He spent the first night of the new loop going from room to room in the barracks.

  Ludere was looking for anything that stood out. He was trying to get a baseline of what people did. If they were going to do this more than a handful of times, he was going to need to be able to figure out the differences. Ludere had enough time to find out who the traitor would be. Now he needed to use it. He didn't know why the cat didn't just tell him.

  He would figure it out.

  The first room of the barracks he'd checked out was his own. The handful of normal people starting after-hours was always present. He knew that most of them would be done around dark. It was a similar thing with the other ones, although he never really floated around. You were discouraged from doing so, but if he had to pretend that he was going there to relieve himself several times then that was on him. He could pretend to be someone else if he donned the right toga. All he would need to do is darken his skin slightly.

  That wouldn't do anything.

  He did have his cowled toga. Stalking around the men's barracks at night made him feel like a hero in a story.

  Cire and Mila would be doing the same, minus, of course, his cool cowl.

  He stalked past someone working over candlelight. It took him a moment to recognize the man. It wasn't Bel. The man wore only a tunic. Not enough to give him an insight into which group he had sorted himself into. The damn academy and its ability to stratify men into social castes according to color was convenient. He found himself looking for a toga to put the man into a bucket accordingly. This had only been a month of his life, and he was already thinking like them.

  He needed to get out of that mindset.

  He needed to—

  The man across the room was looking at him with horror.

  "Regnicus?"

  The whisper was part accusation, part confusion. Of course it was him.

  "Yes?"

  "What are you doing in the fourth's room?"

  Ludere didn't have a good answer for that. "If I said 'looking for demons,' would you believe me?"

  "Demons? Where?" He stood up and looked around.

  "They're not… look, what's your name? I'm sorry I woke you up."

  "Marcel." Marcel began putting on his toga and checking the strap on his sandals.

  "Marcel. You don't want to… what are you doing?"

  "You said that you were looking for demons. Now it's the two of us."

  The other twenty men sleeping next to them didn't stir. Nothing moved, saved for the flicker of the candle that Marcel had been using to write.

  It was like he was being recruited, but backwards. He didn't want it to bring the man along with him, but he realized that if he raised any issue with what he was saying, every single person there would realize what was going on.

  "All right. Stay close to me."

  Marcel grabbed the candle. The first thought he had was that the man was very loud. So loud, in fact that he was panting as they walked around tiptoeing everywhere. How long had it been since he had properly been at base level? He had learned to never swap out Athletics. It made him too much of a liability.

  They sneaked by the fifth's barracks room. And then, without too much fuss, they were outside. He was going to do a loop around the area, but he thought he might talk to his newest party member first before he started that.

  "Marcel, why did you decide that this was a good idea?"

  "When the hero of the Empire decides that he's going to go demon hunting? You take up arms and follow him. That's just what you do."

  Ludere paused at the steps that led down to their yard. "I wish I could say that all of our classmates shared this view."

  It wasn't exactly what he expected, but not every single person in the Empire was equally as pleased about his idea of taking the fight to the demons. He hadn't talked to a lot of people about it, but so far, it had been mostly positive. The fact that he didn't know how to do it—he was going to need some help to get to that—meant that it was an implausible idea. Who would want to expand the Empire to whatever world the demons lived in?

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He was pretty sure that eventually the military and governance would go to blows about things, if the world continued down this path. But for now, if he had to get one guy at a time onto his team, he would do that. He would complain the whole time, but he would do it. All of his friends had been invaluable so far.

  Did he have room for a new friend? No but he could take on a lackey, he imagined, plus those first few levels of Athletics would do a lot for the poor guy.

  "Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to be doing a circuit around the inner courtyard here, and then another, larger circuit around most of the common areas. This whole loop should take about twenty minutes. You're going to have to up your game if you want to keep up the speed."

  "I'll be with you."

  Just because he did physical training every morning didn't mean that everyone did. Marcel proved that he could make less noise than an out-of-tune brass horn. It was close, but possible.

  They snuck around to the edge of the common area that was dedicated to just the males. He hadn't seen anything, but perhaps whoever was infiltrating from the demons had been looking for an opportunity to get one of the women. There would be a lot less going on there.

  There were fewer women in the academy, for whatever reason. The Empire never said why, and neither did the Grammarians. However, they got the same amount of space as the men. This meant that they apparently got to sprawl out more.

  Ludere was in no way jealous. He could deal with the fart smells. He could deal with the snoring. Allegedly this didn't happen at the other barracks. He didn't have a source, just a feeling about what actually went on.

  They moved out from the men's common area.

  "You would think the Empire could spare some people to be guards here at night. Pay them a little bit," Marcel said.

  "That's thinking a lot of a government that doesn't always have your best interest at heart."

  They stopped. Ludere took his time to scan the grounds. From here they could walk to the place where everyone got their meals or even further where they would take the classes in the morning. It was very unlikely that a demon was going to be stalking the kitchen. It could be hungry, but that was unlikely.

  He was pretty sure that they didn't like to eat. And if they were here, then they were probably trying to do some sort of surgical maneuver. The main thing he didn't know, that he wanted to know, was what they were actually doing. None of their plans made any sense to him.'If the demons were really trying to invade his world, then they could just pick a better spot. If they couldn't fight the Legion toe-to-toe, then they shouldn't have tried to invade the capital city during a holiday.

  Either they lacked a sense of timing, or they'd gotten orders to do that for a reason.

  "Regnicus," Marcel whispered. "Over there!"

  There were two souls he could see behind several bushes. That they were engaged in some kinds of cooperative fighting was obvious to both men.

  "Yeah look I'm not here to perv out on two people who are trying to get their sandals off," Ludere whispered. "If there's no demons there then I'm moving on."

  "Neither one of those is a demon?"

  "None of the three."

  "There's three?"

  Ludere paused. "One is watching. Demons have a specific spiritual significance that you should be wary of and—"

  "—I think I don't need to know any of these details, thank you very much."

  "Noted. Alright, let's move on. Nothing against it, but they should have picked a better place. Their souls are very identifiable."

  Ludere winced. He didn't want to tell anyone how to live, but these kids were testing him. How was he supposed to get anything done when other horny teenagers were trying to work out their issues? He didn't say, and what he wasn't going to say was that he recognized one of the signatures as being one of the boys from the top class. He was not going to reveal that to someone he had just met.

  "Marcel, while I've got you here. Do you have any Skills in the fighting domain? Might be useful for you to go over what you could do, while I take my time to examine this whole area."

  Marcel kept his eyes on the bushes where the three people were enjoying themselves readily. Ludere expected more noise from that sort of crowd, but they probably didn't want to be discovered. All the more reason for him to let them do their business peacefully. He knew that when he got reunited with the Oracle, they would be doing much the same thing, if she had anything to do with it.

  He needed to write her a letter and explain that he was inside of another loop and ask her counsel. She would probably immediately bend or break any possible rule to make it to him. Then things would get slightly awkward for a while.

  "I can… I do well with my shortsword."

  "Would you say that you could fend off an average Legionnaire, or do you think that you're more on the side of an experienced Legionnaire, or maybe just a commoner with extra consideration?"

  "If I was given enough time and training, I might be able to fight off a Legionnaire. I don't have any specific storage Skills. Those would be nice to have. Someone told me that you're the guy to ask about skill gems. Perhaps it was a part of your position that you were able to get those? If so, I'm sure that I'm not the only one asking you."

  Dozens of people had approached him about something similar. People wanted Skills, and the rumor was he could get them Skills. The fact that they all thought he was going to get skill gems for people was icing on the cake. Being a Regnicus meant that he had certain responsibilities. It also meant that the Empire would take care of him. Or, at least, they would pay lip service to the idea of helping him.

  He found that, either way, he didn't much care.

  He was going to do what he was going to do, and that was going to be that. He could use the help, and if they wanted to think that he could get them skill gems? He wouldn't disabuse them of the notion. It was to his benefit that they listened to him. And if Marcel hadn't spent the time to get better at the sword, then he wouldn't be good in battle.

  There was no shame in not being a soldier-tier warrior. In a highly martial society like the Empire, and a place where everyone is expected to test themselves against each other for one of the late exams, nothing made sense.

  "If I have a way to come check with us in the mornings, are you going to have an aneurysm? Because we can help you out."

  Marcel coughed. "I don't know that I can pay for that. My family might be rich, but everything's tied up with something else."

  It was just like the Prefereti to think of cost first before thinking of any other situation.

  The movement stopped in the bushes.