It was very clear that everyone was on edge. The children were playing outside, but not with the carefree attitude I would have expected them to have, the adults looked like the stereotypical medieval farmers, but clean and with worry in their eyes. It was clear that there were more humans than wolf-people (saying men was weird as half of them were women), and yes, there were elves. Or humans with tall ears, at least. They didn’t look any different from everyone else otherwise.

Every building was as impressive as the ones we had initially seen, which made it extra concerning when we passed to one whose roof had been destroyed and some of the walls and windows fallen over. Looking at the people working to clear the rubble, this was a recent tragedy. They still had the look of grief on their faces.

I realized this was even worse than I initially thought, when I noticed the perfect organization between all parties involved in the clean-up. They had made a nice line to carry what was carriable, and a few men and wolfmen were using ropes to pull one of the fallen boulders back on top of another.

I concluded that this had happened before.

I gulped as we continued.

“This is bad.” I told my sister.

“Yeah, look at that poor kid, he’s been crying. What do you think happened? A tornado?”

“A tornado wouldn’t have budged the rocks. This is not a one-time thing.

“How do you…”

“Ame wa no?” The wolfman guiding us cut our conversation short.

I turned around to look at him. He was especially hard to read, even though it seemed that he had human-like expressions. At least I was pretty sure his tone hadn’t been aggressive. He was giving us a quizzical stare.

Asking what we were talking about?

“I don’t really see the point in talking to us, you know?”

My sister gently hit my ribs with her elbow.

“Don’t antagonize the wolfman, Nielle. And let him talk, didn’t you say that eighty percent of the meaning of conversations was expressed through body language?”

“Yes.” I met my sister’s eyes with my eyebrows low and scrunched up. “And how am I supposed to understand anything his body language is telling me, exactly? I have no socio-cultural cue, and, more obviously…” I didn’t finish my sentence.

“Relax, sis.”

“I definitely won’t if you start calling me that.”

She gave me a teasing wink, telling me it definitely would not be the last time she’d use the word.

We quickly left the wreckage of the house, to arrive at what seemed like the village’s centre plaza. A bit like old European villages, there was a central building dominating every other with its size and height. In Europe it would have been a church, but this seemed more like a wizard tower with a square base.

“How phallic. Who designed this?” Decorator Gaëlle was back on the case.

I sighed.

I expected to be brought inside the building, and that was exactly what happened.

The wolfman opened a side-door for us, still made from the same dark-green wood, and after entering a barely lit corridor, we entered a stairwell that only rose up.

“Where exactly is he bringing us, to meet the village wizard?” My sister talked out loud.

“Don’t ask me.” I shrugged my shoulders.

The wolfman was still behind us, pointing us to go up.

So we climbed the stairs. It took only ten or fifteen steps before we reached a much larger room, which seemed to be our destination.

It took the whole floor of the tower, and with the big circular table in the middle and the opening on the walls, lighting the room in a partial and atmospheric way, it could have been a film set for a King Arthur round table scene.

Despite the place that could probably have contained half the village, there was just a single person there not accounting for us. It was a man, close to our age, dressed in robes with a plume, ink and paper set in front of him. He barely gave us a look, stopping just a moment to look at our legs.

Great.

The wolfman pointed to the chairs for us to sit down, so we took the closest ones and tried to make ourselves comfortable.

I had less success in that than my sister, but that would surprise no one who knew her.

She had put her legs up on the table until my expression forced her to act a bit more dignified, not without letting out a big, annoyed sigh beforehand.

Then we waited.

Our wolfman guide was sitting next to my sister, scratching his right thumb with his very short claws. They had been cut short, I realized, or he would have been a living weapon.

The other occupant of the room was sitting straight, perfectly still and in the pose of ultimate patience. The twenty-something year old’s eyes staring at nothing were the only indication that he was bored.

“Big boss mage is making us wait, huh. How much do you want to bet that he’s a narcissistic power-hungry fat old man?” My sister had a very peculiar way to fill up the silence.

“Nothing.”

“Oh come on, play a little, big sis.”

I gave her a death stare, but it didn’t look like it had been effective as she chuckled softly.

“And I won’t bet, not because I don’t want to play, but because I have no desire to lose.”

She made a weird grimace.

“Not fun.”

“Yeah, no.” I looked to my left. There was a window, or more like a vertical hole sculpted into the large stone walls. I had a direct view of outside the village, only seeing part of the wooden rampart three hundred meters away. Beyond that stood the coloured forest, and even further away, up the horizon, was the cliff. I wouldn’t have been able to spot so many details without my perception increase, but that was our cliff, I was certain of it.

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A door opened in front of us, and out came an old, fat man, dressed in a silk shirt, with golden seams and oversized pants that ended in frills.

“Shit.” My sister swore.

“Grognar, aur Ame ga?” He asked as he looked at us.

He was…ugly.

“He looks almost as bad as you during your last year at campus.” This was my best effort at reassuring my sister.

“Fuck you.” She gave me a half-cocked smile, but she still kept a worried look at the newcomer.

He pulled a chair and sat down opposite of us.

The scholarly man picked up his plume, and straightened even more, but didn’t do anything else.

The old man started to talk with our wolfman guide, and considering the tone, was asking questions. He gave us frequent stares, which were more and more uncomfortable.

“I don’t like this.” I said honestly.

“Me neither. He reminds me of my micro-economics professor.”

“…The one who told you to give him a blowjob to pass the class?”

“Yup.”

“Colour me surprised.” I grimaced.

That was exactly what I feared.

After a few minutes of unintelligible back and forth, our guide got up on his feet and turned towards us. Me and my sister looked at him, ready to see him leave and be left alone with the pervert and a random bystander, but he just waited for us to concentrate on him, then made a sign with his hand that we needed to get up.

“Did he convince the pervert to let us go?” My sister said out loud with hope.

But once we were back on our feet, he made no sign to move, just making a circular motion with his hand.

“Erm…what?” I asked.

“I don’t know…”

I looked back at the pervert, who was now very obviously leering at us.

“Fuck, wolf boy wants us to turn around for him.” I understood.

“What!? If he thinks I’m going to…”

I winced. “L, we can’t do anything for now. Let’s just do as we’re asked and see what happens. Only if he starts unzipping his pants do we try to run.” I tried to calm her down.

My sister wasn’t known for her respect of authority, and when the aforementioned authority was a disgusting old man, that counted double. The only reason why she hadn’t done any jail time during her last year of university was because there had been video-surveillance footage and that it had happened at the start of the #metoo movement. So I was really happy when she caved and started doing a cutesy spin with the most furious look.

The old man wasn’t looking at her face, so it posed no issues.

I did the same, feeling horrible and suddenly wanting a shower. Once it was done, wolf boy gave us a commiserating look, and asked us to sit back down again.

My sister was furious, and I grabbed her hand under the table. There were two doors in this room, one in front where the old man had come out from, and the one we had used to come in.

Our hopes of running away were not great, I assessed.

Our guide and the old man started talking, and after a few minutes of debate, things got more and more heated, to the point that the wolf man started growling. He had both his hands on the table, making big indentures on the surface with his claws.

The old man said a few things, and the wolf boy lowered his head, defeated.

With a large smile on his face, the pervert turned to the scholar that had kept his perfect stance the whole time. After a few words, the young man started scribbling on the paper while the old man rose, turned around and entered the back door.

The wolf man was a whole lot scarier now that he had his teeth bared, but all his aggressivity was directed towards where the old man had sat.

Minutes passed without anyone moving, the silence broken by the scratching sound of the scholar’s plume on paper.

Then, the old man re-entered the room, a book in hand.

This time he moved around the table to come to us. He may have been fat, but he wasn’t weak or out of breath, despite the fact that he had come from the upper floors of the tower. He was still leering at us occasionally but stopped to give away the book to the wolf man.

It was a beautiful piece of art, the cover golden and silver, with no indications of what the book contained except a single large rune on the front of it.

Our guide was careful with it, as he placed it in front of my sister.

She looked at him questioningly, but he placed his hand in between her and the book when she reached for it.

“What the fuck does that mean!?” She said a bit too loudly.

Clearly, we were waiting for the old man to sit back down on his seat. When he was back on the other side of the table, the wolf man removed his hand and edged my sister to the book.

“Yeah, sure. Is it cursed?” She asked, not wanting to take it this time.

“Could it be like an enslavement contract or something like that?” I guessed.

My sister grimaced. “I don’t know, maybe? But isn’t there only one type of magic? How can water enslave someone?”

“It did give me a stroke…” I countered.

The old man didn’t seem happy, as he talked to the wolf man once again.

Our guide pushed the book closer to my sister.

“Well, nothing bad is going on when he’s the one touching it, at least.” I noticed.

“Good point. I still don’t want to touch it.” She stubbornly crossed her arms.

The old pervert started talking a bit louder, and the wolf man sighed.

He rose, took the book, and placed it in front of me this time.

I crossed his gaze. He looked at me, then my sister, then back at me.

I didn’t like those undertones at all.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” I responded angrily.

“Nielle!”

“What are we supposed to do, exactly?”

My sister looked perturbed. “I didn’t say no so you would do it.” She told me.

“I know.” The three strangers were looking at me expectantly. I sighed and put my finger on the book.

You have discovered the Skill Book: [Speech: Common Overworld]

Do you want to use this Skill Book? Y/N.

Notice: A Skill Book can only be used once.

Notice: Due to your Innate Skill: [Identical Twins], effect of Skill Book will be shared with your other half.

“Wait, what?”

“Daniel!? What is it?” My sister asked, already half-panicked.

“It’s a Skill Book to learn their language. But…we share the effects because we’re twins.”

My sister looked a bit puzzled. “Oh. That’s great, right? Wait no, it can’t be something cheap…That fucker is going to claim that he owns us afterward, isn’t he?”

“…Probably. We should be able to hold on for the door to recharge though if…” I looked to my left. Saw the cliff through the system prompt. I closed it saying ‘Exit’. The light over the cliff had taken a red hue, like a sunset, except there was no sun. How did crystals create a sunset?

My mind worked fast. So many questions, so few answers. The reveal of the [Identical Twins]’s untold effect had strengthened my initial belief that we knew way too little about the system, and that the [Help] function only covered the basics. We lacked knowledge. About everything.

My sister was obviously right, this Skill Book was a trap. I could already see the scene when, now able to understand them, the old pervert would tell us how much money we owed him. And how easy it would be to repay him.

The thought alone disgusted me.

We needed a way out, something.

The cliff.

I was looking at the cliff. Why?

Why? Because it was our way out. How had we missed something so obvious?

The panic, the exhaustion, the new world, too many things to think about…In any case, it was better late than never.

I smiled.

“We’re going to take the book L.”

“Fuck no! Nielle!? I don’t want to be a sex slave for sixty hours!”

“We won’t, we’ll give him something else. Something too juicy to refuse. We don’t need to wait anymore, don’t you see?”

She gave me an annoyed look. “Get on with it Daniel, you don’t need to prove that you’re the smart one. How exactly don’t we need to wait? You found an extra Dyson Sphere laying around?”

“Why did we need to wait in the first place?”

“Because our only way back is blocked by a drag…Oh. Oh!” She smirked. “Pile of rare ores and treasure, unprotected. And one random door. Bonnie, can someone use the door without our authorization?” A few seconds passed. The old man looked more and more impatient, the wolfman looking back and forth between him and me, trying to calm him down.

My sister’s smile grew even bigger.

“We’ve got a plan, big sister.” She spoke.

“I will leave you to rot in the pervert’s cellar, little sis.” I responded automatically.

“No you won’t. He lives in a tower.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Then grabbed the book fully.

“System? Yes.”

You have learned Skill: [Speech: Common Overworld]