Sara examined her new heroes, picking out the “spies” from the loyalists. Then she looked at Tara, who was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching. That was okay. Even if she turned traitor eventually, Sara would ensure that her people (the ones who were loyal) were so powerful that Tara and the others were irrelevant. The word here was nepotism, and the dissidents would soon learn that Sara wouldn’t help them like the others. That was common sense, and she would make that clear.

Sara turned back to her new heroes. “By coming here, you’re agreeing to five years of military service, just like you would in any military wing in the United States. In exchange, you’ll retain your noble pay and obtain resources, training, and other privileges, and all those who finish their term without incident will obtain land, effectively making you minor kings and queens in your territories. Is there anyone who wishes to leave?”

The heroes’ eyes lit up, and they stood still, feet planted in place, exchanging glances and smiles with one another.

“Good. Welcome to hell.” The atmosphere shifted as Sara motioned to the back. Roman Mournings, Edico, Emma, Raul, and dozens of specialty mages stepped forward beside her. “For the next eight months, you will learn how to survive the horrors of war. While each of you will be learning from specialists in your fields, from blacksmithing and enchanting to arraycraft and trap-making, you will all learn how to survive. If you’re a healer, you’ll learn how to protect your patients. If you’re an engineer, you will learn practical earth magic to solve problems on the battlefield. You are elites, and each one of you will have the power to shape the outcome of the war. Prepare yourself: by the end of today, you’ll regret the foolish decision to enlist as a hero. By the end of the week, you’ll wish you were dead.”

The zealous attitudes of the newly appointed heroes dropped, with many of them clamming up, rubbing their forearms, opening their jaws, exchanging glances, and whispering.

“By next month, you’ll be carved out of wood. By next spring, you’ll be forged out of steel. And by the time the war begins, you will deserve the title of hero. So let’s begin!”

2

Raul chuckled, feeling his reputation taking a nosedive in real-time. To no one’s surprise, the group started with sword swings (in his case, axe swings)—500 of them. With their bodies, they could handle far more than normal people. However, by the time they reached 200, they were sweating; by 350, they were crying, sluggishly throwing around swords. Even his eyes were filled with tears before the end.

And yet… a fascinating phenomenon took root during that training session. Sara spared no expense or resources to build up the heroes, so each student had sycounts teaching them swings, encouraging them like corporate managers with stiff smiles. After a while, the forced help started easing and blending and growing until everyone was working together.

During the first break, the heroes didn’t even want to eat or drink anything out of fear of throwing it up. But lo and behold, Sara arrived with elixirs that helped boost their energy and spirits.

“Everyone with distinction will gain resources!” Sara yelled after the break. “Body cleansing substances, tempering substances, body constitutions. They’re not infinite, but we will be emptying the treasury. How many you get is up to you. So even if you’re weak and feel pathetic, I suggest you take this seriously!”

Suddenly, there was new enthusiasm as the heroes started running south—to somewhere. When they got there, they were shocked at what they found. There were now ten buildings primarily built with earth magic. in the middle of a massive field next to a raging river. Beyond the river was a forest filled with thick trees that led to the Quesca Mountains, snow-capped and glorious in the distance. It was beautiful, but everyone was too tired to care.

“You’re tired, beleaguered, and think you can’t go on,” Sara said. “Good. Now it’s time to do your job!” She walked over to a beautiful stone bridge that looked like it could survive centuries of travel and commerce. It was magnificent—but the moment she put her hand on it, the entire bridge rippled, and it exploded. “Engineers! Come fix this! And make it so I can’t destroy it so easily.”

The engineering students watched in shock, unsure what to do. Sara had just touched a stunning piece of architecture, and it exploded. How the hell were they going to build something that could withstand her? They didn’t know. Yet they saluted anyway.

“Yes, ma’am!”

Sara wasn’t done. “Will! Come bring me your sword!”

Will was a once-lanky teen who was a staunch supporter of Sara from the beginning. Now, he was regretting it. His entire body was shaking from sword swings, and he could barely unsheathe his sword. He wasn’t a fighter—he worked with runes and arrays and weapon-making with Master Mournings. His sword was miles ahead of the others, but Sara grabbed it as if it were trash. She stabbed it into a reinforcement array on the ground that lit up orange and then kicked the blade. It shattered in half. “Fix this!” She handed the shattered blade back to him. “If I can break it in one kick, it can’t work.”

“But Master Mournings—“

“You aren’t Roman Mournings,” Sara said. “Enchantments are refined and built with mana, and with your core, you can make Enhancements a hundred times stronger than he ever could. You’re a hero. I don’t want to hear excuses.”

Master Mournings smiled wryly, looking at the ground. Will looked at him apologetically and looked at the sword nervously.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Sara then pointed into the crowd of heroes. “Emily led the healing mages into the tents. From now on, the city’s healing wards will be sending all their non-emergency patients here free of charge. Emma will be teaching with the other healing mages, but she’s not in charge. You are. If people die due to incompetence, it’s on you.”

“W-Why me?” Emily asked.

“Because I had a dream of you saving tens of thousands of people,” Sara said. “Picking anyone else would be stupid.”

Emily’s face flushed bright red as all the other students looked at her in wonder. Suddenly, the profound implications of Sara being a reincarnator from the future kicked in. She wasn’t picking random people—

—she was picking heroes from her last life. Raul was certain of it.

“Everyone here is special,” Sara said. “Each one of you has potential that outstrips even the world’s greatest mages. That’s why you were summoned. So, I don’t want to hear inferiority complexes coming out. You will all be legends by the time you’re done here, so begin!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Raul could only watch in a daze as people scurried around. Somehow, despite being overworked, stressed, and in pain, the students took things very seriously. Perhaps Sara Reece wasn’t so bad with people after all. Perhaps she was just a certain type of person, a person who becomes beloved in situations like this.

3

Emily Keller was destined to be a career professional on Earth. She went to school, did her homework the second she got home, and then after their family’s one-hour dinner (where she’d watch Moonshiners or whatever her father was hooked on at the time), she would go to her bedroom and do whatever the hell she wanted. She called friends, got on Facebook, practiced makeup, and once she was done, she made plans with friends to go shopping.

Go to work.

Get off and disconnect.

Simple living.

Yet something had flipped when she went to Reemada and felt the pressures of life. Anxiety gripped her, and she was unable to let go, spiraling into anti-social behavior as she worked off the clock, reading, learning, and doing anything else to ensure that she could adapt to this strange new world. That only intensified when Sara was arrested, and she started building relationships and learning whatever she could. That’s when the second shift occurred in her life: when people started coming to her for answers.

Before long, she was popular again, but not in a “friendly” way. The other heroes were depending on her. Now, somehow, she decided that she would work as a medical mage due to her advanced control of magic—

—and things shifted for a third time. Facing hundreds of screaming people in the medical tent, she felt greater pressure than ever to perform, and she started shaking.

“It’s okay,” Emma said, touching her shoulder. “You get used to it.”

“You’ve done this before?” Emily asked. “Like… this?” She pointed to the swarms of wounded people.

“Yeah…. I was helping people during the fighting,” Emma said, avoiding her gaze.

“The rebels?”

“Yeah.” Emma quickly lifted her sleeves and began washing her hands. “Everyone here is too poor for medical treatment. So if you save them, you’re a hero. Isn’t that cool?”

Emma was trembling. She’s just as scared as I am….

Emily gulped. “Yeah, that is cool. Kinda lowers the pressure.”

Lies.

“Yeah, it does.”

Lies.

“Let’s get started,” Emma said. “Healing magic is easy to start but has a serious learning curve to improve. Everyone here just has basic wounds, so we’re going to work on mending. To start, wash out the wound by hand.” She used scissors to cut off a man’s pant leg around a gash that he probably got during a farming accident (since he was a tan-skinned serf). Then she summoned fresh water into a bucket and dipped a sponge in it. “You just need to get out the big pieces. The magic pushes out dirt and small stuff when it heals.”

Emma applied the sponge, and the man started screaming in pain.

Emily’s face tightened as she watched. “Isn’t there magic for this?”

“There is, but it’s a bit more advanced and….” Emma looked at the other patients. “When there’s a lot of people, you gotta conserve. You know?”

Emily shuddered at the thought that their massive mana pool wouldn’t be enough to heal a lot of people.

“Now, let’s get started. Repeat after me.”

“W-Wait, I’m doing this?”

“Don’t worry. It’s just a flesh wound…. Like seriously. Not a man’s ‘flesh wound.’ A real one.”

Emily chuckled slightly, but it soon faded when she lifted her hands about the wound.

“Eska,” Emma said.

“Eska,” Emily repeated.

“Morne xenarona.”

Emily’s hands started glowing on the third incantation, and the wound slowly started to heal.

5

Will spent three years of high school trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life and determined he’d go into the military so someone could decide for him. If he was honest with himself, he was unlikely to pursue a girl that his mom would love and settle for someone with a control complex who would take his paycheck and take care of his finances, giving him a fair allowance to spend on whatever he wanted. He wasn’t a pushover—he just felt dread at the thought of making decisions. He’d be satisfied living in a retirement community so long as he could leave and do whatever he wanted, even though he probably wouldn’t leave.

That’s why he joined Sara’s military. She’d give him non-combat work, and his life would be settled. Bootcamp, sure. But no school, no thinking. He’d have his job and get paid ridiculous money, and he could pay people to solve his problems.

He regretted it the minute he got his first assignment.

Master Mournings was sweating bricks as he drew the outline of a fortification circle on a blade, saying, “On a battlefield, you don’t need to create a work of art. Circles are just boundaries. The only thing that actually matters in arrays is the runes and the lines that connect them. It’s a relationship between magic concepts.”

“Wait. So you’re saying that all the times you yelled at us for not making perfect circles was a lie?” Will asked.

“No, it wasn’t a lie,” Master Mournings hissed. “If you’re doing something, it shouldn’t be half-assed.”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“Because on the battlefield, you only have so much time,” Sara said, entering the smithing tent. “That means that you have to half-ass shit, but you should half-ass well.”

Master Mournings’s face drained of enthusiasm and romanticism. “Correct.”

“In your case, you need to do even less.” Sara picked a rusty axe out of a pile of weapons. She threw it on the table, clanking it against Master Mournings’s sword in a remarkably rude gesture that said You’re doing it wrong to the head mage. Then she pulled out her dagger and slid it across her finger with excessive force, creating a line of blood. “You’ve been given so many advantages that it’s offensive.”

Sara drew a shoddy-looking circle in her blood, tattooed runes on it in chicken scratch, connected it with lines, and then closed her eyes. Suddenly, the array glowed with almost blinding light, and the heroes choked from the oppressive power.

Sara turned to Master Mournings. “Choose your best work.”