“Good news, I know where we are.” B charged through the front door, panting, parchment paper in hand, only to be greeted by both Primus and Mimic squatting around a weirdly drawn symbol on the ground, chanting random spells.

“You stole that didn’t you?” Primus looked up at B drenched in sweat with dirt on her face.

“What are you doing?” She tossed the map onto the bed “Are those runes you are trying to make?” She said as she examined their work

Mimic stood up from the ground and proudly gave her a brief tour “That one over there is supposed to glow, the one further from that is supposed to give us some fire, and this one right beneath us should blow up any second.”

Hearing the last words she backed up a few steps“And you thought that was a good idea to draw that inside a house?” B picked up a stick and started adding random lines to each rune, making sure every single one of it is no longer functional “Just a reminder, every single one of these would have worked if anyone else came and used it.”

“So, why isn’t it working? And why didn’t you tell us about anything regarding magic?”

“There was a memo for you somewhere in the dataset 100C, there was a memo. There was even a copy of that at the first entry in the magic section ”

“Oh that was for real? Dude I thought it was just a joke, it looked like one as well” Mimic laughed as he sat down, closed his eyes and started reading from the set.

“Why would I put a joke in there? It’s a dataset.”

“I don’t know, I definitely would.” Primus said

“You see why I have trust issues?”

“Fine, get off the dataset, I’ll just give both of you a crash course on this. Just take the set seriously from now on, you were not involved in the making of it, so nothing in there is a mistake.”

“Ooh! Really? Fucking really?” Mimc exclaimed

“Pff mistake.” Primus grinned as he removed yet another rune

“Now, magic. Well, ‘magic’ as you call it” B said with air quotations “It basically does what you think it does, in games, in literature, etcetera etcetera; Another thing is mana, it’s the blue bar, follows thermal dynamic, one regains a lot faster when their mana is low, and slows down later on, mana also decays out of a person’s body over time, more when you have a lot of mana in your body, and vice versa. Also, different species have different rates on the regain and decay, all can be found somewhere in the dataset. We have put those ideas into your simulation as games and such so you could get a general idea of those, your welcome.”

“Why don’t just give us the powers in simulations? I mean we are going to use it IRL right?” Primus interrupted

“I’ll get to that later, you would know that if you read the memo. Magic is divided into three major parts, the one where someone casts something with their own mana, the one where you store mana into substances, then use it to power things such as that lantern over there, and the one where you use other’s mana to cast. In terms easier to understand, lighting yourself on fire for lumination, lighting a stick on fire for lumination, and lighting someone else on fire for lumination. You get all that?”

“Okay?” Mimic said slowly taking in the information, doubt in his mind “So, um, this magic you are talking about, why can’t we use it?”

“The simple answer is that one, we don’t have mana to start with hence we can’t cast things, and two, we would empty out any mana on contact and therefore can’t really use mana powered tools. For example” B climbed up a chair nearby, then onto the table “See that lantern over there?” She pointed “In theory, that is powered by mana, and inside there should be some rune that does the shining part.” B walked closer towards the lantern, hovering her hands over it “Yeah, this should be mana powered, it doesn't feel hot. Now look closely.” She said as she grabbed the lantern by it’s handle, instantly extinguishing the light, Primus and mimic stuttered in surprise “See? Simple.” B hopped down with the ‘dead’ lantern, handing it to Mimic “Any questions?”

“Yeah, a fuck ton actually.” Primus jumped in, eyes wide as saucers “Why can’t we use it? You set those things up just for what?”

B squeezed her eyes closed, her teeth grinded against each other, then took a deep breath “Fuck… alright, here goes” she wispered to herself. “Two reasons. First, it gets outscaled, fast. They can generate a shield, yet we can just blow right through those with enough force or enough amo, whatever they can do we could do better and scale larger. Now, the main reason, probably also why we are still standing here, there is something called ‘Proof of life’, every living thing has it, even if you are killed off and brought back from the dead. We don’t have that because they made us like that, so that we can do things that normal living organisms can’t. Like for example, fuck with a lower ‘tier’ civilization and not get hit with the rules that dictate this universe. They have tried doing that before, most of it got nowhere, the one that succeeded is now the reason we are here.”

“So how do we acquire such ‘proof’” Primus asked

“We don’t.” She paused for a short while “Well, we could, in theory…”

“But?”

“It isn’t worth it, it just adds more restriction. Well, I mean, casting magic probably is a plus, but then the implications are eh. Anything else?”

“So does that apply to everything?” Mimic took over the lantern and carefully removed the glass around it, revealing a similar rune that he and Primus drew not some time ago, as well as a few clear crystals sitting at the corner.

“Oh, can we do the thing where we just stand there and nullify a big fireball that was just thrown at us?” Primus excitingly asked

“Yes, well, mostly, yes we can nullify most of the mana that comes into contact with us. And no, I would not suggest you do such an act such as catching an incoming fireball. First, it’s still a fireball, you are not immune to the heat, and second, you don’t know if it’s actually a mana fueled fireball or just a flaming ball of oil coming your way, so just don’t.” B replied

“In short, avoid getting into fights at all costs, we can’t really defend ourselves, armors are basically useless if you don’t throw enchantments on, enchantments we would instantly destroy on contact, which leaves us with the protection level of a wet toilet paper; We probably can’t outrun them as well, there are ways to accelerate oneself with magic, and their arrows if enchanted, is basically a sniper rifle. So if we get into conflict, at best one of our limbs get chopped off, at worst, we bleed to death because apparently we can’t be healed by magic as well.”

“Was all of this intended as well?” Mimic let out a nervous chuckle as B lists on the disadvantages. “I mean hell, why didn’t you guys use it on that big ship you guys were on?”

“Magics are great at one thing and one thing only, accelerating civilisation progression. It gave every sentient being a huge boost, basically giving them firearms to defend themselves way before bows are a thing, gave them the ability to turn fortify small twigs into rebars, but then we could just come around and start making things like guns, cannons, poisson gass, vir…” B said pasionly

“Ok we are stopping you right there, we get it.”Mimic stopped her

“We can just invent things that are so advanced and ignore costs like the mana pool. Wounds that would not heal even in the face of healing magic, we have techniques that would just send someone brought back to life to kill themselves.”

“Well that was something.” Mimc said as he scooched away from B

“You think she’s a sadist?” Primus jokingly asked

“I mean think about it.” Mimic gestured vaguely “She probably has thousands of years of memories running around in her head.”

“You two are talking a lot of shit for someone being older than I.”

“Are you...?”

“Nope, sub 100.”

“I envy you sometimes. Either way, that’s that, I’ll read up on runes and such, see if we can make an engine that runs on mana, and do us a favor, don’t go around drawing random runes.”

The rest of the day went by smoothly, bland, but smooth.

Mimic went around the village, talking gibberish to everyone he met, helping out in various places, getting escorted out sometimes due to the null magic properties.

Primus locked himself up inside the house, marathoning decades of knowledge, pausing every few hours for a water break, by noon he can feel his soul leave his body, later that night, according to himself, the experience felt like ‘Chatting with C’thulu while your getting tackled by a quarterback over and over’.

As for B she went around the village, poking her nose into every single storage box, memorising the whole inventory and making a list of materials needed. That night the village had another feast, the three of them sat by the fire indoors after eating, each with a cup of water in hand.

“I want to die.” Primus said, setting his cup aside and laid down on the dirt floor “Fucking hell how did people come up with all these technology?” he exclaimed

“I learned some basic words.” Mmic took a sip out of his cup

“We need to steal some books and kidnap someone who knows how to read” B said out of the blue, her eyes focused on the flame

“What good is it going to do? Most of the people can’t read, we can’t just print shit and expect someone to know what is written on it” Primus said as he attempts at some yoga to stretch his stiff body from lying in bed all day

“The magic part isn’t complete, when making that part we assumed it wouldn’t be used as frequently so we only added basic things. I assume that the locals might have more detailed descriptions or more sophisticated methods we are not weary of.”

“Bruh you just thought you are not going to be using it?” Primus took a deep breath

“Fine, tell me what you know about making fire, the most primitive, non magic way” B said

“I don’t know, rub sticks together fast?” Mimic joined in

“See? The details of the actions are missing, the same with our dataset. So, we get some people, go in, take all the magic related books, and get out, simple enough. Maybe promise to loot their treasure vault of whatever on the way to get people on board, you decide”

“So, I would just go up to some random dude and ask ‘Oi want to raid the kingdom library, with me? We can steal some more gold on the way’?” Mimic chuckled

“Like I said, that’s for you to decide, get it done as soon as you can, preferably before we start taking in people. Age in this era is not really a constraint assuming you can prove it to them that you are capable of doing things. So yeah, do something.” B shrugged

“Is this week some sort of festival or something we are not aware about? That’s two parties in a row out there. Also, no one here has any farming equipment around, I toured the whole village and found like, a few sickels, maybe a hoe or a shovel.” Mimic asked

“Oh they don’t farm, they scavenge, forage, hunt and trade, probably steal as well. Remember when I said I need a map to locate where we are? This place didn’t exist before the war break out, is far from normal settlements, I’m guessing this is some type of refugee camp”

“So they are bandits.”Primus sat back up, dusting off the dirt on his clothes

“I would assume so.” B shrugged

“Welp, that’s good news for us, at least when we need to steal stuff.” Mimic sighted, trying to fit the new request form B into the schedule. “Wait, that means I can just go around and steal stuff, if I get enough loot then they would like, you know.”

“It might work, but again, remember you are one attack away from death.” B yawned. “Anyways, let me know if you want or need something. Want to dule?” She walked towards the desk and took out the wooden swords.

“I can’t, ask Mimic.” Primus pushed open the front door, off to get another cup of drink.

Mimic accepted, after a few rules such as no sand tossing and no eye stabbing they walked into position. B on back towards the door standing tall, one hand holding the sword upright, the other behind her back. Mimic stood across the room, sword pointed downward, the other hand causally on the side.

They nodded and started the duel, at first not much happened, B faked a few attacks just to test the reaction, Mimic swung a few times just to get blocked easily by her.

“You coming? Or are we standing around all night?” Mimic taunted, his eyes locked on her sword

“I might, by the way you call those attacks?” B snickered

Primus pushed open the door and walked towards his bed “Oh you are so very fucked” He laughed.

Mimic took a deep breath, emptying out his mind, here goes. With a blink of an eye, he lunged forward with the sword tip pointed directly towards B

“This again?” B sighted as she hit the weapon out of Mimics hand, only to be greeted by a palm gripping tightly around her neck, soon her body hit the ground from the force Mimic built up.

“Well played, but still, dick move.” She chuckled as she stared at the roof “Well call this a draw shall we?”

“Mate, you are on the ground and I’m not.” Mimic confused, only to be reminded soon after as he felt a poke around his stomach area, as he look down he saw an small wooden dagger B pulled out sometime during the encounter

“Ok, that’s dick move.” He said as he helped B back up

“All is fair, remember that.” She dusted off the dirt and tossed away the sword “Another round?”