It was 7Mor the day after our registration and we were standing in a walled-in training field at one of the Exterminator Guild’s training complexes. We were in the shade under the cover of overhanging tree branches. We wouldn’t get any direct overhead sun until around 10Mor.

  The arena was a dirt field 20 by 20 meters with archery targets, punching boards and striking dummies. All of them were enchanted to repair themselves at the end of the day, though we’d have to supply the mana. There was also a wall with a ton of softwood practice weapons to use. Multiples of just about every weapon imaginable were on the racks.

  I looked out over the three sitting on a long bench from where I was standing in the dirt. Lia was in good spirits and Tizek finally looked to be in a better mood after getting decent rest. Void, however, was starting to look like death warmed over. Not only was she up all night, she was bored out of her mind. All she had to do was go into her Guard post and tender her resignation. No one there seemed to care and they ushered her out the door the moment she said she quit. Now Void was looking like she was ready to hit the hay.

  “Alright, let’s get a few things out of the way before we start this thing,” I announced. We had our bundle of weapons still on the ground along with our backpack of gear. I unrolled the canvas wrap, pulled out one of the rapiers and strapped the sheath to my belt.

  Pulling the blade, I drew a long rectangle in the dirt. “I want to give you a little context behind what it means by me being a dud.” I scribbled in the bulk of the long rectangle and left just a small bit at the one end untouched. “This is my mana bar. This little bit at the end here? That’s my current mana pool. The rest? Completely black. It’s why I’m weak and can’t Advance.”

  The three of them looked at the bar I drew on the ground. Lia’s eyes lit up as she was the first to understand. “Hold on. Is this to scale?”

  I nodded. “Fairly accurate, yes.”

  Her mind tried to add up the section and, once more, her poor education was showing. Void spoke up after her mouth opened in shock. “Wait. If that little bit is a child’s mana pool, then this means you’re, let me see, about 1,200%! That’s obscene! And why is it black? I’ve never heard anyone with a black mana bar.”

  I gave them the rundown of what happened to me when I first arrived. “It was hard confirming what black even meant. Most people I asked thought I was crazy. I did manage to figure out it’s usually a result of curses or casting a forbidden spell wrong. As you can imagine, the Mage’s Guild has it kept top secret to avoid anyone figuring out it’s possible to damage a mana bar.”

  “Why don’t we find a way to heal it?” Void asked. “Wouldn’t that make saving the world a lot easier?”

  “It would,” I replied. “Problem is I’ve tried. No one knows how to heal a mana bar. I barely learned about it through my Gully Jack connection. He doesn’t even have an idea of how to heal it.”

  The other three looked dejected. I had the potential to be unbelievably powerful and I was stuck, unable to advance.

  “Look, I’m still a great archer and my skills are my knowledge,” I said, trying to brighten the mood. “On that subject, though, I have something important to say. Starting now, I want you to assume I don’t know much of anything.”

  Tizek cocked his head and his red frills ruffled slightly in confusion. “Why, my lord? You have been alive for centuries.”

  I put my free hand on my hip. “In many ways, my home world is far more advanced than yours. While we don’t have magic, we have studied forces so large and so small you probably can’t comprehend them. I’m actually a very advanced teacher where I’m from. I won’t bore you with the details, but what I’ve learned from my loops is variable causality is real.”

  The three of them didn’t seem to understand. They never did, but this added to the effect. “If I were to hide in the shadows and do nothing, everything in the world would play out the same way on each loop if I observed. However, the moment I start acting, I put into motion little changes.”

  Lia’s hand shot up. “Oh! You mean if you do something different, the effects could change things you expect to happen later?”

  I pointed to her with my rapier. “That’s correct. For instance, those four we bumped into at the Guild Hall? I wasn’t expecting that. I did know who they were and knew how to interact with them, but the expectation I was about to run into them? That’s never guaranteed. The longer time goes on, the harder it is for me to predict anything. So, starting today, assume I can’t predict anything.”

  “Why, my lord?” Tizek asked, still confused why a time traveler can’t perfectly predict the future.

  “Because I’m not the Grand Creator,” I explained. “I need you three to keep me grounded. I’ve gotten used to running on automatic for too long and I can get in trouble. I’m not going to just puppet you around. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

  “You’re saying you can’t predict what I’m going to say?” Void said with an interesting twinkle in her eye.

  “I know you three well enough to get a good idea of what you might be thinking,” I said. “However, like any good relationship, I’m always learning more about each of you and you’re always surprising me. So, no, I won’t be able to predict what you’re about to do. Now that I’ve interacted with you, the future is uncharted.”

  Lia gave me a small smile. “Thanks. It sounds like you trust us.”

  “I do, you’ve earned it from my part. Now, it’s time I earned yours,” I said and leaned down and picked up the greatsword. “We start by handing out weapons. We need to train for our arena bout in four days.”

  “Before we do that,” Void interrupted me. “What is this about all three of us being rated so high? I find it convenient you’ve found three of us.”

  I shrugged. “Look, that’s one thing I really have no clue about. I’m telling you the truth that you’re the only three that I trust and three of the four that believes me. I will never trust Gully Jack. Whatever is responsible for handing me Mulligan is probably the same force that manipulated causality to put me on the track to meet you three.”

  “The Grand Creator?” Lia asked, her eyes bright.

  I didn’t quite believe in a higher power. Of course, that was my old atheist self talking. Routinely seeing a massive interdimensional squid monster rip a hole in reality had made me question my assumptions about the divine a few times. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’ve had this conversation a lot of times and it never goes anywhere. I count myself lucky the three people I want around me also have great potential. Shall we hand out weapons?” All three nodded in agreement.

  Tizek’s eyes lit up when I picked up the sword. His people loved greatswords, great axes and other giant blades. From some of the descriptions Tizek gave me, a few of them bordered on anime-sized. They thought it made them tough. Shame he was disappointed when I walked over to Lia and handed it to her. “This is for you.”

  “My lord? Why isn’t that for me?” Tizek asked with a downtrodden tone on his voice.

  “Yea,” Lia added as she partially unsheathed the wooden blade and looked at the hardened, sharp edge. “I thought you asked for a Rogue starter kit.”

  “Why? Because you were a street kid and an orphan?” I asked Lia.

  She nodded her head. I laughed. “How is it we came to meet?”

  “I was caught shoplifting?” Lia said, framing her statement as a question because she was unsure.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “That’s right,” I said. “You’re a terrible thief. You also have the Stalwart ability and fire attunement. You may think of yourself as a little girl, but you have the potential to be a powerhouse hitter.” Lia stared at the blade with new admiration.

  Next, I leaned down and grabbed the buckler and mace. I also dug through the backpack and picked up a scroll with instructions to cast a basic healing spell. I then handed them to Tizek. “For you, my friend.”

  Tizek gently griped the flanged mace and stared at the buckler like I was trying to hand him a used candy wrapper. I knew it was insulting in his culture to even suggest using a shield. That was something only the skink-clan used.

  “This isn’t an insult,” I said gently. “I know you hate it, but you’ve got the potential to be a great combat medic. We need someone who can get in close, trade blows with the enemy and keep Lia and Void healthy.”

  “Besides,” I said as I flipped the buckler to the back of my hand and jabbed the edge forward like a blade. “This isn’t just there for defense. You can do a lot of damage punching monsters with it. Even defending is more punching a blade away since it’s too small to hide behind.”

  Tizek still wasn’t buying my sales pitch. It usually worked. I guess I didn’t say the right thing this time or my inflection was off. I left the scroll on the bench next to him and looked at Void. “You wouldn’t mind a spar to show Tizek how to use a buckler?”

  Void looked at the remaining weapons and gear on the ground. “Are you saying I’m the Rogue?”

  “Of course,” I confidently replied.

  “Me? The Guardswoman?” Void continued with a tone of disbelief.

  “Former. Besides, I know you spent a lot of time skulking around your guard post at night picking locks on evidence lockers or listening into conversations looking for signs of corruption,” I said with a smirk.

  “Yes, I think I’ll join you in a sparring session,” Void said, not-so-deftly avoiding my statement. “I take it the rapier is for me. Why that one?”

  “Because you’re better with it than an arming sword,” I said. I knew she was looking at an arming sword in the catalog yesterday. She loved that weapon, but she was far defter with the thinner, sharp rapier blade. Especially now that she was no longer in the Guard and didn’t need to keep up appearances.

  Void looked at me and shook her head with a smile. She liked it when I buttered up her skills. She then walked over to the racks and picked up two practice rapiers. I set mine aside and caught the one she threw in my direction. I gave it a little flourish and entered a southpaw stance with my buckler out front.

  “Oh, you seem skilled,” Void said as she entered into her own fencer’s stance.

  “I’ve had some practice,” I replied. “I’ll have to go hard to keep up with you, though.”

  Void gave me a nod, indicating she was prepared to go. I gave a nod in return.

  Fencing against a person in this world is not like what I ever saw in the Olympics. Olympic fencers would be considered reckless and would end up dead very quickly here. This wasn’t a game where the first person who connected got a point. Go in too hard and too fast and you’d end up skewered.

  With rapiers, I had to keep my body as far away from Void as possible while maximizing my range. All of our motions were quick, short slashes and jabs. Her blade and my buckler were rarely ever far apart.

  Void opened up with a quick testing jab in my direction which I redirected away with my bucker. I barely got the buckler in position. Void was quick and no matter how much I practiced, I never seemed to get as good as she was. I could only best her maybe one in ten. She was a master swordswoman and had talents that I couldn’t match with a near limitless amount of practice. I’m more of an archer.

  We circled and she made a quick flick toward my wrist. I quickly batted away the motion with my buckler and followed up with a rapid jab of my own. Because of my stance, my reach was a little shorter and she was able to keep her body away.

  Void followed up with a flurry of short slashes and jabs. I was struggling to keep the blade at bay with the buckler and almost took a hit to the face which I barely avoided. I needed to change up my tactics. It was especially necessary since I was already huffing and my stamina bar was falling fast. Void’s conditioning was far superior to mine, if only because people in this world walked everywhere. She would need training because she was still mostly a desk jockey.

  I switched to a stance where I hid my rapier hand close behind the buckler. When Void jabbed again, I used my buckler to slide her blade up and away while simultaneously leaning forward in a counter-jab of my own. Void weaved out of the way to avoid a strike to the armpit and grabbed my wrist.

  The grapple was what I was hoping for. I punched out hard on my buckler to throw her off balance before quickly swinging in with the edge of the shield. I stopped just before I rammed the shield into her chest. “Got you.”

  Void backed away and gave a quick salute with her practice sword. “I can fully believe you have been going around a while.”

  “I had a great teacher.” I gave her a wink. She really was an amazing teacher.

  “You could have gone easy on me,” she said with her own smirk back at me.

  “I respect you too much to go easy,” I snorted. “Besides, if I didn’t go all out, I’d have lost. I’m lucky I even pulled out that win since you’re exhausted.” That was the truth. I looked at my Stamina bar and saw about half of it was already gone from the exchange. I was badly out of shape.

  “I did almost have you when you messed up that parry,” Void stated with a big yawn. She did almost smack me in the face, after all.

  I turned to look at Lia and Tizek. Lia looked like she wanted to vomit and Tizek was far more thoughtful. “So, Tizek,” I said, “What do you think?”

  “I can try,” he finally said after more thinking. He’d feel better about his weapons after he got to bash a few monsters in the arena.

  “Great. Void? You mind teaching Tizek the healing spell and working on him with his mace?” I asked.

  “Why me?” Void asked.

  “Because I’m supposed to be illiterate. I don’t want someone accidentally seeing me teaching magic when I literally just got here,” I explained.

  Void tapped her muzzle in thought. “Makes sense. Say, can you cast anything? You’ve been here a long time.”

  Magic in this world was mostly cast through manipulation of internal energy. It required complex movements of mana inside the body, the right mindset and motion of the body. These instructions could be laid out in magical scrolls. The problem was each person was subtly different and you had to figure out the nuances of your own mana channels to get them working properly.

  For me? Well, I only knew a couple of simple utility spells useless in combat. I maneuvered my mana in a rough swirl and forced it to roil and formed spiky, flickering shapes. I moved the mass up to my finger a little flame like a lighter lit at the end of my index finger. When I did, I could barely see a flicker of my mana bar as my energy began to drain. “I can do this.”

  “Oh, so if we ever need a stove lit, I know who to ask,” Void joked. “Is that all?”

  “I can blow dry my hair for a few seconds and purify water. That last one saved me a few times since the one thing no one ever prepares you for with being summoned to another world is getting used to the water,” I replied. I spent a lot of time on toilets or hidden in bushes until I learned how to purify water. It even killed me a few times. That was a big reason why most people ended up drinking fruit juice or alcohol.

  Void gave me a knowing smirk and went over to Tizek. I called Lia to me. She was carrying her greatsword and was looking terrified. “Are we going to fight?”

  I belted out a big laugh. “The term is spar and, no, we aren’t doing that. You aren’t remotely ready. Void’s been practicing for almost a decade and I’ve been at it off and on for a while.”

  “But we’re going to be fighting monsters in four days,” Lia said as her posture deflated.

  “Don’t worry. Fighting people and monsters is way different. Monsters are dumb constructs excess magic creates. We don’t have to worry about anything remotely smart unless we travel out to a ley line or a nexus. No one is crazy enough to build a city or town anywhere near those,” I said reassuringly. “Now put that thing down and I’ll get one that won’t hurt if you accidentally hit me. We’ll do some drills and then I’ll set one of the training dummies to run around so you can get used to hitting a moving target.”

  I walked to the rack, picked up a pair of training greatswords and handed one to Lia. The benefit of most weapons in this world being magically treated wood was the training weapons were the same weight. “Hold it out in front of you with two hands.”

  Lia wrapped her two hands around the grip and held the sword with the blade waving around. I walked in behind her and adjusted her hands further apart to steady the shake. As I did, she spoke. “Did we ever do anything together?”

  “Like what?” I asked as I moved her elbows into a better position. “Stand like this. Monsters are dumb and this stance lets you keep them at a distance while putting you in a position to attack.”

  “Like what you and Void had,” Lia said as she adjusted her arms to my position. She steadied her blade significantly.

  I moved into a similar position and took a simple sideways practice swing. “Take a gentle swing just like that. Is that something you want?”

  Lia matched my motion with shaky arms and smacked the ground when the tip lilted downward. It was her first swing and she was getting used to the mass. “Don’t you know the answer already?”

  I took another swing. “Swing a little slower to get used to motion. Remember what I said earlier? I’m interested in hearing you tell me, not me assuming I already know.”

  Lia took a more measured swing and kept the blade from hitting the ground. “Not really. I kinda think you’d make a good big brother. I always wondered what it would be like to have a family.”

  I hooked the greatsword hilt over my shoulder to rest the grip on my chest. “Good, keep up that repetition. You’re in luck, I already think of you as my little sister.”

  “One you’ve seen naked thousands of times,” Lia chuckled as she took another swing. Still sloppy, but she had a knack for it. I’d be able to transition her to more complex swings tomorrow morning and practice hitting moving targets in the afternoon. If things went well this loop, I’d move her to maintaining swing momentum.

  I shuddered from her comment. “Don’t remind me. It’s always an unpleasant experience.”

  She sliced the blade through the air again. “I’m not that ugly. My stamina is also dropping fast. This isn’t easy.”

  “You always look miserable when you come in. That’s why I dread our first meeting,” I said. I laid my sword down on the ground. “Come on, let’s run a couple of laps to help build up our stamina. It’s a slow process, but let’s keep going until we get some grey in our bars. Then we do some more swing drills to rest.”

  “Run?” Lia asked as she set her sword down.

  “Conditioning is vital in a fight,” I explained. “We’ll improve a little by running and building up some grey in our stamina bars.”

  “That makes sense,” Lia replied.

  I peered over at Void and Tizek. Tizek was currently scratching his head as he looked at the scroll while Void’s head was nodded down to her chest. She had fallen asleep. “It seems someone is slacking and needs to join us.”

  “Lia? Start taking a run around the perimeter. Stop to walk to recharge your stamina. When you have a little grey show up, stop and wait. I need to get someone else running,” I said.

  Lia looked over at Void’s sleeping form and a mischievous twinkle came to her eye. She gave me a knowing nod and took off running.

  I approached Tizek and Void. First, I looked at Tizek. “Hey buddy? You can take a break and go for a run. Keep it up until you get some grey in your stamina bar.”

  “Yes, my lord!” Tizek said happily. He was not enjoying being asked to learn how to cast the healing spell and readily joined Lia on the run.

  I took Tizek’s place and looked at Void. Her hands were flopped to her side and her snout was buried in her turquoise vest. A string of drool was beginning to fall from one side of her mouth while she snort-snored in her sleep.

  As much as I wanted to sit and watch, we had things to do. I leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Guardswoman Void? What do you think you’re doing sleeping on the job?”

  “I’m not asleep, sergeant!” Void shouted as she woke up and fell backwards. She landed with a thud on the dirt. She stared up at the sky and realized it was in the middle of the day. Her eyes shifted toward mine. “Ass.”

  I smiled down and offered a hand. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. We do need to keep you awake, though. It’s important you’re back on a normal schedule for the arena. Best way to do that is fight it for the day.”

  She grabbed my hand and I pulled her back up to the bench. After I brushed the dirt from her back, I spoke. “Come on, let’s go for a run and get some grey in our stamina bars.”

  Void groaned. “I hate running. Besides, I already have some grey.”

  “I’m not talking about your fur color,” I said as I stood and dragged her with me. “Come on now, let’s hoof it.”

  Void started to grumble as I paced along with her on the run, cursing my lineage back to my great grandparents. I didn’t want to tell her I was curing me, too. I hated running, especially since my hard work always got reset every three months. I silently huffed along with Void as we pushed along the interior wall behind Lia and Tizek. A little extra stamina always helped for what was coming in a few days.