The day started out normal. I woke up in the morning, exhausted, wishing that it was a Friday. I got myself ready for school, then I began attending my classes. Lunch arrives, and I hang out with my group of friends. It was a Thursday, so I felt extremely exhausted and lacked any motivation to work. I decided to skip 3rd period and walk to the local convenience store to buy some snacks. I have math class during this period, and I'm already prepared for the upcoming test, so I have nothing to lose by skipping. I noticed that there was a popular girl also at the store, skipping class like me. She glares at me, and I look away. It’s not like I’m scared of her looking at me, I’d just feel weird if she thought I was staring at her. Most guys I know had a crush on her at some point; I didn’t. I know I don’t have a chance, so why should I fantasize? As I’m standing there in line waiting for the cashier, I suddenly feel a warm feeling from my chest. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of a dirt trail, in the middle of a forest. Somehow, I think i’ve been teleported.
“Huh, where am I?!” I hear screaming in the distance.
She starts moving through the trees and approaches the dirt trail, where she notices me.
“You there.” She points at me. “Did you also get teleported here?” she asks me with a mean look in her eyes.
“I go to your school, don’t you recognize me?” I responded.
“Oh, I might’ve seen you in the hall once long ago.”
“We were JUST in the same convenience store a second ago, what do you mean ‘might’ve seen you’?”
Suddenly she falls on the ground, I’m assuming out of shock. I guess discovering that magic exists and getting teleported to another place might’ve been a shock to anyone.
So here I am in the middle of a forest with a girl that’s passed out.
I’m glad I used to watch those “wilderness survival” videos because now I’m using those skills to build a campfire. Watching those videos, I thought it’d be fun, but I just spent the last hour trying to start a fire with a stick, leaves, and vines. Luckily, the girl woke up a couple of minutes ago and helped me with the fire.
To be honest, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now. I was teleported to this world, but my backpack and items in my pockets weren’t teleported with me. That somehow doesn’t make sense since I still have my clothing intact (thankfully), but to be fair, getting teleported in general must’ve conflicted with some laws of physics. Also, why was this girl teleported with me and not the rest of the store? There were 3 people ahead of me and behind her in the line to the cashier, yet only she was teleported here.
As I’m thinking about what I should be doing, the girl asks me a question.
“So what do you think happened?”
“I dunno, maybe some scientist discovered teleporting in another country and somehow we were caught up in it.”
As if I’d know what happens. But socializing with other people must calm her down or something.
“Anyway, I don’t want to stay here overnight. Let’s follow the trail, and maybe we might find treasure,” I suggest.
“Really? After all that time trying to start a fire, and when you finally get it, you want to leave?” she says whilst yawning.
“Hey, you were SLEEPING the first 40 minutes of me trying to start it, you should NOT be complaining,” I angrily say.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, let’s just go already.”
And so we set off following the trail. I thought being in the middle of a forest, we would’ve been walking for days, but only after an hour, we already approached a grassland where, in the distance, there is a town visible.
The architecture of the town resembles old medieval Europe. Somehow I was teleported from North America, across the ocean, to the middle of Europe.
“Pss,” the girl whispers in my ear. “Don’t those guys look weird?” She points at the men standing beside the gate.
I looked and noticed that these men were wearing full knight armor. So in my head I’m thinking, either I’m approaching the weirdest town, I’m approaching an isolated civilization, or I wasn’t teleported; rather, I went back in time.
“Yeah, they’re wearing full knight armor, this is kind of weird,” I reply.
We approach the gates, and the men look up and down at our body, before asking us a question.
“You sir, and woman. Where do you originate from? I don’t recognize this style of clothing.”
I don’t know how to respond to this question, so I say, “We come from lands far away, and we seek refuge here.”
The guy earlier had an accent that resembled movies' interpretation of older English, so I decided to use an outdated form of formal speech.
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“Um, okay then, weird form of speech, but you may enter,” he responds.
The girl once again approaches me and whispers, “What was that ‘we seek refuge’ act you did earlier?”
Great, to be called weird by the person wearing knight armor.
“Well, I had to say SOMETHING, and you weren’t offering to say anything yourself, you know,” I replied.
And so we continue into the town, exploring the beautiful architecture that my country now lost. Also, I’ve discovered what happened to us. We didn’t get teleported to some random place on earth; no, we got teleported to another world. I’ve concluded that just by looking around. There were species of different races. I saw elves, Minotaurs, and different animals in a humanoid shape, like lizards and cats. My companion and I were extremely fascinated with the different world, but we had to talk about more logical matters.
“We need shelter and money,” I tell her after entering the tavern and sitting at a table.
Not completely aware of the situation and still looking around the room, she replies, “Okay, and how would we do that?”
“Well, we are unqualified for basically every job. But I saw an adventuring guild on the way here, and in every RPG, you should always go to the adventuring guild.”
She looks at me, annoyed. “You shouldn’t make choices based on video games. And what is an adventuring guild?”
“The adventuring guild is where people put up requests and you complete them. For example, a farmer makes a request for guild members to kill and remove goblins off their land. He would put up a reward, and someone else would complete it and claim the reward,” I confidently say.
With a disgusted look, she says, “Oh.. I don’t want to kill any goblins or have any blood on my hands. Are there any other options?”
“That may have been an extreme example. They might put up requests like to find their lost cat, or to help them deliver some things, well, depending on the video game.”
“I hope you’re right about this because I’d rather work in another job like a miner than kill goblins.”
So we enter the adventuring guild, and the receptionist explains the process of signing up. There’s a fee we must pay, but they informed us that we can pay it later. We get our identifiers and observe the board with guild requests.
“Well, I see a request for goblin extermination. I’m telling you right now, I am NOT doing this.” My partner glares at me with a serious look on her face.
“I don’t know where you got this idea that I have an obsession over goblin hunting, but I also do not want to do that. Now go look for some easier quests.”
There are so many quests; they range from all difficulties. One poster has a request to remove weeds from an alley in the city, and the poster right next to it wants a bodyguard for a high-class family. Looking at the rewards, I could tell the way currency works in this world. There are bronze, silver, and gold coins. Maybe there is a coin worth lower than bronze, or a coin worth more than gold.
“Okay, let’s take this quest.” I take the pin off the poster and show it to her.
Her eyes widened in shock. “WHAT? No way, are you joking? You want to exterminate slimes? There are way easier quests, like this farming request.”
“Hey! We’re here to get a hotel room and food. My request pays out 2 silver, while yours pays out 10 bronze coins, plus it’s going to take all day. I highly doubt 10 bronze coins could pay for 2 hotel rooms.”
My first quest starts today! I didn’t really have a plan for what I was going to do. I didn’t have any equipment like armor and no weapons. I was thinking I could kick the slimes to death.
We approached the area, and instead of multiple little slimes, there was a massive king slime.
My partner looks at me worryingly. “Umm, are there any penalties for quitting quests? This guy’s too big for us.”
Well, she’s right about it being bigger than us, like more than 3 times, but I’m not going to quit this quest yet.
“Normally, slimes are weak in any video game. So go punch it or some-”
I was interrupted by the slime jumping into the air and landing right on top of my companion. I managed to jump out of the way before it could get on top of me.
I look at my companion and see clearly that she can’t breathe. She does a swimming motion in an attempt to escape the monster. I notice then that the inside of the slime seems to be burning her. I quickly realized that her skin would begin to also be melting, and that’s when I panicked.
I charged at the slime and prepared a punch. Once it landed, it did absolutely no damage. My skin began burning, so I had to pull out. As my hands were out of the slime, a piece of its body came off. I expected the slime's body to be healed instantly, but alas there was still a hole.
This gave me an idea. I began to vigorously dig at the slime with my hands and rip out pieces of its body one by one. My companion noticed these actions and began mimicking me from the inside of its body. Although the slime didn’t seem to stop moving, I feel like we were doing some sort of damage. Once I was already halfway through the slime's body, I noticed that it was preparing to jump. I grabbed my companion's hand and pulled her out just as the slime was entering the air. Once it landed on the ground, it splashed into multiple pieces, with no sign of movement.
“See, I told you this was better than the farming job.”
There I realized that now our clothing was dirty with mud, and there were many cuts and tears all around.
“Great, we got extra money, but now we have to spend it on clothes.”
“We’ll still have more than enough to pay for a hotel... I hope,” I say in a not-so-confident tone.
We approach near the gates, and my partner waits a certain distance away. She doesn’t want to be seen even though I lent her my sweater, so we both agreed that I would visit the market and buy some new clothing. Our old clothing was standing out too much, so I don’t even mind the extra expenses. After they confirmed the completion of my quest and handed me the reward, I went straight to the market.
The market is probably the most packed place I’ve seen yet, at least in this city. I wouldn’t say it is very populated myself. I did feel a little embarrassed walking around with slime on my clothing, but I did my best cleaning myself up with the resources I had. This area is on the cheaper side, and as I was observing the different clothing, I noticed a very cute cat sleeping by itself behind a couple of market stands. I found some cheap fish and purchased it. I’m hungry myself, but whenever I see an abandoned stray cat like that, I feel COMPELLED to help it. I leave the fish in front of it. The cat opens one eye, looks at the fish, then me, then stretches, eats the fish, and runs away. Something felt very off-putting with the way it looked at me.
Anyways, I continue looking for some cheap clothing that fits both my size and hers. Eventually, I find some generic villager clothing and purchase it.
“It’s not pretty... but I don’t have any other choice,” she says as I hand her the clothing after meeting up with her again.
“Be grateful with what you got, there were uglier clothes there.”
“Okay, now look away and let me change.” She says walking behind a tree.
By this point, I think it would’ve been nighttime, like around 8:00 PM or 20:00. We spent some on public baths to clean off the remainder of the slime. With the remainder of our money, my only option was to order a cheap one-bedroom in the tavern. Once we entered the room, we both instantly ran towards the bed, trying to claim it before the other. We ended up sharing the bed, but we put a pillow in between us so we wouldn’t touch each other at night.
“So how do you like the new world?” I say, trying to start a conversation.
“I hope we don’t have to do any more quests like that, the slime monster was scary. It took forever getting the slime off. I’m hoping we can go back soon,” she replied.
That’s something I didn’t acknowledge yet. I don’t know how or if I’m ever going to get back to my world. Every day I spend here, I’m losing another day of education at home. I wonder what my family thinks about me.
“Did you have any siblings?” I ask her.
She sighs. “Yeah, brother and sister. You?”
“Older brother and sister. Also a younger sister. I’ll tell you more about them someday. I’m feeling tired, goodnight.” I yawn, preparing to sleep.
“Wait!” She looks at me. “You never told me your name.”
I wasn’t popular, but how couldn’t she not know the name of her classmate? I guess when you get a certain level of popularity, you don’t keep track of other people’s names.
“Yeah, my name is Nile Maike. Nice to meet you.”
“My name is-” she begins talking before I interrupt her.
“Everyone knows who you are. You’re Luna Soren.” I yawn one more time and look the opposite way from Luna. “Goodnight Luna.”
“Goodnight, Nile.”