Doing my best to ignore the beauties gathering around me like a swarm of locusts in the bible, I was able to finally take in the ‘small’ fortress I was brought to. I sighed deeply and did my best to pick up my jaw from the ground after observing my surroundings.

Let’s start with the skyscraper-like buildings, paved roads and intersections created which looked like they were teleported to this world as well. It looked exactly like a modern metropolis, if you could ignore the excessive greenery and titanic tree in the middle of it all, covering every part of this ‘fortress’ with its branches and stopping above the walls. It was downright impossible for me to miss these buildings with a simple glance from outside the wall that was barely 5 meters tall, much less the tree …

“Miss Anna… how?” – I barely managed to squeeze out because of my amazement

[Oh, right! I guess you might be surprised by the difference. The one in the middle is a World Tree… kind off. It is more like, a World Tree that we cloned from a branch of the original World Tree of another world. Not only we can use it as our main power source, but it also camouflages this entire place and re-enforces our walls. It’s also our only means of continuing the bloodline, without the males of our race…](Anna)

I was surprised to see slightly reproachful looks from the other girls around her and she instantly stopped speaking about it. Realizing that it might be sensitive information that a stranger shouldn’t have immediate access to, I stopped sniffing around for more clues and tried to gather my wits. After all, since coming to this world and interacting with its locals, I feel that I’ve acted like a pre-adolescent boy in front of a playboy girl…

“Actually, it’s an insult to them to be compared… I haven’t exactly seen a girl back on Earth to be this beautiful…” – I muttered to myself

Fortunately or unfortunately, their hearing sense seemed to be much better compared to a normal person’s and soon, giggles broke out from all around me. Their looks my way with their eyebrow raised almost made me blush in shame, but was able to remember that at least I am no longer a virgin and should be able to offer a freaking compliment without all this drama…

[Earth? Is that the name of your world?](?) – one of the girls around me asked suddenly

“Indeed.”

[Tell us about it! How is it compared to our world?](?) – another one asked

“Difficult to say… When it comes to flora, I am no expert and without a more in-depth look I won’t be able to say there are any differences. Fauna-wise, I haven’t seen that many animals, but the insects look pretty much the same.”

[What about weapons?](?) – someone in the crowd asked while pointing to Anna’s railgun

“That much, I can tell you about. Besides the obvious cold weapons like knives and blades, my world developed different types, based on gunpowder. That one is the most common type in my world.”

[How does it work?](Anna)

“Eh? Well, let’s see… Inside the weapon’s chamber there is a bullet…”

[What’s a bullet?](Anna)

Seeing the sparkly eyes of all the girls around me, I began sweating profusely and used all my working neurons in trying to scrap about each piece of information I could gather from my memory.

“Uhm… think about it as a small metal thing about the size of a thumb. Inside this bullet which can be made of different materials such as copper, lead, steel and many others, there is this gunpowder at the back. Using a mechanism that creates a spark through a collision of two metals inside the gun chamber, the gunpowder is ignited and it explodes. Using the propelling force created from the explosion, the bullet is pushed forward at high speeds. That’s about it I guess…” – I answered surprised at my sudden eloquence, while trying my earnest to review what I said in order to make sure it was right

The silence around me caught me off guard and I started looking around me confused. All the girls had pensive looks on their faces, staring at each other while seemingly trying to comprehend what I just said. Maybe I’ve finally given them sufficient material to have some quiet and ask some questions of my own. Something felt fishy about this quest, the more I thought about it.

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“Actually…”

And that’s all I managed to get out.

[What’s lead, copper and steel?](?)

“Huh!? It’s a type of material mined from the ground. By using fire to smelt it, it can be forged into different type of objects.” – I reflexively answered

[What about the bullet? How come it flies out of the gun simply because it explodes? Shouldn’t it just break apart instead?](?)

“Not the entire bullet has gunpowder in it. Only a small part that encases it around the back.” – I answered despondently while creating schematics in my mind, in order to confirm my answers

[Then how does it fly out?](Anna)

Seeing such pure child-like curiosity and joy on her face, I couldn’t bring myself to stop answering questions, even if my throat was already dry and I couldn’t help myself but think that I am dropping my guard too much in front of these beauties and was about to make a fool out of myself because my lack of knowledge…

“It’s because of Newton’s law… ugh… Newton was a scientist in our world that studied these type of things. I think this law of his was something among the lines of ‘for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction’. That’s why…”

[The explosion is controlled! And since it does explode in a small space and backed against a wall, all that force is directed towards a specific point of exit, propelling this ‘bullet’ you speak of in the same direction!](?) – someone in the crowd excitedly yelled

“Correct!”

Appreciative looks were thrown the girl’s way, as if she was the one to explain everything. I couldn’t help but smile bitterly at the thought. Also, our slow advancing pace came to a full stop and I was bombarded with questions continuously.

They were surprisingly orderly about it though, as only one question was asked at a time, even if it came from different people. Still, I was getting mentally tired while my neurons were firing on all cylinders…

[What about power? How is your world bringing energy out of its World Tree, if you cannot control your own life energy?](Anna)

This question was both important for Anna, since judging by her face she wanted to ask for a while already but didn’t since she wanted to be polite, however it was also for the other girls. How do I know? It felt like I could hear the sound as all of them whipped their heads my way and looked with astonishment at me, or rather, through me.

“Hmm? Are they trying to see the mana inside me?”

[Holly Tree! It’s true! Only because of the cursed energy did his body actually started to nurture the life energy inside it! And it looks so badly managed… ahem! I mean…](?)

Seeing the embarrassed look on this beauty’s face, reminded me of a sunset on an ocean beach for some reason. I smiled and did my best to placate her, since she obviously didn’t meant to offend me but might think she mistakenly did. I snickered at the thought, but the confusion and unwillingness in my mind only grew as a result.

“You don’t have to worry. It’s the truth after all. I am not certain what this life energy exactly is, but I might have an inkling now. Back in my world, words of such things are treated as fairytales, stories based on someone’s imagination. There might be some people that reach the same level as I am now through decades of meditation and continuous training tough…”

The gasps in the crowd made me finally realize just how different our two worlds are. What is a just a story you read for us, is real life for them. Just like in those stories however, their entire race has been developed around this type of energy though.

Therefore, their following question should obviously be…

[Then, what about lights and machineries? How do you create your world and raise it from the ground? Judging from your clothing and the fact that it’s a material I cannot recognize, you obviously have industries that require energy. What sort of energy are you using?](?)

And as expected, the question arrived. I was in a dilemma however, as it felt that to them, the guardians of the world, what we were doing back in my world… might certainly offend them.

“Do keep in mind please that, since our cultures are different, we had to evolve using different routes than your world.”

Seeing them all nod in approval, albeit fast like hurrying me to spill the beans, I took a deep breath.

“Firstly there was kinetic energy and fire. Using the force of rivers to move objects through creating specific entrapments for example. However, it wasn’t sufficient as we couldn’t exactly move the said water bodies wherever we needed them. Therefore… fire. By burning either coal that was mined from the ground, or by setting alight wood in contained chambers, the resulting heat would power up different machineries that later on, helped us create and discover new types of energy.”

Seeing the shocked look on their faces and the fact that they were doing their best to remain neutral about it, I sighed in relief and continued my explanation.

“Using these initial two, helped us uncover electricity. Uhm… I don’t think I will need to explain that one seeing the light poles on the streets. Now, not only do we have that, but we can also exploit energy from the wind, sun and even the atoms that we are made of.”

I intentionally threw the last one in as bait, only to see how advanced they are in comparison to us in other fields. The lack of confusion gave me the answer. Even without taking the extreme technological path that we took, their race managed to achieve a beautiful balance between science and this life energy I was barely getting a rough understanding of, in probably less time than we did and judging by the rail gun, even managed to surpass us.

Somehow, it felt as if we humans were cheated and had to take the hard way to reaching where we are right now, through countless wars and sacrifices.