Matt was sweating. His brows were creased. Salty water was slowly forming on his forehead, and in places it became enough to make a drop, slowly sliding down into his eyes.

He didn’t even notice. His stare didn’t waver from what was happening in front of him, the feeling of what he was doing. What needed to happen yet didn’t want to.

Light slowly floated up from his hands, slowly filling out an invisible ball. The intensity of the light was fairly low at first, but kept growing.

It was a far cry from the first time he had managed the spell.

Suddenly, the light disappeared and Matt let go of all tensions in his body as he released his willpower on the spell.

Wiping at his brow, he had a triumphant smile on his face. It was the first time he had actually managed to form a perfect ball. It had been so much harder than he thought, but apparently it got easier as you got used to it.

Casting the light effect was easy now, but adding form? Direction? Oof. That was the hard part. He had managed direction partially. Once.

This was the result of five days of intensive training. Matt hadn’t trained this hard for anything in his life before. But the gamelike aspect of it helped make it fun.

He was almost level ten now! It felt incredibly rewarding to level up and get skills. Plus magic just called to him. There was something so… well magical about it.

But it almost felt like something more than that. Like a calling. No, a longing. Like he had longed for mana his whole life. It was a strange feeling, and he couldn’t get enough of using magic.

But for now, he was satisfied, and honestly quite tired. He needed a break. Getting out of his room he went to one of the other common rooms. There were basically two common rooms, and they were fairly small.

One a Kitchen, where he had seen Krovukk sneak around lately, and the other, the most used room. It had cards, a table in the middle and quite a few games to pass the time. Oh, there also was a gym, but honestly, you could basically be two at a time in there as it was too small.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make it bearable. They had been in space for a week now, and they were hoping they were getting close. From what they knew, the ship was huge so there was no chance it had stealth of any kind, and it should show up from a huge distance on the radar.

They had recently left a fairly small station where they had confirmed the ship hadn’t showed up, so they were now on their way ‘backwards’ from their target’s route.

Matt, however, was happy. Learning magic and leveling up had helped him from thinking about things too much. He had even socialized quite a bit with the crew and gotten to know them.

As he entered the kitchen, he opened a cupboard and took a strange fruit out. There was no fridge. They used [Field of Preservation] instead, which was neat, as cold fruits weren’t really that nice to bite into.

Biting into the croissant shaped, mushy and juicy fruit, he walked towards the common room. He passed Krovukk on his way out who barely noticed him as he was deep in thought about something.

It was still a bit strange to see a huge shark-man walking around. Of course to everyone else it was normal. As normal as the walking rat man, or any of the strange species he had seen on Trupen station.

He cast a last look at Krovukk as he left the room and actually stopped. Was he trying to be sneaky? Krovukk looked around in that way people do when they are hiding something. He saw Matt, waved and made to leave the kitchen.

Curious, Matt couldn’t help but turn the corner and peek back into the kitchen. Just as he thought, Krovukk came back when he thought Matt had left, and rummaged through different cupboards until he had different ingredients on him.

There were actually whole plates ready with food, still preserved and hot you could take out from when someone had cooked, but right now, Krovukk wasn’t taking out a meal, but taking out ingredients. Matt of course didn’t recognize anything, and even if he did, he only knew how to cook pasta and make some scrambled eggs.

Krovukk ‘snuck’ out the other way from Matt, and he wondered why he was being all secretive. Krovukk wasn’t the one doing the cooking usually. Maybe he was trying alchemy? Or something?

They all had hobbies to pass the time while traveling on the ship. He had thought Krovukk’s was strength training with every hour he had spent in the gym. He seemed like the kind of guy to go to the gym a lot and little else.

But maybe that wasn’t the case? Curious indeed. He decided to ask Xar if he knew something about it next time.

Getting to the common room, he heard a cry of outrage, and one of joy. Opening the door, he saw Xar posing triumphantly and Levy despairing, with some cards between them.

Matt had tried to learn the game, but it was honestly a bit too complicated for him. Gathering The Magic it was called. The kind of card game with complexe mechanics. You had to play ‘lands’ to get mana to cast spells, and there were a lot of different types of spells, creatures, enchantments, sorcery… Matt had stopped listening when it had gotten clear the list wasn’t close to being done.

Honestly he didn’t get why they were so fascinated by a card game about magic, being that they lived in a magical world, but apparently it was really interesting to them. Or it was really boring on the ship.

“Ah Matt! How goes your magical training?” Xar said with a huge grin as he entered the room.

“It’s going okay.” He admitted.

“I just managed the ball form with light, but it made the light very weak.” He said, shrugging.

“That’s amazing! You are progressing fast, kid. You’ll be an [Archmage] in no time.” He winked at the end. Matt liked Xar, he had that carefree attitude he wished he could have more off.

Levy was hard to read, and also a bit distant to him most of the time. They had talked of course, but he didn’t… engage the same way as Xar, or Krovukk for that matter.

Which was okay, of course! It just didn’t feel very good. Like he had done something wrong, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Or so the captain had told him. He just took longer to warm up to people he had said.

Putting it out of mind, he sat down and watched as they started a new game. Levy muttering how he was going to crush his boring meta deck, and Xar smiling and taunting him.

It was another day on the ship. Sometimes he felt at ease here, but then he would suddenly feel lonely. Like now. He wasn’t alone, physically, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t really a part of the crew, or part of their lives.

They were adventurers on a mission to save their sister, or levy and the captain’s sister. Him? He was just a kid they had picked up on the way. He was still on his own, still alone in that way. Maybe that was also why he had trained so much in magic. Matt did want to be a part of the crew.

But they just saw him as a kid, again and again they would say it. Kid. At first it hadn’t bothered him, but slowly, he had noticed they really did think of him as a kid. He wasn’t eighteen, but he was basically an adult already. Sure he wasn’t done growing… or so he hoped, but look, Xar was short too, and no one treated him like a kid.

Matt sighed as he leaned back. This break wasn’t really helping. He had constantly been either deep in training, sleeping or chatting. Always up to something. He had even been dragged into the gym once or twice, apparently it was mandatory, or so Krovukk claimed.

It felt like it wasn’t, but it was his way of helping him. The truth was that working out had helped. It had kept him busy and out of his head. This break was supposed to be the same, and also why he had sought out the break room.

But the fact that they were playing that complicated card game had left him doing nothing. Which meant he had started to think about what had happened. All his anxiety about the situation was making itself known.

It’s not like anything felt normal. He was in a damn magical spaceship, hurtling through space at unbelievable speeds. And potentially a universe away from home, with a mom that just might have forgotten him. Where he might not even exist anymore in more sense than one. Feeling like he had to take his mind off himself, he asked the only question that came to mind.

“Xar, do you know why Krovukk is sneaking around the kitchen?” That got his attention, even Levy couldn’t help but look at him.

“Krovukk doesn’t sneak, kid. I’ve never seen him do it once.” Xar said, clearly interested.

“Maybe he is just that good.” Levy said offhandedly. Both Matt and Xar turned to look at him at that.

“Probably not eh?” He laughed softly at their affront.

“No but you seriously saw him sneaking around? What was he doing?” Xar asked. It was clear that this conversation was way more interesting than their game.

“He waited until I was out of the kitchen to go back in and take some ingredients out.” He said while shrugging. It wasn’t like it was that special. Maybe he was doing some kind of protein shake and didn’t want the others to know or something?

“Talk about the monster.” Levy said as Krovukk showed up. All three of them looked at him intently.

“What?” Krovukk asked, confused. He clearly had no clue what was going on. Xar was surprised as he spotted something, and it took Matt a second to see what he had seen.

There was flour, or some kind of white powder in a few of Krovukk’s blindspots. Like he had missed those when cleaning up. Xar pointed a finger accusingly at one of the evil spots.

“I accuse thee of hiding something!” He said in an over dramatic tone.

“Atone for your sin now by revealing your vile machination or face the system’s judgment!” He was clearly having fun with this as Krovukk looked both guilty and embarrassed at the same time.

It was funny how he didn’t have a great poker face, even Matt could see that Xar had hit the spot. To their surprise, Krovukk didn’t reveal what he was hiding.

“Alright, yes I am hiding something, but I won’t tell any of you before I’m ready. So you’ll have to live in the mystery a bit longer.” Krovukk’s teasing smile was mostly directed at Xar.

“Oh because you think you can out-sneak me? I’ll find out what you are hiding before the day is over!” Xar declared with a mischievous smile.

The mood shifted as the captain used a comspell to project his voice to them. He could probably have yelled from the top of his lungs and they would have heard him, but… yeah. That they didn’t have speakers was fascinating, the voice was simply projected to different locations.

“Found them.” His message was short and concise. The mood clearly changed from playful to something more somber and serious. Still, Xar kept his grin on his face as he looked at Kro.

“I’ll go get the details.” Levy said as he got up and out. Found didn’t mean close yet. The captain hadn’t called them up or anything.

Matt had heard them discussing their plan of approach, which was by and large, go in hot, fight and get back out, with Xar adding explosions left and right. Not really a plan, but apparently it had worked for them most of the time.

Xar was teasing Kro about his secret while Matt just sat there, not sure what he was going to do. Of course he hadn’t reached level twenty, so he was supposed to stay on the ship. He had even learned the very basics. Start the engine, fly forwards, and turn in three dimensions, which had been hard to wrap his head around at first. All the other more complicated buttons? No.

Still, he didn’t want to wait on the ship, but at the same time he didn’t feel ready to go out and fight. Not for real. If that made sense. When he imagined it and it was far away, yes, he fantasized about being a hero.

Now? When it felt more real? He was nervous and he wasn’t even supposed to do anything. Imagine if he was supposed to fight. He could conjure light, even heat to some degree. He felt closer than ever with the sphere-form to being able to use the very basic fireball spell Xar had showed him, but it’s not like he had practiced it at all, and it would be weak as hell right now.

Levy finally came back down and they turned to him. Someone was always on cockpit duty as they didn’t want to miss anything happening all of a sudden, and it was the captain’s turn.

“Well, you can all relax guys. It’s still far away, plus we still don’t have a real plan. We might just make sure we do this right before we even try anything.” Levy said.

“How long?” Was all Xar asked.

“A few hours if we want to sneak up on them, which is the current plan.” Levy said in a flat tone.

“How big is it? We know it’s supposed to be big but…” Kro was the one who asked.

“Oh it’s a big ship. Their hangar could take in at least five of our ships I’d reckon. And that’s the hangar.” Levy said. Which sounded big to Matt.

“The question is, do we try to talk to them, or go in guns blazing?” Xar asked, more serious this time.

“I guess let’s go to the cockpit to discuss all of us.” Kro said.

They were leaving and Matt clearly wasn’t included, so he decided he was going back to practice some magic. Every ten levels was always a milestone and power-spike for everyone. Most people didn’t count their classes below level ten as a ‘real’ class, as it had yet to really take shape.

Just as he was about to go into his room, everything went dark. A second later, dark blue light started glowing. Enough to barely see where you were going. He hadn’t heard any yells of surprise or anything and his heart started racing. Had something happened to the others?

He ran back to the main room, and into the cockpit. As he opened the door, he saw all four of them looking at a magnified image of a distant ship. The silence was thick. They traded looks with each other but no one spoke.

“Well, shit.” Xar was finally the one who broke the silence.

“What is going on?” Matt whispered despite himself.

“A ship flew close by and we entered full stealth mode.” The captain said. Okay, that didn’t seem that bad. What was with the mood?

He gave Kro a look. He seemed to understand the unspoken question.

“That’s a fairly known ship. It’s the admiral of Birds of Prey, supposedly he is above level forty.” Kro said with a heavy intonation on the level. Was it that high?

Xar clearly saw that he wasn’t impressed.

“Look kid, at level ten, you start being able to really do some basic stuff, level twenty, you are experienced. Level thirty? Then you are a veteran, someone who is considered an elite of whatever business your class tends to. Level forty? That’s when you get a name. Do you understand?” Xar said in what had thus far been his most serious tone. Matt gulped despite himself.

“But, worse than that? Not all classes are created equal. A fighter gets strong, yes, but what about a |King]? Or a [Leader] to a lesser extent? A [King] makes his whole kingdom better. With skills that boost all of his people, or his lands. That man is an [Admiral]. He is very strong out here in space.” Even Xar seemed a bit nervous as he was explaining things.

“We should assume the admiral has spotted us, even with our stealth mode.” The captain said as he looked at the ship rapidly flying towards the huge hauler ship. Everyone turned to look at him.

“What? With his level? I’d be surprised if we could take him by surprise. Even if he didn’t spot us now, what about when we try to sneak up on the big ship? They will spot us way earlier than we have anticipated. We might even have to consider an actual plan, for once.” The captain said seriously.

“Shit indeed.” Was all that Krovukk added, and they all looked out through the main cockpit window towards their very welcoming destination.