*'LOD'*

Doki and I were now back with Jeehan and Nio. After a night of talking, it turns out not much happened between our pairs as we were separated. We paid the rider we asked to pick us up, stating we had a change in plans, the other two did the same with theirs. And without much more waiting, we started our quest.

We were now with Thorborg walking the path we had walked before, passing farms and fields as we went. Going by looks, she was a teenage girl, having similar blonde hair to her sister's, which flowed behind her as she walked. She had a petite build and lacked her sister's bust. No matter what Doki says, I'm NOT into that. No, I mean it, I prefer her sister's body to hers any day.

Anyway, the sun now was relatively low, and with clouds blocking its light we couldn't make out much of the scenery. The little we could make out was a relatively bland path, surrounded by fields of crops on either side. I couldn't identify which crops, though. 

Thorborg had been hyped about getting an ID, seeing her diligent work paying off with a bit too much enthusiasm, so we started early for her. It was about 7 am now, so Doki Jeehan, and I were still half asleep, the brisk winds keeping me just conscious.

Since all we were doing was walking anyway, I started a conversation to prevent falling asleep. This was bound to be a less than interesting escort mission anyway, so maybe the stimulation would help liven us up.

I faced Thorborg and asked, "Sorry to seem rude, Thorborg, but is anything nicknames or shortened versions I can call you. I find long names awkward to say..." 

I droned off thinking of possible shortened versions, somewhat missing her answer. 'Thor'? Sounds too burly for a girl, especially a girl who crafts. 'Borg'? Doesn't work, sounds too robotic and antagonistic. 'Thobo'? Sounds too odd. 'Tho'? Yeah, that's a decent name, sounds a bit like 'Flo'.

After giving up, and looking around. I noticed everyone, but Doki, had waited for me. I forgot I stopped moving whilst talking...

"Oh, sorry. I got sidetracked... So what did you say was the answer?" I improvised an excuse for my sudden stop. I mean, I was sidetracked, but that isn't much of an excuse to ignore people.

We ran a bit to catch up to Doki, who seemed to be on autopilot, as Thorborg answered my question for the second time.

She turned to me with a wry smile, sighed a bit, the answered. "Oh, you didn't catch that? Well, some people call me Thor, Thobo or just Thorborg... but most of my friends call me 'Bo'. I don't really mind what you call me, as long as I can tell it's me anything's fine." I nodded as she finished, as I decided to call her 'Tho'. "Oh, but don't make it insulting..." Tho added in a panic.

A moment of silence followed. We heard the growls and footsteps of mobs nearby, but they weren't attacking, mainly due to the level difference. We kept a look out, wanting to do our job protecting Tho, but after deeming our safety, our client broke the ice.

She stopped for a moment,  all of us, but Doki, stopped likewise. 

'Is that guy sleepwalking, or does he just not care?' I thought as I scorned Doki's impatience.

"So wait, you're 'Visitors', right?" She looked at me, I nodded to her in return, she then continued. "What's up with that? You suddenly popped into existence, I assume you can't leave. So how are you so calm? You've dealt with situations, that trouble natives like me, with such confidence. Hell, that 'council' stuff Doki suggested sounds really smart and hard to understand..."

I was shocked at the question, looking around I saw a similarly confused expression from Nio and Jeehan seemed interested in out answers. We thought about an answer, as we paused, trying to word it correctly.

Nio answered first, "It's a reasonable question, but since it's convoluted and hard to explain, you'll probably not believe my answer. Basically, we're from another world , we signed up for a form of interactive media called a 'game'. Specifically, a game called 'Myth of Men'. It was supposedly a 'game' where we could go into to interact with the in-game surroundings, and role-play as a person in the world of the game. Having whatever body, race or occupation you wanted. But something went wrong, and we became stuck in here..." He stopped himself, seeing if Tho and Jeehan understood. 

With a nod from Jeehan and an intrigued expression from Tho, he continued. "The reason us three are so calm is that even though this feels realistic, we can still play it like a game. Mechanics, themes, and the user interface are similar to the games we know, and since the 'getting stuck in games' is popular for... 'Authors' in our world to write about, I guess we just had an immunity to it." Nio shrugged, emphasizing the word 'Authors', justly so if you ask me. 

I continued to walk whilst thinking about it, I guess I have read a lot of novels, cartoons, and animated films. This includes that genre of stories where a protagonist goes from their own world into another, like L*g H*riz*n, S*O as prime examples, being my favorite genre. From happy go lucky harem kings, to the nitty gritty realism wannabes, I've pretty as many of these stories as I could. Some being great and some making me doubt if the writers could be called 'Authors', or just chimpanzees with a keyboard. It gave me countless enjoyment regardless, the fun quirky ideas that had limitless imagination behind them, which I found lacked in the more popular novels, made me read on regardless of the quality.

To be honest, compared to most of the stories in this genre I've read, the reality, so far, isn't that scary, it seems more relaxed than the most of the stories. There's no permadeath, no sadistic gods wanting to toy about with you due to the boredom of omnipotence, there are a lot of ways that this could be worse. That's a good thing I guess, but for it, I sacrifice the swarm of girls wanting to join my harem which sucks. Well, at least I'm still male with my flawless physique.

-

I continued these random thoughts of what-ifs for a while, then I realized something. Doki was nowhere to be seen. It could have been that he was just really far ahead of us, but the path for the next mile was relatively straight, although we were coming up to a forest area, we still should have seen him. He couldn't have gone that far without us, could he?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Where's Doki gone?" Nio asked. So I wasn't the only one who noticed...

"Eh?" Jeehan cocked his head to the side and paused for a moment. He looked around and saw no signs of him. "Wait... Yeah, where did he go?"

We were about to get to the section of path that cut through the forest, so we all decided to stop before it. The noise of branches snapping under countless footsteps we now audible. There were some mumbled voices from one of the sides which we couldn't hear properly, the clanging of metal, thuds and louder voices followed. What the hell was going on?

As if answering my question, the heads of a group of malicious people started peering through the branches, scanning our characters and then walked out to greet us. They were the same guys from like a week ago, the ones who attacked us in the dungeon. Wait, about forty to fifty people were visible. Did they grow in numbers?

All of us froze on the spot, as we saw this wave of people stroll out of the trees with menacing grins. As the numbers grew, the amount of blood-lust went up accordingly. Without Doki, Jeehan and Tho began to squirm. When their numbers stopped growing, we got back to grips with reality. About eighty people stood before us, but the main guy from before wasn't there. Odd, but I guess he was with Doki.

laughter and mean-spirited jokes poured from their group, destroying any morale we had as they waltzed over, weapons in hand.

"W-who are these people?" Tho, clearly scared, asked. "A-are they bandits, or..." I gagged her with my hand. We didn't need to hear the rest to know what she meant.

Attempting to keep face in spite of this, I egotistically described our adversaries motives. "This is probably the clan hellbent on making Doki fail. You know, because the leader had a thing for your sister, with the inevitable rejection he tried to kill her family. 'Cause that's the best way to win a girl's heart."

My words failed to have any impact if anything making their grins grow. I guess my acting hard wasn't working. I wielded my weapons, if only in vain, I wanted to at least try. If we gave up we definitely died, if we fought them, the chance of winning existed. The other two joined me, and we got into position. To my surprise, Tho was now calm as if she trusted us to win.

There was now a stalemate, army of men faced our small group, keeping about twenty meters between us. I looked into the structure of the enemy. Swordsman, martial artists and people with various other weapons were lined up, some people in the background wore similar hoods to Doki, obviously healers. 

The stalemate was forced on their side, no reason was stated, no egotistical preaches, no declarations of war were made... I was now confused.  Could it be that they're waiting for Doki to be finished before attacking us? They seem to have the strength to kill us right now, so why don't they?

The forced peace was kept by both sides for a while, glares between sides turned into bored expressions. The blood-lust faded and both sides seemed to be wanting to leave.

At the point of our patience breaking, a red wall appeared. It engulfed half of their men, including all of their healers. Panic now spread through their flanks, in sync, me and the other two acted. Charging unannounced into their lines, we assassinated the assassins, knowing they were the biggest threat and easiest kills. Due to the panic, nothing stopped us, so we continued, massacring ten or so men before we met any resistance. Oh, so these guys are really weak, way lower in level compared to us.

With a boosted morale, we went into attack more of them. Meeting the tanks with force, turning them to into pixels and loose change. I started to think, whilst automatically using my arsenal of skills and weapons to kill my foes. I was clearly being sloppy, as one of them managed to hit me, a resounding ten health being taken away. This made me confused, beginning to go on auto-pilot as I tried to find answers.

'Could this really be this easy? Weren't our adversaries meant to completely outnumber and out-skill us? Then why are we cutting through them so effectively? And why are their attacks so weak?' a barrage of questions littered my mind, with such great numbers I couldn't focus on one in particular, so I lost focus on what I was doing as a result.

With my mind blank, I notice Tho in the background, covering her ears and crouching, eyes fixed on the ground. This didn't surprise me, her brother and his friends were massacring a large group mercilessly. I can understand why she's become scared. Our eyes cold with a sick sense of annoyance that made us seem driven to kill, probably made us look like monsters. I can emphasize with that, but what did she expect?

-

After another while, the army of eighty seemed like a mirage. Only one person stood in the place they started, sheathing his weapons and walking to us. The remainders of the army he was on top of had died and disappeared, or fled for their lives.

"You couldn't fight these level five bandits by yourselves?" a taunting voice came from the person walking to us. It was Doki.

"They were bandits? No wonder they died so easily." I said with a sigh. Everyone else was relieved, even Tho. Well, I suppose that bandits were outlaws, considered to not even be human to the NPCs, so the lack of remorse was reasonable.

"Yeah, I saw the distance between us, so used my time waiting to explore. It seems like a bandit colony set up here recently, they're so weak and small they somehow weren't noticed until now, they seemed to have noticed you coming, so as I came most of them left to fight you. I assumed you could fight them, so killed some at the base. By the time I killed the leader, you still weren't there so I headed back to you." Doki explained.

He continued, in a more mocking tone, "By all means keep up the caution, we are still yet to meet up with that one clan. But please look at the people's gear and such before freezing in fear. They had wooden swords for goodness sake! We didn't even have such shitty weapons at level one! Are you really that thick?" he asked rhetorically, ending his lecture. Doki continued walking, feeling like idiots, we dropped our heads and followed.