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Unsure of what to do, he waved and shouted a hesitant "thank you."
The boy raised his free hand and waved back, smiling.
“Are you alright, mister? Come over here,” he beckoned.
His father flashed him a look but said nothing and turned his gaze back to Logan.
The boy’s voice sounded peculiar, but Logan couldn’t place what it was precisely that threw him off. It wasn't the boy's accent, which reminded him of the American South, but something else.
"Go," Mikey said, urging him on.
Logan shambled towards the pair. His knee ached, and the scrapes on his arms stung painfully.
The man eyed him warily at first, then seeming to make up his mind about Logan, broke out into a wide, warm smile.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said, eyeing Logan up and down.
“Only a fool would wade in that part of the springs, do you have a death wish son?” he asked, shoving Logan’s shoulder cordially.
The push almost knocked him over.
“You know what that thing is?” Logan asked, gesturing to the fish.
“Are you hunters?”
He eyed the bows in their hands. They were simple curved, wooden bows, obviously handmade. He hadn’t seen anything remotely like them outside of museums. They looked practically made for daily use, though he couldn’t imagine many people using bows and arrows nowadays outside of sport, and he knew that those were high-tech gadgets compared to the primitive tools these two carried.
The boy looked too young to be a bow hunter, and the man too large and stocky. The big one, the boy's father, frowned briefly at the question, his mood visibly shifting for a moment before he smiled again.
“Not hunters, son; we just come here to enjoy the springs. ‘Path here from the village isn’t too dangerous, but you can’t be too careful, so…” he said, half lifting the bow.
“That,” he nodded towards the skewered fish corpse lying in its pool of blue blood, “is a steam fish. A pretty big one, too. They only swim in these upper pools. I’d ‘spect you to know that but, you look pretty clueless.”
The boy chuckled, looking up the near foot of height difference at the expression of vacant confusion that had found a permanent home on Logan’s face.
“You okay there, bud? You look a little beat,” Huck said, directing Logan to an outcropping of rock that rose to knee height.
They sat while the boy retrieved the arrows from the fish.
“I’m Huck, that’s my boy, Ryan. Don’t mind his laughin’ atchya, he’s a good kid just got some humor ‘bout him,” he said, and smiled, watching his son.
After a few moments with no response, he looked back at Logan who also sat, absently watching the boy playing with the fish, expertly dancing between pools of hot, boiling blood.
Noticing Huck's gaze upon him, he turned towards the large man.
“Oh, I’m Logan,” he said.
What was he doing in the upper springs unarmed? His clothes look funny too, definitely not from Woolam.
“You’re not a local, are you son? What brings you around here?” Huck asked.
He was sure that it was intended as an innocent question, but it struck Logan that it was one to which he had no answer.
What was he going to tell this man who’d casually killed a huge monster like that, unhesitatingly, as if it were a normal, everyday occurrence? And what was that text? The more he thought about what had happened in the last hour the more confused he became.
“You could say that. I um, got lost. Where are we?”
Huck looked at him curiously, wondering what circumstances could possibly have led to the strange man's predicament. He was a straightforward, honest man, though, content to keep to himself and refrain from prying into others business when they didn’t want to share. This stranger, if a bit odd, didn’t seem dangerous.
“In the foothill springs, son, a bit north of Woolam. Where were you coming from, Tarik or Kareer?”
Logan didn’t want to lie to the man, but he wasn’t ready to share his incredulous story with him yet. Huck was his only contact in this new world, and judging by the steam fish, he anticipated he’d need his help to survive.
“A bit further,” he said, then added “thank you."
He offered Huck a weak smile.
An awkward moment later, Huck smiled back and stood, turning his attention to Ryan, who was jogging gleefully towards them.
“None of them broke pa! Poppy’s arrows are awesome,” Ryan said, returning with the arrows from the fish, holding his prize up high under his father’s nose.
He was beaming, and even looked briefly at the stranger for approval.
Huck rubbed his head with a calloused hand, tussling his hair.
“They’re special alright,” he said, taking the arrows and wiping them with a rag produced from his jacket.
He returned the arrows to his quiver, then looped his arm around Ryan and swung him over a shoulder.
“That doesn’t mean you go runnin’ off on your own to get ‘em though,” he said.
Ryan laughed and playfully swung little fists down on his dad’s back. Over his other shoulder Huck called to Logan.
“We ought to head back to town, light will be out soon, and you don’t want to get caught in the forest after dark. Come with us, I can take better care of those cuts at home.”
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Looking down at his knees, Logan contemplated for a moment before responding. He’d never been comfortable accepting hospitality. Noticing his hesitation, Mikey encouraged him.
"Come on Logan. We don’t know anything about this place, we need his help," Mikey said, his usual spriteliness toned down to a gently supplicative tone.
He can sense my mood.
“I know. You’re right. I just—"
He doubled over, vomiting onto the stone at his feet. His head was being assaulted by stabbing icepicks. He couldn’t breathe, and suddenly he felt claustrophobic and cold. Sweat beaded on his skin, and he began to shake. The whiplash from the encounter hit him out of nowhere, and he continued in that state for what felt like minutes until a comforting hand gripped his shoulder, squeezing him gently, reassuringly.
“You’re worse off than I thought, come on,” Huck coaxed, and helped him to his feet.
The group made their way towards the fish, which had landed at the head of the trail leading down from the upper springs.
Huck approached its head, eyeing the pool of thick blue blood, which seemed to boil, bubble, and fume. Seeing no way to avoid it, he stepped in and knelt by the fish’s open mouth.
He’d just have to be fast. With a gloved hand, Huck grasped a long fang and tore it free. He examined it appreciatively, rolling it between his fingers, the tooth’s pearly white surface reflecting the fading light. He removed a canvas bag from his belt and began to fill it with the fangs.
Logan, having mostly recovered from the episode, also approached the fish.
He was struck again by how massive it was; what he’d guessed to be around eight feet in length when he’d first seen it, he now realized was closer to ten: it was a goliath.
Its scales looked hard and resilient, like little kite shields stacked in a perfect wall to protect its body. He reached out and slid his hand down its side, feeling its smooth, seamless armor.
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Steam Fish, Level 3: Dead
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The text appeared in front of him, just like before, as his hand came in contact with the creature. Now however, there was a new line underneath the name.
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Loot Steam Fish?
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Logan blinked at the prompt. This was just like any RPG game he’d spent hundreds of hours playing.
“Um, Mikey?” Logan asked in his head.
"Yes! What’s up?"
“The floating words that are asking me if I want to loot the steam fish, Mikey. That’s what’s up. The word. That appeared magically. In front of my face.”
Logan glanced at Huck, who was showing the teeth to Ryan, explaining something to him. Neither seemed to notice the floating, glowing text.
"Ah! Yes! That’s one of your powers, Enhanced Looting! Try it out," he said with obvious excitement.
To Mikey, it seemed, it was as if the words and the prompt were perfectly natural and expected.
Enhanced Looting?
“Mikey. What?”
"Go on! Stop hesitating, just do it! I want to see how it works! I’ll explain more later, I promise."
“Okay, fine,” Logan said, shaking his head.
He tried to touch the floating “Loot Steam Fish” button, but his fingers passed right through it.
Trying another approach, he focused on the words and imagined himself clicking on the button like he was playing a video game. To his surprise, it worked.
The text faded quickly and disappeared like an image on a TV being turned off. The fish corpse began to glow a cool yellow; it was soft at first, but soon escalated in brightness until, with a flash, the fish disappeared.
A text box opened in front of him, listing various items. This time it had a large scrollbar on the side.
A neutral, almost robotic feminine voice that reminded him of Siri began speaking to him inside his head; it was somewhat muted, like background noise, but still loud enough for him to hear and understand.
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You Have Looted
Steam Fish | Level 3
Steam Fish Head x1
Steam Fish Fangs x83
Steam Fish Scales x3,726
Steam Fish Fillet x12
Vial of Steam Fish Blood x50
Ring of Refreshment x1
Steel Short Sword x1
Scrap of Chainmail Hauberk x2
Lesser Steam Fish Token x1
Bronze Coin x100 Silver Coin x200
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"Oooohhh yes! Exactly what I wanted! It turned out just how I’d hoped," Mikey said.
“Just how you hoped? You did this? What did you base it on?” Logan asked, inspecting the page arrayed before him.
"I loved the video games in your world, so I kinda mashed them all together when I made this power for you. I didn’t have a lot of time, but it turned out perfectly!"
He practically squealed the last word.
Mikey's energetic voice clanging in Logan’s head didn’t help with his headache from the earlier bout of nausea.
Mikey liked videogames? They had a lot to talk about.
Huck and Ryan knelt in the pool of blue monster blood, holding the fangs they’d been harvesting from the fish’s corpse moments before. They’d both raised their arms to their faces to cover their eyes from the unexpected brightness.
When the flash passed, they lowered their arms and looked up at Logan, who stood with a hand outstretched in front of him where he had been stroking the fish’s side before it evaporated. He appeared lost in concentration.
Father and son shared a bewildered look.
“Logan,” Huck started apprehensively, “did you do that?”
Logan, remembering the presence of the others, snapped out of his inner dialogue with Mikey and stopped inspecting the list of loot. He turned towards them and lowered his arm, which he seemed to have forgotten was raised.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, the word tilting up to sound like a question.
“I did,” he finished, looking in wonder at where the fish had been just moments before.
“You’re a mage, then! An adventurer,” Huck said, looking at Logan with new eyes.
Ryan stared at Logan like he was the most fascinating thing the boy had ever seen, which was strange, Logan thought, considering the massive monster he’d just nonchalantly helped his father kill.
Logan’s thoughts flitted wildly.
An adventurer? Is this really a fantasy world, then? Does that make me an Isekai MC?
He worried that they’d get the wrong idea, and the items he’d looted didn’t change the fact that he still desperately needed their assistance. If he'd had to fight the steam fish alone, he'd have surely died.
“Not exactly, that’s the first time I’ve done that. I’m not even sure how I did it. I need your help, honestly, If it’s not too much trouble. Is your home nearby?”
Logan didn’t mention the items he’d looted, not yet. If making the fish disappear was that amazing to Huck, he didn’t know what he’d think if he knew that Logan could seemingly make materials and money appear from nowhere.
But then again, maybe it was commonplace. He needed more information. It's not that he didn’t trust Huck, but being as naive as he was about his new situation, he couldn’t be too careful.
“Yes, of course. It’s at the bottom of the hill just inside the village, we can make it there by nightfall if we get a move on now,” Huck said, still seemingly enamored by Logan's display.
The group descended from the upper springs and made their way down into the lower terraces, which Logan discovered were much smaller. It was where Huck and Ryan had come to bathe and relax, they told him. As they continued past the springs, the terrain transformed from rocky scarps and terraces to lush, verdant forest.
“This path leads from the village up to the springs. Right now, we’re in one of the safest parts of the forest; It’s wide open here, ‘lot of visibility and almost no monsters but the occasional rabid rabbit or coyote. Don’t wander off though, or you’ll regret it, ‘less you have more of those tricks up your sleeve,” Huck said as they walked down a wide dirt path through the beautiful greenery.
Tall leafy trees of varying thickness stood all around. Mushrooms grew behind fallen logs, and lichen clung to large rocks and boulders lodged in the dirt. The air smelled cool and clean, leaving Logan feeling refreshed and invigorated.
They’d been walking for a few hours he guessed, when he turned around. Behind them, a mountain towered above the trees.
He asked about it, and Huck told him that the springs they’d left were at its base. He gathered that it was part of a large mountain range that separated the land of Huck’s village and the others he’d mentioned from the lands beyond, effectively isolating them from the rest of the world.
Huck had seemed suspicious of his apparent lack of knowledge, but hadn’t mentioned it, and continued to inform him, indulging Logan's curiosity. Upon realizing that he’d been giving himself away, Logan stopped asking so many obviously condemning questions.
Soon, they reached the edge of the forest and emerged onto an open, grassy plain. They continued on a little farther, and Logan saw a village in the distance.
They were coming from above the town, and inside an impressive wooden wall, smoke rose from houses that looked like medieval cottages and cabins of varying shapes and sizes.
Most that he could see were generally rectangular with some sporting an additional appendage or two. The walls of the buildings were wood, cobblestone, or a mixture of the materials, and the rooves were uniformly thatch.
He felt like he had travelled back in time. Suddenly, the bows that the two carried didn’t seem at all out of place. He’d wondered at the steel sword and chainmail hauberk that he’d looted off the Steam Fish, but now the pieces were all coming together. Doing his best not to appear too flabbergasted by the dawning realization that he was very much not in Kansas anymore, he braced himself for his new reality.
Mikey seemed upset that with the era being different most of his knowledge of human culture was probably completely useless since he’d only “studied” contemporary human history.
This couldn’t overshadow how ecstatic he’d become, however, when he’d realized in the forest that he could faintly detect the presence of ambient magic. That he could sense it at all after having lost his own powers meant that the density on this world must be exceptionally high.
All of this he kept to himself, but Logan could sense the excitement in his bodily companion.
They reached the wall’s gate; a twin set of double doors that slid in along the walls to either side. The doors were open, and the guards atop the wall waved them in after recognizing Huck and didn't give them a second glance. The walls, he explained, were not for keeping hostile people out so much as to discourage monsters that would otherwise feed on livestock and attack the villagers.
They took a side street off of the main thoroughfare and within minutes were in front of a wooden cabin that looked much the same as the others, though perhaps on the smaller side. It was a humble building but looked sturdy and cozy.
Huck opened the door and Ryan rushed in, Logan and Huck following after. The air inside the cabin was cool, and Ryan began diligently bringing wood to the fireplace.
Logan’s feet, which were bare and sore from the trek through the forest, relished the animal-fur rugs that blanketed the floor.
Huck hung the bows on the wall adjacent the fireplace, placing them on hooks next to a large pickaxe, and led Logan to a bed in another room.
“Lie down, I’ll be back with some food, and something for those cuts,” Huck said.
Logan thanked him, and sat on the bed, pressing his fingers into the soft blanket. This too was some type of fur, though he didn't recognize it.
He fell backwards, exhausted.
The softness of the blankets, and that he was lying down, made him realize for the first time since waking up in the hot spring just how tired he was.
His stomach grumbled and his body hurt, but sleep washed over him with an authority that brooked no argument.