Kassandra’s eyes widened in realization, almost kicking herself mentally. She hadn’t considered where he would sleep. “I normally just sleep at my desk… or pass out somewhere,” her voice weakening toward the end. Kassandra realized how bad that sounded after saying it. She began pacing the room tapping her chin with a finger, deep in thought.

“Ah!” She exclaimed once more, clapping her hands. Leon took note of this interesting habit she had.

Striding across the desolate wasteland known as a study, she approached a wooden cupboard. At the foot of it sat two drawers. Squatting down, she dug through the left drawer first. Throwing random objects out of the drawer and over her shoulder, she eventually found no more items to throw. Shuffling over to the right drawer, she did the same. Sparing no innocent item or parcel.

“Ah-ha! Found you!” She shouted victoriously. In her hand rested a simple-looking necklace. The cord was made of a type of leather with an emerald gemstone encompassed by a metal frame at the end.

Standing up, Kassandra twirled herself around to face Leon once more. Walking back to him, she put on the necklace. With a gentle touch of her finger, the gemstone began to glow momentarily, before settling into a slightly livelier shade of emerald.

With a pulling motion from her chest, an object materialized. It grew in size as her arm extended away from her body until finally revealing its form as it lay atop some of the floor-blessed items.

It was a mattress.

“Thank you…” Leon said, tilting his body to the side as he sat on the floor. He was attempting to check on the poor items and papers that the mattress has squashed.

Readjusting himself, he stared at her chest. “Is that some type of storage device?”

Her eyes reinvigorated at the question. “It is! It’s called a dimensional storage. It holds up to a finite amount based on the quality of the ma-” Seeing as she was rambling, Leon redirected the conversation.

“So why don’t you put your keys in there? You looked like you were struggling earlier.” Leon eyed her with a somewhat sarcastic smirk.

The few hours they had spent talking had made him very comfortable with her. Their personalities sort of just clicked, allowing Leon to make such a joke at her expense. Of course, this was him hoping that she was equally comfortable, or he’d just feel and look like an asshole who bullies people for doing things inefficiently.

Kassandra broke into an awkward laugh as she rubbed the back of her head. “It’s, uh, a force of habit.” Watching Leon, he was still smirking a bit. Obviously enjoying how the tables had turned from his embarrassing moment. “I, I just don’t like to use magic for everything. I, I could just pick up objects with mana b-but I prefer my hands. Yes, that’s it. It’s just preference. I prefer to use the pockets of my robes over the necklace.”

Leon laughed lightly. Having his fill, he reassured her. “It was just a question I had. No hidden intentions. I didn’t know mana existed until a day ago, so I was just curious.”

It did strike him as strange that it was a force of habit for her. ‘She grew up with mana, right?’ It was strange that she seemed to do many things without mana, but Leon didn’t feel confident enough in his knowledge to jump to any conclusions.

The mattress was a massive upgrade from the hay pile he slept on the night before. To add to it, Kassandra was summoning a pillow and a thin blanket from the necklace.

Looking between the bed and Kassandra, something dawned on him.

“Where will you sleep?” Leon inquired.

“I normally pass out from exhaustion when I’m experimenting or reading… so basically anywhere,” she replied casually.

Leon’s face reddened slightly. ‘I’m sharing a room with a beautiful woman who’s around my age.’ It occurred to him. He knew that the bed was his and she’d probably sleep in a chair, but the thought still embarrassed him. Half of him was concerned with his ‘first time’ in a sense but the other half didn’t enjoy the idea of a woman sitting in an uncomfortable chair while he got a comfy mattress, especially since he was her guest.

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

Getting over his childish concerns, Leon asked her his pressing question. “Are you sure? I can sleep in the chair. I’m your guest. It doesn’t sit well with me if you’re sleeping in a chair or passed out on the floor.”

Kassandra adamantly refused while Leon persisted for a while, resulting in their final conclusion.

“I’ll be working so it’s fine. If I really need to sleep, I’ll join you in the bed.” Kassandra said, casually spewing suggestive words.

Leon’s beat red face returned again. ‘That’s, that’s just a mess up in translation. She didn’t mean anything. Get your mind out of the gutter. Leon! Goddammit Leon, pull yourself together!’ He was having a mental breakdown. He considered himself very mature for his age, but this was an area where he lacked experience. Kassandra’s nonchalant demeanor about the whole thing helped dismiss his gone rogue imagination.

An awkward silence ensued, more specifically Kassandra was waiting for Leon to accept her compromise. Trying to assume a more professional posture, Leon moved the conversation forward.

“Sooooo, what do you do here? I don’t mean to sound rude, but you seem very young from my world’s standards to have such an influential status.”

Happy to move on, Kassandra walked off to one of her tables. “I’m a researcher, well I suppose the kingdom calls me a scholar. I handle magic-related affairs and experiment a lot as you can probably guess. In terms of the ‘influential status’ you’re talking about, I don’t have much of that. I don’t have much say in the kingdom as you’re likely thinking, but I do get some nice benefits like this room.”

The two chatted for a while, Leon learned that Wroven had a pretty basic hierarchy. They were a monarchy at their core, with a council of advisors for the king and queen. Kassandra fell under the magic advisors albeit she was a sort of apprentice as she didn’t have much say on official matters but did her job all the same. William was a senior to Kassandra as he’d been the primary magic advisor for twenty years before Kassandra was recommended to join.

Leon called them magic advisors because it was the easiest way to explain their job. Everyone had mana, thus everyone had magic. The ‘magic advisors’ were the people in charge of all the traditional wizard-type things. There was a mage’s association that they managed and spoke on behalf of. Alongside this, they had an educational institute for teaching magic as well as an academy for teaching young knights. Sir Garett, the man Leon had seen earlier at the evaluation was one of the instructors of the academy.

There were also financial advisors, generals, treasurers, resource representatives, everything you could think of. Kassandra left a lot of it up in the air as it didn’t interest her as much. If it wasn’t related to the multiverse, science, or mana, she didn’t seem very invested in the topic.

Night fell before they knew it. Leon settled into the bed, laying on his back as he stared up at the ceiling. Scratches of inked metal against parchment resonated within the hushed room. Kassandra was experimenting and writing down her observations.

It certainly wasn’t how he thought he’d spend the day after the evaluation. Leon wondered how Nick was doing. More specifically what he thought when he saw him get dragged off for ‘side effects.’

‘He’s probably having a blast explaining how his friend broke the orb,’ Leon internally laughed. They’d been practically attached at the hip since the night before.

Remembering why he took such a detour, Leon spoke. “Hey Kassandra, do you know about these side effects that Sir William mentioned?” Noting to call him sir once he found out how much older William was than how he appeared.

She shrugged at the question. “I didn’t perform your evaluation, so I didn’t see what happened. It is peculiar that the orb broke but Sir William said it was a malfunction so I wouldn’t dig too deep into it.” Proceeding to put her pen down.

“So, you think it was unusual as well?” Leon let out, turning on his side to look at her.

Leon tried to imitate her curious expressions.

“… Alright, I’ll look into it.” Her voice didn’t show it, but she appeared highly interested in the task no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

Content with her promise, Leon laid back down. “We’re going to get instructors and such tomorrow, right?” Referring to the ‘brave warriors.’

“Indeed, you’ll be assigned some basic lessons in combat, magic, and our language. I can’t keep this up forever.” She joked, poking at her throat. She’d confirmed during her rambling that it was a type of mana manipulation and something very intricate that flew over Leon’s head that allowed them to speak their language. Most people couldn’t do it, so it was definitely a priority to learn their language. They couldn’t have Kassandra or someone else go around casting it onto others for their sake.

It made Leon think, ‘I hope they teach me how to use my skills.’ He’d seemingly forgotten about the whole system thing half of the time. He apparently had skills and he didn’t even know anything about them, specifically how to use them. But more importantly, Leon thought that it was time to sleep as the bed’s comfort swayed him.

He dozed off. Enjoying the soft mattress while residing in a natural disaster of a room.