As the morning light pierced through the glass window, Alice felt the warmth crept through her body. She opened her eyes and rise up, stretching her arms and legs, then looked around her. Jayce was nowhere to be found, but she found a bag and a note on the study table. She got off her bed and sat on a chair to read the note.

Dear Alice,

I will be out for a while to browse through the ores and ingredients available in this village. I will be back soon by the time you read this note. I will be teaching you about enhancements when I get back to you. Your breakfast is in the bag, placed on the study table.

Your partner,

Jayce

She placed down the note and examined the bag. The bag had three bread rolls, a small bottle of fruit jam and a bottle of cold milk. Feeling hungry, she began indulging her breakfast.

The fruit jam seemed to be different from any bakery she had visited. As for the milk, it was surprisingly cold for this environment.

Nowadays people were still experiencing difficulty when it comes to preserving their food resources. Blacksmiths pointed out that it was possible to build a system to meet that requirement, but they had yet to find suitable materials and schematics. Although magicians were able to cast ice magic to cool down objects, they still had to expend their mana.

After she finished eating her breakfast, she stored the fruit jam and an empty bottle into her magic gloves. Since Jayce wasn’t back yet, she withdrew her Grimoire and placed them on her study table and began reading.

Alice had learned a few spells from her Grimoire, but she felt she needed to revise on a certain spell she might need for this quest. Her Grimoire was different from others, it had the ability to record every spell she had learned. Not only that, the languages written in the Grimoire can only be read by her. She was, after all, the rightful owner as it chose its master. She flipped pages to pages, trying to find a specific spell. Finally, she found the spell she was looking for and immediately took a mental note of understanding the foundation and nature of this spell. As she finished reading her Grimoire, she heard a click from the door.

“I’m back. You ready?” asked Jayce.

“Welcome back. Yes, I’m ready.”

She closed her Grimoire and store it back to her magic gloves. Jayce went out of the room to give her some time to change. Once changed, she went out of the room and looked back, ensuring they don’t leave anything behind.

They traveled further south of the village, finding a suitable environment with large amounts of foliage. The purpose of this choice was to teach Alice how to use the stealth enhancements applied to her apparel by Jayce.

He explained a few rules to her, turning this training into a game. It was like a game of tag, but the hunter had to touch their target’s back without being noticed. However, if the target caught a glimpse of you, you lose. She nodded to his proposal.

To activate the enhancement effects, the bearer had to imbue their mana to the runes applied to your apparels. However, each enhancement had their own nature. Stealth based enhancement requires patience and a sense of calm of the bearer. It sounded easy, but when it comes to escaping from enemies, the bearer had to recollect their thoughts zealously in order to activate their enhancement.

“Any questions?” he asked.

She shook her head. They decided that Jayce will be the hunter this time, to demonstrate how the enhancements worked in a field. As Jayce ventured deep into the forest, Alice mentally counted to ten.

When the game started, she immediately heightened her senses. No signs of movement, sounds or even presences. She was well aware that this training will not hurt both of them, but the feeling she had was different—fear. She kept looking left, right, front, back and above. Still no sign of Jayce, her senses gradually became dull. At that very moment, a hand grabbed her left shoulder. She instinctively jumped away from it and looked to find out the person who was grabbing her was Jayce.

“Sorry. Are you ok?”

He apologized to her for scaring her like that. His concern was about hurting her, mentally.

She took a few deep breaths, she wasn’t expecting the enchantments would be that effective. She understood how it feels like to be hunted, she switched roles with Jayce.

After some time passed, she activated her muffle enhancement. Keeping her mental state stable, she jumped once and landed on leaves and branches, not a single sound heard.

“It worked,” she murmured.

She darted toward his location while keeping her muffle enhancement active. At the same time, she began infusing her mana to camouflage enhancement, visualizing that she was part of the surroundings. It was difficult to activate two enhancements at once, they required more concentration than she has thought.

Halfway to his location, her mind finally became stable. She felt the sensation that she was linked with her surroundings. Postponing her excitement to the near future, she brought her focus back to their training.

Her eyes became wide when she found her target—who was found casually sleeping beside one of the trees. She didn’t doubt his action, doing so might deactivate her enhancements. She circled around his position, slowly approaching his back, ready to tackle. As her hand was about one centimeter away from his left shoulder, his right hand suddenly grabbed her hand.

“That was fun,” said Jayce, covering his mouth with his left hand as he was yawning. He released her hand and stood up, stretching his arms and legs.

Was he asleep? thought Alice

“How did you know that I was about to tag you?” she asked.

“I don’t.”

She was about to say “Interesting” but instead… “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“It’s exactly what I just said.” He stated it, flatly.

“Then what about your hand grabbing my hand?”

“Oh, you mean that. My body usually moves unconsciously as if it protects me.”

Again, she found these hard to believe. But after everything she went through with him in the past three days, she was sure he had his reason. Although she never got the chance to spook him, she knew she would have plenty of chances in their future. She now looked down, flustered by what she had scarcely remembered.

Jayce turned his gaze at her over his shoulder, imagining that she might be disturbed due to the side effects of using enhancement for the foremost time. But just to make sure, he set his hand along her frontal bone and put his other hand to his brow.

Her face flushed even further, she was at a loss of speech. Her blood temperature was rising.

“Are you having a fever? You should get back to the inn.”

“No, I’m fine. What’s next?”

He took another good look at her for a moment and then nodded. “If you say so. Before we head out, there’s one more thing you should know.”

“That is?” She asked quizzically.

He indicated her pair of magic gloves with this index finger. Her magic gloves were able to manifest any types of magic arrows or daggers for close-range combat. She attempted to trace the rune he mentioned specifically and found that the rune was crafted in the palm of her hand. Knowing the rune’s location was all she needed to know.

____________________

The camp wasn’t what they had in mind— it was more like of a fortress. Not exactly a fortress, that would be exaggerating, surrounding the camp was ten-meter tall wooden walls and eight-metre tall and six-metre wide wooden gate as the only entrance to the premise.

“Let’s see. One archer each on both watchtowers, two swordsmen guarding the prisoners, four swordsmen at the entrance of a large tent, five bandits holding up by what it looks like a weapons barrack and ten bandits patrolling the entire camp. Security is tight. We will have to make our move at nightfall, so let’s find a good spot to take a break,” said Jayce, removing his enchanted monocle from his eye and gave it to Alice.

Alice was curious about the enchanted monocle he was wearing just now. Jayce handed it to her and she equipped it on her right eye. Infusing her mana into the monocle's runes, she gazed on the camp. Her eyesight became blurry momentarily, then the sight of the camp became clear as if she was just a few metres away.

They were currently at three hundred metres away from the camp, standing on one of the sturdy branches of the tallest tree they had found. Jayce put on his usual black pair of spectacles and sat down next to her, scanning the entire forest and, of course, a large bandit camp at an open area.

Alice continued analyzing the camp at her pace, hoping to find an opening to infiltrate their camp. She thought about using long-range magic to take down all the bandits, then enter the camp from the front gate to save the prisoners, but that will likely attract attention and their security might increase dramatically.

They knew that they had two hours before nightfall. Jayce took out his book and started reading. Alice tilted her head slightly, analyzing his odd action.

He later withdrew a belt from his magic gloves and handed them over to Alice. “Here. Use this to tie yourself to a tree before you sleep, to prevent from falling.” She felt embarrassed about being a burden to him for assisting her. She accepted his offered belt and began tying herself to the tree branch. Instead of reading a book, she decided to take a nap, to prepare herself both mentally and physically for their upcoming battle.

8.00 pm, the time to infiltrate the bandit camp has come. However, Jayce had a hard time waking up Alice, who was still sleeping on the tree branch.

He sighed.

Feeling there weren’t any other options, he focused on creating two separate spells, one on each hand. One hand materialized a form of a water droplet and the other causes the surrounding air to be chilly. He cooled down the water droplet, close to its freezing point, then pours that single cooled water droplet to her forehead.

It was effective. Well, too effective for Alice as her entire shook vigorously. She rubbed her eyes to steer off the fatigue that hung over her. Once she was ready, they moved from tree to tree, toward the bandit camp. Fifty metres away from the camp. He switched his usual pair of spectacles with his monocle, scanning the camp.

“Good, the security seems to be lax. Here’s the plan…”

“Plan? We’re looking at a fortress with one entrance. How are we going to infiltrate the camp without being noticed?” interrupted Alice.

“…You’ll see. Back to the strategy, I will infiltrate the camp and you will provide support from here and inform me of their activity, if necessary. I will also open the gate for the prisoners to escape. Should the bandits harm any hostages, knock them out. I’m sure all the bandits equipped themselves with magic gloves. Any questions?”

“Wait, how am I going to communicate with you while I’m here?” asked Alice.

“You will communicate with me like this.”She heard his voice, but he didn’t move his lips or anything. She looked around to see whether this was due to nearby enemies’ spell.

“Relax. It’s me, Jayce. I’m talking to you with my mind,” he reassured.

“Okay, so how do I talk to you with my mind?”

He reminded her the necklace that he gave during their recent expedition in the Grimoire World. Not only that it possessed a rune that wards off the poisonous miasma, it also had a rune that allowed her to communicate with Jayce. The only drawback to this rune was that both bearers had the same rune on their equipment and both bearers had seen and met each other.

“Think of the person you want to contact and imbue your mana to the necklace.”

She nodded to his explanation. She began infusing her mana into the communication rune, imagining every single feature of him. His black hair, black eyes, his pair of spectacles, his—

“You sure take your time,” he teased, placing his hands on his waist.

“What do you mean?! I—” she paused, then continued. “I did it!”

He held onto his head with both hands due to her loud voice, mentally. He blinked a few times to recover from the noises in his head. She bowed multiple times to apologize to him. He told her he was fine. He knew that this was her first time using telepathy enhancement, so it’s no surprise she was that excited. Besides, she reminded him of the time when he tested this rune.

“Before I head off, you need a guardian,” said Jayce, without using telepathy enhancement this time.

Before Alice was about to ask him about “guardian”, he already began the incantation of his summoning spell.

“O Goddess of the Moon, Selene, as your child, hear my prayers, lend me your strength to banish all evils that lay before me, Noir!”

A wolf appeared out of thin air before Alice. At first glance, it looked like a normal wolf as it had black fur with hints of silver fur, but what made it different from the rest of the wolves she had encountered was its majestic and gentle pair of emerald eyes. Other than that, it was equipped with a pair of daggers, one on each shoulder; and equipped with black armors, covering its vital spots.

“Alice, meet Noir. He will be your guardian—Wait don’t! He doesn’t like—”

Despite its appearance, Alice couldn’t resist the temptation to hug Noir. Jayce stood there dumbfounded, surprised that Noir, for the first time, didn’t show slight hostility toward Alice. Up until now, Noir had never trusted anyone but him. As Alice hugging and petting Noir, he wagged his tail quickly.

“Now that we’re all set. Are you ready?” He brought his attention back to their task, trying to not get sidetracked.

Both Noir and Alice nodded.

When in the world did Noir is in sync with her? thought Jayce.