Chapter 9: Isekai Life & Arrow Trail

I awoke to the smell of cooking porridge and the sound of whickering horses. I was stiff in all the wrong places, and my entire upper back felt fused into a single board that burned whenever I shifted. I attempt to push myself up, but that proved to be an ordeal that had me hissing in pain.

Yua appeared above me, bending over to gently take me by the shoulders and ease me up into a sitting position. I had to grit my teeth against the pain, but she got me up there, and then onto my feet. I was then lead, limping, to the back on the wagon. Yua jumped up to sit at the edge of the wagon, thighs pressed tight together.

“Come lie down,” she said in her own language, gesturing with her hands, “Put your head here.”

Without saying anything, I took her hand and climbed up into the wagon, and lay down, placing my head facedown in her lap. My nose filled with her scent, which, even though we had been travelling and saw plenty of battle, was not unpleasant.

Yua then started attacking my back. I know it was a massage, but it was the most aggressive massage of my life. She jabbed her fingers so deep into my muscles that every poke felt like agony ... but it was effective, and everywhere she worked loosened up and felt something approaching normal. Then, when she was done with my back, she forced me to sit up and did the same for my shoulders and neck.

When she was finally finished, I got up and bend over experimentally. I was still a little sore, but at least my back wasn’t completely locked up.

“Thank you,” I told Yua, in her own language.

She eyes shot wide open in surprise. Then, she bowed her head and looked away. “You’re welcome,” she replied, also in her own language.

I opened my mouth to say more, but then I remembered Corgiel’s rules. I couldn’t let on that I know this world ran on D&D, which meant I couldn’t let on that I suddenly had new skills after leveling-up. Or even implying I had a level-up. So, I left it for now. There would be plenty of time to talk, later.

Besides, I had an important date with my spellbook.

I sat down by the fire with Calliope, and cracked open my spellbook. The second my eyes lit on a blank page, I snatched up a bit of charcoal from the fire and started writing like a man possessed. I couldn’t control myself, it was as though I was seized with sudden inspiration and just had to get it out.

When I was done, I had the instructions for the Knock spell written out completely.

Calliope raised an eyebrow at me. “Sudden fit of inspiration?”

“Something like that, I guess,” I said, uncertainly. I didn’t expect the free spell on level up thing to express itself in that way.

Calliope nodded. “I guess you attained a new plateau,” she mentioned, as she bent back over her own spellbook, “I’m a little jealous.”

I searched my memory for what she as talking about ... and came up blank. Guess that knowledge is tied specifically to the Spellcraft proficiency. Or at least, I slept through that class. Either way, it would make sense for there to be an in-character reasoning as to why specialist wizards suddenly had knowledge of new spells every once and awhile.

For my spell selection that day, I went with Burning Hands, Sleep, and Wall of Fog. Outrunning and defeating goblin patrols was shaping up to be our new normal, at least for now- Burning Hands and Sleep were instrumental battlefield tools, and Wall of Fog might come in handy for obscuring our trail. As for my two new second level spell slots, I had but one option, so I just spent a lot of time carefully going over my freshly-written Knock instructions, in hopes of memorizing it twice.

At least it would save me time memorizing spells in the future.

I was so lost in my spellbook, I didn’t even notice how much time had passed. Soon enough, Voss was poking me in the shoulder. “Daylight is wasting, Theodore. We have to get moving, or we may as well not go anywhere.”

I nodded numbly, and stowed my spellbook. An hour and ten minutes I wasted memorizing new spells, at the usual rate of ten minutes per spell level ... We would be lucky to make much progress today.

The day’s ride passed, for the most part, without interruption. We hurried along the road, hoping against hope that today would be the day we’d make it to the next town.

The only thing that was out of the ordinary were the arrows.

We spotted the first arrow an hour out of camp. It was a simple pale wooden arrow with black fletchings, stuck in the ground. Voss hopped out of his saddle to retrieve it, and examined it. “Too long for one of those goblins to pull,” he said with a shrug, adding it to his quiver, “Guess there’s someone else hunting these woods.”

“I hope the goblins didn’t get them, too, then,” I replied.

A half hour later there was another. Then, a half-hour after that, another, all stuck point-down in the middle of the road.

“Two might be coincidence, but three is a pattern,” Calliope pointed out as Voss picked up the third arrow.

“And they’re all fletched the same way, too,” Voss pointed out, thoughtfully, “The question is, why?”

“Maybe there’ll be clues further on,” I urged, “Come on, we have to keep going.”