Around the Porta Paradisi forest, a small team of well armed Peace Knights were patrolling some of the routes that they had been using to move around since the time they were assigned to do so by Jeong-Hwa. It was a sunny day, still morning and they had only been moving for a few hours, making sure that no beast or unknown enemy ever got close to the base itself or Manhattan.

“Nothing new the last few days it seems,” one of the men talked as he was walking at a steady pace, rifle in hand.

“I agree, but man, team four encountered one big ass wolf yesterday, and we haven’t seen anything since that bear a couple of weeks ago,” responded another one walking some steps behind.

A woman walking ahead of them half-turned her head to the side to talk to them. “Hey, at least this is better than being at the base, doing whatever Commander Han asks of us.”

“True!” responded the first knight, quickly nodding.

“I wouldn’t mind looking at her for a while though…” said the second man.

“Really? I can't agree here, it’s better to be on patrol than to be on the Commander’s sights.”

The woman shook her head. “I get that she’s hot and all, but I can’t imagine anyone dealing with her short fuse.”

“But looking at her… I think I could…” responded again the second knight, only to have the other two people shake their heads in response.

“Is something wrong with you, man? Are you like a masochist or something?” asked the first knight as he walked closer to the other man.

“No, no! It’s nothing like that! I just think that there’s something deeper in the Commander, and I would like to get to know it.”

“Don’t kid yourself, man. There’s plenty of pretty and nice women out there, so there’s no need to get all—”

“I got movement ahead!” shouted the woman as she pointed her weapon forward, deeper into the forest.

The other two Knights also prepared their weapons, forming a triangle formation to make sure nothing comes up to them and catches them by surprise. Inside their helmets they could also detect some unnatural movement inside the forest since the bushes and the leaves were moving as if someone was pushing them aside. The woman tapped her helmet a couple of times and the vision inside it changed to thermal. She could see that somewhere inside the forest a small being was moving in their direction; however, it didn’t seem like it was running or trying to attack them due to the speed of its movement.

“It doesn’t seem to be a beast,” she said as she kept her aim in the direction of that being.

“Is it like a critter or something like that? A bunny maybe?” asked the first Knight that was previously questioning the other one about his tastes in women.

“No… it’s too big to be one of those and…” she responded, putting a zoom on her aim, “it’s walking on two feet.”

“On two feet?” said the second Knight, as he too turned on a thermal vision on his helmet.

“Could it be one of the natives?” asked the first Knight while keeping his weapon aimed as well.

The woman hummed as she looked at the figure getting closer. “It could be… if the natives are somehow three feet tall.”

“So like a child maybe?” asked the second Knight this time.

“It doesn’t have the natural stance or the build of a child,” responded the first Knight with a shake of his head.

“It might just be a monkey then,” continued the second knight.

“But it’s movement…” said the woman as she carefully looked at the moving figure, which seemed to be carefully moving aside bushes and even swinging from time to time.

“What should we do?” asked the first Knight, “Do we shoot it just in case?”

“No, let's wait and see what it is,” the woman ordered, her weapon steady.

A few seconds later, the shape was finally just a few meters away from them, and they prepared their weapons to fire at any moment. They were tense, unsure about what fantastical creature would jump at them—if it would jump at them at all.

A hand finally popped out from behind a large tree and finally, a face, looking at them with surprise.

“What the hell is that?!” shouted the first Knight, as him and the other two aimed their weapons forward, ready to fire.

The thing that had showed up wasn’t a human at all, for it had deep green skin, a face with a long hooked nose, eyes that were completely black, a mouth that had a couple of fangs coming out of a slight under-bite and on the side of the head, a couple of long pointed ears.

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“Ah!” the creature exclaimed, its eyes wide with surprise and a finger pointing at the Knights, “Tis a most wonderful and fortuitous encounter that hath been placed upon this great one’s magnanimous shape! This great one delivers the most graceful of salutations for the wanderers brought forth by the divine shape of life!”

“The hell?” said the first Knight taken aback, “Is that like a goblin or something?”

One of the eyebrows on this being twitched after hearing that last bit. “Oh… to be compared in such a foul and degrading manner to a lower existence with the lack of graceful tongue is to be truly degraded indeed. This great one does not wish ill will towards the weary travelers from beyond the world’s veil, so this great one extends his higher will to be treated as such!” saying that, it took a step forward towards the Knights.

The woman fired a warning shot to the side of this being, lifting a lot of dirt up from the ground. “Stop right there!”

The loud firing sound of the weapon paralized the being as it stood still with its hands stretched upwards high in the air, while it looked with wide eyes at both the Knights and the weapons they were aiming at it.

“What are you!?” asked the second Knight as he looked at this being from top to bottom.

“U-um,” it answered with difficulty, as it started moving one of his hands down towards his chest. “This great one has no ill will towards thou. This great one wishes to get to know those coming from… ‘Earth’,” his high pitched and raspy voice seemed to tremble.

“No funny movements there buddy…” said the first Knight while the being was slowly moving his hand.

This being was dressed with what can only be described as a Victorian explorer attire, full with the khakis pants tucked into brown leather boots, a lot of pockets on his shirt and even a rounded light brown hat covering his head. The only thing he was missing to complete the outfit would’ve been a big curly mustache.

As the goblin-like creature slowly put his hand into one of the pockets, the other Knights kept trailing their weapons on him, who only looked back with wide eyes, sweat falling down the side of his face, and a hard swallow. He then slowly pulled out a small piece of light brown paper out of the pocket.

“T-this great one wishes to parley with your king,” he said as he presented the piece of paper towards the Knights.

The Knights were taken aback by this statement as the two behind Knights behind the woman looked at each other for a moment.

“What do we do?” asked the first one, turning to look at the woman's back.

“I think we have a call to make back to base…” she responded as she put her rifle down, “Keep watch over it while I call Command.”

“Yes ma’am,” responded the other two as they took a step forward and she called back to base.

* * *

“So what’s the problem here then?” asked Jeong-Hwa with her arms crossed while glaring at a man who looked like an engineer. “We built this thing by using the best common soldiers we have and even some of my Knights to get it up and ready to go as fast as possible, and over the last three days we’ve not had a peep of anything from it. Explain yourself.”

A drop of sweat rolled down the engineer's head as he avoided looking at the glaring Jeong-Hwa standing in front of him while he desperately looked at a tablet he was holding in his hands. “I-I’m not really sure, everything’s set up exactly as it should be and the technology is all top of the line. There shouldn’t be an issue.”

Jeong-Hwa lifted her chin as her glare turned to a cold look towards the man, who kept desperately looking at whatever information he had in his tablet. She then turned to look over at a tall communication tower built in the middle base. It had a few wires coming out of it and other engineers were moving around the place, with some of them even inspecting something again right after someone had already done it.

“What would it take for you to get this thing up and running so we can finally communicate with Natalia and that other guy,” she asked as she kept looking at the tower, which calmed down the engineer in front of her.

“I don’t really know—”

She glared back down to the engineer as he was in the middle of his excuse.

“I mean, we’ll keep working on it ma’am! We’ll get it up and ready to go as soon as possible!” he quickly said as her glare turned cold again.

“So no idea, huh…” she said with a calm tone that made the people around her a bit tense.

“W-we’ll—”

“No! Forget it!” she finally snapped as she turned around to look at Knight standing behind her, who quickly stood at attention. “You! Get a message to Doctor Hobbs telling him that his fancy communication tower doesn’t work at all and that he should get it working as soon as possible!”

“Yes ma’am I’ll do it right—”

“And also tell him that if this thing isn’t working by the next morning that I’ll personally go back and drag his ass out of whatever lab he’s hiding and force him to fix it with a whip in my hand!” she shouted as a vein almost popped on her forehead.

The Knight she had ordered didn’t respond as he quickly did a Knight salute and left to deliver the message. Everyone else simply stood tense as they didn’t want to bring the Knight-Commander’s attention to them, which still annoyed her as she furrowed her eyebrows while looking at everyone else.

“You all get back to your posts! Or do I have to make you!?” she shouted as she quickly turned to look at the engineer who was about to walk away as well, “Next time you come back with a report to me, it’d better be about how crisp the noise coming out of it is.”

“Y-yes ma’am!” he answered as he quickly left the place to go work on the communications tower again.

Jeong-Hwa sighed, looking at the people busily moving around in the base, so she herself decided that it was time to get busy as well; however, as she was about to turn around, a man in uniform quickly approached her. “Ma’am I have an urgent message from Knight patrol team six.”

She raised an eyebrow as she looked at the man. “Are they in trouble? Is one of them dead?”

“No… they claim to have made contact with the natives,” he answered, passing her a tablet.

She quickly skimmed over at the information written on the report. “How could they have made contact with the natives? They aren’t close to the north-west, where the Imperators should be at.”

“Well… it’s not what we expected,” the man said with an awkward feeling.

“Not what we expected?” she said as she looked up at the man.

“Yes… according to the team, the native claims to… want to speak with you.”

Jeong-Hwa furrowed her eyebrows once she heard that. “Very well… I’ll see what they have to say.”

As she started walking away, the man quickly followed up, “Oh and… I think you’ll be surprised about this native as well.”

She stopped to look back at the man, raising an eyebrow, wondering what that could possibly mean.