10 am, the Day Before The Third Challenge Begins, the Untersberg

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll likely never stop saying it.

My. Life. Is. A. Fever. Dream.

And my current surroundings, the throne room of the Untersberg fortress certainly didn’t help things. Between the original, old-fashioned architecture, the magical map and model of the mountain made by Charlemagne’s Skills, and the various modern devices the room had been upgraded with, it looked like some mad game designer had carelessly mashed together a wizard’s tower with the bridge of a starship.

I mean, everything worked just fine, but it looked sort of ridiculous … which was part of the reason why Charlemagne was unlikely to be receiving diplomats in here for a while, and why I was always going out to visit people in my capacity as an ambassador.

But the outside of the fortress had been massively changed as well, in ways that had resulted in quite a few facepalms on our part, with “our” referring mainly to Charlemagne and Mia, both of whom had missed one of the most obvious tricks available.

Basically, the magic held by both Fionn and the mountain spirits responsible for the mountain’s upkeep made reshaping the outside trivially easy and making fat, short pillars took mere minutes. As for what those pillars were for, it was simple.

Disruption.

In the same way a stone in a stream disturbed its flow, a pillar inside, say, a train station or outside a football stadium would disrupt crowds and slow down the movement of a teeming sea of humanity, setting a more sedate, civilized pace.

Now, there was nothing particularly civilized, or human, for that matter, about the beings who assailed the mountain, but the same principle applied. If we’d done this against the zombie horde, we’d have massively slowed them down.

Against a modern army, all the pillars would have done was provide cover, but while we still couldn’t shoot past the stone towers, we’d not run out of targets even with them.

However, a big question remained. How effective this defense would be against the golems and elementals that were likely going to make up the next wave?

Either way, it wasn’t really my job to worry about defenses. I came up with the occasional good idea and passed it along, and in the unlikely event that I should spot a glaring oversight I’d obviously share that information, but in general, I had other tasks. And right now, I had nothing to do, which was why I was lurking here, waiting for a suitable task to crop up. Because the only alternatives were either lounging around lazily, or bugging people who already had things well in hand for a task. The former was not an option for me, and the latter would only serve to make me feel better while bothering the hell out of everyone else.

“Mr. Vogt, do you have time to do some reading?”

The speaker was a tall, fair-haired, handsome, man who represented the other half of the bizzarity that had taken over my life. Fionn Mac Cumail, or as he’d sometimes been called in modern times before he’d returned and set the record straight, Finn MacCool.

National hero of Ireland, an ancient, nigh-omniscient warrior, mage, and warlord who’d already lived for almost two millennia.

I’d acclimated to the presence of Dietrich von Bern, the ancient Germanic king, pretty quickly, Ogier Danske’s towering presence hadn’t been intimidating beyond the first couple of days, and even Emperor Charlemagne had transformed into just another authority figure pretty quickly.

But our new arrivals were a whole other kettle of fish. Fionn looked like and was functionally heroically personified and he could find out your darkest secrets in a matter of seconds if only he cared to look.

As for Arthur Pendragon, who’d come along with him … that man had a perpetual thundercloud hovering over his head, and quite frankly, merely being in the same room with him put me and just about everyone else on edge. I wasn’t entirely sure what was eating at him and at this point, I was too afraid to ask.

“I’ve got time for whatever you need,” I replied. “There aren’t any more demands on my time for today.”

Of course, he probably already knew that and he’d just been asking out of politeness, but I still had to answer, likewise out of politeness.

“Follow me, please,” he announced and led the way towards the library.

As usual, the room was depressingly empty. It held ancient books, originals that were either only available as the copy of a copy of a copy or lost to time entirely. A metaphorical and literal goldmine for anyone interested in not only Germany’s history but also the Greek and Roman literature that Charlemagne had had his scribes copy.

But we were at war, and I half suspected no one outside of this mountain even knew this was here. Or the various academics who had to be interested in this place were understandably unwilling to go to a fortress that was perpetually under siege by supernatural forces.

The only one I knew had been in here was me, and that had been during my initial cleaning frenzy with [Restoration of the Old].

Which was why it would have been weird to see an entire stack of manuscripts sitting on the central table even if they hadn’t been entirely made from modern, white, paper, rather than parchment.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

It was pretty obvious that was why we were here even before Fionn came to a stop next to it and turned around to me.

“So, I recently learned that you have a Skill called [Knowledge Trade], that lets you grant knowledge you have to anyone you want to have it, and gain whatever someone is willing to teach you,” he said.

I nodded. “What information do you need spread, to whom, and is there any way you can give it to me directly?”

It was pretty obvious that was where this was heading. Though why had it taken so long for him, of all people, to use this capability?

“Knowledge of spells,” Fionn said, dropping a literal bombshell without batting an eyelid. “I’ve been looking for people with the potential to use magic, but as far as I can tell, the only source of magical knowledge is me, and I don’t have the time to teach everyone.”

That made sense … but hadn’t answered everything.

Fionn gestured to the table. “You can gain the basics using your Skill, then expand on that by studying these papers so that you have the maximum number of uses available for future mages.”

“And what are those papers, exactly?” I wondered aloud.

“The basics, magically transcribed, some information meant to build on them. And some more that is meant to build on what I can teach you. I marked which are which. I’ll be gathering the students I found when the first wave of the Third Challenge has been beaten,” Fionn explained.

I nodded. “Does that mean you have to scry for magic potential?”

Now, the important question was if I wanted to tell him about the fact that I had a Skill that let me learn from the old legends my first Class was designed to guide, even if the things they taught were magical in nature.

Based on what he’d said, I was pretty sure he hadn’t intended to have me learn spells too. And honesty might result in losing that chance, while keeping my trap shut would let me access literal magic. But settling on the latter would inevitably result in losing Fionn’s trust at the very least.

So, what to do?

Magic and hell to pay, honesty and potentially no magic … the choice was obvious, wasn’t it?

Honesty was the best policy, unless the dealing you were dealing with was something like whether or not to come out as gay in a country that criminalized it. Zero upside, major downside. So yes, honesty.

“Because I can use magic thanks to a Skill called [Arcane Core] and …”

I paused, having already reached a conclusion, one I really didn’t want to voice. But I felt like Fionn already knew what I’d figured out, staying mum would just make me look ridiculous. Or weak. Or both.

And while I’d just figured out a major weakness of one of the most powerful people on the planet, the kind of information that people would kill for, I don’t think Fionn would fly off the handle.

He certainly wasn’t Arthur. That man … he was angrier than I expected. I’d have called the expression a “Resting Bitch Face” if I weren’t damn sure he was actually perpetually pissed off. But that was a can of worms for another day.

So, get yourself together, and talk.

“… You can’t see the System, can you? With your scrying, I mean.”

“No,” Fionn said, sighing. “It’s something decidedly unearthly, and as I suspect you know, my knowledge is limited to the wisdom of the Earth and humanity.”

“Scheiße,” I breathed before I could stop myself.

“Pretty much,” he agreed. “Thank you for your honesty.”

Fionn paused again, looking around, gaze sweeping across the countless tomes in the library before it came back to rest squarely on me.

“The System might be a ‘black box’ to me, I believe that is the modern term, but humanity isn’t. I know enough about you to trust your judgment. Teach the students I find, but feel free to teach anyone you feel is worthy as well. But I’d appreciate it if you kept the knowledge of my limitations to yourself.”

“I don’t think anyone else is fully aware of how much you should be able to see,” I said. “They’re certainly not relying on your sight to warn of problems. And I don’t think you’d lie about your abilities to avoid embarrassment. If it needed to be known, you’d make it so.”

Fionn laughed. “That’s a very interesting way of putting it. But I think we’ve tarried enough. Please, use your Skill.”

“I have to send something your way, too,” I explained. “What would you like to know?”

I genuinely had no idea what I could teach him. Anything I could share, he could learn himself, scrying for the information in a matter of seconds. Except where the System was concerned, but it wasn’t like I had any deep insight there, just a handful of deductions I’d already shared. A bit of a “what to give the man who has everything” kind of problem.

“Your perspective. Not raw knowledge, nothing about the current state of the world, but how you experienced life in this modern era,” Fionn said, almost making me facepalm.

It was kinda obvious, wasn’t it? Knowledge was easy for him to acquire, but what about emotion? He wasn’t a mind reader, as far as I knew … so I activated my Skill and transferred what I thought he wanted.

The ease of many aspects of modern life. The perverse combination of detesting school yet dimly being aware of the sheer privilege it was to get such an education. And yet, at the same time, the darkness that had to feel so incredibly petty to Fionn.

The frustration with politics, of scandals and broken promises, that had to be borderline pointless compared to what had happened in his time, when a “scandal” involved a lord outright rebelling, or simply deciding to needle his rivals by literally raiding their lands, of a world where anyone save him took weeks or months to get even the most basic information from afar, and any tiny wound could kill if it got infected.

But wasn’t that the exact kind of thing he was looking for? The “modern” point of view, at least one of the countless perspectives from which objective fact became subjective opinion.

And he did the same, sending back the fundamental basics of magic, of how to access magic, how to tell raw energy to make something extraordinary happen, and warp reality itself at its highest levels.

Suddenly, [Arcane Core] wasn’t just a Skill I was vaguely aware of the same way I was aware of all of them, it was a source of power that was pumping throughout my body without a clear location, existing everywhere and nowhere, and so did the energy it exuded.

Then, the System got involved.

[Spell gained: Spark]

[Spell gained: Lesser Telekinetic Pull]

But as soon its voice began to speak, so did the headache. Oww. Fuck.

So it was at least partially about the volume, complexity, and “newness” of information transferred, but what a way to find that out.

“Suddenly gaining knowledge can be painful, but it gets better,” Fionn said.

“I know,” I sighed, sat down at the table, and started rubbing my temples. “I’ll start reading later.”

“Thank you,” Fionn said and strode out through the door to go do something more immediately helpful.

And soon enough, I was immersing myself in his writings. Until eventually, I fell asleep right there at the table, only to get woken by Mia the following morning, an hour before utter carnage was going to occur.