_______Seline’s Side_______

We arrived in the capital a few days ago, I had to take part in an audience in front of the empress as soon as I arrived. I had no intention of lying to the empress and told her everything, from Andy appearing in the Teip Mana Forest, his metallic form which he called a “robot”, his immense strength better than even an A-Rank adventurer, and his kidnapping by the Novum Apes.

After the empress heard of Andy’s exploits and his potential, she agreed to send out a search party to look for him. Unfortunately, I had other commitments on the day the search party was sent out, but the empress allowed Emma to accompany the party to help them identify Andy if he is found.

I sit in the carriage on the way to my mission and sigh, “Just be safe, Emma, Andy…” Maximilian, another court mage, sits beside me and after hearing my sigh asks inquisitively, “What’s got you so down? You just got back to the capital, didn’t you?” “Weren’t you at the audience? I just hope Emma doesn’t get hurt again…” Maximilian scoffs at me, “You’re too overprotective Seline, how is she going to grow any stronger if she doesn’t get hurt?” He was right of course, but that doesn’t mean that I like it! “But that, uhh, what was he called again? Andy guy? He sounds interesting, let’s hope he isn’t dead, right?” Maximilian adds pointlessly. “Yeah, I hope he’s all right.”

_______Andy’s Side_______

I arrive before the village and the guard earthlings immediately go into a combat stance before realizing who I am and apologetically ushering me in. The inside of the village isn’t destroyed, but bug carcasses can be seen strewn about the place, they invaded the entire town, I walk around, making my way to Nevus’s home. I see significantly fewer earthlings out in the open and living their life.

When I get there, I see her sitting on her bench with her head in her hands, looking completely drained. She spots me immediately coming from the distance and shoots up in joy, she must’ve spotted the bug-goop-covered half of my body and taken that to mean I did something.

Walking up to her I ask, “What happened here Nevus? Did the bugs stampede over this town?” “To a point, but we prevailed in the end. What happened to you to look like that? I can’t imagine it must’ve been pretty…”

I give her the story of what happened to me, about the underground jungle I found, how it was being invaded and eaten by the insects, the 4 Rima Insect Queens and the Prime Insect Queen, and my eventual win against her. Throughout my story Nevus listens like an excited kid listening to bedtime stories from her father, by the climax of my fight against the Prime Insect Queen she’s on the edge of her seat with stars in her eyes.

Finishing my story, she waits for a second expecting more only to sink back into her seat in embarrassment, and give off a small comment, “Well done…” Just as I’m about to begin talking once more I hear a voice behind me, it isn’t talking in a language I understand, but Nevus immediately turns to it and ushers the voice over to us.

When I see the earthling, she brought over I am quite surprised, he looks rugged and weathered, he’s taller than Nevus and seems to be of some importance. Nevus speaks up before I can begin guessing who he is, “This is my father, Talp, he is the current village chief. He returned with his hunting party when he saw many bugs converge on the village. His party is probably the reason the village is currently still standing, they are experts when it comes to killing local wildlife.”

Huh, so this is the most important person in the village? I bow down and offer my hand in greeting, but just like Nevus, Talp doesn’t know what a handshake is even supposed to be and simply ignores it. We talk for a bit with Nevus acting as our interpreter and I find out quite a lot, firstly I get a big thanks for eliminating the insect threat, secondly, Talp and his crew are pretty much the only food source the Earthlings have, if none of them hunted food then the other Earthlings would simply starve and with how many insects were around these days they were having a tough fight. I find it a bit morbid to think that there is only one hunting group in this entire village, if anything happened to them this village would be doomed!

After our conversation Nevus talks to me once again. “Now that you’ve finished our request, we’d be happy to guide you up to the surface.” Finally! Just what I wanted to hear! I almost hopped in joy, “Finally! Thank you, then when can we leave?!” I almost pick her up like a small forest creature, but I restrain myself. Nevus composes herself at seeing my excitement and tells me, “My father will soon leave on his next hunting spree when the village has been secured again. So you will simply leave with him then and he will show you the way up to the surface.”

I realized an issue immediately, “Huh? How will I communicate with him? We don’t speak the same language.” Nevus waives my issues off with her hand while walking back into her home, “He might not be able to speak with you, but I think you’ll be fine. He is a masterful hunter and knows where the surface is, as long as you follow him, nothing will happen.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

So, I wait, I walk around the village helping by carrying large things or repairing walls. The village was already pretty much fixed so after just a few hours we are ready to head out again. It seems the surface is closer than expected since the hunters didn’t even sleep before heading out again. I ready myself, looking myself up and down once more, my robot body is now pretty banged up, my hands and arms are still messed up from falling and my entire side is still banged up from taking on that insect queen.

I just hope when I evolve again this will be fixed…Or maybe I can get my hands on some MP… We make our way out of the earthling’s village and get seen off by Nevus, I wave my goodbyes and am finally on the way back to Seline and Emma. As we walk, I can hear the hunting party converse with each other, I wouldn’t know what they’re saying, but I think it wouldn’t do me any good either.

They take some small corridors for which I have to crouch or crawl, but they do wait for me, seems like they just have their own routers which aren’t optimized for human-sized individuals. We keep walking and we once again enter larger spaces and caves, sometimes I wouldn’t even be able to see the walls if it wasn’t for my night vision.

We walk pretty far, but we haven’t walked upwards in any way, so I am getting a bit anxious if these guys actually know the way. I wasn’t a person that did much exploring of the wilderness in their free time, but I’d guess that you’d need to walk up inclines and scale walls if you wanted to get out of there right? I mean I fell for so long there is no way they can get me anywhere close to the surface, right?

As we keep walking, we enter another big space, but this one is different, there is light, but not from stones or mushrooms, but from actual lamps, how they’re powered, I wouldn’t know though! They hang from the extremely high ceiling and give off a very noble view, we’re still in a cave, but it feels like this place is civilized!

I was so preoccupied with looking upwards at the lamps that I completely missed the important bit the earthlings are now walking towards. It’s an actual spiral staircase chiseled into the wall! And it doesn’t look half-assed, this looks like some real professional work, it goes both up and down. Talp points to the staircase and says something in his language, probably asking me to go up there, right?

I step up to it and the entire staircase is illuminated and while dilapidated still looks mighty useable. Jeez, I’d love to see how far down this thing goes…I wonder who built a gigantic staircase down here? As I think of this the idea that this staircase might have something to do with the underground castle from before comes into my mind. Was there some kind of humanoid civilization that lived underground long ago? That might be it.

Talp and his party don’t follow me onto the staircase so I guess this is a moment of parting, I wave them my goodbyes and say a “Thank you!” they wave back and go back on their merry ways.

_______Emma’s Side_______

We made our journey to the part of the forest where Andy was kidnapped fairly easily, we also made our way into the forest fairly easily, but there wasn’t a trace of the Novum Apes that kidnapped Andy. From what I heard from the search party leaders they are a nomadic race of monsters, so it isn’t weird, but they supposedly keep to one territory and simply move around in it. So we should at least find some of them around, but they are simply gone.

The forest itself isn’t very dense, so searching isn’t the hardest, but we still had to be on the lookout for kobolds and goblins. Currently, we’re out searching the forest once again by day, I am accompanied by 2 members and we’re walking around deep in the forest. The terrain this deep in the forest is weird, there are elevation changes, but they are sheer and aggressive, like small cliff faces going up and down with the roots of trees sticking out of them.

When we get deep enough into the forest, we even find a variety of cave entrances that have split open into the ground. And at some point, we even find a gigantic pit, peering down into it from the side I can’t even make out the bottom. If Andy fell down there…

I’ve been here for 3 days, we’ve searched almost every part of the forest, in my opinion, there is no way that Andy is still in the forest. If he’s still alive then he almost certainly isn’t in the forest anymore, but the confusing thing is, why didn’t he go to the capital then? He knew where the capital is and was strong enough to fend off the Novum Apes, so he should’ve been at the capital by now, but we haven’t gotten any kind of intel that he arrived there.

Please just don’t be dead… The leaders told me that there is nothing in this forest that should pose a threat to an A-Class Adventurer and since Andy couldn’t starve if he wanted to, he MUST be alive. The worst thing that could happen to him is the Novum Apes holding him hostage, but we can’t even find the apes and they aren’t intelligent enough to properly trap him, so it’s not very logical.

Walking around the cracked ground deep in the forest doesn’t seem very safe, I feel like the ground under my feet could crack open at any moment and swallow me up completely. It wasn’t getting dark yet and I wasn’t tired so I wanted to keep looking for Andy, but the other members of the search party have already given up on Andy. By the first night sitting around the fire in the camp, I’d already heard whispers of “That guy is probably dead, isn’t he?” and “Why are we still searching for this dude? He’s obviously just croaked.”

It made me mad, but I didn’t want the people who’d been helping out so freely to hate me, so I held my complaints in. I know Andy isn’t dead, he can’t be killed that easily! I would’ve loved for Andy to just pop up from a bush as I’m walking past and simply go home with me, but I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Andy, just you wait! I’ll find you!