It was an enticing offer. Freedom, safety from death by demon king, and a chance for revenge against the empire. However, there were hidden dangers involved, like fulminating gold. First, joining the rebellion would make them parade my name around, gathering support for their cause at the cost of making the empire irrevocably my enemy. That would ruin all chances of fading into obscurity after an escape.
What’s more, I had no way to confirm if there even was a rebellion. Perhaps he was just a criminal, or an assassin here to kill me. Making myself vulnerable to him without more information was never an option.
Instead, I gave him a small test. I scribbled onto the paper airplane, “I’m interested, but can’t abandon my comrades to face the demon king on their own.” The margins of the folded book page were quickly filling up, and I could barely read the letters in the dark.
I sent the paper airplane flying back to the supposed rebel. The shadowy figure unfolded it and read in silence. Suddenly, [Danger Sense] picked up a spike of hostility that faded away an instant later.
I shot to my feet and drew my sword, but the figure didn’t move to attack.
“Everything alright, Julius?” The master mage’s voice came from behind me.
“Yeah, Lady Casteliano, just stretching,” I defused, while keeping my eyes on the figure.
He sent the airplane back, with a new message. The text was frantic, messy cursive and hard to decipher.
“The emperor will seize immortality by sacrificing the heroes to absorb the power of the demon king. Joining us will help your comrades most.”
If it was true, that was concerning information. However, it actually didn’t change much. I’d already been working under the assumption that fighting the demon king would get me killed, and even if I survived I would be assassinated.
The rebellion had just failed my test. Their response seemed a bit too perfectly tailored to my priorities that I’d implied. In addition, by pushing me to fight the emperor before dealing with the demon king threat, I’d lost a lot of respect for them. If they had been more receptive to waiting for me to join, I might’ve joined instantly, but now I couldn’t trust them.
While it was technically possible that they were telling the truth, and it truly was a priority to deal with the emperor first, that route would require me to fight with the empire on a short time scale, which I simply couldn’t do. I needed time to build up skill levels first.
I tore out a second sheet of paper, making another airplane to send my final message. “Not today.”
The shadow looked at me for an uncomfortably long period of time before vanishing into the woods with the paper airplane. I suspected he would take the page, which is why I sent a second page and kept the first one. I promptly created a spark with [Elemental Magic Lv. 3] and burned the incriminating evidence to ashes.
Immediately, Lady Casteliano noticed. “Why are you casting magic?” she demanded.
“Just practicing,” I explained.
“Meditate for [Mana Affinity] instead. Don’t expose our position,” she parroted my own words back to me.
“Fine, fine.”
The shadow was long gone, to my relief. I slipped her book under my shirt to hide it, and settled in for a long wait.
Eventually, Griff appeared on my [Aura Sense] like a bright beacon. He carried jugs of water and bulky rolls of sleeping bags strapped to his back, doubling the size of his frame. The weight didn’t seem to bother him.
“Ahoy, heroes! I’ve returned!”
People filtered out of the carriage and took their share of the supplies, and we had a late dinner under the forest sky. I ignored the chatter and looked at the stars, wondering if I would ever be as free as them.
***
It took four more days to reach the third defensive line. The journey was much the same: every night Griff would buy supplies from the nearest city, and we would sleep outside in the wilderness. I was careful to never be outside alone, and no suspicious people contacted me again.
We arrived at a military base. It was surrounded by thick walls of stone shaped by [Elemental Magic], with wooden spikes jutting out of the ground that I’d imagine would stop a cavalry charge in its tracks. It had a drop-down portcullis made of iron that guarded a hallway leading to a large wooden door.
Lady Casteliano demanded imperiously to be let in, sending soldiers in gambeson scrambling to report to their superiors.
“Don’t be so hard on them, Briana,” Griff chuckled.
“It is their duty to serve a member of the royal branch family,” she said. “And stop calling me so informally!”
The metal portcullis slowly lifted up, letting us enter into a stone hallway. I spotted holes at the tops of the hallway walls that made me nervous- if the soldiers wanted to, they could slaughter us in this trapped environment by stabbing us with spears through the holes.
Maybe I should’ve trained [Elemental Magic] harder for the stone manipulation? Currently, I could only deal with small amounts of the basic elements, not enough to break past a wall.
Thankfully, the soldiers quickly opened the second gate, a large wooden door, letting us into the camp proper. An officer marched up to us. He wore a black uniform reminiscent of Earth’s military officer uniforms, except with strips of pink along his cuffs. He even had a ridgeway cap that had a thin pink strip circling around it.
Compared to the cheap gambeson cloth the other soldiers were in, it was clear this man was of a higher status.
“Lady Casteliano, Officer Dereck at your service,” he saluted.
Military ranks in Castelo were a bit different than Earth. They went, from the bottom to top, conscript, soldier, officer, major, and then general. However, nobles of high enough ranks could ignore military ranks and order everyone around.
Griff snorted at the mage being given command, but didn’t argue. His conferred authority was less than a branch royal, especially since she was also a master. I realized that I didn’t actually know his nobility rank was. Perhaps he was even a commoner that was elevated based on merit.
“Your duty is to secure the heroes live experience against demons before we move to the second defensive line,” she ordered.
“Yes sir!” Officer Dereck dropped his salute and started yelling orders.
“You! Secure room in the barracks! You! Get every single scout here in the next five minutes or I’ll whip your hide!” The polite man transformed into a rageful monster, veins bulging as he screamed at the people who entered his sight.
He turned back to Lady Casteliano and became professional once again. “My apologies for the screaming, it’s necessary to get those farmers to be obedient.”
“Does anyone else thing that word choice was a little weird?” Lily whispered, voicing what I was feeling.
The officer still heard her. He sneered for a split second before putting a professional mask back on again.
Soon, a full squad of soldiers was arrayed before us. Each of them were poorly equipped, wielding cheap mass-produced spears and cloth armor they’d had to cobble together on their own.
“Scouts, you will search the surrounding ten miles. Don’t come back until one of you finds a demon,” Officer Dereck ordered.
The conscripts saluted in acceptance, but I noticed their eyes were gloomy. One even whimpered. This was the third defensive line, so it would take days to find a demon.
I committed their facial expressions to [Mental Palace], solidifying my determination to desert as soon as possible.
A harried man with white hair took the yorns inside the camp to a stable. Meanwhile, a soldier showed us the barracks. Space was limited, so all four of us heroes had to sleep in the same room, which had two bunk beds. The two masters got better treatment, having their own personal rooms.
It was better than being cramped into the 40-people barrack rooms like the conscripts, at least. I slept easily, tuning out the other heroes’ talking.
The next morning I woke up to a blaring racket of bells and clangs.
“Wake up you lazy mongrels! Rise and shine for another day of training!” Officer Dereck yelled from the hallway while hitting a cowbell with a stick. There wasn’t a window in our gloomy stone room, but I was so tired it must’ve been the crack of dawn.
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“Let me sleep,” Lily whined from her top bunk while covering her ears with her pillow.
Gyeong shot to attention in an instant, eyes frantically scanning the room before calming down.
“You okay?” I offered cautiously. That looked like PTSD.
“Yes. I’m fine.” He was clearly not fine. I realized that I didn’t know much about the silent Japanese guy. Still, I respected his answer and dropped it.
“Let’s wake Vijay and Lily up,” Gyeong diverted. I nodded in agreement.
Vijay was in the bunk above me, so I poked the mattress from below.
“Stop poking me,” he groaned.
“Get up and I’ll stop,” I returned. “Sleep time is over.” Meanwhile, Gyeong gently pried Lily’s pillow out of her hands.
Eventually the reticent two got up and we made our way to the mess hall for breakfast. The room was quite small, actually, only meant as a place to serve food. Long, wooden cafeteria tables were arrayed outside to save inside space.
A couple men were serving gray slop from behind a counter. I walked up with my wooden plate and received a heaping splat of the substance.
“Not very good food, is it?” I asked dully. The guy serving me sighed heavily.
“Better get used to it,” he replied.
“Can I at least get some cinnamon spice?”
The man hesitated. “Oatmeal toppings are reserved for Officer Dereck only.”
I pressured him, “I’m a hero. I deserve some cinnamon at least.”
Lily grabbed my arm harshly. “Hey! Don’t act entitled.” I frowned at the brown haired girl. Of course, she only acted righteous when it interrupted my plans. Where was she when Vijay acted all stuck up?
“It’s okay,” the worker said, having come to a conclusion. “I can get some cinnamon for a hero.” He exited through a back door and came back a minute later with a small glass shaker of cinnamon.
He motioned to sprinkle some over my oatmeal but I snatched the cinnamon shaker out of his hand, slipping it into my pocket. “Thanks, bud.” I ignored his pleas to give it back.
“That was mean! That’s Officer Dereck’s cinnamon!” Lily bugged me as I walked away.
“I’ll give it back later,” I lied, and it seemed to mollify her.
My three companions followed me into the courtyard, which was jam packed with over two hundred men. “We’re the last ones here,” Gyeong commented.
“So what,” Vijay snapped, rubbing his eyes.
“He means we should wake up quicker,” I jabbed, and at least Lily looked somewhat sheepish.
As we sat down at the end of one of the tables, I noticed something that felt off: the courtyard was too quiet. I’d expect soldiers at mealtime to be loud and boisterous, full of energy, but everyone seemed subdued.
A boy was sitting next to me. I estimated him to be sixteen, even younger than I was. He had short, brown hair and wore a faded off-white shirt.
“Hello,” I greeted.
“Eep,” he startled. He looked almost afraid of me, and his eyes darted everywhere, refusing to look at me.
“Hi, I’m Julius. What’s your name?” I tried my best to be welcoming.
“Adam,” he whispered hesitantly.
“I’m kinda new around here. Do you think you could tell me a bit about this camp?”
“Shh,” he warned quietly. “They don’t like us talking. Being loud makes it worse.”
Well, that was a packed statement.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Were you conscripted?”
“Yeah,” Adam frowned. “Every man older than fourteen from my village was conscripted.”
“Even the old ones?” I was shocked.
“Well, not the ones too weak to march,” he commented.
“That still seems extreme.”
“The empire takes the threat of the demon king seriously. Our world was still overrun by demon corruption five centuries ago, after all. And, while I hate to say it, you don’t need that many men for repopulation. ”
I eyed the other heroes. None of them were paying attention, off in their own conversation. It was better that way. I still remembered how Vijay flipped from heavily suspicious to instantly devoted after meeting the emperor- any fault would be rationalized away via brainwashing.
“Thanks, Adam. I have one last question, however. Do you know anything about people… who aren’t that happy with the empire?” I left my wording purposefully vague, yet it seemed I was still too forward. Adam paled and shook his head.
“No! I don’t know anything.” The boy stood up and left immediately, even though his plate was still half full.
“That’s not good,” I murmured. I didn’t even get to ask him if he had seen any demons. The classes at the palace were tailored to prevent us from getting scared, so all I knew was that most of the demons were similar to very large boars. Stronger demons and devils weren’t covered at all.
I switched focus to my food, finishing just in time for a loud bell to ring. The soldiers stood up as one and lined up to drop their plates off in a bin. Then, they split into groups, taking care of different chores. Some went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and others started disassembling the tables to make space in the field.
We didn’t know where to go so we just waited awkwardly. It didn’t take long. Soon, Officer Dereck strode out from one of the stone buildings and walked up to us.
“We’ll be doing drills for the morning. I expect you to join, heroes or no.”
“That’s a waste of time. I’m a mage,” Vijay snarked.
Officer Dereck slapped him before the Indian boy could react. Vijay recoiled and yelled in pain.
“No backtalk. You will follow my orders, understood?” He looked at the rest of us. “I mean all of you. Understood?” he said, shouting the last word.
“Yes sir!” We replied, shocked. It was a sharp difference from the endless praising in the royal palace.
“Good. Now, join the conscripts in formation,” he dismissed.
The four of us meekly joined the soldiers spaced out on the field. Being treated the same as a conscript was unexpected- our two instructors were likely majors, if not generals. Yet, he treated us heroes like we were lower rank than officers. In the first defensive line, officers were merely squad leaders, and majors and generals were the ones who made strategic decisions.
So, how could our status be so low as to be ordered about by an officer? Of course, it’s because we weren’t nobles of the empire, so Castelo couldn’t care less about us. It was a little short sighted- I suspected most officers would defer to us, if only because a surviving hero would eventually become a powerful noble. Still, technically we truly were ranked as conscripts. I mentally classified Officer Dereck as a rule stickler, and not very politically minded.
“Swing!” Officer Dereck barked, and I swished my orichalcum-alloy halberd in front of me. The soldiers around me had spears instead of halberds, but the weapons were close enough that I could perform the same motions.
Gyeong had a staff, and Vijay had a staff-spear hybrid, so they followed along as well. Lily had it worse, however, as her only melee weapon was a long dagger.
I noticed a divide among the soldiers. Half of them had normal spears: wooden shafts with a steel pointed head. The other half had staff-spear hybrids like Vijay; this world simply called them staffs, but I mentally named them pencil staffs.
Normally, the head of a spear flared out slightly, with the metal tip having a larger diameter than the wooden shaft it was fastened too. Pencil staffs were different, having a thin core of metal through the whole staff, only extending past the wood at the very end where it was sharpened to a tip. It was like a pencil, except the graphite was replaced with metal, and lengthened to four feet long.
They were shorter than the spears and my halberd, which were a respectable six feet long. The shorter length was because the pencil staffs were primarily designed for mages and not for melee. The metal core ending in a sharp tip allowed for easier compression and aiming of mana. In that sense, it was perfect for Vijay who had [Infinite Magic Compression].
That led to the question of why normal spears didn’t have a metal core. The answer was that aura was primarily used to coat weapons. Channeling aura through the interior was viewed as inefficient, so a metal core would be pointless.
Well, I was an exception, since I still hadn’t learned the [Aura Strike] technique, which would let me extend my aura to coat my halberd. Instead, I had to channel my aura through a thin metal core of steel-orichalcum alloy, which took my aura directly to the halberd’s blades.
Orichalcum was a special metal, having extremely high aura conductivity. Therefore, the metal let me effectively use [Aura Punch] as if it were [Aura Strike], except for the fact that only the metal blades of my halberd would be coated instead of the full weapon. I’d have to be careful to prevent my weapon from being snapped in half.
“V-formation!” Officer Dereck yelled, and I quickly scrambled to find my spot in a diagonal line of soldiers. He had been leading us through formations for a while. Peter, our morning teacher in the palace, had taught us these formations, but enacting them in practice was another story.
[Mental Palace] and its pristine memory helped me out, but the other three heroes took a bit too long to figure out where to go.
“You three! Four laps around the walls!” he gave as punishment. I let myself feel a bit happy; it wasn’t often I was better at something than the other heroes.
After two hours of morning drills, I felt a tiny lurch in my chest. I’d never felt it before, and so I decided to check my skill list.
SKILLS
Immortality Lv. 20
Pain Tolerance Lv. 1
Halberd Lv. 4
Short Sword Lv. 3
Physical Conditioning Lv. 7
Aura Circulation Lv. 5
Aura Control Lv. 5
Aura Sense Lv. 5
Situational Awareness Lv. 5
Reflexes Lv. 5
Deception Lv. 4
Stealth Lv. 4
Mental Palace Lv. 6
Mental Focus Lv. 7
Mana Affinity Lv. 6
Mana Control Lv. 6
Environmental Mana Lv. 4
Summoning Mana Lv. 5
Illusion Magic Lv. 7
Soldier Lv. 1
There was a new skill at the very bottom. I was focused on keeping up with Officer Dereck’s formation instructions, so I waited until the drills ended to check out its description.
Soldier Lv. 1 Increases ability to respond to instructions from a superior officer, and ability to work synergistically with other soldiers in a formation.
All new skills were good, but I didn’t anticipate having to use this one. In fact, I was more interested in the tiny lurch I’d felt in my chest. It was the first time I’d gotten a signal of a new skill. I hoped I was getting more sensitive with time.
Officer Dereck gave orders to the conscripts while I was thinking. Some soldiers were sent out of the camp, many were set to various chores, and others were assigned more training. This was primarily a training camp for conscripts after all.
Once everyone had their assignments he approached me and the other heroes.
“No scout has returned with word of a demon, so you can train independently for the rest of today. Your instructors are busy with other matters,” he said. I was very curious as to what Griff and Lady Casteliano were up to, but I could tell the officer wouldn’t say more so I didn’t ask.
“However, one of you needs to come with me for the rest of the morning,” he added.
“What? Why do you need one of us?” Vijay asked a tad too aggressively. Thankfully, the officer didn’t comment on it.
“There will be a time when you heroes will venture where no other soldier can keep up with you. Therefore, one of you will need to have basic leadership capabilities,” he explained. “So, which of you are best suited to leadership?”
A gleam entered Vijay’s eyes. “Leave it to me, guys.”
Lily and Gyeong seemed fine with that, but I wasn’t. Vijay was antagonistic, and he’d started disliking me back in the palace. I think it happened when I had to act like an chump to ward off suspicion after my library excursion. He was unideal for a leader, but at the same time if he wasn’t the leader then he could cause problems with his rebelliousness.
It might be the best play to simply give him the leader position to placate him. Being leader myself might give me more control, but garnering more of Vijay’s ire was dangerous.
“Any objections to Hero Vijay being trained as leader?” Officer Dereck asked.