The two walked into the store and were immediately greeted with a display right out of a modern day sports hunting store. Tents, fishing poles, and survival gear lined the walls and many racks that made up the sprawling floor. In the back counter, there were no rifles, but rather some sort of magical crossbows sat behind a glass display case.


    Standing in front of them at the counter was a burly man who let out a laugh as soon as he saw the two walk in. “Haha! Neitra! What can I do for ya?”


    “Hi Mr. Awber, just here to pick up some rations, as well as a tent for our newest member.”


    “New member? Glad you’ve made a new friend, you deserve it! Our tents are on display in the back, and our rations should be next to it.”


    “Come on, you know Tommy doesn’t like pemmican, no matter how good the fruits you put in it are,” said Neitra with a smirk while she placed the bag of soft chews on the counter.


    Mr. Awber snagged it with a guffaw and began walking to the back of the store. “I know, I know, I just can’t help myself. Let me grab you a little something from my personal stash.”


    After rummaging around for a minute, the shop owner came back with a small crate of bars.


    “After getting banned from the candy shop, I haven’t been able to enjoy this as much as I would have liked to, so I don’t mind parting with the good stuff for a taste of even better stuff! Especially for such a good cause.” He gave the two a wink.


    After paying for the rations and Artyom’s supplies, the two left the shop and began to head back to the inn.


    “How long have you been in town for?” asked Artyom. “Or did you know those two from before you got here?”


    “We’ve been here for about a week and I only met them a day after we arrived,” replied Neitra.


    “And you got to know the shopkeepers well enough to make the candy transaction a thing in that little time?”


    Neitra shrugged. “I spent a whole day asking around town to figure this all out, and a lot of it was luck.”


    Artyom couldn’t help but feel she was selling herself short; working with people was hard, especially to this degree. Maybe those skills let her carve out a niche in the party that kept the other four from offing her?


    Or maybe she was using those skills to get Artyom’s guard down before she would slit his throat.


    Before Artyom could dwell more on understanding Neitra’s true nature, the duo arrived at the inn.


    Walking through the giant hole at the entrance, they found an especially well dressed man berating the rest of the party. The four women formed a human barricade between him and Tommy, who was the only one to look embarrassed in contrast to the others’ annoyance, and was still wearing the same clothes as this morning.


    “See, what’d I tell you?” whispered Artyom. “Let’s wait outside in case they try to drag us into this.”


    Neitra looked at him unsurely and didn’t move.


    “Money isn’t enough to make up for this, think of the loss of reputation! What noble would want to stay here when it was attacked by a monster?!” shouted the innkeeper. “And what kind of a cut causes blood to spray out hard enough to cover the drapes on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM?!”


    “A cut to the jugular or carotid artery, most likely,” Artyom whispered.


    Neitra’s eyes widened and face reddened, and she immediately disappeared from Artyom’s vision.


    “Shit, Detect Life,” he mumbled, scanning the room around him. To his relief, he saw Neitra’s silhouette just outside the inn right next to the hole in the wall, and snuck away to join her.


    “H-how’d you know I was here?” she asked as soon as Artyom stopped next to her.


    Artyom looked around confused for a moment before focusing in on the source of the sound… and the silhouette generated by his spell.


    “Oh, nevermind,” said Netira, turning off her invisibility.


    To Artyom’s credit, even when he knew she was there, he was surprised enough by her sudden appearance to funnel it into a convincingly shocked expression.


    The two waited until the argument died down and the innkeeper walked off. He sounded pretty satisfied after being given permission to use the hero’s name for his inn’s marketing.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    “What took you two so long?!” shouted Daisy as the duo sauntered into the inn. “Can’t you look after a single newbie, Neitra?”


    “So are we ready to go now?” asked Artyom, cutting in before Neitra could reply in defense.


    “We would be if it weren’t for the innkeeper making such a fuss.”


    “So you’re saying we’re not late?”


    Even from a distance Artyom could see a vein begin to bulge on her forehead.


    “Normally we’d be ready by now, and you two are late by that standard,” said Xerica.


    The two groups stared at each other for several seconds before the silence was suddenly broken.


    “I’m… going to go shower now,” said Tommy, quickly retreating from the festering argument.


    “So we’re not late then. You are,” said Artyom, both flipping the table and spilling whatever was on it all over them in one fell swoop.


    All four of the ladies looked at him with hatred, but he just shrugged and walked past Neitra to an empty seat.


    “You didn’t have to do that,” she whispered. “They would’ve just blamed me for it.”


    “Now we’re even,” replied the man from Earth with a cheeky grin. Besides, the four women already wanted him dead, so pissing them off even more wasn’t going to change his fate.


    They plotted from the shadows. His words struck from the light.


    <hr>


    About twenty minutes passed before Tommy came downstairs. He was dressed in a thin light armor that looked more stylish than protective, but radiated a moderate level of defensive magic.


    “Alright, let’s get going!” he shouted, walking out the hole where the front door once stood.


    A moment before the others got up from their seats to follow, he peeked his head back in with a sheepish grin. “Where exactly are we going?”


    Xerica let out a sigh and shook her head, but her lips were curled into a patient smile. “The next armor piece is located somewhere near and dear to me. It’s where I learned how to work with magic and become the spellcaster I am today.”


    “Like, a magic school?”


    “Holdbright Arcane Academy,” she replied as glittering flames seemingly danced in her eyes. “The kingdom’s premier school for magic!”


    Xerica began to walk out the inn and the others followed behind.


    “A magic school?!” exclaimed Tommy, running up to the front beside her. “That’s so cool! Is it like a giant castle, and the teachers are all super cool and strong?”


    Artyom noticed the red haired woman pause and how her voice began to waver for a fraction of second as she continued.


    “You’ll see, it’s a place that means a lot to me.”


    The group took several winding pathways that, while at first looked to be headed towards the Eastern exit, quickly turned into a winding maze that took them deeper into the city.


    “Do you know where this magic school is?” asked Artyom to Neitra in a whisper. “I’m not sure which direction it’s even in.”


    “We’ll find out once we get to the city the school is in.”


    Artyom couldn’t help but feel her answer didn’t explain things at all. If anything, it just raised even more questions.


    That stack of questions reached their peak and began to topple over as the party stopped in a section of the city between the industrial and tourist districts. Several hotels and warehouses lined the streets, with some obvious tourist trap shops and restaurants dotting the spaces between them. But the most noticeable feature was a large blue crystal floating in the middle of a wide, open space.


    “What the hell is that?” asked Artyom.


    What was meant to be a whisper came out loudly, and the rest of the party turned towards him with looks of disbelief and frustration.


    “You’re acting like you’ve never seen a teleportation crystal before,” said Xerica.


    “But to be fair, looking at it brings even me wonder sometimes,” said Lensa. “For it’s thanks to the goddess’ blessings we have these; only beings with access to her System can interact with it, after all.”


    Artyom remembered the little “chat” he had with the gate guard in front of Count Cabbafor’s manor. He mentioned something about teleportation, and this must have been what he was referring to.


    “Alright, we’re headed to Cape Horn.”


    “Cape Horn?” asked Lensa in a squeak. “That’s my hometown! Could we visit the church I grew up in first?”


    Xerica looked at her with mild impatience, which quickly faded for a kind smile. “Of course! You probably miss your friends from there. Is that fine, Tommy?”


    “Huh? Sure, that’s fine,” he said with some disappointment.


    Artyom silently watched the scene play out in front of him. For all the four ladies could play the mean girls act, they seemed to have their own insecurities. How he would be able to leverage that into keeping himself alive was Artyom’s next question.


    He didn’t have time to think about it now, as the rest of the party approached the crystal and put a hand to it, and a second later they suddenly disappeared.


    “Well, no better time to learn than the present,” siad Artyom as he did the same, waking up to the crystal and placing his own hand on its surface.


    A strange sensation overtook him. He couldn’t describe it, but it tickled whatever part of his brain his [Emissary of Dharma] Skill did when he first unlocked it yesterday.


    “Alright, so… Cape Hope, right?” he mumbled out loud, and then his vision turned white.


    It only lasted for a second but when he came to, he was somewhere entirely different.


    The first thing he noticed was the sound of the coast not being far away.


    Soft waves lapped on rocky shores, and seabirds cawed overhead. The sky was perfectly clear, with the kaleidoscopic sun well above the horizon now, illuminating the sparkling sea in slivers of turquoise green on top of its deep royal blue.


    Green grass beneath Artyom’s feet bent gently as the wind blew the scent of salty waters all the way to where he stood.


    It was the kind of place that called to the part of everyone that yearned for peace, promising it to anyone that would sit down for just a second.


    The man from Earth was tempted to do just that, but before he could feel the grass on his back, he heard a blood-curdling scream.