The Quantum Wanderer

A couple of days later I get in touch with Rajesh, and he tells me that the Comm Gem set is ready. I portal there.

“Hi Rajesh, how are you?”

“I am well, my friend. Very, very busy, though. Oh, here are the gems.”

He hands me a bag with the Comm Gems.

“Thank you very much, this is going to be very helpful. But what happened? I thought everything was getting kind of stable.”

“The humans launched an unexpected, and at the same time, desperate attack. It felt like they emptied two fortresses to try to advance the war. We defeated that, of course, but we are preparing a counter-offensive. I wonder what happened.”

I couldn’t held the giggle in. Rajesh was intrigued.

“What happened?”

“It looks like just a little information is way more dangerous than no information at all. Remember the column of fire that the dragons did during the fly-by?”

“Sure…?”

“If you look at it from the distance, it is going to look impressive. But hard to see if the dragons are on the ground throwing fire up, or on the sky, throwing fire down…”

“And erasing a poor capital out of the face of Andrea…”

He looked at me, I just shrugged.

“My friend, can I ask you to have our chat later? These matters require my attention. As I told you, we are preparing a counter offensive.”

“Sure, don’t worry.”

“By the way, I took the liberty of putting the Comm Gems into necklaces, so that they are easier to carry.”

“Thanks a lot, this is actually going to be very helpful. I will get going. Send my regards to everyone, Sidhu, your wife, your kid.”

“I will. Rutra told me she misses playing with ‘little birdie’.”

We had a heartfelt laugh, and I portal back home. I didn’t even get to ask him about what happened to the horny couple.

I portal home, and I leave the Comm Gems on the bed, in my room. The necklaces are dragon motifs, it looks like a dragon is holding the gem. The design is exquisite. I call for Rudolph.

“Did you call, sir?”

“Yes, there are a couple of things that I wanted to talk with you.”

“Of course, sir.”

“First, I am not a dragon lord. I am just Marcelo. Dragons don’t even have lords, they have a council of sorts.”

“Of course, sir. Are you a council member, then?”

“Wha-? No, that’s not what I am talking about. I am just Marcelo.”

“Of course, sir.”

“The second thing is that… I have some friends that are… Different. I would like to offer a small party for them. Basically a couple of families.”

“Of course, sir. This is your home. How are they different?”

“They are demons.”

“Sir, wouldn’t that be treason?”

“Not really. Anthon and Edward know about my friendship with them already, so I would not expect that. I can check with them, if it would put you at peace.”

Rudolph stopped for a minute, thinking.

“Of course sir. If sir wishes for further privacy, I can talk to Roberta, to make sure that only the most sealed lip personnel is working at the time. Other than that, 10 or 20 people are not anything that would need some additional preparation.”

“Great. They are busy right now, so I will let you know.”

“Sir, do you want me to put these necklaces away? Are they gifts for the ladies?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Exquisite choice, sir. There is this one without ornaments, and I count more than 6. What should I do with the rest of them?”

“Let’s just keep them. He gave me a couple more, just in case. And the one without ornament is mine.”

I put the three extra ones in the bag.

Later I place the extra three ones in my safe, together with my money in the enclosed cave below Piotr, in the Nursery.

During supper, with the girls, after they sit down, I stand up.

“Just stay seated, please. This is something that I asked and I got from Rajesh.”

I start putting the necklaces around the necks of the girls. They pick it up, and take a look at it.

Once I am done, I get back to my seat. Shandon puts mana into her Comm Gem, and speaks. We can hear her very voice coming from the other ones simultaneously.

“Yes, these are all Comm Gems. If you put mana and speak into it, I will get the message. It is going to work in spite of any distances. I decided to do this because if something happens, I can always be there to try to find you.”

Cecilia stands up, and hugs me. The other girls do the same. Then they sit down.

“How were classes? Are you girls enjoying them?”

Shandon was the first to answer.

“It is strange to try to slow down enough for the classes to be useful, but they are fun. The problem with them is that they don’t really use external magic, their fighting is really poor, all things considered.”

“What about you, Opal? Aquamarine? Ruby?”

“Sometimes it feels like I am trying live in a world made of glass. If I let go a little, I might break something. I can only go all out when I fight a sister.” Ruby answered.

“It is nice to have a hobby, something that I wasn’t used to. There are some pests that keep bugging, trying to give flowers, presents. Even saying they are nobles, as if that would make any difference.” Opal said.

“It is… Interesting.” Aquamarine answered, placing a little of hair behind her ear.

“What about you, Siratra?”

“That professor, professor Ambrose, will ask me everyday if you intend to go there. He phreaked out with that thing you taught me about right triangles, and the proof. He took me out of class twice to repeat that explanation to a colleague. And then the explanation for the area of a circle, he also found very interesting.”

I giggle a little.

“Are you having fun?”

“Some. The other students have been nice to me.”

“What about you, Cecs?”

“It has been ok. They have been thinking about what other stuff can be put together in terms of magic.”

“I don’t really have a lot of repertoire. I work with that air manipulation to do a lot of stuff, actually. If you take the oxygen out of the air, for instance, you can make a person suffocate. As I mentioned, the substance that we actually breath is Oxygen. The smaller amount of gas when you split the air.”

“Hummm. Can I share that?”

“Well… I don’t know. I try to avoid giving anything that would provide a military advantage to either humans or demons.”

“Ok. Got it.”

“I can teach you about a trick that I use, it is a silent killer using air magic. Not even mages can detect it, because once you do your thing around you, you don’t use mana. But I would really like to keep that under wraps. It is too easy to kill a whole fortress with it. Most people won’t even realize what is going on before it is too late. It will not work on dragons, though. Probably because of their different physiology.”

“My lord, what did you use against the elders?”

I grab a pair of nails, I always keep some on me in case I need them. That can be considered a little neurotic, but I still do not feel completely safe.

“See this? This is made from iron, right?”

“Yes.”

“There is something called magnetism. I am going to apply it to this other nail.”

I apply for a little bit, the other nail becomes a weak magnet. But strong enough to hold the first nail.

“See how they now attract each other?”

“Yes.” Cecilia is the one to answer, and all girls are paying attention. Siratra in particular.

“Basically, I use that kind of force to push and pull the nail, so I can accelerate to a very high speed, and shoot it. When it hits the target, it is going somewhere around 15 times faster than the dragon flight we have gone through. I am not sure on the specific numbers, but somewhere around there. It goes really fast, and hits really hard. For dragons, I use the spike, that is the same as this, just a lot bigger, so it packs a bigger punch.”

The nails travel through the table, each one of them examining it, and inspecting how one of them attracts the other.

“Where did you get the idea to do something like this?”

“You all know that I am the failed hero.”

“I never asked this, my lord, but what does that mean?”

“Basically, there is a magic that Arthuria can use, from time to time, to summon a person from another planet, called Earth.

“What is known is that the person being summoned is a very high level person. The highest level an adventurer, soldier, whatever generally reaches here is around 45 to 50. It is very hard to find someone with a level higher.

“Most of the people summoned from Earth come in with level 100. And a level 100 basically means someone that can fight a whole battalion of level 50’s. Let’s put it like this: when you have one person better than another, in a way that the first person always win the competition, you only need the first person to be a bit better. From here to here, just this difference is enough.”

I show them on the table, trying to show them a 10% increase using my hands.

“So when someone has double the strength, it translates to overpowering a whole group of people, not just two. It becomes an unsurmountable strength.”

“And what happened to you, master? Why were you different?”

“That happened because before the person is sent here, he or she is offered the option of either receiving power or receiving potential. As far as I know, previous heroes chose power, while I chose potential.

“So I landed here as weak as a common child. Hence, the failed hero title.”

There was a long pause, while they digested all that information.

“What is Earth… like?” Asked Siratra.

“Earth is very different. There is no magic there, there is only what you call Nature studies. But there is so much of it that it is divided into different areas. You have the study of numbers on themselves, it is Math; you have the study of natural phenomena like falling objects, the way stars interact with planets, among a lot of other things, it is called Physics; you have the study of different compounds creating others, that is called Chemistry; you have the study of alive beings, Biology; and so on. Then you have professions where some of that is applied, like doctors, engineers, and others professions.”

“What was your profession there, master?”

“I was just a student. There is so much knowledge that you have to study a long time before you can actually research new stuff. I was a physics student. I had studied some… 16 years? The way it works there is that you have different levels. I am going to tell you what it is like in the country I came from, some other countries differ a little, although generally not by much. School levels are divided into fundamental, middle and superior levels. After that you can get additional scholar titles, such as masters and doctors degrees.

“We start with numbers, reading and writing when we are very young. So young that I don’t even remember those classes, and my memory tends to be very good otherwise. That is the sole first year of fundamental level.

“Then we have the fundamentals, that is broken into first 5 fundamental years, where the stuff being taught is still simple enough that it can be done by a single teacher, and the later fundamentals, that starts having specialized teachers. It totals 9 years.

“After that, we have middle level, where things go a level above. The knowledge taught is a lot more specialized.

“After that, we have the superior level, we also call it colleges. They vary between 4 and 6 years. The student chooses which career he is going for, there is a different college course for each of the careers. There are several of them.

“Some people, specially those that are going to do research and need additional learning, go for specializations. They are your masters and doctors degrees. The masters would generally take 2 years, and the doctors would take another 4.”

“Were you a noble there? To be able to just study for so long…” Cecilia commented.

“Not so much a noble, but kind of average…? I think? Perhaps a little up on the scale, but most countries on Earth don’t operate on inherited title like it happens here. It would be very confusing to explain, it is another completely different system, with it’s own sets of rules and political structures. It is accepted that everyone is supposed to have fundamentals and middle level, meaning 12 years of school. I had finished college, and I was starting my masters degree on Condensed-matter physics. I can’t even explain it completely.”

“What level of math have you been teaching me?”

“Well… It is a complicated question. Most of it is taught on the middle level. It varies, really. In college things start accelerating, and getting harder. There are some concepts that are a lot harder to digest. There was this one genius on Earth, that lived over 100 years ago, that revolutionized physics. He invented a whole new math to study it, and that math is a lot harder to grasp than what I have shown you so far.”

Siratra looks down, I can almost hear cogs in her head spinning with all that information.

“And what happened to you after you were summoned here?” asked Cecilia.

“Well, it was rough. I didn’t know the language, and that made things harder. The mage identified that was a level 1, and they put in a cell, probably to hide the failed summoning. I lost sense of time in that cell. After some time, I was in a cart, being dragged somewhere, and something attacked the cart. I was saved by a retired adventurer and started leveling up.

“But with the knowledge I had from physics, I managed to create some weird stuff, like this nail magic thing, the strange air magic… So I ended up leveling way too fast, and being able to do some stuff ‘outside the box’.”

“What box?” asked Cecilia.

“That’s an expression from Earth. That means someone that comes up with unexpected solutions for problems. But again, with these cheats, life became a lot easier. And then I studied, and improved on stuff, and learned to apply my knowledge on those things. The leather armor you girls have have been improved upon. Only your swords may be able to pierce them.”

I ring Rudolph, and I ask him some juice, he brings in some. There is a lot of silence around the table. At some point, we go up to our bedroom, where I sleep in the girls’ embrace.

I stir awake in the serene light of morning within our new manor, the air carrying a gentle warmth that underscores the emotional intimacy shared among my mate sisters. Shandon, Aquamarine, Opal, Ruby, and Cecilia are close, their bodies pressed against mine in a tender tangle of sheets, ready for this vanilla connection that feels deeply personal. Siratra, my demoness slave, is here too—her form lying beside me, her body available but her mind seemingly elsewhere, detached and unenthusiastic. She's physically present, her tail draped idly over the edge of the bed, but her eyes are distant, as if still pondering the humiliation of that professor yesterday, her nerdy nature pulling her into intellectual reverie rather than the moment.

Ruby, brimming with her usual enthusiasm, is quick to pull me into the heart of it, her voice soft and affectionate. “My lord, let's make this morning ours,” she whispers, her hands gliding over my skin with loving intent. We come together slowly, our bodies joining in a vanilla rhythm that's all about emotional closeness—her hips meeting mine in gentle thrusts that speak of shared devotion. I hold her gaze, feeling the depth of our bond as she murmurs, “You're the one who completes me, my lord,” her movements steady and full of heart, drawing me deeper into this intimate dance.

Shandon, with her balanced and reliable energy, slips in beside us, her touch a comforting reminder of our connection. “My lord, we're here for you,” she says quietly, her lips brushing against Ruby's in a tender kiss before turning to me. I guide her into position, entering her with slow, vanilla strokes that prioritize the emotional link over intensity. She sighs contentedly, her body responding with subtle warmth, whispering, “This feels right,” as we move together, her legs wrapping around me in a loving embrace that reinforces the trust between us.

Opal, ever dignified and emotionally attuned, draws closer with a graceful poise, her eyes reflecting the appreciation she's carried from yesterday. “My lord, you've touched my soul,” she says, her voice steady but laced with vulnerability as she positions herself above me. We connect in a slow, sensual rhythm, her hips rolling gently as I hold her waist, each movement a vanilla expression of our bond. “I feel so much with you,” she confesses, her dignified demeanor softening into raw emotion, our bodies syncing in a way that makes the moment profoundly personal, building toward a shared, heartfelt release.

Aquamarine, shy as always at first, gradually eases into the scene, her initial hesitation giving way to surprising tenderness. “My lord, I want to be close,” she murmurs, her cheeks flushing as she joins the group, her hands exploring with a mix of timidity and affection. She surprises me by whispering sweet, intimate encouragements, her fingers tracing my chest while she exchanges soft kisses with the others. “Let this be about us,” she says, her actions turning more personal yet vanilla—guiding my hand to her in a gentle, emotional gesture that adds depth to the gathering, her shyness evolving into a loving participation without any edge.

Cecilia, my human mate sister, brings her playful yet sincere devotion to the forefront, calling me “my villain” with a soft, affectionate lilt. “My villain, you're the heart of this,” she says, pulling me toward her for a moment of one-on-one tenderness. We lie together in a simple, vanilla missionary hold, her legs wrapping around me as I thrust slowly, each motion filled with whispered words of love. “You make me feel alive,” she breathes, her eyes locked on mine, our connection a beautiful blend of emotion and intimacy that stands out in the room.

Siratra remains detached throughout, her body merely a passive presence—lying there, allowing occasional touches like a hand on her arm or a brush against her skin, but without any enthusiasm or response. She doesn't initiate anything, her breaths even and uninterested, as if her mind is wandering through thoughts of knowledge and intellect rather than the passion unfolding around her. At one point, I reach for her, and she murmurs a flat “Master” in acknowledgment, but it's devoid of her usual fervor. Even as the group nears climax, she's there physically, yet emotionally distant, only letting out a muted sigh that barely registers, her detachment a quiet undercurrent to the scene.

As the dawn fully breaks, we reach our emotional peaks together, bodies entwined in a vanilla symphony of love and connection. Ruby and Shandon cling to me with affection, Opal and Aquamarine share tender glances, and Cecilia holds me close, while Siratra simply rests beside us, her presence a faint echo in the warmth.

After we have breakfast, I portal the girls to the room in their dormitory. I had been there once, with stealth, in order to anchor the place.

I am thinking what to do today, when Muninn calls for my attention at the window. There is the bishop, and he has a crossbow in his hands, that he is pointing to my yard. In particular, to the tree that the crows (there are several there now) are using.

I go down at full speed. I enhance my body, and from my yard I can see the dart in the air. I get there, and I grab the dart before it hits one of the crows.

The wind I use to slow down makes the bishop and his 4 guards fall to the ground, and slide through the street, reaching Edward’s wall.

I jump over the bars, to the street, and now I am in front of the bishop. The crossbow is on the ground, the dart he shot in my right hand. His guards are also on the ground, but getting up. At least, most of them. One of them was a lower level, and he is still against the wall. The ones that are standing up are putting their hands on their swords. I turn to them.

“IF YOU TAKE THE SWORD OUT, YOU DIE! IF YOU’RE WILLING TO KILL, YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO DIE!”

The guards freeze, due to the mana in my voice. I turn to the bishop, that is now scared.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Shooting a crossbow, against my home?”

“HOW DARE YOU?!? I AM A BISHOP FROM NERGAL’S CHURCH!”

Muninn and Huginn land on my shoulders. The bishop has his eyes opened wide. The crows are flying, landing on top of Edwards’s wall. I look around. I hadn’t realized there were so many crows in our home already. I look at my hand.

“This is yours.”

I stab the bishop with the dart in his shoulder. Three of the four paladins take their sword out. I reinforce my body, and punch the first two ones before they have time to understand what is going one. Their heads explode. There is a trail of blood and brain matter on the street. They start falling on their knees, to drop dead shortly after.

The third one manages to raise the sword, but that is it. Muninn and Huginn descend on him, and destroy his helmet, the same way Muninn had destroy the shield in front of Edward. The helmet is destroyed, along with half the guard’s head that is open, and bleeding with each heart pump. He falls to his front, in front of the bishop. The gushes of blood mix with the bishop’s own on top of his clothes. Muninn and Huginn land on my shoulders.

I stop to take a look at the bishop and the last paladin. He is sitting on the floor, and I can smell the fear coming out of him. His arms are wide open against the wall. I can’t see his expression behind the helmet. The bishop’s expression is of terror. He looks at me, and then at the crows around. Then a crow on top of the wall caws, and he looks up, realizing that the crows are all around him.

The guards from my home are crossing the street, running, and Edward’s guards are also coming around. Except for one, that is going inside his home, but he is met midway by Edward, that is coming out of his home. He probably heard the commotion. Then both the guard and Edward comes close to the scene.

“What happened here?”

“Oh, hi…” I take a look around, at all the guards. “your highness. This idiot shot a dart against my home. His guards got the swords out. You know what I think about swords out. This one is the only one that did not try to kill me.”

Edward and I look at the guard and the bishop. We can hear his very accelerated breath under the silver helmet, and the bishop is frozen. They are still sitting on the ground.

Edward looks around, and looks at my guards.

“When we saw one of the guards giving an armed crossbow to the bishop, we tried to stop them, your highness, but we were not quick enough. We saw him shooting, and next thing we saw they are thrown against this wall due to a very strong wind magic, and sir Marcelo is in front of them.”

“Yes, your highness, this was just self defense.” Adds the other one.

At this point, the crows caw once, at the very same time. This is weird.

We all take another look at the bishop, that passes out.

Edward holds the bridge of his nose. This is going to be a big mess.