“Does everyone see what I see?” Mike asked the two men beside him.

  “You mean the drone?” Aaron asked, glancing up at it. “Don’t worry, it is not a threat or anything. It’s just a toy, one Master Aric loves.”

  “He hired a technomancer to keep it in repair,” Haliard added. “And enchanted it himself. That crystal on the bottom is a messenger crystal.”

  “No, we have them where I’m from. I just assumed…” Mike gave a low chuckle. He wasn’t sure why he thought magic and technology wouldn’t mix. They had told him that Slide drew from everywhere. “Just another unfamiliar idea, though this one is very familiar. I think I actually sold those types of drones.”

  He headed towards it as the rest of them packed up their equipment. Bandit trundled along behind him, occasionally hopping to keep up. When he noticed the badger was having trouble, Mike slowed a little.

  The bulbous center piece of the drone was three feet across, with the rotors adding another foot. Hung underneath in the camera mount was a spherical red crystal. There were aftermarket symbols painted in gold on its body, with functions Mike could not understand. The drone didn’t move as he approached, so he reached out a single finger and poked it, casting Identify.

  Modified Korinjawa Quad Rotor Drone

  Model Number 1E8277

  Serial Number 093266

  He didn’t recognize the manufacturer, but it matched in form and function one of the higher end drones that was sold out of his office. If he had sold one, he would have gotten almost a thousand dollars in commission, so he had memorized as much as he could of their functionality. He reached out to touch the crystal, but he hesitated.

  “Will I eat the spell on this?” When no one answered, he touched it, and cast Identify. “Hey me, I don’t want to absorb this magic, OK?”

  The ID window popped up, but Mike didn’t glance at it yet. He was waiting to see if he would absorb the magic that had gone into the crystal. It was instinctive last time, so Mike focused on not doing it as he kept his hand on it. There was a faint buzzing, but Mike ignored it. There was a slight distraction though as the younger wizard appeared beside him, speaking the language he now mostly understood.

  “Be ready for the meet. Colosseum twenty-four B at six—” Mike’s focus failed and there was that same tingle he had felt with the arrow as he drew in the spell. The message cut out as Mike stepped back, wincing as a flash of pain momentarily filled his head. Several more windows appeared.

  Mike blinked away the first window, which identified the crystal as an Arcane-Attuned Carnelian with no other information. Another said he had started to learn the spell Phantasmal Self, but Mike was interested in the bump he got in his language quest. According to the Quest screen, his familiarity had jumped to ninety-eight percent.

  That new Skill was so close.

  Mike felt a real drive, for the first time in too long. His career had stalled out, leaving him little more than a glorified telemarketer. No girlfriend, no one more than a casual acquaintance in his life. Coasting through it, trying to keep his head down. It wasn’t that Mike had some grand tragedy in his life, nothing to ruin his momentum. He just felt like what he was doing wasn’t important.

  This new world and all it brought with it had changed that. It wasn’t becoming the slave gladiator of a powerful wizard that guided him. The changes his mind had gone through were the guidance he felt he had been lacking.

  “Bandit, I promise, I’m going to make something of myself. For me and you both.” Mike squatted down and scratched the badger.

  “It ended early, but we got the core information.” There was a note of disapproval in Haliard’s tone as he approached. “Twenty-four B at six something. We won’t get in trouble if we get there exactly at six, though it would have been nice to know the exact time.”

  Mike hung his head sheepishly, but he couldn’t contain a smile. Things were working out for him.

  “Sorry about that. I am still not sure how everything works.”

  “We have to hit the showers and change if we’re going to make it on time,” Aaron said. “Mike, come along with me and we can look at my spells, see if you can learn anything while awaiting your turn.”

  “Sounds good,” Mike answered and helped the rest of the men pack away their equipment. There was some chatter about the fight that Mike couldn’t join in, but he did feel the air of excitement and joy. If it was true that they had lost a good number of comrades and friends recently, a victory might be what they needed to set things right.

  Victory, and a strange mage, Mike thought to himself.

  As they headed inside, the language component of Identify ended. Mike focused on the conversation around him as the men talked. Glory, fighting, the upcoming victory and what it meant for them, the conversation was intelligible to him. The walk was short, though, and soon the men were organizing themselves to wash up. Bandit trundled into Mike’s room, curled up on his bed, and fell asleep. Since there were only a few minutes left until the spell ended, Mike let the raccoon sleep.

  With the sinks and toilets built into the bedrooms, there wasn’t much space in the shower. Two of them at a time could fit without poking each other. There were enchantments built into the plumping here, instantly setting the water for whatever temperature you desired, along with adding soap to it. Mike was impressed, but he was more excited to check out Aaron’s spell book.

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  “Let us know when you all are done, I’m going to try to teach Mike how my spells work.” Aaron led Mike into the room he shared with his brother. It was the exact duplicate of the one Mike shared with Haliard, just with a few more homey touches. There was a towel tossed across one bed, and two chests of drawers under the lower bunk. Aaron went to one and opened it, revealing a mess of the white linen clothing everyone wore. Atop the pile was a single book.

  It was about the size as one of the spiral notebooks Mike had used in elementary school, though thicker. The cover was golden wood with a binding of five brass rings punching through it. It was old, and obviously well worn. There was a symbol carved on the front, a drawn bow surrounded by eldritch symbols, their depths stained dark. Mike thought he recognized some of them but wasn’t totally sure. The pages inside were wooden as well, each about a quarter of an inch thick. There were only six of them.

  “This is the spell book my father gave me. He gave Julian a shield and told him his job was to protect me while I took people down. An archer and a protector, going back generations of my family.” Aaron gave a small smile. “That combination works well, for the most part.”

  The smile fell away as darkness crossed his face.

  “Well enough, until we got overwhelmed.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Mike asked hesitantly. He knew he should be there to support Aaron and listen to him, but his recently discovered drive made him want the knowledge within the book.

  “No, let’s go over these.” Aaron forced a smile and opened the book up.

  Mike was ashamed of how relieved he felt that the man didn’t want to dredge up the recent trauma of the group with him. He leaned over and looked at the first page Aaron had revealed.

  There were symbols like the ones on the cover, but while those looked decorative, these looked like a math equation. Mike had gotten up to calculus before he started to slip, and some of the more advanced math flowed like these did. They were carved into the wood of the page. Around them were notes in ink, some faded over the years. Mike assumed they were helpful hints on how to do the spell, but he couldn’t make them out.

  “This is for the spell that lets me summon my arrows. It is the foundation of all the other spells I know, and it is important to learn how it works.” Aaron started to work through the symbols, explaining what they meant and how they worked, but Mike was lost by the third one. He had a very faint grasp on what some of them meant, but the vast majority was beyond him.

  Is it four percent of the symbols I get, maybe? Mike thought as Aaron traced his fingers over patterns of symbols. While he did that, Mike pulled up the mental spell book he had and checked that yes, the Conjure Arrow spell was sitting at four out of a hundred.

  Exploring his new abilities, Mike touched the page himself. He traced his finger over the symbols, moved along the edges where generations of fingers had worn the edges smooth. Aaron went quiet as he handed Mike the book. He was nervous, remembering how his arrow had vanished when held in Mike’s hands, but the book had a comforting solid nature.

  There was no effect. No sudden tingle, no pop-up screens informing him of new knowledge. Not automatically, anyway.

  “It took me three years to master the spell,” Aaron said as he knelt down beside Mike. “You shouldn’t feel bad for not picking it up right away.”

  “I’m a mage who knows three spells; I have to do a little more.” Mike placed his hand flat on the wooden page before him and cast Identify.

  Instantly a spike of pain went through his head as multiple screens appeared. Mike heard a chime come from between his ears as he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. There was some comfort in the darkness, with the display of his new powers vanishing, but it couldn’t last long. Aaron was shouting for someone to come to help him.

  Mike realized that he had fallen over at the pain, ending up on the stone floor. He groaned as he pushed himself up.

  “It’s alright. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” He couldn’t make it onto the bed, so he just sat on the floor and rested his back against it. Haliard poked his head in the door with his mass of hair slick from the shower, but Mike waved him away. Remembering the destructive nature of his spell on magical items, he snapped his head up. “Is the book OK?”

  “Don’t worry, it has been through far worse things than dropping on the floor. How are you? Did you do… that thing you do?” Aaron scooped the book off the floor and held it in his lap. It didn’t look any the worse for wear to Mike, so he sighed and focused on his own pain.

  “I did, and I think I overloaded my brain a bit.” Mike checked the windows appearing before him. “Conjure Arrow, Imbue Arrow, Hunter’s Mark, Primal Tracker, Sudden Step, and Predator’s Eyes?”

  “Those are the spells in the book. Don’t tell me you’ve mastered them already. I only figured out Sudden Step last year!”

  “Part of them.” Mike checked his screens and saw that each of them was a tenth full. Conjure Arrow was slightly ahead from his earlier mystical consumption of an arrow, but he was a full ten percent of the way to having the spells available to him.

  There was also a slight bump in experience for his Force Dart and Conjure Ally spell. Not enough for them to level up, but it was noticeable. The Affinity of the spells from Aaron’s book worked well with both nature and arrows. It looked like they also helped each other out, based on the percentage.

  Makes sense. If he is a magical ranger, that would track. Mike shook his head, dismissing this train of thought. He had gotten caught up in preconceived notions before and didn’t want to go down that road before. No matter if he was looking at this new world through a game interface, he couldn’t assume it was a game he knew the rules too.

  “I should…” Mike started to reach toward the book again, but he felt dizzy. The rapid casting he had done to increase his familiarity with his spear wouldn’t work here. He needed to wait. The spell lasted for three minutes, so he decided to test how he felt again when that was done.

  But Mike was more excited by the last window that opened.

  Quest Complete

  Learn The Language 100/100

  New Skill Unlocked

  Arcane Polyglot

  “More good news. The notes you all wrote in there, I think they helped me out in a different way. I have fully grasped the local language.” Mike flicked through the screens to check out his new Skill.

  Arcane Polyglot

  The ability to learn languages, alphabets, and a variety of other communication styles is increased as a factor of Intelligence.

  Mike groaned as he saw a new tab labeled Stats on his mental book. They can’t make this easy, can they? Before he moved to that one, though, he took a deep breath and stood. He staggered a bit, still dizzy. Aaron reached out to steady him, standing himself.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be fine?”

  “Surprisingly,” Mike said with a small smile as he firmed up. “I think I’m doing better than I should be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mike stood there, feeling his new friend’s support hand on him. The pain in his head was nothing compared to what he had gained. Not just the knowledge, but the power it gave him in this new world.

  The old job he hated, the family who didn’t care about him, the friends he barely knew, Mike knew there would be moments he would miss them. There would have to be, he was only human. Those experiences shaped him.

  But he could start fresh.

  Mike’s smile grew firm as he started towards the shower.

  “It means every day is a new day, and a new chance to get better. And that is what I am going to do.”