The weather was fucking horrible. Blue skies and nary a cloud drifting across it. Even the wind died down. I could feel myself turning into a roast.

I turned my sight away from the shimmering green horizon and moved the luggage over myself. Tom grunted a thanks and kept at his jog.

The heat was making me lose my focus, the pane of mana - protecting the book I was reading from the sweat dripping from my face - wavered and broke. I applied a new one and buried myself back in the fascinating descriptions of the different grasses growing on the plains.

The words were blurring before my eyes, just turning into "a grass is a grass is a grass" and other such ramblings. I moved the book forward and laid down on the cats head. "Did you know, by the river, grows a type of blue grass that turns you blue for half an hour if you eat it?"

Tom just grunted in response. I was too tired to poke him, so I just continued speaking, "If you eat enough of it, it can even change your race. You just become blue. No changes in stats, the race name doesn't even change, just the description. You turned into a blue person."

I turned my head sideways and felt my cheek sticking to the kitten's fur. Everywhere around, it was just green. Wouldn't it be exciting to see a blue blade of grass? Just one would do. Wait... was it a new colour I was seeing?

Ahead, there was a yellow break in the grass. On one side it led towards the mountains, on the other, it turned in the direction we were going. I thought to boost over to get a better look, but my body just felt like a soggy pancake. A wet rag? A snail flattened on the windshield, just without the wind.

I'd allow someone to sell me their soul if it brought wind. I bet hell was freezing cold... why else, would such a magnificent Devil like me suffer in the heat?

"Are you a Bengal tiger, kitty?" I swayed my hand around Tom's head in an attempt to poke him. I failed and puffed some mana at him.

He grunted. "I'm rashasssssha." Came the slurred speech. I never heard of such cats. I bet they lived on the local North Pole.

I thought to check if I had books on it, but it was such an effort rich manoeuvre, I gave up and just kept reading about grass. There were these tall, brown grasses and they were just like normal grass, but they grew dried up. What even was normal grass... so many things were grass.

I exhaled strongly. There was no grass above the book, just dirt. A yellow line of dirt stretching ahead. The sides were green. The left was green and the right was green, but the middle was a brand new yellow. My thoughts were running in circles.

There was a tree. A very vibrant, deep green tree. Well, the trunk was brown, as it tends to be on trees. The yellow continued beyond the tree, but it also stretched to the sides behind it.

A crossroads. A choice to make, would we follow the yellow dirt road or the other yellow dirt road. Maybe we'd do something totally unique and follow the third yellow direction.

Once we reached the crossroads, I chose none of those and slid off Tom to fall beneath the tree. Ah, a day long shade, keeping some remnants of the nights chill.

I laid on the ground like that for a while, Tom slumped against the tree just... staring blankly ahead. When my faculties regained some of their functionality, I drunk a belly full of water and offered the cat my pouch.

"Thanks."

Honestly, it wasn't all that much better under the tree. The air stale and smelling of wood, grass and the dirt. The cat took my backbag and pulled out a little bag from it. "Could you make a manabowl?" He asked. I complied, forming one between us.

Tom turned the bag over the bowl and out flew fresh, succulent berries. I was tempted to just bury my face in them, but one needed to maintain some manners no matter the situation. I put my hands in the bowl and shoved a double handful of berries in my mouth.

The cat had a wooden spoon. He even sat straight in front of the bowl and kept his elbows to himself. Good kid.

Once we refreshed ourselves, I pulled out some marmot meat and cooked it, enclosed in a bubble. While we waited for the food to be ready, we played tic-tac-toe, by drawing with our swords in the dirt. After a couple of rounds, I formed the shape for the game in the air and Tom pointed where he wanted his circles.

Occasionally Tom poked the meat with the sword and we passed time. After one of the pokes, he tilted his head. "Some people are coming."

I looked back, and from the mountains, three figures shimmered on the road, still too far away to identify. I shrugged and blocked Toms triple. This was going to be another tie.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Where are we going anyway?" It was fun just travelling blind, but we'd reach the place soon enough.. maybe. I didn't ask about that.

Tom looked my way, then to the sky and seemed to be thinking. "There is a spider goddess, she placed several temples around the world. They all have entrances to some dungeon no one ever cleared, but near the surface, they have areas practically designed for training."

"They usually help with external magic and with my new evolution I will need to learn how to do it." He shrugged and poked the meat again. "Seems to be almost ready."

I withdrew a little bit of honey and smeared it over the meat with herbs. I probably should have done that at the start.. oh well. Tom threw in some veggies. 

At my questioning look, he answered, "I found them when you were out." He looked up and turned back to the game. "They look to be other candidates."

I turned and there were two human-looking middle schoolers and one shorter kid, running towards us. I still couldn't tell distances. Maybe a hundred meters? I shrugged and reformed the board.

The kids reached our tree, as Tom was blocking my triple. They were three boys. The leftmost one wore a leather set of armour. A studded, long leather vest, white shirt beneath and leather gloves on his hands. His pants were torn in places and he had black military boots. He had a slightly chubby face, black hair and dark eyes. There was a sword hanging from his hip, in an old, damaged sheath.

The middle one, seemed to be the same age as the others, just belonging to a short race. His head reached a little below the armpits of his companions. He wore a knee-length, blue robe, jeans and sneakers. He was thin and had a bit of acne on his cheeks and forehead. His eyes were a somewhat washed-out blue and he was a ginger. He didn't seem to have a weapon.

The last one wore a white gambeson, white pants and was barefoot. He had an axe on his hip, hanging from a white belt. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, a beginning of stubble over his lips. He was the only one to wear a hat, a white fedora.

All of the boys were pale and had slightly burned noses.

I wondered if the hat had the same stigma, as it did on my Earth. One of the boys opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him, "The office is closed today. The devil is not accepting any deals."

Tom chuckled and waved at me to place his circle.

The trio looked to each other, the short one shrugged and they went to lay on the other side of the tree.

After the meal, the cat put me on his shoulders. I raised our luggage above of us and pulled out the violin. Trying to play it with Tom's head in the way was difficult so I moved to his right shoulder and leaned my back against his head.

I played a mazur and the kitten joined in, making up a song about a devil refusing the souls of peasants.

The heat caught up to me after seven songs and I moved back behind Tom's head and exchanged the violin for the book about grass.

"So, there is this grass that grows out of itself and forms freaky constructs," I informed the cat. "It can grow to about twenty meters tall and it's made out of thirty centimetre long leaves."

"We will probably cross a field of them once we start nearing the Academy," Tom informed me in exchange.

I shrugged and got back to reading the book.

Many stomps later I saw an intriguing sight. Behind us, the sun was setting, turning the sky red and ahead, there was a small half circle of the night sky at the end of our road. 

Once it got dark, the circle blended in with the rest of the sky, but as we neared it, the stars within it grew. It was strongly messing with the perspective, kinda making it seem as if a part of the firmament was coming to greet us.

When we got near it, I noticed a silvery spiderweb forming a dome, enclosing the darkness within. Inside, was a ruin of a greek looking temple. The grass was replaced by black crystalline imitation and here and there, grew black crystal trees.

The night wind made the entire place filled with the music of glass chimes.

Tom crossed the threshold and we found ourselves surrounded by stars of various sizes. From just tiny drops to orbs as large as the cat. Somehow, their light was dimmed within the air coloured the shade of night.

We passed the bleached corpses of various structures, the road slowly turning paved with white marble. In the middle of the dome, was a large round plaza, filled with broken and fallen columns.

Within the centre of the plaza, was a functioning black fountain. I boosted over to stand on its edge and its bottom had a mosaic representing various red on black eyes, dotting a silver spiderweb.

There were no statues anywhere to be seen. Did the goddess not wish to be represented, or were they stolen away? I shrugged and refilled my water sacks with the fountain water. Tom finished fishing for his sacks in his backpack and refilled them too.

As the cat was rolling out his tent and looking for a place he could stretch it in, a small white figure walked out of the temple.

A girl about six years old, with pure white hair, falling straight onto her shoulders and back. Her skin wasn't just pale, it was as white as the hair. She further wore a white suit shirt, with rolled-up sleeves and white short shorts. Her arms and legs up to knees and elbows were black and had a metallic sheen. Her trainers were as white as the rest of her outfit.

She came close to us and I noticed she had three, red irises per eye with black whites. In the middle of her forehead, just above white eyebrows, sat two other eyes, with singular irises.

"Hello Mads..." she paused and after looking at Tom, read something in the air, "... and Tom."

Spider legs extended from her back and she brought herself over onto the top of the fountain. "You can't pronounce my name, so call me whatever you wish. You...", she pointed at me, "are the only Reborn in the Academy here, so you will be my friend." She looked at Tom. "You are a native, so you can teach me magic. I'd rather not enrol unprepared."

She then pulled out a burger wrapped in some paper with a logo I didn't recognise, from anywhere and began eating. She had black, sharp teeth. Half-way through the burger, she pulled out a large paper cup of soda and sipped from it.

I pulled out some dinner leftovers from my backbag and joined her in a meal. Tom was looking all over, at the girl, her food, the temple, the mosaic in the water and completely forgetting to set his tent.

"Why this Academy?" I asked after a while.

"This temple had a portal close to my room." The girl answered and continued her meal. She was on her third burger.

Maybe I was going to be a general of an Overlord? No. Just following others was fun for now, but not forever.