Because Ronny had gone to bed early the night before, it was still dark when he awoke. He laid on the futon for a while, legs tucked into his chest. Unmoving, he thought about his previous life, and how much kinder it had been.

The events of the day before were paralyzing, and Ronny didn’t want to get up. Before then, he’d never seen a human corpse. The dead, unblinking eyes and mangled corpses of his workers were still fresh in his mind. Their dried blood stuck to his skin and stained his clothes, but he didn’t bother to wash.

Not that he could. Ronny and Alice’s stocking efforts had been in preparation for a long, suffocating siege, not a sudden coup de grâce. By now, the city was surely overrun with Demons. What that meant, Ronny did not know.

The King was probably dead, and so too were the legions of ‘soldiers’ that the despot had conscripted in preparation for the war. They never stood a chance.

He remembered Risitro. A demon capable of killing the massively superhuman Boss in an instant. It didn’t seem right for any one creature to possess so much power. It was especially unnerving that this creature was willing to use it without hesitation. If the any other demons could fight like that, Barnock was as good as dead. In fact, maybe the city’s death had already come, and he just hadn’t heard yet. I wouldn’t surprise him.

In a mournful mood, Ronny pulled himself up to his feet. He wasn’t sore—the system made that impossible for him—but his body felt heavy. Lethargy was tempting, but he still had Theo and Alice to protect. He didn’t want to lose them too.

He slid off his contaminated work clothes and put on the outfit he’d been wearing when he died. A tee-shirt with some grey jeans. The moccasins came on shortly after. It was a strange choice of attire that would strike others—including himself—as odd, but he felt compelled to surround himself with what remained of his past life.

His room, while much nicer than it had been when he first arrived, was still just an empty box with a crummy old cot in the corner. Over the past two weeks, he’d had started beginning to see it as a home. Now though, it didn’t look very appealing.

Ronny pushed open the door and started down the stairwell—the cracked wooden planks squealing in protest as his feet pushed down on each step. Normally, he wouldn’t have noticed something like that, but the city outside was empty—of noise, and of people.

There were no demons, nor junkies, nor soldiers in the streets below. The lanterns that usually defined the area’s nighttime landscape were also absent. It was as though the Inn was a ship in the ocean, far from anything but the deep waters below.

As he approached the bottom of the stairs, it occurred to him that he was unaware of what he intended to do or where he was going to go. It had been his habit to go down and eat when he woke up and then head off to work afterwards, but he wouldn’t be doing that today.

Strangely, a soft, orangey glow was coming from the from the cracks in the door leading to the kitchen. Theo and his magic immediately came to mind. Instead, it was Alice sitting alone by the table.

Her arms were stretched out straight and her hands faced her ceiling. Above her palm, there was a fire. It danced and flickered like a candle in the wind, but without a wick to burn from. The flame was brighter than its size would have suggested.

She addressed him as he walked through the door, “Ronny! You’re up.” The flame moved a more wildly while she spoke, as though her concentration was broken, “Hopefully you got some sleep.”

“Yeah.” He had the Well Rested buff as always, but felt more tired than The System said he did, “So you can use magic too?”

She sighed and lit a candle with her flame. With the new fire lit, the one in her palm disappeared, leaving just the weak light of the regular wax candle, “It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to use magic… but with the way things are now, I think it’ll become necessary to rely on it soon.”

“I hope you’re not intending to fight any demons.”

“I will if I have to.”

“Please don’t! They’d kill you. You haven’t seen how they are yet, but I have. Alice, I don’t want to lose you too!”

His pleads were met with a poker face. Alice held up a finger. Above it, a flame much larger and brighter than the one she’d had earlier appeared. Ronny could feel the sweltering heat from across the room, droplets formed across his body.

“You’re a perceptive man, Ronny. I’m sure you noticed Theo refer to me as a member of the Grivelspyre family.” The flame swelled to twice the size, and now almost touched the ceiling, “You already know that our King shares the same name. I bet you’ve already connected the dots, so I doubt this comes as a surprise, but I used to be a member of the royal family. What you might now know, are the implications of that fact.”

With a snap of her free hand, all the candles and wall sconces in the room went ablaze. The room was well lit and very, very hot now. She continued, “I realize that you don’t know much about the guild, but maybe it would help if I told you I used to be a Mythrill adventurer.” That did help. Even Ronny knew that Mythrill was the second highest rank in the Guild.

It was a rank that was rarely achieved in one’s youth, if at all. Of the Guild’s twenty-or-so million members around the world, less than 2,000 held the rank. A single Mythrill-ranked adventurer was said to be akin to an army of a thousand soldiers.

Ronny didn’t know what to make of the news. He just took a seat across from her and sat there, waiting for her to say something else. Something that made sense.

“My father is old now. He might have been able to single-handedly deal with the Demon Army if he were still young, but he’s a shadow of what he once was.” The flame above her finger shook wildly, “He’s dead by now, no doubt.”

“B-but that would mean…” Ronny’s voice quivered as he spoke.

“Yes. It does. I’m confident that Barnock has already fallen.” She cast away her flame, leaving just the candles to dimly illuminate the room, “What that means for us, I’m unsure… but I may have to get involved in this mess at some point. I want you to know that.”

“Please, Alice… I’ve seen enough people die already.” Ronny wanted to cry, but held himself together, “I can’t lose you too. Theo needs you too.”

Alice slid her chair next to Ronny’s and put her still warm hand on his shoulder, “I didn’t say that I was going to die. Make no mistake, Ronny. I’ll survive whatever this cruel world of ours throws at me.” She slouched a little, “Survival is the only path forwards, you know. I can’t leave this world just yet, not while Theo and you are expecting me to come home. Or can I?”

“You can’t.” Ronny forced a smile, “You’re not allowed to.”

“And that’s why I won’t.”

“Good answer.” Ronny took a deep breath in, “Teach me magic.”

“That’s sudden.”

“I need to get stronger, don’t I?”

“Well sure, that would be good, but magic isn’t really something you can learn at your age.” She frowned as she delivered the news.

“Well that’s what you might think, but like you, I’ve also been keeping a secret. A secret far less believable than yours, for that matter.” He stood up and with one hand, scooped up the heavy oak table in front of him. It looked—and felt—effortless, “Two weeks ago, we met. In our first encounter, I’m sure you remember my appearance. A chubby, middle-aged man with a hunchback. Just walking around would strain my breathing if I did it long enough.” He put the table down, “But in just two short weeks, that’s changed. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

She raised her eyebrow, “What are you getting at?”

“I’ve gone from lifting five bricks in a day to several hundred. That kind of progress isn’t exactly a natural occurrence, is it?”

“I suppose not. But how is getting in shape quickly relevant to learning magic?”

“Take a look at my clothes. Have you ever seen anything resembling these?” The clothes didn’t fit him and his lean body well anymore, but they were still in good shape.

“No? I guess not… Aren’t they from the island you said you came from?” Alice was thoroughly puzzled now.

“That island, North Carolina, is no island. It’s actually just a part of a country in my home world, Earth. A providence, if you will.”

“Your home… world? What are you on about, Ronny?”

“I’m not from this world, not an island on it, nor a country. Nowhere on this planet. I’m Ronny McKitty, a man from the suburbs of Charlotte—which is a city in the state of North Carolina. A state in a nation called the United States, which is a part of a continent called North America. North America is a continent in a world called Earth. My home.”

Alice put her hand on her forehead, “You do know how hard this is to believe, right?”

“Of course, and since my clothes are the only hard evidence of that, I don’t expect you to believe me. All I need you to believe is that when I arrived to this world, I was given a power. It lets me progress in any skill at a superhuman pace, magic included.”

“Okay sure. I’ll believe you because you have no reason to lie at this point. So what do you want me to do then?”

“Just tell me about the most basic magic-related skill you can think of. I can take things from there.”

“Well that would be the ability to sense mana, I guess…”

“And how do you use that ability?”

“Oh god, it’s been so long since I learned how to do it.” She looked to the ceiling as she tried to recall how she’d been taught, “I think you just close your eyes and sit completely still for a few hours. While you do that, I’m supposed to channel magic in your general direction. An unnaturally large amount of magic in the area makes it easier to detect.”

“Well let’s begin then, shall we?”

“Right now?” She sighed, “You do understand that if you move at all, we’ll have to restart, right? Well, that’s assuming that you’re actually capable of awakening your mana as an adult.”

“I am. Have faith.”

“Whatever you say, I guess.” Alice gestured him to sit back down in his chair and close his eyes. She told him to find a comfortable position and not to move from it for any reason. Not even for an itch, no matter how bad it was. He nodded and they began. Like she’d said, every few minutes, she’d throw magic in his direction. Ronny, of course, didn’t notice anything. Not yet anyways.