//Translation of the ancient is in square brackets [xxx], paragraph comments and author’s notes

In the end, the group allowed Layn to join their ranks. And once it happened, the full degree of their friendliness finally came to the light. Rather than just leaving him alone to tend for himself, the same girl that he happened to create thoughts transfer with led him to the small lake in the middle of the area, before conjuring a pair of cups out of the thin air.

“Kaka magnari ypah.” [I’m very happy] Nodding his head in gratitude, Layn accepted the cup filled with the freshly obtained water. Leaving the problem of dealing with any and all potential parasites to his slightly modified intestines, Layn finally enjoyed the feeling of the relatively cold water flushing all the sand from his throat.

Just a single sip was enough to make the archmage feel like if his entire body revitalized on the spot. It seemed that his earlier tiredness wasn’t physical exhaustion, but the way of his newly reformed body to announce how greatly it lacked water.

Layn’s thirst was finally satisfied only once five more cups were filled and emptied. Only then did his brain return to the usual rate of its spin, allowing the archmage to look at the world around him with clarity.

‘What the fuck I was doing all this time!’ Internally screaming as soon as the major part of his intelligence returned from the unexpected vacation, Layn only barely stopped his own hand from punishing his stupidity by slapping his own face.

“Irea, collea.” [Irea, come] With the entire group preparing to leave the oasis, it was the last moment for Layn to invest most of what remained of his initial pool of magic. Due to how dead the entirety of this desert was, it would take literal aeons for his full state of mana to replenish by itself. Even in the locally rich in life oasis, the density of magic in the air was so impossibly small, that Layn once again started to consider the most disastrous scenario.

And as lady fortune would have it, so far, it seemed that this unbelievably tragic scenario seemed to perfectly answer all the inconsistencies between Layn’s plan and the reality he had to face.

Hearing his call, the girl quickly trodded towards the archmage, with great curiosity written all over her face. Even though she had her own initial doubts about Layn, ever since she first uttered that ‘Rexa’ world, her attitude changed drastically.

“Let’s try it out…” Muttering to himself as an extremely complicated structure of grade fifth spell appeared in his mind, Layn overcame the last bout of hesitation, before pouring all his remaining magic right into the form.

But nothing happened. That is, on the surface.

With the magic in the area being extremely thin, the usually high cost of this spell lowered by a huge degree. No interference of the local free energy meant that more of Layn’s mana could be used to achieve the actual objective rather than keeping the spell stable.

And soon, this godlike spell started to work.

It wasn’t anything flashy. Just a mix of five different spells charged in a polar fashion. The activity of one part would lead to the activation of the other, and so on. This way, a single bout of energy could constantly travel between each of the activators, saving Layn the trouble of controlling it.

“We should reach the city in two to three days. That is, if our gabba won’t sezere.” [package/succumb] Even though the spell wasn’t perfect, it made communication way easier. The meaning of the untranslated words could be guessed from the context or just the gestures and facial expression of the one speaking.

But as great as this spell was, not only it could last only for so long, Layn also had to limit its usability to keep the energy cost affordable. With that said, while the spell would continue to learn more words, understanding others would quickly become an easy task…

Sadly, speaking in their language was an entirely different matter.

“Ra!” [Careful!] A sudden shout forced Layn out of his train of thoughts. Raising his head towards the noise, he saw that not only the people on the side of the group but literally everyone instantly started preparing themselves for the clash.

Swords left their sheaths, maces raised in the air, towers blocked the line of enemy’s sight. In just a moment, the entire group ceased to move, creating a protective circle with Layn in the middle of it.

‘Aren’t they a bit too skilled in protecting their cargo?’ Unknowingly using the same word to refer to himself like the men his spell heard doing earlier on, Layn moved his eyes towards the source of the danger.

‘Wait, really? Firedog makes them so cautious?’ Stunned by the sight in front of his eyes, Layn once again got the urge to slap his own face. At this point, his ominous prediction that his gran arcana misfired, died under the show of incompetence of this group.

How could such a huge gathering of clearly experienced warriors have any trouble with disposing of a single firedog? Even though it was the size of a house and the fires spreading from every inch of its skin could burn even stone, as long as one knew what he was doing, taking an entire herd of those wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Sadly, as a great source of fire-resistant skin those dogs were, they were commonly referred to as the bosses of the desert, due to how rarely one could spot more than just a single one in any particular place.

But from the looks of it, neither the leader nor the rest of the group that Layn joined seemed to take this encounter as lightly as the archmage. Still motionless, they continued to watch the lazy actions of the fire dog.

“Want me to beat it up?” Layn attempted to say, while perfectly aware how he most likely said something along the lines of ‘I hit big bark’. Thankfully, from how the girl that Layn decided to stick with looked at him with her big, wide-open eyes, it didn’t seem like anyone would have anything against it.

“No. Keep him back. We can’t risk the safety of the guest.” As strange as the current course of events was, the way in which those people acted only reinforced Layn’s idea that he didn’t want to acknowledge.

The idea that rather than moving twenty years to the past as he planned, he actually ended up in the era before the culling, the greatest disaster to ever happen, laid the foundations necessary for the proper magic to develop.

The sanctity of the guests was one of those clues.

The sanctity that Layn could care less about.

So before waiting for the girl to kindly translate those words to him, he went past the men in the formation, walking right in the open area between the group and the fire dog.

“Come at me, you son of a… well, dog.”