Shattering glass rained all around him, but his feet were stuck and running away was impossible. Then, with a wrenching feeling of unrealness, Ioha woke up sensing how his brittle shields had broken at two locations.

  “Wake up!”

  He needn’t have shouted. Ai rolled on the ground between shelter and fireplace, hands flailing in the air, weaving patterns Ioha recognised from evening exercises on their march here. Soon flares shot into the air and mixed with those from other groups, and a few brighter and larger cast by unseen third or fourth year students. The sound of rumbling feet called for his attention, and he sent a series of hard shields in the direction of where something had breached the perimeter he set up before they went to sleep.

  “Careful, Ioha!” Canadena from the furthest breach. She and Karaki both woke faster than he, and now his shields disrupted their movements. Ioha released them and hoped they had whatever had happened there under control.

  The air tasted of rotten sugar, foul and disgustingly slippery and sticky at the same time, and the smell of roses felt like someone forced a broken bottle of cheap perfume up his nostrils. He gagged.

  “A bleed! All parties prepare subjugation!” Sound magic, but the voice still felt far away.

  E-rank subjugation. Bleeds weren’t too bad. Seems they did the job right then. Something went thump behind him, and Ioha activated spring traps on the shield that had stopped whatever approached.

  “Genu — now! Ai, light!” Miri didn’t need to burn herself unconscious to make the right call. Even without her magic supercomputer, she was tactically bright.

  A flare arced over Ioha, and below it Genu went to work on the thing the trap had caught. In the flickering light dancing between trunks and branches it looked a little like a spider if spiders had been mammals. It writhed and tore at unseen hooks. The shield wouldn’t hold much longer, but Genu methodically destroyed its body with a two-handed axe. Swords looked nice, but axes were better for butchering.

  Coward! Ioha threw a taunt at the dying creature, just in case.

  Around them, the sounds of fighting became scarcer and then died out altogether. All was over in less than a minute.

  Guess we made it. Damn, that was pretty awful. It was harsh, and not something ever accepted in the peaceful world both he and Ai came from, but here you had to weed out those who couldn’t stand the field of battle, even if they were still kids. A lot was wrong with Spellsword Academy, but this was not one of those things.

  Tomorrow a few of them would start the week-long journey back to school just to leave it forever. They weren’t bad or wrong, but they weren’t meant for killing other beings. With one or maybe two members less, a couple of parties were bound for guard duty, hopefully with a passing grade from the night. This was one of the things wrong with Spellsword Academy – the blind belief that you had to be six party members to do anything. It wasn’t even entirely the fault of the school. Curse the idiots from Isekai, and besides, why six and not five? Weren’t five supposed to be a set in Japan? Half a dozen in Sweden, but the school set its rules long before the Gothenburg gates opened.

  “We really gonna sleep in this?” A bit closer to Genu, Ai voiced her disapproval while she searched for anything worth healing. The reason for her ire lay beside them, clearly visible under her flare, which had come to a standstill. Blood more black than red flowed from gashes Genu inflicted with his axe.

  “Poison?” Miri wondered.

  With a shake of her head, Ai decided that the body was safe. “Do we have to show it to the teachers?” she asked.

  Ioha nodded slowly. “Think so. It’s proof of what we did.”

  “Four of you?” Karaki’s voice came closer through the underbrush and branches. “We got two of them.”

  “I got two of them.”

  “I made it easy for you, so counts as we.”

  “Shit!” That was Ai responding to Canadena’s and Karaki’s bantering. “I failed then.”

  Ioha turned after her voice. “Monsters down. We passed.”

  “But I was supposed to lead.”

  “And you did,” Ioha said. “It was dark, and every member needs to act even without instructions.”

  Ai smirked and shook her head again. “Miri gave instructions. I only did my part as logistics.” There was nothing wrong with what she said, but leadership was more than just knowing what to do, or even doing it. Miri lacked the easy confidence needed to make people follow her lead over time.

  “You did good,” Genu said. “Flares perfectly placed. Miri got it easy.”

  “Agree,” Miri added.

  “Done with the praise?” Canadena’s voice.

  Ioha looked at her. Teasing took the edge off the situation, and he appreciated how she almost always knew how to put oil on wherever friction in the group started to show. “Breakfast, anyone?”

  The fireplace was still warm from the evening before, and they had leftover firewood. With hands remembering short hiking tours from his high school days, Ioha built and lit a small cooking fire. Sometimes magic got in the way, and doing it the old school way helped clean away the night. Dawn slowly broke on them, drinking tea, chatting and munching on salty jerky. During their breakfast a teacher arrived, looked at the three corpses, got the short version of what happened and jotted down some notes on paper. It had to be a passing grade. Since they could do whatever they wanted with their battleground, Ioha walked to the bodies. When he left, they were idiotically clean. After that, he got rid of all the grime from his friends.

  Need to be better at protecting my friends. Easier if they stand close to me. His status display lit up once, and he opened it. Battle standard? One ability of his inactive set received its first point. That meant it was patently useless, but at least he could try learning what it was supposed to do. He did have an idea. Revelations and asking the important questions sometimes improved his abilities. He wanted people to stand close to him, and then his battle standard ability got its first point. Probably something that made people gather around him. That was good. What was better, it burned through his divine aura. Now he could fail at using his new ability without using his normal aura. He’d pay the price in less cleaning, and he couldn’t care less. With the display open, he looked through the other changes. A few abilities increasing a little. Traps and shields were used when there was actual danger around them. Ioha wasn’t too surprised. It only reinforced the feeling he had that this world worked according to some kind of game-like mechanics.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Ioha?”

  He dropped his thoughts and searched for the voice. Canadena. “Yes?”

  “Thinking?”

  Flames danced in the morning light, and he allowed himself some mental rest and let his eyes follow their shifting shapes. “What just happened.” It wasn‘t a question.

  Canadena hugged a lukewarm cup of tea in her hands. “First time. We did good.”

  She was right, he guessed. “Maybe, but there’s a lot to learn.”

  “Do good today, do better tomorrow.” A gulp of tea travelled down her throat. “Still did good.”

  “Should have dropped fields between my shields. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

  Something warm and very welcome intruded from his left. “Elaborate,” Ai said when she had nestled down. “And be cool about it!”

  That was enough for him to laugh, and together with unexpected mirth came a sense of completion. He finally let go of his urgency. “I’m already cool.”

  “Doesn’t show.”

  “Does.”

  “Does not.”

  “Fine,” he grinned. “This uncool boyfriend of yours is thinking of how to prepare camp better.”

  “Be cool, I said.” Her hands played with his hair, so it wasn’t as if she were unsatisfied. Her brown mixed with his blond, and Ioha put an arm across her shoulder.

  “I’d like real traps that stop things coming into camp, but then they could stop us when we need to move around.” He looked at her. “I can’t make magic goo that lets you through but stops Canadena.”

  “Why stop me?”

  “That was just an example.”

  “Make good examples instead!”

  “Can’t you make a trigger that dispels them if a known aura is caught? You know, like the magic locks at school?”

  She wasn’t just beautiful and lovely. She was brilliant as well. “Like attune my traps to your auras?”

  “The warning ones as well, yeah.”

  That could work. Sure, anyone else from school would get caught, but he couldn’t really memorise hundreds of auras. Or? “Ai, when you heal someone, do you know why you’re doing it?”

  “To make them feel better?”

  “Sorry, no, I mean, do you know exactly who you’re healing?”

  “Duh, if I know them then… Ah, yes, yes, if I’ve healed them before, or prepared in advance for some reason.”

  “Guys, are you honestly discussing if you know the people you know?” Karaki protested. Both Miri and Genu nodded in agreement.

  “Yup,” Ai answered unhelpfully.

  “You’re bad for each other,” Canadena said.

  Ioha didn’t wait for her to comment on how they were probably mutually useless in bed. “Aura, we’re talking individual auras.” He looked at Ai. “How do you remember them all?”

  In return, he got a blank stare. “The same repository I use for all other magic configurations. How else?”

  Oh. Yeah, your magic aura counts as magic. Duh! “I see.” Ioha quickly scanned his friends and added their auras to a section he created in his display. He knew them well, so it only took seconds for three of them and a few minutes for Genu and Miri. Anyone unknown likely required close to an hour, so he couldn’t realistically scan the entire school. Still, he had made quite a few acquaintances whom he could add over a shared meal. Sometimes he was an idiot. Ai’s obvious solution was, well, too obvious.

  Soon marching orders reached them. They broke camp and lined up on the road in sunlight that barely offered warmth. Another month and temperature would soar soon after sunrise.

  By lunch, they were deep inside the border zone, and teachers called for a halt. Another half a day’s march and they risked entering one otherworld or another. The border in question wasn’t the one to Remerrin, but rather a poorly defined area where two or more worlds met each other. From the outside, a circle on the map maybe two days’ on foot across, but inside distances slowly lost their meaning. Walk to the middle, and you risked walking out of the border zone in another world. Most likely you could get back, unless something bad happened to you, and ‘most likely’ wasn’t something people liked to bet on in the first place. Things came out into the border zones, and the excursion was meant to ensure that something bad happened to whatever came out before it made its way outside of the zone and into the surrounding farmlands. Normally troops stationed here kept watch, but even soldiers had to be given leave from time to time, which was the main reason adventurers were allowed inside, or in this case, a military school.

  Ioha threw a glance at carts following the column. The carcasses from the night before were to be processed. They represented money. Not a whole lot of it, but still. On carts belonging to the third and fourth years lay the remnants of different monsters than the ones they fought last night. Those did represent a decent amount of money.

  This time they spent the afternoon preparing a larger camp. That included setting up wooden ramparts of sorts, with an outer trench with something that served as an abatis. The result was serviceable, even if not properly built. An opportunity to get hands-on experience, more than a true defensive position. While the first years were busy making engineering mistakes under the surveillance of yelling teachers, the fourth years led the third years further into the border zone. Their training was of a more serious nature, and the culling should keep any dangers the coming night to a minimum.

  Ioha carried one end of a tree, the entire tree, to the outside of a trench dug by logistics students using magic. The tree went down, branches pointing out, and soon students less suited to carrying heavy objects went to work trimming and sharpening the branches. Staff students rather inefficiently managed fieldwork as part of their training, and teachers prevented anything astoundingly stupid from happening. When Ioha went back with a muscular merc for another tree, he looked at the entire operation with a sense of admiration. This was, mistakes and all, truly a first-class education.

  By sunset, they were ready, and framed shelters littered the entire camp. Local students showed a lot of interest in the innovation used by Ai’s party, and since building shelters didn’t interfere with the camp, their teachers let it slip. Another year or two, and tents might become a thing in Wergaist. Maybe. Ioha realised they’d put a strain on logistics. Isekai introduced adventurers a decade earlier, and tents obviously didn’t catch on.

  “Bleed or gash?” he heard one teacher ask another. They continued in the direction of where all staff shared food.

  “Gash, most likely,” the answer carried to him over the wind.

  So they believed the coming encounter would be D-rank. If so, the defensive works made a lot more sense. F-rank to S+-rank. The Japanese fantasy crazed designations of difficulties and capabilities. A little stupid, a little romantic, but all in all, a surprisingly well-functioning system. First years could handle F and E -rank dangers. D-rank in groups, which was why they had to organise themselves into parties of six. Third and fourth-year students were expected to handle D-rank problems alone.

  Ioha grimaced. For him, status displays showed numbers and a plethora of very specific abilities. Ai’s skill tree probably indicated the letters used here and grouped abilities for a cleaner, aggregated view. Numbers didn’t translate into letters well, since the ranking of a problem involved an entire group of abilities, and Ioha wasn’t sure which abilities were primary and which secondary or even tertiary for solving any one given situation.

  Well, that was a later problem. Right now, he wanted something to eat and, if at all possible, an early night in bed.