"What the hell are you doing here?" Zoltan asked, and Konrad had no good answer to that.
Where was 'here' anyway?
All he saw was grey—but this was different.
Not a wall of nothing as a universe formed, only to crumble in what felt like seconds.
It was more constant, emptier, smaller, but also infinite.
And he wasn't alone there.
"You're alive," he noted, looking at his former teacher with surprise.
He didn't change much, though he was cleaner, and the familiar vinegar smell was missing.
There was a second man, though, one he didn't recognise.
"Who's the old guy?"
"Who?" Zoltan spun around as if he had no idea someone was with him all this time.
The man in question slammed the floor with a staff, but broke into a coughing fit before answering. Not that there was an actual floor, but the wood made a sound as if it touched stone.
"Oh, him," the illusionist said, rubbing his chin. "He's the Silver Mage. You know, the king's—"
"Yeah, the court magician," Konrad nodded, the name familiar. "He sent me that illusion letter. Is the king also here?"
He looked around, but found no one else.
"The king?" Zoltan seemed disoriented. "Why'd he—"
"I told you, idiot," the Silver Mage yelled, his coughing over and done. "That Mad Caster attacked us, and that's how I ended up here. But the king—I lost sight of him."
"Mad Caster?" Konrad furrowed his eyebrows.
Waiting for the usual voices to give him a hint didn't work. His mind was dead silent.
He got so used to his haremettes having a chat inside his head that he almost forgot how his own thoughts sounded. This place didn't help with thinking straight, either.
Though it was odd.
The crippling exhaustion he had felt only moments—or an eternity?—ago was gone.
"The Green Mage," the other two yelled in unison.
"My master had returned," Zoltan added, sounding equal parts excited and depressed. "He visited me in Eytjangard, back when your messenger left. But that was ages ago."
"It was yesterday," Konrad pointed out. "And five minutes after he left, Maple couldn't find you."
"What?! We've been here for, for—"
He fell silent, looking at him, then at the old man combing his long, grey beard with his fingers.
"So who were you again?" the mage asked, once it was clear Zoltan wouldn't continue.
He was in a state of shock, his lips moving, but no sound came out.
"I'm Konrad Ostfeld," Konrad introduced himself, complete with a bow. That old man was a powerful sorcerer after all, on par with the Green Mage, except—
"You mean you're that Halstadt boy? The king's new favorite?!"
Right. He was a noble now and the heir to Erwin Halstadt. How could he forget?
"We were on our way to your tournament when that rogue whisked me away," the old man continued. "And when I arrived, this child was already here. Do you know him?"
"Zoltan?" he asked with a laugh. "We have some history together."
Hearing his name, the illusionist's head snapped up, pointing a finger at him.
"I don't know what you've done, but this all must be your fault," he claimed, standing firm. "I was the Green Mage's apprentice. Why else would he put me in this place, if it wasn't you?"
"Because you were a terrible pupil?" Konrad asked, crossing his arms.
No, this wasn't the time for snarky comments. But what was the hurry again?
"Wait, you don't know?" he asked when the realisation hit. "Your old master, the Green Mage, was Maou Midori all along. He's invading Kasserlane with hundreds of thousands of nomads."
They both looked at him with disbelief, though with different flavors.
"H-hundreds of thousands?!" the old mage demanded.
"Maou Midori?" Zoltan scoffed. "What a joke. That legend is much older than my master. And why would he change his name anyway, when everyone already feared the Green Mage?"
"Actually, he didn't change his name," Konrad noted, having another revelation. "It's the same."
"The same what? Name?" the illusionist fumed. "It can't be the same person."
"No, no, he is," he confirmed. "Not that I figured it out by myself, but it should have been obvious. 'Maou Midori' is more or less 'Green Mage' in Japanese."
How could he even miss that until now?
"In what?" the other two asked—again, in unison, and in utter confusion.
"In Japa—"
Wait. Hold on. Of course, they had no idea.
Japan didn't exist in this world. But he knew he was right. So how?
How did the Green Mage know the words?
Why did every answer he found only give birth to even more questions?
"Nevermind, listen," he said, then went ahead to explain everything he learned so far. Well, he and Lily, Gabrielle and Maple, without involving them in the story itself. "So he time-traveled."
"The ruins of his tower," Zoltan muttered. "That's why they seemed so old? And the books—"
"Yes, see?" Konrad felt triumphant.
Time travel was one of his first guesses when he dispelled the Tower of Illusions back then.
It was so outrageous, and yet it all made sense now.
"So he went back in time—by accident—and to avoid time paradoxes, he fled to the far east, and became the legend, Maou Midori. He wanted even more power, gathered nomads, and—"
Okay, it still didn't make sense.
According to Gabrielle, Maou was trying to escape this world and topple heaven.
He needed that dungeon core thingy, so why bother conquering Kasserlane instead?
"So you met my master?" Zoltan asked, his voice filled with pride for some reason.
"Ugh, we had a chat, but can't say I saw him," Konrad noted, the moments—eons?—before he ended up here still hazy and strange. "I guess he kidnapped me as well as you two."
Did they go through a similar experience? If they did, they didn't seem to remember.
But then, their minds went blank every few minutes, looking at him like they'd never met.
He knew that, because his mind did that, too. But with all the distractions his haremettes provided so far, he'd gotten used to such things.
"So what is this place again?" he asked, circling back to the most important question.
He expected a 'what place?' or something as meaningless, but Zoltan surprised him.
"Ah, it's a space-time bubble, but we're still on the same plane of existence," he explained. "We can't move, and if what you said was right, we could say, we're out of time."
He understood. He didn't mean in the sense that they had to hurry.
They were outside of the fourth dimension.
Somehow. Forget about how or why. Was that even a thing?
"Any way out?" Konrad continued his interrogation. "Can you cast magic in here?"
"No, and no idea."
Short, unhelpful.
"This place is full of mana," the Silver Mage added. "But I can't tap into it. My staff is already overflowing, but the essence passes right through any rune I'd pour it into."
The way he put it—that was all too familiar.
The same thing kept happening when he first tried magic. It was the first bottleneck to conquer, and the most frustrating one. Well, life was much simpler back then.
He used to experiment with gathering light.
Whether it was the memory or a sudden idea, he cast the spell now, too, out of reflex.
Light element, focus, end.
And to everyone's shock, a glowing orb formed in his palm.