Having been the youngest of seven children, Peter Rollins had always felt like an afterthought. While his brothers and sisters had always known exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, he’d struggled to find a place for himself.

  At one time, he’d thought he’d end up being a flower merchant like his mom. Then he’d wanted to be a blacksmith or a machinist like his uncle Owen. For a brief moment during his twenties, he’d even considered being an arena mage.

  The one thing he’d had going for him was his natural ability to sense and manipulate essence which he’d been tested for during his education at the Center. It put him on the path of magic and got him accepted into some of the training programs in preparation for going to one of the academies.

  Unfortunately, he ended up never going due to the fact that he hadn’t been accepted into the one he’d wanted. Rather than going to a second-rate school, he instead signed up for the apprentice system in the local Tower of Magic. Being a member of the Tower would have allowed him to reapply every five years until he eventually got in.

  Working there at the Tower had been awful though, so much so that he ended up questioning his decision to even become a mage. The work was boring, and everyone there was better at everything than he was. They were always just DOING things, experiments, studies, competitions… training.

  He simply wasn’t cut out for it. So, he’d left. His parents had been disappointed, along with the rest of his family.

  Eventually, he’d gotten a job working for one of the smaller guard companies associated with the merchant’s association in Gate 5. It was good money and more than enough to live on. He’d been able to practice his magic at his own pace, and he’d figured he’d still eventually make his way to the Royal Academy in Hennings at some point.

  For years, he worked there, off and on taking contracts for shipping defense and warehouse protection. What had started out as a temporary choice had become his life.

  He’d been in a rut, and his path had completely stalled.

  All of that changed when he’d been out drinking with a few work friends at the arena. He’d watched as a freshly awakened nobody took advantage of the fact that he was fighting at a low level to abuse an aspect of magic that he shouldn’t have even been aware of. It had been both brilliant and crazy.

  From there, Peter had taken the time to learn all about the new Lord Walker. The young man had been a commoner just like him, but after being killed and reborn with a soul from another continent, that all changed. From nothing, he’d raised himself up to nobility and learned magic all on his own. He’d been ‘alive’ for basically weeks, and he’d already done more than Peter had ever managed to do.

  It was inspirational enough to shame him into taking a good, hard look at his life.

  Then, he saw the speech Lord Walker made to his attendants. The young lord urged them to care more about their progress along their path, to stop wasting their lives, and to try and be MORE than they were. The sentiment had him clenching his fists in determination, and when the call went out for people willing to join House Walker, he stubbornly decided that it was time for a change.

  He would no longer just be floating through life, waiting for something to happen. No, he would be actively working on finding his path.

  It wasn’t like he had any real ties here. He and his family weren’t all that close, and he didn’t have a significant other. He’d always planned on leaving the city. This way, he’d be seeing the world under a unique, and who knew where he’d end up finding himself.

  Just last month, he’d been drinking in a bar with his friends complaining about a stingy merchant not tipping enough, and now, he was in the mountain city fighting kobalds along with the army.

  The Walker was right, adventure really was worth pursuing.

  Hearing the Walker’s question, Peter looked up from the ground he was staring at, and replied, “Why’d I join up, my lord? Um… I don’t know. I suppose it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  —--

  It took several hours before Nick and his nerd squad were finished. When they were packing up, Nero couldn’t help but stare at the illusionary wall in confusion. It made absolutely zero sense to him that they spent all that time tinkering with it and then DIDN’T take the time to dismantle it.

  Walking over to Nick, Nero interrupted the man’s conversation with a few of the more nerdy-looking people in robes. “Hey, you guys know the fake wall is still there, right?”

  Nick exchanged a few uncertain looks with the science-types, then replied, “Yes?”

  “Well, aren’t you going to… I don’t know… take it down?” Nero asked somewhat angrily.

  The dorky-looking woman on Nick’s right replied, “Why would we do that? Leaving it here intact will allow us to take future measurements and scans if we need them. Everyone knows it’s there, so it will no longer be fooling anyone. Disrupting the spell enchantment would serve no logical purpose,” she stated firmly as if it were obvious.

  Nero, while positive that she was wrong, was uncertain that he could explain his completely irrefutable reasoning to her. So, instead of arguing, he just said, “Fair enough,” and walked away.

  Now that the survey team was finished, Natalie resumed control of the formation in short order. Everything was packed up and they were on the move back to the forward operating base as soon as possible. Nero took up his position alongside Merrick in the formation, all the while looking over his shoulder at the false wall that represented hours of his new life utterly wasted.

  Even knowing that Nick and his scientist buddies had a reason for what they’d been doing, Nero still would rather have been DOING something.

  Their path back was as uneventful as their path there had been, and Nero found himself back at the little camp they’d set up with the rest of the team. While Nick had offered him the opportunity to sit in on the meeting scheduled between the survey team and the Tower of Magic, and Natalie had asked if he wanted to take part in the command conference with Cathleen and the camp’s leadership, Nero had declined on the grounds that he hadn’t wanted to. Neither Nick nor Natalie had bothered to try and talk him into participating, so Nero decided to call it a win and forget about it.

  The rest of the day passed without incident, and Nero found small ways to entertain himself. The benefits of having access to the Thought Hub and all the interesting little shows people made were offset by his increased brain power. Even having part of his brain watching them, the rest of his mind was quite bored. It was like watching a show on the TV in the living room and still feeling the need to scroll through his phone or talk to the person next to him.

  So, Nero took the opportunity to get to know the rest of his team, aside from the dwarves that is. Those assholes holed up in their little stone bunker they made and kept completely to themselves.

  ‘The little bastards are probably throwing a party with beer and snacks, laughing at the stupid humans in tents,’ he thought to himself grimly.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the team circled around the center of their little camp as if there were a firepit there… which there wasn’t. But that didn’t stop them from chatting with each other to pass the time. At first, Nero found the professional atmosphere somewhat like what he’d assume a corporate retreat would be like. Eventually though, everyone seemed to loosen up.

  It was nice for Nero to be around what could be considered ‘the normal’ people in the kingdom. Up until now, he’d basically been hanging around the elites and nobles. Everyone was so absurdly competent and serious that they consistently made him feel like an idiot. Yet, these people weren’t like that at all.

  Both the Helens were simple warriors who’d spent their days as guards for Precision Shipping and some storefronts. They shared some stories of what they’d gone through and some amusing tales of people failing to rob the places they’d worked at. One of the Helens, the one with brown hair, spent her free time taking classes on pottery and gardening at the Center. While the other Helen, the blonde, enjoyed arena fighting, both watching and participating. Hearing them talk about their lives was both informative and kinda illusion-shattering.

  Neither of them was all that different than the standard blue-collar workers he’d used to hang out with. That was, aside from the fact that they occasionally fought things and people to the death for a living.

  The scouts, Victor and Sam, were both rather quiet. When the group had asked what they did for fun, they both replied, “Training,” and left it at that. Nero likened them to the hardworking grunts that kept society running while never getting anywhere in their professional lives. Prime candidates for his future bowling league without question.

  Claire, the last woman of the group, took the opportunity to complain that she was forced to use a sword and shield instead of her preferred spear since there weren’t enough people on their team for a solid line of defense. Nero found it interesting that she was a spear user who used to be a combat instructor for the Center. She had three kids who were already grown up and off on their own, and two former husbands that she still kept in contact with. Her jolly yet complaining tone reminded Nero of a P.T.A. mom who had too much time on her hands.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Even Merrick and Peter weren’t all that ‘fancy’ when they started talking. Merrick, Nero had already learned about through their chats, but Peter surprised him by being even more down-to-earth and unimpressive. The guy looked pretty ordinary, and his personality matched him perfectly.

  Peter had come from a family of merchants whose parents got their start with a flower store. His brothers and sisters were all off starting their own businesses while he was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He’d gone to one of the magic schools in the city with the hope that he would one day go to one of the larger academies, but he never ended up going. In fact, Peter wasn’t even sure if magic was what he wanted to do with his life, and he made it clear that working his way up the ladder of the Tower of Magic was something he had absolutely no interest in. Most of his free time was spent in the bar with his friends.

  Nero of course, asked why on earth he signed up as a follower of House Walker if he didn’t want a life of adventure and danger.

  In response, Peter just shrugged and said that he felt like a good idea at the time. This was, of course, a sentiment that Nero could appreciate, so he didn’t push.

  Without a sky overhead, the rest of the day passed without anyone looking at their mental clocks. Nero found himself enjoying his time with the wackos, hearing about their lives and what they were into. He even learned a lot about how the average citizens in Dorchester spent their days and how they lived their lives.

  He learned about each of their pillars, as no one bothered to keep theirs a secret. Most of them were pretty dull, like Peter and his ‘momentum’ pillar. While in the future it sounded like it might end up being impressive, right now it just allowed him to keep maintaining what he was doing at a reduced cost. It made his contribution to any spell shield he was a part of disproportionate to the effort he put in. Merrick’s ‘intensity’ pillar did something similar, but instead of keeping the cost down, it magnified his spell’s effects. Both had put most of their stars from their level-ups into them, which seemed to be pretty common as everyone else did the same with theirs.

  Nero listened more than he talked, as every time he spoke up, the cheerful atmosphere in the ether got disturbed. His identity as ‘The Walker’ was enough to get everyone to clam up and pretend for a moment to be serious. Luckily, as time passed, he got progressively better at using his essence technique to get them to forget he was there.

  Just being in the background and enjoying the conversation going on around him was enough for him to feel like he belonged. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel as if he were just one of the guys. It was nice.

  He recalled what Jennings and Nick had warned him about, how his altered mind caused him to focus too much on being an adventurer and not an actual person, and he couldn’t help but agree with their point. He’d forgotten how to just stop focusing on the next trial or opportunity for advancement and just live in the moment.

  On the other hand, as he watched Merrick trying and failing to teach Peter how to improve his ‘acid ball’ spell form, Nero realized why none of these people were among the elites. It wasn’t that they were unskilled or weak, they were just so ‘average’. He’d gotten used to being around Nick and Jennings, who were both rather impressive. Even the warmage he’d briefly studied under made these people look like they were children playing at being mages.

  ‘These guys kinda suck,’ he thought to himself with a grimace.

  He sort of liked these people, and he felt kinda uncomfortable realizing that in many ways he was already way ahead of them. They’d lived their whole lives trying to be better, to strive for more, and they hadn’t progressed nearly as far as they’d have liked to. Every one of them gave up everything to join House Walker in the hopes that a change would give them the push to be something more than the average person they were, but no amount of desire could overcome a lack of talent. Not without a lot of effort that is.

  Nero couldn’t help but accept that he was just lucky. Everything here came easy to him. He could ‘see’ the essence flows in the ether, and his mind practically recorded every spell form he saw. Calling him talented was like calling Usain Bolt pretty quick.

  Standing up from his stump, Nero let the technique he was using to hide himself drop. Like a teacher walking into a classroom, his presence immediately ruined the happy and relaxed atmosphere. Every one of their heads turned to him in both confusion and surprise, having completely forgotten that he was there.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your time off, so don’t feel like you have to participate. But, if any of you would like, I’ll be setting up a training ring over there,” he gestured off toward one of the walls of the chamber. “If you’d like, we can try and get some training in while the people with the proper chairs decide what we’re going to be doing. Who knows, maybe we’ll all have something to teach each other. But, like I said, this isn’t mandatory or anything. So, feel free to just hang out here if you’d like. I know this sounds like I’m hinting that you should take me up on this, but I honestly don’t mean it like that.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, Nero finished his offer, “Anyway, I’ll be over there if anyone needs me, or is interested in working on anything.”

  Not forgetting to return his stump to his personal space, Nero walked away quickly.

  He’d been planning on working on some spell forms that he’d found on the Thought Hub, but he hadn’t expected to invite anyone to train with him. He knew he was doing it out of guilt, or maybe a sense of responsibility, but it really wasn’t like him so he felt somewhat uncomfortable about it.

  Arriving at the wall, Nero scoped out a good place to set up a training ring. He could feel the ether here wasn’t particularly suited to training, but instead felt like it used to be a marketplace. He could almost see the shadows of past shops and buildings filling up the walls with their wares. Yet, now they were all gone, and only empty stone remained. For a moment, he wondered how the kobalds had decorated the place when they’d been here.

  Shrugging off the thought, he reached into his personal space to pull out one of the books he’d been given by Jennings before he’d gone into the wilds. It was a book on surviving as a hunter which he’d skimmed. There was a spell form inside that he figured would be perfect for what he intended to work on. Flipping quickly through the pages, he found what he was looking for.

  Holding the book with one hand as a reference, he slowly carved a spell form in the ether. It was one of the recommended spells for setting up a camp, and it did nothing more than even out the ground while erecting a small rounded ring around the area. The ground was already flat and made of stone, so the rounded lip around the ring copied the pattern. While the spell itself was intended to alter the ground permanently, the ring should last around thirty minutes. In the wilds, it was a great way to keep everyone within the range of an enchanted protection circle. Nero found the spell interesting for several reasons.

  The first, and most important, was the fact that it actually affected reality by making the ground flat. According to the book, it did this by ‘moving’ what made up the ground rather than creating anything. It was a force spell, not a creation spell. Depending on how much debris and crap was in the way, the spell could be costly or incredibly easy to cast. In this case, the ground was already completely smooth, so it was practically free. The only effort he needed to put forth was to ‘create’ the ring at the edge. That part of the spell was an earthen spell form that he found very similar to the pillar spell he liked to cast.

  After the spell was cast, Nero didn’t drop the spell form. Instead, he just stared at it as if he were trying to discover its secrets. He’d thought a lot about how a city like this could have been built, and the only conclusion he’d come to was that the people who’d built it had relied heavily on spells like this. Rather than cut out the stone, they’d probably just compressed it into the walls around them, building the place up as they dug deeper into the mountain.

  ‘It must have been exhausting,’ he thought to himself, not envying them at all.

  As he stared at the spell form, he tried to isolate the parts that he recognized while focusing on the ones he didn’t. It was the unfamiliar parts that were responsible for the effects he was interested in.

  “A camp spell, my lord?” a voice asked from behind him.

  Nero, having not been focusing on his essence field, was a little caught off guard by someone having snuck up on him. Quickly recapturing the center he’d used for the spell form, Nero turned around to see everyone from the team standing there watching him. Merrick was out in front, and obviously the one who’d had enough guts to speak up.

  Smiling widely at them all willing to show up for his impromptu training session, Nero replied, “Yeah, I was just trying to figure out how it affects the real world without making constructs.”

  Merrick turned to Peter, who was standing right next to him, and said, “I believe Peter has some experience with material patterning, my lord.”

  Peter, rubbing his hands a little as if he weren’t sure he wanted to actually be there, replied, “Yes, my lord, I did a little work with the construction crews for the city. I can walk you through some of the alteration spells I learned for the brickwork if you’d like. They’re not all that complicated for someone like you, but they might help you figure something out. I mean, if you’d like, that is… my lord.”

  Everyone else was just standing there, watching.

  Nero, not wanting this to turn into all of them just focusing on him, replied, “OK. First off, you guys can cut the ‘my lord’ crap. I’m barely a noble. To be honest, I’m more like you guys than I am like them. So, let’s just stick with ‘Nero’, alright?”

  Although they looked uncomfortable with the idea of just referring to him as Nero, they eventually nodded along in agreement.

  Nero, having already had an idea of how he wanted this to work, started breaking them up into pairs and spreading them out. He used the spell a few times to set up some more rings while Victor helped out by marking the raised areas off with chalk which he pulled out from somewhere. According to Peter, even after the constructed ring disappeared, the chalk would remain so they could keep the training areas separate.

  Taking advantage of having heard countless motivational quotes from the internet, Nero encouraged them all to take advantage of the opportunity to train. He assured everyone that he could heal them if they ended up hurting each other, so they could feel free to wail at each other to their hearts' content.

  “We’ll be down here fighting kobalds for a while, and based on how slow this campaign looks to be going, we’re going to have a lot of downtime. While we could spend that time just waiting for stuff to happen, we can instead take the opportunity to push ourselves. What blood we spill now in training is blood we won’t be spilling when we are out there in the thick of the fighting. Work hard now, and fight easy later. Learn all you can from each other, and don’t hold back. Down here, in the dark, we’re all that we have to rely on. If you can teach someone something that ends up saving your own ass, then you haven’t wasted your time in training them,” he declared firmly, trying to channel his inner motivational speaker.

  Turning away to rejoin Merrick and Peter in what’s become the center ring of their little training area, Nero remembered to remind them, “If anyone gets hurt or accidentally kills someone, just give me a shout. I haven’t run into anything I haven’t been able to heal, so don’t worry about injuring each other. That said, do your best to not need me. The point of training is to learn how to NOT get hit, not how to survive a beating.”

  Nodding to himself, Nero made his way back over to the mages.

  “Now boys, let’s talk about altering the world around us through magic,” he said with an eager grin while rubbing his hands together in excitement.