Despite a total junkie move, I told them what to expect. I made it explicitly clear that if they felt anything other than what I described, to please let me know.

By the end of their first high, I already began training them to convert normal mana to compact mana. In a week, they could do it easily, but they still needed more time for the conversion to be second nature.

I did a lot of battles with Tina for both our training, especially mine as a warrior, until she was too tired to continue. Once my sparring partner was too exhausted, I’d switch with someone else.

Dan was already very experienced in using a sword and shield, so all he really needed was to master mana conversion. He wasn’t the youngest fellow, so he focused on skills and spells instead of physical training. It appeared he knew what his weaknesses were, so I let him do his thing.

I had Adam focus on his sniping abilities, and taught him a spell that allowed him to enhance his senses sight, smell, and sound, and of course, on the sheer power that his arrows came at. Since his arrows were now mana bound, it meant his compact mana affected them greatly. Plus, the bow itself was enchanted, so his power increase was becoming astronomical.

Tina’s ability to wield ice spells was pretty good, and ice could be rather flexible depending on how the person chose to use it. Her power as an expert was great, all she needed was more familiarity with multiple castings and some more real-world experience.

Solina was put into the category of warrior. This world wasn’t very complex when it came to roles, like how certain games had a very varied class system. She was more of a sneaky type, one not meant to be seen. I had a guest trainer help her – the Darkviper demon that helped Tina fight against the Hellfire demons. The Darkvipers were masters of subterfuge, espionage, gathering intelligence, and torture, amongst other things. I felt like this path was perfect for Solina.

They were all surprised at it, but there wasn’t much more I could do for non-wizards past helping with mana conversion, enchanting, and making training suggestions from my once-useless-but-now-useful experience with RPG games. Admittedly, my brother Isaac was always better than me though. He wasn’t a pro or anything, but he’d kick your ass like one.

In this world, healers were placed under the Knight Guild because they also focused on defense, just like knights. But they were much closer to wizards in nature, so it had me a bit baffled. I told Sam to rethink all the crap that the guild taught him. After all, their healers were built more for war than they were to be adventurers. Their job was to simply heal behind the lines. But as an adventure, he’d be under attack much more often.

So, I had him focus his training on getting his own ass out of danger through quick-witted use of the lifestyle spell, Dawnlight at very bright levels, and spells to ensnare or stop his enemies. That way, even if he didn’t need to heal anyone, he could still be useful and lend a hand from afar, which would reduce the need for him to deal anyway. He had some trouble adjusting, but after a while he began to see that preventing damage and injury was better than fixing it.

The next order of business was simply experience. In my arsenal of summons were undead knights, archers, and wizards. I quickly learned that although I viewed them as nothing more than castle helpers, they were powerful enemies in their own right. Dan, our most experienced member, had to try his utmost best to take down just one of the undead knights. Wow, and I can summon thousands of them.

The undead archers weren’t as powerful as Adam’s enchanted bow and arrows, but they were more accurate than he was, and their pace wasn’t bad either. What made them formidable was their inclination to run away when enemies got close; they were fast enough to force you to sprint if you wanted to catch them.

As for my undead wizards, their true danger came in the fact that once more than one of them was fighting against you, they’d always use the same spell as a way to up its destructive power. They were around the level of an apprentice wizard, but their group spells’ power was bordering on adept.

We forced ourselves to fight against them, and slowly learned how each other move, how to cover our teammates, how to pace ourselves, and how to kite if we were overwhelmed by numbers.

By the start of the second week, we were able to fight off three knights, three archers, and three wizards. Dan and I fought the knights. Solina and Adam took out the wizards as quickly as possible. And Sam used low-cost spells to disrupt the archers just enough so that they couldn’t shoot arrows, and if they did, it was badly off-target.

Our next practice target was an undead revenant, a summon of mine that was strong enough to be the boss at the end of a dungeon, in a game at least. It was much larger than the others, wore thick plate armor, and either used a huge claymore or a shield and sword combination. Yes, their offence and defense made them a force to be reckoned with, enough so that we all needed to participate if we wanted to stop the monster.

But what really made it dangerous were the two floating black skulls at the sides of it. Their eye sockets would light up and shortly after a flash of light would come out. If your eyes were opened when the flash occurred, you’d be paralyzed for a few seconds, more than enough for the revenant to slice you in half.

Only at the end of the third week, when we were strong enough to defeat the undead revenant and a few normal undead, did I agree to a normal quest for proper experience. The quest – slaying raptors – required C-rank adventurers and above, but because Tina was an expert wizard, they allowed us low-rankers to tag along.

We rode west of Reuland to the mountainous regions and Adam’s arrow claimed the first raptor, and the second one, and the third one. The monsters had no idea where he was, but they sure knew where Dan was.

Our knight clanked his sword’s hilt on his shield and released a primal roar. I stood next to him, while Tina and Sam prepared their spells in the back of us.

A group of about a hundred raptors was stampeding towards us.