The burst of sound was what surprised me the most. Though the world hadn’t been silent while everyone else had been frozen, the amount of screaming, shouting, and howling that erupted in an instant was enough to make me flinch.
The second thing that surprised me almost as much was the shadow that immediately fell over me as soon as time resumed. Looking up, I was no longer staring a swinging weapon as it hurtled down at my face, but my vision was blocked instead by the strange clothes that the Otherworlder wore.
His flame blade locked against the demon’s own, which made no sense since I’d seen him cut through the other two demons already, and their weapons were made of the same Aether as their bodies. He looked back at me with an awkward grin.
“Are you alright, Lena?”
I stared at him. For the first time since I’d met him, I realized that he looked a lot younger than I’d first thought. Though he was pretty tall, rivaling the Sheriff in height, I only just realized that he was probably a lot lankier than I’d first thought, his figure being mostly obscured by the baggy hooded shirt he wore. In that moment, I could tell that his proportions looked slightly off, the hallmarks of a boy that was still being ravaged by the worst of puberty.
I was broken out of my trance by a threatening growl. The shadow growled angrily at Ryuji as it tried to force its way through the stalemate of their locked blades, but Ryuji didn’t seem to be bothered. He just gave one last grin, an awkward looking smile that seemed to be his attempt at looking cool, and slashed behind him without looking.
The demon fell to the floor, bisected like its fellows.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”
Without waiting for a response from me, he launched himself forward at the remaining demons.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Ryuji flourished his blade and shouted some other nonsensical words each time he cast a magic spell. I more focused instead, on the reaction of the Sheriff and the rest of the villagers that were gathered around to watch. A majority of them had turned pale and ducked away to the side of the road, bending over and retching as Ryuji split more demons in half. The Sheriff and a few more of the older villagers didn’t have as bad of a reaction, but even they seemed to grimace in disgust.
“Hey Sheriff,” I said. “Those are Goblins, right? Made of flesh and blood? Not demons made of Aether?”
The Sheriff looked confused by my question. “Yes,” he said. “Lena, are you alright? My son’s told me you’ve had quite a stressful day.”
I laughed. That was putting it mildly. The fact that the Sheriff had confirmed that the villagers were somehow seeing something different than what I was only made it even worse. But was it a silver lining in disguise? Maybe I was just going crazy. Somehow that thought was more comforting.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Not so convincingly if the Sheriff’s expression was any indication, but an ear-piercing screech drew our attention back to the fight.
“That’ll teach you to attack innocent people,” he said, to the demon currently impaled on his flaming sword, as if it would somehow retain the lesson that Ryuji was trying to teach it. He flicked his sword to the side, sending the demon’s body sliding off and tumbling a few times on the floor from the momentum.
A few of the stoic villagers lost their stomachs at that.
Ryuji locked eyes with me, gave me a smile, and turned to the villagers before raising his sword.
“You are safe now!” he said.
I could tell that nobody in the village believed him. I looked around, to see if anyone looked like they weren’t about to soil themselves, but even the Sheriff looked like he was considering laying down his sword and begging for mercy.
I sighed, finally accepting that somehow I, little old Lena, amateur magic user, apprentice butcher, whose only noticeable qualities were a nice ass that I’d just learned about today, was somehow the most reliable person here under pressure. Maybe that was unfair, since the rest of the onlookers probably saw Ryuji standing proudly in a pile of Goblin guts and gore, rather than the quickly fading Aether that made up the demons’ bodies, but I didn’t care.
“Three cheers for the adventurer!” I said, cementing my fate as his Follower even more. “Hip hip, hurray!”
Judging from Ryuji’s wide smile, he didn’t seem to notice that I was the only one cheering.
“Hip hip, hurray!”
The Sheriff joined in with me on the second cheer, which I was grateful for.
“Hip hip, hurray!”
A small handful of adults accompanied me on the final cheer, though they’d spoken in almost a whisper, as if trying not to draw any attention to themselves.
Ryuji smiled and lowered his sword. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, when a blue panel appeared in front of him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Hip hip, hurray!”
I frowned when I heard the fourth cheer, now with more people joining in. The crowd sounded nervous and they must’ve been if they’d lost their ability to count. Ryuji didn’t seem to notice, too focused on the blue panel to pay attention to anything else. It was written backwards from my perspective, but once again, I had no problem understanding it.
Quest: Defend the Village [COMPLETE]
By defending the village, you have cemented yourself as a Hero and a true adventurer in their eyes.
[GOBLINs] defeated: 7/7
Casualties: 0
Grade: Calculating… S+
Rewards:
+200 exp
+20 Stat Points
+20 Skill Points
“Hip hip, hurray!”
Were they still going? At this point, most of the villagers who weren’t still recovering from puking their guts out were shouting, creating a dissonant cheer from the onlookers who sounded like they didn’t want to be there.
Ryuji didn’t seem to notice, being more occupied with doing a little shake of excitement before tapping the blue panel with his finger. It disappeared instantly and was quickly replaced by another.
Secret Objective: Save the Girl! [COMPLETE]
By saving your love interest from certain death, she surely must be grateful. Surely, this gratitude could blossom into something more in the future.
+15 [AFFECTION] (Lena)
Why the hell did the panel sound so uncertain? And what the hell did [AFFECTION] mean? I saw Ryuji glance up at me, and I quickly pretended I was looking somewhere else, cold sweat dripping down my brow.
“Hip hip, hurray!”
I looked around to see a few new faces that hadn’t actually been around to see what Ryuji had done, but had been attracted to the site by the commotion, their curiosity being stronger than their desire to stay away from Ryuji. I was sure that half the people cheering at this point had no idea what they were cheering for.
Ryuji walked up to me, and the nearby villagers stepped back to clear a path, despite being nowhere close to Ryuji’s path. Thankfully he didn’t seem to notice the villagers avoiding him like the second coming of the Pestilence. Unfortunately, that was mostly because he had his eyes locked onto me.
Seeing no way to pretend that he wasn’t walking straight for me, I turned to him and gave him a smile, already missing the time when the world had been frozen just for me.
“Are you alright?” he asked, scanning my body for any wounds.
Remembering what my mom told me, I struggled to resist the urge to try and hide my body with my hands.
“Yeah,” I replied.
Ryuji smiled. “I’m glad.”
I don’t know if he expected to say anything else, but we just stared at each other for a few seconds, the awkward silence only being broken up by the occasional “hip hip, hurray.” By the time I realized that I should’ve said something, the silence had gone on for too long.
Fortunately, the panels decided to finally work in my favour for once.
Tutorial: Levelling up
Congratulations! By completing your first quest, you’ve earned enough exp to advance to the next level! You can access your status screen right now by using the [Status] command and use your newly acquired Stat Points.
You can also access your skill menu right now by using the [Skills] command and use your newly acquired Skill Points.
Why don’t you try it out?
As Ryuji let out a loud cheer of his own, interrupting the villagers in the middle of yet another “hip hip, hurray”, I couldn’t help but notice the insistent tone that the panels had. Though it was obvious that the panels had some form of sentience to them, I still wasn’t sure what their goals were. I knew I would be watching them closely in the coming future.
“Status!” Ryuji shouted. “Skills!”
As the blue panel disappeared, I expected to see more panels pop up to replace them, but nothing happened. At least from my point of view. The way that Ryuji was stroking his chin and poking at the air made it obvious that he was seeing something that the rest of us couldn’t.
I didn’t know why I could only see some panels and not others, but I felt like I wasn’t going to get my answers just by watching Ryuji awkwardly pawing at the air, oblivious to the world around him.
“Hey, Sheriff,” I whispered. I motioned to the Sheriff, who was about five feet away from me after he’d backed off when Ryuji walked closer to me.
The Sheriff flinched when he heard me call him, but when Ryuji paid him no mind, he seemed to relax. Though he stayed quiet, he nodded at me to show me he was listening.
“I think you should get most of these people out of here,” I said. “Ryuji seems to be distracted for now, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to be the case.”
The Sheriff nodded immediately. “Right,” he said. “I’ll get right on that, ma’am.”
My first reaction was to want to laugh at the amount of respect the Sheriff was showing me. It felt strange to see the tough man avoid my gaze like I was royalty. But before I could feel any sort of humour in the situation, I realized that he was right.
I wasn’t strictly royalty, but Followers were considered to be powerful people in their own right. While the outright manipulation of an Otherworlder was forbidden, the position of being a Follower did have an inevitable amount of influence on an Otherworlder’s actions, which demanded a certain amount of responsibility and respect on its own.
While I wasn’t officially a Follower yet, the Sheriff seemed to think I was a Follower in every way that mattered.
And he was probably right.
I sighed, watching the Sheriff do my dirty work and round up the villagers while Ryuji stood in the center of the road, mumbling to himself while the demon corpses slowly disintegrated around him. I wondered how that looked like to the rest of the villagers, who might still be seeing them as fake Goblins, but I didn’t want to ask them and risk sounding more crazy than I already felt.
Before long, there were only a few of the more confident villagers left to convince Ryuji that he hadn’t been rudely forgotten about while he was in his trance. As we waited for Ryuji to stop scrutinizing the air so intensely, they stood around in silence, too nervous to make any noise. Though they all stole quick peeks at Ryuji, curious about what he was doing, none of them were brave enough to stare at him directly or for too long.
It was only after a few minutes that I realized they were looking at me in the same way.