Klein whistled a tune he had often heard the bard sing in a tavern at the Capital. He had once frequently visited that place for the musician's pieces, and certain tunes and lyrics became unforgettable memories.
The memories remain, the memories remain,
Ol' great Clover made a mountain,
Made a river and made a fountain,
Cast his spells on sea and rock,
And made them turn and made them rock -
And when he was done they were never the same
Oh ~ They were never the same, they were never the same
It had been a long while since he last called upon his nostalgia, but the calm road and the hope he now carried for the future brought him some ease.
As he whistled and drove, he recalled his gains and smiled. He began rummaging through his pockets and retrieved two magi-crystals.
They were small, irregularly shaped rocks that gave off a slight glittery glow.
Klein grasped them both with one hand, his other holding the steering wheel.
After a while of uncharacteristic silence, the rocks crumbled in his hand.
'Phew' Klein exhaled a foul breath, and started talking to himself again.
"As expected, two meager lowest-quality Magi-Crystals is enough to recover half of my mana..." Klein sighed.
These rocks were used for a variety of things. Recovering mana, albeit inefficiently was one such use.
Klein couldn't help but feel inadequate for the millionth time over his small mana pool. It was a miracle he had managed to make it to the 3rd circle as a mage at all, but he knew that he was approaching his limit - a fact that had kept him awake on many nights.
And the sleep he eventually managed to catch caused him to be perpetually late to his classes at the Academy.
Klein shook his head and laughed.
"Anyway, this comes first..." Klein first cast the fundamental spell every Academy student learns on their first day.
'Store Memory'
It was a convenient utility spell that allowed students to retain information with perfect clarity. Of course, the amount of information one could retain depended on how much mana they expended on the spell.
'Mr. Weathers could probably store five full libraries of information in that head of his with a single cast...'
Klein shook off his thoughts again and regained his smile.
The memory he chose to store was perhaps insignificant in some sense. It was that dying alien warrior's last words. It was simply a case of curiosity overcoming necessity.
That's right, that's all it was...
"I'll view it again after I learn English," Klein said to himself and laughed.
He quite liked those aliens.
He began whistling another nostalgic tune to expel his thoughts when a sudden sound startled him.
Beeeep. Beeeep.
Klein stuck his head out of the vehicle's window and turned around to view the source of the sound.
An alien carriage was attempting to grab his attention, it seemed.
Upon closer inspection, he noticed the carriage held what seemed to be a family of four.
Klein hesitated for a moment before stopping his APC. He took a quick glance at his unpresentable self before letting out a chuckle.
'Even aliens have etiquette, right?' He thought with a wry smile before exiting his vehicle, preparing to cast his modified version of [Soul-Link].
The carriage stopped, and a middle-aged man in a T-shirt somewhat fearfully approached him.
Klein completed his spell, then smiled at the alien.
Upon seeing Klein's smile, the man visibly relaxed and asked.
"Hi Sir, we saw your vehicle drive on the road, and were just wondering if you know anything about what's happening?" He looked at Klein's tattered uniform and red-stained sleeve, wondering what on earth could have happened to the poor soldier, and whether he would even want to know.
The past few hours had been quite tough for his family. They were driving along a relatively quiet highway, when lights started flashing, and an earthquake had struck. He had abruptly stopped the car on the hard shoulder to wait it out.
But after the earthquake had subsided, they found themselves in an unfamiliar place.
Luckily they were in the middle of the road, and the merged region he was in happened to be in the countryside, so there was relatively little danger here compared to the cities. Not that he would have been aware of how lucky they were until he visited a larger city.
However, it did spook him and his family how unnatural the environment appeared. From the abrupt climate change to the strangeness of the road they were on, and from a strange path in the distance to an old-looking village that definitely wasn't there before.
He and his wife knew the tropes of horror movie protagonists, so they immediately opted to drive away from that place as far as they could, eventually finding a military vehicle driving along the same road.
"Ah. Well not much honestly..." Klein paused, considering, then continued "Tell you what. If you know where I can find a library, I'll tell you what I know" Klein said with a little expectation in his tone.
"... A library, Sir?" The man looked at the soldier skeptically, turning to look back at his vehicle, and making eye contact with his wife in the passenger seat.
As a long-term married couple, they were capable of conducting the mythical 'eye conversations'.
'Not sure if this one is right in the head'
'What does he want?' His wife's eyes asked.
'A library'
'A library?'
'A library.'
There was an awkward pause, but his wife continued to communicate.
'Well, the closest library was near St. Peters, just tell the poor soldier'
'Right.'
The silent conversation took barely a few seconds as Klein observed with interest.
"Ah, sorry about that Sir. You can find a Library about an hour in that direction" He gestured, and said "There should be a town there and someone you can ask"
"Ah? That's great to hear! So you wanted to know what happened, right? Well... I guess it can only be summed up in one word" Klein chuckled, an amused glint in his eyes.
"One word, Sir?"
"Yeah"
"And what's that, Sir?"
"Aliens."
"Aliens?"
"Aliens" Klein smiled, showing off his tattered uniform and sleeve which was still stained a deep red, then continued, "barely made it out of an encounter with a group of them, but they're all mostly dead by now" His eyes contained a bit of regret.
The man froze, dumbfounded, not sure what to think.