Chapter 12 Trains and Company Part 1

The inside of the train was huge. The train itself was already big from the outside, but the inside was certainly larger.

Space enchantment magic. It was a common enchantment, surprisingly enough. Outrageously expensive, but common. It used to be super rare back in the olden days, specifically after the fall of the Lord of Bindings. But someone had cracked the code to mass manufacture bits of space.

The enchantment in most objects was the spell. A flame-conjuring staff would have the spell of flame conjuration written on it directly. But they’d found a way to mass-create space with one spell and seal it down to an object with another. I had no concept of space-type spells, but I practiced sealing spells. That was how I had managed to make my suitcase. I couldn’t afford a regular bag of holding so I had taken the ‘space’ tied to the old bag of holding and tied it to a suitcase. Of course, my sealing wasn’t nearly as good as professional enchanter’s but it got the job done.

That was all to say that I was familiar with bags of holdings and how they worked, but that wasn’t what was happening inside of the train. This wasn’t an artificial unnatural space that couldn’t support life, but rather the natural space of the realm expanded. And the enchantments weren’t just written onto the carriage itself, but rather the very emptiness that held it.

I could sense magic in the very space itself, enchantments binding themselves to the ground of the carriage and the sheer denseness of the magic. It wasn’t like the Adventurer’s Guild building, which had numerous enchantments all woven and working together in harmony.

No, this train was designed to hold things and move and the enchantments were beautifully worked into the metal and the gears beneath. I bet there were some mithril or adamantium gears beneath me.

Beautiful, I thought to myself.

Then I frowned.

I still couldn’t get that damned angel out of my head.

I had a history with half-angels, one specifically.

A romantic fling back in my early days.

We were opposites in some ways but similar in others. She hated her celestial heritage and rejected it, which was unheard of for half-angels, but she had her reasons. And that struggle, that fight with the voice in your head and the temptation of instinct was one I could understand.

We were both outcasts, traveling from town to town for about five years before one day, she woke up and sold me into slavery.

Well, it wasn’t that quick, nor did she know that I was sold into slavery. But she had chosen someone evil and prideful. I don’t think she knew what he would do to me afterward, but still.

That was the closest I had ever gotten to turning.

Angels. Angels were a thing of order, not goodness. Order tends to be a good thing and chaos tends to be a bad one. But they were not the same thing. Angels weren’t always the good guys and demons, well, they were always the bad guys, but not because they sought to be bad but because they sought to break order.

While demons were corruption and hatred made flesh, angels were idiots. They couldn’t stand perceived injustice. They were quick to attack what they deemed evil and preened in all the glory they could get.

Even in the great war between the Lord Of Light and the Dark Lord, they had cut down millions of innocents because of some falsehood or deception, or in some cases, just plain ignorance. They believed their instincts and nature led to good and gave too much power to their feelings.

I had never killed an innocent person in my life. Hell, I’d never even attacked someone innocent. Sure I thought about it, but never let myself act on those thoughts. But that feathered bastard would have killed me nonetheless.

It wasn’t that I was a demon and demons were evil to him. It was that I was a demon and demons corrupt and cause chaos. If the world was white or black, the angels would be happy. Demons were what forced gray things into reality.

I sighed and let the anger leave me.

This wasn’t new. But it had been quite some time since I’d gone through something like this. I guess I’d gotten used to the peace of the cave and deep-side.

I gripped my staff and leaned back into the chair. At least it was comfortable here. I was in the full humanoid cabin, meaning all the two-legged and two-handed races up to a certain size were in there as well.

The biggest guy in here was a minotaur, and he must have been over seven feet tall if not seven and a half, and the smallest was a halfling.

Or was it a gnome? You really couldn’t tell those two apart. I know gnomes used to have sharper ears and skinnier builds but they had interbread so much over here that the traits had mixed and muddled with one another.

It was the few interspecies marriages that the churches hadn’t tabooed out of society.

Speaking of interspecies stuff, I wondered what the offsprings looked like. I’d seen some mixed traits here there but I’d never seen something too strange. Like, I’d never seen a centaur with human legs or something.

And I had seen plenty of human-centaur pairings walking around.

Back in the Woven Forest archane mixed with dark elves all the time and their offsprings would have some strange spider features, whether that was webs emerging from their lower backs, multiple eyes, spinnerets, or in the worst case, claws instead of limbs.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Either way, you would know.

But you never saw that here, the features seemed to have gelled in the best way possible, mixing and mashing the best parts with one another. There were dragon-kin with cat ears and cat tails, but no strange mixture of scales and fur. There were half beastmen, half goliaths who just seemed to be a bigger version of their race.

I’d even seen a-

What was that?

My eyes locked onto a small- animal? Person? Something walking around the area.

It- no.

They were the size of a large cat. The creature was like a mouse, but larger and walking upright with clothing. It looked like what I assumed would be a mouse beastmen, but I had never heard of that species.

They had big mouse-like ears and a mouse-like face. And they had a huge puffy tail, like a squirrel trailing behind them.

Half-squirrel half-mouse beastmen? I didn’t know there was such a thing and why were they so small?

I turned my gaze away before the person saw me. It was rude to stare, though some of the passengers on the train didn’t seem to know that. They stared at me and the small beast-kin alike.

The small beast-kin got attention because of how small they were. I got attention because of the ruckus the angel had caused at the train station.

Maybe the small beastkin sensed this because when she reached my seat, she stopped, looked at me, and smiled.

“Hello there!”

Her voice was female and her mannerisms were woman-like. Well, that’s what I gathered at least. And she was chirpy too. Maybe it was her species but I doubted it. She seemed… bubbly, almost bursting with joy.

“Uh, hi.”

“Is this seat occupied?”

“No,” I answered.

“May I sit here then?”

“Sure.”

She nodded and jumped right up and into the seat.

“Ahhhh, it’s so comfortable over here. All the chairs are so big and the cushions are so thick. I could take a nap on these things real easily you know. My inn gave me a human-sized bed and I was rolling around in that thing for days. It was like a cloud, or a giant pillow or something.”

She seemed to be talking to me, so I nodded in response, though the slight awkwardness in this conversation seemed to be lost to her.

“I’m actually from a colony not too far from here. District 112. It’s all just rodent-folks and small beastkins and stuff so we rarely get any human-sized visitors. We don’t have the infrastructure for it to be honest. They’d have to sleep out in the fields or the backyard somewhere if they came.”

I nodded again.

“But we have a lot of other stuff there though. We have dogs and cats. I know humans have dogs and cats but our dogs and cats are long-lived. And they’re strong too. Really strong. Have you ever had a dog or a cat?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh well, you’d like them if you did, though the cats need training. They’re the smaller of the two but they’ve got a real killing streak you know. But you probably wouldn’t have to worry about that at your size.”

I nodded. I had never owned a cat or a dog before but I think this person seemed to think I didn’t know what cats or dogs were.

“I’m an adventurer by the way. I’m on my way to the Graveyard Dungeon. My dad is against it and so is my mom. They said 'Niff, you’re small. You’ll die out there.’ I said I won’t and even if I did, it wouldn’t be a big deal anyway. I have sixty siblings already. They can just pop out another batch if they need to.”

“Wow,” I replied.

“Yeah, it’s not like I’ll be missed. And besides, we have to sneak out every once in a while you know. Remind the world we still exist and whatnot. My parents don’t like that either. They said ‘Niff, us critter-folk are better off staying hidden and out of the light.’ and I said you critter-folk can stay out of the light, but I Niff Niffan won’t.”

I nodded again.

“So, what about you?”

“Huh?”

“You’re an adventurer, right? That’s why you’re headed to the Graveyard Dungeon?”

“Uh yeah, I am.”

“We’re a courageous few us adventurers,” the mouse girl said while nodding solemnly.

“How long have you been adventurering?”

“Fifty-seven hours.” The mouse stated.

“...Two days?”

“Well, I got my license two days ago, but I’ve been on the lookout for monsters ever since. It’s a promise you know, a lifestyle. We’re never off duty, not truly.”

How the hell could someone be so small yet so full of themselves? I wondered.

“Well, I’ve got the courage down but I’m planning on letting my actions speak for me in the Dungeon. I’m just a warrior but I plan to advance into a spell sword after a while. I’m pretty good at enhancing if I do say so myself. What about you?”

“I’m a mage,” I answered. “Not specialized in anything in particular but I’m combat capable.”

“Ah, a generalist. You might not win a lot of fights but you’ll live through ‘em alright. Then you get stronger and stronger and eventually come back with a vengeance! Good stuff, my fellow adventurer! Good stuff!”

My eyes widened at her analysis. I thought she would gloat some more or try to comfort me for lack of type specialization but instead, she had given a fair, if exaggerated, assessment of my combat skills.

“Thanks,” I replied. “You said you were an enhancer? How high can you go?”

Enhancing was one of the most basic forms of magic. Some said it was the earliest, that whatever species had walked through Yggdrasil first had done it before learning to speak.

The skill sounded exactly like what it sounded like. You enchance yourself. All physical combat required it and some races did it naturally as a part of their biology. Giants for example needed to enhance their bones, muscles, and even nervous system past its natural limits to even be able to breathe.

The problem was enhancement magic ate permanently at your mana. It was less of a spell and more of an alteration of your body. You saturated in your own mana and made it magical, to the point where it needed that magic constantly to survive.

That was the reason most mages didn’t mess with enhancement magic too much unless they were enhancing their brain or thought-processing speed.

“I can go up to twelve as of now, in speed, endurance, stamina, and thought. And I can do ten in strength and durability,” the small beast-kin stated proudly.

I nodded in approval. Ten was not bad at all. If she were a human she would be able to run at over two hundred miles per hour and lift over two thousand pounds. That was pretty decent.

But her size was a bit of a problem. Her original muscle mass and general ability were far below that of humanoids so those enhancements, while they did make her better than your average human, didn’t put her up against similarly enhanced adventurers.

But that speed was something. If I had to guess, she was faster than a human unenhanced. Probably faster than most species. And then multiply that by twelve and… she was probably faster than the speed of sound.

“That’s pretty good,” I said with a genuine smile.

“I know,” she said, pretending not to care, though her tail started waving pridefully at the compliment.

“I would have been great in the dungeon, heck I would’ve been amazing. It’s a shame though.”

“What?” I asked. “They’re not allowing you in?”

She looked at me and chirped.

“You mean you haven’t heard. It’s been all over the forums recently.”

She reached to her side and pulled out an oracle from a small bag of holding. The oracle itself was the same size as my own and was basically a hand mirror in her hands.

“They’re setting up new rules to enter the dungeon now. Apparently, something is interfering with oracle communications and divinations in there. They’re saying it's tier-ten magic or higher, and they’re not letting individual adventurers in due to safety reasons. I had a ticket booked for today anyways, so I figured I’d go and wait Necrotopilios.”

I frowned.

“Really?”

“Yep,” she chirped. “It’s been all over the forums since this morning.”

“Shit.”