Before they all went on the quest, the murder muffins and dragon egg, they all huddled around the fire, tension in the air.
Peter and Asmodeos, just like the gnomes, had eaten their fill of the vegetable stew and had eaten their fruit as dessert.
And they, just like the gnomes, were sleepy, but the adventurers couldn't actually go to sleep because even the shadows looked alive to them, and they wanted, very much wanted, to have more adventurers with them.
So, they could have a better chance to get the dragon egg.
Peter looked at Asmodeos, who was leaning on him, using his shoulder as a pillow. The brunette adventurer smiled, his brown eyes twinkling.
"Asmodeos, may I ask you a question?"
It was a silly way to start something so fundamental as asking a question. After all, Peter had already asked a question, and yet, without so much as blinking, Asmodeos nodded, humming his approval.
"I was wondering, does the offer for cake and coffee still stand?"
It was strange for Peter to be so pushy. Normally, when someone told him no, he understood the hint.
But Asmodeos was the kind sort, the good sort, and not only was he actually the person who Peter wanted to spend his time with, but he was also a dear friend to Peter by now.
"Peter, I think I should make you the cake myself," Asmodeos rarely offered to cook for someone.
The gnomes he could cook for, they were small and defenseless, and he was their nanny.
But Peter was not so.
Peter was someone he had hired, albeit not paid to, and so Asmodeos smiled, chuckled, and stood.
The watchtower loomed in the distance.
There had been too many gnomes to be housed within, but he was sure that the guards were going to let him use their kitchen if they asked nicely.
"Do you think we should train a little bit more?" this was also a very strange question to ask, but Peter decided that since he had already asked a strange question once, he could do it again.
The truth was that he was unprepared for this world.
Sure, he had a copper sword which could turn pretty much everyone into a golden statue, but that didn't mean that he could actually use it in a fight.
His best bet was to actually touch something with the tip and hope for the best.
That wasn't very good for one's survival, and even he knew it.
"Would you like to train?" Asmodeos took out his training pendant.
In this world, a world full of magic, there was pretty much a pendant for everything.
There were the truth pendants, the training pendants, the time stopping pendants, the "let me just run away, I'll throw you this golden trinket, and you can sell it for gold" running away pendants.
But the training pendant was something Asmodeos couldn't use more than once per month.
It was, after all, too much of a cheat pendant.
Who wouldn't want to go somewhere where one single hour in the real world was a whole year in the pendant?
Asmodeos had gotten this from a market, which was in the middle of a crossroad.
No, as the elf merchant was selling the pendant, the man was trying to sell it off as a truth pendant. And while Asmodeos had managed to buy a truth pendant from the elf, he had also had a good eye for the training pendant.
It was why he, as someone who had dropped off the academy and had flown away from Nestor's guardian wing before he had managed to turn 30, had still managed to become a passable necromancer.
Not someone who was the stuff of legends, no.
Just passable.
Peter nodded, reaching out. Asmodeos chuckled once more, hugged Peter, and then transported them into the training pendant.
And so, their journey of training and discovery began!
0000
Peter regretted everything.
He decided, as Asmodeos got him to run another lap around the forest, which was in the training pendant, that he shouldn't take Asmodeos for cake and coffee, but to a courthouse.
Bringing the law and the worker's codex on the mage's head.
The former necromancer was a vicious taskmaster.
He had made Peter run, swing his sword, lift weights, chop trees, get water from springs, and even fluff up his pillows.
Peter didn't understand why the last part was important, considering that the pillows were perfectly fine even without him fluffing them, but he guessed that if he did not, then Asmodeos was just going to make him run uphill, while having a stone tied to him.
Peter swung his axe once more, chopping another piece of wood. He supposed that it could have been worse. After all, here in this magical world, which was actually a cheat magical world, he could build some muscle.
He had plenty of food, he couldn't complain. No meat, but he guessed he could survive off fruit and vegetables just fine.
Peter looked around, noticing a deer passing through the forest.
These animals, who Peter believed were put there by Asmodeos, didn't really care much about the fact that they weren't alone.
In fact, Peter was pretty sure that they had never, ever, seen a human before.
It was almost too easy. Peter, lacking anything better to do, just walked towards the deer with his axe in hand and raised the axe high.
The deer looked at him, raised a brow, and then kicked him in the kneecap.
Peter doubled over, his axe dropping to the floor, asking himself why this deer, which shouldn't have such high intelligence, had managed to kick him in the kneecap.
He was grateful that it hadn't kicked him in a certain other place, but still, as he curled himself in a ball, he wanted, really wanted, to get out of here.
He wanted meat. Wanted to smell it as it grilled, wanted to taste the fat, the juices, the slight traces of blood.
The deer, as if it could read his mind, kicked him in the ass and then pranced off.
Deer 1, Peter 0.
"Peter, honestly, this is a training field. The animals had ages to train and develop intelligence. Just why did you try to kill that deer in such an obvious way?" Asmodeos also wasn't wasting his time.
He was doing sit-ups. He was currently at his 50th one, and for lack of anything better to do, had decided to look after Peter's training progress.
"Wait, you mean that these animals are now as intelligent as humans?" as Peter slowly uncurled himself, he decided then and there that should Asmodeos confirmed his suspicions then he was going to make sure that every single one of the gnomes managed to get through this room.
Asmodeos nodded.
"Oh yes, they are. Why shouldn't they be? And if you left something in a time warp, and it didn't die after the first-time warp, then obviously it was going to learn from its mistakes," Asmodeos said.
Peter cheered, for he had a plan.
It was time he started to farm his own bad Karma points…