"I am quite curious," Alicia confessed. "How does the transporter device worked?"

"Well, first," Owen began as he flipped the book again. "It's called the Transfer Circle though the room is called Transporter Room. Essentially, it works by switching the maneg in our body with ambient maneg in the target world, and somehow it's so instantaneous that the constant is maintained. The long delay of the transfer is due to the circle having to gather up maneg on the other side.

"Element doesn't really matter, just the amount of raw maneg. But that does mean if the area has a lower concentration of maneg, usually only happens after a lot of Orders are thrown about there, we can't transfer there."

PIING

Kaomagi

Year 299 AGP

As the rainbow light collapsed around her, Alicia was greeted with another wasteland. However, the soil was deep crimson as if it were painted with blood instead of the grey ashes and the craters were replaced with broken bones, swords, spears, arrows, and anything in between scattered all over the desolate land.

"Conveniently," Aqua mused. "The world that you are going into is Kaomagi."

"Hey, that's on our plate!"

"Why is that?" Alicia asked in conjunction with the pixie's conjecture.

"Because Kaomagi is connected to your world," Aqua answered.

"Connected?"

"It means that there is a possibility for travel between these worlds without us being involved. In that case, they are called 'sister worlds.' Many 'Earths' have this trend so we decided to name them with their sister world's name in front of them. As your world's sister world is Kaomagi, it is called Kaomagi Earth."

"I see... I understand."

"Well then," Aqua continued. "Let me tell you a bit about Kaomagi."

And then, she went over the desk, pulled one of its drawers, and took out a metallic rectangular box which she set in on the low table between the sofas.

"Is that... a projector?" Alicia asked.

"Correct," Aqua said as she hooked it up to the computer on the desk.

Then she grabbed a pole resting on a corner, laid it in front of the projector horizontally, opened its tripod, and unrolled it upward. A screen.

"It gives a good visualization of where you are going to," the greater water spirit said.

"I supposed you are right about that," Alicia mused.

The presentation begins.

"Kaomagi is your typical world of swords and magic you read in those fantasy novels."

The projector showed an overview of the world's landscape. It then zoomed into the red wasteland.

"However, in the southeast part of the world exists a Lord of Vengeance who, at every start of the century, rises up and attempts to destroy the world.

"He was supposed to return by the year three hundred AGP, but four years ago, his army, the Vengeful Remnants, suddenly appeared and start marching towards the nearest kingdom.

"It was fortunate that the operators happened to look through the world and spotted them mobilizing only the day before, so they had yet to start invading."

In that instant, Alicia grimaced at Aqua's last sentence. She implied that the Otherworldly Court had a streak of only detecting problems like this long after it had first appeared, thus not weeded out in its infancy.

Regardless, Alicia continued listening to Aqua's briefing. "And we have confirmed that the Lord of Vengeance has not returned despite that. As their sudden arrival was not supposed to happen, we came down and eliminated the army ourselves."

"And so right now, our mission is to suppress another wave of enemies?"

"Correct," Aqua nodded. "Incidentally, this whole thing is kept under tight wraps. The people of Kaomagi will undoubtedly panic if news got out that the Vengeful Remnants had come early. We also have help from the church of the religion there as their pope happens to be the Life Guardian."

"I see, that is... quite convenient."

Right now, Alicia donned a hooded red cloak with the symbol of the Otherworldly Court to its back, the scale over the spear and shield, resting upon a large, yet faint, symbol of a flame. Owen wore a similar cloak, except it's light blue, a snowflake instead of fire, and the scale had a silverish color to it. She also noticed the silver outline on his cloak and recalled the cloak that Alice wore had it too, but it was gold-colored.

RATTLE RATTLE

Not a moment after they have transferred did they hear the sounds of bones rattling.

The screen showed another image, bones. It was a bunch of skeletons of many creatures from humanoid ones to that of giant reptiles and the ones that could fly (though they probably couldn't know that they nothing but calcium). What was common with all of them was the sickening red orb visibly glowing inside the area where their hearts would be.

"Eek! Scary!" Voice screamed as she flew behind Alicia's shoulder.

"These are the Vengeful Remnants. Vengeful for singular," Aqua explained. "Basically, they are skeletons held together by the red orb inside them. All you need to do is destroy the orb, or just destroy the entire skeleton with sheer brute force."

Emotion suppression on.

"They're here," Owen announced. His tone of speaking was monotone, however. There were no emotions in it.

One of the traits of a Maneg Soul is that when the Court Wizard is in combat, it would suppress their emotions so that they act on logic and keep their composure.

"Right," Alicia said monotonously.

Let's go!

Though it seemed that Voice did not adhere to the suppression despite being a part of the Maneg Soul that's responsible for it.

Voice? You can talk while inside?

Well, duh!

RATTLE RATTLE

The two Court Wizards prepared themselves.

RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE

"Revenge!"

"Murder!"

"Blaaargh!"

The projector then showed one particular group of Vengefuls. They were humanoid, the size of a child. They carried clubs, swords, bows, and staves.

"Observations told us that only the goblin-type Vengefuls are coming out."

"Skeleton goblins!?"

"Correct, Voice. And they are quite easy to deal with, you do not even need to break their orbs. Just make sure to not get surrounded."

"Kill!"

"Destroy!"

"$%#& the #$%#[email protected]#!"

"Gbflrfgh!"

The sound of the skeleton goblins is becoming louder.

While all they were shouting were gibberish at a glance, one of the boons a Maneg Soul gave was the understanding of languages. When the Court Wizard hears a foreign language, their Maneg Soul will shove the entire vocabulary, written alphabet, grammar... well, everything needed to speak, read, and write fluently as if it was natural into their heads.

But Owen told her that the language needed to be recorded into the Mother Souls in which it then passed it to every Maneg Souls, meaning at some point, someone recorded the skeleton goblins' language.

As such, Alicia was able to understand what these skeletal remains of goblins are saying, there's even one with a foul mouth er... jaw. Though one of them did literally speak incoherently.

"Make'm pay!"

"Yeah! Yeah!"

"Kill'em! Kill'em!"

"Blgrhfiwhtkgosjbrkhowj!"

And the skeleton goblins revealed themselves over a mound of bloody soil.

Just like the picture from the projector, they were no taller than children with completely dried white bones held together by a pulsing crimson orb was seen inside their chest.

There were about twenty-two of them and most of them wore nothing but rags that couldn't hide their orbs. There was one that wore a wooden helmet, but that's about it.

Fifteen of them carried clubs made out of bones, wood, stone, etc. Five carried bows and arrows. One carried a staff and was the most clothed. The one wearing the helmet carried a chiseled bone as a makeshift sword and wore leather armor, it was probably the leader of the group.

They stopped in their tracks and locked eyes (though they had none) on both Alicia and Owen. They started to scream even louder.

"Enemy!"

"Kill! Kill!"

"Desecrate their bodies!"

"Kill #$%&@#$%&#[email protected]#!"

"Muahuhauhiao!"

The sword wielder pointed its sword to the Court Wizards. The club wielders raised their clubs in the air screaming bloody murder as they rushed down. The archers took their arrows from their torn quivers and pulled the strings. The staff wielder got into a stance and softly muttering something.

Owen walked ahead of Alicia. "Take care of any Vengefuls I let through, Alicia," he said as a javelin of ice materialized above his head.

SHTAK

The javelin flew straight into the orb of the skeleton goblin mage. Its chant was disrupted as it crumbled down with its orb shattered. Its crimson light faded. The others, however, seemed unfazed by their fellow's demise and continued marching.

21 skeleton goblins left.

Five club skeleton goblins jumped at Owen who just stood there.

CREME CREME CREME CREME CREME

"Grah!?"

Out of nowhere, their white bones became light blue as they were frozen, reminiscent of what happened to those kidnappers yesterday. Though in this case, they can no longer control their trajectory mid-air as Owen simply sidestepped out of their way. They crashed into the ground with a SHATTER, breaking their orbs and their bodies into pieces in the process.

16 skeleton goblins left.

Then, Owen ordered five more [Javelin]s around him. It flew past the skeleton goblins and towards the five archer skeleton goblins taking aim.

SHTAK SHTAK SHTAK SHTAK SHTAK

It hit their marks accurately and it caused the archers to release their arrows to nowhere.

11 skeleton goblins left.

You know, he could easily destroy these guys all on his own!

I cannot argue with that.

"Muhahahaha!"

Alicia saw a club skeleton goblin approaching her, it was further from Owen so it must have passed through him.

Nevertheless, Alicia raised her hand.

[Fireball] 30 cm diameter.

When Alicia was training in the wasteland, she noticed that the five simplest Orders, which she had a feeling that she probably wouldn't use all of them in this mission considering Owen doing the heavy lifting, she was taught seemed to have been memorized after it was first given. Voice explained that it was her doing (and by extension, the loyal maneg itself was able to instantly memorize it).

And so, a ball of flame appeared in front of her hand. It flew to the attacking skeleton goblin.

CRASH

It did not strike the orb, however. Instead, it destroyed its spine, disconnecting it from its lower parts. With its momentum, it slid across the ground and eventually shattering the orb anyway. Just as Aqua had said, she did not need to hit the orb directly.

10 skeleton goblins left.

Don't forget to grab the loyal maneg back!

Right. Loyal maneg return.

The mass of loyal maneg hanging around where it hit the skeleton goblin jerked back and re-enter Alicia's Maneg Soul. Technically, as it had already hit something, it would automatically return but with a delay unless ordered to.

Alicia looked at where Owen was fighting to see him barely moving from his position. Around him were remains of even more skeleton goblins. Judging by the scene, the goblin-type Vengefuls had surrounded him wasn't seemed to be a problem for Owen, even though Aqua told them to be careful not to.

She looked at the remaining skeleton goblins to see four left, including the leader.

4 skeleton goblins left.

The last four skeleton goblins stood their ground in a stance. The futile effort of their brethren must have been drilled into whatever limited intelligence they had as they no longer charge at the light-blue cloaked boy not much taller than them.

"Get her!"

"Yaaah!"

Instead, all of them jolted to a run, keeping their distance from Owen and charged at Alicia.

In return, Owen materialized four more [Javelin]s to launch straight at them. The Order he used to freeze them solid probably needed to be in closer range.

SHTAK

SHTAK

SHTAK

SHATTER

The [Javelin]s hit their orbs in succession as they moved. However, the only sword skeleton goblin instinctively swung his sword, deflecting the [Javelin].

1 skeleton goblin left.

"Die!"

And the last skeleton goblin lept forward, bringing down his sword onto Alicia.

Use [Fire Burst]! You're supposed to practice but I'll handle the parameters this time, just say the Order!

Okay, [Fire Burst].

Lifting both hands, a burst of flames came forth in the shape of a cone. The attacking skeleton goblin had no time to stop its momentum. The [Fire Burst], however, does it for it, pushing it back as while creating it in the process.

SHTAK

The skeleton goblin fell to its back, and Owen sent another [Javelin] to finish it off.

All skeleton goblins were slain.

Battle was finished.

"Are you alright, Alicia?" Owen asked, still in a flat voice.

"Yes," Alicia answered. "I am fine."

RATTLE RATTLE

"Right, get ready for the second wave."

The mission, however, was far from over.