When Hal first heard of a confirmed Otherworlder sighting in his little village of Plainswood, he hadn’t known what to think. At first, he’d dismissed the Sherrif’s son’s claims as a prank, or perhaps the words of a gullible boy who had listened to Old Fran’s ramblings for too long, even when he looked nervously up at him and told him that Lena was the one to find the Otherworlder and was currently escorting the boy around town.
His first thought had actually been one of relief. He knew Lena well enough to know that she had a mischievous streak, one that she’d gotten from her mother. While it was highly frowned upon to falsely claim an Otherworlder sighting, with the possibility of being fined heavily if you lived in a larger city, he didn’t think it would be outside of Lena’s comfort zone to try and prank her friend with such an outlandish claim.
But when he saw the boy shivering, begging him to believe him, swearing on his mother’s grave that he knew for a fact that the Otherworlder was real, Hal felt his blood freeze in his veins. He wasn’t close to the boy, only knowing him as the Sherrif’s son and Lena’s childhood friend, but he knew him well enough to know that he would never invoke his mother’s name so lightly.
After telling his wife about the news, Hal stood in his shop, keeping an eye glued against the window, expecting Lena to come along at any moment.
When he saw Lena walking back home, an unfamiliar boy following along with her, Hal braced himself, ready to play the part of a friendly butcher who just wanted to help out a weary traveler, but his heart almost stopped when he saw where the boy was looking.
His first reaction as a father was to be furious. How dare a boy look at his daughter in that way.
His second reaction was to be terrified.
Otherworlders were notorious for many things, including their tendency to adopt Followers. Of course, this was one of the tamer things that an Otherworlder could do, considering the large-scale actions of an Otherworlder could mean the toppling of governments, the destruction of cities, and the murder of hundreds, or even thousands, but in that moment, Hal could only think that he would prefer dying if it meant that his daughter would be spared from the fate of being a Follower.
A small part of him knew that some parents would be thrilled at the idea. A child becoming a Follower was technically a path for great success and riches. Not only did Followers of Otherworlders boast an exponential rate of growth in their talents and skills when “partying up” with an Otherworlder, they were also given a handsome reward by the crown if they helped them mitigate the Otherworlder’s destructive actions. While Hal knew that his own parents would’ve been thrilled by the idea, he couldn’t say the same.
In his youth, Hal had read “The Chronicles of a Witness”. It was a book written by a Follower of the Pestilence King since she was twelve. An autobiography.
The first-hand experiences recorded in that book made Hal shudder, and the Pestilence King had been known to be one of the less temperamental Otherworlders that had spawned in Astranta. Eti, as well as two other Followers, had been subjected to witness a number of disturbing acts that the Otherworlder had committed.
The Pestilence King was dead now, and Eti was still alive and ridiculously rich. She’d been paid out by the Crown for her help in mitigating the damage done by the Pestilence King, and had the royalties from the book that she’d written based on her experiences, but she had been quick to fall into a deep depression afterwards. After bearing the responsibility of handling an Otherworlder since she was only twelve years old, her sense of reality had been severely twisted and she’d never been able to properly reintegrate herself into society. Hal didn’t blame her. After seeing the aftereffects of the Pestilence King’s actions on society, it wasn’t surprising to think that she would want to hide away from it, if only to avoid the guilt of what she could have prevented.
Hal shuddered to think that that could be the fate of his daughter. He would do anything in his power to prevent it.
As Hal watched Ryuji’s reaction to Lena bursting awkwardly into the room, and leaving just as quickly, Hal grimaced as the lovestruck expression on the powerful being refused to fade. He had to nip that in the bud as early as he possibly could.
“I apologize for my daughter,” he said. “She can be quite rude at times.”
Ryuji frowned at that. “Really? She seemed pretty nice to me. Are you sure you should be talking about your daughter like that?”
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Hal felt sweat drop down his brow. He wasn’t sure whether the Otherworlder was threatening him, but it seemed like he was already infatuated to the point where he would defend her honor. That wasn’t good.
“She is my daughter,” Hal said, with a shrug. He wasn’t sure whether his attempts at being nonchalant were succeeding. “I love her, but I am not blind to our flaws.”
“Well, I didn’t notice anything bad about her,” Ryuji insisted. “She just seems a bit shy.”
Hal was surprised the gritting of his teeth wasn’t more audible in the quiet room. “Perhaps. Say, traveller. May I ask you a question?”
Unfortunately, Hal wasn’t a subtle man. The change in subject wasn’t smooth at all, but he could only hope that Ryuji wouldn’t call him out on it. Ryuji raised an eyebrow, not oblivious to the sudden change in topic, but seeming to be willing to play along.
“Sure,” he said.
“Do you have a dream?”
Ryuji’s narrowed eyes softened, taken aback in confusion.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“What is it that you want to do in this world?” Hal asked, wondering if that was too direct. Though a normal person would probably interpret ‘in this world’ a little more generally, but he was dealing with an Otherworlder who could take that in a more literal sense. Hal hadn’t realized that until he said it out loud, but thankfully Ryuji didn’t seem to take notice, focusing more on the question itself.
“Well, I want to become an adventurer for sure,” he said. “Bit disappointing to find out that guilds don’t really exist in this wo- country, but I guess that’s not too big of a deal.”
“I see,” Hal lied. “And what exactly does an adventurer do?”
“They… do adventurer things,” Ryuji said, taken aback by the questions. “Dungeons, monster hunting, questing. You start off with killing slimes and goblins, and eventually escalate to hunting dragons and demon kings. Isn’t that pretty normal here?”
Hal paled. Though Ryuji seemed to be quite docile at first glance, it seemed that the Otherworlder had a murderous streak. Hal had no idea why anyone would want to kill slimes without harvesting them, and though Goblin bandits were sometimes a problem in the more southern parts of the country, the Goblins in the general area were no problem, with the local forest tribe even being friendly enough to establish a good trading relationship with Plainswood and some of the surrounding villages. He wondered if he should send out a messenger to them, to warn them of the murderous and possibly racist Otherworlder. He decided not to pay attention to the claim of dragons and demon kings, not feeling ready to even try to process that.
“That’s a good dream,” Hal lied, his mind too occupied to think of a better response. He was too busy thinking about what Ryuji’s dreams meant.
While nobody could ever claim that Otherworlders were straightforward, there were a few sets of rules that they seemed to share. The most obvious rule amongst them was that Otherworlders, without exception, were extremely difficult to kill. This often meant that they were incredibly talented in magic and combat, to the point where you would need to bring an army to even consider dealing any amount of damage to them, but even the ‘weaker’ Otherworlders tended to have some sort of gimmick that ensured they would shrug off any attempts at murder and assassination. This was what made them so dangerous, and why no governing body would attempt brute force to get rid of them, as they would risk their own destruction in the attempt.
The second rule that Otherworlders seemed to share was that most of them had a gimmick to their strengths. Strangely enough, it was easy to guess what an Otherworlder’s powers would be if you knew their goals.
The most common example used was that if an Otherworlder’s goal was to become a great healer, they would likely have some sort of biological power, like the Pestilence King’s ability to manipulate living material on a whim. It was a hotly debated topic on whether the Otherworlder’s power was shaped by their desires or if it was the other way around, but the result was often the same.
Hal knew he wasn’t a well educated man, but the reason why he had asked Ryuji that specific question, other than to shift the conversation away from Lena, was to see if there was anything he could figure out about the Otherworlder. What he would do with that information, he didn’t know. Though the crown paid handsomely for any information about Otherworlders, all he really cared about was keeping Lena safe, money be damned.
So why did he feel like this was important, somehow?
Hal realized, with a start, that he’d been lost in thought for a few seconds, plunging his store into an awkward silence. Fortunately, Ryuji didn’t seem to notice. He was gazing off into space instead.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to have so much fun here. It won’t be anything like it was back home.”
Hal had no idea what to say to that, so he stayed quiet. He had planned to try and dig into Ryuji’s motives a bit more, to try and figure out what his power would be, but he didn’t see any reason to drag him out of the trance-like daze he seemed to be in at the moment. He still felt uncomfortable about having an Otherworlder inside his home, so close to his wife and child, but he would take any wins he could get.
At the very least, it seemed like Ryuji was no longer thinking about his daughter.
“Goblins, huh,” Ryuji said wistfully. “That would be a pretty good start. I wonder if this village has a goblin problem.”
Hal opened his mouth, as if to deny the idea, but shut it quickly, not wanting to disturb him. For some reason, it felt like a bad decision not to say something, but his survival instinct told him not to draw any more attention to himself than was necessary.
Hal felt his legs shaking underneath him.