A pale-red flame danced quietly inches above a small, calloused palm, emitting a low, concentrated whistle that sounded more like a pressurized gas torch than a medieval fire.
Right in the center of the overgrown castle courtyard, Roland Wimbledon had improvised a crude open-air laboratory. Three heavy oak tables dragged out from the dining hall were lined up on the uneven flagstones, covered in rough iron tongs, a hand-operated leather bellows, a pile of low-grade iron ore brought down from the North Slope Mine, and several clay crucibles.
To any passing servant or guard, the setup looked like a messy heap of peasant junk. To Cheng Yan, however, that muddy corner of the yard was the beating heart of his nascent industrial empire.
Standing in front of the main clay crucible, wearing a simple, loose-fitting gray linen dress, Anna extended her right hand.
Her slender figure looked fragile against the heavy stone walls of the castle, yet the aura around her was one of fierce, silent intensity. Her expression was pure concentration as she poured a steady stream of Magic Power into the crucible.
Inside the clay pot, a fist-sized chunk of raw, dark iron ore began to surrender to the unnatural heat. Unlike a wood or charcoal fire that flickered wildly with the wind, Anna's flame didn't waste a single calorie of energy. The rough metal turned a dull cherry-red, then brightened to a blinding orange-white, until its solid edges finally softened and slumped into the bottom of the crucible like melting candle wax.
Roland stood two paces away, completely mesmerized by the sight of solid iron liquefying in broad daylight without a blast furnace.
Beside the prince, Arthur and William watched the experiment with equal focus, though each of them was processing the miracle through a completely different lens.
For Arthur, having awakened his own Level 1 Telekinesis just hours earlier, the experience went beyond mere sight. By focusing his mind slightly, he could actually sense the invisible ripples in the ambient energy around the girl. He could feel the violent, hyper-localized agitation of the air molecules vibrating around Anna's palm — a pocket of extreme heat that seemed to laugh in the face of classical thermodynamics.
And yet, despite generating enough thermal energy to melt iron five centimeters away, the autumn air brushing against Arthur's face remained cool, and not a single hair on Anna's pale forearm was singed. Every ounce of radiation was locked inside an invisible boundary dictated entirely by her willpower.
Suddenly, Roland tore his eyes away from the glowing crucible.
Instead of checking his notes on the oak table, the prince turned his head and fixed his dark, tired eyes squarely on his two guests.
The initial shock of hearing their story about the Fjord Islands had already settled in Cheng Yan's mind, leaving behind the relentless, nagging itch of an engineer who hated unsolved variables. Under the clear morning sunlight, the machine-stitched seams of Arthur's hoodie and the uniform, elastic knit of William's black shirt stood out like a neon sign in the middle of the Middle Ages.
— "Did the two of you sleep well these past couple of nights?" — Roland asked out of nowhere, his tone casual as he broke the quiet hum of the courtyard.
Arthur adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves and offered a polite, measured smile.
— "Very well, Your Highness," — Arthur replied smoothly. — "The hospitality of Graycastle has been more than generous, and a dry roof near the kitchen ovens is a welcome comfort after the long hardships of our journey."
Roland let out a faint, noncommittal hum, his gaze sharpening like a scalpel.
— "I am glad to hear it," — Roland said, folding his arms across his royal tunic. — "Your explanations during our private banquet yesterday left me quite satisfied at the time. However, as I was reviewing our conversation in my study last night, a rather curious detail occurred to me."
Roland took a slow step sideways, angling his body away from Arthur and locking his eyes directly onto the taller, muscular young man standing quietly beside the table.
— "Arthur is remarkably skilled with words," — Roland observed, his voice dropping its casual warmth and turning firm and direct. — "So skilled, in fact, that while he guided our entire discussion toward prophetic books and limestone kilns, he marvelously dodged the very first question I asked you at my gates: the origin of the clothes on your backs."
Before Arthur could even open his mouth to intercept the question, Roland raised a hand to stop him, never taking his eyes off William.
— "You did not speak a single word during the entire banquet yesterday, Mr. William," — Roland said, springing the trap with cold precision. — "Perhaps a man of action can give me a straight answer, without the academic flourishes of his partner. How exactly did two shipwrecked scholars acquire garments produced by high-precision industrial machinery? And what is that metal artifact ticking incessantly on Arthur's wrist?"
For a split second, William's mind went completely blank.
A tiny jolt of pure panic shot up his spine before an intense wave of déjà vu washed over him, bringing back a crystal-clear memory from the previous night in their locked guest room.
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Flashback ~
Arthur had been leaning against the cold stone wall near the window, staring up at the wooden ceiling rafters with that icy, calculating look he always got when mapping out ten moves ahead on a chessboard.
— "Listen closely, William," — Arthur had said in the dark. — "Knowing how Cheng Yan's mind works, he isn't going to just forget about our modern clothes or my watch. Sooner or later, the engineer in him will demand an explanation for the physical anomalies. And because you stayed completely quiet during the banquet today, he is going to target you directly next time. He'll assume you're less practiced at lying than I am, or that he can catch you off guard to see if our stories match."
— "Wait, you left the question about the clothes unanswered on purpose?!" — William had asked from his bed.
— "Of course I did. If you try to explain everything at once, a skeptic knows you're lying," — Arthur had replied calmly. — "I left that hook dangling so he would interrogate you tomorrow. And when he corners you, the rule is simple: do not make up a story. Just refuse to answer and tell him it's a secret we aren't ready to share yet. A cynical mind like his will respect a blunt refusal ten times more than a poorly improvised fairy tale."
.
William blinked once, returning to the sunlit courtyard.
Internally, he couldn't help but marvel at the borderline sociopathic foresight of his best friend. Straightening his broad shoulders, William pushed down every trace of nervousness, met the prince's piercing gaze head-on, and adopted a calm, surprisingly mature expression.
— "I will be completely frank with you, Your Highness," — William said, his voice steady, deep, and free of any hesitation. — "That is a secret that, unfortunately, we cannot reveal to you right now. Neither about how these clothes were made, nor about the device on Arthur's wrist."
Roland's left eyebrow rose slightly, waiting to see if the young man would fumble for an excuse. Instead, William simply offered a firm, confident nod.
— "However, I give you my word as a man," — William continued evenly. — "In the not-too-distant future, once the walls of Border Town are standing tall and we have survived the coming crisis together, we will sit down and tell you the exact truth about where these garments and that watch came from. No riddles, and no half-truths."
Silence hung between them for three full seconds.
Roland narrowed his eyes, studying every microexpression on William's face. The answer had come out fast, without stuttering, without looking over at Arthur for help, and without trying to spin some ridiculous lie about magical tailors in the Reino da Aurora.
To the exhausted mind of Cheng Yan — who had spent the last few days dealing with the slimy, two-faced flattery of court nobles and Barov's endless whining — a blunt, honest refusal backed by a promise felt far more trustworthy than another grand speech.
Slowly, the tension in Roland's shoulders faded, and the prince gave a single, approving nod.
— "Very well. I accept your word, William," — Roland said, genuinely satisfied with the directness of the reply. He turned his attention back toward the clay crucible on the table. — "Keep your secrets for now. As long as your work here is real, I can wait for the rest."
At that exact moment, Anna abruptly cut off the flow of her magic.
The flame vanished into thin air, and the puddle of molten iron at the bottom of the clay crucible immediately began to hiss and crackle, darkening from blinding white back to a dull, cooling red.
Anna let out a long breath, her chest rising and falling beneath her simple gray dress. Her face was pale from the steady consumption of Magic Power, and several damp strands of hair were stuck to her soot-smudged forehead, yet her eyes remained bright and remarkably focused.
Standing there by the smoking furnace, she didn't look like some submissive damsel from a cheap romance novel; she looked like a dedicated factory technician who had just finished a grueling twelve-hour shift at a blast furnace.
Seeing that Roland had stepped back to jot down temperature estimates on a piece of parchment with charcoal, William felt his natural confidence — and his stubborn desire to test his "protagonist aura" — bubble up to the surface.
Adjusting the collar of his black shirt, William strolled over to the crucible table with an easy, charismatic smile on his face.
— "You know, Anna, seeing your control up close is seriously impressive," — William said, leaning casually against the edge of the neighboring wooden table. — "Keeping a flame that hot without scorching the wood underneath takes crazy precision. Honestly, with your firepower and my combat skills, the two of us could easily be the strongest duo in this entire kingdom."
William gestured vaguely toward the muddy walls of the fortress with a playful wink:
— "This gray castle is way too gloomy and cold, and the problems piling up here are endless," — he added lightly, testing the waters. — "If things ever get too messy here, we could just leave the mud behind and go explore the world out there. A brilliant young with talent like yours deserves a much bigger stage than a freezing mining town at the edge of nowhere."
Anna didn't even blink.
She slowly turned her head and looked up at the tall young man with a quiet, penetrating calmness that would have made a veteran knight take a step back.
She didn't blush, she didn't stammer, and she didn't look flustered in the slightest. Instead, she looked at William as if he were a noisy, slightly puzzling lad that had just crawled onto her workbench.
— "The world out there wants to see me burned alive at the stake," — Anna replied, her voice completely flat, direct, and stripped of any romantic illusion. — "The Church calls me a demon born from hell, and the nobles treat everyone like me as disposable filth. His Highness Prince Roland saved my life from the rope. He gave me freedom, a warm bed, clean food, and a real purpose that doesn't require me to hide in the dark like a rat."
Anna gave a small, polite nod of her head before picking up a pair of iron tongs:
— "So tell me… what exactly does this wonderful world of yours have to offer me that I don't already have here?" — she concluded coolly. — "I thank you for the praise regarding my fire, Mr. William. However, I see no reason to trade my work here for the supposed 'protection' of someone who is probably wasting their breath with empty words."
Pffft—!
Three paces away, Arthur couldn't hold back a short, sharp laugh, genuinely entertained by the verbal takedown his friend had just suffered in under ten seconds.
— "Will, give it a rest and stop bothering the girl while she's working," — Arthur said, walking over and clapping a hand onto William's stiff shoulder. — "Anna values hard data and practical results over flowery speeches and heroic poses. Save that breath of yours for the physical training later — and for when we finally recruit Iron Axe. Something tells me that Mojin hunter isn't going to care much for your 'charm' either."
William coughed dryly into his fist, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin as his self-proclaimed protagonist aura took a critical hit.
— "Hey, I'm chill, I'm chill," — William muttered, raising both hands in surrender. — "You can't blame a guy for trying to lighten the mood in this place."
.
.
.
The following three days passed in a relentless blur of sweat, soot, and frantic preparation.
With the basic feasibility of Anna's fire confirmed, the quiet, sleepy routine of the castle courtyard was completely shattered, replaced by the constant clang of hammers, the scraping of shovels, and the shouting of laborers.
During those seventy-two hours, the three modern men divided their responsibilities according to their exact strengths.
While Roland worked alongside Anna to refine the design of the first rotary cement kilns, Arthur locked himself inside the castle's dusty administrative archives on the second floor.
Whenever he was completely alone in the cramped room of stone and rotting parchment, Arthur used his work to secretly train his magic. Resting his elbows on the desk, he used his Telekinesis to lift heavy leather-bound tax ledgers off the shelves, hold iron inkwells in midair, and sort piles of corroded copper coins without touching them with his fingers.
It was grueling mental exercise that left him with a dull headache every evening, yet his control was growing noticeably sharper by the hour.
More importantly, the numbers he uncovered inside those archives painted a grim, suffocating picture of Border Town's reality.
The castle's finances weren't just bad; they were practically terminal. The public granaries were less than a third full, and a large portion of the stored winter wheat was already spoiled by dampness and mold. The town guard's armory consisted of rusted spearheads, brittle iron swords that would snap against a demon beast's hide, and padded cloth armor. Worst of all, the population of two thousand miners and peasants was completely apathetic — starved, illiterate, and conditioned by decades of misery to simply curl up and wait for death whenever winter arrived.
Meanwhile, down in the muddy training yard behind the stables, William was confronting the brutal physical reality of his new life head-on.
Every afternoon, regardless of the biting wind, William stripped down to his black t-shirt, grabbed a heavy, unsharpened iron broadsword from the rack, and put himself through a punishing regimen of modern calisthenics mixed with weapon drills.
He swung the heavy iron bar hundreds of times until the skin on his palms tore open and stained the leather wrap with blood. He wasn't just building muscle memory; with every explosive lunge and every heavy strike, William focused on synchronizing his breathing with the restless current of Magic Power flowing through his veins, forcing his body to adapt to the physical toll of his spatial jumps.
Border Town was still a freezing pit of mud and despair. Yet, with every passing hour, the combined presence of Roland, Arthur, and William was acting like a chemical catalyst, slowly forcing the rusty gears of the town to turn.
.
.
.
Late on the fourth night, after the castle had finally fallen into a deep, exhausted silence, Arthur and William retreated to their quarters in the east corridor.
Clack.
Arthur slid the heavy iron bolt across the inside of the oak door, checked the hallway one last time, and walked back toward the center of the room, where a single tallow candle flickered on the table.
Three consecutive nights of draining their Magic Power down to the last drop and letting it refill had done more than slightly reduce their headaches and nausea. That afternoon, a new sub-menu had quietly unlocked at the bottom of their blue status screens.
It was time to test the classic trump card of every dimensional system: the [Inventory].
Arthur stood near the foot of his bed, his eyes focused on the empty sub-window floating in the air in front of him.
— "Alright, Will. The interface is open," — Arthur said in a low voice, pointing toward a heavy, rough-hewn oak chair sitting in the corner by the unlit fireplace. — "Bring that chair over here. Let's test the upper weight and volume limits first."
Grinning with excitement, William walked over, picked up the solid oak chair with one hand as if it were made of plastic, and set it down right in front of Arthur.
— "Ok, Lord Doraemon," — William whispered, crossing his arms. — "Work your magic and make it disappear."
Arthur stepped forward, placed his right palm flat against the cold backrest of the wooden chair, and mentally issued the command to store the object inside his personal space.
Bzzzt.
Instead of the chair vanishing, a small red warning box flashed across Arthur's retina, blocking the action immediately:
[FAILURE: Target object exceeds the maximum mass and volume parameters of the current Inventory level.]
Arthur pulled his hand back and let out a quiet sigh, his neutral expression shifting into a slight frown of disappointment.
— "No good," — Arthur reported, shaking his head. — "The System rejected it immediately. It looks like the dimensional pocket has strict physical restrictions on size and weight. We definitely won't be storing furniture, siege engines, or heavy boulders anytime soon."
— "Man, what a rip-off!" — William complained in a hushed tone, rolling his eyes. — "What kind of cheap isekai system doesn't let the protagonist carry an entire arsenal in his back pocket? Alright, forget the chair. Try something smaller. What about that basket of ugly apples we brought back from the dining hall yesterday?"
Walking over to the table, William picked up a small woven wicker basket containing four bruised, sour-looking wild apples and set it on the edge of the mattress.
Arthur reached out and touched the rim of the basket with two fingers, mentally triggering the storage command again.
This time, there was no red error message.
Without a single sound or flash of light, both the wicker basket and the four apples inside it vanished from the bed, leaving nothing but an indentation on the wool blanket.
— "Gj! It worked." — William whispered, leaning in to stare at the empty spot.
Arthur, however, did not smile. As he read the updated data on his floating blue screen, the frown on his forehead grew much deeper.
— "Wait a second..." — Arthur muttered, his eyes scanning the interface rapidly. — "We have a serious problem here."
— "What's wrong now?" — William asked, raising an eyebrow. — "Did the apples rot inside the dimension, or is the System charging us a storage tax in food?"
— "Neither. The apples are fine," — Arthur replied, raising a hand to materialize the visual grid of his Inventory in his mind. — "The problem is how the System calculates stored objects. It doesn't recognize 'a basket of apples' as a single combined item. Its logic operates on strict, individual physical units."
Arthur tapped the air, pulling the items back out onto the bed with a soft rustle:
— "Look at this. The wicker basket took up one slot, and each of the four apples inside it took up its own separate slot," — Arthur explained dryly. — "That tiny snack just ate up five spaces of my inventory at once."
— "Five slots?! Just for four pathetic apples and a piece of woven grass?!" — William stared at the basket in disbelief, doing the math in his head. — "Wait... how many total slots does this piece of junk actually give us?"
Arthur let out a short, pragmatic sigh.
— "Ten," — Arthur said flatly. — "Our maximum capacity right now is ten individual items per person. And worse, identical items do not stack."
William stared at him for two seconds before letting out a muffled, ironic laugh and flopping backward onto his straw mattress.
— "Motherfucker," — William said, staring up at the dark ceiling beams. — "We officially have the most nerfed, pathetic inventory in the history of fiction! Ten non-stacking slots with a tiny weight limit? We couldn't even use this to smuggle a single set of decent chainmail for the militia, because the helmet, the boots, and the gloves would fill the whole thing! What the hell are we supposed to do with a ten-slot bag?"
— "We are going to do things far more dangerous than hauling armor like pack mules, Will," — Arthur countered, a cold, sharp glint appearing in his eyes as he reached down and materialized one of the apples straight into his palm from thin air.
Tossing the small apple up a few inches and catching it effortlessly, Arthur looked down at his friend on the bed:
— "Stop thinking like a medieval quartermaster and start thinking like a modern special-ops infiltrator," — Arthur said quietly. — "With Roland building steam engines and barges, we won't need magic to transport tons of iron ore or barrels of black powder. What a ten-slot invisible pocket gives us is enough to espionage, sabotage, and assassination."
William stopped laughing, turning his head on the pillow to listen closely.
— "Think about it," — Arthur continued, his voice dropping to a surgical whisper. — "If we ever get searched by Church inquisitors or enemy guards, we will be completely unarmed on the outside. Yet, inside those twenty combined slots between the two of us, we can carry loaded flintlock pistols, spare ammunition, stolen prison keys, intercepted royal letters, vials of odorless chemical poison, or compact high-explosive charges."
Arthur took a slow bite of the sour apple, chewing thoughtfully as he stared into the candle flame.
— "Combined with your Teleportation, you could jump straight into an enemy duke's bedroom, pull a lit explosive charge out of thin air, drop it under his bed, and jump right back out before the fuse even burns down," — Arthur concluded. — "Our Inventory isn't a cargo truck. It's a concealed scalpel — and nobody on this continent will ever see it coming."