With the beginning of the war in earnest, Lee found that things were different in the villages.

  In both lives, he was recruited in the City of Angels. One of the greatest hotspots of Imperial supporters in the Empire. It only made sense that many young men and women would be swept up in the patriotic fervor that he had fallen into when a volunteer service was made available and news about the barbarian threat disseminated to the greater public.

  However, at least in the village he was in right now… the sentiment didn’t seem to be as good.

  “A war…?”

  “Oh, gods…”

  “Guess our taxes just went up again…”

  And many such sentences came up with the villagers he had passed by. Frankly, if that kind of talk were to come up within the army itself, they’d likely be flogged as a result of spreading traitorous sentiment. It was a bit annoying for Lee to have to listen to them, but he didn’t want to burn any bridges being angry at villagers, especially when he needed their supplies for his travels.

  He also somewhat understood their worry. After all, the Army at this point was recruiting men and women who were at the age of eighteen to twenty-six. The ones going to war would be their children. The reminder that many families would be broken by the war smothered his annoyance by quite a bit, and made him reflect on his own situation.

  The war itself, unless he decided to join the army again, would make traveling a bit more difficult. Traveling village to village was fine—he doubted he’d get stopped doing so. But if he had to stop within a city, he’d most likely have to face inspections, and have guards demand his identification, which, seeing as he had already known about the fact that it was going to happen, he had already known to bring.

  It was a bit surprising to think that one reason this war had started so soon was because a barbaric special forces group had gotten so close to the City of Angels. Lee knew that the event wasn’t the sole reason that war had begun—it would be both extremely egotistical of him to imagine he had somehow managed to stumble into an important operation that would kickstart a war and foolish to not even think about any other situations—but it was safe to assume that the Blades being discovered had been one reason why war was declared.

  He was ashamed that his interference allowed most of the Blades to get away. With only one intruder to interrogate, will the Empire perform as well during the war? He, indirectly, might have been the cause of many more deaths. It didn’t matter that Luis had run for the promise of loot and glory and that he had to save him, but Lee had the knowledge that something might happen during the month to spark the war.

  He just didn’t think that it would also be so close to the City. He had heard them talking about extracting a VIP. At the forest, he thought it might have been Luis, but that would be impossible.

  Luis was a simple village boy with no special connections, other than being the son of the village’s mayor. His own family wasn’t particularly remarkable either. Unless Lee had missed something, but he doubt he did—the family was not remarkable in a way that the Blades would be involved.

  So that meant that the VIP they were extracting was someone within the City—the only place of importance that they were close to. Perhaps a spy, or a traitor. Lee wasn’t sure. He hopes the Hands find out who they were looking for, even with less information than they might have gotten. It wouldn’t be good for his mind if he negatively affected how the war went by meddling somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

  But—seeing the faces of the family, and the relief shared between them… It made it hard to regret.

  But you might have killed thousands more. His mind whispered. Thousands of soldiers dead because of missing information.

  … It’s best not to think about that. He just hopes that the thought was wrong. He didn’t want to regret doing a good thing, lest his mind starts to justify doing worse in the name of good.

  But, with his inadequacy during the previous incident, Lee had come upon a problem. One that he had already known even before he set out on this journey: he was not very good at combat.

  Yes, he had been a soldier. Yes, he can use his spear to fight.

  But he had fought a lifetime ago. And he wasn’t anything good then either. He had never been promoted past the rank of just a ‘footman’. He had never become a corporal, or gotten enough authorization to request specialty items, or been given a command. He was always just a soldier, fighting under someone else’s command.

  At the time, he had accepted it—the nobles knew best. They were born to lead, born to command. What would a commoner like him know?

  But that was no longer enough. He must improve his combat skill, alongside everything else he had, so that he had an answer to anything that could come his way. And, if his life were to repeat once more, he would be able to do much more with it.

  He must learn to fight more effectively. His practice was not improving him—he was practically no better than an untrained civilian. The only reason he was able to defend himself against his enemies was because a spear was dangerous regardless of who was wielding it. A sharp tip on a long stick was not something anyone wanted to be near them, after all.

  There was also the fact that the reason he had defended himself against a Blade, despite what Luis had thought, was that the Blade was not aiming to kill him at all, but to hold him hostage, likely to use as a bargaining chip.

  But why?

  Luis was not the VIP. He vaguely remembered hearing one of the Blades, before they extracted, yelling to grab the VIP. Did that mean that Lee was the VIP?

  A dangerous question. If he was, wouldn’t the Hands be telling him to stay in the City? Wouldn’t he be under guard? Besides, there would be no one important in his family that would call for an enemy trying to kidnap him. His family was dead, after all.

  … Perhaps it is something that I am better off not knowing. It would not be off the table to imagine they knew something about him. His father had been an important person, after all. Perhaps it might be something as simple as revenge, or something as simple as wanting to take his body to try and recreate his father.

  He had been, after all, an Emperor’s Hand. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to imagine the barbarians to know him from previous action against them, and to want to replicate him somehow, possibly by taking Lee’s genetic material and doing something with it.

  No. That is farfetched. It’s likely revenge… That was the only explanation that made sense, after all. It just made his thoughts about his weakness in combat valid. He would not be able to defend himself against them if more of them wanted revenge.

  That was why Lee had decided for his next destination to be the city of Morganburg—a city with deep martial roots, owing to the fact that the city was named after a general from centuries ago. It was where the modern style that soldiers used was developed, if it could be called a style at all.

  The general, back then, had supposedly been given the city as a prize for his loyalty and service, though Morganburg back then had not been the city that it now was. He had transformed the small village into a small fort, and trained many of the villagers into practically soldiers in the name of defense. Over time, more and more people were put under the banner of Morganburg as it grew in size, and more and more people were trained in the martial arts.

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  Many independent martial artists had gone to the city to create schools of their own, or simply bask in the environment that it held. Supposedly, there was also a martial tournament that happened every so often in the city, with a really high cash prize. He had heard of many of his former soldiers back then that had joined the tournament. None of them were winners, of course—chances are, if the winner of the tournament would be to join the Army, they’d become an officer. They wouldn’t be wasted within the line infantry.

  Morganburg would definitely hold a way for him to train in the spear. Or a different weapon—but he was far too partial with a spear. There was also his magic, of course, but getting official training with spellcasting was difficult for someone like him. He might have had a recommendation for the Artificer’s College (that was most likely void now), but he did not have one for the Mage’s College.

  The Mage’s College was similar to the Artificer’s College, in that it only accepted the elites. Rich commoners or nobles—the like. Lee only had an invite to the Artificer’s College due to his mother, who had connections he hadn’t been aware of before she died. He was unlikely to forge those same connections, leading to the problem.

  Getting a recommendation without his mother would need him to impress some noble or rich commoner to sponsor his entry into the College, which would be very difficult with his poor skill in spellcasting.

  For now, he’ll have to stay safe and practice spellcasting as an individual. There is a bit of overlap between spellcasting and artificing anyway—he doubts he’d have to pursue the Mage’s College itself to learn of more intents or methods to cast.

  Travel was fairly slow. There was the fact that he was walking, of course—he could definitely go to Morganburg faster if he decided to join a convoy. Ride a cart, sit while a horse pulls it instead of having to burn his legs walking village to village. Or burn all his coin riding one of those new civilian automobile services.

  But that would detract from his other training. Learning spellcasting was difficult work. In the month he had been traveling since his last incident, he had focused all his time into cutting down the casting time for his Protect spell.

  It somewhat worked—he could even call it combat ready now. It took a second to cast, and he can do it while he’s distracted, which meant he can do it when he’s fighting. The durability left much to be desired, as well as its mana efficiency, and its size, and its… well, there was a lot of room to improve for the Protect spell he had. At the moment, it acted as a disposable shield that could maybe block one attack. He’s never had to test it in combat yet.

  His Hurt spell in comparison had not progressed much. It still took far too long to cast for it to be effective in combat. He couldn’t be distracted while casting it. And it did pitiful damage whenever it actually went off.

  He still remembered the intense barrage that the group of Hands had done during the incident. If he were to try and dissect it with his understanding, they would have been casting a non-elemental spell with extreme efficiency and layering for explosive power.

  He could not do that. Trying to layer extra intents onto his spells was still far too difficult for his meager reserves. And it did not seem to be growing any time soon. He’d have to make his spells more efficient first before he decided to add anything else—or simply get better at spellcasting. Easier said than done.

  There was also his artificing. Mainly, fiddling with the staff given to him by Luis.

  The impulsive man had said that he found it off the Blades’ camp, and it certainly checked out. The staff was well made, with almost no flaws in its design. Not the faux wooden case—he still wasn’t sure what material it was made of—but its internals were well made for being a piece of technology the barbarians produced.

  The wiring inside revealed that mana would be expelled to both tips of the staff. This was not too uncommon from common staves made in the Empire, but the wiring within was complex, layering over itself multiple times. In theory, this meant that when he pumped mana into it, the staff could be enhanced like he does with his own body. In practice, he lacked the mana to do so.

  The mana gem within the staff itself was also fairly complex. There were multiple intents layered as instructions within the gem. Search was one such intent, as well as Light, Direction, and Illusion. He did not know what they were doing together, and what the staff did, despite seeing its internals like this. The best he could figure out was that they were using it to find their VIP, but how exactly was still lost on him.

  Attempting to use it himself to see what it would do led to him passing out. Too much mana used at once, he reckoned. At that state, it was functionally useless to him, other than a stick that he can use to just beat people over the head with. So, he had decided to reprogram the gem instead, though he first had to wipe its initial instructions first with a quick burst of mana.

  There was a bit of resistance, which was strange, but it worked out in the end, and he could finally program the gem directly. His first attempt was to try and turn the staff into a spear that uses only mana.

  In theory, it would stop him from having to worry about his spear. He worried about its durability. He had used its tip during the incident quite a lot, and while it didn’t seem to be that problematic at the moment, the future may be different. The tip could pop off or it’ll be too dull. He maintains it religiously for this reason. But, if he had a spear with a tip he never had to worry about, it’ll be good for his nerves.

  The idea was simple—he wanted to emulate what he had seen the Hand that had saved him wield. The execution was not so simple.

  In the path to trying to recreate something similar, he had thought that maybe what he aimed to do would be easier. He wanted to project only a small spear tip on one of the tips of the staff, after all. That would surely be easier than projecting two straight blades on the side of a stick that converged to a single point, and to make it a whole solid and sharp shape too!

  Trying to do it was a different story. The trigger for it was simple enough—keying it to his mana signature and turning it on whenever he feeds mana into it. The function on the other hand was incredibly difficult and fraught with failures.

  The first failure had been spectacular. The mana certainly expelled from the tip he wanted, but it expelled more than he had been expecting. It did not create a spear tip, but a beam of pure mana that splashed harmlessly into a tree he had been pointing the tip at. It had also, incidentally, drained him of all his mana and knocked him out after he had seen his failure.

  The second failure was more mundane. The shape he had been wanting to emulate was like that of his normal spear—a leaf shaped blade with a really sharp point. Instead, he had created a ball of mana at the end of the staff. Changing a few intents to try and make it act like a mace did not work as expected. Slamming it into a tree had the ball of mana explode uselessly, draining him of energy.

  The third failure succeeded in making something pointy—in that he created a cube instead of a sphere. He didn’t test to see if he could make it useful and just dispelled it, working on the next iteration instead.

  There were many more failures after that. It turned out that just shaping the mana into what he wanted alone was difficult. Restrained Expansion wasn’t enough—he was missing something. He just didn’t know what.

  These failures didn’t stop him from continuing to try his best, however. Even if they never worked out. At the very least, his latest failure involved creating a cone—which broke as soon as he tried to use it to stab something. He might be getting closer, but he felt that he was still doing it wrong.

  Despite him not having created a successful device during this travel period, he had found it fairly fulfilling. Over time, he learned how to make his devices more efficient with using mana, simply because of necessity. He couldn’t do multiple tests at the same day if he kept running out of mana every time he tried to do a test.

  It’s not so dramatic a change as a fifty percent cut to mana usage to all his devices, but it was enough so that in hot days, he can actually use his backpack to cool himself off without it running out of mana in two minutes. Still not able to last indefinitely with just the efficiency, but it lasted at least four minutes this time with improvements both in the gathering rate and its mana usage.

  If only he could do the same to his spellcasting. Unfortunately, it seemed that mana flowed differently inside a mana gem than when he was slinging a spell. A shame, but it just meant he needed more practice.

  He stretched out his arms as he sighed, putting the staff down as another failure stared him right in the eyes. An inverted cone of all things, as he messed up the Restrained Expansion’s parameters. Completely unusable, if it could even hit anything without breaking, anyway. The experiment fizzled out into nothing as he stopped feeding mana into it, leaving him alone under the moon, a lamp his only company.

  Growth had come slowly to him during these travels. But growth always comes slowly to him anyway. Going to Morganburg would likely not speed it up—but it was a bit of a fool’s hope. There were many masters within the city, he hoped he could find one that could teach him how to wield his spear effectively.

  It’s still too slow. It will always be too slow, his doubts whispered. You will still die pointlessly. Alone and forgotten. Another life wasted. More potentials snuffed.

  Lee closed his eyes.

  He was close to the city, now. Two more days of travel at the worst.

  For now, he should rest. Then he can think about what to do when he gets inside the city.