Leyline Magus 2: An Isekai Progression Fantasy (Hero of Mirras), page 1
Leyline Magus 2
An Isekai Progression Fantasy
Hero of Mirras
Book 2
Isaac Keyes
Marcus Sloss
Copyright © 2024 by Royal Guard Publishing LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Author’s Note
Check This Out!
Chapter One
“That’s it. Right there. Just like that.” Riss said to her young apprentice, Ton.
Riss and Belmora were supervising Ton, who was valiantly trying to focus on her work under their shared gaze.
The sun shone brightly and a soft breeze blew through Riss’s forge. I sat in a chair to the side, watching with a small smile on my lips.
It had been a few weeks since Verra and I had snuck into the Capital and violently disrupted the Druzha masters’ plans, along with ending one of the masters themselves.
Underneath the palace in a maze of catacombs, after a long search, we’d found the source of the defiled ley. It turned out to be more of a horror show than we’d anticipated. The Druzha, a race of scaled near-humans, had been using living people as conduits to generate defiled ley, which was then seeping out into the land.
We still didn’t know what their ultimate plan was, beyond creating the defiled ley.
We slew the so-called master and his human underling, a “Great Lord,” who could wield the ley like I could. It turned out that humans from Earth had the ability to directly channel and use the magical currents – ley – that flowed throughout Mirras.
Belmora had been the Druzha masters’ slave, lured by promises of greatness and renown, only to be used as a tool instead.
Until we’d shown up.
She still hadn’t told us very much. Understandably, she was still processing everything from her long imprisonment, and her sudden unexpected rescue when Verra and I showed up. She needed time, and we were happy enough to oblige.
In the following week, Verra and I spent the time like the happy couple we’d become. The change in Vera's personality after our successful adventure was thrilling to see. She wasn’t a completely different person, but she’d seen the world. It had put this tiny village and its tiny problems into perspective for her. I’d seen her stand up for herself and shout-down several people in the past week. Her newfound confidence was damn sexy. She knew it too. And I was pretty sure the whole village knew it too as I gave her screaming orgasms each night, which she made no effort to keep quiet.
I hadn’t been an exhibitionist before, but knowing that everyone could hear her drove me wild.
Thankfully Juliss, Vera's almost-surrogate mom, offered her guest room to Belmora after two nights on Verra’s couch.
Life settled into a nice little rhythm.
We all knew our adventure was far from over. The Druzha and their human pawns were hardly defeated. According to Bel, their plans extended outside this kingdom and into their warring homelands. Before tackling that though, we had to find out where the defiled ley was being taken and why.
The human pawns — the Lords — had been dispatched to the cities and villages, including this one, to collect the defiled ley. It coalesced inside each village’s master leycin: an intermediary device that funneled magic for the village to use. Belmora told us that after it was collected, it was taken to an unknown facility outside the borders of the Saldani kingdom. That was our next goal.
But time, surprisingly, was not of the essence. Not yet.
So we kicked back and relaxed before things would inevitably speed up again. We had a million questions for Belmora, especially about the glowing, golden cracks in her chest; a leycin had been implanted inside her body.
I couldn’t make sense of it. I could feel the ley swirling inside her, both from the leycin and her own natural power… but I couldn’t understand what it all meant.
She promised us answers in due time.
We were willing to wait.
We also knew, based on what she’d already told us, that she didn’t have all of the answers that we sought. What she told us would likely only give rise to even more questions.
She was, however, willing to ply her trade for Vera's benefit.
As a Y’zendi, a somewhat rare and remarkable race on Mirras, Belmora was able to create leycin on a level that was far superior to all other races’ abilities.
Verra, naturally, was over the moon about it.
Before we’d left for our adventure to the Capital, her lifelong friend and almost-sister, Riss, had passed down a leycin that her warrior father had used. The leycin was set into her sword, and it whipped the wind into a deadly flurry of slicing gusts that sheared through armor, flesh, and bone. And it had done so, many times.
I struggled to replicate the effect with my own power.
Belmora promised Verra that she would craft, with Riss’s help, a full set of leycin armor, which would make her nearly as deadly as I was, once she got used to using them.
The thought of fighting again, with Verra at my side, got my blood boiling. She’d proven herself a clever and capable ally, time and time again.
During the week, I’d been diligently practicing with the ley. As a human, I held powers that no one native to Mirras possessed: I could directly manipulate the ley without the need of an intermediary device like a leycin. And according to Belmora, I was the most powerful leyline magus who had been summoned to this world. My battles against other humans from Earth confirmed this. None of them were even close to me in terms of raw strength. Their skill, however, had nearly been a match for me a few times.
That wasn’t going to happen again.
While we trekked to the Capital, I’d learned many things but had no time to refine my technique. As these quieter days passed, I found that using the ley was getting easier and easier.
My ability to levitate grew in leaps and bounds. It was euphoria to speed over the land with only magic holding me up. The experience was nothing short of living a dream.
Levitating other things, however, proved to be much more challenging, especially the further away they were. But I’d get there.
The most intoxicating power that I’d learned was one from the late “Great Lord” Jake. I wrapped the earthen ley around my body, intertwining it with my own inner ley, and bolstered my body’s strength and defenses. Not only did it protect me from harm, but it also gave me overpowering strength. It didn’t directly make my muscles stronger; the ley did the work for me, but it was functionally the same thing.
Testing it out the day before in the forest, I’d shattered a massive boulder that was twice as tall as me, in a single punch. I’d barely felt it, and I wasn’t even using all the magic that I could. My blood pounded with excitement as I watched shattered pebbles rain down on broken chunks of a once-proud boulder.
Intoxicating indeed.
A small crowd had come for the demonstration.
Naturally, Verra was there. And perhaps it was due to the electricity flowing through my veins, or perhaps it was the lust in her eyes as she watched my display of power… either way, I’d wanted nothing more than for her to drop to her knees and take me inside her right there.
We weren’t quite that into exhibitionism, though. At least not yet.
So I made up for it that night instead, giving her multiple screaming orgasms for the whole village to hear.
But a worry had been creeping into the back of my mind lately, that I would eventually need to leave Verra behind. She had undeniable skill, but would there come a point when she could only do a tiny fraction of what I could in battle? Would she become a liability? I decided I’d cross that bridge when or if I came to it, and put those worries aside for now.
Meanwhile, Belmora had made it clear that she wanted nothing more than to be useful and help anyone however they needed it, in order to atone for her past.
The things she’d done were hardly by her own will, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. She tried to hide it, but her facade cracked often, and regret and shame spilled out across her face.
At Vera's soft inquiry into whether Bel could create leycin for the purpose of battle, she’d practically leapt out of her seat to get started. She seemed thrilled to be able to help and to have a goal that would provide an interesting challenge.
So it was tha
I woke up early as was still common for me even though alarm clocks didn’t exist on Mirras. I hadn’t mentioned them to anyone. I didn’t want to be the asshole that introduced such a horrible concept to this world.
Riss often woke earlier than I did, even though she went to bed later. When I’d asked, she’d told me that she regularly napped for a few hours in the middle of the day, usually through the hottest part.
It sounded like a really nice system.
I’d dressed and made my way to Riss’s forge, leaving a softly snoring Verra in her bed. I found Belmora and Riss already there and working on Verac's armor. Or rather, watching Ton work on the armor.
Riss towered over Ton. She wore a heavy smithing apron over a sleeveless shirt, showing her heavily muscled arms.
The sides of her head were closely shaved, her stark, white hair trailing down her back in a loose braid. No one had commented on it and I never asked, but she was the only person I’d seen on Mirras with white hair, and it wasn’t from age.
She was likely around my own age, maybe a few years older. She had the pointed elf-ears that all the Dolorei did, and I found myself thinking it odd on her, still. Except for her height — an inch or two taller than me — she might as well have been a classic dwarf.
Ton looked like a child standing next to her. She was dressed in much the same way, but her arms held only a quarter of the muscle that Riss had. Ton’s black hair fell down her back, the color very common among the Dolorei. A long, thin tail snaked out the back of her dress, swishing slowly.
She worked on one of a pair of sabatons that had already been made to fit Verra. With a smithing hammer in her hand — a leycin itself — she molded and weaved the magic at Belmora’s constant instruction. Despite her panicked eyes, her hands were steady and the magic flowed smoothly under her blows.
I still didn’t understand how all of the leycin devices worked.
Even though I could literally see the power they directed into and around their target, how they did it was a mystery.
Not to Belmora, though.
As a Y’zendi, she had an innate understanding of the ley that none of the other races, humans included it seemed, could match.
During the initial construction of the armor, Riss and Belmora worked closely to mold the materials and weave the magic into them.
The finishing touches, however, were left to Ton.
Riss bellowed at her often, swearing like a sailor as she did. It was all in good humor. I didn’t think I’d seen Riss get legitimately angry even once. She had an air of loud joviality that I found infectious. Verra mentioned that many people around the village didn’t like her, but I concluded that they all must have been assholes.
Verra agreed.
“What the fuck are you doing, Ton!?” Riss yelled.
“I’m done!” Ton squeaked, her shoulders coming up to her pointed ears.
“Done? Done!? Are you kidding me?” She brushed the younger woman aside to inspect her work, holding the sabaton up and examining it closely. She set it back down and gave Ton a hard slap on the back. “Looks great! Excellent work, as always.”
Ton bowed low. “Thank you, ma’am!”
“Now, go take a break. You’ve earned it. I don’t wanna see you back here for at least a few hours. Get something nice at Julie's. Tell her to put it on my tab.”
“Yes! I will. Thank you, ma’—”
“I said, get the fuck out of here!”
Ton squeaked again before turning on her heel and sprinting out of the forge toward Juliss’s place. Belmora and I watched her go, chuckling to ourselves.
“Are you like that with all your apprentices, Riss?” I asked.
“Nah. Only the ones who roll with it.” She started cleaning up the area that Ton had been working in, putting the various leycin away in their places. “Not everyone does. I don’t get it.” She shook her head. “Why even bother living if you’re not joking around constantly? Life’s a total shit-show most of the time. You might as well try and enjoy it as much as you can.”
I stared at Riss’s back as she continued cleaning up. “Shit, Riss. That’s a profound thought to be doling out in casual conversation.”
She shrugged, not looking back. “As if there’s a better time for it.”
“Good point.”
I glanced over at Bel, who wore a soft smile, her eyes downcast.
Her short, dark and wavy hair was unbound as usual, framing her light skin and bright golden eyes. They shone with a light from within. I had assumed they were leycin too, perhaps insanely advanced ones, but she’d just shaken her head and explained that all Y’zendi had eyes like hers. The most disappointing news had been that they didn’t even see differently from anyone else’s. They were beautiful, though.
She wore gilded armor that I’d never seen her take off. It sat on her shoulders and ran down her arms, covering her hands, but allowing her sharp claws to peek out. As far as defense went, it was pretty terrible; her whole chest and stomach were left exposed. But it hadn’t been made for that. It was a series of highly advanced leycin. What they actually did, though, hadn’t been discussed. It was one of the many questions she had left to answer.
The day when she felt ready for our interrogation seemed to be getting closer. For most of the time in the village, she’d been going on walks by herself or spending time with us at Juliss’s or out in the forest. The conversations had all been of mundane things.
We didn’t press it.
Since beginning work on Verra’s armor, her mood had improved. A few rare smiles appeared at times, and she was intensely focused on the forging, which was a change from her listless and melancholy behavior before.
I gently put my hand on her arm. “Hey, wanna go get some Fiery Retorts? It’s probably going to be a while before Verra crawls out of bed. She’s really taken to sleeping in lately, now that she has no responsibilities and all.”
“Yeah,” she said, her light cheeks coloring just slightly. “I’d like that.”
Juliss’s Bistro didn’t have a sign or anything. It was just an extension of her own house. As the only restaurant in the village, I guessed that she didn’t need to advertise anything. Everyone already knew.
When we walked in, it was only a minute or two before Juliss descended on us. Her light blue hair was pulled back in a severe bun and she wore an apron, much lighter than Riss’s. “Danic! Lady Belmora!” We hadn’t been able to talk her out of giving Bel a title just because she was Y’zendi, so we were rolling with it. “So glad to see you! Where’s Verra?”
“Still sleeping.”
Juliss snorted. “That girl’s gonna go soft! Anyway, come in! Sit! What can I get you? Do you need menus?”
During my many trips to the Bistro, I’d never seen a time when Juliss wasn’t working, night or day. She had other employees, but she was always here.
“Just tea and some Retorts, if you would.” I raised an eyebrow to Bel, and she nodded assent.
“Of course, of course!” She led us to the booth by the window that she knew I liked.
I leaned back into the seat and lazily took in the bistro. As I was doing so, Jeron walked in the door. Our eyes briefly met.
He paled, rapidly turned away, and hurriedly took a seat on the far side of the room with his back to me.
Bel raised an eyebrow at me. “What was that?”
I snorted. “That’s Jeron, Vera's once-boyfriend, a long time ago. A mistake. Her words. He gave us a bunch of shit when I first came here, but I put him in his place. Here, actually. Right over there.” I pointed at a different booth. “He was in here being an ass, so I punched him in the face. It’s one of my favorite memories, actually.”
She chuckled. “Poor guy.”
“You know, I’d almost agree with you. If he wasn’t such an asshole, that is.”
Belmora leaned over and rested her chin in an armored palm. Since her armor only covered her shoulders and arms, it was hard not to notice the considerable cleavage now showing above her stylish dress.
The golden light shining out of her skin did nothing to detract from it.
I tried not to stare.
Verra was sure that Belmora would be leaping onto my cock as soon as we rescued her. What was even more shocking though, was that Verra was into the idea. She assured me that harems were common enough on Mirras for powerful men, which I counted among.
