Cool earth pressed against his palms.
Nick inhaled instinctively and froze when the breath entered cleanly.
The air smelled of pine and damp soil, with something faintly floral carried beneath it. A breeze moved across his face, cool enough that his skin prickled beneath it, and somewhere overhead a bird called through the rustling leaves.
None of it made sense.
His eyes opened.
Sunlight filtered through a canopy of green, scattering across the forest floor in shifting patches of gold. Ferns crowded around the roots of enormous trees, while moss climbed their trunks in pale blue streaks he didn’t recognize.
Nick remained on his hands and knees.
His chest didn’t hurt.
He drew another breath, deeper this time, and felt his lungs fill without obstruction. There was no blood bubbling somewhere beneath his ribs, no broken bones grinding against another, no burning timber driven through his chest.
Slowly, Nick sat back.
His clothes were intact. So was the skin beneath them.
He turned his hand over and stared.
The scars were gone.
The pale line across his right palm from the Siege of Gaerun had disappeared. So had the burn encircling his wrist from the fight against Alice, along with dozens of smaller marks he had stopped noticing years ago.
Nick flexed his left hand.
Every finger moved.
His thumb trembled.
For a long moment, he simply rubbed the pad of it against his forefinger and felt the faint ridges of his own skin.
Seven years.
It had been seven years since he could feel that.
He pressed two fingers against his sternum, then slid them beneath his shirt and traced along his ribs. The old breaks were gone. So was the ridge beneath his shoulder where bone had healed badly enough that Seren had once threatened to break it again simply so she could set it properly.
His breathing began to quicken.
Nick closed his eyes and forced it back under control.
Then he reached inward.
Mana answered.
The amount was pitiful.
He nearly laughed from the sheer absurdity of it.
The reserves he found were a fraction of what he had possessed before, barely enough to deserve the name, yet the current itself moved through him with an ease he had forgotten was possible. His pathways were narrow and undeveloped, the channels little more than faint currents running through flesh that had never been trained to carry significant power.
They were also clean.
There were no dead sections forcing the mana around them. No scar tissue narrowing the flow. No old damage threatening to split apart the moment he applied too much pressure.
Nick opened his eyes.
For the first time in a decade, there was no pain anywhere in his body.
He should’ve felt relief.
Instead, Seren filled his thoughts.
He saw her standing beyond the flames, silver mana tearing through the suppression field around their collapsing house. He remembered the fear on her face when she saw him, the sound of his name beneath the roar of the fire, and the burning beam punching through his chest before he could reach her.
His hand tightened against the earth.
He had died.
There was no uncertainty in the memory. Nick had watched too many people die, and had come close enough himself often enough.
Yet the sun warmed his face.
A bird continued singing somewhere above him.
Nick looked through the forest and found nothing he recognized.
The trees were unfamiliar. Pale blue moss covered several trunks, and a cluster of small white flowers near his knee folded their petals inward when his shadow passed across them.
He rose carefully.
It felt wrong.
His body was lighter without the accumulated stiffness and damage that had followed him for years, but the movement also revealed how little strength remained beneath the healthy flesh. His balance was sound and every joint moved cleanly, yet the body itself possessed none of the conditioning his instincts expected.
Nick lowered into a shallow stance and moved through several basic motions, testing his reach and weight distribution before driving a short punch into empty air.
The technique was correct.
The result was embarrassing.
He stared at his fist.
Mana stirred when he reached for it, and the old response came so naturally that he almost failed to notice what he was doing. Power flowed toward his shoulder and began spreading through muscle and bone according to patterns he had refined over most of his adult life.
Nick stopped it.
The mana dispersed.
He stood quietly beneath the trees, watching his hand.
It would work.
Of course it would.
This body was weaker, and its channels were barely developed, but the underlying principles had not changed. He could reinforce the muscle, stabilize the joints, force more power through the movement, and begin building his way back toward what he had once been.
He could also remember exactly where that road ended.
Nick flexed his fingers once more and felt every one of them answer.
“No.”
He had spent too much of one life destroying his body to begin another the same way.
Assuming this was another life.
A twig snapped somewhere behind him.
Nick turned immediately, one hand moving toward the sheath that should have rested on his side.
His fingers closed on empty air.
Whatever had happened to him had restored his body and clothes, but apparently his equipment had been excluded from the arrangement. He had no gun, no sword, no knife, and nothing else he would have normally considered useful.
Voices carried through the trees.
“Over here!”
“I smell smoke.”
“Spread out. Boss might’ve come back.”
Nick moved behind the trunk of a broad tree and listened.
There were several of them. Heavy footfalls disturbed the brush from more than one direction, accompanied by the occasional scrape of metal against bark. Whoever they were, they made no meaningful attempt to conceal their approach.
Nick crouched and picked up a stone.
It wasn’t much, but he had started battles with less.
A man appeared between the trees a few moments later.
He wore a dirty brown coat over patched trousers and carried a rusted sword loosely in one hand. A white strip of cloth covered his hair, while a thick beard obscured the lower half of his face.
The stranger passed within ten paces without noticing him.
Nick watched the way he moved.
The sword sat poorly in his grip, while most of his weight remained too far back over his heels. Even before the man reached the edge of the clearing, Nick was reasonably certain he had never received serious training with the weapon.
Killing him would have been easy.
Nick stepped into view instead.
The man jerked around.
Nick tossed his rock aside and raised his empty hands.
“I am Nicholas Draegan. State your name and affiliation.”
The stranger stared.
His gaze traveled across Nick’s clothes before returning to his face.
“What?”
“Your name,” Nick repeated. “And affiliation.”
Suspicion replaced confusion.
The man raised his sword.
Nick saw the attack long before the blade moved. His shoulder tightened, his hips committed too early, and his weight shifted forward until there were only a handful of ways the swing could reasonably develop.
Nick stepped aside and caught his wrist.
At least, that had been the intention.
His grip slipped.
The man’s arm jerked halfway free before Nick adjusted and struck the nerve above the elbow with two knuckles before driving his palm sharply beneath the man’s chin.
The stranger collapsed.
Nick stared down at him.
That should have been cleaner.
His timing remained intact, along with the instincts that told him precisely where and when to move. His body simply couldn’t keep pace with them yet.
“I found him!”
Nick looked toward the shout.
Men emerged between the trees until nearly a dozen surrounded him, several carrying swords or axes in varying stages of neglect. An archer lingered farther back, partially concealed between two trunks.
They spread around Nick without much coordination.
He let them.
A thickset man carrying a chipped axe pushed his way toward the front.
“Well, well.” His eyes lingered on the unconscious man at Nick’s feet. “What do we have here?”
Nick examined the group while he spoke.
Most wore the same white bandanas, along with matching tattoos on their right arms depicting an axe-horned unicorn. Their clothing was mismatched, their equipment poorly maintained, and judging from the smell drifting toward him, several of them had discovered alcohol some time before noon.
“Our boss went missing,” the thickset man continued. “Then we smell fire and find some stranger wandering around our territory. Bit suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Your territory?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you with the kingdom? Or maybe remnants from the holy empire?”
“The kingdom!” the man laughed.
Nick looked across the collection of rusted weapons and improvised armor. One of them appeared to be wearing two different boots.
“No,” Nick decided. “Probably not.”
Several of the others laughed with him.
“Adventurers?”
That amused them even more.
“Mercenaries?”
The thickset man grinned.
Nick studied him for another moment.
A possibility occurred to him that he would have preferred to dismiss, but very little about the morning encouraged optimism.
“Are you bandits?”
It wasn’t possible.
Seren and Aurelia had set out to end the bandit problem for good.
Once those two set out, it was no longer possible for bandits to exist.
The man placed one hand over his chest.
“I prefer Alternative Revenue Specialists.”
Someone behind him snorted.
“Independent Wealth Managers,” another man offered.
Nick closed his eyes.
He had died, awakened in an unknown forest inside a body that appeared to have been reconstructed from scratch, and within ten minutes encountered professional thieves with matching tattoos.
“Bandits,” Nick repeated.
“If you want to be rude about it.”
Nick stepped forward before the man could finish raising his axe.
He slipped inside the swing, drove two fingers into the hollow beneath the man’s throat, and caught his weapon arm as the breath vanished from him. A sharp twist forced the man’s grip open, allowing Nick to catch the falling axe and drive his knee into the outside of the bandit’s leg.
The joint folded.
An arrow hissed past Nick’s head.
He had seen the archer draw and was already moving when another bandit rushed him from the left.
Nick caught the incoming sword against the axe haft and turned the blade aside before burying the axe beneath the attacker’s ribs. The weapon lodged there stubbornly enough that he abandoned it and stepped away as three more men closed in.
*Ding*
=You have defeated (1) Bandit=
Something chimed inside his skull and a translucent line of text appeared across his vision. Nick had just enough time to recognize that neither belonged there before the next bandit attacked.
He could read the bandits easily. Their eyes moved toward openings before their weapons followed. Their feet committed too early, and every strike carried enough unnecessary motion to advertise itself long before it became dangerous.
Knowing where the attacks were going did not make Nick faster.
A sword scraped across his shoulder when his foot failed to clear the line in time. Someone else caught him across the mouth with the back of a fist, snapping his head sideways hard enough that pain flashed through his jaw.
The man smiled.
Nick broke his nose.
A bowstring thrummed from somewhere behind the others. Nick dropped beneath the arrow and snatched a fallen sword from the ground as he moved.
The weapon was badly balanced and had an edge that would have embarrassed an apprentice smith.
It still felt reassuringly familiar.
The next bandit lunged.
Nick redirected the thrust, stepped past him, and opened the man’s throat with a short cut that required very little strength.
=You have defeated (1) Bandit=
Warmth gathered somewhere to his right.
Nick’s attention shifted.
Mana.
A thin man in patched robes stood behind the others with both hands extended. Fire gathered between his palms within a spell structure so crude that Nick could practically see the wasted power spilling away from it.
“Fireball!”
The flame formed.
For an instant, Nick forgot the forest.
The heat became a burning house.
He could hear timber collapsing around him, smell his own flesh beneath the smoke, and see Seren forcing herself through the broken wall.
Mana surged through his body.
Shoulders.
Spine.
Heart.
Lungs.
The old pathways opened before conscious thought caught up.
Nick tore the mana free.
Pain flashed through his chest where the flow had already begun forcing itself through flesh too fragile to sustain it.
The fireball came toward him.
Nick moved too late.
Flame brushed across his left arm and caught his sleeve before he slapped it out.
He looked down.
The skin beneath the cloth had reddened, but the burn was shallow.
His hand was still shaking.
The mage began forming another spell.
Nick stared at him as an idea occurred to him.
He had spent years limiting himself to reinforcement because his damaged pathways could no longer tolerate the strain of shaping mana outside his body.
Those pathways were now untouched.
He raised his hand.
“I’ve always wanted to try this…”
The man hesitated, clearly unsure of what to make of that response.
Nick could feel the next spell assembling now that he knew what to look for. The construction itself was simple enough to follow, relying on a crude gathering of mana followed by an equally crude conversion into heat.
Something chimed inside his skull.
A translucent window appeared in front of him.
=Fireball=
-Active Skill-
->Rank: 1/-
->Description: Throw a fireball.
Fireball.
Nick stared.
A bandit rushed him from the side.
Nick stepped out of the man’s path and struck him across the temple with the pommel without taking his eyes from the window.
The bandit dropped.
Nick read the description again.
“Throw a fireball.”
That was all.
The mage finished preparing his second spell.
Nick raised one hand.
He allowed mana to gather.
The response was immediate.
A structure unfolded around the power before he could shape it himself, assembling with a speed and precision that momentarily distracted him from the men trying to kill him.
Nick examined it.
The framework was already complete.
All the difficult work had been done for him.
He reached into the construct.
The structure resisted.
Nick pushed harder.
The outer layer flexed beneath his control, and the rest of the spell compensated automatically.
His eyebrows rose.
“Huh.”
Seren would have an aneurysm if she could see this.
“Fireball.”
Flames formed above his palm.
The skill attempted to stabilize the spell at what Nick assumed was its intended size, but he compressed the mana before the process could finish. Resistance built through the construct, followed by another adjustment as the system tried to preserve the spell around his interference.
The flame contracted and brightened.
Nick felt his mana reserves plunge.
It was far too inefficient.
He released it anyway.
The fireball crossed the clearing.
The mage had enough time to look confused before the spell struck him.
The explosion painted the tree behind him red.
Silence swept through the clearing.
Nick stared at the remains.
=You have defeated (1) Bandit=
That… had been considerably stronger than expected.
=Fireball has reached Rank 2/-=
Nick looked from the window to the smoking remains of the mage.
“That’s obscenely convenient…”
Someone nearby dropped a sword.
Nick turned toward the sound.
The bandit immediately picked it back up.
“Sorry, uh… sir?”
Nick turned.
The bandit lunged forward.
Nick raised his hand.
“Fireball.”
The man screamed.
This time, Nick adjusted the compression more carefully, allowing the system to maintain more of the structure while he altered the density at its center.
The spell struck the bandit in the chest and hurled what remained of him backward.
Another notification appeared at the edge of Nick’s vision.
He ignored it.
Two men rushed him together while a third attempted to circle behind. Nick caught the first across the throat with his sword, turned through the falling body, and kicked the second hard enough to disrupt his balance.
The third raised his weapon.
Nick extended one hand.
“Fireball.”
The spell detonated at close range.
Nick underestimated the blast.
Heat and blood washed over him as the bandit disappeared backward, forcing Nick to stagger several steps before recovering.
His vision swam.
The inside of his skull felt strangely hollow, while a buzzing pressure gathered behind his eyes.
Nick stopped drawing on his mana immediately.
Almost nothing remained.
That sensation, at least, was familiar.
Different body.
Same stupidity.
Several translucent windows waited at the edge of his vision.
=You have defeated (3) Bandits=
=Fireball has reached Rank 3/-=
Nick wondered briefly how to dismiss them.
The windows vanished.
He blinked.
Apparently that was enough.
The remaining bandits had stopped attacking.
Nick looked around the clearing.
A sword slipped from someone’s hand. Another man lowered his axe, reconsidered, and let it fall beside him.
Within seconds, weapons were striking the ground throughout the group.
“We surrender!”
Nick rested the stolen sword against his shoulder.
The first man he had knocked unconscious was awake again and had chosen to remain on the ground while slowly raising both hands. The thickset leader clutched his injured knee several paces away, his earlier confidence thoroughly gone.
Nick wiped blood from his cheek.
His shoulder ached where the sword had grazed him. His jaw throbbed. The burn along his forearm stung every time the breeze touched it, and his mana reserves were nearly empty.
It was still the healthiest he had felt after a battle in years.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Nick pointed toward the thickset man.
“You.”
The bandit swallowed.
“Yes?”
“You said your boss disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“You have a hideout?”
Regret passed visibly across the man’s face.
Nick waited.
“…Yes.”
“Take me there.”
The bandit glanced toward what remained of his mage.
“Absolutely… Sir.”
***
The hideout was less impressive than Nick expected.
A dozen tents occupied a clearing between several enormous trees, surrounded by stolen wagons, stacked crates, cooking equipment, and enough discarded bottles to suggest the organization had been approaching bankruptcy through alcohol alone.
The surviving bandits entered first.
Nick followed with the stolen sword resting against one shoulder.
Men and women emerged from the tents as they approached. One particularly large woman stepped out holding a half-roasted chicken and stopped chewing when she saw him.
Everyone looked toward the thickset bandit.
He raised both hands.
“Management change.”
Nick looked at him.
The man reconsidered.
“A… temporary management change.”
“Get everyone out here.”
The order spread quickly.
Within a minute, nearly two dozen people had gathered near the center of the camp. Nick studied them while they assembled, paying particular attention to the tents and wagons around the clearing.
He saw no prisoners.
That improved their immediate life expectancy immensely.
A man stumbled from one of the tents after everyone else had gathered, visibly drunk enough that crossing the short distance required far more concentration than it should have.
“What’d I miss?”
He noticed Nick.
Then he noticed everyone else standing with their hands raised.
The drunk considered the situation and slowly lifted his own hands.
“Right.”
Nick nodded.
These bandits seemed to possess fairly good survival instincts.
“Is this everyone?”
The thickset man nodded quickly.
“Everyone who’s here.”
“The rest?”
“Our boss took a few people with him.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
Nick looked toward the crates stacked around the camp.
“Then let’s begin with something easier. Everything you have that can be eaten, worn, traded, used as a weapon, or reasonably described as valuable goes into the center.”
Nobody moved.
Nick raised one hand.
The camp erupted into activity.
He almost laughed.
The pile grew rapidly as the bandits surrendered food, blankets, coins, weapons, arrows, rope, and several bottles containing liquids that Nick suspected would qualify as poison.
A scrawny man eventually approached carrying a leather-bound book.
He held it with the solemn expression of someone surrendering a beloved pet.
Nick took it from him.
Symbols filled the pages.
He recognized none of them.
That was less encouraging.
“What is this?”
“A… skillbook, your lordship.”
Nick looked up.
The man flinched.
“A what?”
“A skillbook, sir. It teaches a skill.”
Nick opened the book again and examined the unfamiliar writing.
“How?”
The bandit looked uncertain.
“You… read it?”
Nick stared at him.
“Yes, that was my general understanding of books.”
“I mean you use it.” The man hurried to clarify. “The system teaches you the skill.”
Nick looked back down.
That was considerably more interesting.
He turned the page slowly.
This so-called system had already demonstrated an ability to construct a spell around his mana without requiring him to understand the underlying process. Apparently it could also extract something from a written object and transfer the result directly to a person.
“How common are these?”
“Skillbooks?”
“Yes.”
The bandit shrugged cautiously.
“Depends on the skill, I ‘spose.”
If that were true, Seren would have dismantled these to figure out how they worked, and then she probably would’ve banned them as an abomination against the proper pursuit of magic.
Nick tossed the book onto the growing pile.
“Keep bringing things.”
The man hurried away.
Nick watched him go before looking down at his burned forearm.
The skin had reddened further.
Mana stirred faintly beneath the injury, and his instincts immediately supplied several ways to compensate if the arm became unusable.
He ignored them.
This world had just shown him another mechanism for acquiring power.
He intended to understand it before deciding how much of his old life needed to follow him into this one.
When the bandits finally finished emptying their stores, Nick dragged a wooden chair toward the remains of an old campfire and sat.
The thickset man remained standing nearby.
Nick gestured toward another chair.
“Sit.”
He obeyed.
“What is your name?”
“Cal.”
“Cal what?”
“Just Cal.”
“Sure. You said your boss disappeared?”
Cal’s expression tightened.
“He went to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“A vampire.”
Nick waited.
Cal seemed to expect a reaction.
When none came, confusion gradually replaced his nervousness.
“What?”
“You said that as though I should understand the significance.”
Cal stared at him.
“You don’t know what a vampire is?”
“I know what the word means. That isn’t what I asked.”
“Oh.”
Cal scratched his beard.
“A vampire came here maybe four days ago, or five. Boss talked with her alone, then packed some supplies and took three people with him. Said he’d be back the next morning.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Do vampires commonly recruit bandit chiefs?”
Cal shifted in his chair.
“Not really.”
“Then you were concerned.”
“Concerned enough to send people looking.”
Nick glanced toward the forest behind them.
“The group that found me.”
Cal nodded.
Nick leaned back.
The chair creaked beneath his weight.
He knew almost nothing about where he had landed. He didn’t know the country, the political structure, the local dangers, why he could understand people whose writing was completely foreign to him, or what rules governed the mysterious system that had appeared in front of him.
More importantly, he still had no explanation for why he was alive.
The obvious response was caution.
Gather information. Find civilization. Learn how the system worked before making assumptions about it. Determine what counted as dangerous in a place where books apparently taught supernatural abilities.
Nick looked toward the pile of stolen supplies.
Then toward the bandits surrounding him.
They were unlikely to be scholars, but people who made a living robbing travelers tended to know roads, settlements, patrol schedules, merchants, and every place nearby where civilized people preferred not to travel.
That made them useful.
“I need information,” Nick said.
Cal nodded quickly.
“We’ve got information.”
“You also need supplies.”
The enthusiasm faded from Cal’s face.
Nick gestured toward the pile.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. You answer my questions. If your answers are useful, I’ll leave enough food and equipment for you to survive after I’m gone.”
Several people nearby visibly relaxed.
Cal hesitated.
“And if they’re not useful?”
Nick raised a finger, experimenting with the Fireball skill. He allowed the construct to form just enough to conjure flames, then interrupted the process and snatched the converted mana.
A flame danced across his fingers before quickly fading.
Cal stared at the flames.
“Useful answers,” he said. “Understood.”
Nick settled more comfortably into the chair.
His body ached from the fight, though the sensation was almost pleasant compared to what he had considered normal only hours ago. His mana reserves were nearly empty and he had no idea where he was.
However, he felt as though he had enough pieces to begin asking the right questions.
There were dozens he wanted answered, ranging from the nature of the system to the identity of whatever political authority claimed the surrounding territory.
Those could wait.
One possibility mattered more.
Nick folded his hands.
“Let’s start with the important one.”
Cal swallowed.
“All right.”
Nick had traveled to every corner of Earth and fought in every territory. There was nowhere left for a forest like this to hide from him.
Which left one possibility he would have laughed at yesterday.
If he had somehow been brought to another world, then there was probably a reason for it.
His own world had certainly needed saving.
“Is there currently some world-ending threat?”
The bandits exchanged confused glances.
Nick continued.
“A demon king or an ancient evil? Maybe a sealed god or some sort of extradimensional invasion? Is there something expected to destroy civilization unless a particular person intervenes?”
Cal stared at him.
Nick leaned forward slightly.
“More specifically, has anyone recently summoned a hero from another world?”
Silence settled across the camp.
Cal slowly opened his mouth.
“…Huh?”
