The questioning had gone on for a while, Petal was surprisingly forthcoming and friendly. Not with the answering of things, she was somewhat compelled to do that so it felt a bit cheaty, but rather with how much extra information she chose to add.

They learned not just about the invasion plans, which was oddly simpleminded. The demons are entering the world, attacking and bringing as many back as possible to feed their Lord. Once the inhabitants of the world were culled enough they would start harvesting it for resources. If the world was ‘good enough’ they would just move in and start the process anew from there. True parasitic in nature.

The reason for this was how their culture and race worked. As mentioned they grow bigger and stronger the more they eat people. She explained how this worked as well and in simple terms, the more powerful an individual’s soul was the more of a ‘boost’ it gave the one eating them. Regarding inherited abilities, this mostly happens with mages or people with personal powers, never with natural abilities like wings or just being stronger than normal. The chance of getting something is either random or there is a factor they haven’t discovered yet.

They are humanoid mammals, meaning that most weak points for most of the humanoids would also work on demons. The problem is their self regeneration which increases the higher power the demon is. As an example; Petal’s is practically nonexistent but the Gate boss, the large demon that came through the gate, could regenerate an arm in a few days at most. Faster if he eats ‘good food’.

Regarding forces, there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of them.

The power hierarchy is split up in a rather common concept. There is the Lord who reigns over everyone, he’s the biggest and strongest which gives him this right.

Under him are the Generals, Petal doesn’t know how many there are but not giving anyone too much power to topple the lord there is most likely only a few.

Then there is the Second in command, there are quite a few of these, as this is the first proper social status rank. Then there are the Gate masters, like the large demon that came through the gate. They are the first rank of actual power increase.

Under this are the warriors. This is everyone who has some form of fighting powers, all from just small cannon fodder imps to proper eldritch horrors, anyone not in any social power but who are under the command of the others are in this group.

Lastly there are the servants, from which Petal is from, they are the lowest of the low, no combat powers, tiny and weak.

The largest and most varied group is without doubt the fighters.

The servants like her are basically worthless, they are given simple tasks and if they fail they become some torture plaything or just eaten. As Petal’s body would show she had been on the receiving end of such violence before. She said that in most cases it was for simple things, Gilliam found most of them to be trivial like accidentally dropping a healthy to-be-eaten victim before picking it up again. She had ‘damaged’ said victim and this got her beaten as a punishment. If you’re unlucky you might just get stabbed for the fun of it...

Needless to say that the servant class isn’t happy about things.

The Gate that opened now a few days ago was just a test-portal, given that the people brought back were humans, and magical at that, this world would be considered good for consumption. So there will be an invasion in not long.

Exactly how long ‘not long’ is was a problematic thing to answer. Their world was a barren hellscape with jagged rocks, permanent red illuminated sky and no day and night cycle. The concept of counting days was not normal in their home. They will come ‘when ready’.

Realistically, this won’t be too long since they have a taste for the world now, Vozellath would just gather his army and then they would start opening gates. They have somewhat control over where the gates open but they don’t exactly know where this will be due to not knowing the world, meaning that the first will open in the rough area of the first confirmed gate. Or they might open a gate underwater and flood their world or something like that. The initial red gem that spawns and gathers energy always spawns in such a way that it opens on ground level, but as mentioned ground level could be at the bottom of the sea, or on the edge of a mountain cliff, so a few scouts are always sent out first.

The only bonus is that the gates are temporary in nature, even if left alone and in-use the portal will stop working after a while. The arch will remain so it’s easier to open a new one but there is a downtime before that can happen again as the gem recharges.

Now, once this has gone on for a while, the Main Gate is opened to send the Lord into the world. Due to his power this is often enough to tip the power balance of anything remaining and that is usually the win-card. It is also a permanent gate.

However, this portal is more unstable and demands a lot of resources to open properly, due to this they use the smaller portals first to make sure that it will be stable and proper, setting up a foothold where they can keep everything good and stable from this side.

Petal didn't know anything about the portals themselves, she just knew they were two way, the already mentioned details and that if you managed to damage or affect the red gem in any meaningful way it would harm the mages back home. She had seen that happen which is the only reason she knew.

She went into more detail than this but it was the broader strokes of the explanations. Jial had taken a lot of notes, asked followup questions and Ghaos even had to stop Jial from asking interesting but unneeded questions at the moment. Though a rather weird individual, Jial was a researcher at heart.

“Well, I think we have what we need for now-” Jial suddenly explained after this had gone on for quite some time. He had been using a neat spell where the ink pen moved on its own, tied to him with a magical thread.

Ghaos had been good at asking questions in the nature of combat and weaknesses, but took no notes.

Jial turned towards Gilliam properly and continued. “-I need to take this to the headmaster, and we need to spread the information around the world. You should probably work on your magic.”

Ghaos broke into the conversation. “Oh, I can help with that.” he grinned widely, there was an undertone of Gilliam ending up with broken bones from this...

Though... All things considered, with just his own healing he could fix that, so proper healing mages could probably fix it in seconds.

Magic was certainly convenient at times.

Jial nodded at Ghaos before moving for the door. “I’ll send down some clothing for her-” Stopping on the way through the door to face Gilliam once more. “-I recommend that you treat her as a servant. Give her something to do. Not for her or your sake but everyone else. If they don’t see you taking advantage of the power you have over her. They might question it.”

He had a very good but depressing point. From what Gilliam had seen, read and heard the time he had been here it was absolutely not common to harm or abuse your slaves, they were your property after all. You don’t key your own car, so to speak.

However, they were still your servant, and a servant not doing anything might not be worth the upkeep. This was also a special case where ‘one of the enemy’ was going to follow him around, considering that her kind invaded and killed several people only a few days ago, seeing her walk around was most likely going to be... triggering to some people.

But, for her to be even able to survive here she would have to show her usefulness, the information they got is kind of an ‘invisible usefulness’, not something you can see is from her, but if she actually properly does things for Gilliam publicly not only will this solidify that she belongs to him but also gives her a higher value in the eyes of society.

That last part Gilliam could understand, it was not too far from how the world worked back on Earth. You are most commonly valued by what you are doing, and if you do nothing you usually have no value. The bar for what was defined as useful was incredibly low but anything is better than nothing.

“So, I just give her menial dumb tasks, and it’ll help?” Gilliam wanted some form of confirmation.

He hadn’t thought about it before but since she is from the enemy, as soon as she didn’t have any use to people, once she had shared information, once the war started becoming worse she would most likely be publicly executed as a show of force or morale boost... Stuff like that had happened earlier in history so... Perhaps it was a good idea that she ended up with him and not some local.

“Anything is better than nothing. I placed the mark on her forehead on purpose. It could have gone anywhere but this should aid you more.”

He didn’t wait for any response and just left, the door closed itself slowly once he let go of it.

This was probably a good idea. Based on how he said it the mark could probably go wherever, but to make a large point of this it was probably not a bad idea to have it in extreme plain view.

He had thought this through surprisingly well, having Gilliam smile a little, was Jial actually a softie at heart? To people of this world and especially to the teachers and students, she was ‘just a demon’. If she died, was stoned on the street or worse most wouldn’t even care. One of the few

“He means well, but he’s a bit odd at times.” Ghaos smiled as he patted Gilliam on the back with the force of the little wrecking ball he looked to be. This had Savia spur to action as if it was an attack, but again she seemed to realise that it was nothing of the sort and went back to tangling herself in Gilliam’s hair.

“Though he has a few good points. I don’t know you that well but I can tell you don’t like the idea of slaves, especially forced ones. But people are very easily swayed by emotion. Though she might not have had anything to do with it by choice, people will still see her as ‘one of them’-” he emphasised this by nodding his head in tact with the words. “-So if you treat her a bit roughly in public that might not be a bad idea.”

Gilliam could tell that Ghaos was not too fond of that idea himself, but like everything the two of them had said down here it seemed based on a very analytical view on the local culture, which they knew quite well compared to Gilliam.

Was he going to do this? Absolutely not.

He had to train his magic, yes, absolutely. He had some offensive powers he could do unstructured, as well as the laser if need be but he didn’t have anything defensive.

That was at the top of his list, barrier spells. This felt like something that Ghaos might be familiar with given that he was a battlemage, and he did hint that he could train Gilliam, so why not start right away!

“While we wait for Jial-” changing the subject without any subtlety. “-I have been thinking about protection magic, and since you said you could train me. We might as well start right away”.

This was not just to protect Petal, but also to protect himself and as many as possible when the invasion kicks in properly. He was not going to hide that there were a few undertones of him just wanting to learn more magic as well, but that was not the main drive now.

Ghaos smiled wide, both happy and somewhat proud. “Oh, I like the way you think! Sure, we can start right away. Jial prepared me about you knowing the runes. I don’t get it but it’s good for you.”

He pondered for a few seconds as he put his runed quarterstaff against the wall.

“You wanted defence first. I am more of an offensive man myself-” he smirked a bit at his joke as he continued without pause. “-but the most versatile is Barrier magic which is tied to Aether.” he started walking a bit back and forth, never really leaving the reach of his staff.

Savia had long since fallen asleep in Gilliam’s hair, and Petal had just been standing there and observing them for a while. Being in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, speaking in an unfamiliar language, having just been enslaved and being practically naked. She handled this surprisingly well but it was clear that she didn’t exactly know what to do here and now. She ended up fidgeting with her hair.

“Barrier magic really shines as unstructured spells, as a good barrier mage can create any shape of any size at the blink of an eye as long as he has the mana for it. Structured spells are good if you know what you want, like a shield, sword or thing you imagine you’ll use often. The common structured spells are the Shield as mentioned, but also a dome to protect an area.” Ghaos also used his hands when explaining, mimicking holding a shield, a sword and a dome shape with his hands as he mentioned the respective concepts.

“The strength of the barrier depends on two things, the first is its shape, the second is how much mana you give it. The second has two ways of working, you can either give it a chunk of mana that it handles on its own, this is very practical with Mana crystals. The second is to just connect it to your mana pool. The latter is without doubt the strongest but might have you run out.”

Ghaos held his hand in a stop motion towards Gilliam, there was a brief flash of a magic circle, too fast to make out any details or runes but there was a triangle with a rune at each corner.

In the same blink that the circle existed and disappeared, a large disk formed in the air between them. It looked like a translucent manhole cover made of flickering yellow light. There was no sound but it glowed a little.

Petal reacted by taking a few steps back and Savia remained sleeping.

“In concept it’s basically physical light, if you touch it you will see what I mean” Ghaos explained and used his non-spell hand to give him a go ahead.

Gilliam stepped closer and touched the shield. It felt a bit weird, tapping it there was no proper noise but more of a spark’y sound. It felt like it was made of stone or that kind of texture, as he tapped and knocked on it and it just felt weird.

“There are different kinds of barriers, made of different things, but since this one is based on the Light spell it allows anyone to cast it. It is also simple enough that if you swap the Light rune-” as he started explaining the rune he also made a calm movement in the air, forming the magic circle. But this time let it hover to let Gilliam inspect it.

It looked exactly like the multiplying light circle from earlier, but this time the three runes were Light, Solidify and Circle.

As Ghaos spoke about the light rune he pointed at it specifically.

“-With Fire, water or another element you can use, you can make a fire shield, a water shield or.. You get the point. This is why we teach this specific spell as it lets any student use it and build on it. Now you, being the Heptagon Mage and whatnot.”

Ghaos made a whole-body wobble taunt and tone of voice to mock the Heptagon Mage title.

Gilliam didn’t consider it at the moment, it sounded envious but it was not important.

“You should be able to make it out of any element you might want.”

Gilliam pondered for a moment as he took some notes in his notebook, making sure that the little cottonpaperthing was on the correct page when he closed it, so the ink would not smear or mark the other page.

“Can you make it invisible?” This was an important question, as it could then be used as a trap or if possible, anchor it to yourself and since it didn’t block vision it was just always there.

“Oh, that’s very possible. Jial’s barrier is almost invisible. So if you use Aether as a base you might figure out something.” It was clear that Ghaos didn’t have super control on the other variants than the one he’s using. Perhaps that’s because he didn’t seem to have any elements? His badge hinted that he might be a specialist of some kind, no colored triangles so he might not have an element.

“So... if I do this...” Gilliam first mimicked the spell as shown, with the Light rune and everything as normal. Once he channelled energy into the circle and activated it the circle disappeared and instead formed a glowing yellow disc!

He had made a shield spell with ease.

Inspecting it he considered a few things, light only illuminates when it hits something, light in-transit doesn’t produce... Well... Light. Meaning that the reason this glows is the light spell effect. It was also odd that it was entirely weightless, which made sense but it just felt weird. No weight and no momentum to it.

Cutting the energy to it the shield faded basically instantly.

Redoing the circle but swapping the Light rune for Aether, everything else was the same, channelling energy into it again it went the same as before, everything during casting felt the same but this time the disc was Emerald green in colour, still translucent but the completed product felt different.

Ghaos smiled widely again, nodding with pride.

“You got the idea of it. This shield looks to be incredibly sturdy, might actually rival mine.” he kept smiling and didn’t look envious at all, just happy. “Aether is the best element for a straight up barrier, seems like you caught on that quickly. The depth of the colour and the less transparent it is, the stronger it is. That goes for all elements but it’s easier to see when it’s not glowing.”

Gilliam moved this one around a bit as well, it had the same weightless feeling as the light one, which should have been obvious. It just looked different and sort of felt different.

Closing his hand didn’t do anything, it was not until he actually cut the energy to the spell that it faded. Or rather, it was not that he had to actively cut power, just stop feeding it.

“You mentioned that it can draw energy from Mana Crystals, how do you make those and how does the spell circle change?” Gilliam had already taken up his notebook and taken some notes before he asked this question.

“Oh, in that case you change it like this-” he projected the Light-shield circle again, but this time the top slot for a rune had a smaller mana circle inside it, that secondary circle seemed to be a circle with two smaller circles in it.

The smaller circle had a Mana rune in its center, then smaller circles on the inside of the circle at the 12 and 6 O’clock points. In the top one was a Transfer rune, and the bottom one was a Charge rune.

The Transfer rune was connected by a strand to a circle outside of the Secondary or main circle to an entirely different Triangle magic circle. It looked the same as the Light Magic circle, but the Top circle has a Light rune in it, the bottom right has a Gather rune, and the bottom left has a Transfer rune in it, which was connected to the other Transfer rune.

“-The smaller circle in the top of the Magic circle only handles channelling of mana from an external source into ‘this’ magic circle. Now the external one looks the same as you might be familiar with. But its job is just to gather an elemental energy and transfer it through the line. Pay close attention now.”

He moved the gathering circle onto the floor before he took out a small crystalline pebble from a pocket and poked that into the gathering circle on the floor.

Nothing was happening until he pulled the connecting line between the two transfer runes, as soon as that connected the pebble glowed for a split second before it shattered into dust, the dust was absorbed into the gathering circle which sent it down the connected line into where the Light rune would normally be in the shield Magic circle, the whole circle activated and everything disappeared at the same time as the shield manifested. All of this took a fraction of a second.

“So, it doesn’t activate until the line is connected? That... That makes button-based activation very easy.” Gilliam had an epiphany. And he was getting eager.

Ghaos was a bit surprised but laughed happily as he dismissed the shield spell.

“You got that already? Yes! That’s exactly correct. This is the simplest form of magic items. The physical triggers.” He shared in Gilliam’s fun for a moment.

“There are more interesting triggers like if it’s looked at, touched, or more specific like ‘if Jial is wearing green shoes’. Though the more specific the harder the trigger is to set up.”

“That makes sense, but how do you make the crystals?” Gilliam had some ideas that might work, but it relied on a few factors.

“Not everyone can do that, but most mages are able to certain degrees. The way to do it is to sort of channel your chosen element into a single spot. Once it gathers it will naturally start to crystallise. If you’re able to do it, it’s actually really simple”

To explain the example he held his hands one over the other and started channelling mana into a point between them, as the mana grew and condensed more and more it started taking physical form. Almost like how blood coagulates in the presence of air, or how glue does the same, this process seems to do something similar with Mana. Oddly passively.

Once he stopped channelling the crystal fell down into his lower hand. It was only the size of a pebble, but the same size before activated the shield so it’s pretty good.

Gilliam had to try this, having magical batteries sounded amazing.

Replicating the trick Gilliam held his hands over another, his left palm facing up and right palm facing down, right over left. He has chosen Aether for this, it felt appropriate for his ideas.

Channelling his mana into a point between them it actually took a few tries to aim correctly, focusing mana to a pinpoint like this was surprisingly hard. If you miss the pinpoint it wouldn’t form as it needed to start central and grow from there.

After four tries the fifth try he figured out the trick, much like Ghaos after just a few seconds a pebble sized gem formed, but rather than stopping Gilliam let the energy flow more for a good solid few seconds more. He didn’t really count the seconds but stopped when the gem hit fist sized.

It was hovering in the air during the channelling process but as soon as he stopped it sort of fell as if gravity was suddenly activated. It landed in his hand with a small slap.

It was more transparent than the one that Ghaos made. “Ah, mine is more transparent. Does that mean that it’s weaker like the barrier thing?

Looking at Ghaos after he posed the question Gilliam guessed this was not the case. Ghaos’ jaw was agape.

“N- no... For Mana crystals the cleaner they are the better. Yours is almost perfect... I get now what Jial meant about disliking you a bit.”

This was clearly in an envious tone, so Gilliam took it as a compliment rather than something to get annoyed at.

“If I use this in a spell, will it consume all of it at once? Or can the same Magic circle tap it more than once?” Gilliam’s plan was nearing possible! He wanted to make a shield generator, not only for himself but for Petal.

“I.. No...-” He was still a bit taken back at the purity of the mana gem. “-In most cases it will just continuously feed the magic circle until you disconnect it. The pebble I used broke because it was empty. This will be able to keep a shield going for quite the time...”

He was still envious, but he was smiling in a way that he was clearly proud of his student at the same time.

“Just... don’t drop it... They are fragile and Mages sometimes uses them as simple bombs...”

He looked a bit worried.

“Ah.... And since this is relatively large and pure... it will..” Gilliam didn’t complete the sentence before Ghaos did it for him.

“Most likely kill us, in a confined room explosions are much more dangerous.”

He had his hands up a bit like he was ready to catch it if Gilliam were to drop it.

“Ah, then, you can have it...” Gilliam handed it to Ghaos, he used a few seconds to make it and if Ghaos liked it that much then this could just be some minor payment for the teachings.

The battlemage was dumbstruck. “You... you’re giving me this? Do you know what this is worth?” He sounded like it was indeed quite expensive.

“Since you say it like that, I’d say a bit. But since it took me.. What.. 10 seconds to make without effort, for my first time. Take it as payment for your teachings today” Gilliam smiled widely as Ghaos did the same, taking the gem from Gilliam and starting to look at a lightsource through it immediately.

Petal didn’t know what to do during all of this, she seemed to recognize that magic was going on but she was just idly standing there. She seemed like she wanted to say something multiple times but didn’t manage to find a moment to do so.

The door suddenly opening had her let out a tiny startled noise, everyone turned towards the door to see Jial coming in with a stack of something.

“I have some things. It's a simple servant dress. And a slave collar.” He said this without thought of tone and thought of anything else. They had talked about this before so this was just the end of it.

“Have her put them on and go... do things today. I suggest; work on getting used to Combat-cast some spells. I’m sure Ghaos can show you.”

Ghaos was looking at his neat new gem with a glee often reserved for children and candy.

“W... what? Oh yeah, sure. We can go outside and train a bit of combat.” he smiled, snatching his staff from where he left it against the wall.

Gilliam took the clothing from Jial and handed it to Petal. “Put this on, it might be better if you wear the collar, marking you as a slave officially might... hopefully.. Have people behave a bit around you.” The tone was absolutely not certain, but he was going to do his part to try.

Petal started putting on the dress, taking the collar after.

“I don’t mind, I am your slave after all.” She still had an oddly satisfied smile to her. Given her story and explanation it was clear that this was a better life for her but... Gilliam still felt that it wasn’t right. But if possible, releasing her from this could also be dangerous.

During all of this Savia was just sleeping in Gilliam’s hair. She managed to hold onto some strands with her feet and hand-claw-finger things in her sleep, probably a survival mechanic from her forest lifestyle.

“Let’s go beat you up with magic!” Ghaos cheered towards Gilliam as he moved for the door.

Seems like this was going to be another weird day...