After the events of last night, which I have yet to understand, we all met back at the inn, had dinner and went to sleep. Not me, though, I’m back to being unable to sleep.

  —

  It’s morning, today we’ll be back on the road to the capital of ‘The Human Kingdom of Exousia Archibald’, or ‘Exousia’, for short. But before that we’ll visit Mira, apparently Ayla sent the flowers to an apothecary, and then took the medicine to Mr. Victor.

  “Are we all done? Aria, don’t you need to get ready at all?” - Cass asked me.

  “Nope! Only need my weapon, other than that I have no preparations”

  “What about swapping clothes? Actually, where did your clothes come from, if you’ve been at the Barren Lands all your life?” - Elijah enters the conversation.

  “Oh right! That’s a neat thing I can do, my clothes are made from aura, I just think about what I want to wear and just like that I’m wearing whatever I imagined” - I figured I could do that after the monsters began ripping my clothes off.

  “So that’s what you did that night before we got here! I thought I was dreaming when you were naked and then clothed in the next second!” - Elijah said without a care in the world.

  “Naked?” - Cass and Ayla said at the same time.

  We all stared at him, Cass’ aura was leaking slightly.

  “What?” - He said.

  The conversation ended there.

  —

  The Carpentry shop is closed, but Cass still knocks on the door, after all, we’re here for the exact reason why Mr. Victor isn’t working today, that being Mira’s health. After some time we're invited inside.

  “It’s you all… Mira is currently asleep, the medicine made her very tired” - He says in a tired, but much more cheerful than before.

  There are also dark circles under his eyes, as well as teardrop stains in his cheeks, it seems he has lost some sleep ever since his daughter started getting treated.

  After some hesitation, he looked into Cass’ eyes and bowed deeply.

  “Thank you! Thank you so much for saving my kid! I apologize for the way I have been treating all of you all this time!”

  Cass is taken by surprise, his face shows it. As an outsider who only got involved at the end of this story, this seems like the only outcome possible, but I’m sure there’s a massive emotional baggage that both sides are carrying here.

  With teary eyes, Cass bows too.

  “I also apologize, I am sorry for promising something I couldn’t achieve, I do not deserve your gratitude!”

  After him, Ayla and Elijah bow and apologize too. I decide to follow their lead without saying anything.

  “And Sir, if you must thank someone, please, thank Aria. She’s the one who found the flowers, everything is thanks to her.” - Elijah says perhaps planning to stop a ‘thank you’ competition before it starts… Or maybe that’s giving too much credit to his mental capacities.

  Hm, I’m sure that Aria person is amazing huh, I’m also sure she wouldn’t like to be put on the spot like this, HUH.

  Seriously, had him claimed that everything was a group effort, as it was, you had a clear way to fix your reputation not only with Mr. Victor, but also with everyone in this village, but oh well.

  “Aria, was it? Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart!” - He said while bowing directly at me.

  “...It was a group effort, I couldn’t have done it alone. But we accept your gratitude nonetheless” - I say while slightly bowing and smiling with my eyes closed.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Elijah takes the opportunity and continues with the subject.

  “So, Mira’s sleeping right? We wished to say goodbye in person, but it’s better to let her sleep as much as she can, so, please, tell her in our instead that we wish her to have a fast and steady recovery, and to take care of herself”

  “Yes, I will” - He finished with a big smile and a thumbs up.

  After that, we hit the road to the Capital of the Exousia Kingdom.

  —

  It took a whole month and a half to get to our destination, during this time our encounters with monsters decreased significantly, of course, deeper in human lands there would obviously be less monsters.

  So instead of lookouts for beasts, we had lookouts for thieves. It seems anywhere remotely far from a village always has a group of bandits lurking around, so we needed to take care of them.

  And by ‘take care’ I mean let Cass do the work of catching them. On the first night I was supposed to do the lookout, some of them popped up and I defeated them, but then I didn’t know what to do.

  Should I tie them up and let them rot here? ‘Cause no way I’d drag them to a village far away. Should I kill them? I’m not in a rush to become a murderer, and I also agreed to Elijah’s terms of not doing anything crazy like that. Should I let them go? In that case they’d just steal and maybe kill someone else.

  So I woke up everyone and Cass decided on the first option… The first part at least, tie them up and then drag them to a village. That’s the righteousness of a hero to you, I could never.

  Though I gotta admit, seeing him drag ten tied men at once is incredibly funny. He really is strong huh…

  Other than that, Ayla taught me magic – or rather – magecraft, it seems ‘magic’ is a vulgar term, in an academic setting it’s the kind of thing that’d get a professor annoyed. So, ‘magecraft’ functions by creating ‘Aura Threads’ – basically, concentrated aura in straight lines – with them the mage draws a ‘rune’ in the center, which will define the element of the magic, and then add other threads to the surroundings of the rune to create a desired effect.

  This way, a triangle, the rune of fire magecraft, when released will produce a flame, but if you add the right pattern on the outside, the result is a fireball.

  Pretty simple… Except every type of magecraft, fire, water, earth and wind, have different runes, and the patterns are in no way interchangeable – a mage would be lucky to use a fire pattern with the water rune and not have the magic straight up backfire.

  “And that’s all you need to know from Magical Theory, everything else you’ll learn at the Academy” - Ayla finished with a pleased face.

  ‘Magical Theory’, the theory that explains all of the currently known magic phenomena, holds as much weight in this world as the Cellular Theory or the Evolution Theory of my previous world.

  On another note, it was decided – mind you, without my consent – That I’d go to the Archibald Royal Academy of Magecraft Research, or simply ‘the Academy’ for short.

  Because of that, Ayla also taught me how to use eight spells, two of each element, the first ones because “They’re fundamental, everyone starts there so you’ll too”, and the others because “You’ll use them to get good grades on the entrance exam at the Academy”, so that’s that.

  Also, according to Ayla, this world has no affinity system in place, so there’s no such thing as being better at a school of magecraft and worse at another, she said the only people that claim such a thing exists are students making excuses because they don’t study enough.

  I said nothing after that, though, I did have a harder time learning water magic compared to the other schools.

  Beyond magecraft, I also asked about skills, according to Elijah “Skills are a response of the world to a strong will, so when dragged to a critical point when one’s motivation is at its peak, a skill might awaken, they’re inscribed in your soul until your death and don’t require any aura, but take a toll on your stamina. Did you get one?”

  And so we had a chat about my [Infinite Thought-Process]. Every reincarnator up until now possessed at least one skill, except for Cass, who has two.

  Ayla has [Telepathy Net], which is exactly what it sounds like, she can create something akin to a hivemind between her and other people.

  Cass has [Identifier], the skill to understand almost everything he looks at, if someone uses a skill, he’ll know, someone’s race or the quality of someone’s weapon? That too. If that wasn’t enough, he also has [Aura Disruption], allowing him to disrupt the flow of aura, incapacitating your average mage from doing magecraft.

  He’s the perfect person to fight an unidentified enemy, as he can counter magic for at least enough time until he gets enough intel about everything said enemy can do. Man, talk about overpowered…

  Elijah, though, is the craziest of all. His skill, [Mind Intruder], gives him the ability to enter people's mind, watch their every move through their eyes, influence their thoughts without them knowing, and even trap people in their mind and make their body a puppet in his control. He’s the perfect assassin through and through.

  And then you ask: How do we know he isn’t controlling us all? Hahaha…

  …On a serious note, anything from influencing people onwards is impossible if their will overpowers his own, and no need to mention the mental toll of doing so.

  Everyone’s secret overpowered powers aside, we reached the entrance of the capital of Exousia. According to Cass, there’s a barrier that notifies authorities if a monster breaches it, but it relies on the leaking aura to do it. So if I don’t leak anything – as I’ve been doing for the last three months – it should be fine.

  No pressure… Haha…

  It’ll be fine…

  …Jinxed it.