Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“OPEN, Gate of Magic.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I was about to attempt to dive deep within myself, beyond the depths of my instincts, beyond even my subconscious, into the chaotic realm where I would release the spell’s energy. I regulated my breathing and focused my mind.

First, I constructed the image of an inner world within myself. It was a space shrouded in darkness, and there I was, standing inside of it.

It is a surprisingly difficult task to clearly reconstruct an image of oneself in one’s mind. But in this case, it took no time at all before I was looking at a copy of myself, wizard’s robe and all.

In fact, I felt that my thought processes were running abnormally quick. If I were to think of my brain as a computer, it felt like someone had upgraded my CPU and RAM. This must be Geo Margilus’s high ability scores at work, I thought.

Carefully, I took the image of myself standing in the cell and the image I’d created of myself in the inner world and brought

them together. Once the lines between them had blurred, and my physical self had melted into my imaginary self, I slowly opened my eyes.

Darkness.

No longer could I see the cell I was standing in. Now I was inside my inner world. I raised my right hand and formed the image of a lantern that would light the darkness in my mind. The lantern immediately formed in my hand, lighting my surroundings with a deep red tinge.

“This is amazing… It feels so real… Wh-whoa! No! Stop!”

The weight and heat of the lantern, the smell of the oil… It was just so real. It shocked me for a moment. That moment of shock—or rather, disbelief—had sent my inner world reeling. It felt as if I were being pulled hard from all sides, and it left my stomach churning.

Deep breaths: In… Out… In… Out…

In a flustered panic, I first focused on restoring order to my breathing. The swaying and disturbances finally gave way to calm.

“That was a close one…”

I was still only in my inner world, so even if my images of the world and self broke down, the worst that could happen was that I would make myself terribly sick. If I had let those images fail later in the process, there was a chance I could have put myself in a coma. Who the hell came up with this, anyway? (I did.)

“Reveal your form to me.”

Both my physical self and my self-image chanted the second verse of the spell in unison. When I raised my lantern to light the way ahead, the gate appeared in front of me.

“So, this is the magic gate.”

The gate was three meters tall and appeared to be made of stone. It was inscribed with countless ominous engravings, which only emphasized its magical nature. This gate connected my inner world and the chaotic realm. It served as the way in and the way out, but it also symbolized a protective barrier between myself and that plane.

What lay beyond the gate was still part of my mind, but at the same time, it was indeed another realm. If I were to explain it in psychological terms, the chaotic realm was not unlike the collective unconscious: within but beyond.

The magic gate opened without a sound, revealing stone steps that spiraled downward in a counterclockwise flow. By the lantern’s light, I slowly descended the steps. Along with the magic gate itself, this staircase and adjoining structures had taken many long years of training for Geo to construct in his mind. (According to the backstory I wrote for him, anyway.)

If any part of the image of the gate, walls, or staircase in my mind was inadequate, and my conscious self-image were to touch a part of the chaotic realm directly, my consciousness would be swallowed up by its roiling disorder, and I would lose my mind.

But there seemed to be no cause for alarm. My surroundings were built by the imagination of a Level 36 magic user, after all. From the hardness and coldness and coloration of the stone walls, to the flow of air and even the smells, there was no way to distinguish this world from reality.

I wasn’t counting steps, but after descending a couple flights’ worth of stairs, I came upon the first landing. There was a door and a plate above it which read: “The Beginner’s Spellbook Archive.” If I just wanted to practice, I thought, it might not be a bad idea to try casting a Rank 1 spell, but right now the spell I want to cast is farther down. I walked past the landing and continued down the stairs, past the second landing, the fourth, the seventh, the eighth…

Finally, I reached the ninth landing: The Grand Wizard’s Spellbook Archive. This was where the Rank 9 spells were stored. The chaos just beyond the walls was palpable. In a sense, this imaginary structure I inhabited was but a temporary space, forcing order upon the formless sea of energy that was the chaos. If any of these walls were to break down, that chaos would flood in, and both this space and my self would be lost to it.

Nervously, I gulped and raised my lantern to the door. It opened like the magic gate before—without a sound. Beyond the door was an archive room filled with giant bookshelves. If I had to pin it down, the floorplan of the room was similar to that of an elementary school classroom.

Upon entering the room, I saw nine elevated bookrests immediately in front of me, each of them holding a thick tome. Every book represented a charged spell. While ordinary bookrests are tilted toward the reader, these lay flat and level, like a table. This was because the bookrests served yet another important, but less obvious, purpose.

I looked at and confirmed the titles of the books: Time Stop, Meteor, Create Monster: Any, and… Invincibility.

I found the spell I was looking for and touched it lightly. It appeared to have over a thousand pages, but all I needed was one. The book opened by itself, as if it were alive. It turned to the page I was looking for of its own accord.

Both my physical self and self-image chanted the remainder of the spell.

“For the next six hours, my body will be covered by an invisible barrier that will nullify all weapon-based physical attacks and any magic-based attack of Rank 3 or below.”

The spell itself was more or less the same as the description of the spell in the D&B rulebook. In a way, it was like computer code, detailing the target and effects of the spell. After I read the spell, the book shone brightly and began to change its form, shrinking until it fit into the palm of my hand.

When the transformation was complete, I was holding two ten-sided dice—one white, one black. With the two dice, I needed to roll an activation check. Taken together, the two dice represented a number between 1 and 100. If I were to roll a 100, a result with one percent probability, my attempt to cast the spell would result in a so-called fumble, and the spell would not activate. This activation check is not required by D&B rules, but the game master at the time suggested we include it, in his words, “to make the game more thrilling.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, “probably shouldn’t have gone along with that one…”

I tossed the dice onto the bookrest.

This was why the bookrests were flat. There needed to be a place to roll any dice the spell checks required. The sound of rolling dice brought back memories. I looked to see how they landed. The white die read 0 and the black die 9. The white represented the tens’ place and the black the ones’ place, so the result was 09/100. I shivered a little. I’d almost fumbled.

“Invincibility.”

With that final word, the spell was cast. The two dice shone bright, and then their forms stretched and shot upward, all at once turned to energy sent out into reality. The bookrest I stood at was empty. Eight unused spells remained.

I exited the Grand Wizard’s Spellbook Archive and climbed up the spiral staircase. There really was no need to—after I cast the spell, all I needed to do was cut the link between my self-image and physical self—but I decided to play it safe, and waited until I had left the chaotic realm and was back in my inner world. Then I closed my eyes and severed the link.

“Phew… I made it.”

When I opened my eyes, I was back inside the prison cell.

I looked at my hands, still locked in wooden stocks, and the rest of my body. I could just barely perceive something like a thin, white, misty layer around me—a barrier. I had to squint to see it myself, so I doubted anyone else would be able to notice it. To check, I tried feeling the barrier near my abdomen. It felt cool to the touch.

In short, the spell was activated.

“I really was able to cast a spell…”

It felt like I spent an hour trying to cast that spell, I thought, but I knew it couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. Even if I tried to rush, it would still take ten seconds. The rules were crystal clear.

I won’t argue with the fact that it makes sense in the context of a game, but the fact that casting a spell makes me completely defenseless for ten seconds means I’ll have to be really careful how I use them.

I let out a sigh of relief, feeling the pent-up stress melting out of me. I then spent another few minutes staring into space.

But this time, my peace was broken by someone else. A rabble of footsteps and conversing voices were headed my way.

“Hey, you! Get up. You’re coming with us!”

“It’s time for your questioning, pal! You’re gonna talk!”

Three men shouted at me from the other side of the cell’s bars, wearing what looked like dirty leather armor.

Whoa… They’re all white, I thought. Wait, that’s not what’s important. They’re… What’s the word again?

Bandits. That’s it.

One of the first things I noticed was that I could understand what the men were saying, even if the words weren’t pleasant. Yet at the same time, I realized that it was in a language I’d never heard before. The Watcher must have downloaded knowledge of their language into my memories.

“I said get up!” one of the bandits shouted. “Come on out of there!”

“Hurry up, idiot!” shouted another.

“Snap out of it!” shouted the third.

The three men making a ruckus on the other side of the bars all had either blond or brown hair, and by their facial structures and general build, they seemed like they were of European descent. None of them looked like they had bathed in a while, and all three were armed, carrying a variety of axes and swords.

It wasn’t as if I had seen any in real life before, but taking what I knew from games and manga, these guys were definitely bandits. If they appeared as characters in a story, one might be tempted to dismiss them as small fry, but seeing them face to face, they looked far more dangerous than any punk you might find on the streets of Japan. If this truly is a world of swords and sorcery, these bandits have probably fought and killed before.

I kept quiet. Up until that moment, the threat of violence had never once been a factor in my life. The bloodthirsty aura of these bandits threatened to consume me entirely. I couldn’t bring myself to move.

“Can’t do anything by yourself, can you?”

Apparently realizing I couldn’t open the cell from the inside, one of the bandits unlocked the door and walked in.

“Um… I—” Before I could say anything more, the bandit punched me in the stomach. Immediately, I yelped in pain.

And through that pain, I suddenly realized my mistake. Invincibility was a spell that nullified damage from weapons and some forms of magic. Nowhere in the description of its effects did it offer any defense against a bare fist.

“I said come on!” the bandit growled.

As I cowered, all the air forced out of my lungs, the three bandits pulled me out of the cell. As I was dragged along a short hallway, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a young woman locked in one of the other cells.

For an instant, our eyes met, but neither of us were in any position to speak.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get to you once we’re finished with him!” one of the bandits crowed. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other then! Ha ha ha!”

I heard the woman let out a scream, but I was still in a state of panic. Forget helping her—I couldn’t even help myself.

***

“This way!”

The bandits took me through a door at the end of the hall, which led outside into a large courtyard bounded by thick stone walls. On the other end of the courtyard stood a stone tower. As I trudged toward the center of the courtyard, I found another group of bandits already waiting there. They laughed and jeered at the sight of me.

“Hey! It’s the fake sorcerer!”

“C’mon, show us a magic trick! Why don’t you try and conjure up a way out?!”

“Better yet, how about you use your sorcery to dig your own grave?!”

Fake sorcerer? I thought. What’s that all about? Unable to come to any sort of answer, I was forced to my knees when we reached the center of the courtyard.

Groaning, I tried to make sense of my surroundings. I knew what sort of place this was. It was some kind of fortress, or castle—the bandits’ hideout, probably. It was just the kind of place you would expect to encounter in a game. Maybe I would have been able to enjoy it from a more distant perspective, but the way things were, I certainly wasn’t having any fun.

“Jargle, sir!” I heard one of the bandits say.

They held me down for several minutes before a man in robes appeared from the tower, carrying a staff in either hand. He had the sunken cheeks, long moustache, and high-bridged nose of a man easily annoyed. It seemed the one in charge of this fortress was not a bandit chief, but an evil sorcerer.

“Who are you?” Jargle suddenly screeched. “Who are you, to have such an incredible staff as this?! Who did you steal this from?! How did you come across this, and those other materia?!”

Jargle rattled off his questions without leaving me space to answer. Upon closer inspection, I realized one of the staves he was holding was my own Staff of Wizardry. That staff was a powerful magic item I’d crafted in commemoration of Geo reaching Level 36. It had cost me half his fortune to make.

“I, uh… I am but a humble magician,” I said, stumbling over my words. “My name is Geo Margilus. That staff is a personal possession of mine.”

I almost said my real name but caught myself. That’s right, I thought. I’m in another world. No one here cares about my former status as a gainfully employed Japanese citizen. None of the laws or morals of that safe nation will come to my aid now.

“Magician? Do you mean to say you’re a sorcerer? Don’t you try to fool me! You have no mana! There’s not a drop of magic in your veins! You could never be a sorcerer.”

“Huh?” I said, confused. I have no mana? What does he mean by that?

“Enough with your nonsense,” Jargle shouted. “Tell me who you really are!”

Before I could respond, one of the bandits kicked me in the stomach. I doubled over in agony.

“Ha ha ha! What a pathetic little wimp!”

“You’re gonna have to do better than that to fool us!”

My mind went blank from the pain. In all my forty-two years, I’d never been subject to this level of violence before. But even more frightening than the violence was their laughter. No one with even the slightest whisper of a conscience could laugh that way.

“While I sense no mana in this staff,” Jargle said, a touch of doubt in his voice, “it is clearly materia!”

Jargle swung the staff in his left hand—my wizard’s staff—and with a flash, bolts of lightning struck the ground between us, followed immediately by an explosion of thunder.

The lightning and thunder were gone as quick as they had come, but the shock wave they created was enough to throw the three bandits who had brought me there off their feet. They cried out in fear and confusion; the other bandits watching from a distance looked dumbfounded.

“What the hell was that?”

“I’ve never seen sorcery like that before…”

Damn it, I thought. That must have been the lightning spell charged in my wizard’s staff!

In D&B, as long as you equip a magic item, you intuitively know how to use it, so that part didn’t surprise me. But he said he sensed no mana in the staff… What does that mean? I tried to wrap my head around what he was saying, but my thoughts were paralyzed with pain and fear. I couldn’t focus.

“How can there be materia without mana?!” Jargle shouted. “Did those fools in the Faction of the Wise develop this?! Tell me what you know!”

“I have no idea what you’re—ugh!”

Before I could finish my sentence, the gang of three bandits started kicking and punching me anew. If nothing else, Jargle and these three were all on the same wavelength.

“Hmph… You underestimate me, the great sorcerer Jargle? Insolent fool.”

“No, I just… Gurgh…”

It took all the strength I could muster just to withstand the kicking and shoving from that gang of three, but I must have struck a nerve. Jargle commanded the bandits to drag me to my feet, and as they held me still, he lifted his right hand—the one with his own staff—toward me.

“Icia Bolza!”

As Jargle shouted those words, something emerged from the tip of his staff and shot into my shoulder.

“G-gyaaahh!!!” I screamed.

When I looked at my shoulder, burning with pain, I saw a thick shard of ice protruding from it.

Magic! He used magic to shoot an ice arrow at me!

But if he used magic, why didn’t my Invincibility spell work?! It’s supposed to nullify magic below Rank 3! Did he use a higher-ranked spell?!

“How do you like the taste of real sorcery? If you don’t want to be turned into an icicle, you’d better start telling the truth!”

“That’s our Jargle!”

“Show him who’s boss!”

I could tell Jargle and the others were still taunting me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The pain I felt from the ice arrow was on another level compared to the blunt force of the bandits’ kicks and punches. This pain clawed its way into the depths of my consciousness. Subject to more suffering and violence than I had ever experienced, all that filled my mind was fear…and anger.

I don’t want to hurt anymore. Am I going to die? I don’t want to die. Someone help me! I don’t want to be here anymore. Why did this have to happen to me? I haven’t done anything!

“What’s your next move?”

Suddenly a voice cut through my tangled thoughts like a knife—the familiar voice of my friend and game master.

Even if it was only for an instant, the pain and confusion ebbed enough to allow my mind to reboot.

That’s right. I’ve gotten out of situations like this countless times before! Admittedly, all of those times were in the context of a game, but I pushed that snide qualification out of my mind.

From that moment on, my brain kicked into overdrive. I ignored the pain and insults and everything else that got in my way. In response to the first-ever real threat to my life, my concentration peaked. The light, heat, sounds, smells, and other factors of my environment came into perfect clarity. My ability to concentrate so well must have been largely due to Geo Margilus natural aptitude.

In no time at all, I knew the only choice I had was to cast a spell.

I ran through the list of spells I had charged in my mind and selected one that would both completely seal Jargle’s movements and threaten the bandits enough to make them hesitant to act. Most likely, Jargle had taken my spellbook, so using a spell to run away was never an option.

“What’s the matter? Answer him!”

“Don’t give us the silent treatment!”

One of the bandits kicked me from behind. I fell, and my face and gut both struck the earth, knocking the wind right out of me. Even so, I gritted my teeth and looked up at Jargle.

“Open, Gate of Magic…”

With a composure that surprised even me, I began to cast the spell.

I steeled myself to keep going no matter what happened during the ten seconds it would take to cast the spell, but Jargle and the bandits must have thought I had lost my mind in fear and pain. They just kept laughing and jeering at me.

“As a consequence of this spell…”

After the worst ten seconds of my life, I activated the power of a spell from the fifth level, the Enchanter’s Spellbook Archive. The dice roll for the activation check wasn’t a problem.

“…one target will be turned to lifeless stone. Petrify.”

“It looks like you need to taste a little more of my sorcery to… Huh?”

Neither Jargle nor the bandits seemed to realize what was happening, but I noticed that both of Jargle’s feet began to discolor…and turn to stone.

“What’s happening to my feet? I-I can’t move them!”

The discoloration spread from his feet to his ankles and continued upward with merciless speed to his calves and then to the thighs beyond, his robe undergoing the same process as his flesh. Once it reached his waist, both Jargle and the bandits realized what was happening.

“It’s stone… Jargle’s turning to stone!”

“I-I can’t move! I can’t move my legs!”

Once Jargle’s lower half turned to stone, the color drained from his face, and he began to scream. First the gang of three, and then the rest of the bandits in the courtyard, started to panic.

“What are you doing?! Kill him! Kill him!” Jargle screamed.

At that moment, I felt something touch my back, and I turned around.

“Wh-what is this?! What are you?!” One of the bandits had frozen stiff, his arm extended in a stabbing motion. Apparently, he had tried to stab me with his sword, but my Invincibility spell had blocked the attack.

“You damned freak!”

“Why can’t I stab him?!”

The gang of three tried to attack me with their axes and swords, but with my body protected by Invincibility, I could hardly feel anything at all. If any one of them had tried to attack me with their bare hands, that probably would have been the end of me, but in their panic, the thought didn’t occur to any of them.

“No!!! Stop! Stop it! Somebody help m—”

With his face twisted in fear, Jargle’s petrification continued mercilessly. It reached his chest, then his throat, and finally his head. In less than twenty seconds since I uttered the final words of the spell, he had completely turned to stone, with that look of horror frozen on his face. According to D&B rules, the spell’s effect was supposed to be instantaneous, but… At least it worked. I can’t expect everything to be exactly the same. I’ll admit I felt a little bad about using a spell like that on a human, but I felt no sympathy for this particular one.

Having regained some of my cool, I let out a sigh of relief, but immediately the pain in my shoulder flared back up, and I twisted my face in pain.

Everything around me was quiet. The only thing I could hear was my own heavy breathing. The silence lasted about a minute, though it may have been shorter. Then it was broken by one of the bandits, who cautiously approached Jargle.

“H-hey…”

“J-Jargle… Sir, can you hear me?”

The bandit reached up and touched Jargle—or rather, his statue—and since he had frozen in an unnatural way, the statue lost its balance and fell with a loud thunk as it hit the ground.

“He’s really turned to stone…”

“W-was it that guy who did it?”

The bandits’ collective gaze, which had been focused on Jargle, turned toward me. The contempt in their eyes was gone, replaced by fear and anxiety. Serves you right! I thought, but because of the renewed pain in my shoulder, I was more cautious than confident. I had to get rid of the bandits as soon as I could.

In that case, I… Ugh, what do I do? I can’t think through this pain.

“What’s your next move?”

Pain or no pain, I heard the voice of that same game master, my oldest RPG compatriot, challenging me.

While I frantically struggled to collect my thoughts, the bandits were starting to grasp what had happened. Starting with the gang of three, many of the bandits started inching away from me.

“That guy really turned Jargle to stone, didn’t he?”

“B-but Jargle said he wasn’t a sorcerer…”

“Yeah, well, look what happened to him!”

“Wh-why don’t we kill him? You know, to be safe.”

Nevertheless, some of the bandits still had their weapons in hand. None seemed willing to make the first move, but if I ran, or one of them grew tired of waiting, the balance that kept everyone still would collapse.

I started casting another spell. It wasn’t some carefully planned decision. I simply couldn’t stand the pressure of the moment. I wanted to do something—anything—to get out of it.

“As a consequence of this spell, a platoon of six ogres will be created out of nothing, and for three days will follow my command. Create Ogre Platoon.”

Create Ogre Platoon was a spell from the seventh level, the Invoker’s Spellbook Archive.

Chaotic energy released by the spell warped the space around me, twisting ripples in the air.

“What is it now?!”

The bandits didn’t have long to react. Soon, six humanoid monsters—ogres with brownish-red skin—began to emerge from the distorted space. They were large—about three meters in height—and dreadfully gruesome. The first thing they did was form a defensive circle around me.

“D-daemons…”

“He summoned daemons! He has daemons on his side!”

The effect on the bandits was extreme. One stifled a scream, and the others were clearly stricken with fear.

The ogres, armed with axes and clubs, were all Level 6. Given that the maximum level a monster could have in D&B was the same as player characters, they were not particularly strong monsters. However, each Level 6 ogre could easily take on a party of six Level 1 adventurers, with Level 1 being equivalent to the abilities of a common foot soldier.

I wasn’t sure how well the strength of humans in Sedia lined up with the level system in D&B, but it wasn’t a stretch to assume six ogres could easily slaughter ten to twenty bandits.

The bandits seemed to come to the same conclusion and quickly lost all will to fight. Who could blame them? A few of the bandits who were nearest to the gate threw open the side door and ran.

Is “daemon” just the term people here in Sedia use for ogres? I thought. The word the bandits used caught my attention. I thought I understood the language, but I still wasn’t sure what a “daemon” was, exactly.

There was already more than one way to pronounce the word ogre in Japanese. I was more familiar with the French transliteration, and that was the style I used in my summoning spell, since that was the reading of the word used in the Japanese version of D&B. More modern games generally prefer to pronounce the word in the American English style. I’m not sure why D&B went with French, but quirks like that were pretty common in older TTRPGs.

“Hrgh… Hyaaah!”

While I was again preoccupied with the pain in my shoulder, one of the bandits (specifically, one of the gang of three) let out a cry and ran toward an ogre, swinging his axe.

If the ogre had just sat there and done nothing, the axe might have done some damage, but the ogre deftly swung its club and knocked the axe out of the bandit’s hand.

“Eep!” The first bandit let out a frightened yelp.

“Wh-what are you doing? You idiot!” the second bandit exclaimed.

“Damn it! Let’s do this thing!” the third bandit yelled. The balance tipped, and everything came crashing down.

Some of the bandits haphazardly faced off against the ogres, and the rest fled. The ogres kept their defensive formation, so no one attacked me, but…

“Please don’t kill them! Just drive them off!” I yelled.

The ogres responded to my command with a roar. There was no reason for me to ask politely, but the etiquette ingrained in me from working at a large company for several long years wasn’t easy to break.

Every time the ogres swung their axes and clubs and boulder-like fists, bandits were sent flying. With each attack, the bandits lost more of their will to fight, but none were losing their lives, so that meant the ogres were faithfully following my command. But even with the ogres holding back, the bandits barely did any harm to them at all.

The fact that Level 6 ogres had such an overwhelming advantage was probably due to the bandits’ abilities being comparable to Level 1 or 2 characters at most.

“We’re not even putting a scratch on these things!”

“Run! We gotta run!”

“W-wait for me!”

Those bandits who’d tried their hand at attacking the ogres were all driven back and swiftly lost their will to fight. Dragging their feet, the remaining bandits fled after the first who ran. There weren’t any left too hurt to walk, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

As I watched the last of the fleeing bandits struggling to fit through the side door, I considered tying them up. If I did that, I could hand them off to the authorities, whoever they might be.

If I wasn’t trying to conserve the spells I have currently charged, I might be able to pull that off, but I still haven’t found my spellbook… When I thought of what might happen if I used up all my spells without any way to replenish them, I quickly lost any desire to mete out justice.

Either way, it wasn’t long before there were no more bandits left in sight, and hardly any longer before they were out of earshot as well.

Just minutes ago, this courtyard was like a war zone, and now it’s silent, I thought. It was hard to believe. I took a deep breath and exhaled. My next thought was to secure my own safety.

“Three of you,” I directed the ogres, “please guard the perimeter and make sure none of the bandits return. Two of you, search the fort, and please remove anything you consider dangerous. As for the remaining ogre, you will guard me.”

“Grrrn,” the ogres grunted in response.

After listening to my commands, all but the one ogre who was to be my guard dispersed.

“Ugh… This hurts so much…” I moaned, holding my shoulder in the quiet courtyard.

The ice arrow itself was gone, but there was a large open wound in my shoulder. Thanks to the fact that it was an ice-based attack, the wound looked like frozen meat, and wasn’t bleeding much.

I still wasn’t any closer to finding my spellbook, but I realized that if I left my shoulder the way it was, it might lead to lasting damage. Plus, just looking at it was unnerving.

I went to the ninth-level spell archive and cast Complete Recovery.

According to D&B rules, Complete Recovery could immediately cure any wound or effect with the single but notable exception of death. Given that it was my fourth time casting a spell, most of my anxiety about the process was gone.

“Whoa… It really healed…”

It was a Rank 9 spell. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but as I watched my shoulder heal, it was like watching a video being played in reverse. It healed completely, without even a scar to be seen. I felt I had glimpsed the true significance of the power of a Level 36 magic user.

“Well, let’s get to it, then.”

Feeling better, I decided to explore the rest of the fortress. First, I had my guard ogre break open the stocks on my hands.

“So, my first dungeon is an abandoned fortress, huh? Better keep an eye out to see if anything gets squished under the doors the ogres knock in…”

D&B was designed with four distinct character classes—warrior, cleric, rogue, and magic user—with each class holding its own advantages and disadvantages, and each performing a different role in an adventurers party.

As was made clear by my run-in with the bandits, no matter how high a magic user’s level is, they are fundamentally useless when it comes to combat in close quarters.

Magic is powerful, but it is not without its shortcomings. Every spell requires one round (roughly ten seconds) to cast, and while casting spells, a magic user is left defenseless. Recovery magic is a cleric’s specialty, not a wizard’s, so the spell Complete Recovery is an exception rather than the rule. While a magic user can cast some spells that will unlock locks and disable traps, they cannot use those skills limitlessly, like rogues can.

The more I dwell on it, the more glaring the disadvantages are. I’ve got to be more careful if I’m going to make it here.

I wasn’t confident everything would go smoothly, but with my guard ogre stationed in front of me, I was able to explore the fort without any issue. There weren’t any traps, and whenever I encountered a locked door, I just had my ogre break the lock.

The layout of the fortress was relatively simple, consisting of a main tower, a separate building for living quarters, and an elliptical outer stone wall. There were guard towers on either side of the main gate, and at other points along the battlements. They gave me the impression that the place was built with utility over appearance in mind. The jail compound I had been in before was connected to the building that housed the living quarters. The main tower had three floors above ground and one basement floor. Generally speaking, the basement was used for storage, the first floor was mostly open space, the second floor housed an office, and the third floor contained living quarters.

I found my stolen Infinity Bag and the rest of my items in Jargle’s room, up in the tower’s living quarters. The first thing I did was turn the bag upside down and make sure my spellbook was there—and there it was, thicker than a phone book, with “Geo Margilus’s Spellbook” written on the cover. Once I was satisfied I’d found the real thing, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

I was also able to reclaim my robe and other equipment. Though it was the first time I was wearing them, both my robe and boots felt well worn and broken in.

Unfortunately, I’d turned my Staff of Wizardry to stone along with Jargle, who was currently collecting moss back in the courtyard. I’d have to retrieve it later.

“It looks like this is a mountain…”

When I looked out of the window in Jargle’s room, I saw that the fortress was built on the side of a steep mountain peak. The fortress was surrounded by a forest, and only a small winding path provided a way down out of it. I figured that if I followed the path, it should lead to a town or village at some point.

“Wait! How could I forget?!”

After leaving the tower and walking around the courtyard, my eyes settled on the jail compound. I suddenly remembered a very important detail.

“I’ve got to save that young woman!”