“We thought you’d gotten lost,” Ressa said as soon as we walked into the dorm.

  “Just working hard,” Ellaazi said. “We both got another level, and we both made working Radiant Glow rods!”

  Ressa’s eyes widened, then glazed over as she no doubt confirmed our level increases.

  “Magnificent,” Yoru said cheerfully, coming over to pat both of us on the backs. And you got back just in time for evening meal! We thought we were going to have to go without you.”

  “And after,” Ellaazi said, “I’m breaking out my stash of Jagga to celebrate.”

  Yoru clapped his hands together. “You are officially my favorite Nyvren!”

  The news of Jagga seemed to cheer everyone up, and the mood over dinner was jubilant. That only increased as we returned to our dorm.

  It turned out that Jagga was a drink. I accepted my cup, sniffed it, and found the crimson liquid inoffensive. It had a vague cent of treacle. I watched as the others knocked theirs back, all seated comfortably on the sofas of our room, and with a shrug, I copied.

  I expected the warm fuzz of alcohol, but apart from a syrupy sweet taste that coated the mouth, I felt nothing. I should have asked more questions.

  I tried to ask more questions, but when I opened my mouth, my jaw dropped and wouldn’t work. Within seconds, drool began to run out from the corner of my mouth like a slug making its way down to my chin. It was official. I didn’t like Jagga. Paralyzed but still fully aware, this was my idea of hell.

  Then I was in a barren landscape under a bright red sky the color of the drink.

  A strange slurping noise came from behind me. Thankfully, my body worked now, so I spun to see what it was. I came face to face with a giant slug. Green and orange, twice my size and utterly disgusting.

  I backed off for a few steps until the slug opened its massive mouth, revealing rows of long, sharp teeth that had no place in such a creature. The sight was enough to set me off running and frantically searching for anything that could be used as a weapon on the dusty floor.

  A glint of metal appeared to my right, and I dove for it, desperate and hopeful that it was something useful.

  It was a dagger.

  As I rolled to my feet, I roared to the red sky. “Seriously?”

  It looked like the dagger I’d tried to get from the Hunter’s thigh when I was first captured. It appeared that I needed to be more specific in my wishes.

  “Give me a massive axe or something! Anything but a dagger!

  A beautiful, double-bladed battle axe appeared ahead of me. I snatched it up, staggered a little as I felt the full weight, then turned to fight.

  “Come on then, ya bastard!”

  And come it did, growing in size and speed as it approached. What a shitty way to die, I lamented. Still, I’d go down fighting.

  I swung the axe, and it bit deep into the slug’s maw, slicing deep. Then I threw myself to the side to avoid its approach as it shot past. My trailing leg was trapped under the slimy titan as it passed, and the sensation made me want to vomit.

  It turned in a wide arc to come after me again. Sticky legged, I sat up and cursed. Why didn’t I pick a fucking assault rifle?

  I then gaped as the axe transformed into an SA80, the same assault rifle I used on Earth. To be honest, that was the moment I realized I was actually hallucinating. What the hell was in that drink? And why would I choose a rifle if I could have a tank?

  I was sitting inside of a Challenger 2, laughing hysterically. I looked down the scope to see the mega slug still coming. I fired off a shot expecting to see the slug burst into a thousand pieces, and that’s exactly what happened. The air turned into slugnado.

  A horrible thought popped into my head. Urgh, imagine if those little bits turn into new slugs.

  I screamed internally. Stop thinking horrible things!

  It was too late. Thousands of sharp-toothed slugs rained down from the sky, landing all over the tank.

  No, no, no. I closed my eyes. “I’m on a beach. I’m on a beach,” I repeated calmly and absolutely not hysterical.

  Warm sand nestled between my toes, and cool water washed over my feet. I opened my eyes to find myself on a beach. I looked down in my hand to find my cocktail of choice, an icy Old-Fashioned ready to drink. The sun beat down on my skin, and the sound of waves lapping on the shore was like music to my ears. I took a sip of the drink and smiled. Now this was more like it.

  Stay positive, Adam. And whatever you do, don’t think about thousands of slugs. The ground was covered in thousands of slugs biting at my feet. I screamed in terror and desperation.

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  Something popped, and I reappeared in our dorm room, sitting on the couch, mouth still hanging open. Torma, Ellaazi, and Ressa were all spaced out. Only Yoru was still lucid and watching me with amusement.

  “Everything okay, Adam Henshaw?”

  “No, that was absolutely horrible. I can see why you didn’t take any.”

  “Oh, I did,” the big man said with a smile. “But it doesn’t have the same effect on me. It just relaxes my synapses. It looks to have had a very strong effect on you.”

  I groaned and slumped back in the chair. “I just wish someone had warned me about the hallucinations. If I’d known, I’d have only thought of nice things, but once the slugs appeared, I had no chance.”

  “Perhaps further warnings should have been given. Jagga is one of the most popular recreational drugs across the Union, and its effects are very well known. It’s hard to remember that you are not from Union-controlled territory.

  “Yeah,” I grumbled. “I feel pretty tired after that too.”

  “It does relax you, though you have been very busy for your first circuit. And not getting to rest on your free day is tough when you first start. Hopefully, next week will be better and you won’t be given classes to catch upon.”

  I winced as a headache began. “I’ll take all the extra classes I can if it helps me improve faster. I’ve got too much to do to be idle.”

  “Ah, your escape plan back home?”

  I glowered at Ressa. “She told you?”

  “She did, yes. Ressa and I are close, and I know how excited she is to escape the Union and her family. I hope you are successful, though I will miss her when she is gone.”

  I frowned. He was so matter of fact about it. “You sound as though it’s a forgone conclusion.”

  “With Ressa, it most likely is. As long as you follow her lead once in the Hunter’s hall, you should be fine. Her brother is a great mage, and he will get you in undetected. I see very little room for error. The hardest part will be her convincing him. She gets on well with most of her siblings, but she worries he might not be happy with her leaving for so long.”

  My head was spinning a little now. “Leaving for so long? The portal only opens once every fifty or so years. We’ll be dead or close to it when it reopens.”

  It was Yoru’s turn to frown. “You do not look so old, Adam. Ressa is only 30 Union turns. She will be in her prime in fifty years.”

  I gaped. “How long will she live?”

  “That depends on how powerful she becomes, but even unascended Velorians live for approximately a 180.”

  “Well that puts a whole different spin on things! And you? How old do your people reach?”

  “Unascended Thuris live for around three hundred years.”

  “And ascended?” I asked.

  “Again, that depends entirely on the level of power you attain. You do understand that as an ascended, providing you aren’t in any fatal incidents, that you will live for a considerably long time?”

  “No. I didn’t realize that at all.”

  “Then welcome to the club of the long lived. I should warn you that while you can still level once you reach your own natural lifespan that ability will decrease dramatically. So get your leveling done in good time. How long do Earthers live?”

  “We call ourselves humans,” I replied, more to return the favor than because I cared about the distinction. “And honestly, as an average across our planet, it’s about seventy-four. Don’t quote me on that. And some areas have longer life expectancy. Plenty live into their eightieth year. Not very many make it past a hundred.”

  He winced. “That is incredibly short. How old are you?”

  “I’m 21 Earth years, but from what I gather, they’re not the same as Union years.”

  “Do you have any time measurements that match ours?”

  “Yeah, we do actually. We’re the same up to hours for some reason. Why we used sixty is beyond me.”

  Yoru tilted his head slightly, a smile spreading across his face. “Perhaps I can educate you a little then. I do love mathematics, and 60 is a fascinating number. It is the lowest superior highly composite number, with twelve divisors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60.”

  I nodded, trying to follow along. “So...?”

  Yoru looked positively excited with the subject. “It’s allows for a highly divisible time system. Think of all the segments we split it to!”

  I began to understand. “So it’s just easier to break time into smaller pieces?”

  “Exactly! It is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. In our system, we would call this the lowest common multiple of those numbers.”

  “That’s... pretty convenient,” I said, reflecting on how the system made sense in a way that I hadn’t thought about before.

  Yoru’s eyes gleamed with a hint of approval. “Indeed. The Thuris use a base-12 system for time, but the Union adopted the same system as you for its elegance and simplicity.”

  I hadn’t expected such a lesson, and I suspected if I hadn’t just leveled in Mental Acuity, Yoru’s little trip down mathematics lane would have done the job and he wasn’t finished.

  “How many hours in an Earth day, and how many days in a turn of your sun?”

  With my headache, it possibly wasn’t the best time for the conversation, but I humored him. “Twenty-four hours in a day, and three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, give or take a very small margin that isn’t worth discussing.”

  His happy expression hardened. “Tell me!”

  “We need an extra day every four years to make up the difference.”

  “And how many days past 21 are you?”

  I had to think now, and I didn’t like it as all I wanted to do was sleep. I was five months and a few weeks past my twenty-first. I couldn’t be bothered to work it out accurately, so I gave an estimate around one hundred and eighty days.

  He rubbed his face then seemed to sink into some deeper state. “So we’re looking at approximately one hundred and eighty-eight thousand hours. A Union day is twenty hours, with three hundred days a year, which means you are approximately 31 Union years. That actually makes your life expectancy a little older than I first thought.”

  “Same age as Ressa, too. More or less,” I pointed out.

  “Yes. We are all of a similar age. I am 28 turns old. Torma is 33, and Ellaazi is 26.”

  “Wow, that’s young.” I tried to work out how old that made Ellaazi, but I failed quickly.

  “Around 18 in your years,” Yoru said. “Ascended early because her father is a famous Warrior Mage. One of the deadliest in the Union, and it is expected Ellaazi will follow in his footsteps.”

  “When are people normally ascended?”

  “When they reach 26 years of age. Almost every student here apart from the occasional outlier is ascended then. It is a rite of passage among the families that can afford the cost.”

  “Why 26?”

  “Because that is when most races reach physical maturity. Before then, there is a high risk that your base stats will only reach their true potential then. If you are ascended earlier, thus creating a lower base for your stats, it will affect your potential growth for the rest of your life. There is an argument that it should be left another ten years to compensate for maturity in Mental Acuity.” He looked exasperated at his own words. “But it’s no surprise to anyone that Mental Acuity is least valued against physicality and magic!”

  I shook my head and winced from the pain, barely able to keep my eyes open.

  “So is Ellaazi’s father is a great general or something?”

  Yoru laughed. “The great Aazi Stormfront is no mere soldier. He is among the top ten arena fighters in the Union. But I feel this is a place for Ellaazi to speak, and if you don’t mind me saying, Adam, you look like you are about to fall asleep.”

  “I am,” I mumbled. “Let’s pick this up again later.”