Danjo was getting accustomed to the dungeon. Three days in, and he was starting to familiarize himself with moving and defending himself. Of course, his primary role was still that of support, but it was impressive how well he was doing, considering the conditions he’d been locked up in for multiple months.

Fate hadn’t lost any time in helping out either, suggesting things like flashbangs and smoke grenades, as well as portable tripwires and such. Of course, items that didn’t exist on Earth, such as invisibility suits or sound cancelling devices, would’ve been useful, but Danjo had explained that those weren’t within his realm of creation. He’d been rather ashamed to admit so, but it was just how things were.

Danjo wasn’t the only one improving. Prota continued to train on her own as well, with John watching over her. Neither of them talked about that day, although both of them were still thinking about it. They had time, though. Surprisingly, despite one of their group being dead, the mercenaries didn’t show up. There weren’t any attacks or approaches.

As a result, John was getting impatient. Prota could tell.

“John,” she said quietly after finishing up another beast. “What if… we don’t have to fight?”

“Hm?”

“The others,” Prota explained.

John got off of the rock he’d been resting on and stood up. “I mean, that would be super cool. That would mean that we don’t have to do anything.”

“But…”

“But this is a [Story]. We’re not going to avoid a fight. It sucks, but that’s just how it is. Why? Do you not want to fight?

“...”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll do the fighting. Just do whatever you want.”

Prota nodded. Two conflicting emotions were swirling inside of her. On one hand, she was relieved, but on the other hand, she was concerned.

Why had John been so harsh if he was just going to let it drop? What was the whole point? On top of that, if he was going to deal with it, then that meant that he was going to fight with people on par with that man she’d fought earlier.

Could she allow that?

No. But she wasn’t strong enough either. She was realizing it.

Against opponents that gave it their all, against opponents that took her seriously, she’d lose. So far, she’d been fighting uphill battles against opponents so much stronger than her that they’d paid her relatively little attention.

That was changing. The closer in skill her opponent was, the more likely she was to lose. And the rate at which she was growing was not matching the skill at which her opponents were growing.

“I’ll fight with John,” Prota said quietly.

“Are you sure?”

Prota nodded. John looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything. Prota couldn’t tell what John was thinking, but John could tell what Prota was thinking. She wasn’t doing it just because she wanted to. It was because she didn’t want to leave John alone. Once again, it wasn’t her choice.

It was a sense of obligation. Of guilt, perhaps? Duty? Regardless…

“This might take a while,” John muttered to himself as he kept walking down the tunnels.

~~~

“Prota,” John said suddenly.

Prota was toying around with some mana after finishing up some weak mana beasts, but John’s tone was urgent enough that she snapped to attention immediately.

“We have to go. Fate’s under attack.”

“Fate?”

“The other two mercenaries. They made their move. Let’s go.”

Prota nodded and closed her eyes. John had been somewhat following Fate the past day, making sure to stay within range of Prota’s mana detection ability. His plan was coming in handy now, because they’d need to reach Fate quickly.

John was worried. From Fate’s tone of voice, he’d been having a rough time. Danjo’s devices didn’t transmit much other than the voice of the user, so John wasn’t able to tell what kind of battle was going on, but it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t like he was going to abandon Fate just because it was a losing battle. After all, for John, losing battles didn’t exist.

“Ready?” John said as they approached the area where Fate’s mana was. He pulled out his rifle and checked the chamber, making sure that the weapon was in proper order. He slammed a fresh magazine in, momentarily pausing to comment on how out of place his weapon was, and looked at Prota. She nodded, and the two charged in together.

It didn’t take much to notice that things were not going well. Danjo was cowering in a corner, Fate bruised and bloodied from trying to defend him. One of the mercenaries was missing an arm while the other had a bandage wrapped around a nasty wound, but they seemed to have the upper hand.

“Fate!” John yelled, kneeling down and taking aim. They didn’t have time to play nice.

“John! Wait!” Fate yelled, but it was too late.

John fired a burst of bullets toward the first one’s legs. It was mainly because he didn’t want to catch an earful from Fate later on, but today, luck was on his side. There was a sneer from one of the mercenaries right before a bright flash of light, and John found himself somewhere else.

He didn’t even have time to express his confusion as the three bullets he’d fired penetrated his leg, cleanly breaking his bones. He cried out in pain, falling to the floor, but the adrenaline coursing through his body quickly numbed it. The shock actually activated [Determination], causing the pain to disappear completely, but that didn’t matter.

Cyrus, the one who’d swapped places with John, was standing next to Prota, bow aimed and ready. Without thinking, Prota formed an ice wall, freezing Cyrus’ arrow in place, but it was almost too late. The tip was poking out, just in front of her face. Now that she was defending herself, her body was acting for her in perfect time.

Azar, on the other hand, had her dagger out and was already aiming for the kill. Fire swirled around the blade as she brought it down, but John rolled out of the way just in time and pulled out his pistol, firing wildly. Luckily, it seemed that the lack of an arm was slowing her down. None of the bullets struck, but the noise was loud enough to momentarily shock Azar, who leapt back. Prota similarly fell back to John’s side, panting heavily.

“John,” she said worriedly.

“I’m- kh, I’m fine,” John said through grit teeth. Now that the initial shock was gone, [Determination] had been deactivated, and the pain was back. “Freeze my leg, will you?”

Prota looked at John’s leg, the smell of iron wafting through the air, but she eventually froze John’s leg, numbing the pain. The damage had been done, though. His leg was out of the battle.

John put his rifle back in his bag and pulled out a shotgun, hobbling over to Fate.

“I’ve got Danjo. Go!”

“Leaving all the work to me again, huh?” Fate said tiredly.

“I’ve been shot in the leg. The fuck you want me to do here? Fall over and die? Shut the hell up before I get killed for real.”

Fate grit his teeth and nodded, moving over to the battlefield, creating a standoff of sorts. The two mercenaries were moving cautiously now, probably wary of the boy who’d been dealing with them both at the same time.

“Careful,” Fate said as Prota joined up with him. “The man with the bow has some kind of spatial magic. I didn’t even know one could teleport that easily, but it’d be best not to attack him with any kind of ranged spell.”

Prota nodded. Didn’t that make her useless? Just like with Kenina, the mental strength of these people was strong enough that it slowed down the usage of her [Soul Steal] ability, so she couldn’t just knock them out. Thankfully, she had mana to spare. The temperature in the room dropped as the floor froze, black ice spreading across the rocky dirt. The once coarse ground was now practically frictionless. The other mages weren’t used to this.

Fate, on the other hand, was.

With a new hazard in play, Fate was now free to go crazy. His feet danced lightly on the icy floor as if he were skating, wind swirling around, allowing him to easily change direction on the frictionless floor.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Cyrus was still an annoying opponent to deal with, teleporting whenever Fate got close, but such a spell had to take a large amount of mana. It was a battle of endurance, and Fate would win.

“That’s… Fate!” John yelled, holding up his backpack to block an arrow from Cyrus. He winced as he continued to hobble away, making sure Danjo was safe.

“The piece of paper! It’s the same as before!”

“What?”

“He’s using some piece of paper!”

Fate’s eyes flashed towards Cyrus, whose hands fumbled quickly, but not quickly enough. A magic circle. Strange markings engraved on a piece of paper, drawn in a circle.

“Shit,” Fate cursed under his breath. “So that’s why he’s been teleporting so freely.”

If casting spells could be compared to doing math, then magic circles were like using a calculator. They were efficient, took less effort and work, and could allow people who knew very little about math to do equations they’d never dream of doing otherwise.

The only downside was the time it took to draw one, and the fact that they disappeared after a certain amount of uses.

However, Cyrus had a bag on his back. Fate could guess what was inside.

“Shoot,” he cursed. He considered using his ability, but… no, to do something like that was too risky. He wasn’t yet at the state where he could cut intangible things like mana.

He just had to make do with what he had.

With a cry, he charged forwards, dodging and cutting. Thankfully, with one of Azar’s arms out of the way, her attacks were easy to dodge, but he was busy dealing with more than one person’s attacks at a time.

Prota was struggling. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t fire any attacks or anything, since that would just result in her taking damage instead. She’d frozen the floor since she’d done something like that before, but what now?

[Hey, that guy’s taller than you, right?]

Prota turned to John, whose finger was over his lips. He was telling her to stay silent.

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[If you fire at his head, and above your head, then it won’t matter if he teleports, right?]

Won’t matter… that would work, right? Would it? No way. Something like that sounded too simple.

Prota might’ve been a natural genius when it came to dealing with mana, but when it came to practical applications, she didn’t really know what to do. Both her Blossom of Ice and her Frozen Flame were the results of a teacher or a stressful situation. She didn’t know how to be creative with her magic on her own. In short, her talent for battle didn’t match her talent for magic.

[Or… you could just freeze the “space” he’s standing in.]

Prota closed her eyes. She couldn’t picture it. Something else was occupying her mental energy.

Freeze the space he was standing in?

She didn’t really understand what that meant, but… she could try.

Ice magic. The mana for ice magic felt cold, frigid and sharp. She couldn’t explain it, but she could feel it. The mana for ice magic felt different that the mana for, say, fire magic. With that understanding, she could occupy the space Cyrus’ mana core was in with ice mana. From that point, it was just a matter of activating it.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she extended her hands and felt the mana trickling out of her body. It moved through the air, a thin strand of ice magic that would be barely visible to even those with mana vision, and invisible to those fighting around her.

Fill it. Fill the space with that cold sharp feeling.

Cyrus didn’t speak, but he turned around wildly as the air around him turned frigid.

The air around him turned frigid as his skin started to turn blue. He tried to reach for the magic circle in his pocket, but his fingers couldn’t move. He tried to call out, but the cold had reached his throat. He couldn’t move. Soon, he was nothing more than a human sculpture, frozen solid.

Prota collapsed, exhausted from the mental strain casting such a kind of magic had taken on her. She’d been lucky that Cyrus hadn’t moved, focused on supporting Azar while getting ready to use the teleportation spell. It’d taken her far too long to use that magic. She’d only been able to do it because Cyrus had been so focused on Fate. It wasn’t a practical spell. Similarily, her hesitation no longer mattered as she was casting a spell that took a dozen seconds to cast.

They’d gotten lucky.

Now wasn’t the time to think about that. With Fate having nothing to worry about, he could let loose on Azar, who stood no chance against Fate with a missing arm. With a cry, he walloped off the other arm, then struck one more time, slicing her head off clean at the neck.

Just like that, it was over. Rather anticlimactic, but it was done.

“Hey,” John called out, visibly annoyed. “If you were going to kill them, I would’ve just aimed for the head.”

“You’d be dead if you aimed for the head,” Fate countered, panting as he wiped the blood off his sword. “You’re lucky you just got shot in the leg.”

“You have a potion?”

“...really?”

“I was shot. Multiple times. Do you know how long that takes to heal?”

Fate sighed and took a vial of red liquid out of his cloak and tossed it over to John, who calmly surveyed the room. Shattered rocks and blood stains were everywhere, giving colour to an otherwise gray cave. It was beautiful in a gruesome way. He looked at the dead bodies with mild interest, then stuffed the empty glass bottle in his bag.

Danjo, on the other hand, wasn’t dealing with it so calmly. He was trying to hide it, but he was visibly shaken. His hands were shaking as he stared at the scene with wide eyes, trying to avoid looking at the maimed and cut bodies on the ground.

“Hey,” John said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You did fine.”

Danjo calmed down a little at John’s reassurance, but he kept sneaking glances at the dead corpses as if he were afraid they were going to come back to life and attack them.

“Sheesh… let’s go back to the camp. We should probably get out of here soon. We’ll probably be out within a day?”

“R-really?” Danjo stammered, visibly relieved. “Finally…”

“If you want.”

“Hold on,” Fate called out, the potion taking effect as he got up. “Danjo. Did you really get what you came for?”

“Uh… what?” Danjo said quietly.

“You want to save your sister, right?”

A timid nod.

“Then do you think you’re strong enough yet? If we go confront the organization that kidnapped you tomorrow, would you be ready?”

“I- I know I’m not strong,” Danjo sniffled. “Like you or Prota. I can’t even stay calm like John. I’m useless. But still… I can’t stay by and do nothing. I can’t just let my sister sit in that prison, not knowing what might happen to her! If I do that, how can I accept everything she’s done for me?!”

Fate walked up to Danjo, looking at him dead in the eyes.

“Yeah? You’re a coward?”

Prota wanted to say something, but John held her back. Prota looked up at him and saw understanding in his eyes. If John was saying it was ok, then it was probably ok.

“Then do something about it. You want to be stronger, right?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Then get stronger.”

Fate pointed back at the bodies of the two mercenaries.

“You think I want to kill them? No. Did I have to? Yes. Danjo. We can’t live by what we feel like. If we could live just by what we wanted to do, the entire world would be a shitshow of a mess!”

Fate’s voice was bitter, even through the sound distortion of his mask.

“I’ve seen first hand what happens when people act purely on their feelings. Danjo. Your feelings are what make you alive. They drive you. But you can’t let them tell you what to do.”

Danjo nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Then what… what do I need to do?”

“Well, for starters, are you going to keep going?”

“What?”

“John!” Fate called out.

John got up, clapping slowly. “Damn. What a great motivational speech. You should be a general or something.”

“You know, now that I’ve heard that from you, I don’t really feel good about it anymore,” Fate grumbled. “You brought it, right?”

“Yeah. Do you know how to mine?”

“I assumed you did.”

“Good assumption,” John said, slinging a pickaxe out of his bag.

Prota thought back to what Zero had told her. John’s memories were extremely fragmented. He remembered how to mine ore from fragmented memories?

“Hey, Danjo. You said you’d be able to make some new stuff with the right materials, right?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then let’s go get some. Pick up camp, we’re moving in.”

Fate turned back to look at Danjo one more time.

“Danjo. Are you weak right now?”

“Well… I…”

“Answer honestly.”

“...yes.”

“That doesn’t matter. Look at John. Is that stopping him?”

Danjo looked over at John, who had a somewhat annoyed expression on his face, but it didn’t look like he was going to speak up. He was weak. He couldn’t say much about it.

“I don’t know how that guy gets by, but he does. If you’re weak, admit it. If you’re not strong enough, admit it. But you need to keep going. Your machines. Your artifacts. Do they always work?”

“No,” Danjo said. His voice was a little more firm.

“Do you throw them out then?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you stopping now?”

Fate put his hand out, looking at Danjo dead in the eyes.

“Danjo. These past few days, you’ve been scared, right?”

“I…”

“That’s fine. You just need to keep pushing.”

Danjo gulped and took Fate’s hand, wiping his eyes one more time.

“Alright. Alright, I’ll do it.”

“Wow, very good! Nice character growth and all that,” John sighed, getting up. “Fate, seriously. If you were gonna plan on staying, you should’ve told me in advance.”

“I didn’t know you were planning on leaving.”

John shrugged. “You think I enjoy being in a cave all day? Hey, you made a pretty good speech, by the way. I’m surprised.”

“I’m usually not like this! You just have a knack for pissing people off!”

John chuckled. “Good to know.”

“That’s not something you’re supposed to be proud of!”

John got up, getting ready to leave, but then paused and turned back.

“Hey. Danjo.”

Danjo flinched as John called out, as if he expected John to hit him, but instead, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t die. Dying sucks. And you have people that care for you, right? So don’t make them sad by leaving them behind. You’ll be someone great, so just keep growing until that happens.”

He motioned for Prota to follow him as he walked back towards the camp. Prota took one look back at Danjo before running after John.

“What… did he mean?”

Fate stared at John’s back.

“If… if he was being serious, then…”

“Then what?” Danjo said, nervous.

“No, it’s nothing bad, but that guy’s intuition is comparable to foresight. If he thinks you’re going to be great…”

Danjo’s eyes widened. Him? He was going to be great? He, an orphan who was always mocked for having great dreams of becoming an artificer like those of the myths. He, who was an outcast, only to be taken in by an older sister who he’d never be able to repay.

He was someone great?

“I don’t know what he means by that,” Fate sighed. “He might have meant something else. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

Danjo’s shoulders slumped down. That was right. He wasn’t-

“But regardless of what that guy says, Danjo, I still think you’re a good person. You’re extremely talented, even now. Forget what you’re going to become.”

Danjo looked up into Fate’s golden eyes.

“You’re a great guy, even now.”

~~~

Draco was pacing back and forth in a lower area of the dungeon, his subordinates patiently waiting by his side.

“Argh! Why haven’t those imbeciles reported back yet?”

“It may be that they’re just a little late, sir. Give it some time.”

“They’re dealing with commoners! Fools that are less than cockroaches! How hard could it possibly be to deal with pests like that?”

Draco grit his teeth in frustration.

“Seriously. We cannot have mere peasants standing up to nobles. It’s not right.”

His knight and caster said nothing.

Draco kept pacing back and forth for a few minutes, but no one came. He was getting increasingly frustrated until he heard footsteps.

“Oh, that must be them,” Draco smirked. “I don’t know what I was nervous about.”

He looked towards the tunnel where the sound had been coming from, but nothing emerged from it.

“Hm? What’s…”

“Young master! Look out!”

There was a yell, a screech, and then silence.