Jack awakened slowly, painfully, to the powerful stench of dead teufeljaegers. The fire was gone from his body, but there remained sufficient pain to do the job. He tried to catalog the different areas without moving. An old trick that had served him well over his misspent life. Sliced finger, stinging like somebody had soaked it in lemon juice. Another cut, apparently, along his stomach. He didn’t remember getting that one. Throbbing ache of a sprained and swelling ankle. That one he did remember. Somebody was strumming the muscles of his back from his right shoulder blade to his spine with a steel guitar pick soaked in brine, using his arm as a fretboard. And, of course, the cracked rib. Or maybe two. Had he really survived that fight? At the moment, he wasn’t altogether sure.

“Awake at last,” the girl’s musical voice intruded on his self pity.

He cocked an eye open and regarded her as calmly as he might. “Healer, right?”

She smiled and laughed lightly, a surprisingly unsettling sound for the way it made his stomach tighten. She was way too young for him and that wasn’t counting the wrong world angle.

“I am a mage, Jack san,” she told him. “Not a priestess. I can cast low-mid rank healing spells, but not just now. It will be quite some time before I am able to generate so much as a fairy light after you put me to so much trouble with the keeping of you alive. Have you no sense of self-preservation at all?”

He started to answer, but she hadn’t stopped.

“I mean,” she went on. “Grandmother always told me how you heroes were, but I had always thought her to be exaggerating.”

He sighed. He wasn’t sure which one she was, yet, but he figured here was where he found out. He’d originally thought Deredere, but the snark was confusing him. Obviously not tsundare, since she hadn’t clobbered him yet even once. But she didn’t fall into any of the other categories either. He closed his eye again, reminding himself, Too young, wrong world. Therefore, whether the universe was hitting him with best girl tropes or not, it didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter.

“Define, ‘quite some time’, please?” eyes still closed, voice strained.

“Some time tomorrow, at the earliest,” she said. “I cannot express with sufficient clarity how near you came to dying out here, Jack san.” she scolded. “I am not an arch mage. I am only a rank ten. I am not even officially a full mage yet, merely an advanced novice.

“The venom is gone,” she let out an exasperated breath. “You have stopped bleeding, and I have bound your physical wounds as best I can using mundane methods. I suggest you settle for that.”

“Fine,” he relented. “I’m sorry, alright? I promise, I probably won’t do it again.”

“Probably?” her voice squeaked. “Jack san—”

“Best I can do,” he opened the eye again, grinning at her panicked expression. “It wasn’t like I invited a mob of teufeljaegers to jump us.”

“Jack san?”

He winced at the coldness that had come to her voice. “Tiarraluna?”

“You know these things?”

“Kind of?”

“You have fought them before?”

“Sort of?” he winced and tucked in his head. If she was tsundare, he’d find it out now.

“They are from your world?” her voice was ice. “This is why they bear no life crystals?”

He opened both eyes when the rain of blows didn’t come. Okay, not tsundare. “No.”

“Then where?”

“Can we move clear of the bodies before we discuss things any further?” he asked. “They stink something awful. Am I well enough to move?”

“If you are careful,” she allowed.

“Where’s my staff?”

“FoeSmite is beside you, on your far side. I cleaned the goo from it as well.”

“FoeSmite?” he asked quizzically.

“Your staff,” she clarified. “Grandmother and I enchanted and named it. Did you really think you had successfully bested five monsters with a green heartwood stick?”

“But... FoeSmite?”

“I was in a hurry!” her cheeks reddened. “Be grateful it is named at all. That fact probably saved your miserable life!”

“Alright,” he held up a placating hand. “Alright, I’m sorry. FoeSmite it is.”

He rolled to his side and took up the staff, noting the lack of any fresh gouges or dents. Yeah, that didn’t jibe with the thing he’d carved. As he had before, he climbed it like a ladder, accepting the girl’s additional aid without comment. Now that he could pay attention, the wood was darker than he remembered. Sort of reddish, like cherry wood. It felt warm to the touch. He looked to the girl and back to the staff. FoeSmite. Whatever she’d done had indeed changed it.

Then he remembered the call. Had that been real? He’d been down and unarmed, and then he wasn’t. You called me? He wondered. As if in response, he felt the wood warm beneath his hand.

He looked back to the girl. “Rank ten, you say?”

She sniffed. “Grandmother helped, alright?”

“Grandmother?” his eyes went wide. “You can connect with her all the way out here? Just how powerful is that woman?”

“I can,” she smiled proudly. “And very. My grandmother, Rosaluna Galbradia, is rank two-hundred, and one of the most powerful enchantresses in the land. If not the most powerful. You have her as well to thank for your life. Again.”

“Well,” he nodded. “She may consider herself thanked. Again.”

They’d reached the horse by this time, which was a good thing, as both were exhausted by even this token effort. Jack sort of slid himself down FoeSmite’s shaft and lay back down for a little rest. He shuddered to imagine what continuing on to the cart would be like. He hadn’t been this beat since running mountain patrols in the ‘stan humping a mortar tube.

“How far are you expecting to go before we camp?” he asked experimentally.

“I think five or ten yards from the road should be enough,” she answered casually. “I do not want to venture beyond the wards.”

He raised his head, and stared. “You mean camp right here? What if those bodies draw scavengers?”

“Do you not know how to start a fire?” she asked. “If not, I do. We shall be fine.”

“But why here?”

She glared. “Because I will not abide those... things... to foul the land,” she said. “I will purify their souls and give their bodies to Mund.” she drew in a breath. “But not until tomorrow.”

“Mund?” he wondered. “Who is Mund? Your god?”

She looked at him as though he were an idiot for a moment, before remembering that he was not of this world. She looked to the ring on her finger, frowning, and then back to him. “Mund is the world,” she explained.

“So you’re going to consecrate the bodies and give them over to your world?” he ventured. “Good luck with that.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Means,” he yawned, “that I doubt your world will have them.”

Tiarraluna would have to gather the firewood and kindle the fire on her own. Jack was asleep.

She sat watching him for quite some time before rising to do so, her mind working through the day’s events. She’d been fully prepared to find him strange, based on Grandmother’s warnings. She hadn’t expected to find him so infuriating. Moreover, she hadn’t expected to find herself so readily falling into the role of a follower.

Grandmother had given over to her the task of conveying the man to the town. She should have taken the lead and held to it. But when he’d told her to stay back, she’d unthinkingly done so, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Worse, he’d fully expected her to do so. As though it were her place. And his place to order such.

Atop it all, he’d gone to sleep without clarifying where he’d previously encountered the like of these teufel-things. Sighing in a put-upon fashion, she rose and moved into the treeline to hunt for kindling.

Jack was up with the sun to find that she’d apparently managed to roll him onto a blanket and drape the loose end over him. Good thing, too. The air was brisk. Smiling, still using FoeSmite as a crutch, he staggered to his feet and into the woods while the girl slept.

She was stirring by the time he’d returned, sitting up and primping her colorful hair. Girls etcetera. He debated flopping down beside the embers of the fire and seeing if she’d feed him, but decided he needed to see the results of his prior day’s efforts with a clear head more than he was hungry. He settled for grabbing the blanket and draping it over his shoulders. That was the trouble with having only one set of clothes to your name while living a life of adventure. Too easy to iterate the one down to zero.

The jaegers hadn’t derezzed. He’d been half convinced they would, despite the girl’s comments. Yeah, they were teufeljaegers alright. Far uglier in life than in the game, but there was no mistake. He hobbled completely around the champion, trying to get a better notion of what he would be dealing with moving forward, since he did not doubt for an instant that he’d be dealing with more of these things as time progressed.

Having satisfied himself that they were indeed from the game, he was coming to the decision that they’d been sent specifically to take him out before he could spoil their master’s plans. The champion’s final comment helped that theory.

Now he was wondering if maybe the bus had been sent for the same purpose. He’d been going under the assumption up until now that it had been a more or less typical isekai delivery system gone deliberately awry. But if its purpose had simply been to kill him without shunting him anywhere, how had he ended up here? And how had they known where to find him?

He was still standing over the champion’s body when the girl arrived some while later. He glanced up as she moved to his side. “Good morning, Tiarraluna,” he nodded. “Sleep well?”

“Jack san,” she replied, looking down at the dead monster rather than up at him.

“They’re supposed to be bio-constructs,” he ventured experimentally.

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“Golems, then?”

“More self aware,” he said. “Fairly smart on the scale of the creatures their master employs.”

“Yes,” her voice was low, contemplative. “Their master. About whom you were going to inform me yesterday, but instead decided to hibernate.”

He gave her the eye. This attitude was in danger of becoming tiresome. “Is there something you want to address with me, Tiarraluna?” he asked with an edge to his voice.

She started and looked up, directly into his eyes, blushing slightly.

He twisted around on the staff to address her more directly. “Look,” he said more softly. “I’m very grateful for all the help you and your grandmother have given me. For my life, in fact, since I’m sure that my continued presence among the living can be laid entirely at your feet. But you keep treating me like your ex-husband on visitation day and I think I might just as well say goodbye here and go on alone.”

She ducked her head and lowered her eyes. She had almost no idea what the man was talking about, but his tone was clear, and she could guess its cause. Upon some short introspection, she thought that she could perhaps see where it might be that she could possibly be seen as somewhat infuriating in her own right. Maybe. In a certain light. Her blush deepened.

“Very well, Jack san,” she said without looking up. “While I do not know what visitation day is, nor how one becomes an ex-husband, I will attempt to guard my tongue more aggressively.”

He raised an eyebrow, playing back through that statement in his head. So, she’d still think him an inconsiderate idiot, but she’d try harder to keep it to herself? Was that what he’d heard? Ah, well, he thought. Tomorrow they’d be in the town. Next day at the latest. And then she could find somebody else to look down on. He’d be out of her hair, and she wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

The silence stretched on for minutes before the girl gathered herself once again to speak. “And you will tell me now where you have encountered these monsters?” she asked in what she hoped was an even tone.

Now he was on the spot. Did they even have video games here? He kind of doubted it based on the level of technology he’d seen thus far.

“I’ve never encountered them in person,” he admitted after some thought. “Only in simulations.”

“Simulations?” she wondered. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m pretty sure these things are from the world I was supposed to be sent to,” he explained.

“We had already worked that out, Grandmother and I.”

“Right.” he scratched at the back of his head with the hand not holding onto FoeSmite. “In my world, we have... machines... that allow us to simulate being elsewhere. Spells, I suppose you’d call them here, though they aren’t technically magic. That allow us to practice,” Or pretend, his subconscious confessed silently. “engaging and defeating obstacles. So that when or if we encounter them for real, we aren’t entirely unfamiliar.”

“I see,” she ruminated. “War games, yes?”

“Sure,” he smiled. “Close enough.”

“And so, you already knew how to defeat them before you went forward on your own?”

“I, ah...” he cleared his throat. “I didn’t know it was these things until they jumped up out of the grass at me.”

“Ah,” she frowned.

“Look,” he shot back. “I lived, they didn’t, okay? Just do your thing and let’s be off down the damn’ road, alright?” he waved a hand in the direction of the stinking lumps of matted fur. “Just get my ass to town and I’ll be out of your hair for good. Won’t that be nice?”

She’d taken a step back at the increased volume in his voice, but it wasn’t enough. Somehow, his sudden anger hurt. She felt her chest tighten at his proclamation. But that was silly. Why should she care if he was angry with her? Why should she feel pain at the notion that she wouldn’t see him again? That had been the entire plan from the beginning, had it not?

“I... I cannot,” she stammered back. “Not yet, at the least.”

He rested his head against FoeSmite’s shaft, eyes squeezed shut, forcing himself to calm. Where had that come from? As if he didn’t know. He’d done the best he could. From the moment he’d awakened in this crummy place. Just like he’d always done in that other crummy place. His very best.

Sometimes, that hadn’t been enough, though, had it? Who was he, Clark freaking Kent? And every time... each and every God—! Every time he’d come home after something had gone sideways —his fault, somebody else’s fault, nobody’s fault— somebody had always been right there handy to look him dead in the eye and say, ‘Ah. Too bad. If only you’d been stronger. If only you’d been quicker. If only you’d been smarter.’ And all too often, if there’d been no one else to lay blame, that look, that ‘ah,’ had come from the mirror.

“—ill take at least the rest of the morning,” the girl’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “Before I have regained enough mana to attempt a soul release.”

“Fine,” he said into the wood of FoeSmite’s shaft. “I’m gonna take a turn around to scout for sign. See if I can figure out where these things came from. And then I think I need to rest a bit more.”

Tiarraluna stood stock still as he turned and hobbled off, the tortured cast of his face burning itself into her memory. Had she been the cause of that? How? What had she done? Was his ego so frail that a bit of sarcasm could damage him?

Shaking herself loose from that train of thought, she turned back for the fire circle. Jelia would need water, and there was a bit of sweet feed in the pack that would help her along. She was an old mare, and deserved more rest than Grandmother gave her.

The sun was heeling over and Jack seemed to have recovered his temper by the time Tiarraluna was ready to assay the task for which they’d held themselves from the trail.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jack ventured as they moved towards the bodies. His voice was much subdued, but not hostile. “You’re a mage, right? For sufficient purposes of? Isn’t this the sort of thing for a priestess?”

She shrugged, herself still uncertain how to feel. “Ideally,” she said. “But there is some overlap in the abilities and duties of our professions, and many things that any gifted can accomplish. For instance,” she waved a hand in the direction of his wounds. “A priestess of rank ten could have cleared the poison out of you and healed all of your physical maladies with relatively little effort. But she would not have been able to enchant or name FoeSmite, regardless of how much assistance she might have.”

“I see.”

“Any gifted,” she went on, “with any sort of mana manipulating ability, can cast healing spells. It is often the first thing adventurers learn. Even you,” she nodded his way. “With the mana you possess, could perform up to, I would say, higher order low level healing.”

“Wait,” he stopped, causing her to bring up short. “Mana I possess?”

“Or course,” she frowned.

“When did this happen?” he asked. “My acquiring mana, I mean?”

“Everyone and everything has mana,” she pointed out. “It is merely that only those with life crystals —the gifted, as we are called— may use it in any directed manner.

“As for you, personally?” she admitted. “I have no idea. For all I know, you have had the ability all along.”

“But you know it all of a sudden now?” he asked. “How? Rosaluna told me that I had no status bars. No crystal, no nothing. No way to read or even ascertain if I had abilities of any sort.”

“Well, you have status bars now,” she shrugged. “Not that I can read them properly. They are very strange. And you still have no life crystal.”

“I repeat my question,” he persisted. “When?”

“Oh,” she half turned as she resumed her trek to the dead jaegers. “Yesterday, when you dec— ah,” she managed to overcome her natural inclinations. “When you... when you were fighting. They were just there. First your life bar, and later, when you called FoeSmite to you, your mana bar.”

“Hmmm,” he hmmmed, moving to follow as he worked this new information into his internal logbook.

She’d stopped several feet short of the smallest of the bodies. “Stand back, please,” she requested as she began the incantation.

The jewel in her staff began to glow. Initially, the same dull azure as yesterday, but as the incantation continued and grew in power, the light took on a different hue. Blue-white, shifting to nearly pure white, hot as an electric arc.

Jack averted his eyes. Tiarraluna’s voice rose, took on urgency, took on strain. He squinted one eye open. The body was bathed in a thick coat of brilliant luminescence, easily a foot thick. Nothing else was happening. He opened his mouth to ask a stupid question, but shut it again without voicing it. To paraphrase Lincoln, better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and foul the spell, to who knew what horribly unintended consequence.

Tiarraluna ended the incantation with a demanding crescendo, smacked the butt of her staff against the ground, and went quiet, breathing heavily. Jack opened both eyes to see what was what. The girl had sagged to the ground, but seemed unharmed. The coat of luminescence remained. The creature within remained as it had been.

“You were correct, it seems, Jack san,” Tiarraluna’s tired voice came to him. “Mund will not accept the creature, nor Jehsha its soul.”

“If it has one,” he muttered low enough that she might not hear.

After a few moments, the glow began to dissipate. They watched quietly for a few minutes more, wondering, each on their own, what they were going to do with the thing. At which point, the substance of it began to bubble. The first bubble burst with a small pop, emitting a puff of thick, black, foul-smelling smoke. Quickly then, tempo increasing, more bubbles burst, adding their own small puffs, gathering together into a thick, noxious cloud, rising straight into the air. Like a burning latrine, Jack thought.

Both humans moved back, well clear of the billowing black pillar. Five minutes later, the only sign the jaeger had ever existed was a scorched patch of ground, a small sprinkling of gold coins, a smooth ochre ovoid of some sort of gemlike substance, and an oversized, stylized bat ear of some crystalline substance.

Jack stumped forward, sliding down the staff’s shaft to a knee to examine the gold. He had no idea what sort of value the coins held on this world, or if they’d be useable, but he scooped them up and stashed them in the pouch. Pretty good haul for a jaeger, if he was remembering right. He’d count them later and divvy them up with the girl. “This, he gestured with the dull orange gem, “will be the core.”

“What we call a life stone,” the girl supplied. “And what is that supposed to be?” she asked of the bat ear.

“Magical component, obviously,” he laughed. “I’d think you’d know that.”

She scowled. “I have never seen anything like that,” she said. “I would not dare to touch it, let alone work it into a formula."

He shrugged. “That one,” he closed his eyes in thought. “I believe, is part of a concoction that grants temporary sonar.

“Sew-nar?” she seemed confused. “And what is sew-nar, Jack san?”

“Oh,” he scratched his head. “Uhm, it’s a device or skill that uses sound waves to echo locate objects, or your place within a given space.”

“Of course,” she said quietly. “Naturally it is that. But what is it?”

She was being snarky again, but he’d give her this one. “You have bats here, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“This allows you, for a time, to navigate as they do, even in total darkness.”

“And you know the formula to create this wonder?” she asked.

He tried to remember. “Pretty sure, anyway,” he told her. “Although, I’m not at all certain we’ll find any of the other ingredients anywhere on this world.”

“Still,” she mused. “I am loathe to simply leave it laying there next to the road. Do you suppose it is safe to touch?”

He shrugged. “Am I poisoned?”

She held back her snarky retort this time, and instead looked to his health bar. “No.”

“Then you should be fine,” he said. “It’s no more than an object at this point. like the coins and the core.”

So, she thought. Much like our native monsters. How refreshing.

The second monster’s disposal went much more quickly. As an experiment, she didn’t try to fully release it, merely building a thin blanket of cleansing light to allow it passage on its own. This time the light dissipated much more quickly. The ordeal of the bubbling horror proceeded exactly as the first had. This one yielded coins and core, but no components, as did the third.

The fourth gave up a crystallized venom sac, which Jack explained could be used to create antivenom. Which came in very handy when fighting jaegers and their ilk.

The champion, however, in addition to a much larger pile of coins and a larger, clearer core, gave up a pair of eyes and a narrow sword of much higher quality than the creature had wielded alive.

“Is this normal for your world?” he asked, picking the weapon up and swishing it through the air, testing its feel. He’d used one of these in the game for a number of levels, but had never held one in his physical hand. It was an Imperial infantry officer’s saber, and a pretty high level drop for a jaeger.

He tried to remember the lowest level at which he’d ever seen one of them as a random drop, but couldn’t put his finger on it for sure. Forty, he thought. Maybe. Not being one to particularly enjoy wading into close range and soaking up damage in exchange for dealing it, he’d only done a single playthrough as a melee build, and that solely for the purpose of having done it. More as a challenge than for enjoyment.

It had been enough to convince him that a sword was what you used when your ammo ran dry. Consequently, he’d generally been more interested in the firearms than blades by the time he hit the mid levels. So, fortyish. And jaegers topped out at about twenty-five.

“The components,” she said, eyeing the sword critically, “yes. The gold, also yes. I have never heard of a random monster below rank fifty dropping anything beyond those, however.”

So, another difference. “Oh, just to be clear,” he asked. “The local monsters... do they just naturally derezz and drop, or is that ritual required?”

“Only the ritual releases the gifts of Jehsha,” she told him once he’d explained the term.

“Gifts of who, now?” he asked. “You mentioned that name before.”

“Jehsha,” she scowled again at the ring. What was wrong with the silly thing? Again? Were there words it simply refused to translate? “Jehsha is our god, of course,” she told Jack. “The god of Mund.”

“Oh,” he kept his face straight. “Sorry. I’ll remember that.”

She allowed her expression to ease. “Thank you.”

“So,” he pressed. “If the ritual isn’t performed?”

“Nothing,” she shrugged. “Nature takes the beast’s body as it does any other living thing. The difference is that the beast’s soul is chained to the underworld for eternity and forever lost to Jehsha. Being a just and benevolent god, Jehsha morns the loss of even these creatures, and so holds back his gifts.”

“Even evil creatures?” Jack was dubious.

“Monsters are not evil in and of themselves, Jack san,” she scolded. “They cannot help their nature, and so deserve the chance at salvation.”

“Even things like orcs or evil wizards?”

“Orcs?” she asked. “I have never heard of such a thing.

"Evil people, of course,” she frowned. “Wizard or otherwise, must also be given back to the earth and their souls freed.”

She paused for a moment, thoughtfully. “You see, Jack san," she intoned seriously. "Jehsha, while benevolent, is not all forgiving.”

She shook her head slowly. “For those who live lives of unrepentant evil, Jehsha insists on judgement. Some, should they not be completely beyond redemption, are sent back to Mund as lesser creatures with but a single chance to earn their ways back to heaven. It is a difficult path, and many, even most, fail.”

“And those beyond redemption?” she had him hooked now.

“Jehsha has more potent torments at his call than the underworld in its chaotic hellscape can manage,” she shivered.