The atmosphere of Shimmer City calmed down pretty quickly for having just weathered a monster attack. I was reminded of New Bay to some extent, but they hadn’t even finished cleaning up yet and it felt slightly unnatural. Same as the way they welcomed us into the city, but we had just helped kill some of the swarming flying things.

  Snatchers, they appeared to call them. Unfortunately, Translation didn’t let me know the name for things I didn’t know another word for. It was especially tough with the local language where they just named things differently. Just like disembowelers, snatchers had a normal animal name attached if I just thought about the sounds.

  “Nice lightning!” Riala said as we caught up to her. She had been waiting inside the walls, after having flown over them. There were probably at least a couple dozen snatchers that had holes that matched her spears, though there could be even more that ended up out of sight.

  I shrugged, “You’ve seen it before.”

  “Still though, you could be in the top ten lightning casters in the whole country!”

  That was… concerning. Obviously I didn’t expect to be the best, but with twelve upgrades there were so many people who could match me in lightning specifically? If people were generally specialized in energy magic, I would expect it to be more common. If we considered possible other energy types, then I could extrapolate fifty or so powerful magic users.

  Perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable for a country that seemed to frequently be at war, but it felt like a lot. Then again, I wasn’t fully aware of the number of mages in Graotan. Ethus certainly didn’t match them, but maybe they’d match up to a magically powerful country from my old world.

  Then again, mana here was pretty intense- training would be easier, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to be stronger. And if affinities actually did something, a sufficient population size should also nearly guarantee something similar.

  Riala leaned towards me. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Magic.” The actual details were suspicious. Why did they have magic that was so efficient here with the level of mana I’d seen? It wasn’t just Aidura- Zuresh had been the same. The rest of The Six were probably similar because I hadn’t gotten the sense that Zuresh was exceptional.

  Riala laughed. “Well, what else would I expect? The libraries in the capital have quite a lot to offer. I’m sure you’ll love them.”

  “That would be great,” I said. Though depending on how things worked, I might not get to see much of them. We had to solve the problem of the curse first. If our disguises survived that, I might then delve into whatever else they had. Sticking around after we no longer needed to be here seemed a bit much, especially since I could be content with what I’d already gained.

  Yalith had been shockingly casual with handing out information. I wondered if that was a security flaw. Or maybe they just assumed their wards were infallible.

  I looked upon the smiling face of Riala. She seemed genuine, but she also had a concerning level of insight sometimes. It was quite possible that we’d already given away too much.

  -----

  It was a good thing we got paid for helping with the assault, because our funds were running thin. We’d had to buy all sorts of things to try to blend in with the locals, and we hadn’t been able to pop back to Earth for food supplies since we were traveling with Riala. Even if we did, the food itself would be suspicious so we were doing our best to eat locally.

  Graciana was pretty bad at cooking. It was a surprise not because she was a woman but because of her alchemical affinity. Apparently, mixing things together wasn’t a skill that translated for her. Relatedly, Ramen was surprisingly good at cooking. I didn’t expect a jock to know his way around a kitchen. Or… various cutting implements next to a campfire. He helped make various stews, but nothing with noodles.

  Shimmer City was weird. It was difficult to say why it was weird, except that it was a fortress on wide open plains. Why would anyone bother assaulting this place when they could just go around? For that matter, Fort Seire wasn’t all that well placed… though it might not have been trying to cover everything. Shimmer City was supposed to stop people from reaching the heartland… probably. Forces Drawn from Afar… maybe they could teleport things?

  “You want to teleport?” Riala asked when I was making idle speculation about the name to Midnight and Inasyah. I hadn’t realized she was standing close enough to hear. It was a good thing I hadn’t been talking to just Midnight. “We could do that. Though… with your wagons it would probably take just as long waiting around here as to go over land. They’ve got a tight schedule and not just anyone can skip ahead.”

  I kept my face as free of suspicion as possible. I was pretty sure she was one of those people… and it might even be possible for her to get two wagons full of people on an accelerated timeline. “That’s neat,” I said. “I’d kind of like to see them, but if it’s faster to just continue on foot it’s better. Cheaper too, I bet.”

  “You’d be right about that,” Riala nodded. “The’ll charge you both horns!”

  I had to assume that was similar to an arm and a leg. It was unlikely they were actually charging horns, it just meant it was pricey. I reached up towards my head. “I need these. So I guess foot it is.”

  “Yeah. We could go see the circles first, though.”

  “Sounds neat. Can we bring Meter too? He’s learning spatial magic.” If she was hesitant, I’d just ditch him. I needed to see these. Would they be something similar to what Extra had, drawing in teleportation? No, probably not- otherwise humans could use that against the city. It would have to be exclusive, somehow.

  “Sure thing,” Riala said. “You’re pretty fond of the kid, huh? Even giving him a strange nickname.”

  So she noticed. I wasn’t going to admit that I was probably just wrong about his name. Meter was fine, but his initial attitude hadn’t really given me much confidence in him. Maybe he’d earn it later, like Graciana. Even if she’d just been guessing about the curse, sometimes randomly correct ideas were what you needed from people. If nothing else, some people could inspire the right line of thought by not being too timid to bring up ideas without strong reasoning.

  Intuition was a very real thing. Sometimes, people knew more than they could say they knew.

  Riala and I grabbed Meter- and also Evija ‘because she likes magic stuff’. Honestly, that was a great reason. I just hoped her gear wouldn’t be closely inspected as we approached the teleportation building.

  They sure had a lot of guards. I saw at least a dozen in the short trip through the front door and down a hallway, and then there were more inside the central chamber. But nobody stopped us. The only thing we got was a guard captain of some sort greeting Riala. “Y- Madam Riala!” There was that word again. I should have listened for it more. I was still betting it was something like ‘Ye of Impaling Enemies’ or something. A very specific title? Sure. But the people here seemed like they’d be into that.

  Every good country should have a head impaler. Doubly so if they were demons- though it seemed these people here just shared visuals. I wasn’t an expert on fiends, but they should feel… different. And the angels were experts, and seemed to think they were fine. I could understand their leaders slipping by, but every random civilian? Well, common soldiers really. We’d barely encountered anyone that could actually be called a civilian except maybe some of the book thieves.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The whole room was a big teleportation nexus. It didn’t have separate alcoves like Extra, where they expected people going in and out frequently. In fact, while we were observing, only one group came and went in each direction, filling up a large part of a big circle in the center of the room. But I was certain the circle wasn’t the strict limit of the facility’s teleportation capabilities.

  Relatedly, I’d also ‘snuck’ Midnight in. He needed to observe teleportation stuff too. He could compare it to how well Celmothians did. It certainly seemed less convenient, but it might have its own upsides.

  The walls were engraved with various materials. I couldn’t say what they all did, but I knew enchantments held better on certain materials. The Celmothians were using proprietary high-tech materials for their embassy- the construction was probably being held up by our absence- but there were probably an infinite number of options that could still be effective to some extent.

  I hoped Midnight recorded as much as he could, though some of what we encountered couldn’t be picked up by any standard recording equipment. Magical signatures were something we would have to remember for the moment… though I was sure someone like Vilhelmiina could have found a way to record them. Maybe I should find an excuse to contact her again. I wondered if I wasn’t supposed to show her Ignis so that she could pretend she didn’t know what happened there.

  “This is amazing,” I said honestly. I only understood a tiny portion, but I knew that I couldn’t teleport here- in or out- without something special. I didn’t even think about the consequences of the latter until a different time, my focus more on learning what I could. “These pillars stabilize things, maybe?” I wasn’t supposed to know how these worked, and Riala had brought me here to fill my curiosity.

  “Look at these runes!” Meter said, kneeling down just outside of the circle. “They’re so intricate! It must have taken forever to make this place.”

  “Not all that long, really,” Riala said. “A good crew of skilled craftsmen can make something like this in a decade.”

  That was a long time. I couldn’t complain too much about how long people got to live when I was still young, though.

  Reviewing the whole place in a couple hours would be impossible. Riala seemed to be getting bored… and we had at least taken recordings of everything with Midnight’s tech. Like we were spies, which might technically be what we were. Though not sent by anyone the people here expected.

  -----

  We didn’t stay long in Shimmer City, but I noticed something interesting as we left. I could finally place my finger on the weird feeling once it was gone. Something had been drawing us towards it… but once we were beyond that feeling focused on another destination. The capital, or a decoy? Maybe the capital was a decoy. Magic like this… would it be to protect civilians? Cities with important infrastructure? Would people who were less magically sensitive be able to detect it, or resist it?

  I could probably do it, now that I knew. But we were also following Riala to our destination, so it didn’t really matter. She was either going to the decoy, or she wasn’t.

  The woman couldn’t sit still. Seriously, when she wasn’t striding back and forth along the lengths of our wagons she was sitting in one messing around with Telekinesis, grabbing random rocks or her spears or whatever she felt like. Though she did seem to leave other people’s stuff alone for the most part. Unless she was teasing them. Or… training them?

  “Come on Raman!” she said. “I’m barely holding it! You can snag it back!”

  One of his javelins was way up in the air. It wouldn’t really be an issue of power for him there, but of distance. I thought he’d get upset about the situation, but he actually took it pretty well. He did cheat a little by climbing as high as he could on a wagon and jumping to extend his reach, but I couldn’t fault creative problem solving. At least he pushed his actual grabbing range a little.

  People were growing fast with proper instruction available. It made me wonder whether Zuresh had been rushing things by sending us out after a few days, or if the combat was really important and people would have gone back to more… instructive lessons. I learned a couple neat things with Meter during the days at the castle, but they were really thin on details. There had also been no way to study without the assigned masters around.

  My best indication of level growth for the teens was their mana levels improving. It didn’t seem this local world had a concept of strict mana points, but I could go with how my world worked. It seemed people had gone from level 0 to level 4 or 5 now. It wasn’t amazing, but the growth was quite observable. And they were getting more efficient, so even if they only had half again as much mana as at level 0, they could do two or three times as many spells or other moves in the same period.

  Then mana would recover quickly, and they could start again. Usually they engaged in physical tasks in between, though of course on the road sometimes they were just sitting in the wagon.

  I wondered how they would compare to Jerome. Obviously he was more advanced than them at this current moment- he’d been learning for a couple years instead of a couple weeks- but he might not have any special talent. Aside from the ability to work hard once anyone believed he could be intelligent. Maybe it would be good to introduce them once we got back to Earth. Jerome could use more friends, and they could use someone closer to their age with experience. Even Ramen wasn’t as bad as he’d seemed right when we arrived- his negative reactions understandable due to the stress of being abducted to another world.

  -----

  As we continued on, I spent a lot of time staring at the sky. Sometimes I saw birds. Sometimes I saw things that weren’t birds, like more Snatchers. But it was a small group of fliers, and Riala said they weren’t a concern like that.

  Then I saw something else. A tiny little thing fluttering about. No wait, I’d been through this before. I waited for Riala to be heading towards the back then grabbed a pair of binoculars for just a moment. Yeah, that wasn’t something small up close. It was something huge far away.

  “Hey Riala,” I said. “I think I see a dragon.”

  She vaulted over the wagon, ‘landing’ next to me as she hovered. “Where?” I pointed. “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. Red?”

  “Burning Calamity? Boiling Blood?” I didn’t know. She shook her head. “I just hope it’s not a Sower of Chaos.”

  “... What’s that last one?” I asked.

  “It’s fine. They’re incredibly rare, and they aren’t really red. It’s more of a…” she thought for a moment as she looked off into the distance.

  “A point in space where your eyes blot out what you saw?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that. You’ve seen one before, then?”

  “... No.”

  Riala sighed. “Dammit.”

  “How bad are they?” I asked.

  “They can easily topple a village. Cities can withstand them with minimal casualties, usually.”

  I wondered how many minimal was… but it probably didn’t matter. I’d seen how many guards were on Shimmer City’s walls, and how they fought the Snatchers. They had been swarmed, but still stood strong. It seemed that one of these dragons was a greater risk… which wasn’t a surprise.

  Riala gave me a look, like she was pondering something. Then she shook her head. “I’m going to have to go take it down.”

  “... Alone?”

  “Can you fly?”

  “No wings,” I gestured. Even that might have been too much. “What sort of danger does it pose? Elemental? Claws?”

  “Indeed.”

  “What kind of elements?”

  “Any or all of them.”

  Ugh. I had no idea how to make either Energy Ward or Stoneskin look like normal casting. “Can’t we just hit it from the ground?”

  “Do you have a range of a half mile?”

  With Meteor Swarm? Yeah. I didn’t have any lightning spells that would go that far, though. I was pretty sure the tomes I had were lacking in that department too. “It’s not that high yet, is it? I could start with a lightning bolt.”

  “It won’t be that effective anyway,” Riala pointed out. “It’s resistant to every element.”

  “Sounds like cheating,” I said. What else could I do? I might get Ignis to fly up there in wind form. But Riala really needed defensive enchantments. If she died, we wouldn’t get anything she had promised. Also, I kind of liked her.

  Getting her to not try to take down the dragon didn’t seem like a viable option. It was a shame we couldn’t just sic our angels on it. If we did, we might as well just cast Fly on other people.