt from his pack and with a mental tweak, shot the magic at the monster chasing them. The spear of flame flew through the trees and splashed futilely against the monster's shield. Bits and pieces of the spell careened into the sky, leaving the monster untouched. Morey had never seen any shield cause magic hitting it to simply break into pieces.
Morey tossed the empty stick of wood aside and concentrated on running. It was almost upon him!
A salvo of pure magical bolts rocketed in from the side, distracting the monster from turning Morey into a messy smear on the floor. That would be Nal of course, only she could guide so many magical bolts between the trees with such accuracy. Her bolts didn't fare any better, also breaking into streaks of uncontrolled magic.
There was a blur somewhere behind him and the crashing of trees as the monster ran into another one. Then a sound of steel shattering on the rocky skin of the monster, Etani had tried to strike again.
"Break for the open area! Lead it away from the town!" Morey shouted, "we must defend the civilians!"
Etani was too busy dodging legs crashing down from the trees above to reply and Morey trusted that she had heard. He turned to run.
When they broke out of the forest into the bare rocky slope, Morey took a chance to regroup with the other two. Nal could take care of herself but Ereli was already sporting cuts and bruises, no doubt from tripping in the forest. The Iris girl seemed to be able to trip on nothing at all, how she had managed to get through the forest in one piece was a mystery. Etani he wouldn't have to worry about, it was more likely she would be taking care of Morey instead.
"You guys all right?" Morey asked while looking them up and down.
Ereli winced at a particularly painful bruise on her cheek, but still put on a firm look and nodded gamely. Good.
"I have an idea," Nal said, "if I don't have to juggle powerful spells, I can control a lot more. We'll see if I can't overwhelm the shield. "
Morey nodded, Nal was the most knowledgeable about magic among all of them.
"I- I'll help!" Ereli squeaked.
"Head upwards and keep your magic in reserve," Morey said, "we may have to use the trump card. "
"Yes!" Ereli squeaked again. She hadn't been with them long enough for the glamour of talking to the Hero to wear off yet, and this was her first major crisis. Understandable really.
"It's coming!" Etani yelled as she ran out of the forest, their ridiculous and makeshift. but very effective, shield pointed back where the monster was.
The creature followed her out of the trees and they finally got a good look at it.
Twice the height of a man, and about the width of a house, the monster simply bulldozed its way through the trees. It had six legs on either side, each as thick as a man, and it scuttled forwards deceptively fast despite the size of its body. And the body! Covered all the way down to the tips of the legs with a dark brown carapace, its vaguely oval shape was festooned with odd spikes and strange discolourations. Twin eyes were set into armoured sockets with a tough white film protecting them.
It reminded Morey of an oversized crab. Well, crabs didn't usually have a glimmering magical shield surrounding its body and legs.
The shield was currently the subject of their frustrations. Unlike the hard smooth shields that Morey was taught to use by Etani, this shield was fluffy. As if composed of a thick blanket of weaker strands.
Morey watched again as Etani attacked one of the legs with a powerful magic assisted swing of her warhammer. Just when the hammer passed through the shield, the acceleration spell on the head simply fell apart, just like all the other spells they had tried. The swing lost some power but it still smashed into the leg shell with a loud crack.
There had to be some kind of trick to that, Morey decided. The shield seemed to wrap around the hammer? Maybe?
A huge and sharp leg slammed down at Etani but she stood her ground. The Crysteel door they had looted from the ruin was not forgeable into another shape but the best smiths in Inath had managed to attach a pair of steel handles and a large spike at the bottom. She slammed the door down into the ground to anchor it and simply endured the blow. The monster's leg slammed into the door, pushing Etani backwards despite the anchor. The spike dug up a small trench in the hard ground but the door simply shrugged off the attack. It didn't even look damaged.
Etani rode the blow backwards and swung her warhammer at the leg that just attacked her. Still to no significant effect.
Morey took out yet another firebolt. Channeling a spell storm, the three basic bolt spells showed the stark difference between Nal and his half-baked training. He fired them and triggered the wand immediately after, the bolts streaked forwards. The shield reacted again and they never reached. Now that he was watching for it, Morey noticed that one of the threads seemed to reach out and touch the spells just before they broke apart. Maybe. It all happened so quickly that Morey couldn't be sure he saw that.
"Firing!" Nal shouted and Etani darted away. The crab-monster took another few steps forward and met with a sudden avalanche of bolts. Simple, crude and weak, Morey could have made such a bolt even before he left the capital, but there were so many of them! True, Nal's spell storm had improved lately but not this much! The air almost glittered with the machinegun like stream of bolts... that were all caught and scattered.
No, not quite, the last few seemed to strike deeper into the shield. The threads were obvious now, flailing around trying to intercept all the bolts. And there weren't enough of them to keep up with Nal at full auto fire.
Then the torrent subsided. It wasn't enough to open a hole in the shield.
"Quantity! That's the key!" Morey shouted as Etani dashed back in to distract the monster. "Fire enough spells and shield can't deflect everything!"
Nal was already breathing hard but nodded. "Give me your wands!" she shouted back.
Morey swung his pack off his shoulders and tossed it up the slope with a grunt. A spurt of magic made sure it arrived.
Nal opened the pack and unceremoniously dumped the colour coded sticks onto the ground and then added those from her own pack. "I'll try to set these to all fire at the same time, so make the monster stay put!"
And just in case it didn't work, Morey glanced up at Ereli who was still climbing upwards. Slowly. "Ereli!" he got her attention, "use it! Hit that monster just after Nal fires!"
He lingered long enough to get Ereli's nod then focused on the green shard hanging from a pendant around his neck. The Iris gift glowed as he poured magic into it and the ghostly blade sprang into existence beside him. Followed by the minor phantom, Morey drew his sword and ran forwards to join Etani. It was time to see how his melee training had paid off.
This was going to painful.
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"FIRING!"
The welcome shout finally allowed Morey to back off. Dancing around the monster, avoiding the stabbing legs, they had all dissolved into a blur that just went on and on and on. Dodge, strike, fire a bolt, dodge again. Repeat. His minor phantom had disappeared some time ago after futilely trying to smash through the shield. The shield didn't seem to be able to break phantoms, but the phantoms couldn't go through the shield either and was reduced to bashing the shield over and over.
The monster didn't seem to have any other attack than the legs and those were slow enough that they could be dodged given some warning. But it was clearly a defensive monster and all of Etani's and Morey's attacks might as well have been pinpricks to it. All they had to show for those tense minutes was two palm sized pieces of the carapace lying on the rocky ground. The monster had stopped attacking with the vulnerable legs and they didn't get a chance to exploit it.
Behind them, Nal was almost done. Her eyes were closed and she was doing that mnemonic chatter she always did when she was truly concentrating. If the monster hadn't been pinned down by Morey and Etani, she wouldn't have risked doing that. On the other hand, she was surrounded by a small army of wands floating in the air.
She opened her eyes and fired them all at nearly the same time. Sequential firing took more concentration and she was at her limit now, but what a scarily high number that was! That was their weeks of hard work at enchanting the wands and Morey thought she had fired almost all of them. The screaming mass of bolts of every type shot forwards, a barrage of magical disruption, heat and physical blows.
Even that rain of attacks was overshadowed by the cloud of magic hovering in the sky. Nal had copious magical power, Morey had thought, but Ereli's brute strength made hers look puny. More than five times their combined magical power. At the cost of not having trained anything else at all. Ereli didn't know how to do even the most basic things, magic or otherwise. Even putting on any clothing more complicated than a shirt and pants was too much, she had had servants to do it for her when she was growing up.
When Ereli joined, Morey had made her learn basic alchemy and constantly store her magical power each day. Despite her horrendous inefficiency at enchanting, the staff they had bought her was filled in two days. It was even made of iron to store more magic, no battlemage had ever needed an iron staff before but Ereli's magical power was just that ridiculous.
With three of them, Ereli could store enough power to channel a Ritual Summon all by herself, even if the weight of the iron was harsh on her weak body. The cross formation forming in the sky was not as powerful as when used in an army but the fact that she could even manage to make it appear at all was nothing short of miraculous.
The blue glowing cross slammed downwards savagely, like a giant hand descending on an ant. Nal's salvo reached first and the shield deflected a large number but the rest tore straight through to the carapace, blasting holes in the main body of the monster.
Above, the cross of solid magic hit the shield and ground against it, magical disruption fighting against the monster's shield. The carapace creaked under the physical force that leaked through and the monster's legs buckled then sank into the ground. But it stubbornly refused to die.
Then the cross shattered into countless smaller pieces.
They could only stare in shock. The shield was still up, and was even now reforming. Morey reacted first and managed to slip a trio of firebolts through Nal's gap in the shield but the attack only added another scorch mark next to her heavy gouging.
But what sort of monster was this?! Weeks of stored magic and Ereli's ritual summon, the monster had simply endured it all. Not without severe damage, it's legs were cracked and trapped in the ground and there was a large burnt hole in the main body leaking pulped flesh and blue coloured blood. But it was definitely still alive and was already trying to dig itself out.
"What is this thing?" Morey asked incredulously.
"I have heard of such stories," Etani said beside him, recovering her stamina, "stories where a Hero fights a singular unique monster. I never thought the legends were real but it seems we have found ourselves a Titan. "
"But why was it in the Tsar ruin?"
"Perhaps it was guarding it?" Etani ventured. But they had no answers.
"It's getting up, we should attack it again," Morey said.
Etani nodded and ran off with the door still in her arms. Man, Morey would have been dead tired just carrying that thing but Etani managed to carry it throughout the fight. He really needed to learn these Em things she was using.
Morey ran forwards towards the monster but nearly tripped when his leg hit a stray magical pulse. Shit, that stung! He hobbled to a halt and looked back. There were actually rather a lot of them. Malformed magic after being shattered by the shield was just hanging in the air or near the ground. After emptying their entire magical stock at the monster, the air was almost sparkling.
"What are these?" Morey wondered aloud.
Bits of spells, broken and non-functional. But they still contained power. Power that could be used.
He reached out to one, like the alchemist had told him to do to connect to a spell. Morey rebuilt the broken magical bolt and watched it fly at the monster. It got deflected, as expected, but the spell reverted to a fragment again.
Hm. Could that be exploited?
He had better do it fast. The crab already had one leg free, despite Etani chipping away at the carapace on the other side.
"Nal!" Morey shouted. She scrambled down into speaking range and Morey asked, "is it possible to make a spell to modify other spells?"
The spellstorm mage frowned at him, "yes. But on the fly modification takes at least a few seconds. Even if I put the same function in a spell, that wouldn't change. And the shield is controlled by the monster, you can't make the connection to the shield to modify that either. "
"What I want to do is modify these bits of spells," Morey indicated the sparkling haze hovering in the air above the battle. "If you can modify them to attack the monster again, like I did just now, maybe we can overwhelm the shield. Of course, you're going to have to build a delay into that so it all happens at the same time. "
Nal surveyed the sparkles and nodded to herself. "If I control the modification spells, I can change the restoration process to make a decreasing delay and correct for the angle... hm, yes it is possible. "
Morey nodded, "how much time do you need?"
Magical power was already coalescing into partial spells around Nal, but the monster freed another leg behind them. "Not fast enough. Looks like you get to be bait again. "
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Unlike her signature spell storm, this one sprayed a series of more complex spells into the air. Each of the modification spells worked on one fragment of magic at a time, setting it to fly downwards on a timer. Nal's attention darted from one modification spell to another as they completed their tasks in turn. Controlling multiple spells at once was hard enough and Nal was using them in a complex dance of spell modification.
Safe to say that only Nal could possibly accomplish something like that, even so, it prevented her from using her full complement.
She had given herself two minutes. Compared to the darting attacks Morey and Etani were unleashing on the monster, keeping it from using its free legs to dig the others out, two minutes was a very long time. For her task? Nal shook her head and went back to work.
"Firing!" she said, finally, creating a familiar constellation of her favourite magical bolts.
She had somehow managed to make it in time. Almost as one, the entire cloud of shattered spells shot downwards. The pieces from the shattered ritual summon contained the most power and Nal had taken the liberty of making her modification spells follow behind. And, it had not escaped Nal's notice that the Grand Cross summon had still managed to deal severe damage through the shield. Rather than attempt to destroy the shield like Morey was thinking, she was going to try to cook it inside its own shield.
It worked far better than she imagined. Most of the magic from the ritual summon hadn't been expended after all, and the remaining magical power converted to heat the moment it touched the shield. Just like Nal had set it to. Added to the not insignificant cloud generated by Nal's own discharge of their wand stock, the very air itself turned white hot.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Morey and Etani had already gained some distance, but not quite enough. The superheated air exploded outwards and upwards, radiating enough heat to curl hairs even at Nal's distance. She put down her arms that she had thrown up instinctively against the heat.
Of the monster, there was no sign. No wait, there was the six gouges in the ground where its legs had been driven in. Bits of the creature's legs were still there but the corpse was just a black smear of ash in the shallow crater. And in a rising cloud drifting away in the wind.
"Oh, wow," Nal muttered, not believing her eyes.
"Hot! Hot!" There was a yelping from further in and one of the dirt mounds shifted to reveal Etani scrambling out of her armour. "How did you do that?" she asked. Nal had no answer for her question though.
There were more clanks as Morey surfaced as well. It looked like their armour managed to absorb most of the heat.
"Wow, totally annihilated huh?" Morey said, once he was free as well. He had been nearer the blast than Etani and sported light burns on his neck, hands and back of his legs.
"How could it have done that?" Nal asked wonderingly, "I could believe Ereli had that much power but then why didn't she destroy the monster in the first attack?"
"I suspect we have been very stupid," Morey said, still sucking on his burnt fingers, "the monster had a magical shield that was very good at deflecting magical attacks. We can't grind it down either since the shield doesn't absorb any hits, it just turns them aside. Pure magic blasts were never going to work against it. "
"The firebolts and forcestrikes didn't work either," Etani pointed out, "neither did accelerating my hammer. "
"But you see, the shield deflects all magic that touches it," Morey said, "I wonder why I never thought of it, but the solution is obviously to use magic that can attack without touching the shield. "
He hefted a rock and threw it at the smouldering stump of the legs. The pulse of magic sent the rock flying and the fist sized stone knocked out a piece of the burnt carapace.
Nal wanted to smack her head in exasperation. She had even seen some of the answer when she saw Grand Cross crushing the monster. Magical fire, being a gas literally made out of magic, wasn't going to work, but completely non-magical heat created by magic went through the shield. Even Grand Cross also crushed its targets with a downdraft of high pressure air, although its main effect was magical disruption.
"That said," Morey got a calculating look in his eyes, "despite the flaws, I would dearly love to find out how to make a shield like that. I suspect Etani and her door will become practically invincible. "
Etani and Nal shared a laugh, recalling how the monster had tried to bash through the Crysteel door. Etani turned it over with a steel boot and winced. There was actually a few scratches on the surface. Shallow ones but this was the most damage the door had suffered thus far.
"I... finally... got... -Ah!" a high pitched yelp behind them heralded a breathless Ereli tumbling over the rock. She collided with Morey.
"Woah!" he staggered backwards under her weight and hit Etani. All three of them went down into a messy heap.
Nal could only sigh. She still wasn't sure that Ereli was not faking her clumsiness. Surely, no one could be that bad, right?
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"You got fooled," the man behind the table made the one standing in front of it quiver a little. But the hand on the cane barely budged.
"How so, Karin Sir?" the man with the cane asked.
"He will not be able to rebuild quickly from memory?" the branch leader Elma Karin pounded the table, "nonsense! That man, Cato, wrote this!"
Karin held up the large sheet of paper containing the biggest drawing. "Look carefully Klaas," he said while pointing to the words in the annotations, "the handwriting for this schematic is the same as the others. Which are the personal notes and investigations. It is stiffer and more formal in the big one but it is the same script. Unless you mean to tell me this man writes in the same style as the First? Who, I might like to add, do not appear to have a writing style at all? Certainly not like this. "
Klaas gulped and looked at the papers. "I am sorry, it is my error. "
"Good that you realize it," Karin said.
"With your permission, I would fix my mistake. It won't cost you a telin. "
"Kalny started doing something different," Karin mused, "he's backed off on our territory. Besides, after that fiasco, do you think anyone will fund this man's ideas for cast iron? Especially when we make it known that we have the secret and can do it best?"
"But he still knows the secret. We have killed for less than this. "
"Indeed. But I still harbour the hope that he can be made to join us-"
"Then let me try that. "
Karin sighed and said, "don't let your pride cloud your thinking. The man is important but right now, we have no leads on his activity and what he is planning to do. Or if in fact, he only got the idea from a First ruin and this is just a copy. "
There was a pause and Klaas shared the sigh, "Sorry. "
"Apology accepted. And don't think you have to repay us for your mistake. It was an honest one made in the stress of the situation, I might have the same error myself," Karin said, "If you want to be useful, then watch that man. Make sure his work is known to us, and ours to him. Then perhaps one day, we will have the best inventor Inath has ever seen. "
The mercenary nodded, "it is good to have an understanding employer like you. "
"One cannot afford the whims of nobles in business," Karin smiled, "a useful asset like you will be appreciated. "
It went unsaid that useless assets were just as mercilessly discarded.
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"So what do you plan to do now, Cato?"
Cato looked around the empty office. Kalny had given them a few days to pack up and leave. Pasteurization wasn't as simple Cato had made it appear the first time and after the first few exploding bottles, the merchant had come back and wanted to work with Cato again. This time with Cato as an advisor only. There was no mention of the blast furnace.
It was a shame that they were just going to leave it but Kalny preferred a safer venture.
So it was now the day Cato was due to lock up and they were here to clean out the last few things before handing the keys back to Kalny. Keys that were hardly any good against a decent set of lockpicks, apparently jiggling the lock was considered an acceptable method of key use. Yet one more shock Cato should have foreseen given the lack of standardization.
"I haven't given up on breaking the guild monopoly," Cato said, picking up the last box under the table. It was locked, for whatever good that would do, but it was also the most important things he had. He opened the box and showed the contents to Landar.
She picked up one of the bound stacks of paper and her eyes gained the twin starry look faster than Cato had ever seen.
Well, that was only to be expected. After all, they had titles like 'Calculus' and 'Material Properties'.
"What are these?!" Landar almost squealed, "did these come with you and you didn't tell me?!"
"Not so fast," Cato picked up the calculus stack and flipped it open. The pages were covered with notes and diagrams. "I wrote these in the last month, condensing everything I could remember. I thought it best I wrote down whatever I could before I forget it, and as you can see, there's a lot. "
"It really is a lot," Landar said. Even Danine was curiously peering over her shoulder. "What does this Newtonian Mechanics even mean?" she muttered and flipped it open.
"Hey, don't start reading it now," Cato laughed and took the stack back. Landar shot him an annoyed look but relaxed once Cato explained, "you will get to read whatever you want from here, but I must warn you that I wrote them to remind myself of what I know, they're not easy to understand without explanation. "
"And how does this relate to the guild monopoly?"
Cato took out one of the thinner stacks near the top. "This booklet is much more comprehensive. It explains the principle behind making steel. The amount of carbon, the types of impurities and their effects, and how to mitigate them. I included the construction diagrams for our blast furnace, including all the minor problems we solved along the way like how to create proper plugs for the iron and slag tap holes. "
"It's better than the plans that man took," Landar noted.
"Indeed. And with the help of another thing I'm intending to find another partner for, I'll distribute this booklet all across Inath. The Ironworkers will have so many competitors they won't ever be able to control the market again," Cato nodded to himself.
"You can't write fast enough to make nearly enough booklets," Landar pointed out, "what other miracle thing are you planning to introduce?"
Cato grinned, "it's called a printing press. I believe the papermakers, who you said supply the government scribes, will be very interested. "
"What about the other booklets?" Landar said, looking down at the others.
"Eventually. When the time is right, I will release them as well," Cato said.
"Why not keep one for yourself?" Landar asked, "just one of these will make you a very rich man. "
"That's not what Inath needs. You need to develop faster, become more powerful. The monsters will not wait and if they develop abilities every few months, they may become powerful enough to kill us all faster than you think. "
"Even if I grant you the notion that the monsters will become more powerful than a battlemage, there's no reason for you to do this. You're not from this world, so why are you taking responsibility for everything? Neither Kalny or I or even Michi would do that. Even the kings and queens of the federation don't seem to worry about the entire world!"
Cato sighed, "the same reason why I saved the Fuka village. I don't have a firm answer but because I can and it is a good thing to do, so I will help as much as I can. I don't want to be killed by monsters either. "
Landar grumbled for a bit but seemed satisfied with the answer. Of course, Cato neglected to mention that an Inath with a higher understanding of magic, once it was better studied in a technological society, would be much more likely to be able to find out what happened to bring Cato here from Earth. And how to send him back.
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Morey brought his gaze back to ground to find Nal sitting next to him. The side of the hill opposite the battle was deceptively normal, no one would have thought anything was out of ordinary looking at the gentle carpet of green grass. That hid the scene of devastation behind his back.
"Watching the stars again, Morey?" Nal asked.
Morey nodded and looked up at the unfamiliar sky. The bright stars that moved quickly were the other lesser moons but he still hadn't figured out why some of them seemed to go backwards at times.
"What is so interesting up there?" Nal asked again, when it was clear he wasn't going to say anything, "nothing ever changes in the stars. "
"It's not the same for me, the world I grew up in had different stars. "
They sat in silence for a while longer, the soft glow of the campfire was only enough to make out Nal's rough position. Morey had no idea what her expression was. He wouldn't be able to tell whether she was still there if it wasn't for the magic on her bracelet shining bright and clear in magic sense.
"Do you think about it often?" Nal said softly, almost as if she was afraid of his answer.
Should he answer honestly? But to give her a gentle lie would only hurt her later, and Morey didn't think he could get away with it. "Yes, all the time. For one thing, I really miss air conditioning. "
"You don't have to make things a little funny, I know you think of your parents a lot. " Nal said that but Morey could tell from her tone she certainly had a smile now.
"They weren't around very often but they are my father and mother. While I didn't have many friends, I miss talking with them too. "
There was another short silence then Nal asked timidly, "was there anyone special to you? Perhaps some girl you wanted to marry?"
Morey smiled to himself, "it would have been awfully cruel of your summoning spell to take me if that was the case. But no, there was no one like that. I did have girls approach me a few times but I couldn't tell if they did that just because my parents had money and influence. "
"Isn't that being cruel to them? Just assuming those girls were-"
"I tried three times. Each time it became clear later that... any prospective relationship wouldn't work out. " Morey sighed, wondering why he was telling all of this to the tiny girl next to him. It wasn't as if he was rich or powerful here in this world where Morey might as well be a fish out of water.
If anything, this Hero of theirs only sometimes had good ideas. He wasn't even that useful, his jack of all trades syndrome applied just as much to magic as to other skills. The team he seemed to be collecting worked well together in combat, each with their own defined roles. Not for Morey of course, all he could do was support one or the other with his own inferior ability. So much for being a fighting Hero.
And it looked like fighting was more or less all the Hero was going to do. At least if he wanted to ever return home.
Provided the Sword even could return him at all. Now that was a horrible thought. The Queen hadn't been too clear about that, Morey didn't think she knew either. Queen Amarante had a tendency to think in terms of stories and legends, so since the Sword was a legendary artifact only a True Hero could wield, it stood to reason that the Sword would return said Hero to his world afterwards. Right? She was a true airhead that made Morey wonder how she stayed queen.
"Wasn't there anyone you found attractive?"
That was an unusually intrusive question. Morey looked at her for a moment but gave up, there was nothing to see but a vague black shape. "A few," he admitted, "I don't even remember the name of the last girl who asked me to date her. I only remember she was a little bit cute and liked hamsters. "
"What are ham- never mind. So what about here? Did you find anyone you liked in Inath?"
Morey shook his head and stopped when he remembered she couldn't see anything either. Oh well, honesty couldn't hurt. "Sorry, right now, I'm too worried about the future and whether I can ever return. I can't start a relationship like this, nor do I want one. Well, if you're looking for one, I guess that answers your question. "
"Ha. Very funny. "
"It's funnier from my end," he chuckled, serve her right for poking him.
There was a rustle and the vague shape that was Nal got up. "I've got a letter to write," she said, "don't stay up too late, all right?"
Morey just nodded.
And she was gone, leaving him alone with the stars again.
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"My Queen Amarante, there is a complaint from the Ironworkers Guild. They claim that a man is destroying their business in the Holmes Gap region with the knowledge of someone from another world. "
"Another world?"
"Yes. Apparently the person claimed that himself. "
"Huh, what is Morey thinking?"
"Um, Queen Amarante. "
"Yes?"
"You sent Morey to the Passage of Kirita. "
"Mm?"
"That's on the other side of Inath from Holmes Gap. "
"Oh. Right. I knew that. So what about this person who claims to be from another world?"
"He must be an impostor of course. There are no other Summoning circles and the one in the ruins of First Landing are closely guarded. "
"I see. But the Ironworkers Guild is treating him seriously. Such small matters are beneath our concern but keep an eye on it anyway in case this impostor becomes troublesome. We can't have someone pretending to be a Hero. "
"Understood. "
"Oh, speaking of watching people, has there been any progress on Morey? I take it Etani still hasn't mentioned anything?"
"I am sorry, but Etani can be a little clueless when it comes to romance. I am not sure she would notice even if Morey was interested in her. Unless he was very obvious. "
"And Nal makes no progress too, huh? Why did we choose her again? She's powerful enough but she still looks like a kid. "
"I recall you saying that some men like younger girls. Although I am inclined to agree that Nal does look a bit too young. "
"I think I have been roundly disproved. So Iris sent that other girl... er... well, anyway, I didn't think it was a good choice but just in case?"
"Her name is Ereli. He does seem to be inclined to support her but both Etani and Nal are in agreement that he's only doing that because she's too clumsy. At everything that isn't a summoning stone. I would like to add that this includes romance. "
"And he doesn't seem inclined to want all of them?"
"I very much doubt that, my queen. "
"Haa. Oh! Do you think, perhaps, he likes men?"
"Probably not. Putting Etani aside, Nal would have noticed. Is it worth a try? No, I think we're still more likely to score a hit with women. "
"Hm. I will have to think about this a bit more. "