Lunch and dinner had been better than breakfast, though I would still say bread and cheese was pretty tasty. However, it didn’t seem like any of the meals were worthy of heroes. They were neither luxurious nor nutritionally dense. At best, I could say it was properly filling. There was some protein, which was good for those who needed to build muscle. Specifically, that was two of us. Ramen and also Ayat. The other four of us ended up with magic training. Alchemy was definitely magic.

  “Mostly they taught me to make acid,” our alchemist reported. “A lot of different kinds of acid. Some of them were flammable, which is fascinating. But we haven’t really gotten to any elixirs yet, and they wouldn’t let me bring anything with me.”

  Meter explained our ability to make spatial storage. People were suitably impressed as he pulled something out, even though it was just a rock.

  “That’s pretty neat, Mile.” Ramen threw javelins all day. However, that wasn’t the only thing. “They taught me a spell to pull them back. It’s really neat, even if I can only do it like half the time right now.”

  Ayat was pensive. “I don’t know if I learned anything supernatural. They taught me how to stab people and use a buckler.”

  I’d spotted her in an adjacent area as we were about to gather for lunch. There was certainly something magical about what she’d been doing. Just like a swashbuckler sort from my world, though I couldn’t say precisely what they did. Enhanced reactions and speed made the most sense. Possibly some sort of offensive boost, too. “I’m sure you’ll see more in the future,” I encouraged her. “Edel?”

  It was annoying to remember two names for Inasyah, but I was just treating it like a superhero moniker. Even though she used her real name for her job with Extra.

  She nodded. “My magical training went well. I can show you what I learned too.” She began to chant and make hand gestures much like Meter and I had been learning. That was a pretty good fake but she shouldn’t be able to-

  A sphere of darkness appeared in her hand. It was quite similar in potency to the basic light spell I knew, but it instead drew in light. The various candles we had around the room were barely enough to maintain any light, and even I had trouble seeing through the darkness. This wasn’t her faking something. Real magical darkness.

  She squeezed her hand shut and snuffed out the darkness. “Well, it’s about like that. Apparently, any sort of attacks take longer to learn.”

  Lana sighed in relief. “Oh, good. I thought dark magic would be… something else.”

  “It appears light and darkness mean precisely that, in terms of magic,” Inasyah commented. “Now then, did anyone learn more about why we are here? I asked, but they remained quite vague about the details beyond us being heroes.”

  Midnight’s tail swished behind me. At least something, then. That would be later.

  Ramen made a face. “They want us to fight, right?”

  Ayat nodded seriously. “It’s most likely… they’re at war with somebody, I think.”

  She seemed like she had more to share than that. “Any specific idea.”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Just a dumb idea.”

  I kind of wanted to hear it, but she didn’t seem eager to share it in front of people. Oh well, we didn’t have to figure things out on day two. Or maybe day one, since it had been less than twenty-four hours.

  Nobody else had much to say on that topic, so I moved us along. “Well, I don’t see any inherent danger with training to become strong. If they have ill intent, being stronger is better.”

  Well, technically if they wanted to kill us and absorb our power or something being strong might be a problem, but it was probably still better to grow. Also, three of us were strong already but they didn’t seem to know that.

  My biggest reason was the other people that I found. They had been… alive, at least. At the time. Sure, one guy was chained up but the others were fighting monsters so that was probably the main focus. No guarantees, though.

  I wondered if Earthquake would be better for leveling a castle than Meteor Swarm. I had enough points to get any one spell, after all. Though in that case, a couple upgrades for Meteor Swarm might be more efficient if I only cared about immediate impact.

  -----

  I was doing push ups while Midnight explained what he had learned. I wasn’t going to let being temporarily abducted ruin my conditioning just because they knew I was a magic sort. If Meter got anywhere near a battlefield it wouldn’t matter if he could store a rocket launcher or something, because still targets were vulnerable. I doubted that guy could run a mile. Lana shouldn’t be on the battlefield either in her current state. Then again, the two training physical abilities weren’t particularly impressive at the moment either.

  “I snitched some food from the kitchens,” Midnight said. “It doesn’t seem there’s a stigma against black cats here. Anyway, the servants there are quite talkative. Much of the gossip is about us. You guys.”

  He showed us some recordings, because he could do that. Kitchen staff were saying a lot of things about how it was a shame that another young group would end up throwing their lives away hopelessly. They danced around the actual topic, but eventually they brought up the phrase ‘Demon King’. I could hear the capitalization.

  “You should be good against demons, right?” I asked Inasyah as I finished my sets of pushups. I kind of wished I had some basic weights available, but I didn’t tend to throw random heavy stuff in storage during my day to day. I had some non random heavy stuff, but it was more meant for dropping on someone’s head if necessary. Maybe I could use the manhole cover.

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  “I am excellent at battling demons,” Inasyah agreed. “The main problem is that I don’t know if there are any here.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t be here,” I said. “They’d be… over there?” I gestured vaguely. “Presumably not in the human’s castle.”

  Inasyah shook her head. “No, they would be here. I don’t sense a single demon infiltrating the castle. Also, I would sense a great concentration of them at a far distance.”

  “They could be on another plane,” I said. “Also, they could be hiding their aura. Or spending a lot of time in the areas of the castle that are warded.”

  “I can’t deny the possibility,” she said. “But I sense no taint on any of our hosts.”

  I pondered for a while. “So they’re not bad people?”

  “I didn’t say that. They merely appear untainted by demonic presences. Humans have great potential for cruelty and evil all on their own.”

  I was glad I knew the Clean spell, for perhaps the first time ever. I hadn’t really needed it before. I was certain there was some sort of way to clean myself here, but it would be better to remove any traces of sweat and other exertion in my room so nobody grew suspicious. If someone was trying to handle me, I’d rather they not be aware of my potential to physically overpower them. I was obviously big, and I couldn’t do anything about that, but I wanted whatever advantages I could have.

  Inasyah asked Midnight and me to pick out the most suspicious locations. She apparently didn’t sleep and was going to snoop around. I wasn’t certain a single darkness spell was good enough for that, but she also had her illusions. Well, as long as she didn’t get herself killed we could recover from whatever happened.

  “If there are no dimensional suppressors, I’d like to pick out a good courtyard for potentially calling in agents from Extra. Can you tell them to have a squad on standby?”

  I nodded. I’d used Sending as soon as practical yesterday to report our general situation to Malaliel. It had been important to confirm that worked, after all. “Sure thing.” Half an hour later, I got the response. “She says that she will have a squad prepared, but asks you to make sure this won’t cause an interdimensional war.”

  Obviously there was already conflict. Kidnapping our people was not okay. However, Extra wasn’t interested in saving a few people at the cost of many more. They would take appropriate risks, of course, but war over a few people wasn’t something they were prepared for. Then again, New Bay might take over that responsibility, and even if it was just a single megacity… I would be loath to imagine any country that would win. Even Granbold with their mages and archmages, knights, and everything else would find it difficult to deal with a whole army of superheroes.

  Actually, there might be a number of villains that would participate too. Some because kids were involved- and high school aged teenagers were kids even if they didn’t want to be called that. Others were territorial and wouldn’t like anyone ‘making a move on their turf’.

  “I really hope it doesn’t come to anything like that,” Midnight said. “But if it does, I can get some support from Celmoth. Since these people did technically kidnap me too.”

  I nodded. “Plan for the worst, hope for the best. I suppose we can’t wait too long to reveal ourselves to the others. Whenever it makes sense, we’ll extract them first, then see if retaliation is justified.”

  I had in Storage a number of rocks, dirt, and some grass. All local things, specifically to make certain I could more easily focus my way back here. I was planning to enchant some with this world’s resonance. Tonight, maybe. The time zone shift was really hitting me, but I could get by on five or six hours of sleep. Maybe with some Enhance Mind throughout the day.

  -----

  Day two we learned some different magic. First was distance manipulation for the sake of covert communication. In short, the Message spell. But different, obviously. The way people here in Zuresh and presumably the surrounding countries used magic wasn’t like I was used to. They seemed to stimulate the flow of mana indirectly with chanting and hand movements.

  It appeared to be more mana efficient, but I wasn’t actually sure of that. I was sure that it was slower and seemingly more rigid, though it would also make sense if Yamaha wasn’t teaching us flexibility yet on purpose. It was best to get the basic form of something down.

  Anyway, Message was certainly spatial magic. The other spell wasn’t.

  I looked at the floating hand in front of me. The best thing I could say was that it moved in space. Relatedly, this spell was not Mage’s Reach. It was way wimpier. Also, cheaper- so there was that.

  It wasn’t just my own judgment. It seemed like Meter learned Telekinetic spells slower. It wasn’t actually part of a spatial magic affinity. However, the people here- or at least High Mage Yamaha- clearly thought that space magic users were supposed to carry things. Thus, it was part of the curriculum.

  It still didn’t take too long to work. We already had the general idea of spellcasting down. It maybe took twice as long as Message to learn, but we still had sufficient time in the afternoon to begin learning one more spell. Spatial Step.

  It appeared we weren’t just going to sit in a field after all. This one was specifically for moving around.

  “Once you cast this, you can move at a moderate pace and keep up with even a swift runner,” Yamaha explained.

  Yeah, okay. So it wasn’t much. But walking was good.

  Relatedly, Yamaha looked weird when he used it. It did fit his explanation, though. He was shortening the space in front of him as he walked. So even though he was only slightly visibly distorted, his body still moved unnaturally as his strides took him further than they should.

  I learned the spell first, because Meter was taking forever. I didn’t want to perform poorly. The gestures weren’t much harder, but I think he was straining to hold so much mana at once. Which was to say… barely a level 3 spell. If he was still the equivalent of a level 0 by my world’s rules, however, that would make sense. He’d be bumping up against the fatigue limit, even if we recovered mana fast enough for him to not run dry.

  Meter almost had the spell, but then he passed out. The problem was that he was standing, ready to move… so I caught him by the shoulder. “Careful there.”

  “Ah… sorry about that.” He shook his head. “I can’t quite do it.”

  Yamaha actually had good advice, so he wasn’t useless. “Practice just the chants, then the hand signs separately. After that, you can fuse them together.”

  Alone, they didn’t seem to form into an actual spell. Just a vague flow of mana, most of which returned to the caster when everything was said and done. I was willing to bet that some spells would do something bad if you split them like that, though. What if one had all the power and danger, and the other segment was all control? I was only barely beginning to understand the meanings behind all of it.

  I wondered what this kid thought the words meant. Whatever translation magic he had made him pretty good at speaking them, but I wasn’t sure if understanding was an important component. It might be, but I also did a good bit of manual mana manipulation.