*'Doki'*

Ugh. I'm so hot and sweaty... And not in a good way. You know, playing video games for days on end... What did you think I meant?

I know Mr. Simpson said to explore the village, and I agree with the want for knowledge and wisdom the NPC's, who know different aspects and insights to the world we are stuck in... But... Fuck summer! It's way too bright for me, a hermit who'd rather stay indoors than go out, to actually see in, the feeling of sweat pouring down my arms, neck, legs... I was pretty much coated in the stuff, in a game. A, 'G, A, M, E'... This is NOT reality! These developers really wanted to create hell for me, and it shows.

"Doki... Are you okay? You seem ready to pass out."

Oh, yeah. This guy. He's call LOD, and, for some reason, I need to buy him breakfast. Well, considering we're forced into contact but the magical sorting hat of fate, I'd rather get on his good side. But geez this guy it a lot to handle.

Excessively panting, I did my best to respond coherently. "I'm... Fine... LOD..."

"Well, think about it like this, it could be worse. I mean, we could get sunburn."

Yeah. Thanks. Just what I needed, another thing the developers could have put in to make this hell more hellish...

"Grr..." I tried to express my contempt, but I was to tired to do it. "Let's just... Go and eat..."

Whilst saying that I remembered our first goal. Food. LOD was very hungry earlier, and, I'm with him on that. And then, I finally saw a good site. A building that released a heavenly scent, it smelled like exotic spices. I mean, compared to my own sweat, any smell was heavenly.

So I pointed and said "Over there... Food." and we turned directions sharply, and honed into the shop. It looked like a cafe, but, it was better than nothing. LOD was drooling speechlessly, like he saw some prey, and was ready to pounce. So it was decided, we'd go there.

The cafe had a cooling atmosphere, and a fan-based cooling system, meaning I could actually think. So cooled down, I started to think back. LOD said that apparently, the 'visitors' were to visit the town hall at noon. Since it was about seven right now, that gave us five hours to do things. I don't really have a plan of what to do, so I was about to bring it up with LOD after we ordered something to eat. But...

"Oi! LOD. Stop spacing out and pick what you want to order." LOD was staring, with a similar amount of drool as when he saw the shop, but it wasn't aimed at the food.

"Um... Sir. Please order something, you're holding up the queue." Said the Girl behind the counter. She was wincing, clearly distressed since she was the target of LOD's glare.

Oh... I get it. This guy's like 'that'. Well, this should be fun. The girl he was ogling was pretty young too. She had long black hair, and, for a lack of better details, she was flat. Making her a perfect... Damn, what's the word, 'Lolita' or 'Ohime' was it? And to add more punch to my retort, we were the center of attention.

"LOD. I don't think that girl is edible." I looked towards the girl in question. "By the way, I'm with him so I'd like to order some black tea, also can I have the brownie to go with that?"

"... Okay. That'll be 90 coins for the tea and 120 coins for the brownie. For the total... Oh, sorry, I forgot to ask, is this to take out or to stay?"

"I don't feel like walking around anymore, so it's to stay."

"Okay, there'll be an additional charge of 15 coins per person, is this acceptable?"

"That's fine." I glared back to LOD, "Have you gotten out of your trance yet, if so what'll you order?"

"Oh... Sorry. I was thinking hard about what to order."

"Yeah, sure you were. So what are you going to order?" It'd be a lie to say that I didn't enjoy saying that. With the amount this guy was demeaning me earlier today, I felt like getting my revenge on him.

"I'll take the herbal tea and the carrot cake. Also, a smile would be tipped."

I felt the need to instantly retort. So I did. "Don't forget you made me pay for your meal. And I'm not covering your tips."

"Tch!" LOD and I both looked around, to my glee, there was still a lot of glares at him. So he buckled. "That was a joke. Sorry. So what's the total my lackie has to pay?"

Relieved, the girl behind the counter said. "For the herbal tea it's 80 coins, and for the carrot cake, it's 110 coins. With you two staying, that adds up to..." There was a moment of pause, whilst I assume she added it up. " The total is 430 coins," she said.

Wait... That's almost half the 1000 coins Mr. Simpson gave me! With tears in my eyes, I paid the amount in full, with a 10 coin tip for good service. I had no idea about the value system behind it, so I just blindly went with it for now.

Whilst finding a table, I glared at LOD. But I loosened my glare after a while, and we found a table. Well, it was a table for four, and we were a party of two, so I felt kinda bad, but nevertheless we put our stuff down, and I started a conversation.

"So, what are you going to do?" I stated. I was curious about whether or not LOD would join me in my goal to be an adventurer. But as the saying goes, 'Everyone strives for new endings, but all start from old beginnings' (this phrase is explained in the authors note after chapter 8. when it gets released of course.) , so I wasn't going to assume he wanted to do the same as me just because he was with me.

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"About what, what I want to do after today?" I nodded, so he continued, "Well, I'd like to give adventuring a go. I mean, apparently it's a good way to get money, items and it seems fun. Of course, it's asking to get attacked, hurt and even die, but I think it's worth it. If you're the same, then I'd like to party up with you. Of course, we'll need more members first."

A sound of footsteps nearby caused me turn in response. There were two males standing there, seeming to be interested in out conversation. They were coated in armor, although there were slight differences in the types. And one of them seemed to be wielding a greatsword whereas the other was wielding a Katana.

The guy with the greatsword asked, "Sorry, but do you mind if we join you two?"

LOD and I exchanged looks, both accepting them I replied, "Sure, We don't mind. Sit down and we'll continue the conversation."

"So Doki, your answer to my invite is?"

"Oh, I'd love to. I've always seen myself as a rouge, but with the class I am, I need people to depend on. Making a party and fighting as a group is probably better than fighting alone." I looked towards the two strangers and asked, "So, who are you, guys."

The guy with the greatsword who had a very masculine build with much bigger muscles than I did, I was kinda jealous, to tell the truth, was the first to respond. "I'm Titanious, and this guy here is... "Jeehan". Something about his tone was suspicious, and the look of regret on the other guy, Jeehan, who was clean-shaven, slightly lankier but just as manly in his own right, added to this suspicion. I decided to not care. For all I know his username is his pin code or something.

But Titanious continued "I assume you want to know our classes and sub-classes too."

He paused, but we gave him a look to convey our intrigue, so he continued again. "I'm a tank with Maid as a minor, and a minor in Cooking." I was going to explain the class and subclass, but before I could, LOD, who was laughing excessively, broke the ice and said "Ha ha ha! that's hilarious. The toughest and manly person here, Cooking and Cleaning. What a joke. You're lying right?" To be fair, I wanted to leave at that point, I find these sorts of things aggravating and annoying as hell. But Titanious's response was surprising enough for me to stay.

"And? I'm male. I have an X and Y chromosome... So!? Does this thing dictate that I'm forced to like sports and such and hate doing 'girly' chores!? And what, you're living as a male perfectly!? You goddamn sexist fool!" he yelled, forcing a very shocked reaction from LOD.

Looking defeated, LOD backed down and said. "No..."

I mean, I don't blame him. Titanious, as mentioned before, had a very muscly world. If this wasn't in the game world, he'd probably be able to beat you to a pulp easily. His intense glare and the ridiculous volume of his voice at the end just added to his fear-factor.

Titanious saw and heard his response so stood up and put the nail in LOD's coffin, "Then shut up about! Shallow views are stupid, irrational and genuinely take tenacity to merely mention! Instead, why not just shut up, and maybe not try to force your shallow thoughts upon other's who dare to be different!"

With his rant over, Titanious sighed deeply and sat back down, trying to get back his energy.

As for LOD, he was practically inside the cushion on his chair after seeing Titanious stand up against what seemed like a casual joke to him.

Yay. My favorite part of conversations, the awkward silence.

The mood was thick, but sounding meek, the icebreaker finally came from Titanious. "Sorry... Um... I have a trauma about my likes and dislikes and my gender, so vented them out towards you when you were making a joke. I just loath jokes and such about that topic, so please don't do that again."

LOD seemed to take the apology well, so came back up and continued to eat his cake. "It's fine. Sorry for the bad joke, it's a habit I use to break tense atmospheres. I didn't expect quite the explosive response, though. It's fine if you want to cook and cleaning, I was just laughing because it's ridiculously unlikely where I'm from. Gender is pressured really harshly here, so it's relieving to see the freedom other places have. Plus it means that if you join us, you can cook and clean, so I don't have to."

To be honest, LOD seemed really charismatic in our conversations before. Talking to me for that long is quite the task for most. So to see him bounce back that easily, didn't surprise me. But now I felt awkward butting into their conversation, since most of it had simmered down to apologizing...

Whilst I was bored with waiting for it to end, I noticed how awkward and silent Jeehan had been. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to start chatting to him, and 'kindly' asked, "So how about you Jeehan?"

"Um. My class is 'samurai', you probably realized that from my sword. My major is Smithing and my minor is Enchanting. I picked them because I thought they would complement each other well. I want to be an adventurer too, and I think our group is efficient. That is, assuming the LOD guy is an assassin, and that you are a healer." he said. He started off shyly but gained confidence soon enough. He was probably shaken at my sudden prompt.

"Not exactly correct. LOD, Titanious, do you two want to stop apologizing over and over again and join in this productive conversation?" I asked the other two in spite. Titanious and LOD were basically competing to see who could apologize the most. I wanted to say LOD owed me breakfast, but he wasn't exactly talking to me, so I had no right.

With the other two now listening, I introduced myself. Of course, I said exactly the same as I told LOD before. And their reactions were the same. So then LOD introduced himself, and when we were done, an hour had passed, and we had finished our food and drinks. By the way, I'm basically a cat who burns his tongue on the most tepid of water, so it actually took me an hour to finish my tea. With the good timing, we decided to leave and go shopping for supplies.

-

We decided out roles, that I would pose as a battle-mage, to surprise people when they found out I was a succubus way too late and get free hp from them. I got a mage's robe, a relatively good staff Jeehan had to help pay for, and AP potions. Most of our money pool went towards LOD's weapon, and Jeehan and Titanious's armor and hp restore potions. And when we finished, we only had a collective 140 coins left. I mean, we looked cool and were stronger than we were before, but it's still annoying to barely have enough for a tea between the four of us.

There were about two hours before noon, so we decided to go outside and go hunting as a party. I mean, we needed money, and we might as well do it.

Before going, though, Jeehan told us about the shortlist system in the game. And yes, apparently there was a shortlist system in this game. We could set a maximum of 20 skills in this shortlist from any skill tree's we had, a collection from our class skills, sub-class skills and weapon skills. Skills on your short list were voice activated, whereas the others needed to be selected physically from the menu.

So we each chose our shortlists of skills, which took a pretty long time. Titanious took a while to decide upon three of his twenty cleaning skills to pick, and LOD took equally as long thinking of 'witty' words to choose as prompts...

Eventually, even those two had finished making their choices, so we went off to the wilderness.