Trapped in Another World With No Magic

Chapter 26: The Mechanic Finds the Citadel

Fort Peony, also known colloquially as 'The Flower Garden', was once a semi-ceremonial fortress at the mountain range separating the allied kingdoms of the east from the demon lands of the west, but its remote and treacherous location made it almost impossible to pass through the area with a large military force. As such, it was almost entirely manned by noble women seeking to earn prestige as military personnel, but perched in a relatively safe location where their families wouldn't have to worry about them so much -in theory-. 

Unfortunately, a devastating attack from a dragon has left the demon-side wall of the fortress in the valley melted most of the way through, but after two weeks of no signs of invasion, the allied military sent a full contingency to Fort Peony and the surrounding valley clearings to strengthen and begin reconstruction.

A hooded figure walks through the center of the fortress, near where a simple well had a manual hand pump attached to it. At first, the figure was ignored. After all, it was as if they had appeared inside the gate, rather than passing through, which, given the watchstanders fiercely guarding both entrances to the fortress, would be quite difficult without an alarm being raised.

However, not all in this world needed to pass through a gate to arrive at a location. Or rather, those from beyond the worldly plain would have no trouble.

Eventually, though, this figure, walking through an apparent daze while the fortress was busily trying to rebuild and fortify against the risk of a follow-up invasion attempt, would be noticed. It's natural in a place of fervent work to be noticed when one is idle, and even more so when not in uniform or armor. 

“You there! Halt and declare yourself!”

The head of the hooded figure tilts only slightly as soldiers of all sizes, shapes, and from various commands swarmed around at the emergent call of one of their own. Commander Leiwelles approaches the figure with her sword drawn and a buckler on her offhand ready to block a surprise attack. While she was the commanding officer of Fort Peony before the main garrison took over, she was always a warrior in her own right. MOST soldiers in the world are prepared to fight the demons or other humanoids, including the goblins, lesser demons, kirins, dattakoriens, and all of the others, save the true demons and the dragons. Few stand a chance in battle against a true demon or a dragon.

Leiwelles states in a more cautionary tone with a hint of dryness, “Strangers don’t do well at the Garden, Stranger. I’d recommend you keep your hands where my archers can see them and lower that hood if you want to see tomorrow.”

“Daniel…”

This puts Leiwelles off her guard for a moment. “P-Pardon?” It’s a feminine voice, so it definitely isn’t Daniel himself, and he hasn’t been seen since the scouts retreated from when they first spotted the dragon and its vanguard force. 

The hooded figure looks at Leiwelles, and she’s further disarmed by the pained expression of the young woman. To describe her appearance as heavenly wouldn’t do her beauty justice. Her hair seems to glow with inhuman light, even under the hood of her robes hiding who and what she is. Her eyes sparkle deeply like a night sky. Her face is delicate and beautiful, and seems capable of producing expressions of wisdom as easily as expressions of innocence. 

CLANG!

A sword falls from an armored gauntlet. Leiwelles couldn’t raise her sword to this being if she tried. She knows it in her gut. She doesn’t know why, but she just knows.

“C-Commander!”

“It’s alright…” The Commander murmurs softly.

The Divine Being speaks quietly, “I was told a man named ‘Daniel’ was here. I must speak with him.”

“He’s not here.” Leiwelles’s voice is still soft, and her head lowers in reverence. “He was last seen standing against the enemy that destroyed the western wall.” She gestures at the remains of the west wall of Fort Peony.

This causes the Divine Being’s face to pinch in agony. “No…” She whispers.

“If… I may, your Divinity,... How was he chosen?”

Her eyes widen in horror as she looks at Leiwelles’s face. The Divine Being isn’t happy for some reason.

In truth, Leiwelles is doing what she’s always done. She’s testing the person before her. She genuinely believes that this being is quite possibly an angel, if not a goddess. However,... Daniel’s circumstances were strange from the very moment he was summoned, let alone how he ended up all the way at Fort Peony through sheer misfortune, given what his world clearly was like. 

The Divine Being looks at Leiwelles, and then the melted wall several times each before finally replying quietly. “Would… you believe me if I said his summoning was an accident?”

This shocks the normally rock-steady Commander. “A-... Accident? A-... A Divine Summon… was… That’s… That’s impossible…”

The Divine Being shakes her head slowly. “One summoning ritual was performed. Two summons arrived. One possesses magic, protective blessings, and special skills unique to Summons. The other…”

“Is Daniel…” fills in the Commander, knowing enough at this point. The Divine Being nods slowly. 

“H-... How does… something like that happen?”

“I sincerely don’t know. But, I must find him and make reparations. That he survived this long without the necessary protections for this world is a miracle. And, I’ve… heard…” She looks around suspiciously.

Leiwelles also looks around. She whispers, “His treatment… It wasn’t worthy of a Divine Summon…”

The Divine Being makes eye contact. “I need to know where he is. Do you have any idea where he could be now?”

Leiwelles sighs. “Assuming he survived the battle… We think he headed west… Deeper into the demon wildlands.”

This surprises the Divine Being as much as it surprised everyone else when they saw the evidence. True enough, Daniel’s boots were always unique, though no one really paid any mind to it until they were trying to piece together what happened during the raid on the fort. Treia and Gwenesphia left on a free scout to try to track him as far as they could… at least before they reached the edge of the scouting zone. She personally warned both of them about going beyond the scouting zone, but it’s likely those words will mean very little. That’s their choice to make, of course.

But, it doesn’t satisfy the Divine Being who has yet to identify herself. Regardless, she was directly involved with the summoning ritual, and whatever happened, it’s clear she’s genuinely concerned for the hero summoned and subsequently trapped in a world with no magic of his own.

******************

Daniel idly whistles as quietly as he can. He’s doing it to entertain himself, but he does realize that he’s in a wild territory where he doesn’t know the geography, he doesn’t know where any villages or cities are, and he doesn’t know the flora or fauna. While he has plenty of supplies to last himself a long while, thanks to the magic bags he claimed, the animals and plants could be predatory, or simply aggressively defensive. As such, Daniel keeps his hand close to his revolver. He still hasn’t tested it officially, but assuming it works, it should be able to protect him from at least a few animals, even if he were to be cornered by a pack of wolves -or their equivalent in this world-. 

He has been practice swinging a sword, however, using one of the many inexpensive swords he picked up from the attackers to cut through trees and branches, practicing simple self-taught forms to hopefully be able to fend off untrained attackers or animals with a melee weapon, if possible, since his ammunition is scarce. He has only the strength of his own body to rely on, since he has no magic or divine enhancements, but if he can take out simpler enemies with a sword instead of his firearms, then he can conserve that ammo for any more dangerous threats, such as an obvious swordsman or huge enemies he wouldn’t stand a chance against in melee, such as giants or the obvious dragons and drakes. He’s also seen and heard other reptilian avians flying around, indicating that dragons and drakes may not be his only draconic threats. 

As he walks, he reaches the edge of the current wooded area he has been trekking through for the last couple of days. It opens into a sprawling open field where he has height looking out over rolling hills. It reminds him of a roadtrip a long time ago where he was driving through Montana, and he could see for miles thanks to his elevation as he was driving, and the vast fields, and even distant forests, that merely decorated the land ahead with color, contrasted by mountains even further in the distance. He can see a waterfall in this world, with its base obscured by mist, and a winding river cutting the countryside he’s currently gazing upon. There’s at least one obvious village or city in view, but what really catches his eye is something even stranger; a massive castle perched on a tall cape overlooking a massive lake that stretches far into the distance, beyond what his eyes can perceive. This castle, even from what has to be over twenty miles away, appears humongous and is clearly larger than the village. And, while the castle appears to have sustained damage, given that its shape is irregular and lacks certain purpose-built structures, such as flat towers, it does have what appear to be broad entrances large enough for an airplane to land.

Or, in this world, the largest and most powerful flying creatures in the world; the dragons.

He grins cheekily. “Wow! I never thought I’d find it. Hope they don’t know what I smell like.” He continues his journey down the hill, making his way for obvious wild territory, rather than civilization and farmland, as he wants to avoid being spotted and confronted. He has no allies with him, now, so being caught this far west as a human will certainly mean death… if he’s lucky. While Daniel MIGHT be smart enough to leverage slavery into his favor in one way or another, he’s not particularly keen on finding out. If he is captured, likely a swift and painless death would be his best option.

But then, he still has his tricks up his sleeve. Including his rifles, he has a few more explosives he made during idle time, and he also found some chemicals and vegetation that react into a teargas when combined. And, that’s completely ignoring the venom from the Green Dragon and whatever substances gave rise to the Red Dragon’s fire breath, since he still has both corpses. Since they can still be revived, he may have a bargaining chip to get him in front of the Dragon Lord, if need be. And, failing that, he’ll try to figure out another way. Since only those who’ve seen his rifle in action know what it is by looking at it, most would never assume it’s a tool that can slay dragons.

Which, of course, reminds him that he should try to figure out a way to ensure he can pierce their hides if and when the time comes, as his steel-core bullets have only worked so far because he was able to get a clean shot into its mouth at the exact moment he needed to, or in through the Red Dragon’s eye from close range. Relatively speaking, they’re small targets, when his shells should do enough damage after they penetrate to kill a dragon with a wider tolerance for where he hits, IF he can penetrate their armor-like scales.

Of course, he’s only assuming dragon scales are nigh impenetrable in this world. The best weapons of the allied kingdoms for dealing with dragons seem to be the ballista or catapults with massive bolas or chain nets to try to drag the monstrous avians out of the sky to where they can be swarmed by melee fighters… most of whom will die.

In Daniel’s world, many speculations were made on the possibility of dragons, or dubiousness therein, such as their wings not being able to support their weight in flight, or impenetrable scales being too heavy for them to move in any sort of meaningful way. There are many reasons physics says those things, but he’s not on Earth, and he knows they can fly and breathe a fire so hot, it can melt stone like butter under a blow torch. Gravity could be lower, elements could be stronger, and failing all of those; magic.

The one thing Daniel doesn’t have.

Regardless, none of that brings him closer to his goal. He needs to observe the castle from afar, and if he sees another Red Dragon that looks more menacing than the one he has in inventory, then he needs to take it out. If he can more easily identify the Dragon Lord, he’ll of course go that route. If he needs to sneak into the castle, he will. More than likely, he’ll have to assassinate the lord and vanish. It’s not his ideal lifestyle, but since coming to this world, his old ways and his old comforts don’t cut it. 

Daniel stops at a small creek that he comes across as he descends the large rolling hill towards the castle. Now that he has a definitive direction, he just needs to keep track of his general direction. 

He uses the water to wash his face, feeling refreshed instantly upon the cool water dousing his skin. He wasn’t much of a camper on Earth, but he’s managed to pick up enough to appreciate what he missed out on. The sounds of nature around him, the crisp, fresh air. The trees have darker tones and colors than Earth did, and he suspects there might be some magical aura to the flora of the demon wildlands. But, much of it also reminds him of home. 

Daniel enters another wooded area, watching his surroundings carefully as he walks. He stays close to trees, watching for any signs of unnatural movement, and listening. He worked on machines all his life, and something that saved him headaches time after time was the ability to listen for a sudden change in sounds from normal to even slightly different. A tree branch creaking in a weird way could mean a predatory plant or tree, like an ent straight out of fantasy novels, or mutant venus fly traps.

Feline-like creatures or people, serpents, or even potentially arachnids or insects that can keep silent and strike without warning are his biggest dangers. Keeping close to obstacles will reduce the opportunity for them to pounce him, as long as he accounts for anything being above him.

Daniel snatches his revolver out of its holster and grips it tight in his right hand as he’s suddenly yanked off of the ground as he’s passing a large tree. He cries out in pain, but it’s more of a scraping pain than a hard piercing pain. He’s tumbled through the air by several large limbs; something like how a spider ambushes prey. He’ll have only a moment.

He makes sense of where the monster is, calling out, “GYAH!” as he shoves his sword towards it, and he manages to make contact, feeling dizzy as the spinning disorients him.

However, this time, there’s a hitch in the movements as the monster flinches up in the tree and lines him up to bite him. He loses his sword to the violent movements, but he still has his revolver.

Daniel aims and pulls the trigger, praying. He built the revolver to operate as a double-action, meaning the trigger pull is harder, but it does the whole job; cock the hammer and fire. The hammer ratchets and…

BOOM!

Again, the monster flinches as the round splatters dark red-orange goo from a massive wound. The revolver rounds are big, and it nearly flew right out of his hand in recoil, but he did it intentionally; one of the reasons .45 caliber pistol rounds were popular on Earth was that it was, relatively speaking, a fat, slow moving bullet, which will likely not penetrate all the way through a target. It delivers maximum force, often smashing the bullet so that its surface area increases on impact, distributing the damage even wider. Likewise, Daniel’s revolver rounds are relatively fat, slow-moving bullets for their size, at around .50 caliber, with a comparable payload to more than what he recalls for .50AE rounds, which were used in certain pistols of Earth. The sheer impact is enough to flinch the monster and cause it to release him.

Daniel thuds the ground on his back, coughing as he tries to keep his wits. He’s rattled for only a second, and he quickly aims up and fires twice more.

BANG! BANG!

He scrambles to roll clear of the monstrous beast that was perched in the tree before its lifeless body slams the ground where he just was, its blood pooling from the three entrance wounds and two exit wounds of his revolver's rounds. One of the shots may have stuck in a bone, since he definitely sees three entrance shots. Given that the two exit wounds are each the size of serving trays, it’s possible they overlapped as well.

With a relieved sigh, Daniel lays on the ground for a long moment. He wants to do nothing, but he has to stay alert at least. Fortunately, save actual thunder, his weapon is probably the loudest sound the forest fauna have ever heard, and an eerie silence has befallen the forest. 

Daniel jokes quietly, “I hope you’re happy, Beastie. One of us is still going to be dinner. I just suspect you didn’t plan on it being you.” He looks at the creature he just slayed with a more studious eye as he rests on his back. If Daniel were asked -and he was creative enough to do so- to combine the features of a wolf, a panther, a praying mantis, and a hermit crab, then he could only hope it would look like this creature. It has the fur of either or both mammals, with a wolf-like head, but the retractable claws of a feline and the more subtle ears of a feline. However, it also has three rear legs -the third appears to be in lieu of a tail-, and two snatching forearms like a praying mantis. And, to top it off, it seems to have some biological mechanism to form a shell out of tree-bark like a hermit crab, or even something like a bagworm, allowing it to disguise itself as part of the tree, especially at a glance.

Daniel finally rolls over and tugs on the bark briefly, finding it glued rather firmly to the creature’s fur. It’s likely that it can shed both over time as it grows or the bark wears out, allowing it to find new pieces to use. He notices a crust around its lips, and he briefly touches its saliva with a pair of leaves, milling it around between them until they cease to move freely. He nods as it begins to make sense. I see. Some component in its saliva serves as the adhesive. Air activated? No… It would glue its own mouth and throat shut. Friction… Yes, Friction is most likely. Like a cat grooming itself, it activates the glue while applying it, sticks bark on when it’s good and tacky, and then lets it dry. Interesting… Very interesting.

Daniel makes a note of that information for later. He doesn’t need glue at the moment, but a friction activated glue may prove useful if he needs one later, and he should be able to extract the residual from the creature’s mouth and saliva glands when he does.

As such, Daniel finds an ax in his gear bag, and he severs the monster’s head, allowing him to store it separately from the body. That way, he doesn’t risk wasting the saliva when he extracts the body to carve useful pieces of meat from it.

I should also do something with the dragons. I wonder if I can find a way to turn a tooth into a bullet… That could solve my fear of my iron-cores not being hard enough to penetrate. I imagine dragons can harm other dragons.

With that, Daniel continues on his path towards the castle he saw. As night falls, he extracts one of the shelter shells, and he even weighs it down from the inside with anything heavy from his inventory. He won’t be able to escape easily, but hopefully, nothing else will be able to flip the shell and disturb his sleep, allowing him to sleep peacefully.

After making breakfast in his shelter, Daniel takes the moment of peace to sort his inventory some more, with at least the things he can extract inside the shell and organize as much as possible. It’s not much bigger than a tent, but it’s more than enough for him to work in comfort. After, he cleans up his bunkering weights and barricades, and then checks outside before crawling out of the shell. Nothing is around him, so he stores the shell and continues on his way. Conveniently and inconveniently, depending on the situation, the magic storage bags don’t really care what the contents of the thing Daniel is storing are. If he leaves his favored shell set up with a bed mat, cooking equipment, and other items and containers, they will be stored with the shell exactly as he left them. Currently living things are the only things that seem to be stripped of whatever they had, for some reason. Regardless, because he selects the item he wants to extract via the magic hologram crystal, it doesn’t really matter what’s inside, though of course, the magic itself is based on mass, and not volume, so he can’t cheat the bag’s storage volume by storing things inside the shell. The only way to cheat is to put things inside of other magic bags and store those, since the mass of the objects inside is technically in another dimension… he assumes. Either way, it’s been working, so he doesn’t question it too much.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have any real reason to rush to find the Dragon Lord. The sooner he can defeat it, the sooner the world would likely be in a better place. However, he’s not a member of this world. He’s not trying to disturb the balance of power, but he is the only one that can deal with dragons, it seems. At least, he is the only one with a means for single-handedly dealing with them.

If Daniel kills the Dragon Lord, it’s increasingly less likely that the demons will attempt another invasion in any near future, from what he’s been hearing all around. The Demon Queen seems to be fairly conservative. Why she invaded eastward at all remains to be seen, but she hasn’t actively pressed the borders, save for when the dragons attempt something. He’d like to meet her and find out what he’s up against, if possible, but for now, he needs to remove the primary aggressor.

Due to the distance, it takes a couple of days for Daniel to close the distance on the castle he saw. Naturally, its massive size is like trying to approach a mountain in the distance; it takes a lot longer than one would think, thanks to how clearly visible it is, and yet, it never seems to get closer. And, the closer he does actually get to it, calling it a mountain isn’t far from the truth. The castle is truly massive. It can’t have belonged to humans. Given the size of all of the windows, the structures for landing and perching, or looking out, it had to have been constructed for nothing less than the dragons.

Of course, the damage seems to have been ignored. A great battle took place sometime long in the past, and the mountainous fortress had trees and shrubs growing in the rubble and on unnatural perches like those on the steep mountainsides of Earth where birds would nest. Either the dragons don’t care about the defensibility of their fortress nor its aesthetics, or they are somewhere else. But, for now, he has only the path ahead of him. Until he confirms the giant fortress is absent any and all dragons, he needs to make his way close enough to determine that.

Finally, after seven more days of walking, Daniel reached the fortress. As he speculated from so far away, much of the castle looks like ancient ruins, rather than an actual fortress. And, strangely enough, it seems to have been made with humans in mind to some degree. While the castle entrances are too big to say that, there are tons of ruined and ancient house-like structures within the castle walls, each possessing standard looking doorways and window openings set to human or close-to-human standards.

A quick thought in Daniel’s mind is that the fortress is -or was- home to dragons serving as royalty, while servants, soldiers, and other vassal citizens were of the many varying races of the world. It actually makes a lot more sense, since that’s exactly the breakdown of the attacking vanguard that hit Fort Peony.

However, it’s clear this fortress is no longer active. At least, in the ‘home of royalty’ sense. Someone else seems to have taken interest in the giant castle, and it gives Daniel pause when he spots the individual.

It’s a small, childlike figure with broad, triangular ears and a BIG, fluffy tail, like she’s part fox, all with black hair on her head and black fur on her ears and tail. While it’s hard to tell for certain, the features strongly suggest a young girl; stick-like arms and a petite body with soft, doll-like features on her face. She’s wearing rags for clothes, and yet has a simple, beat-up sword and a wooden buckler with a chunk missing out of its surface area. Given her small size, even a simple buckler shield is close in comparative size to a standard shield for a full grown man, but it looks like it would crumble under one or two more impacts from even a light blow.

And, the girl seems intent on going into the castle on her own.

Daniel sighs as he sits in his secluded hiding place in one of the destroyed buildings.

Don’t do it, Daniel… You have no idea who or what she is… If she’s here to hunt dragons as well…

He closes his eyes in frustration at himself. If she IS here to fight dragons, then her flimsy and worn out sword and frail wooden buckler…

Daniel claws in frustration at his hair in idle resistance to the urge in his heart and gut. No… Don’t do this… You’ll regret it…

He glances at the massive entrance one last time to see the last traces of the girl as she disappears into inky darkness of the gloomy and forlorn castle.

The castle that is probably full of monsters if not dragons themselves.

The castle, if not infested with 'monsters', is undoubtedly home to dangerous animals… like the creature that nearly made a meal out of Daniel himself.

He stands up with a sigh. He grumbles under his breath, “Please let me even be able to help… And, if I do, please don't kill me myself…”

***

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