“As long as it doesn’t interfere with my contract.” Ioha just got demoted to a school teacher, and that added another week of absence. “So me and all eighteen?”

  “You and me both, plus two drivers, and all eighteen,” Nanami said. “Aki can handle patrols for three parties. Your idea about a reserve is good.”

  It wasn’t his idea. It wasn’t even a reserve, but as long as she kept a separate unit to keep the lights on at home, he was happy. “You plan to take them in?”

  At the entrance to their camp, two of the wagons stood ready for departure. This had been planned from the start, and Ioha expected to catch up with them just before he entered Isekai. Now he’d march together with them instead.

  The stench never abated, so three parties had to be on duty at all times, two on distance patrols and one for perimeter duty. For the coming two weeks, company logistics got reduced to just two members. Ioha threw a glance at a small group gathered just outside the barn wall. Half of them Nanami’s original crew, and none of them pleased. He smiled. Of all the rookie adventurers, their chef quickly became the most popular. He was, Ioha admitted, seriously talented over a cook fire, but he should never take an active part in a battle. He trained together with them the last week, nonetheless, or he’d fail the rank test. When they were done milking him for whatever could keep their food at an acceptable level, Nanami would order their departure. Slowly their chat came to an end, and the chef hugged one of Nanami’s crew who had taken a liking to more than his cooking.

  “Make ready!”

  “Hiro’s first, vanguard!” Ioha hollered. A week had done wonders to those who were worth keeping. The heavily armed duo marched out, with two archers and two mages a bit behind them. Ioha moved Haruto, the ranger, to the first group in exchange for the crusader knight.

  After them, the wagons with Nanami in command followed, together with the worst of the lot marching around them. They’d take their ranking test, some would fail, and Ioha hoped he never saw most of them again. The smith and chef rode one wagon each. After they made some headway, he turned and waved to Louise. “Keep the camp running, will you?”

  “Easier with you gone,” she shot back.

  Attitude! “Yeah, yeah.” She’d welcome him back to a better camp than the one he left now. He wasn’t worried. He waved one last time and motioned for the remaining group. “Hiro’s second, rearguard!”

  They filed up, Viking girl and crusader knight front, healer and thief mid, and Tsumugi, the remaining useful mage, as backline. Ioha padded out their numbers. He refused to give that place to one of the lost causes.

  “Hikari, you’re in command today. Switch tomorrow!”

  Some dust mixed in the air, and feet hit the road. They left quite a few pieces of circus equipment behind them. Two days of heavy rain made the inherent problem with leather armour clear for all but the diehards. Yes, it was historically accurate. If you didn’t have the good stuff, you’d settle for the bad. If you didn’t have lots of rain, then leather wasn’t terrible. Isekai sat on the coast. It offered both a lot of the good stuff and a lot of rain. The low mountain range forced clouds to build as well as drop their water, but usually not until most of them had already crossed the ridge.

  “Sir Questingtank?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “You’re in command, Hikari.” He drew breath and gave the question a thought. “Mostly we walk. That gets boring real quick. Focus on how to keep your group alert while on the move.”

  Hiro’s first and Hiro’s second. Ioha had been adamant about that. Giving parties unique names was cute, but the surrounding administration turned into pure hell during battle.

  He glanced at the treeline. Nothing.

  Sure, if your entire organisation was one party, and he guessed that held true for most, then you could run with a fancy name. Mercenary companies made up for a large proportion of all adventurers, but more than half of them gathered in temporary or permanent single parties.

  They kept marching, and Viking girl did a decent job of keeping them active, while Ioha did the real scanning for monsters. It wasn’t that she was bad. Heimdall just gave him absurd passive perception abilities, with the worst in the high fifties. The vision-based ones had already climbed into the nineties. While his aura burning additions were pretty awful, he didn’t really need all of them. Applied on top of his passive ones, the aggregated result lay in the low one hundreds, which was borderline superhuman.

  The column moved along the road at a brisk pace, and during their break the chef conjured up something that realistically had no right to exist given their circumstances. Satisfied beyond expectations, Ioha turned his feet toward the cooking fires.

  “Fantastic food!” he offered.

  “Thanks.”

  “Aura enhanced?” He just had to know.

  “Yes. I love this world! I’m never going back.” The chef flashed him a toothy grin. “Do you know what a kitchen that can do this costs back home?”

  Ioha had absolutely no clue. “My cooking is passable at best. I couldn’t even guess.”

  “Very expensive. Very. And not as good,”

  Ioha looked at the fire. Something made by aura blocked part of it, and it looked like some of the fire got funnelled to separate pots. “Got the ability from your cooking or just learned cooking magic separately?”

  “Don’t know. After I ate with my god, I just knew,” the chef said and stirred one pot.

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  Of course, he had a meal during his contract. Ioha snorted. So I got Heimdall because I was a lazy bastard and tried to sleep? “Think I could learn it?”

  “You plan to become a chef?” Suddenly, the voice was filled with suspicion.

  “No, no. When I cook, I do it for myself.” It wasn’t entirely true, but he definitely had no plans to open a restaurant with himself in the kitchen. “I’ll be outdoors a lot, and it would make evenings feel better.”

  “Only for yourself?”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “Campfire cooking only. Being alone shouldn’t have to mean eating bad food.” He planned to get a camping stove, if anyone sold one that checked the box for being portable in Isekai.

  “Food should never be bad. OK. I believe it’s a magic skill that comes from making fires.”

  So he calls them skills and not abilities? Well, same thing, I guess. “Ah, thank you. Mind if I have another go?”

  The chef smiled and opened his palm in an invitation for Ioha to get more food. “There is plenty more.”

  Ioha didn’t need to pretend. The food was fantastic – the chef even managed to bake bread without an oven and in half the time Ioha remembered from his life in Gothenburg. He sat alone, a bit away from the others. They weren’t his crew, not really. Nanami hired him for a job, and now he got roped in to babysit the wandering circus, but they weren’t his crew either.

  In his hands he had a spicy mix of rehydrated vegetables and jerky in bread, so fresh it was still warm, together with ice-cold water, courtesy of one of the mages. A perfect companion to blazing sun, and the chef even managed to make use of the ever fainter stench from the zone.

  Around him, the rookie company had already broken apart less than a month after it was formed. Ioha had helped it break apart. Hiro’s first and second sat together, clearly distanced from those soon to be ejected. No one spoke about it, but they all knew.

  Nanami came over from her two drivers and Ioha watched them join the first and second together with the smith.

  “Good?”

  “Mm.” Ioha glanced at their chef, but he kept busy making something and didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to get some food of his own. “He’s superb.”

  “Talking about?”

  Ioha shrugged. “Just wanted to know if I could learn the cooking magic myself.” He helped himself to another bite and waited for Nanami to reach the real topic.

  “Can we trust them with guard duty?”

  He didn’t even follow her stare. “Not a chance.”

  “Think singling them out…”

  “Look, Nanami, you handed their sorry arses to me. I just did the spanking.”

  “Regret it?”

  “What, coming with you? Why should I. Experience and pay. I’m happy.”

  “Don’t sound like it.”

  “Sorry. The idiots just give me an itch, and we have to drag them with us for a week.” He looked up and faced her. “Why did you trust me?” Another bite.

  She mulled over his question. “With my people? I didn’t. With them?” She thumbed the morons. “I didn’t. You were just handy.”

  That was harsh. “And now?”

  “I know you’ll do your job. You’re good at it. Not really a teenager, are you?”

  You weren’t supposed to ask about Earth, but Ioha respected that a company captain needed to know more than most to keep the members alive. “Not really.” Nanami was like a younger version of his parents. It wasn’t by chance he excelled at corporate studies. “Got a degree. Business. Got some experience as well. Remove the weapons and monsters, give me a month, and I could run your company.” It wasn’t bragging, and he both trusted and respected her as much as you can trust anyone after a few weeks.

  “Thought so. I didn’t know, so I couldn’t trust you. It was a test. I apologise.”

  Too late for an apology now. “Did I pass?”

  “With flying colours.” This time, her smile reached all the way to her eyes.

  “I don’t think I’ll lead a company.”

  She looked at the chef. “That’s why you asked?”

  “That’s why I asked.”

  “Makes me right not to trust you.” A skewed grin broke her face. “Staying with us?”

  Ioha nodded. “For a while. Say Christmas.”

  “What about your second year?”

  “Ain’t happening. There are reasons.” He took another bite.

  She rose. “Good.” Then she returned to her crew. Not his, her.

  By evening, they left the border zone and made camp.

  Just before he awoke, Ioha had a dream. He was back in Schooltown on his date with Ai, walking down from the roof on stairs made of glittering shields with Ai in his arms. The stars above them glimmered with approval, and even the moon nudged him to hug her tighter. Then he woke.

  “Damn!” he said to no one. “Shit, I’m even dreaming of…” Oh, wait a minute. The dream ended just before he took his first steps on the cobbled square and removed all the shields he had just walked on. I dropped all of them. No, I toggled the destruction of all of them.

  He rose and went for breakfast. Something crunched in his mouth and he swallowed without tasting. His mind worked on overdrive. I used a key to trigger their destruction. He was almost there. I used a key to destroy more than one magic effect at once. Ioha shovelled some more breakfast into his mouth and chewed. I cast one spell that triggered multiple effects. He swallowed. I could cast one effect that sets up multiple spells at once. Damn! I’m an idiot! More food passed through his mouth on its way to his stomach without ever activating any taste buds. I cast one, let’s call it a grid, and a preset number of independent non-volatile effects kick in. That meant defining those grids and saving the configuration to his magic repository. Defining them would take ages, but if he did that work beforehand, he could cast dozens of spells in a moment as long as he didn’t care about them being perfectly adapted for the situation. Hell yeah! That’s time worth spending. His serial speed-casting couldn’t even come close, but it was still useful if he wanted a result adjusted specifically for the application.

  From here on, the trek to Isekai became tedious marching with a tired healer healing blisters every break until they reached Halfpoint, where Hiro rented a carriage for the morons and sent them ahead. There was no hiding the broken company. Nanami asked why he didn’t rent three, to which he grinned and answered they screwed up so they didn’t deserve the ride. Marching, while still as tiring, became a lot more pleasant after that, and three days later they reached Isekai. For Ioha’s part, it wasn’t that bad. He trained, calculated, trained some more, and when he saw the outskirts of Isekai he had five grids he was happy with.

  Ioha left the company before they reached the actual outskirts. He felt Nanami stare after him when he turned right and followed a dirt road to a building site. He wanted to know the progression of his new ryokan and, if possible, become its first overnight guest. When he returned here next time, it should be in full operation. Even though there were no rooms completed, he used one with most of the walls up but no ceiling for the night. The bath, however, was completed. After life in camp, it counted as a five star luxury hotel.