As one disorganised group they left the training camp, ushered through a gate they’d never used before that led out of the compound by an unmemorable instructor. They were told to report in at the outpost in the local town of Blackmoor; this would be easy to find, being the largest building in the small settlement. From there they’d be given their orders.

A sense of freedom and jubilation settled on Ted’s shoulders as he walked, causing his chest to swell with the promise of this new life. He hadn’t considered the reality of this place in days, hadn’t questioned whether this was a coma or a waking dream or some bizarre drug trip from something he didn’t remember smoking. Being surrounded by people who were certain of their place here had helped him decide to just live it, and see where it went.

The feeling was clearly spreading amongst the group, as quiet conversation broke into louder ones, some people started singing, and others started using their low level spells, sending small fireballs, ice gusts, or even just balls of light around in celebration. They were like a bunch of school kids, let outside of the school bounds for the first time, with few restrictions and no watching teachers.

The path itself was a wide, neat stone road, solid and well built, that travelled in long gentle curves through dense woodland. It looked similar to the woods that Ted had found himself in after leaving Kai the Greeter’s office, though he was far from an expert on trees, woods, or nature. He’d never been able to find the office or those trees again though, implying there was more magic involved.

Ted walked between Jerah and Kara, with Red on the other side of the Baraye, spraying off smoke in cone shapes out from his hands. They were much larger than he’d managed in their original mission, as he’d made it his goal to level it up as quickly as possible. It had led to a new rule banning all Techniques in the dormitories after he nearly choked out everyone in the room in one of the early days.

‘You’re getting really good at that.’ Ted commented to the Aussie.

‘Cheers mate.’ Red replied. ‘I can make a lot of smoke now, but controlling it’s a whole different ball game. If it’s windy, it just goes in a second, unless I use all my mana trying to hold it together. Takes about three seconds and I’m ready to fall over though!’

‘Is it better just to make more?’ Kara asked in her gentle, high pitched voice. The Brawler class Baraye had no spells beyond Light, and wasn’t expected to get any; all of her Techniques focused on improving her strength, speed, or other inherent capabilities. She’d been disappointed, and said that she was keen to try to learn anyway, but to date nothing had come up. The other mages had been given separate lessons and specific books to help them develop the understanding required to obtain the Skills and Techniques, but poor Kara had had nothing.

Ted felt similarly, in that he was supposed to be learning magic, but had been completely abandoned when it came to the advanced Skills and Techniques he assumed Time Magic, Space Magic, and Portals were. It seemed that there were no instructors who had those abilities available to teach him. It meant he was hamstrung on what seemed like the most useful Skills his Class would get, and it meant he couldn’t progress his Class at all until he did, or at least, that’s what the instructors had told him. It irked him all the more when he knew that several of the warrior classes had already achieved most or all of their Skills and were facing a Class upgrade. Once again, the lessons on attributes had been poor, but he knew that levelling your Class gave you bonuses to your attributes, and the way it was going, he’d soon be surrounded by superhumans with 50 Strength and 50 Intelligence whilst he sat in the corner playing with his spear.

‘I can just make more.’ Red admitted. ‘But if the wind is really strong it just gets blown faster than I can make it. Apparently learning control of the smoke after I make it is important for getting higher levels.’

‘If you could control it, you could make a tiny cloud that just goes around someone’s head, so they think they’re in a huge cloud.’ Kara suggested.

Red gaped.

‘That’s a great idea!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Like an individualised smoke grenade! I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks Kara.’

Kara snuffled, a sign of being pleased, Ted had worked out over the last couple of weeks.

‘Maybe you can help me learn it?’ she asked, hopefully.

‘Sure thing Kara. Maybe when we get taken to the front we’ll have some time. I’m assuming we’ll be on some sort of transport?’ He added, hopefully.

‘They have portals and weird travel magic here.’ Ted said, uncertainly. ‘So they may just teleport us there? Though why didn’t they do that already?’

‘While I do not question our Lord’s choices.’ Jerah said. ‘I do feel that the level of accomplishment of our teachers at this camp may not have been one that would allow long distance teleportation or travel magic. They were unable to teach you the basics of either.’

‘That’s true.’ Ted conceded. ‘But maybe they have it in town? I’m assuming it’s a big place, magic guild, pub, shops, mayor, all that stuff, so they probably have some powerful people there.’

‘It is a small village with approximately one hundred people living there.’ Jerah said matter-of-factly. ‘The main buildings are the church, the outpost, the inn, and the local store with nothing else but rolling hills and briar patches for miles’

‘How do you know that?’ Ted asked with surprise.

‘Because I asked Alyssa before we left.’

‘Ruined the surprise.’ Ted grumbled. ‘But still, it should be exciting. Looking forward to spending all of our hard earned Authority-bucks!’

Just as he finished his sentence, there was a roar from the forest. Ted looked to his right, where the sound had come from, the rest of the recruits doing likewise. It had been a loud sound. Angry.

‘Did she tell you about anything that might attack us from the woods, Jerah?’ Ted asked, looking quickly over at his friend before looking back at the forest.

‘She did not.’ Jerah replied. He was in a martial stance, looking concerned, but calm.

Eva was quick to take over.

‘Anyone trained to fight without weapons, come to me. Anyone who can cast spells, spread out either side. If you’re neither, get back, help if you can, but don’t get in the way. Non combatants, that includes you.’ she said, confidence emanating from her voice. She moved herself to face the woods, standing in the centre of the road. There was some brief shuffling, and then she was joined by Jerah, Kara. Toya, Red, Mirass and Lissar flanked them.

Ted stood back, with Elssar and the dozen or so non-fighters. He and Elssar were the only two who currently needed additional weapons in order to fight, as far as he knew. He knew Eva was a Weaponmaster, but she seemed confident enough in her unarmed combat. Probably from her first life.

The trees rustled, then shook more violently, before a tall, skinny brown creature emerged from between the trunks. It was covered in shaggy hair, and walked on two large, ten toed feet, whilst two sets of arms held sticks and rocks, in some crazy combination of gorilla, bear, and eastern god. Its face, barely visible beneath the mess or brown locks, showed two angry looking eyes, and an oversized mouth. It roared again, the sounds offensive in its pitch and volume.

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‘Shit.’ said someone from the line facing it. Ted, stood behind them, had been thinking the same thing. That thing looked dangerous; even taller than Kara, and holding more weapons than the entire team had together.

Suddenly smoke started billowing from Red’s hand towards the thing, going straight for its face. The thing batted at the smoke like it was an insect, doing a relatively good job at clearing some of it away, but Red continued to send more.

‘Fire offensive spells!’ Eva shouted. The others let off the spells they’d managed to learn in the short time they’d been in this world; a thin beam of cold, icy light hit the creature, whilst a small fireball inched across the space between the caster and the monster. These were basic spells. They weren’t doing much.

Kara jumped forward, unprompted, and charged towards the creature, which, by now, was pissed off and moving forward, half blinded by the continuous stream of smoke covering its face. Red was looking exhausted already though, and it seemed unlikely that it would last much longer.

Kara’s move prompted Jerah and Eva to follow, letting Kara’s huge bulk lead the charge and the first blow into the creature, as she ful- on body slammed into it. The creature didn’t just stumble, but fell backwards entirely as Kara’s full weight hit it in the chest. It was quickly surrounded by the other two fighters, who started striking its arms in an attempt to take out its obvious weapons.

Ted had found himself gawking for a few seconds, before deciding he needed to at least try to do something. He sprinted to the other side of the path, diving into the forest and looking for anything that could act as a weapon. Preferably a long stick, that he could pretend was a spear. But anything better than a twig would help.

It didn’t occur to him that he’d just seen evidence that there were some scary, angry creatures in the woods that he’d ran into. He got lucky twice, in that there was nothing waiting for him, and that he found a long branch taller than him that had clearly fallen from its tree recently. It was heavy, it was poorly balanced, and it was covered in spiky, stubby little branches and leaves. But as far as he was concerned, it was a staff, and it would have to do.

He ran back to the road at full speed, seeing Jerah, Eva, and Kara brawling with the thing, as the spellcasters continued to try throwing magic; it was clear that a lot of them were spent though. As he watched Eva was hit hard by a fist holding a rock, sending her flying, and allowing the monster to get his third arm free. Ted rushed forward, yelling at Elssar to go check on Eva. He charged forward, holding his ‘staff’ overhead, bringing it down with an almighty crunch onto the arm that had just batted Eva away. The creature roared in pain, and bucked, throwing Kara off and to the side, struggling to its feet.

It was left winded, facing Jerah and Ted, one arm seemingly broken, another seriously hurt. Kara had climbed to her feet and moved to stand next to them.

‘You good?’ Ted asked Kara, keeping his eyes on the beast.

‘All okay.’ Kara replied. The remaining mages had moved forward and now stood around them.

‘I think we can finish it off now.’ Jerah said, looking the monster up and down. He took a step forward, but the fight seemed to have gone out of the beast; now that it suspected this was not a fight it could win, it seemed less eager to attack. A few more spells flew its way, weaker than before, but still causing it pain. Ted tried to use Stand Your Ground, but apparently it didn’t work with staves. It wouldn’t have done anything anyway, but he thought it might have looked cool.

Without warning the monster turned and leapt back into the forest, one arm carrying the two useless ones. There was a cheer from the group,and insults towards the ‘hellspawn’. It had been their first real battle, and they had won.

Eva was badly bruised, but mostly okay; the fist had caught her in her stomach, but she’d spent her whole life training in combat and was used to taking a punch, albeit not from some enraged multi-armed ape. She was bent over in pain, but she could walk by herself.

After checking that no one else had been hurt, with the magic users all discussing headaches and exhaustion, but no real injuries, they decided to move on. There was some discussion about what they should do now, but there was only one option really. Heading back to the camp wouldn’t really make sense.

‘Do you think it was a test?’ Kara asked as they started off again.

‘I don’t think so.’ Ted said. ‘I think we were just unlucky. It didn’t feel organised.’

‘Is this world full of those creatures, I wonder?’ Jerah said. ‘If they fight for the enemy, it might be fearsome indeed.’

‘If the world is full of those things, I’m starting to worry even more about what our teachers didn’t tell us.’ Ted said.

‘I reckon it’s quite a bloody lot.’ Red said. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting the real teachers.’

They continued walking, and twenty minutes later as the forest around them started becoming sparse and thin, the town came into view. Ted was disappointed to see that Jerah’s claim rang true, and it was indeed a very small town; the edges of the light grey boundary wall were clearly visible as the scrubby, dark hills around the town seemed to underline them. A few minutes more and they’d walked past a clear boundary between the woods and the fields, and they found themselves walking through countryside that reminded Ted of the moors of Dartmoor and Exmoor. He could have believed he was back in the countryside at home, were it not for the near complete coverage of dark, dense bushes and thickets that made the ground look nearly black. Plus the bears, lizards, and variety of different human races around him.

They reached a crossroads when they neared the town that showed roads going off into the distance both to their left and right; no one considered going AWOL however, and Ted suspected he was the only one who’d even thought of it. As they approached the town wall, they saw a guard standing by the open gates of the wall, holding a spear and looking bored and uninterested. He must have registered their appearance from some way away, but he only bothered to react when they were within a few metres of him.

‘Recruits from the camp?’ he asked, his back leaning against the edge of the arch of the gateway.

‘Yes.’ said Jerah, taking the lead as spokesman for the group.

‘Wonderful.’ the guard said, the words laced with apathy, or maybe sarcasm, Ted couldn’t tell. ‘Outpost is the first building you’ll see when you head in. Don’t all go in at once, it’s not that big and they’ll get upset. Head on through.’

‘Some brilliant guarding there.’ Ted muttered to Jerah as they followed the directions and walked through the stone gateway. ‘Looks like you just need to put on some green clothes and you can walk in here anytime.’

‘He did appear a bit lax.’ Jerah agreed, worriedly. ‘But there are nearly thirty of us; what could he do against us? And we are in the heart of the Authority’s lands. Perhaps it is understandable.’

‘You got a bit lax yourself, did you, when guarding your monastery on your world?’ Ted poked, grinning.

‘Never! We always remained vigilant!’ Jerah said, humorlessly at Ted’s joking insult to his honour.

‘I believe you pal.’ Ted said. ‘Think we should have told him about the monkey monster?’

‘We can report at the outpost.’ Jerah said.

They’d walked through the town wall, a surprisingly thick and solid construction a metre wide, and along what must have been a main road. There were houses lining the road, but in front of them the road split into a Y shape around an official building made of white stone. To remove all doubt, there was a flag hanging from the wall - a simple circle shape, the symbol of the Authority - and a wooden sign that said simply ‘Outpost.’

‘Well, we’re in front. Shall we go first?’ Ted said, noting that the loose group was spread out behind and beside him.

‘Of course.’

They walked up the two steps and past the pillars of the portico and through the open door, finding themselves in a hotel style lobby, albeit a small one. There was a small desk, with a Bakan woman behind the desk; Ted was surprised to see that she was clearly middle aged, making her the oldest person Ted had seen since waking up in this world. Everyone else, whether tall or stout, no matter what planet, had been reverted to somewhere in their late twenties. He was momentarily lost for words, trying to stop himself blurting out some comment on her age, but fortunately she spoke first.

‘Oh hello!’ in the same cheery tones that Ted recognised from every charity event and school fair in his world, every sentence ended with a friendly exclamation mark. ‘You must be the new recruits! Welcome to the outpost!’

‘That’s us!’ Ted responded, matching the energy.

‘It’s lovely to see you! We were so sorry to hear what happened to your intake, but we’re so glad that the rest of you have soldiered on!’

‘I’m sorry?’ Ted said, confused, looking at Jerah, who shrugged. ‘What happened to our intake?’

The woman behind the desk faltered, also looking confused. ‘Well, I mean… there was a death, wasn’t there? On the very first day? An earth human called Peter?’

‘Ahh, no, he was just injured.’ Ted said, reassuringly. ‘He got into a fight with a Sassar and got held back for the next cohort.’

The woman’s face fell even further.

‘I’m really sorry, but I don’t think that’s true, sweetie.’ The woman said, her face falling even further. ‘His body is buried in our church graveyard.’