“Missive for you sir.”

The dark-haired man sat alone in a very large room. It was obviously an office as there was a desk, chairs for visitors, soft carpets, a few odd curios, and even a couple of plush loungers. Most of the room was taken over however by many books on large handcrafted and carved bookshelves lined the back and side walls. Thousands of books, the room reeked of musty paper and ink. Yet the man behind the desk wouldn’t have it any other way. The smell was a comfort to him. If he ever had work to do, he always attended to it here.

After handing the envelope to the man who had been drafting a letter of his own, the mail clerk turned and promptly left, not even waiting for a reply.

On the outside of the folded and magic sealed letter was written…

“Hand deliver to Mihk Asher. Stockmore. Core tower 3.”

“Interesting.” Mihk softy said, he knew this handwriting, but had not received a letter from that person in a long time. Then looking up to make sure he was alone, waved his hand at the door to his room. It closed and latched itself. Then the door flashed green once. With a nod Mihk opened a drawer in his desk to his right. He brought out a small stamp looking item and placed it upon the letter. With a small application of magic the letter’s seal broke allowing Mihk to open and read and re-read its contents. Not that the letter was long, in fact it was very short, five words short. But the message was very unexpected.

“Force mage discovered in Hombeck.”

The average in everyway man sat back, sinking into his plush chair. “Now that is some news.” He calmly said aloud to the ceiling.

The man sat and stared at the stars that crawled across the ceiling of his room, matching the constellations and slow shift of the real sky above. There was even a sun and two moons that would make their way from the east wall to the west as the day and night progressed. There was almost always one truism about worlds, the sun almost always rose in the east. At least in the worlds this man had seen.

Stray thought forced from his mind he once again focused on the letter.

“I may have to make a move myself on this.” Mihk stood pushing his chair back. His own letter now abandoned. Kings could wait for minor missives if this news was true. He suddenly felt he was being moved like a piece in a game. Yet he could not ignore the sender or the news. With a sigh and a determined grunt Mihk walked to the bookcases on the back wall, then through one that faded incorporeal for a second. He arrived into a much smaller room. The walls lined with shelves holding various wands, rings, necklaces, robes, and many other objects of power. He slowly began to choose items and they disappeared into his spacial ring. He then moved to the robes hanging on hooks and choose a simple white cotton looking robe, which had silver threads woven into the weave from top to bottom, spaced a hand width apart. Changing into his new robe and placing his old one on the empty hook he turned to leave satisfied in his choices. “Well, time for another road trip.” Then took a step and stopped. “Whoops. Can’t forget my hat.” He reached back to the hooks on the wall and retrieved a blue skull cap type hat with a very wide, and gaudy yellow brim. Placing the odd hat choice onto his head, then patting it into place, Mihk stepped back out of the small room. He appeared just outside of the main gates, startling the guards.

“Oy! You!” One called out and was immediately pulled back and shushed by an older guard.

The man who appeared outside the gate did not turn back, but he did wave a hand as he strolled away.

“Ern, you ever see that man appear like that, just ignore him. And if you can’t then just wish him a good day.” Rebuked the older guard to his younger companion.

“He the one yah told me about Bert?” The younger guard asked quietly looking at the mages back slowly growing smaller.

“Yeah, and if you have the sense the gods gave to pigs, you’d just forget about him being here.” Bert replied.

With a nod of thanks by Ernie to Bert, the two guards returned to watching over their fellow guards who were doing the intake and searches today.

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By Shae’s fourth month she was really enjoying her physical training. As she learned before time here flowed differently. On top of that, there were 8 days to a week, 32 to a month and 14 months to a year. For a whopping 448 days to travel once around the sun.

Shae was now up to four sparing partners, at once no less. She was now able to use her force magic not only as armor, able to use it to reinforce itself for much stronger blows, but she was also able to move herself around physically to boot. She could move forward to attack but at the last second shift her body with magic and attack from a completely new approach. If, her body could move that way of course. There were still limits to how far her body could bend after all. Which had her doing a lot more stretching and working on her flexibility as much as she could in a day without over doing it.

Ms. Fell could no longer be a challenge by herself, so the college hired adventurers to fight her instead. Shae rarely saw the same group twice, and more than once she had heard “monster” whispered behind her back. That just made her smile with gleeful pride. Using dummies that were reinforced with magic she practiced using force strikes layered with electricity. Well lightning here. Fire was not as effective, but shock someone and you had all kinds of advantage. Other elements were best saved for creatures with a certain weakness, like saving her flaming fists of fury for trolls.

Shae could move almost as if she was flying. But there were limits to that too. It seemed you could not use force magic to separate yourself too far from the ground, as it needed a solid object to interact with. She could bust jump, well, HIGH. Having to catch herself with an opposite push down as she neared the ground. Of course, the higher you went the faster you came back down. Since you needed an object to interact with, the timing for enacting with the ground before she impacted was something she needed to practice the timing of. There was not set way to judge it really. If she put too little force in, she would land hard. If she put too much, she would end up potentially shooting herself back up. She had managed to land a perfect Irone-man three-point landing from twenty feet up once. It was so cool. It had put more than a bit of stress on her body though. Practicing a cushioned landing was a much safer approach. If harder.

One good thing was she was getting the feel of the field around her. Which helped time fall suppression and even allowed her to feel attacks from behind. For this she used a portion of the power she put into the force armor as a wider two-meter feeler barrier. Allowing her to even monitor movement around her. Epic she squealed mentally the first time she tried it. She could make the barrier wider, but it diffused the feeling too much. She missed smaller movements. Arrows were a no go, they moved too fast to “feel” in time to stop a back attack. This was tested by arrows being shot at her repeatedly above her head. She could at best slow them down after she would have been pierced. ‘Stupid human reflexes’ she mentally complained. Still, she was becoming the force to reckon with as Ms. Fell once promised her.

Her lesser magic conjuration was coming along, though she would be no prodigy at casting fireballs. More of the lower-than-average type. Still, she felt she had the best of the abilities as her force magic could to a greater degree push away other kinds of external elements. She could for instance push fire to flow around herself. It didn’t work for lightning very well, however. But as she learned, you could pit your magic against other mages to greatly reduce its effect. Like having resistances based on your power difference. Since her ability in force magic was very high, and her aura so massive, she had a lot to push back with. In most cases she was not even the slightest effected if she pushed back hard enough. It was more of an all or nothing for her at the moment. She would have to spend years learning to react to another mages power levels, maybe less if she learned to read auras for herself.

Mel and Co. had returned two nights ago. A lot worse for wear. They had run a dungeon. A friggin dungeon. They were a thing here. Merchants or countries would hire adventurers to do runs in them. Each dungeon had its own thing. Monsters to collect parts from to use in magic, potions etc. Minerals to be used in crafting, potions, and even enchanting. Mineral dungeons would respawn at different rates depending on the aura saturation. It seemed the creator of this universe used anchors in this world, acting as lighting rods for their power to feed into and from the planet. Unlike earth. This caused an unregulated flow that created things, monsters mostly, that became proxies. Mineral dungeons Shae assumed were just natural deposits, like back home, but were also an anchor. As sometimes mineral dungeons had no spawns. She just called those mines to herself. But dungeons… Yes please!

The spawned monsters were normal created beings, they didn’t have drops or anything like you’d read about in some books. They were however more magical in nature allowing their parts to be used in magic creations, or even mundane items like armors, clothing etc.

Adventurers were hired to be bodyguards by merchants or government collectors, who would break the monsters down for personal gains. Dungeons could not be entered on a whim, you needed to purchase a run permit, which lead to long wait times for permit buyers going into months in advance. Even years for the more lucrative dungeons. If a dungeon wasn’t booked, the government would preform the clear out itself. When a merchant preformed the run, they were required to sell at least half of the gathered good at the nearest town, before moving on to sell elsewhere. This kept a good portion of the goods in country and did not create waves with the merchants. since the merchants were pre-taxed in the cost of the license the government made up for a bit of the loss for things that were sold out of country.

After she learned about them, she had of course headed to the library and looked for references. There was only a small selection of books on the subject. Three books really. The reality was not every dungeon run was a success. In those cases, if the merchant bought insurance, the government would send teams to pull them out, if they were alive. If not, their bodies and items if intact would be given over to family. Or otherwise absorbed by the local government who issued the insurance.

Shae now had the inklings of a goal in her head. She would train to excel at dungeon running. It sounded lucrative and she wouldn’t have to fight other people. Well at least minimize it. Some people were just assholes after all.