The distance between our camp and Jillesha’s only really became apparent now that we were walking. It was way too long, and definitely not worth the confidence that I had originally had when thinking that I could easily walk the entire distance. Of course, I blamed the armor for most of the fatigue, since it was way too heavy for a walk like this; a fact that triumphed over my earlier presumptions. More than that, we weren’t even allowed to take it off, since the enemy could have spies waiting in the trees, and could attack us at any moment. The last nail in the coffin was the fact that nobody else in the camp seemed to be bothered with all the weight, so I was the odd one out. There was no way that I could get out of this.

Typhen recommended giving him my sword, so that at least that weight could be lessened. But he found out only after taking it that it weighed almost nothing. That was why I was able to hold it in the first place. Once we got back to the camp, I needed to talk to the blacksmith to give my armor the same treatment. But seeing that the armor seemed to be standard issue, my plea would probably go unheard. There was no escaping the torture of all that metal. In the end, I decided to let Typhen hold my helmet. Even that, he slung over the end of his bow, and continued to walk as if absolutely nothing had changed. One day, I would be at that level too. Hopefully.

The afternoon sun was being blocked by all the trees, so there was that. On the other hand, that left these huge sweltering spots where the trees hadn’t grown, or had been cut down. Everyone avoided those spots, even if it made the walking inefficient and occasionally broke our pattern. Walking in one meant certain death, of the mind that is.

All the while, Sylvia was busy talking with Kaisel, who had left his own group and wandered over here to give her some advice. After Typhen took my helmet from me and my head seemed much lighter, it felt like I could think a little too. Since the fight would most probably leak into the unmonitored time, I would also be able to use magic. Keeping that in mind, I went and joined in to listen to what he had to say.

“Keep all of that in mind, and you should be fine.” He smiled, before handing her a pair of gloves that had a different symbol on their back than normal ones.

“What’s that one?” I asked.

Both of them turned to look at me, as Sylvia took the gloves and passed them on to me.

Kaisel explained as I looked at them, “Those can store the element within themselves. In some underground spots, the element isn’t naturally present. So, you can take some from outside and use the gloves’ storage in case you come across such a place and desperately need to use your magic.”

“Whoa. These must be mass-produced then?”

He laughed, “No, that’s impossible. After all, they are expensive to make. To make matters worse, they can only be used once, because you cannot push the element out of the gloves without transforming it. Doing that burns their storage section and leaves it unusable for the next time. You could force some into it if needs are dire, but the remnants of the last use stand a huge change of mixing with the new one and turn your magic black.”

“Huh. That’s strangely balanced, isn’t it?” I asked.

Sylvia scowled, “It isn’t! These gloves are the only reason magic fights don’t generally happen underground.”

“You say that as if we decide where they happen. I mean, when I was running from Jillesha, it was underground. And…swinging a sword in there wasn’t really a problem.”

Kaisel corrected me, “Yes, but you did not fight him in the actual throne room, did you? Jillesha has the strength in that place, and it should be safe to assume that he has means to change the atmosphere of the room. It would be mad to run a bandit group without a mage. Not that one of us will necessarily encounter things like that. In fact, we most probably won't. Being careful is still good.”

That made me think of something insane. It probably couldn’t work, but it was worth asking, wasn’t it?

“Kaisel, we can use atmosphere magic to change the element to anything, right? Is that change permanent, or temporary?”

“It’s permanent.” Kaisel smiled.

Sylvia, for some reason, also had a creepy smile on her face, as if she was very pleased about the question.

“Don’t worry. We’ve all thought of it, but it doesn’t work like that.” She sighed.

Right. So, the idea of using the element in the storage glove once, and then using atmosphere magic to reverse the changed element back into its original form…was impossible. It would have been quite broken if it were possible, so to a certain extent, it made sense that it wasn’t. Magic really wasn’t the most impressive thing in this world. Physical strength seemed to triumph above all, if used to its greatest extent. At least that’s the conclusion I had come to; which was definitely influenced by the fact that I hadn’t seen anyone use magic to a highly destructive extent yet.

That was the side-effect of getting stuck with a pacifist teacher like Kaisel.

“What else did you tell her?” I asked him, “I just want to make sure that I know the tricks she has up her sleeve, to better support her. Especially when the time is right.”

“Ah. I wouldn’t mind repeating them. I was just going over some basic rules once more, while adding small amendments that I think would be nice.” Kaisel said, “The more you study and use magic, the more you realize that we really haven’t unlocked its full potential, you see. There is no way that there can be only nine forms of it, especially since the element itself seems to be free enough to be transformed into anything. And so, rules can be amended every single day to get better results!”

I took my words back. Kaisel was the absolute best. His words themselves were enough to get me excited for what he was about to teach. I had full confidence that if someone were to discover a brand-new form of magic, it would be him. The form probably wouldn’t end up being very helpful in combat, but just its existence would be more than enough to get people more interested in looking at it more seriously.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And so, Kaisel’s lesson began.

It wasn’t very interesting, after all.

He did indeed just go over most of the older rules that he had already taught us. Two or three of the amendments that he suggested to using certain forms were interesting, but I could only understand the ones related to neutral, fire and water; the others were focused on what Sylvia was good at. Diverging from that would probably just be counted as unnecessary, expository dialogue, and could get Kaisel into trouble for being off-script and without context.

Other than that, the only thing that was really worth paying attention at were two major tricks that he talked of. Both were related to the use of the storage gloves, and seemed very useful in terms of practicality. In the end, he ended up giving me a pair too. Of course, they were only for ‘backup purposes’ in case Sylvia had to use the first one, and for absolutely no other reason. Kaisel was adamant that we wouldn’t need more than that, though, even after Sylvia begged him to spare another pair.

Then, he went back to his group and left us alone.

“How long has he been teaching you?” I asked her.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a weird question, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Feels like a very general one to me.”

“Shh. I’m trying to stall while I think.” She closed her eyes and stressed for a while, “Should be…seven years now? Let me see. We joined the band at eleven, then we were generalized in everything for a year, and then he started teaching me. Yeah, seven seems about right.”

“You’re nineteen, then?” I asked.

She nodded.

I don’t know why I thought that that wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t remember the exact number, but I’m pretty sure I was somewhere close to that in the real world. Compared to what she had gone through till now, my life had probably been smooth sailing. It was mind-boggling that how being on a slightly different planet, in a different place in the universe, had such a huge effect on something so important. Just thinking of the fact that our places could have been reversed made me shudder.

The suffering had made her much, much stronger than me, but I still wouldn’t switch my life for hers. There was something about the peace that was worth it.

“What about you?” She asked.

“Oh, I don’t remember. Somewhere around the same number, though.” I replied.

“I see. Sorry.” She whispered.

“Why are you sorry about that?” I asked, “It’s not really that important, is it?”

She smiled, “I think it is. Losing track of just how long you have lived sounds like a terrible thing. Putting something into numbers really brings it into perspective, I think. I mean, the stars wouldn’t be half as interesting as they are if you hadn’t told me that most of them aren’t even visible.”

“You’re talking about scale?”

“Uh, sure. Whatever that means.”

I shook my head, “Like…comparison? You put one thing against another to judge both of them in a better way, at one glance. That isn’t possible without exact data like numbers. So, when you say age, then you’re comparing yourself with the universe, and measuring both of them at the same time. It, kind of…connects you with the vastness of it all. Does that make sense?”

Sylvia seemed a bit impressed, “Ok. I mean, yes. I’m just a bit…stumped. Is that the word? How did you come up with that?”

“I don’t know.” I tried my best to think, but there was nothing, “Almost like I heard you talk, and the concept just connected to itself. It just made sense all of a sudden.”

“Ah, I’ve had those. Mostly with study stuff, though.” She smiled, “Like, there was this time when Kaisel was teaching me about-”

The conversation went on for a while. It switched from the topic of age, to magic, to the mercenary camp as a whole. I stopped keeping track of what we were talking about after that. The weight of the armor did not trouble be quite as much as before, probably because for once, all of my thought wasn’t focused on it. By the time we stopped talking, the sun had also begun to set a little, and Ginzari gave us the warning to prepare for the eventual arrival to the camp.

The mercenaries around us were also staring at us while we talked. Some actually came a bit closer to listen in, but we didn’t really mind. There wasn’t anything personal or particular about the conversation. In fact, I would have felt nice if the others joined in with their opinions on some of the topics too, but that didn’t happen. Maybe Sylvia’s very high regard made her a bit unapproachable for most of the members? That was the case with Hess, so it wouldn’t be strange for it to apply to the others of her status too.

After all, I had never seen someone talking to Ginzari about casual topics. I was pretty lucky to have met her first and gotten involved with these people right from the day of introduction. Also, for some reason, I didn’t see them in the same high praise that the others did. Once more, I blamed the fact that I wasn’t from this world. They were the first example of warriors I had seen here, so I had probably gotten a false gauge of the average strength a person had here.

Anyways, the conversation did eventually end when we were all stopped by Ginzari.

He turned to all of us and asked us to gather in a circle and get as close as possible. After all of us were in that position, he started to whisper,

“Rest for a while and gather your energy. Once the sun begins to set, we will attack. If you want feel free to come to me or Kaisel to review your individual attack plans. Until then, though, just make sure not to make too much noise.”

All of us sat down, and began to mentally prepare for the fight to begin.

The sunset was beautiful.

The entirety of the body wasn’t even visible, but just the way it shined through the leaves made the wind feel cooler than before. The light was just perfectly in line to make the leaves looked golden and make the barks shine. Even the grass, softly blowing in the breeze, felt much more welcoming than before. I took off the armor covering my feet to stand in it and move around for some time, which inspired Sylvia to do the same time. The other mercenaries of our group followed.

My heartbeat kept rising, higher and higher. I could feel a sense of death all around, but the scenery did not support it. Whoever had decided that it always rained before an intense battle was wrong. This made me feel more melancholic, hopeless. That was probably what God had been aiming for.

Then the sun went down.

And all of us began marching, as quiet as possible.

The archers raised their bows and shot the guards as soon as they noticed us. The three bodies were about to fall to the ground, but Kaisel used his magic to break their fall and softly place them on the ground.

All of the groups divided into their own sides. There were around seven to eight people in each group, and there were six of them. One had been Hess’, but her job had been given to someone else. After the groups were ready, Ginzari raised his fist in the air. The others did the same, and I copied them. Then, without a word, our group entered the entrance.

Our group was supposed to clear the very first enemies that we came across, and allow the other groups to enter the main cave to fight the more important battles. Sylvia had been angry about that, but she had no choice than to do what she was told. We kept walking slowly, readying our weapons. Sylvia wore the storage gloves, which she had already filled with some of the element. Using it was apparently up to the user, so she could use them like normal gloves for now.

Inside, we could hear the bandits laughing and talking. We slowed down a bit. The fight was close now.

And then.

All of us stopped at once.

Stage Directions (Day 31) –

MAIN: Witness – Before You Embark on a Journey of Revenge, Dig Two Graves

SUB: Defeat Rok and Dayer

Whispers everywhere. The direction had been updated. Olbert’s words suddenly rang in my mind.

Sylvia whispered,

“He’s watching, then? Great. Let’s put on a show.”