Karaki’s hatchet was a godsend. Ioha made a mental note to buy the smaller version that could be strapped to the inside of his shield for transport. Firewood, frames for their blankets and even primitive furniture materialised at a simply impossible speed if you only had a knife. Sure, they could burn aura and get it done anyway, but that obviously left them depleted on aura, which was never a good idea.

  One large stone in each hand, Ioha stood just where trees ended, and fields began, uncertain where he wanted to build a fireplace. Fields were a misnomer. They hadn’t been cultivated for years, probably even decades. Back home, underbrush and young trees would have retaken their domain a long time ago, but here, a border as clear as if someone kept after any unwanted vegetation clearly marked where the forest began.

  Something was off with the field and adjacent forest. A taste of sugar gone bad clung to him and competed with the smell of artificial roses to get a rise out of him. A side effect of free magic, one of the teachers said. Ioha didn’t really care. He was busy enough with the land he stood on playing merry hell with his status display. Ai complained about her skill tree changing, so whatever it was, it affected them all. Ioha shrugged, decided on making their fire where trees would offer some protection against a sudden squall while they still had a free view of open land. His two stones made the foundation for their future meal, and he went back to where he knew he could find more.

  One by one, the groups got a teacher visiting them, and it was confirmed that the status displays were indeed unstable here. Their actual abilities, the teacher promised, weren’t affected. Ioha doubted that, and when the teacher left for the next group, he went to work on some more firewood to shake away the feeling of discomfort. When he came back, flames danced from his fireplace, and Ai sat on a blanket chatting away with Miri while Canadena and Karaki prepared their meal. Ioha glanced at his best friend. Things were still uneasy between them, even though Canadena was adamant Ioha had nothing to apologise for. Awkward as it was, that just made Ioha respect the merc even more.

  The sound of steps behind him announced Genu arriving with the last of the firewood. With a wave of his hand, Ioha showed Genu where he wanted it so it would dry while they cooked. After that, he grabbed a blanket and his shield. The good price they were offered was still ruinous, but Ai persisted in saying it had been a steal. Something about awful imbuing degrading the work of a genius artisan so that it took someone with her absurdly powerful aura to clean it. She had cleaned it, and ever since Ioha took the role of an awful mage-crafter and Ai sighed and cleaned up each night after he failed to get the spells he wanted active on the shield right.

  “Why the extra defence?” she asked from her side of the fire. Shadows and light played over her face, and Ioha revelled in how it made her look even lovelier. Flames reflected in her hair, which had grown a little since their return to Isekai, and now it reached down below her shoulders again. A different kind of magic, one that needed no status displays, and one he couldn’t get enough of. “Ioha?”

  “Sorry. I was… Just thought of something.” He scratched his cheek. “Defence? Because more defence is good?”

  “Told you he’s no good,” Canadena said from where she had cuddled up with Karaki. “You really plan to use that thing as a shield?”

  It was a shield. How else was he supposed to use it? He rapped his finger across it. “Flat surface between me and your sword. Looks like a good way to use it.”

  “Moron. Canadena, maybe you’re right.”

  Miri’s eyes bounced between the other girls. She wasn’t fully used to their bantering yet.

  “Still useless in bed?”

  Ai grimaced. “He’s mine!” An index finger shot out in Ioha’s direction. “Needs some training, but he’s not useless.”

  “Ai!” The fire made everything look red, which was a blessing for Ioha. “Could you please not…”

  “I like the mornings,” she interrupted.

  “Before or after breakfast?” Canadena shot in.

  “You guys!”

  Across the fire, Genu reddened as well. He wasn’t as fast on the uptake, but this was blatant enough even for him to get it.

  “Ai, really…” Their love life wasn’t exactly Ioha’s preferred topic for campfire stories.

  “About that shield,” Ai said and put an end to his misery. “I was planning to add my magic to it rather than have you pump it full of what you can already solve on your own, you know.”

  She hadn’t told him before. “You can do that?”

  “Mm, you know why Hanna taught aura manipulation?”

  A question for a question. “Sorry, no. Not exactly my area of expertise.” The answer had to be something else than manipulating aura. Ai didn’t run with that kind of deadpan jokes.

  She winked at him. OK, maybe she did, but not this time. “She’s a mage-crafter, and a good one. Since you’re imbuing magic by touch, it’s pretty much an aura extension discipline only.”

  When she said it like that, it was rather obvious. Their shared university studies shone through, though. “And you’ve been dabbling in her domain from the start?”

  By now, their friends watched the verbal ping pong match with what threatened to be quickly fading interest.

  “I’m primarily a caster with poor skills in independent magic. Of course, I’m interested in a new field involving aura extension.”

  That was her way of saying she had mastered it by now. “And you just watched me making an arse out of myself?”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Ai nodded. “Was fun, but you learned the basics. One day, I’m sure you’ll have a use for it.”

  “Fair enough. Your planned additions?”

  “Your self-healing is getting good, but it’s too slow to use in combat. I was thinking of adding an aura manipulation effect to speed it up, but nothing else.”

  Ioha stared at her. Is that even possible? Self-healing was a set of abilities spread over dozens of sub-abilities. No, it isn’t, not for her. It’s one unit in a skill tree. So he’d get a boost based on his worst sub ability? Probably, but since he saw the numbers for each ability, he made certain he kept the entire set lumped together. In reality, it allowed him to apply self-healing more or less the same way she did, since he activated the entire set if he was in a hurry. “Thanks,” he said when he realised he’d stayed silent for too long. “Thanks, I really mean it.”

  “So, hand it over.” Two hands reached out, and he gave her his shield.

  Ioha moved over to her side. “Light show, please!”

  Ai obliged, and he watched her weave aura into his shield. “This part, how did you stitch that thread?”

  She explained, and he watched in admiration as what he struggled with for hours came together in a few minutes.

  Around them the other four grew tired of their conversation just as Ioha suspected. Karaki and Canadena lay cuddled together on a blanket, and Genu draped them both under Karaki’s cloak. Canadena didn’t have one. She either didn’t give up on the flamboyance part or used it as an excuse to sleep close to her mate, boyfriend, friend with benefits, whatever, the man she wanted. Genu and Miri shared one of the shelters made of blankets and sticks. There was no cuddling, but Ioha saw the start of a friendship that might eventually develop into something else.

  He shared a mug of tea with Ai, or rather, some kind of herbal infusion. Real tea hadn’t made its way to Wergaist, and what was worse, neither had coffee. Still, it was hot, and with a touch of honey it made him feel cosy. This was camping at its best. They hugged side by side and stared stupidly into their fire, which should have been dangerous here but for Ai being able to restore their night-vision in a fraction of a second. When Karaki started up his signature snoring, Ioha clasped Ai’s hand and led her to the other shelter. Canadena’s personal air-conditioner worked while she slept, and Karaki slept through anything that didn’t kill him outright.

  Huddled together with Ai on an air-mat he conjured up using the same magic that trapped Anthony von Shithead half a year earlier, and under a shared cloak, Ioha sleepily scanned the area around their camping site. There was nothing out there. Just to be certain, he threw a net of brittle shields in a half sphere around the entire group. Anyone approaching would wake them all up.

  Independent magic with trigger systems was awesome. Volatile independent magic based on that trigger system was even better. Together with Ai, he found the final piece of a puzzle he had tried finishing for months, and now they were both able to simulate analogue processes active on an independent magic system. Yesterday, Ai replicated the mysterious remote healing that was supposedly impossible. It helped to grow up in a digital world, because there ‘continuous’ was just an illusion with higher quality and resolution than the analogue reality. In a world with technology sufficiently advanced and all that.

  Karaki’s snoring, as usual, was something else. It rose like a wounded dragon in its death throes and slowly rolled back to the soothing sound of a pig being slaughtered. Genu and Miri moved uncomfortably despite the magic sleeping-mat they shared, and even Canadena shifted with Karaki’s thunderous rhythm where she lay curled up in his lap. Ioha threw a shield just by Karaki’s feet and let it expand under him. At the same time, the second spell, a force field similar but not identical to their sleeping-mats, shifted under the sleeping lovebirds, built itself upwards and lost some of its composition at the bottom. Then Ioha moved his shield upwards until it touched the new underside of the field. Everyone should have their own private forklift. With both spells safely above ground, he sent them in the direction of the third shelter and lowered boy and girl onto their beds. Releasing the shield, lowering the field and disintegrating it from the top took some time as well, but the alternative would have been unceremoniously dumping them on the sleeping mats. Last, he threw a new type of shield he had played with for the last few weeks around them. It only blocked wind, or rather, changes in air pressure. Karaki’s snoring went silent.

  “Can they breathe in that?” Ai wondered. Her voice was heavy with sleep, but she must have drifted out of sleep when Ioha’s aura shifted as he cast his spells.

  He grinned and looked at her. “Twenty-first-century consumer tech,” he said. “With a touch of magic.”

  She left the last of her sleep behind her. “Huh?”

  With two fingers outstretched, Ioha pointed at their friends. “Two shields, or membranes if you’re picky. One mic and one speaker.” His grin mellowed into a smile. “They’re connected.”

  She tilted her head and burrowed under his arm. “Did you just invent noise cancellation?”

  With a shake of his head, Ioha denied the idea. “Old school. I just found a way that works here.”

  “Counts as invention.”

  He shook his head. “Product development, nothing more.”

  “Business case and sales pitch!”

  Ioha grinned again and rested his chin in one hand. The other pointed dramatically into the night. “Five coppers a night, snore without fear!”

  Muted giggling reached him from his side. “Wouldn’t the one suffering be the buyer?”

  With another look at their friends, Ioha slowly shook his head once more. “Depends,” he said. If Canadena really did suffer but kept quiet about it, Ioha believed Karaki to be the one who wanted a solution first. The merc cared for his girls, or maybe just girl by now. Ioha hadn’t seen the other one lately. “If you knew you were snoring, wouldn’t you…”

  “I don’t snore.”

  “But if…”

  “I don’t snore!”

  She did, very cutely, but there was a time for truth and another for silence. “I’ll ask someone else.” She knew she snored. Her self-healing abilities gave her more or less absolute knowledge of her body. Silence was the answer.

  “Can they hear the outside?”

  Ioha bit his lower lip while he pondered his answer. “In a way. The membranes interfere with all sounds, but it’s mostly a one-way cancellation.” They interfered enough that those inside might fail to hear some sounds. There were benefits, but also drawbacks. He wasn’t entirely certain if he’d dare to use it when they needed to hide. “I put traps around us as well.”

  “I could key them to your hearing instead.”

  She probably could. “Er, mm, I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “A once-in-a-lifetime offer. Move to fantasy-land and get a neural implant for free!” He looked at her. “Sounds like a hard sell?”

  “Would only last for half an hour.” That proved she had already probed his anti-snoring solution. 28 minutes to be exact. Plus minus 30 seconds, depending on the volume inside.

  “You know, sometimes you scare me.”

  “Cool, isn’t it?”

  He hugged her closer. With some luck, they’d fall asleep before the membranes dropped, and Karaki scared away all monsters in the area.