"Thank the ancestors. I'm finally home." I collapsed onto my bed for the first time in months. After a successful training mission, we had all been given leave to go home for a few days to see our families and recover. My father was busy with Thane work so I had skipped the family visit and had gone straight to my room, actually, I hadn't seen him since I had been presented to the clan. Some part of me wondered where he was and what he was doing, the rest of me wanted to rest.
"Oof. I feel like I could sleep for a hundred years. Maybe I can? I'll have to look into that later to see if dwarves can sleep for centuries." I let my mind wander for a bit until it stumbled on something really important.
"Ancestor's beard! I don't have time to sleep! I have to unpack my samples and try to purify them before I go back to training. Fresh meat!"
I opened my pack and began rummaging through the collected samples. There had to be something in here that could help me advance my five point plan.
There were some herbs that were all red but smelled relatively familiar, some random rocks that might be valuable, and several biological samples. Including the small foot tall demon gnome.
You could never know if one of these items might be this world's version of penicillin.
"Hmm. What to test first?" I twirled one of my red hairs in thought. "Wait, what the heck is going on over here?"
The demon gnome the catgirl had given me was slowly flaking away, as if a certain purple alien had snapped their fingers. To make things weirder, the particles were drifting in a line to the corner of my room.
"What in the nine hells is going on?" I asked no one in particular.
In the corner was the pile of incomplete experimental tech that I had attempted and given up on over the years as the inconsistent flow of magic constantly let me down. A test rocket, prototypes of the shield grenade and other force field tech, a dehumidifier and humidifier, a mana powered grill, and other random items that I thought would help me in this world.
I followed the flow of particles to a particular device. It was something I called a mana condenser. My thought process was that if I could gather the local mana and force it together in clumps, I could charge some sort of battery. However, I could never get the runes to cooperate with me. There was probably some hidden frequency that I lacked the knowledge to figure out.
"Seriously? What are you doing?" Call me crazy, but I personally believed talking with technology made it more cooperative. The Mana Compressor was dug from the pile and placed on my desk, where it promptly disintegrated the demon gnome. "Hmm, were you supposed to do that?"
Left behind from the demon gnome's corpse was a slab of meat that looked similar to a chicken breast and a small red pebble.
Curious, and just a little bit hungry, I cooked up the meat on the grill that fortunately had just enough local mana to run. It still took half an hour to get rid of any pink.
"Delicious!" It tasted like bland chicken, but it was still a thousand times better than the shoe leather they called meat here. "Time for more experiments."
Over the next hour, I purified everything I had collected and fine tuned the runes on the Mana Purifier.
"Hmm. I can get rid of the miasma from foodstuffs, that's one item from my list. Now what can I do with these red pebbles?"
From each and every item, the miasma had condensed into crimson rocks of varying sizes from a grain of sand to the one from the demon gnome which was about the size of my thumb.
"I wonder…" I fished out another device and a stack of paper. "If I rearrange this rune here, replace this rune for the one described by Runemaster Brovruli, then redraw the lines here with mithril ink, and…"
Two hours of work went into updating the runes, but the result was an unmitigated success. "Eureka!" I shouted in glee. "It works! By all the ancestors and their runes, it works!"
At long last, after so many trials and tribulations, I had figured out how to trap lightning in a bottle. With the reconfiguring of a mana purification and mana condenser device, I was able to convert the miasma stones, or demon cores as I decided to call them, into viable energy sources that I could store into mana batteries.
The rest of the night was spent testing and retesting all my gadgets and retooling them to accept directed energy rather than ambient power. They all worked… In their own ways… I couldn't wait until the next time we went to the surface so I could get more demon cores!
A full month went by before I knew it. Constant exercise, drills, and shouts from Elder Wevrik made the time fly. Then it was time for a full month to be spent on the surface.
"Mogrim!" Elder Wevrik bellowed at me as I fell into formation for our trip. "What in the ancestors name is on your back?"
"Equipment I want to test on the surface, Elder." I answered. There wasn't that much. A mana condenser, miasma purifier, a mana battery, paper, pens, ink, rune crafting equipment, along with my weapons, armor, and supplies…
Ok, maybe it was a bit too much.
I was forced to put the majority of it back in my room and catch up to the group as they assembled on the surface. The only extra thing that I kept in my pack was the miasma purifier. That was my ticket to eating as much fresh food as I wanted!
"Hmm." I glanced at the open sky in discomfort. "It still feels weird not having a ceiling over me."
"Don't think about it, wazzock." A warrior marching nearby ordered. "Very few races fight in a civilized manner underground, so when the High King calls forth the Throng, it will almost always be on the surface. It is important that you youngsters are prepared."
The Throng was the term for when the High King called on all his vassals to assemble in a great host to crush whatever he deemed an enemy. Since it was usually a grand undertaking that cost a gigantic fortune, a Throng was usually only called in times of great need or when a new High King wished to make a name for himself.
"Do you think the High King will ever call forth The Throng?" I asked.
"You never can know, youngster. It could be tomorrow, it could be a hundred years from now, it could be in your children's time. No matter when the call comes, our honor demands we answer The High King. Hmm?"
Several of the nearby adult warriors tensed, their hands on their weapons. They looked around for enemies. Elder Wevrik called for a halt.
"What's going on?" One of my fellow students inquired of our guardians.
"Demons." Elder Wevrik growled. His beard prickled as the hairs stood on end. "Anyone who intends to be a warrior, memorize the scent of the air, the feel of the stone, the rustle of the trees. Every instant you have to prepare is more precious than gold and diamonds."
As if to punctuate his words, a proper demon sprung from the bushes. Five of them, to be precise.
Unlike the demon gnome the catgirl had brought me, these were actual demons. Roughly five to six feet tall. Their skin was redder than blood, mouths full of dagger-like teeth, foot long horns that looked razor sharp, eyes blacker than night that looked rabid. Every single detail of their naked forms screamed death and destruction.
Eep!
"Stay calm!" Elder Wevrik ordered us. "Do not show them fear, it gives them strength! Fight as you have been trained."
I found my weapon in my hand before he finished speaking. Unfortunately, or I probably should say fortunately, I didn't get to test my mettle against the demons. The warriors took care of them in the blink of an eye.
Demons seemed to fight in a completely instinctive manner, worse than wild animals, with no regard for their own safety and their only thought being killing. The warriors blocked their attacks with their round shields and slaughtered the demons with hammers and axes.
Elder Wevrik proceeded to give us an extensive and bloody biology lesson on demons and the best ways of killing them. Also how they would try to kill us. In gory detail.
Exceptionally gory detail. With personal tales and scars to match.
It's a good thing I haven't eaten yet. Speaking of eating, I think I feel a familiar pair of eyes on me… It's probably nothing.
Apparently these were a type of demon called Demon Serfs. The lowest rank of demon with no intelligence, sentience, or any sense beyond killing. I made a note to find out what the highest rank of demon was and if there was a demon lord about.
That night after we made camp, I tried to get my hands on the demons so I could see if my miasma purifier would work on them like it did the gnome demon, but the warriors had already burned the corpses. It was apparently standard procedure to incinerate demon corpses so that their bodies wouldn't decompose and become poisonous miasma that blighted the soil.
"Fresh meat…" I groaned as I trudged back to the fire. As always, dinner was 'mystery meat' that tasted like shoe leather and stale beer.
"Mrow."
"Ahh!" I dropped the remains of my dinner, which vanished into the mouth of a hungry catgirl before it hit the ground. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be out with your tribe or parents?"
"Nya?" She gave me a funny look before dropping another demon gnome at my feet. "Mrow."
"... I'd be angry about you eating my dinner if you weren't so cute. At least you brought me more. Let's see if I can purify it." I fished the miasma purifier from my pack and began to work. At first I tried to convince the catgirl to help me build a fire, but she refused to move from her nap in my tent.
"Hmm. Looks like the runes are functioning as expected." Just as last time, the demon vanished into thin air, leaving only the demon core and slab of meat.
"Mrow?" She leaned over my shoulder and sniffed at the protein.
"This is my dinner." I growled. "If you want some, you'll have to bring me more demons."
"Mrrrgh." Her tail shook in annoyance, but she appeared to understand me. Or at least I assumed she did. Similar to me talking to my tech, I talked to animals with the assumption that they understood me. "Rrrmm. Hsst, brrgh."
I wondered if that's what I sounded like to her, and if she was speaking in her language or just making random noises. No answers were likely to be forthcoming as there wasn't a Rosetta Stone in the archives. At least none that I had been able to find.
A bit of sneaking, bargaining, and bluffing later I had a fire and a small pan for cooking. "Ahh. Outdoor campfire, fresh food, and open air. Anyone would classify this as a perfect night."
"Nya?"
"What do you say… I should probably name you. Hmm. What do you think of T'Pol? She was my favorite character in my past life."
"Hsst."
"Not a fan? Fine. What about…" While the demon meat cooked, I tried to give her various names from sci-fi shows. "Well if you don't like what I call you, what do you want to be called?"
Without even realizing it, I was sharing a bite of meat from my plate. I'm a sucker for adorable cats and even cuter catgirls.
"Yuki."
"Yuki, huh. Well there are worse names- Wait. Do you understand what I'm saying?" I had been spouting a lot of details from my past life I didn't feel like explaining.
"Mrow?"
"Well, I guess I'll cross that bridge later. Yuki."
"Nya!" She purred at the mention of her name and she nudged my hand with her head. It was probably a coincidence that she jostled the food off my fork.
She slept in my tent that night and purred like a motorcycle. The next morning she interrupted Elder Wevrik's lessons numerous times by leading demon beasts to our location. Angering the elder beyond comprehension and annoying the other warriors equally so.
However, I was able to secretly cut off generous amounts of meat that I later purified. For the first time since being reborn in this world, I ate until I couldn't eat another bite. Yuki joined in the meal and ate more than me!
The rest of the month on the surface was spent productively. Eating my fill and stuffing my bags with demon cores to be converted to energy when I returned home. I couldn't wait to try powering something fun in my room!