At front of the gates of the late Roshan's castle, Vijan and Ruby were beginning to make their way to Leviere. As Ruby put on her scarf, they heard a cry coming from the castle doors. Coming from feeding Erma a few dozen boneless cows, Heirloom approached the two with his armor off.

Heirloom: [I came up with more to the plan in my sleep.]

Vijan: [Make it quick, dude.]

Omar jumped from the top of the castle and landed beside the group. None of the boys were phased by this but Ruby could help but gasp.

Heirloom: [There's a good chance that the Allience is expecting an attack from you, so you need to stay alert at all times.]

Vijan: [Okay, and?]

Omar: [If you're just going to warn him, you could've done it through a message.]

Heirloom: [There's more to it than just a warning, you idiots. When you get to the capital, remember to stay as low-key as possible. Try to find an NPC that'll tell you anything. I recommend somewhere no one of nobility could find you.]

Vijan: [Stay out of trouble, got it.]

Heirloom turned to Ruby and rested a palm on her shoulder.

Heirloom: [Please make sure he doesn't get into any trouble.]

Nodding, Ruby replied.

Ruby: [You got it boss!]

Heirloom: [While you two are away, there's a high chance that they'll notice we have the princess, and likely attack the castle.]

The dragon tamer turned to the vampire, and with a smug grin he continued,

Heirloom: [It'll be a big battle, so I'm leaving it to you to hold down the fort.]

Omar: [Where'll you be going?]

Heirloom: [To get our failsafe.]

Unsure of what he meant, Omar watched the little dragon tamer walk towards the castle gates.

Vijan: [If they send any Paladins his way, he'll likely die before I can come back. Are you sure you want to leave him alone?]

Heirloom: [Leviere would think twice before sending their Paladin on a mission.]

He leaned on the gate doors and lowered his head in contemplation. Furrowing his brows and narrowing his eyes, he let out a little breath. The three watched him from the sidelines, glancing at each other to see if anyone was going to do something. A cold breeze blew by and forced a few of Heirloom's scales to show over his skin.

Heirloom: [Omar will be fine. As soon as you get the information we need, or you find yourself backed into a corner, return to the castle and don't tell anyone anything. You may leave.]

With a shrug, Ruby and Vijan left the castle gates and followed through the snow-covered floor north.

-

After washing himself off, Parker saw Faith sitting at a coffee table with a glass of a golden liquid filled to the brim. She was staring at the glass with her eyes half open and a noticeable frown across her face. Sean wasn't anywhere in sight, so Parker took a seat beside Faith and tapped her shoulder. That seemed to have woken her up from whatever was going on.

Parker with a grunt: [I'll have a little of what you're having.]

Faith turned to him with her eyes now open. The light blue color coming from her eyes caught his attention.

Parker: [This world is stressing me the fuck out.]

Faith gave him a weird glare.

Faith: [Just so you know, this isn't liquor.]

Faith stood up and walked up to a cupboard.

Faith: [It's Api Juice.]

She pulled out a wine glass and gently put it on the cupboard. Parker raised his brow to the name and chuckled.

Parker: [The fucks that?]

Faith: [It's like apple juice, but way better. It can help with stress and can heal the stomach, but it's really sweet.]

Faith reached into her inventory and pulled out a long bottle with a golden substance sloshing inside.

Parker: [Whatever. Anything helps.]

She began to pour the golden liquid from the long bottle into Parker's wine glass. The liquid looked exactly like apple juice. Parker watched Faith throw the bottle into oblivion without a care in the world. He was shocked. She replied with a chuckle.

Faith: [You're still amazed by the most simple things.]

Parker turned to Faith with his face narrowed.

Faith: [What?]

Parker: [This fucking world, man. It's messing me up big time. Time works differently, there are monsters everywhere, and I miss my parents.]

He groaned and threw his head onto the table. Faith sat back on the chair and lifted her wine glass.

Faith: [I feel you. After I was kicked out, it made me miss the old world even more. Then I learned about Api Juice and that drinking the entire thing will make my worries disappear for a while.]

Parker raised his head while keeping it on the table.

Parker: [So it is beer.]

Faith: [No, it- just drink it!]

Parker lifted up the glass and chugged it down like a shot of alcohol. The texture and taste of the drink tasted exactly like a cold glass of apple juice, but once he slammed his glass back on the table he started to feel his mind go blank.

Faith: [How is it?]

Parker turned to her and tears began to form in his eyes. The blush and tears made Faith giggle to herself. Moments later, Rosy came running from Parker's temporary room and hopped onto his lap.

Parker: [This is so much better than alcohol...]

Smiling, Faith took another sip of her drink. She didn't end up like him, but there was a noticeable blush.

Parker: [How long does this last?]

Faith: [A whole day in this world, so about 27 hours if you down the whole thing.]

Due to there being twice as many suns in this world, there was more daylight than night all year long.

Parker: [Hallelujah!]

Sean walked out of the bathroom and noticed the tears coming out of Parker's eyes. He sighed and made his way to the counter.

Sean: [What happened to him?]

Faith: [He had some Api Juice. He's currently in a trance.]

Sean: [Isn't the Api fruit hard to find? Collecting some was a B-rank quest back at the Leviere guild.]

Faith: [They're super common in that forest you guys met me in. I was collecting some before a couple of Free-Form Ultras showed up.]

Sean walked up to them and sat on the seat beside Parker.

Sean: [Since they are common here, best place to sell them is a kingdom or village far from here. That way people will pay more for it.]

Faith nodded.

Faith: [In order to get your hands on one of these, you'll have to take out a few Free-Form Ultras.]

Faith raised her glass and took another sip. The effect was beginning to kick in.

Faith: [They guard those things with their life.]

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Sean: [How much of those did you get?]

Faith: [A couple dozen. I only really use them for myself. Takes a quarter of a dozen to make a single bottle.]

Sean narrowed his eyes and lifted the bottle.

Sean: [Man, that is nowhere close to enough!]

After Faith gave him a shrug, Sean sighed and opened his inventory. Skimming through the large list of items he was keeping stashed, he came across a certain contraption.

With a thump, a desktop computer-sized Printer Scanner was brought onto the table. It was a glossy black with silver railings connecting every individual part together. Looked a lot like a printer, it even had an ejection slot, but there was a scanner-like section at the top. Sean was a little out of breath after picking it up and started taking light breaths.

Sean: [It's super low level, but it should work for the most part.]

Faith: [Is that a printer-]

Sean: [A Multiplier!]

Sean was quick to interrupt Faith.

Sean: [I managed to take -- borrow it from the guild before I left. Knew it would come in handy at some point.]

Faith wasn't surprised to hear that he stole it, but the fact that he let it slip out his tongue was something else. She got off her chair and made her way to the contraption laying on William's counter.

Multipliers in this world are heavy mechanical objects that can magically multiply any object within a few seconds. It was designed to mimic the Duplication skill that very few adventurers get their hands on. Though only one object can be multiplied at a time, it works quite efficiently. Depending on the level of the machine, the durability and accuracy can be unreliable. The Multiplier that Sean stole was made for multiplying things such as paper and low-level gear.

Faith looked at it with a narrow glare.

Faith: [We are NOT using that.]

Sean attempted to talk back but Faith stopped him mid-sentence,

Faith: [It's too weak to be used on complex items.]

She watched as the machine disintegrated into pixels and returned to Sean's inventory. The wizard rolled his eyes and groaned.

Sean: [Fine, how else are we supposed to make money?]

Faith: [It's safe to say that you guys have no knowledge of the world around you.]

Parker turned his attention from his dog to Faith.

Faith: [Maybe I should educate you some, yes?]

Parker: [Some information wouldn't hurt. Go ahead.]

Parker's face was full of glee, emitting a small ray of sunlight.

Sean: [Oh, so while we were working our asses off, you were studying?]

Faith: [How are you supposed to work when you have no idea what you're doing?]

With a snap of her finger, Faith transformed the entire room into a pitch-black space-like abyss. There were small specs in the air that resembled stars in the night sky, along with 3D-generated space rocks floating about. Standing in between everything - like gods watching above their universe, were the three that were sitting at the counter.

Faith dragged a planet that was floating about in the abyss over to the boys and had it levitate above her palms. The blue and green planet rotated like nothing had bothered it.

Faith: [This is the planet we're currently on. It's called Tietus.]

Parker noticed something about the planet that looked awfully familiar. He squinted his eyes and moved in closer to the perfectly round planet above Faith's palm.

Parker: [It looks exactly like Earth, but the continents are all wonky.]

Faith eccentrically nodded with wide eyes and blushed.

Faith: [That's because this is Earth, but if magic really existed. Believe it or not, the way that magic is used in this world screwed everything up, from the number of suns it orbits, to giving mosquitoes an actual purpose.]

Sean narrowed his eyes in disbelief.

Sean: [So what you're saying is that this planet was at one point, our planet?]

Faith: [Yeah... at one point, it was Earth.]

With a roll of his eyes, Sean allowed Faith to continue her lesson.

Parker: [Okay, if it was Earth once, how did magic ever come around?]

Faith: [These beings called Fairies suddenly appeared one day and granted a couple average humans another form of power, making them do things that seemed impossible to normal people.]

Faith zoomed into the planet by releasing a pinch. She zoomed into farmland where a family of four was walking around and carrying crops in a rusty metal wagon.

Faith: [This magic began to change the way people lived, for better or for worse.]

Parker: [What do you mean? Isn't the magic in this world restricted? I have a select set of moves I can use, and that's about it. There's no way people turned these lame moves into life-changing and dangerous attacks.]

Faith: [Actually,]

She swiped on the planet, moving it away from her and into the endless dark abyss where it faded away. A single star maximized itself into a human-based hologram that Faith moved around with her fingers.

Faith: [The magic we use today is controlled by the mana we have stored in us.]

Blue vein-like stings appeared all around the human hologram's body. The veins stemmed from its heart to its brain and connected to every other bone in its body.

Faith: [This means you can control it however you want using your brain and physical strength.]

Parker and Sean seemed confused about the information Faith was giving them. Faith grew nervous at the sight of the two looking at each other with raised brows and furrowed lips.

Faith: [The only thing that is restricted, no matter what you do, is what your class can do. For example, we should never expect Parker to make a fire out of thin air.]

Sean: [But you didn't answer Parker's question. How come our move-sets are like they're from an MMORPG?]

Worried about the response, Faith turned into a nervous wreck.

Faith: [O-okay, a really, really long time ago, I think it was after some sort of enormous war... the nobles at the time all decided to put a certain restriction over what any mana wielder can do by forcing them into classes.]

Parker: [Oh! So the nobles fucked up the combat system.]

Faith's face brightened up once Parker got the answer to his question.

Faith: Exactly! The restrictions didn't only hold back combat magic, but also magic used for everyday tasks. Because of this, people lost interest in using their mana. Over time, a majority of the population became normal salesmen and quest givers, or as we like to call 'em, NPCs!]

Sean didn't seem to be liking anything Faith had been telling him.

Sean: [Listen, pal. Sure, you can convince me that magic completely changed the way the world runs, but that doesn't explain why we're here or why Zack and the others arrived here a year before us.]

Faith turned her head away from her older friend. Her cheerful attitude quickly turned around when pushed against reality.

Sean: [Do I even have to mention the fact that you don't know where we can find Ismail or Andy?!]

Sean shot his narrowed eyes at her. Even with her head turned, she could feel his piercing glare, making her feel guilty.

Sean: [You left the main city and learned a ton of new crap. I'll give you points for putting in the effort to read a book, but like always, what you do is never helpful in the big picture.]

The universe's appearance in the room slowly turned back to how it was before.

After noticing the tears beginning to form in Faith's eyes, Parker stood up and looked down at Sean with his glimmering brown eyes.

Parker: [Sean, you're being an asshole. Yeah, Felix was doing nothing while the whole world was his library, but neither were you. Even I'm at fault here.]

Sean: [Shut your fat ass-]

Parker: [Just because you're older doesn't mean you can boss us around!]

Sean clenched his teeth.

Parker: [Felix tried his best to find a way to get back, while the two of us just chilled in Leviere! In the other world, you may have had the street smarts, but in this one, you're as useless as I am.]

With an eye roll, Sean made a single-use portal and walked through. The portal instantly closed behind him, making it near impossible for anyone to know where he went. Faith felt a little at fault for Sean's behavior, but a little feeling in her agreed with Sean and what he said. All the things she learned: Tietus' world history, cultures, regions, kingdoms... all of this was useless.

Faith: [In the end, I did nothing to find-]

Rosy pounced on to Faith, knocking her over and laying her flat on the ground. She proceeded to continuously lick Faith in the face while she panicked and screamed for help. Faith could only hear her heartbeat and see a large golden dog trying to lick her eyeballs. She began to cry and scream, feeling helpless as she was being attacked. Tears streamed down her ear as she remembered when she was attacked by the wolves in the forest. It wasn't until Parker came in and lifted the dog off her chest that she calmed down.

Parker laughing: [I can't believe you started crying while Rosy was trying to cheer you up.]

Faith got up and whipped her tears off with the back of her hands.

Parker: [Regardless of the size or cuteness, a fear that large is incurable.]

Faith angrily: [Keep that mutt away from me!]

Her voice was still shaking from the fear, and whimpering through her tough expression. She poofed into a bright purple cloud of smoke, and once they cleared, she disappeared.

Parker sighed and put Rosy back on the ground.

Parker: [They're both fucking drama queens.]

Rosy turned around and looked at Parker with her body laying on the ground, ears down, and a sad frown. Parker bent down to give her a pat.

Parker: [It wasn't your fault, Rosy. It was just a bad time, that's all.]

Rosy whimpered and Parker sighed. Parker stood upright and looked around the living room. The building Faith brought them to looked far too luxurious for someone like Faith to have. Parker grew suspicious, but before he could really put any thought into it, he looked for the gallon of Api Juice.

Parker disappointed: [27 hours my ass.]

He opened the fridge and stared at the various drinks and snacks scattered about. They weren't in any particular order, and some looked to have been around for several weeks, leaving a funky odor. Parker quickly shut the fridge and turned back to his dog. [

Parker: There's no way this place belongs to Felix... right?]

The flat-screen television in the living room started to make a sudden static noise, which got the attention of Parker and his dog. They rushed over and saw a grey static screen, then it changed into a news channel. Confused, Parker took a seat on a leather chair. Rosy hopped on his lap and looked at the screen with him. On the screen, a fairly young lady with short orange hair stood tall; holding a microphone in between both of her palms and smiling brightly into the camera. She, along with the person recording were standing in front of an unfamiliar forest.

Man whispering: [We're live.]

The lady raised the microphone to her mouth and completely changed her expression.

Staring confidently into the camera,

Lady: [We have a special report for everyone in the Jime region! Veo, the Hydra ninja, was reported seen roaming the forest with a young blonde girl by his side.]

William raised his head and looked at a monitor projecting the same broadcast from inside his bar. The bar was empty with the exception of Faith sitting on the opposite side of the counter. She seemed to have been paying no attention to William or the broadcast. Her head was laying face flat on the counter with her arms covering her cheeks.

Lady: [We don't know what his priorities are, though we do suggest that any adventurer roaming in the woods returns home and avoids coming into contact with him, as their life will be in jeopardy.]

The television screen returned to its static state.

William coldly: [So Vijan really decided to come out of his shell.]

He lifted a hand and carefully touched the skin around his eyes, feeling the rough surface around his eye pocket, he sneered and clicked his tongue.

William: [You took everything from me.]

After tying on a red blindfold, he looked up at the wooden ceiling with a narrow glare. The wind from the open door blew on his midnight-black hair.

William: [It's time I do the same to you.]