She’d been standing nearby the return circle being prepared to return her home, having experienced ten long years and many things, both horrible and beautiful, when a magic circle started writing itself into existence beneath her.

The circle being prepared locally included things to strip the hero of most of her powers, since otherwise she’d explode on returning due to Earth being nearly manaless. It also included making the trip while passing through the world’s god area, since she’d be getting a reward for having saved this world that could be taken back to Terra.

The new summons interacted and got messed up by the return circle and left both of those things out.

The other changes were on the location portion of the circle, which had two effects. Summons were always supposed to pass through the god’s realm in order to be blessed and receive information as to the situation and how to return home. The first effect made that not occur.

The second was for where the summoned would appear. The summoned was supposed to arrive within the summoning circle on the new world, but due to the inclusion of data from the return circle, she was dropped off far away, though still within the summoning country.

It was a bit of an issue that the heroine appeared in the sky, far above the ground. Though she was rather happy that at least it was there, rather than underground or deep in the ocean she was able to see the sea nearby from the altitude she’d arrived at. At least she could do something while in the air.

While flight wasn’t common, being in fact quite a rare ability on the last world, one known as Valla, she’d put forth the effort to learn it. It did tend to tax the mana pool quite a bit, but being the hero, she’d grown to be extremely strong, both physically and magically, so her mana pool would allow her to fly for nearly an entire day straight before she needed to rest and let her mana regenerate.

So she flew, but since she didn’t know the local world’s common sense or dangers, she had to expend her mana further and go into invisibility. That halved her flight time, but she was still extremely OP.

Because she’d been in free fall when activating the flight spell, it took her a little bit to stop plummeting without breaking herself. Even with magic, physics still applied unless otherwise screwed with.

She was now at about half the height she’d been at, but could still overlook the land and find a suitable destination for her landing. She decided that the port town would likely be the best option.

Not knowing the local customs with regards to visitors from foreign lands, she thought it best to act as though she’d just arrived on a ship from a distant land.

Destination decided, she took off in that direction. And she went fast, though she stayed under the speed of sound, not wanting to break the barrier and cause sonic booms. The current situation called for stealthy entry into the land, and creating immensely loud noises would draw attention to her.

It took four hours to reach her destination, partly because she’d had to travel up the coast to find a city that seemed to have international visitors, but also because she had to deal with a flight of wyvern. The stupid beasts couldn’t see her, but the could smell her and started chasing her as soon as they did. So she’d had to stop and fight them.

They’d been easy prey since she’d taken some time to prepare the battlegrounds after spotting them pursuing her. She’d basically gone in circles around an area so they’d keep chasing her scent, then added another active spell to cover her scent so she could ambush them.

It worked out very well, with her being able to dispatch a third of the flight before they noticed something was wrong. She’d gotten behind them and swiftly beheaded and stored her kills in her spatial storage. She was found out because she’d taken care of the stragglers and had gotten started on the main group.

Knowing something was going on hadn’t helped them. Not one bit. Their numbers continued to dwindle without being able to locate the danger, until at last they scattered. That didn’t help them any, though it had been what took up most of the battle time, chasing the predators that had become prey. There was no way she could let them continue to be a danger, so she’d had to finish them off.

After the battle, the remainder of the flight had been boring. Sure there was beautiful scenery, but she’d seen plenty of that on Valla, she just wanted to get to a bed and rest!

On Valla, the return circle was only operable at midnight under the full moon, and it had been getting close to that when she’d gotten pulled here. She’d had a long day full of dealing with the last of the hero BS she’s had to put up with and had been looking forward to returning home, which would have dropped her back where she’d been summoned from. Her bed.

---

She’d been reassured on her arrival that very little time would pass between her departure and return when she’d first been summoned ten years earlier, though she would change with the world. Reverting the undesirable changes was supposed to be part of the reward for saving the world, regaining the lost years, and a bit more. Also scars, those would have been removed if she wanted them gone…

Neither of those had become necessary given items and skills acquired during her stay on Valla. Being the Hero, she’d gotten access to the temple’s library and absorbed the knowledge usually reserved for only the pope or a few cardinals. It allowed her to learn the highest level spells, recipes, and how to acquire rare skills.

Her healing had become god-like, undoing damage instantly, without straining the patient by using their stamina to fuel the spell. It also allowed her to deal with old damage, which most were unable to, letting her remove scars or restore lost limbs.

She’d learned spells from other branches of magic as well, as she’d had the aptitude for all of them, though not all to the same degree. This allowed her to handle entire regiments at a time, though those kind of spells couldn’t be used frequently due to the laws of magic, as well as draining the mana pool.

Not wanting to spend all her time on learning spells, she’d allocated some of it to learning crafting skills as well, creating her own clothes, weapons, armor, and potions.

It was thanks to alchemy that she didn’t have to worry about aging. During an exploration of an ancient ruin, she’d discovered an old and crumbling library with books from an ancient civilization that had been destroyed for unknown reasons. If touched, the books would disintegrate, so no one could read them… except her.

Messing around, the Hero had discovered that she could read books from within her inventory, allowing her to always have reading material available, without having anyone realizing her attention was split. She’d never shared the ability, keeping it her secret.

She’d been the one to discover the library, on her own, and by the time others had joined her it had been emptied of all the tomes. She was sad for the one she’d destroyed by touching it, since the title had been interesting.

Among the loot from the restricted section were recipes for remarkable potions. These included hair-restoration, perfect conception and it’s reverse, elixir, and age reduction potions. There were also alternate recipes for healing and mana potions, some better and some worse than the ones in use, that used different ingredients.

Patents existed on Valla, and she’d gotten rich from releasing the recipes, allowing her to purchase rare materials to use without having to hunt them down herself.

She hadn’t shared the potions for elixir and age reduction. At least not publicly. The ingredients were too rare, and she needed to make sure she had sufficient for herself first. She’d gotten enough to make potions so she could stay young for centuries.

She’d figured on only being able to make a single rejuvenation potion, until she’d discovered that a different book included methods for allowing cultivation of the required herbs. It’d never be possible to mass produce them, since this also required rare ingredients, but it was enough to allow a little to be made each year.

One other thing made most of the god’s reward unneeded. An extremely rare skill she’d acquired after perusing the ancient books.

Shapeshifting.

The ability to do so had already been known, but there were immense limitations and preparation required to use it safely. In its modern form. Most of the information on it had been lost over the millennia, but in it’s original, perfected form, it was easier. Provided you had an immense source of energy to power the skill and make the changes.

The ancients had the ability to harness and store mana easily, but that had been lost with the cataclysm that had destroyed them, and even I wasn’t able to rediscover that since many books had turned to dust before I’d even arrived. However, I was able to fuel the changes with my mana pool.

I’d been planning to see if the god’s reward would allow me to retain the ability, even if in a limited fashion, back on Earth, since I couldn’t have the mana for it if I didn’t want to explode and die.

I’d been assured I’d get to keep some of my powers, including spatial storage, when I returned, so I’d hoped that would have been one of them.

-------

Shaking my head, I forced my mind to stay awake. Falling asleep while flying was dangerous. I was almost there. The city was in sight.

I’d been coming from along the coast, since the first habitation I’d seen was only a small fishing village, making me divert to the north, since there were mountains further south. I could have tried flying higher, but doing so cost more mana due to lower air density. Mages save mana by bending the rules rather than breaking them.

The city I approached was larger than the capital of the empire that’d summoned me on Valla, and it’d been the largest city on the continent. That meant that either this was a capital city as well, the local civilization was more advanced, or something else. I couldn’t think straight. Getting really sleepy.

The sun was nearing the west horizon as I came to hover over the docks, looking for… there! A ship with a different design, and flag, was almost done docking, so I sped my way over to it.

The ship resembled a galleon bearing a heavy load, though there were no visible holes for cannons to defend it from threats. Well, there hadn’t been any on Valla either. Adventurers, especially including mages, protected ships from monsters, both literal and metaphorical, as I viewed pirates and bandits to be less than human.

I took the time to make sure it wasn’t some kind of military or diplomatic vessel, but given the appearance of the crew and passengers on the deck preparing to unload and disembark, I guessed it would be a merchant ship.

There was a decent amount of variation among those aboard it, so I thought I’d be able to blend in. My clothes looked similar enough to not raise suspicion.

I carefully landed, choosing a place so as not to bump into anyone or getting the way and slowly released my invisibility. Well, it was less releasing invisibility and more altering it to camouflage and then slowly releasing that. I’d gotten good enough at it to be able to pull it off without anyone noticing me appear. Instead if they saw me, they tended to think I’d been there, but was just someone with little presence and not worth paying further attention to. I tried to stay low key like that.

That kind of thing was useful, since as the Hero, I’d been highly visible, and when spotted people tended to gather around and shower me with attention.

I HATED being the center of attention.

Here, no one knew me, so I didn’t have to worry about my reputation preceding me, but I still needed to suppress my aura, since I wasn’t interested in being drawn into things before I knew the lay of the land. Being strong attracted the wrong kind of attention.

As I’d hoped, no one noticed me slowly become visible in a small corner of the deck. I’d timed it just right as the ship finished docking and the passengers started to disembark. I joined them, though I was one of the last to do so.

There was no customs inspection or need to prove our identity as we entered the docks… but it seems they were separate from the city. They were protected by walls that stretched out into the sea, but there was another wall separating this area from the rest of the city.

I’d followed behind some of the passengers who headed to the city, but had veered off when I realized ID was required to pass through the gate.

Oh, I had an ID card, but it was likely useless here. I’d checked it, and it used a different language from the local one. I was able to read and understand it, so it seemed that function was either built into the summoning circle rather than granted by the gods on arrival, or my language skill from the last world somehow worked here as well.

Whatever the case, without a readable ID, I wasn’t getting through the gate. So I asked around. I’d gotten better at being able to get information from people without standing out, which I used to discover there was a branch of the Adventurer’s Guild here in the merchant district, as the docks were called. They could issue an ID that was usable internationally.

Destination decided, I headed off.

Telerean

So I'd originally intended to just note down the idea behind this, but once I started the story flowed. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 2 will be up tomorrow. 3 the day after. After that, who knows?