A few quiet days passed after Alex decided to take a break.

  For once, he actually followed through on it, spending most of his time in the city library.

  As he’d learned, the building was older than most of Luterra, its stone walls thick and cool, the air inside always carrying the faint smell of dust and parchment. He continued to study various textbooks on monsters and plants, eager to expand his knowledge on this world’s flora and fauna. He also tried to read up on this world’s history and geography, to not seem completely uncultured in conversations, but that proved to be rather boring in comparison.

  Books on magic, however, were much more conflicting.

  According to most sources, shaping mana required either spoken formulae, engraved arrays, or a deep internal visualization that aligned intent with form. All of which assumed you could actually move mana outside your body.

  In other words, it was worthless to him.

  It wasn’t that the information itself was wrong, or that the spells described within weren’t powerful enough. The problem was that none of it applied to him. He couldn’t project mana. Couldn’t shape it externally. Everything he did happened inside his body, constrained by flesh and blood.

  Still, the time hadn’t been wasted.

  While most of the knowledge he’d found revolved around external mana and casting spells, the second largest portion focused on body magic.

  Unlike traditional spellcasting, body magic did not rely on projecting mana outward. Instead, it reshaped the body itself, using mana as a stabilising force rather than a projectile. The practitioners—body mages—treated flesh as both medium and catalyst, inscribing runes directly onto their own tissue to force mana to do what they wanted it to..

  Most beginners limited themselves to the skin. It was accessible, comparatively safe, and mistakes were less likely to result in an expedited reunion with their maker. Apparently more powerful body mages moved deeper, carving formations into muscle, bone, and in extreme cases even vital organs, but that sort of knowledge could not be found in a public library. It seemed that even this world’s openness with information had limits.

  The results, according to the books, were varied.

  Most applications of body magic did indeed come down to being tougher and punching harder, like the path Rhen was taking, but others went far beyond that. There were plenty of examples of mages setting their own fists alight, phasing partially out of reality to let attacks pass through them, or giving themselves inhuman levels of flexibility to the point where it shouldn’t be physically possible.

  The more extreme texts spoke of body mages who had grown entirely new organs to process toxins, generate elemental effects, or survive in environments that would kill normal people outright. Extra limbs were not unheard of either, though that practice seemed heavily discouraged, and Alex couldn’t find much information about it beyond ‘don’t do it’.

  In short, body magic wasn’t just about hitting harder.

  And more importantly, he was actually capable of it.

  Using one of the publicly available introductory texts, Alex had experimented with a few of the absolute simplest runes. Even then, it had taken him almost a whole day to get his mana to hold the required shape.

  The reaction had been… underwhelming.

  Because of his lacking control, he’d been forced to make each rune much bigger than they were supposed to be, and he could only maintain one at a time. The effects had been nothing to write home about, merely hardening his skin a little, kind of like semi frozen chicken. This was also where Alex hit a snag.

  The moment his concentration wavered—even slightly—the carefully shaped mana unravelled. It didn’t disperse harmlessly into the air like a normal spell would; it was immediately dragged inward, absorbed by his body and broken down as fuel.

  Any rune he tried to create simply vanished.

  Worse still, even when he did manage to maintain a structure for more than a few seconds, his regeneration worked against him. Body magic relied on forcing the body into a specific altered state, but Alex’s body rejected those changes just as aggressively as it rejected injury. The moment he stopped actively sustaining the effect, his flesh reverted, ‘healing’ itself back to its default state as if the rune had never existed.

  Which meant that right now, body magic was a dead end. Not forever—he could feel that—but for the moment it was just another reminder that while he had power, he still lacked the ability to use it properly.

  Alex closed the book with a sigh and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a long moment before standing up. He returned the text to its shelf, thanked the librarian and stepped out into the cloudy day—it seemed like Luterra had been on a streak recently, with several days in a row of terrible weather. It reminded Alex of England, just without the British people.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Much more pleasant.

  He opened the doors to the guild and was met with a wall of sound as usual. Adventurers moved back and forth across the guild, talked, drank, and did various other adventurer-like things.

  A particularly large grouping of people was crowded around something off to the side of the main mission board. Curious, Alex tried to make his way over, but the crowd was way too dense and he didn’t want to antagonise anyone by forcing his way through.

  Instead, he scanned the room and quickly noticed a familiar face behind a counter.

  Polly was on duty.

  She was juggling questions from two adventurers at once, sliding papers across the desk while rattling off numbers with practiced ease. Alex waited until there was a brief lull, then stepped forward.

  “Hey,” he said and pointed back at the crowd. “What’s that about?”

  Polly looked up, blinked once, then smiled. “Oh! Hi, Alex. Haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Good to see you too. So… what did I miss?”

  She glanced past him toward the crowd and chuckled. “Not much, just that.”

  “Thanks,” he grinned sarcastically. “That really narrows it down.”

  “Sorry,” she apologised. “War has broken out.”

  Alex stared at her for a moment. “Excuse me?”

  “War,” she repeated. “Between Ecrait and the Free Kingdoms.”

  “And those are…?”

  “Two countries north of Prasanth,” the receptionist finally elaborated. “Ecrait is northwest of here, though we aren’t direct neighbours, with Casmor in between us and them. The Free Kingdoms are a series of islands even further northwest of Ecrait.”

  “Oh, great.” Alex relaxed. “So the war isn’t here.”

  “What? No, no, of course not,” Polly shook her head. “I would not be so calm if it were.”

  Alex nodded along, then pointed back at the crowd. “But what does that have to do with this? If the war is so far away, what are they doing?”

  “Well, as you know, the guild is a worldwide organisation,” she waited for him to nod. “That means that we have branches in most countries on this continent. Just based off of the pure combat manpower it can mobilise, the guild is the most powerful force on the planet. This obviously means that when there is a war, all parties involved send recruitment notices to the guild, more or less treating it like a mercenary base.”

  “I see…” Alex frowned. “That explains why the two countries have involved the guild, but given the distances involved, why is this branch of the guild receiving the notices? My geography isn’t great, but I know that Casmor is over two thousand miles across, and we’d have to get through the entirety of Prasanth to even get to the southern border. Surely by the time any adventurers make it there, the war will long be over?”

  “That’s what the teleportation rooms are for,” Polly beamed. “As a relatively new adventurer, it’s understandable that you aren’t familiar with them, but it’s one of the services offered by the guild. They’re special rooms covered in enchantments—kind of like the truth rooms—except these serve to send people to various branches of the guild. For a price, of course.”

  “Ahhh,” Alex finally understood.

  Basically, countries at war send missions or recruitment notices to the guild, which then posts them in all its branches, and adventurers can then decide whether to join the war or not, at which point they teleport to their chosen country.

  “You mentioned something about a cost?” He suddenly remembered.

  Polly nodded. “Yes. Fifty silver per person.”

  “Fifty-!” Alex resisted the urge to curse.

  Forcing himself to calm down, he considered the situation. Obviously, such a service couldn’t be made free, not only because it’s probably expensive to run, but also because it had great potential to be abused. The adventurer’s guild would become a travel agency, and not a guild—plus, imagine fifty people from around the world trying to go to one place at the same time? A nightmare.

  “…I guess that’s fair,” he begrudgingly admitted. He turned to look back at the crowding adventurers. “Do you think I should go? You’ve explained how the postings got here, but that doesn’t explain why those people seem so rabid to do them. Is the pay really that good?”

  “Take a look yourself,” Polly shrugged and pulled a couple of flyers from beneath her desk.

  And others.

  Alex’s eyes bulged. “One- one whole gold per day?!”

  “Yeah, that’s why they’re so excited.” Polly nodded at the crowding adventurers. “That sort of pay is hard to come by, though the risk is commensurate.”

  Alex fell into thought. ‘Looking at it objectively, this is obviously the best next step for me. I can’t keep camping out here in the middle of nowhere and grinding away at low level monsters. If I want to learn more about my abilities, especially how they interact with humans, I’ll need to experiment—and there’s no time for human experiments like a war.’

  “Well, you’ve given me plenty to think about.” He dragged himself back to the conversation. “I’ll need to go talk to my companions before I can make any real decisions, but I’m definitely intrigued.”

  “Of course, any time,” Polly smiled at him. “It’s my job.”

  Alex grabbed a copy of each of the postings and turned to leave the guild, already compiling a list of things he’d have to find out before he made his decision.

  ‘First: why are they actually fighting?’