Azdrial did not have photos. Magic was magic, but there were practical limits to what it could do.

  Force of power. But just that - power.

  Sure, Wade could summon fire out of his hands and launch a boulder with far more force by channeling power into it on throw. He could technically drag a soul back from the afterlife and trap it within the bones it had once inhabited, and then puppeteer it with his will. A demon could use free magic to embed power into a contract that would force the signers to comply with what was written within it.

  And yet nobody could make a perfect picture appear on a canvas using their imagination.

  Or rather, it could be done, but the results never looked like real life. More like a warped marble, a fish-eye effect. And only a few things would have any detail.

  Whenever an artist used free magic to 'draw,' it would end up looking like a fever dream. The best of the best could make a few items be picture perfect, but the lighting and other parts of the detail would be different. Usually for the better, but always different.

  And it absolutely had no idea about videos.

  "That's a better picture of a car here," Wade said, pointing at the paused video footage of said car. This was a quick recorded video in front of Jason's beat-up pickup, with Ann and him smiling back at Wade. They were going to the Griffith Observatory for Ann's birthday, and Wade had decided to be the cameraman for this excursion.

  The next video was of the group hiking up the mountainside, complaining about how difficult finding parking had been. Wade was trying to capture some of the night sky here and miserably failed since his phone was not even close to good enough for the task.

  That, and he hadn't known what exposure photography was. So his efforts were doomed from the start. That wasn't a single problem for Medy, however. She was transfixed by what wasn't there.

  "There really isn't a moonline at all," Medy said, looking through the dark video. "Wow. Look how dark it is on the trail! Only those light posts are shining anywhere."

  The moonline was what happened to the sunring when the majority of the sunring's power was on the other side of the world.

  What was left of the sun moved around the world bundled up in a small tight sphere on a fixed path, getting dragged by some rock comet at the front. But once the bundle of sunlight had set sail and passed by, what was left was a silver ring that glowed like moonlight. And two actual moons that also floated nearby, far more hidden in the darkness as there was no light to reflect off of them.

  Scholars didn't know why the sunring left behind a silver line, but Wade had an odd feeling it was like one of those LED plastic wires that conducted light through them on the edge, only on a massive scale. So the silver light coming from their ring was actually just faint sunlight from the other end.

  Which meant Azdrial did have a day/night cycle, but it was jank and artificially propped up by a system that was actively breaking down, according to Play.

  Another vote on why people should jump ship out of there.

  And then actual footage of the observatory itself came up on the phone.

  The architecture alone was alien to both Medy and Bael, and they both just kept handing the phone back and forth, replaying that particular video each time to spot more details they'd missed. Watching the massive courtyard filled with buses shuttling up and dropping off passengers or picking up tourists. How many humans were walking around here. The grand pillars. All of it.

  Eri was almost forgotten, left to his own devices, to which he was testing different ways of squashing blackrot, including a game of grabbing multiple Blackrotten bugs as a collection before leaving them on the flat side of his greatsword.

  They would duel to the death the moment the bugs noticed one another nearby, although the same species tended to be a tossup, some just ignored each other.

  Handing his phone safely to the pair without fear was pretty easy. They both swore they wouldn't attempt to steal the phone from him and would hand it back when he asked for it.

  Demons didn't turn back on their word.

  And despite the high use of battery, Wade's smartphone was still showing an odd 100% charge, like the little phone here had a battery upgrade that just kept going.

  A text message popped up, and Medy pressed the X button so that she could go back to watching the video.

  The text message popped back up, and Wade could see a very angry emoji on it for the brief second before Medy once more clicked the X button and continued playing the video clip.

  Both of them had learned how to exit out of Play's antics, and the goddess was getting real pissed now.

  Secretly, Wade was finding that the funniest thing ever.

  Play, of course, was going to be a little troglodyte whenever she could. So the moment he'd passed off his phone, she'd shown up out of the woodworks to harass people. Dramatically.

  Fortunately, she didn't speak demonic. She spoke English. Because whatever texting program she was using to pester Wade with, it only had English letters, with English emojis or Japanese ones, given how weird and detailed they all looked.

  She could speak demonic, she just had no means of writing demonic back. And she wanted to be introduced.

  Instead, Wade was having a fun time telling the demons that the texts were just something else on his phone and he'd explain it after everything. Then he showed them how to exit those messages.

  The rest had sorted itself out.

  The sheer amount of video footage and images was overwhelming. Seven years of random items all coming from his own life.

  Sometimes it was pretty.

  Sometimes it was even scenic.

  And sometimes it was a picture of a single fork on an empty plate, sent to be a one-and-done meme picture to a friend or another. Completely random and banal pictures.

  And sometimes it was a picture of the sunset. That held their attention for far longer than anything else would. Both demons were transfixed.

  This was all up until Eri swung by, bug stomping duties handled for the next few dozen yards, and he stretched his skeletal hand forward, asking for the phone.

  Amateurs. His jaws clicked. This isn't what a phone is truly used for.

  Medy slowly handed it off, where the skeleton used his snowboarding gloves in order to trigger the touchscreen properly.

  The skeleton clicked his jaw a dozen times rapidly, then clicked one final key.

  "You little troll," Wade said, realizing what the skeleton was going for as he navigated through some options. "Jason's a bad influence on you."

  He'd learned by watching when Jason was still testing his language boon, trying out new music in words he couldn't understand. He'd opened up the app on Wade's phone to run through more.

  Wade didn't pay for any subscriptions, which inevitably included music streaming.

  But he wasn't going to live a life without music either. He wasn't a psychopath.

  So slowly, over seven years, he'd downloaded music songs directly, one at a time.

  Like a psychopath would.

  It added up. And as the mp3 app opened up, Eri scrolled through and hit play all.

  The first song that came out was electropop, some mellow happy-go-lucky tune he'd heard off a video game. Back when the world was whole and complete. The good days.

  "It's making noise?" Bael asked, not realizing it as music until the beat truly began. "...Wait, is that...? Impossible."

  The chorus kicked in early.

  "Oh good hell, Wade... Is this Earth music? It sounds like music. Only, really weird." Medy stared at the little phone that could. "How is it doing that from your metal tablet? Where's it coming from? How is there enough space in there to fit that many instruments? Whose voice is that? How did you get her voice in there?"

  "Uh, that's a very long answer too," Wade said.

  "All your answers are long," Bael said, but there wasn't that gruff cynicism in his voice. His eyes kept a direct stare at the little phone in the skeleton's hand.

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  It wasn't pleasant as a sound to him. But equally unpleasant. He was mostly certain the strangeness of the musical instruments were so different compared to what he knew of and had heard before that his mind was having a difficult time adjusting.

  Eri was spinning around, skull bobbing to the beat, doing some kind of weird dance. He couldn't care less and was going to enjoy every last second of this hike. This was dance music, Jason had shown him music videos of humans dancing to it, he wanted to join in. He wanted to be human.

  That or he wanted the creatures out there to give him a bigger challenge than the bugs and the smaller animals that raced off to avoid them instead. The dead fused colony had chased off all the larger packs nearby, which meant all they'd run into thus far had been prey animals or smaller ones that decided a large pack was too dangerous to pick a fight with.

  Wade himself was equally surprised, but more at the sound itself. "Jesus, when did the sound quality get that high up?" It flowed clear and crystal through the air, in a way his little phone speaker had never been able to do.

  The skeleton jumped closer and closer to the hiking team behind him, waving the phone like a rave light.

  Medy started bouncing on her hooves. "The music is so strange, but very interesting. I like it."

  Bael snorted. Of course Medy would adapt to new stimulus faster than even he could. She seemed like a demoness of extremes. Either change was bad and would never be adjusted to, or change was good and she'd immediately leap into it without second thought.

  This was the latter.

  Eri took the opening for what it was, slipping by Medy, then doing some weird wave motion with his hand, extending it out to her. She hesitantly grabbed hold, and the skeleton was off to the races, clearly too hyper, yanking her with him.

  Wade and Bael watched from behind, keeping the pace, both having deeper and opposite thoughts.

  Wade was more trying to figure out what happened to his phone. Full battery despite the past thirty minutes of nonstop use, and now the sound quality sounded better than if he'd worn his earbuds or a Bluetooth sound bar... no chance this was his original phone's settings.

  System Quality. Just what could this phone do? Other than being spawned with him each time regardless of if he died or came home.

  Bael watched for far older reasons. Music was rare in his world. And despite how strange the sound was, he was already starting to come around to the strange instruments. The repetition of the chorus was making it easy to anticipate the same sounds, and repeated sounds helped him slowly decide if he enjoyed it or not.

  What a strange siren song. Coming from an entire new world. A world untouched by anything. The cheery English voice wasn't understood, and yet Bael could almost feel the ghost of emotions coming clear through. Nothing he could eat, but more something he could imagine himself.

  Eri jumped, jamming, waving the phone above him, before twirling on himself and tossing the phone like a basketball at Wade.

  Bael caught the thing midway, his arm easily large enough to snatch the tiny item. Slowly, the older demon brought the phone up to his eyes, looking down at the moving images and UI showcasing the song's artist.

  Wade felt this was it. This was the moment. Medy was trying to awkwardly mimic Eri's flailing arm movements, much to the delight of the skeleton. The smile was slowly coming through on her features.

  She liked dancing. Although, she liked moving around in general. Spinning in circles, rolling on the ground, and other movements like that made her feel happy and calm. There were unfortunately few chances to do so safely in this world. The dancing from this world was strange, no partners, all done by oneself. More a performance. She had no idea if she wanted to focus on getting some of it copies from the crazy skeleton ahead, or hyper-focus on the music itself.

  And Bael was simply holding onto the little phone as he walked forward, to the point he'd stopped even considering the world around him. Hyperfocus on the song was his choice.

  "You know, if you guys are enjoying the sights, videos, and music of Earth, why not see it all in person?" Wade suggested, casually dropping the bomb.

  Both demons halted in their directions, looking up at him with a snap of their heads.

  "We can? Wait, we can?" Medy instantly stopped dancing. Her tail swished left and right in wide arcs. "How??"

  Bael snorted, slowly putting the phone down, his eyes looking over the scrawny human. "By signing a contract with the mortal. Isn't that right?"

  He saw where it was going, he just didn't yet know where the catch was. Or if there was a catch, he wasn't certain he'd care.

  Eri clicked his jaw, tapping his sword, then bounded forward, back to clearing out the bugs. Now with a soundtrack to jam to while he did his janitor duties. He gave Wade one bony finger up before turning to the road ahead. Don't turn the music off, boss.

  "Yep," Wade said, both to the skeleton and to the demon. "Standard employment contract for Wade Industries. We'll offer free transportation out of this world and into the new one, where you no longer have to fear for your life about all this mithril sea and Blackrot stuff, and get full freedom out in the world." He gave a thumbs up to Medy, then turned to Bael. "We'll need to figure out some disguise for you first before you go outside too often, else I'll have the local police on my ass. But after we figure something out, you're free to go explore out there."

  An entire world. Untouched by the madness here. A new life. A better life. "What do you want for this?" Bael asked. He felt the itch of a bad deal already, but that was reflex and imagination on his part.

  Someone offering an escape from Azdrial itself. Into another world that had none of the disasters this one did. That had a civilization far more advanced than their own. To the point even a small device like this was carried by every human in that world.

  Bael knew what he would be willing to give to travel there.

  This mortal could outright demand everlasting eternal service for the rest of his natural lifespan, down past the family tree for generations after - and it still wouldn't be an unfair deal to Bael.

  So what was this mortal going to demand? Loyalty beyond death? To serve his family, scion after scion until the family itself functionally dissolved?

  He stayed quiet, waiting to see what his fate would be.

  "I want a forgesmith to make me some stuff. Four days a week, eight-hour shifts, and occasional on-demand requests. Also, your assistance with general tasks and to keep discretion for now until Earth is more prepared to see magic and demons walking around out here. Basically: be a good employee among my budding trade empire."

  Bael stared. There wasn't even a hint of an itch anywhere on his body on hearing those terms.

  "Oh, I'll do it! I'll do it!" Medy instantly jumped up and down. "I can learn forge smithing; it might take me a few years, but I'll focus really hard and do nothing other than that! I swear I'll do a good job! Please-please-please let me come back with you! I want to go to Earth!"

  "Actually, since you know a bit about alchemy as an Apothecary, I was hoping you'd be Wade Industry's official Head Alchemist."

  Medy stopped in her jump, dead silent. Her eyes went wide. "You... want me to do alchemy?"

  "I daresay you'd probably be the best one on Earth since there isn't any there yet. No mana, remember?"

  "Wait, you... you mean it? I'll be able to do alchemy again?" She almost spoke in a whisper now.

  "Yep." Wade shot her a thumbs up. "Might have a bit of a problem coming up with ingredients since it's a completely different world, but you might figure something out. Chemistry's the closest Earth's got; we can start there."

  Medy remained completely shocked, mind racing a thousand miles a minute until the train finally hit home.

  He could see it in her eyes as they began to tear up.

  And then he was promptly plowed over down into the mud as she rocketed straight into him and squeezed him in the tightest hug she could muster, head buried in his chest, horns dangerously close to Wade's throat.

  "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyo-!" The voice was muffled in his shirt, and Wade could feel it was equally starting to get wet.

  Bael grunted, walking above the pair, then grabbed Medy by the shirt collar and lifted her.

  The demoness held on, hugging him harder, now full-on sobbing.

  "Come on. Let go of the mortal," Bael said. He shook her, and Wade fell straight down back into the mud.

  Bael lifted her higher up, like hung laundry.

  Snot was dripping down her nose, and her eyes were filled up far past the brim. Each sniffle made her entire body tense up, as she was still being suspended from the shirt, hooves hovering over the ground.

  The old Satyr looked down at the fragile little demoness he held, then down to Wade, and back.

  He snorted. She must have had a rough life if the prospect of escaping eternal summons to the arcane realm and never mining again could overwhelm her so completely.

  But Bael could understand that feeling all too well.

  Being sent into the mithril sea over and over, as a frailer demon without the body mass of a Satyr, would indeed be a terrifying life.

  He'd been fortunate enough to escape that fate for decades, now being summoned as a smith instead. But even during his time in the mines, finding himself down here again and again, he always felt so long as he could get free of the blackrot once, he had a strong chance to survive.

  There were options. If he got a sword early out here, he could fight his way free over time. He'd done so before.

  Long ago he'd been a warrior, an excellent one. That knowledge had never left his soul. But he also knew a large amount of that confidence came from being a Satyr and having the sheer weight and power to back him up.

  Not the same for a frail waif like Medy.

  "Sorry, sor-" She hiccupped and tried to stop crying, hands dragging her sleeves up so she could use them to mop up her cheeks, and that only made her sob more. Bael decided to slowly let her down on the ground, where the demoness remained sprawled there, still going through a lifetime's amount of relief.

  "You trust her to be your alchemist? She's an apothecary. One that hasn't earned the name for it yet. A junior apothecary at best," Bael said, looking over to Wade. "I do not say this to bar her the way; I say this in that you might hire her for other services on your world, to have better return on your own contract. A secretary perhaps, or in administration? She may be scatterbrained, but occasionally you find such people highly intelligent at the strangest tasks."

  "I got a gut hunch that she'll be an excellent alchemist for our industry in no time," Wade said, flashing her a thumbs up as he got back up on his feet. "Even with your lack of experience on your official resume, I believe in the potential of people, Miss Medea'Vee."

  She didn't answer. She couldn't. Hooves sprawled in the mud, frantically trying to wipe away the tears that just would not stop coming. All that he could hear were hiccups and sniffling.

  Wade turned to the larger demon, who remained quiet.

  "As for you, Bael, the contract is still open for negotiation. We'll need to iron out further terms, but I'm happy to discuss those terms on Earth, where we're both safe again from all this. Earth doesn't have mana, but I think we can figure out something to get your trade up and running over there."

  He extended a hand out to the old Satyr that loomed over him.

  Bael stared back. "This is the deal you offer? Nothing else?"

  "There might be more I need to work on, like details, but the general gist is having a forgemaster over there that knows how to work runes and make enchanted gear. It's not going to be more than that; we'll just be discussing PTO and benefits instead in more detail."

  The demon slowly looked from Wade down to the tiny miracle in his hand, still playing happy songs. "There is nothing I can craft that would be equal to this. Nothing."

  "You'd be surprised what kind of things magic here can do that we can't back home."

  "Impossible," Bael said, looking back down at the phone, slowly handing it back to the mortal. "The world I saw in your images is beyond what a simple sword or a plate of armor could add to. What would you lack that I could possibly match against?"

  "Well, for one, we don't have any kind of healing over there," Wade said. "Just natural healing and hoping our bodies do the rest. That's already the first thing I'd be having you do: magical healing gear, like rings and amulets! Maybe even magical surgical knives with healing? I'll make a fortune. So, want to discuss further details on Earth?"

  The hand remained outstretched, the deal offered.

  Bael began to laugh, hand reaching back. "Not even a minor itch. Nothing at all. Do you realize how lopsided this agreement is in my favor? You are unlike any mortal I've ever met. Why would you go so far for a demon?"

  "Well, I've got very good luck on my side," Wade said. "The god of fortune himself showed up to recruit me, and now I'm the one recruiting."