After a good night’s rest, the group made haste towards the portal that would take them to the kingdom of Andarmat.

Even though the mission ahead was dangerous, they were casually chatting, trying to keep the mood light. James was convinced that a good mood was essential for a good performance in combat. Plus, he hated seeing his friends tense or stressed.

“You spent most of your time inside the lands owned by Hedonia, or in various rickety dungeons. Now that we’re going to foreign lands, do you want to know anything about the kingdom of Andarmat?” Lunaris asked James.

“Nah, not really. Unless it’s relevant to the mission, I don’t really want to know it. All I really care about is leveling up, getting richer and more powerful. And more importantly, having a good time with my friends.” James smiled and munched on one of Lunaris’s cookies.

James was never one to care for details. Not only was he impatient and easily distracted, but if it wasn’t anything specifically related to one of his interests, then he’d prefer to not know about it until he saw it with his own two eyes. He felt like a veneer of mystery made life more exciting.

Going to a place he knew nothing about was much more interesting to him than researching it ahead of time. He was like that even back on Earth. He was never interested in going to Paris or New York. But a remote forest he never even heard about seemed like an interesting adventure. Being told about things before he saw them felt real life spoilers.

He was the same way with the video games he played. He hated reading guides, following the meta or using someone else’s build. He used to spend hundreds of hours learning a game through trial and error, when normal people would just follow a guide and be way ahead of him. But that was no fun.

That’s why he preferred making his own spells nowadays. Copying someone else’s spells would be beyond boring. But creating something nobody else had researched before, now that was exciting to him.

And now he was going to a foreign land, in a world that was already foreign to him. The mystery made it much more exciting. So he was trying to avoid any spoilers. Although they had a mission, so it was unlikely they’d spend more than a few minutes in this kingdom anyway. There was no time for sightseeing.

Denmac was constantly laughing, amused and intrigued by James’s quirky personality. But his laugh was the only sign he was awake at all, he seemed dead asleep even as they were walking.

To James’s amazement, instead of walking besides them, Denmac was floating in what looked like a vertical sleeping bag. He didn’t have to move a muscle, he was comfily levitating while James had to move his feet like a sucker.

“That thing is so awesome, I want one too!” James said in reference to Denmac’s peculiar mode of transportation.

“Don’t even think about it!” Helios smacked him lightly with a rolled up newspaper. He didn’t even read newspapers, he preferred getting his news from the Aetherweb. But he decided to keep one around just to smack some sense into James every now and then, which ended up being too often.

“You’re a fighter, man! Your body is weak enough, what with your unique build, so obsessed with avoiding training anything other than magic. Denmac can afford to ride this … thing, because he’s not a combatant. You, however, need to shape up and start working out. In fact, drop and give me fifty!”

Even though this wasn’t exactly the right time, they were about to go on an important and dangerous mission! But Helios decided James needed to start changing his attitude right away. And push-ups were always a good start.

James looked at Lunaris with imploring eyes. She smiled at him empathetically, but even the kinder and gentler Lunaris thought this was necessary. “Helios is right, the body is very important, no matter who you are. So I’m not going to rescue you this time.”

Lunaris and Helios loved James like he was the closest of family, and they were usually very nice and kind to James. But his neglect of his physical condition was worrying, so they decided he needed to be given a good push to get into shape. And they would literally start with push-ups.

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James was reluctant, but he knew they did this out of love, so he did as he was told.

As it turned out, his friends were even more right than they knew. James struggled to do any push-ups at all. Even after all the exercise he got by dodging and moving around while fighting monsters, he was barely able to do twenty.

“You see? That’s just not healthy, brother. But don’t worry. With me around, I’ll turn you into one of those people that can do fifty thousand push-ups with an elephant on their back.” Helios then smiled enthusiastically, which to James looked scarier than all the agents in the world put together.

Even though he was still curious about it, for the rest of the walk to the portal, James didn’t dare to even look at the sleeping bag anymore, much less ask anything about it.

After they stepped through the portal, they found themselves in the capital of Andarmat, whose name James quickly forgot.

While they walked around town, James didn’t find this kingdom particularly interesting. Perhaps life at Hedonia made his expectations too high, since Hedonia was a melting pot where people and mages from all over gathered.

One thing he did find intriguing were the tiny little dragons scurrying all over.

Helios noticed him staring at the dragons and clarified. “Andarmat is also the bread basket of this region. There are vast fields with countless crops, especially wheat. As a result, their capital has an excessive amount of bakeries and food shops. Their entire culture revolves around it, as you can clearly see from the people’s … shapes.”

Now that Helios mentioned it, James noticed that the people around here did seem a lot bigger than the ones at Hedonia. Taller, fatter, stronger. They looked like they could snap a frail mage like James in half with just one hand. It made James want to drop and do fifty pushups without anyone telling him to.

“And the dragons love this abundance of food. Try as they might, Andarmat can’t get rid of the vermin. They did almost succeed once, by bringing in huge mosquitoes to get rid of them, some as big as a man’s nail. The dragon’s natural enemies! But then the mosquitoes become too much of a problem, and so they had to get rid of them. They had to bring in enchanted toads. And then that became a whole big thing. Long story short, they had to get used to the dragons. It was easier that way.”

James already felt like his insistence of not knowing anything before visiting a place was paying off. Seeing this phenomenon with his own two eyes sure was intriguing. He noticed tiny dragons crawling out of sewer grates with pieces of bread in their mouths.

“Don’t look at them with those eyes, James. I made that mistake when I was a little girl. I thought they were cute and I wanted to pet them. The next thing I knew, I was bedridden for two weeks. Those things are crawling with diseases!” Lunaris told him while zapping a dragon that got too close to her feet with a holy bolt.

Lunaris was right to warn him. James was the type of guy that even back on Earth thought that mice and rats were kind of cute.

James noticed a dragon fighting a spider fighting in an alleyway. The dragon was spitting fireballs and the spider was firing webs and acid.

But as intrigued as he was by the weird scene, the rest of the group had to push him along. They weren’t here for sightseeing, much less for staring at two vermin fighting in a dirty alleyway.

The group made haste and soon arrived at the Andarmat army’s headquarters.

James, Lunaris and Denmac waited outside while Helios popped in for a quick meeting. As the son of the leading archmage of Hedonia, he had a higher clearance level than the rest of them.

Not more than a few minutes later, Helios already returned.

“Wow, that quick?” James was quite surprised.

“You probably have no way of knowing this, but Hedonia is actually quite well-respected in the outside world.” Lunaris chuckled. “And since we’re here to help solve one of their problems, they were probably very interested in helping us posthaste.” She then turned towards Helios. “Did they tell you everything we need to know?”

“They told me all they knew.” Helios nodded and sighed. “Which is surprisingly little, actually. I mean, I’m sure they didn’t hide anything. They didn’t have much time or manpower to actually to spare for the necessary investigations, they have a lot on their plate already. And apparently, even neophyte agents are very stealthy and hard to track. But I guess that’s where you come in.” Helios smiled towards Denmac.

“Yep, you can count on me. I know that these psychopaths are hard to track, but as long as I’m in their relative vicinity, I’ll get us the clues we need!” Denmac said enthusiastically, even though outwardly it looked like he was sleeping.

“At least we know the general location of the disappearances.” Helios added. “The most important thing they told me was about this recent incident. It occurred in a village at the periphery of their kingdom. Apparently, a few days ago, several local mages disappeared without a trace. Being a kingdom bordering the lands of Darkness, their army is already stretched thin, so they haven’t had a chance to investigate. That’s where we come in.”

Lunaris hated to hear that even one person was hurt. She almost teared up at the thought of all those mages slain senselessly. She really wanted to bring those monsters to justice, and prevent any further bloodshed. “So I guess that’s where we start. Let’s go.”