Mark shielded his face from the sudden sunlight. They were no longer in the cave. The cube had transported them onto the deck of a large ship, roughly eighty feet long. Above them, massive white sails were billowing in the wind as the ship moved forward slowly, with nothing but endless ocean stretching to the horizon.

  Everyone—Vikings and Gamers—stayed still for a few seconds, studying each other while the ship gently swayed beneath their feet. The Vikings were still holding their weapons, still ready for battle.

  Mark worried that maybe they would start fighting immediately.

  There’s no way we can beat them.

  Luckily, Tobias was the first to move, breaking the standstill. He rushed to the side of the ship and leaned overboard, vomiting into the sea.

  The Vikings relaxed and laughed when they saw the Gamer puking. In front of them, Erik Bloodaxe looked at the worried Mark.

  “Now you think about the consequences of your actions?” he asked.

  He laughed. His laughter was expansive, louder even than the wind hitting the ship.

  "Now I see it! You’re young! You’re not old men gifted with young bodies like we are." He pointed to the Viking with long black locks of hair, who had just sat on the floor of the ship. "Harald here lived to be almost eighty years old, even if he now looks like an ugly man in his forties."

  Harald responded with what Mark assumed was an obscene gesture. Erik Bloodaxe laughed, then turned back to the Gamers. "But you… you’re truly young.”

  Mark didn’t deny it. Erik Bloodaxe stared at him and waved his worry away.

  “Relax, young man. You’re safe. We don’t have to fight among ourselves. The Glimpse of Valhalla shall collapse on its own. We can rest together. We can plan together. Aren’t we allies now?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Great. There are rooms beneath. We shall sleep and talk again in a few hours. You’re all probably as exhausted as we are.”

  And just like that, the Vikings retreated within the ship, leaving the Gamers alone. One of the Vikings helped Harald to his feet—perhaps it was only psychological, but despite his younger body, the ninety-year-old seemed more tired than the others.

  When they were alone, Gustav approached Mark.

  “This was your fucking plan?” he whispered. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “Yeah, the Mongols just have to wait us out and kill us,” added Wyatt, also whispering to make sure the Vikings couldn’t hear.

  Mark shrugged. Suddenly, the idea of finding some hammock, or whatever they used on Viking ships, was extremely appealing.

  “We’re alive, aren’t we? We can sleep. We can train. We can Level. And even more important…” he said, opening his holding bag and showing them a corner of the magic book. “We can learn how to do goddamn magic. I bet this will even the odds.”

  They entered the ship through the same narrow wooden door the Vikings had used. Beyond the threshold, a steep staircase descended into darkness. Mark walked down, his fingers brushing against the wooden wall for balance.

  Everything felt real—the rough grain of the wooden walls, the lanterns mounted along the walls swaying with the ship, making shadows dance across the narrow passage… This wasn’t a fantasy. The ship felt completely lived on, as if only a few minutes before it had been navigating through old Earth.

  They descended the staircase and realized that along the sides of the ship there were cramped compartments, separated with wooden partitions, with about four hammocks strung across in each. The Vikings seemed to have taken the ones on the left of the ship. The Gamers took down the wooden partition of the two compartments farther away from them—on the right side of the ship.

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  “Nobody start sleeping yet,” Mark whispered when he realized some of them were eager to jump into a hammock and forget about everything.

  “We cannot allow anybody to gain a Class and start Leveling, until we know who can learn magic and who can’t,” he added.

  “Why?” Gustav asked.

  Arthur explained Johan’s theory on the hard limit of one hundred Levels per person, among all Classes, and the exponential growth with each higher level. He explained:

  “A Level 60 [Swordsman] will be much more powerful than some dude who has Level 20 [Swordsman], Level 20 [Archer], and Level 20 [Pikeman]. Exponentially more powerful.“

  And Tobias gave a quick summary:

  “So it doesn’t make sense to waste Levels on a Class you’re not going to use for the long haul. And if you have potential for magic, it doesn’t make sense to have any Class that’s not magic.”

  “Do you even know how hard it is to learn magic?” Gustav asked. “Maybe it takes years to do it.”

  “I hope not,” Mark said. “In any case, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to learn if somebody has the talent very easily.”

  Mark had taken the book out of his holding bag, leaving it on his lap. He looked at the boring, unassuming cover. Now, under the little light of the sun coming from the small porthole of the compartment, he could see that it was titled: “Introduction to Magic, by Professor Msad, loyal subject of Ghasu the Twelfth”.

  For a moment, he hesitated opening it again. He still remembered almost losing his consciousness back on the battlefield, the pain ripping through his skull when the moving, fiery patterns started burning through the deepest confines of his mind.

  On the other hand…, he thought. I always wanted to go to Hogwarts.

  So he opened it again.

  And woke up a few minutes later, his mind feeling as if it had been incinerated by the most powerful fire imaginable.

  The rest of the Gamers were crowding around him, looking worried. Arthur was at the entrance of the compartment, telling a Viking that the shouting had been done by the injured Wyatt when they had tried to set his broken leg.

  “Thanks, maybe we’ll take you on that offer,” he added when the Viking offered his help. “But for now, we’ll try ourselves.”

  Mark made an effort to sit up. He realized his face was covered in tears. His voice was slurry when he said:

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not meant to be a powerful [Mage]… Now each one of you try.”

  All the Gamers looked at the book, with fear on their faces.

  “That seemed intense…” Gustav said.

  “I don’t know if I even want to become a [Mage]...” Liam said. “A [Soldier] seems cool enough.”

  Arthur, walking back after getting rid of the Viking, said:

  “We all have to try. Magic will be the edge that keeps us alive.”

  “And the first time I looked at the book, it didn’t hurt as much,” Mark added. “I’m pretty sure my defenses were weak this second time. So it shouldn’t hurt as much to you.”

  Mark could have gone to sleep; he wasn’t needed anymore. And he couldn’t imagine anything greater in the whole of existence than lying in one of those hammocks and letting the gentle rocking of the waves lull him into oblivion.

  But curiosity got the best of him. And he stayed awake to see who would become a [Mage], and who wouldn’t.

  Arthur couldn’t read the book. After a few seconds, he threw it away as if it was a venomous viper.

  Liam couldn’t read the book. After failing once, he tried to open the book again—showing that he had lied before, because he did want to become a [Mage]. But the rest of the Gamers took it from him before he could hurt himself.

  Wyatt looked at it for a couple of seconds and fell unconscious—which was probably a mercy, considering the poor state of his leg.

  Four out of seven. And no potential for magic, Mark thought. This is going great.

  Tobias was next in line. He opened the book and stared at it for almost a minute before lifting his eyes to look at the rest of the Gamers. His eyes were filled with a different kind of tears than the ones that had been in Mark’s eyes. Tobias said:

  “It’s beautiful. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

  So they at least had one potential [Mage] among them.

  Gustav tried to read the book. He averted his gaze after a second and looked at it covering most of the page with one of his hands—only seeing a fraction of the page. After a couple of seconds, he ran to the porthole of the compartment and started vomiting into the sea.

  “Fucking hell. I think I made it even worse,” he said when he finished, sitting on one of the hammocks.

  Six out of seven.

  All eyes focused on Emily, who had been looking at the procedure from a corner of the compartment. She was a little pale and looked at the book with fear.

  “It has to be done…” Arthur muttered to her.

  Emily looked at him, her eyes very open, her lower lip trembling a little.

  “I know… I know...”

  She took a deep breath and walked fast towards the book, opening it and starting to read it right there, standing in the middle of the room. Her brows furrowed with concentration. And after about thirty seconds, she smiled.

  “Oh gosh… This is not so bad...”

  Two out of seven, Mark thought, not bad, I guess…

  But nobody had the energy to celebrate.

  Arthur chose one of the hammocks, starting to lie on it. He seemed to be in a bad mood after having been rejected by the book. He gave some final orders:

  “Everybody to sleep. Tobias and Emily… Don’t Level. Cancel any Level-up you receive. That’s something Johan says should be possible. Everybody else, do Level. And good fucking night.”

  And then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  On the other side of the ship, the sound muffled by the wooden partitions, they heard the Vikings waking up and shouting in surprise, apparently unaware of the whole leveling up process.

  What kind of Classes will everybody be getting? Mark wondered, before finally falling asleep.