“Listen Gael things always turn out better in those isekai stories and whate-” Athena notices me gasping for air and rushes to my side to try and calm me down

“hey hey no no no cmon-cmon you’ll be alright, you’ll be alright” Athena silently panics while trying to hold my hand “Cmon you can’t leave me here all alone” Tears well up in Athena’s eyes as she thinks of what she can do before she remembers those random instruction posters that were posted around the school in case of choking, seizures, panic attacks, etc. “hey breath, breath it’ll be alright it’ll be all right” Athena comforts me in the calmest voice she can muster I try to take deep breathes and I feel as if my lungs are missing or that the air from the atmosphere has gone missing at first, but I'm able to stabilize my breathing with a bit more effort. I quickly pat Athena's hands, causing Athena to promptly examine me all over before we stare at each other tears welling up in both our eyes. the realization that we had both been okay had brought Athena and I to embrace each other in sweat and tears. We balled in each other's arms for a good few minutes before we calmed down.

“Are you okay now?” Athena asks with a worried expression wiping her tears away. the last time I remember Athena making such a worried expression was when I fell off our treehouse. We were 12 back then. I nod to reassure Athena that I am fine “I just need to catch my breath for a bit” I say. After an hour or so of catching my breath, thinking of our next move, and contemplating my near-death experience. I come to the conclusion of where we should head first. I get up from my lying position and sit on a dry rock across from Athena

“Athena, how far have you read in Ruthel’s Redemption?” I ask “I just read the first 15 chapters because I was curious why you liked it so much, but I didn’t really like it so I dropped it,” Athena tells me about her lack of taste in stories “So you didn’t get to the revenge arc huh?” I ask “No why?” Athena responds confused “Because you haven’t met the vampires” I respond

“There are vampires?” she asks with a raised brow “Yeah It’ll be time to live out your vampiric fantasies” I try to grin but can only muster a slight smile “Firstly, Don’t bring up my middle school crush on Paul Wesley, and secondly aren’t vampires like evil?” Athena asks trying to not bring any attention to my shaken-up smile “Yesn’t if this world is truly the world in Ruthel’s Redemption. Then the vampires in this world will be extremely intelligent and curious by nature. They probably won’t try to kill us because we contain knowledge from another world. However, they are really into progressing their technology and their species, so they essentially don’t have many morals.” I explain while trying to keep things lighthearted

“Ok, and what if they try and dissect us for science? Shouldn’t we visit the elves instead? From what I read the elves and humans had a good relationship in the novel. Didn’t they?” Athena asks “Yeah that is true. However, something doesn’t make sense, humans in this world are nowhere near advanced in runic language to be able to teleport masses of people from another world to this one, so it might be a stretch, but I think that the vampires are the best option for us right now before we get to learn more of our situation.” I explain “Well damn, but do you know what time period this world takes place in?” Athena asks a good question “Umm, not really I’m just assuming we’re in a time period around the latest chapter, to be honest.” I say with a bit of embarrassment due to my oversight

“Well whatever, is there any reason in particular you picked them?” Athena asks while stretching in a way to hype herself up to leave the cave “Yeah, vampires are really smart so they developed their technology in a unique way using ruin magic. They essentially created a sci-fi world within their cities with the fantasy genre they exist within” I Explain “How many genres exist within this book?” Athena says with a dumbfounded look “Ahaha, it's not that mu-” I try to retort only to realize there is a shit ton of genres in this book “Let's just hope we don't stay in this world long enough to see the horror fiction genre part in the novel” I shudder “Fuck” Athena says realizing that all the horror shit that we’ve never found to be scary before because it was fake could finally be real. “How will we find the vampires anyway?” Athena asks “We might already be pretty close to them considering we’re in the red desert. Their city exists within a giant crater, so some high ground would be a good starting point to finding where they are.” I explain “You up for some mountain climbing?” I ask Athena with a grin

“You know what I actually do need some air,” Athena says with an exasperated sigh “Hey Athena…sorry for worrying you,” I say with a guilty conscience. Athena looks back t0 me “Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t have a panic attack from all the shit we’ve seen. We… we just need to process things a little more” Athena says with a slight smile and tired eyes as she leaves the cave. After having seen Athena’s tired expression I realized I had witnessed the deaths of hundreds of people, hundreds of people I had known and talked to I had forgotten, I had gotten over the deaths of all those people.

Of course, I didn’t know them well, but those were people I had seen on a day-to-day basis, people I had known since I was a toddler, and I had totally disregarded them and gotten over their deaths in less than an hour. Then why was I so immobile when I saw Catelyn fighting those monsters and those soldiers were killing people? Why was my heart beating so fast then? Was it because I was overwhelmed? Was it excitement? Was it survival instinct? Was it the gore? Was it all of those things?... Was it because I was sad?

My stomach starts to churn and I go to throw up in a darker part of the cave so Athena can’t see it. At that point, I realized the reason I had thrown up was not because remembering the massacre of my community had enticed a sense of disgust strong enough to warrant my vomit. It was that I had become far too aware of my true nature far too quickly; I didn't feel sadness over their deaths.

I take a deep breath and follow Athena outside taking in the view of red rocky sand, a small yet generous amount of vegetation, and large scorch marks that delved dozens of meters into the earth, and the two blazing hot suns to really set home we aren’t on earth. I notice Athena is looking back at the cave we went to or rather above it. I look to see what Athena is looking at and notice that there is a clean cut in the mountain that we had been taking shelter in. It seemed as if the mountain toppled over after being scorched through by Catelyn’s beam attack.

It actually seemed as if the cave that we had been in was formed from those two parts of the mountain leaning on each other creating an open in which we took shelter. “Hey, Gael you think we’ll be this strong?” Athena asks with an awestruck expression “Maybe, when you hit puberty.” I retort Athena lightly punches my shoulder and chuckles slightly “dumbass.” I slightly chuckle as well “alright let's start climbing” Athena stretches and cracks her knuckles “ahaha if you haven’t forgotten Athena I have the upper body strength of a slug, so I leave this to you,” I say in a monotone voice “this is why you should’ve worked out with me when I offered” Athena brings up my poor decision making choices that I don’t regret “ok ok I apologize for not developing and muscle mass to support my noodle body; just climb the mountain,” I say while rolling my eyes “So I’ll leave this to you” I give a thumbs up

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Ugh, fine. um, can you look for something for us to drink or eat in the meantime? You know this world better than I do so I’ll leave that to you” Athena tries to put me to work “Oh by the way you gotta work out now. No excuses.” Athena gives me a menacing grin “Ugh fine” I moan in anguish as Athena now has the excuse of survival to watch me suffer “Athena by the way if you see a Giant Sand Worm stay or feel a lot of vibrating stay absolutely still.” I warn Athena.

After assigning each other our own tasks we head out to do said tasks. Athena scales the mountain as I scout out the area in search of sweet sweet milk fruit. In the novel, Ruthel had to roam the Red Desert at one point due to an assignment given to him by the elves.

Ruthel had to survive numerous amount of days in this sort of desert, and the main reason he even survived was due to the local demon population called the Albadw Alruhl, which taught him how to survive in this land. Their main source of water came from milk fruit, as the name sounds it's a fruit that creates milk on the inside, it's a round fruit that kinda resembles a persimmon. The Albadw Alruhl had their water source changed later on in the story, as they found that milk fruits are good indicators of underwater water sources.

Food is going to be more complicated, however, as there are no good efficient food sources outside of hunting. The problem is me, I have nothing to hunt with nor do I think I can hunt in the first place to be blunt. Also considering that the creatures here are magical I would have no chance in an exchange with them a ghost fly would kill me in the worst way possible. Wait actually, a thought comes to my mind ghost flies are nocturnal creatures it’s around early afternoon right now so if I can find another cave where ghost flies live I might be able to kill one because they don’t wake up to anything during the morning, the problem is those things are half my size and they’ve got chitin shell that can withstand the force of a truck, also I don't want to touch a giant dragonfly let alone eat it and I think Athena shares the same sentiment I sigh, but that's the only option I see working in our scenario and it’s not like its impossible to kill them. Their underbelly in particular is a good weak point yet still strong enough to withstand a baseball pitch from a pro baseball athlete. I need something sharp I think to myself not just for food but also for harvesting resources in case we have to stay a while. In any sort of survival scenario, something sharp will always end up being a lifesaver.

I look around the collapsed mountain looking through the collapsed rubble to find a small stone that slightly resembled a spearpoint or preferably a knife luckily it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for I found a pointed rock that was albeit still round and blunt, so I tried to sharpen it by bashing it with another rock. The final product came out very rough, but it would work for the time being, so with my newly acquired chipped rock I was on my way to finding some milk fruits, some ghost flies, and if possible vampiric civilization.

Both the demon village and the vampire kingdom would be useful in fact the demon village would probably be more useful around now the problem with that is we can’t offer anything to the demon village like we can to the vampires. The only reason the demons helped out Ruthel was because of the immense mana and potential he held, other than that there would be no reason for them to take in a couple of strangers who appeared from another realm. It would bring more risks than rewards.

I start focusing on finding some milk fruit, but before I can truly put my mind to it Athena yells at me from halfway up the broken mountain “Gael there are some weird-looking plants over there!” Athena was pointing in a direction just past a couple of bushes to the side of me I force my way through getting a slight cut on my left hand and another on my right leg in the process, but it was all worth it as I came across the white persimmon fruits sprouting from the sides of a cactus with a reddish-orangish fruit which somewhat resembles a dragon fruit sprouting from a large purple flower at the top of the cactus.

I noticed that there were also a lot more cacti within the field that Athena pointed me to, meaning that water wouldn’t be an issue for a while. While harvesting two ideas come to my mind. First, considering dehydration and heatstroke are the most important things to avoid in the desert. What if I cut off a branching part of the cactus, hollow it out, and then wear it to protect myself from the heat, also I gave up on trying to find an underground source of water for the reason of them being well underground, but considering that Catelyn blasted laser beams in this direction might’ve opened a way to an underground water source too.

I shake my head; the milk fruit is already here no need to get further away from Athena than need be. I ignore my explorative desires and focus on harvesting the milk fruits. I start grabbing all the milk fruits budding from the cactus and stashing them in my pockets. I ignore the reddish-orange fruit because ironically enough this fruit is also called a dragon fruit. However, this fruit is called a dragon fruit due to its extreme levels of spice, which I do not want right now despite my love for spicy food.

After I had grabbed all the milk fruits on the cactus, I was not on the part of making cacti helmets. I cut off a rounder part of the cactus that was branching off and carefully used my finger to push the non-prickly part cactus against the floor to keep it from moving without getting pricked and attempted to hollow the cactus. I fuck up a few times, resulting in me getting pricked a few times, and leaving a few gashes into the helmet, but all around it seemed to be able to serve its purpose.

I carve two holes in the cactus so that I can see and I put it on my head. Now that I had a cactus on my head I worked on Athena’s cactus mask as well when another idea came to my mind. What if I make a cactus bag to hold the fruits? With that in mind, I go ahead and make another cactus mask for Athena. Then I go look for a large leaf that can withstand a bit of pull and hollow out another cactus branch cutting two holes on opposite sides of the cactus and tying the leaf through them.

After I had formed my elongated Louis Vuitton cactus bag I put all my milk fruits and Athena’s cactus mask in the bag. I thought about looking around for an underground water source again, but noticed that it was nearing late afternoon and I had deforested a few cactuses to make up for my really bad fuck up attempts, so I start to walk back to the cave checking my phone to as expectidly have no service. I wonder what kinda Pokemon I could find in a different world? I think to myself looking at the Pokemon Go app.

As I reach the cave I notice that Athena has already started a fire and built what looked like a fence with a bunch of plants on it in front of both the cave and the fire. I ignore that Athena had apparently had enough time to build a fire and a fence by herself and greet my sister who was sitting on a rock playing with a knife of her own that she had made, lost in thought. “Hey, Sisters!” I yell “Oh you're here I gotta te-” Athena stops midsentence startled to see some Micheal Myers-looking mother fucker in a cactus mask making a James Charles impersonation enter through the entrance of the cave. I think that was a fever dream of mine once. I internally reminisce about my past trauma.

Athena quickly realizes it's me and bursts out laughing “You look so fucking stupid,” Athena says while laughing I twirl around with my Louis Vuitton bag “Scuse you bitch I look fabulous” I retort causing Athena to laugh so hard she to the ground holding her sides. “Hey don’t diss the getup too quickly I got you a mask as well,” I say while carefully pulling out Athena’s mask and holding it out for her. “Sure, thanks,” Athena says with a battered breath. Athena carefully puts on the mask and suddenly I've come to realize the hilarity of Michael Myers being some diva. The idea gets to me and I'm unable to pretend as if I was offended by Athena’s previous statement and start laughing as well. It wasn’t much but it was able to keep our minds off of our current situation which we really needed right now.