Chapter 57: In Good Company

Lilia came back to Freedom’s Peak to find Kalender and Page having some sort of greenish tea around a table. It wasn’t green tea. It didn’t smell like it. It was colored green, and that was it.

“Oh, Lilia. Where’re the others?” Kalender asked.

“They’re at…ah.” She sat with them and leaned in so others wouldn’t hear. “They’re at the castle, having tea with Her Highness, the Princess Knight.”

““Woah,”” the duo made the same sound.

“Did Jyn or Minimine say when they’ll be coming back?” Kalender asked.

Lilia shook her head. Figures. Kalender was thinking of waiting for Jyn by the plaza, but there was a big chance they’d run into Arpeggio there. It’s not like he wanted to actively avoid the Princess, but giving someone space to think was usually a good thing.

There was also a good change that she would find out where they were staying from Jyn, so she could approach them at any time.

That said, it wasn’t good to just let her come to him. It was entirely possible for Arpeggio’s hesitation to drag on, in which case he’d reach out. Hopefully, they could smooth it over, then.

He ate dinner with Page and Lilia. It was some sort of bread bowl. Honestly, he couldn’t name most of the food, but the ingredients were fresh, and it was always filling.

They went back to the room. Page and Lilia turned in early, while Kalender tinkered with magic a bit. Even if he had a max of 20 MP now, he didn’t think it was enough. He didn’t know how dangerous the Monster Wall was, so all he could do was continuously push the envelope on what his magic could achieve.

He went more conventional this time, replicating the mechanisms of an entirely mechanical airgun, valves and air cylinder and all. The only magical thing about it was how the air cylinder was refilled: a special magic circle inscribed on its surface.

That magic circle was special, in that it was the first time he’d bothered to make one that required measuring a physical quantity other than distance. In this case, it would measure the tank’s pressure, and reject further MP input once it reached 10,000 psi.

Really, the weird thing here was magic somehow understanding “psi” as a unit of air pressure. Alright, maybe it had its own unit, and his Skill was just translating to it, but what the heck, didn’t that mean his Skill was also doing math in the background?

The only other weird thing about his design was how the air tank was entirely part of the gun, meaning it couldn’t be unscrewed and switched out. He’d thought about adding that feature in, of course, but the primary thing he wanted to test was the MP-to-energy conversion efficiency.

Also, rubber gaskets and plumber’s tape did not exist in this world. He did not want to deal with air leaks.

He completed the prototype airgun just as Jyn and Minimine came in.

The first thing Jyn saw was a tinkerer working under the soft glow of a lamp. It was a tad charming.

“Not sleeping yet?” Jyn asked.

“I was about to,” Kalender replied. “Lilia told me. How did it go?”

“Well…”

Jyn stepped out of the way. Behind her, Arpeggio shyly waved to Kalender.

“Ah.” Kalender stood.

“Please don’t,” Arpeggio said.

Kalender stood there for a while. “Her…High—”

“Also don’t,” she said again. They both chuckled.

“Then—”

“I wanted to apologize,” Arpeggio said. “Jyn is a good Knight. Please continue to treat her well.”

“Well, of course.”

“…And so, I would like to apologize.”

“I think you’ve said that already.” Kalender chuckled. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?”

“Forgiveness isn’t expensive, you know?” He smiled for her.

Ignoring all of that, Minimine tattled over to the edge of the bedding, said “The flesh demands”—and plopped down, straight unconscious.

“You heard her.” Kalender laughed. Jyn and Arpeggio giggled, too.

They said goodnight, and Kalender and Jyn went to bed. Arpeggio skipped alone in the darkest streets, humming along to the tune of tomorrow.

***

The next morning, Kalender got down to business, and everyone tagged along to the arena to watch.

They chanced upon Aunt Cage, who was in charge of accepting mages into the Company.

Hunter Zee was right. Aunt Cage was wearing a literal wooden parking cone. The wide brim looked like it had just been glued on later. The lady under the hat herself wasn’t young, but one could somehow feel that she was impervious to aging—perhaps by way of gobbling up unsuspecting men, but there was no information about that. If there were anyone who’d known…they weren’t able to tell the tale.

Examinees were lined up to one side, while a target was set up downrange. Despite being mages, only a handful of them sported the “traditional” wear. These ones were academics who had developed powerful spells, and the robes signified their affiliations to various academies.

Everyone else was indistinguishable from any other adventurer.

That wasn’t quite right. 90% of adventurers did not look like convicts signed up to an unofficial mercenary unit just to get reduced sentences. The Adventurer’s Guild strictly maintained that number below 10% for marketing purposes.

Normally, these folks looked like gruffy serial killers, but right now, they were well-disciplined serial killers. Arpeggio, the Company’s top sponsor, was observing from a high seat, surely just on a whim, and not because she wanted to see how Kalender, an otherwise kind man, performed on a test designed to give even Knights a run for their salary.

Aunt Cage had a hoarse voice, but it was clear and commanding.

“Obliterate the target,” she said.

It was a simple enough instruction. The first woman went up, fully expecting a fireball spell would turn the target dummy to ash.

The size of the fireball was impressive, but it was orange. It washed over the target dummy, burning off its straw “clothes,” but failing to do anything to it.

“What—” The woman looked to Aunt Cage for an explanation, but she was tight-lipped, yet neither did she dismiss the woman.

The woman, and all the people, here realized what was going on.

Find a way to do it. You’re on your own.

The woman flung an inordinate number of fire and explosion spells that must have amounted to 100 MP, and yet, the dummy remained standing. A part of it, however, was slagged.

“Next,” Aunt Cage said. Nothing was said of any result. She simply noted down who was on the field, what they did, and what that amounted to.

The next one, seeing that the target dummy was made of iron, changed tactics. She set upon it a breath of freezing air—cold magic.

Cold magic was rare, but not because it was difficult. It was the parent magic of ice magic, yet all it could do was make things cold. This was alright for food preservation, but not combat.

Once the mage was satisfied, it shot an ordinary stone bullet at the dummy. To everyone but Kalender’s surprise, it cracked like ice, and the mage gleefully began bombarding it with a hail of stone bullets until it was just giblets on the ground.

The remains were carted off, and a new target dummy was rolled into place. This time, it was made of ice.

The next examinee shot a stone bullet at it, but all it did was break off a chip. Her fire spells should have done it, but they were ineffectual. She couldn’t figure out why.

She ended up storming off the field. Aunt Cage struck her name off the list.

The next examinee managed to figure out that it was actually made of a special type of glass, not ice. She bombarded it with stone bullets, curving some of them to hit the target from the back.

Eventually, one of the bullets hit a tensile stress line, and the whole target shattered into sand. Kalender was impressed that they’d basically created an oversized Rupert’s Drop in the shape of a target dummy: practically impervious from the front, but apt to shatter if hit from behind.

The examinees were all impressive to Jyn’s eyes. She may have been a Knight with a bit of magic, but her expertise lay in using MP in a close fight. At distance, she had little in the way of bombardment or sniping, and things like curving bullets—she didn’t even know that was possible!

Then, it was Kalender’s turn. He was faced with…absolutely nothing. The arena staff definitely carted something into the field, but it wasn’t there.

Could be some sort of invisibility. He still vaguely remembered a bunch of movies with people dealing with invisible enemies, so he took a page from one of them.

He grasped a fistful of the arena’s sand.

{Shoot this pocket sand!} (19.9/20 MP)

The grains sprinkled over the target, outlining it clearly for him. What he didn’t expect was the target moving to ram straight into him.

He rolled out of the way. The target wasn’t making any contact with the ground at all, or else it would’ve been obvious. It was also roughly spherical, as far as he could tell from the sand.

At the same time as he magicked more pocket sand, he pointed at it with a finger gun. {Prepare fifteen bullets of flame!} (19.15/20 MP)

Sand rained on the target. He fired as soon as he saw it, all fifteen flame bullets in succession, heating up the target until it gave off a faint red glow for all and him to see. It was a perfect sphere.

It zoomed towards him.

He pulled out his gun.

(19/20 MP)

The shattered sphere laid on the ground.

For most here, it was their first time seeing an airgun. The pop it made wasn’t scary, but it was surprising. Magic usually made whoosh sounds, and the only explosions, of any sort, only ever happened on the receiving end of the magic.

That wasn’t really all that special for the veterans here, but…

“Wait,” Aunt Cage said. “How much MP did you use?”

Kalender’s eyebrows perked up, but, “Almost 1,” he said.

One?… One?! The veterans here couldn’t believe it. Most of them would’ve used area effect or detection spells, and those usually cost upwards of 5 MP. Another option was to indiscriminately shoot bullet spells all over the place, but there was an audience watching with no magic barrier in place.

…They would complain about the Company not being able to afford a magic barrier, but out in the jungle, there wouldn’t be such a thing, either.

This man had instantly grasped the true weakness of invisible enemies—sand—and he squeezed out every drop of economy he could from it, taking out the enemy in a single, comical shot, just one little pop.

Without him knowing, Kalender’s reputation shot straight up among the local serial-killer mages.

The moral of the story was thus clear: movies have good ideas, sometimes.

“W-who have I befriended…” a Princess Knight mused from her seat. The cat’s kindness hides its claws, indeed.

This was just the first stage of many tests, of course, and there was no telling whether Kalender would perform well on all of them.

In a tucked-away corner of the arena, a certain Hunter Zee frowned. She'd failed this time, but not again.

KeeperAbra

(2023-03-11) So initially I was just adding on the MP in parentheses so I can keep track of it myself, but I ended up keeping it in coz it oddly felt pretty good as a sort of instant feedback on characters' actions. What do you think?