POV: Blythe:

What the… Just when Descal was going to give Trevor the canteen, he immediately broke down, started screaming, and just lost conscious. Now I am just standing there looking really dumb just looking at his unconscious form.

“Say… was he poisoned or something?” (Trevor)

“Let me check. Help me draw some blood. Nope, the magic stone isn’t changing color. He isn’t poisoned.” (Adal)

“First, let’s carry him to the camp. Adal, you take Les. Blythe. Help me with this guy. Blythe. Blythe! Blythe!” (Trevor)

“Ah sorry. Hold on.” (Blythe)

Adal went over and carefully slung Les over his shoulder. Trevor went over to Descal and with my help, I put him over Trevor’s shoulder. Surprisingly, he was pretty light. We went over to our camp, and we put them into the tent. Adal went to put up detection/ warning spells and traps around our camp while Trevor and I prepared dinner. We dug a hole and started a small fire to try and limit the amount of light that leaked from the fire. We started to roast some roots that Trevor has dug up.

“Well. Today was a really crappy day.” (Blythe)

“Surprising would be more like it. I thought we would have to prepare for the worst when Les was taken like that. In the end, Les is still alive, including her rescuer. Then, he just screams and collapses like that. Just who is that guy?” (Trevor)

“I don’t know. I can try asking him more when he wakes up.” (Blythe)

Trevor took out his canteen and found it to be empty. When he reached for Les’ canteen that Descal handed to him, he froze when he took a sip of the water. Immediately, he took the canteen out of his mouth and ran over to Adal who was just coming back from his routine trip. Adal looked at the contents, gave a surprised loom and came rushing back.

“Blythe! The water in this canteen is a really pure mana water. This is Grade A mana water. This has to have been taken from an extremely deep area of that cave!” (Adal)

“Are you telling me that Descal got his hands on that water while he was rescuing Les?” (Trevor)

“I don’t know, but with this we should have completed the task. We’re gonna get a big bonus for this! Just who is this guy?” (Adal)

We looked over at the tent where Trevor was sleeping in. Suddenly, a burning smell came from the fire pit.

“Crap! The roots!” (Blythe)

“Adal. Disperse the smell. I don’t want to attract any monsters or bandits right now.” (Trevor)

“[Soft Wind]. Great. Burnt roots for dinner. I’d rather have Les’ poisonous signature dish.” (Adal)

“Hey. I thought we agreed to not talk about that time.” (Trevor)

“Relax. Les is asleep right now. She won’t hear me talk about her shitty cooking.” (Adal)

Just then, I noticed Les crawling out of the tent. Immediately, I started to focus on the roots and tried to salvage what I could. Trevor tried to save Adal’s ass by trying to take back what he said.

“C’mon. You don’t really mean that. I found it quite unique in flavor. Right?” (Trevor)

“What are you talking about? Did you forget how long I was stuck near that tree all night? I thought I was gonna die! Seriously, I thought that Les was trying to kill….. She’s right behind me, and she’s holding a dagger, isn’t she?” (Adal)

Trevor and I immediately started to nod our head. Adal immediately began to sweat, and he paled.

“You’re going to die if you keep spouting your mouth like that.” (Les)

“Now. Les. Let’s calm down here. You can’t refute the truth here…” (Adal)

“But you can “suppress” the truth. Right?” (Les)

Les leapt on Adal and put him into a stranglehold while tangling his arms with her legs. Adal started to scream, choke, and turn blue as he started flailing around.

“TAKE IT BACK. I DON”T COOK LIKE A GOBLIN. TAKE IT BACK” (Les)

Just then, Descal came out of the tent and just stared at the two that were tussling on the ground. They immediately froze up, and Adal just lost consciousness. Descal cocked his head and said something in a strange language. Then, he went over to me, took a root, and started to munch on it as he stared at Les. He looked over to me and asked:

“No stop? He die if no stop.” (Descal)

“Ah yes.” (Blythe)

“Hey Les. Stop choking Adal. He is going to die if you continue choking him.” (Blythe)

“…. Uhh yeah. Don’t worry. I know when to stop. He isn’t going to die. Not that I care.” *clears throat* So uhhh what happened? I remember being pulled by a spider, but I can’t remember much after that. How am I alive?” (Les)

“You have this guy right here to thank for that. After you got dragged away, this suicidal maniac jumped in after you came back. Not only that, he even somehow got his hands on some Grade A mana water.” (Blythe)

“You’re joking, right?” (Les)

“Every single thing I said is true.” (Blythe)

“Okay, just” (Les)

“who is this guy? Yeah, we are all wondering that right now.” (Blythe)

I looked over at Descal who was still nonchalantly munching on his burnt root with a faraway look in his eyes. This guy was probably the most mysterious person I have ever met. Ever since he has come back from that cave I noticed a growing …atmosphere that was radiating from him. Before I could think more about it, Trevor walked over to Descal and asked me if I could translate some stuff for him.

“Blythe. Can you ask him how he came upon this sword?” (Trevor)

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I relayed the question to Descal, and he replied that he found it in the ruins. When I informed Trevor of this, he merely nodded and asked if he had any skills with the sword. Surprisingly, it turned out that Descal didn’t have any training with the sword. I got curious of why Trevor was asking this, and Trevor replied that Descal threw away his sword too casually, and the way he threw his sword was that of a complete amateur and almost cut off his hand. Trevor then walked over to Descal, handed the sword to Descal, and gripped his shoulder to look him straight in the eye. He said to take extremely good care of this sword and not to treat it like some toy. He then offered sword lessons to Descal which Descal looked pretty enthusiastic about. But this new information made me extremely curious, how does Descal fight?

“Descal, exactly what is your fighting style? Do you use a knife or what?” (Blythe)

“Use sword. Kinda. No specific style. Use magic.” (Descal)

“Wait, are you a mage?” (Blythe)

“I use magic.” (Descal)

“Wow. Umm. I don’t know how to reply to that…” (Blythe)

Even Trevor was surprised about this. First, a mage by himself was able to survive close quarter fights in the cave, and young mages are pretty rare to begin with. A human becomes a mage only after years of hard work and study, or the person had a natural affinity for magic like Adal. To think, we would also meet another young mage. Huh. I can’t tell what is wrong with our luck today.

“So. Descal… Trevor and I have some questions for you. We were all wondering what happened down there? Also how did you get such purified mana water while you were rescuing Les? Did you really go down to the deepest level?” (Blythe)

“Fought spider. Got Les. Found secret passage. Got the water. Came back up.” (Descal)

“You make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal.” (Blythe)

“Eh.” (Descal)

“Why did you go down screaming like that when you came out of the cave? Are you sick?” (Blythe)

He got really quiet. He then whispered that it was complicated. Maybe he got cursed. That would explain some of the weird stuff that was surrounding him. Well, it doesn’t look like he is going to talk much anymore, and the whole gang is up so let’s finish up our dinner and set up watch for the night. Adal woke up after Les slapped him awake, and we drew straws for the watch. Since Descal was new, we decided to pair him up with the first watch who was Les. I went into the tent to quickly catch some shut eye before it was my turn to keep watch.

POV: Descal

Sigh. The night sky is really beautiful. Yeah, Earth had a real nice view, but pollution ruined most of the view. It’s really nice being able to actually see the stars while breathing fresh air. I look over, and I see Les on top of the tree fiddling with her knife. I wonder why I was paired with Les since we can’t really speak to each other. Perhaps Blythe really needed a break.

I then looked at my sword once more. Trevor looked real disappointed that I threw the sword at him. First, I felt horrible for giving him that scare. I shouldn’t have thrown that sword. I suck at throwing things to begin with. Yeah, I can shoot arrows or guns quite accurately, but I could never throw anything with much accuracy for some reason. Yeah, I sucked at dodge ball. Second, I probably insulted his way of life by treating my sword like that. Well, not much I can do about spilled milk. On the bright side, Trevor offered some sword lessons so that should prove to be really useful. Hopefully.

But right now, I am worried about the future. This world hasn’t changed one bit from when I was gone. If anything, it looks like it has regressed instead of progressed. I guess all those destructive wars whittled down civilization and technological advancements. Two, I can feel my body coming under intense strain. Now that I am in a world with abundant mana, my soul is starting to recharge itself to its former glory. The healing water only made this worse. You may think that this is a good thing, but it’s wrong. My body won’t be able to keep up with the increase in the mana levels of my soul; my body will morph and undergo extreme change in order to accommodate the higher mana levels, and I want to keep my present body at the present. At the moment, I am trying to delay the inevitable by continuously using my mana to bind my body. Once I have time and materials, I should be able to cast a sealing spell to seal off my level of mana so it doesn’t reach dangerous levels. Until then, I have to be careful of avoiding reckless use of magic.

SO many things to do. I just can’t catch a break, but it’s good to be back in a way. The peaceful life of Earth didn’t really sit well with me. It felt like a dream, and I would always spend every morning worrying about everything crashing down on me. I wonder how Mom and Dad are doing. If I had one regret, it would be suddenly disappearing like this. I wish I had the chance to say goodbye at least. I heard a noise from the tree, and I saw Les approaching me.

She knelt down and said something that I had no idea about. I think she was thanking me for saving her since she gave me a wooden carving of a knife. I hope there wasn’t any extra meaning for the carving to be a knife. Wait. She wasn’t awake when I grabbed her chest right? Nah. She was knocked out cold. I’m just overthinking this. Anyway, she sat down next to me and watched the night sky with me.

Not long after, Trevor came to take over the watch. Since I had no tent nor had the time to build one, I decided to climb up a tree and sleep on one of the branches. Trevor offered me his, but I didn’t really feel comfortable sleeping in Trevor’s tent. There is some weird shit in his tent like shrunken heads that makes me real jittery looking at them too long in the dark. I made sure to borrow some rope so that I wouldn’t fall to my death. I found a nice sturdy branch and fell asleep.

I woke up bright and early without needing someone to wake me up, something that rarely happened in my teenage years. We had some jerky and more roots for breakfast before setting off. It turned out our destination was the town of Shiville which was where the nearest mercenary guild was. It turns out that the mercenary guild was created soon after the first calamity war. The mercenaries were completely scattered and disorganized. As a result, many of the new nations thought it would be a good idea to group them under a guild similar to the merchant’s guild. As a result, the mercenary guild was born where people could come and post requests for odd jobs. This was a win-win situation because people had a place to post requests, and mercenaries now had a steady place to obtain work. I was curious if Terr had changed to a fantasy RPG so I jokingly asked Blythe if the mercenary guild had a ranking system. The mercenaries did have a ranking system, but it was never really taken very seriously. In fact, it was discontinued a couple decades ago when brawls started to break out, and some lower ranked mercenaries were embarrassing the upper ranked mercenaries. In the end, it never really worked out. Now, mercenaries were judged by the average difficulty level of the jobs that the mercenaries take and succeed in. The difficulty ranking went like this: (lowest difficulty to highest difficulty) Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The mana water was a Blue level difficulty request from the alchemist guild.

We stopped near a creek in an area that was heavily surrounded by trees so that it was hard to find our camp area. We also lit a fire because it was still bright outside, and Adal started to cook some meat from the deer that Blythe shot on our way. I started sword practice with Trevor, and the results were….. Horrific. I had absolutely no talent with the sword whatsoever. I just could not keep the balance with the sword. In addition, I just couldn’t get the feeling right. No matter how many times Trevor told me to think of the sword as an extension of myself I couldn’t do it. I kept treating the sword as a freaking club or a poking stick. In the end, Trevor found out that I had a LOT more skills in hand to hand combat by accident, and he just gave me a couple pointers on that instead, but he couldn’t help much with it since he wasn’t an expert on it. In the end, I was just stuck with a useless sword that I think I will just hang onto as a club until I can get a better weapon. Hand to hand combat won’t get me far in this world. This world isn’t Kung Fu Panda.

Well, the day ended pretty quickly, and we were near the road that led to the city. Once we get on the road, we should be able to get to the city by sundown. All along the way, I had Blythe teach me the common language, and with the help of magic (strengthening neural connections and memory formations as well as extra energy supply/ electrical stimulation to Broca and Wernicke’s area), I could now speak nouns and telegraphic speech. If Blythe continues to teach me at this rate, I should be able to speak in a really broken and heavily accented manner, but it’s a major improvement at least.

As the sun went down, Blythe sat down next to me on top of the tree and asked how the training went with Trevor. I merely replied that I had no skills with the sword, and she nodded her head.

“On the bright side, you could probably sell that sword for a lot of money at the weapon shop. That way you will at least start out with something to get you started.” (Blythe)

“I guess. Real Pity. Guess didn’t inherit skillz.” (Descal)

“Although I don’t understand why you would want to use a sword when you can use magic. Wouldn’t it be better to focus more on your skills in the manipulation of mana?” (Blythe)

“Less attraction. Avoid draft if war.” (Descal)

“Pfff. And you tell me that you want to become a mercenary.” (Blythe)

“Now easy way to get job while travel” (Descal)

“Yeah. You don’t look like the farmer type. Sorry for calling you a hick in the caves.” (Blythe)

“No need. Asked easy questions.”

“So exactly what was your past life like? I can’t believe that you never heard of the calamity wars.”

“Far far away. Had parents. One little brother. Traveled. Came here. Very peaceful.”

“And yet you have that monstrous strength.”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked at the setting sun once more. It was quite beautiful as it went down the canopy of the forest with a soft glowing orange light that wrapped around the trees. As I let my mind wander, I began to think of all the supplies that I would need to buy at the town: clothes, furs for bedding, flint and steel…. And weapons. I had no idea what weapon to get for myself. I could use ranged weaponry, but bows and crossbows tend to be very limiting in what I could do in a fight. A sword is a no go. A dagger just doesn’t fit for me. I have absolutely no idea how to fight with a spear or an ax. But what should I get? The answer will come eventually. Maybe browsing the weapons shop will give…

My eyes caught Adal rummaging through Les’s stuff and putting something into it. I swear this guy had the worst timing ever because he did it just when Les returned from scouting. Immediately, she crouched and started to sneak up on Adal ready to assassinate him. Suddenly, an idea hit me. I remembered a famous game that existed on Earth which featured assassins, and their favorite weapon was the hidden blade. Now obviously, that weapon won’t work very well here since it was exclusively built for killing other humans, but it is a good idea to build upon. First, I would put the blade on top of the arm, not underneath it. In addition, I would probably put metal lining around the armband so that it could also function as a shield. Then, I would customize the blade so that it would be detachable, and with a rope attached, to the end of the blade I can essentially make a very dangerous “whip”. With this weapon, I would also have the element of surprise, and it would be extremely adaptable too. Now the only problem is how to make it. I can make a custom order for the blade. Hmm. This would require more thought. First, let’s see how developed metalworking is right now, and I can go from there.

When Blythe heard Adal’s scream, she rolled her eyes and went down the tree to calm down Les before she would “passive aggressively” beat Adal. Les is quite scary surprisingly. Well, I have the third watch this time so I should catch some shut eye as fast as possible.