Though they had their own weapons, Sir Kalman saw fit to provide Honey Badger and Twirl more practical ones.

“If there’s a battle here,” he said. “It will be on a real battlefield. No time to consider sparing people. If they properly surrender, we’ll take them in.”

Our barbarian got a warhammer- and a shield. While I believed the shield was entirely non-magical, it was still a solid chunk of steel and should protect him from most things, including laser weaponry. At least for a period of time. I probably wouldn’t recommend he let them keep continuous fire on him.

Twirl got a rapier. “After you get in position,” Sir Kalman explained. “You thrust. Use all the muscle you have. The cutting edge isn’t for chopping, but can be used to slice someone open if it’s positioned right,” he demonstrated a draw cut with the blade placed over a dummy’s shoulder.

“What about me?” Iron Hawk demanded.

“What about you? Have you used a weapon?”

“Sure thing,” she said. “I’ve knocked people out with a lead pipe. Used a knife. And I have firearms training,” she said, patting her leg.

All of us had a holster with a personal gun, even if that wasn’t our primary or even secondary option in everyday work. Sometimes, mercenaries just needed a reliable ranged option. It was also good incentive for people to not shoot at us, really. Though depending on our powers some didn’t care that much. Francois’ outfits were quite bullet resistant, but nothing was truly bulletproof. Someone could always have a bigger or faster bullet.

“Right,” Sir Kalman replied. “How many of those have you used since becoming a monk?”

“Uh… I used the pipe. But they told me to replace it with a staff,” she gestured to the weapon she was holding.

“Sounds like you’ve got one. What were you expecting?”

“... Wouldn’t a halberd be better? It’s basically the same.”

“Sure,” Sir Kalman said. “Can you use your abilities with a halberd?”

“I should be able to, right?”

He pointed to a boulder. “Try to break that. With your fist or your staff or whatever.”

She used her staff like a spear, thrusting at the rock. It didn’t explode into pieces of anything, but it did crack where she hit it. “That’s about it. Wouldn’t it be better with a proper spear?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Sir Kalman said in a way that told me he already knew something. Why didn’t I know it? Oh right, I had never really interacted with any monks. He had someone bring over a partisan. It was basically a spear with a really long point and some wings out to the sides. “Now try it again.”

I felt her mana try to form- everything from our world used mana, not ki or whatever- and she stabbed forward. There was a horrible sound as the tip of the weapon snapped off upon striking the boulder.

“Why?” Iron Hawk grumbled. “This again, huh?”

“So you’ve run into this before,” I said.

“The Brigade had me try different sorts of weapons. I just assumed that the problem was they weren’t authentic.”

“I must have missed some of those training records,” I admitted.

Sir Kalman picked up the tip of the partisan, taking the weapon from Iron Hawk’s hand and giving both to one of his subordinates. “Bring that to the smiths for repair.”

I assumed said smiths would actually have some magic to repair it. Because even though I wasn’t a smith, I knew that a broken blade like that required basically a full reforging. You couldn’t just melt the bits together and assume it would be good.

“Anyway,” Sir Kalman continued. “The simple answer to your question is this. Monks focus their mana through their own bodies. They can also do so with simple weapons- a perfect cylinder like a staff is a good example. The more complicated the weapon, the more difficult it is. So you need some more training. I can get you a proper trainer.”

“... Aren’t you all paladins?” she asked.

Sir Kalman chuckled. “If the Order of the Lion were exclusively paladins, we’d probably crumble apart the first time we came into contact with any proper foes. Paladins like myself might be our backbone, but we’re not much good without clerics and mages. We even accept warriors and those of other martial disciplines if they’re willing to stand alongside us. The discipline of a good monk is appreciated, if rare.”

I was just wondering if Repair was a paladin spell. That made a lot more sense. It was like me assuming the public facing mercenaries of the Brigade were everything there, just people who could fight in one way or another. Well, not quite since powers tended to be quite diverse and weren’t chosen, unlike classes. But ignoring the people behind the scenes required to make a functioning group was silly. If Francois didn’t exist, every member of the Power Brigade would be full of holes. And generally dead.

“So you have someone who can teach me?” Iron Hawk said. “Cool.”

“Is it?” Sir Kalman shook his head. Slang didn’t always Translate well.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Speaking of which, Midnight and I were going to have to measure how much we could use it. Even with Multicasting, hitting everyone would be troublesome. In this case, we’d cast it on Sir Kalman but in the future we’d need to do more. Midnight and Zeb couldn’t speak humanoid languages without it, which left us with only two more for an efficient Multicasting. It would probably be Sir Kalman- who would be interacting with us the most- and Malaliel- who would be interacting with the other locals the most.

Too bad Malaliel wasn’t one of those angels that spoke all mortal tongues. Actually, maybe that only worked on a per-world basis. They could probably just learn them, with their presumably unlimited lifespans. I hadn’t asked Malaliel about that one, though. The rules could be different with her.

In terms of weapons, our bard Boom shouldn’t be involved in melee combat at all. Bolster was a mage like me, or maybe not like me in that she also should not be involved in melee.

Bandage could brawl, but she already had a proper truncheon. While designed to be non-lethal, that didn’t make it any less incapacitating in a proper battle. Either way, she refused when offered a mace with some intimidating spikes on it. She really wasn’t supposed to be on the frontlines if we could help it.

With all of that sorted out… we had some traveling to do. Apparently, the Order of the Lion hadn’t quite made it to Linduel just yet. It was further east than I’d ever been, though that didn’t mean much since I wasn’t exactly widely traveled. Izzy had probably been there, though. If she had been interested in a mercenary career, she probably would have been with us right now.

-----

“... I preferred being in a van,” Twirl said, as we rode along. The Order had spare horses for various reasons, so we were using some of those.

I agreed, mostly. “Celmothian vehicles would be nice.”

Midnight shrugged. He wasn’t the one who had to deal with a saddle all day, though. He was instead plopped down on a nearby supply cart, with Fluffy.

Speaking of Fluffy…

“Whoa, is that a squirrel?” Zeb darted off into a field. “I think I saw a squirrel!”

“That’s a rabbit!” I called after her.

“Oh, I want a rabbit!” She sniffed around. “I think she went in here! Hello, miss rabbit! Please come out and say hello!”

“You do realize that if they don’t speak a language, it still just sounds like you’re barking at them?”

“They’re friendly barks!”

“Wild animals won’t know that,” I pointed out.

“Fluffy understood!”

“Fluffy attacked us for invading his home and then gave up because there were too many of us and he was confused.”

“... Maybe it wants some food. What do rabbits eat? Do they eat jerky?”

“They eat vegetables,” I said.

“Oh cool! There’s grass right here,” Zeb said, tearing some up and letting whatever didn’t fall out from between her teeth drop in front of the burrow.

“That’s not-” I shook my head and looked over at Midnight. “Surely Bunvorixians have vegetables.”

“Even we do,” Midnight said. “And we’re almost purely carnivores.”

“I only ate nutrient paste.” Zeb commented. “It was kind of slimy and gross. But all the food on Earth has been really good!”

I wasn’t sure what she’d been eating. Hopefully not dog food, since that wasn’t made to particularly great standards most of the time. Then again, I had seen her at the cafeteria and all of that stuff was good. Maybe not quite balanced for canines though.

Zeb went about ten times as far as the rest of us, with all of her darting around. She did eventually get tired and collapse into a cart, and I kind of wanted to do the same. I still wasn’t made for riding, despite a bit of prior experience. I imagined it would have been a lot worse in different clothing, though. Leave it to Francoic to make a suit that was so comfortable and practical.

Along the way, Sir Kalman occasionally received updates, which he discussed with Malaliel. Our purpose was not to fight a war, but to verify the presence of particular weapons and come up with some sort of plan to neutralize them.

I imagined they would probably be shielded against EMPs. Also, it wasn’t like I could just make an electromagnetic pulse whenever I wanted. That wasn’t a spell.

One of the current plans was to organize raids on enemy camps- depending on how big they were, among other things. We were still only a small number of people, and powers weren’t exceptional here. If it were so easy to completely disarm people then it would be done in every war, however. We might be able to find and destroy backup energy cells or the like.

The more likely plan was that after we confirmed the presence of disruptive technology to trace it back to the source. It may not be glorious to leave Linduel to their own devices- plus the support of the Order of the Lion and whoever else- but if we could go cut off the flow of such weapons it would accomplish our purposes.

“So who do you think is responsible?” I asked Malaliel casually. “Doomsday? Mod Squad? Some faction outside of New Bay? Bunvorixians?”

“To my understanding, the Grey Gunners you had trouble with in Yew-Kay are now inoperative. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if others tried to replicate some of their efforts but more… intelligently. Gold is worth more in our world than as currency here, I believe. So any number of groups could have arranged for an exchange of that sort if they had extradimensional access.”

“So mostly Doomsday. Though the weird planar stuff…” I shook my head. “Nah, he probably already has countermeasures for whatever they set up to keep out manaless people or however it works. If we’re lucky, it snapped closed his portals and cost him a lot of time and effort, though.”

We- by which I meant myself and any others with portal manipulation abilities including the ability to smash devices that made them- had dealt with all the active portals we could find, obviously, but Doomsday probably had a million secret bases we didn’t know about. And if he wasn’t personally involved in this particular business, he might have sold some tech to other villains.

Or the natives of this world could have gone to Earth themselves. Or another dimension, since if they were connected somehow we could probably access those with Gate too. It wasn’t like I was the only person in this world with the spell.

“I would like to make continued attempts to bring through more agents of Extra,” Malaliel said. “If you can conserve some mana for attempts when we stop to camp.”

“If Midnight and I split the cost for Translate, we can manage it.” There were a lot of things we wanted to keep active, but as we weren’t near the battlefield Stoneskin was too expensive in multiple ways. The replacement material components would actually be costly here, instead of using powder from industrially made diamonds. We only had so many baggies. Force Armor lasted a long time and was cheap, so that meant ultimately we could keep ahead.

I couldn’t help but be reminded that the ambient mana was lower than in New Bay, though. The amounts were what I had considered ‘normal’ for a long time, but now that I had to go back to them after experiencing better I was a bit disillusioned. I wasn’t expecting anything like the ancient plane which was thick with mana, but at least double would be more comfortable.