I woke up the next morning pretty exhausted. I hadn’t gotten to sleep until late at night, and the innkeeper knocking at my door to wake me up like I had asked had been almost as bad as an alarm clock. I slowly managed to drag myself out of bed. There was no way I was going to miss getting back to my own world.
I was soon packed up and ready to go, and then I was just waiting on Lily, who seemed to be taking forever. Eventually, I just decided to go up and get her, so I asked the innkeeper for her room, and went up the stairs and started knocking at her door.
I started with a soft knocking, but I slowly increased my force until I got a “WHAT!?” from inside the room.
“We need to get going Lily, we’re going to be heading to the gate today.”
All I hear back was a muffled groan, so I continue to cajole her until I get a proper response, then head back downstairs. Maybe ten minutes later Lily comes down, fully armed and armored in the same way I was.
I gave her a nod, and then we went to meet up at the north gate with the adventurers who would be leading us to where they had found the gate. We soon arrived, and I greeted the leader of the group, a large man with a soft face, looking more like you would expect an innkeeper to, if not for the harsh glint in his eyes, and the wariness he had, constantly looking around for threats.
“So we never introduced ourselves, I’m Roland, and this is Lily. We’ll be in your care for however long it takes to get to the gate.”
The large man let out a grunt of affirmation before giving a short “Johann”, which I assumed to be his name. Another member of his group then decided to give out a little information before we head out.
“It’s going to be dangerous, and we won’t be able to babysit you, especially if we run into any five star mobs. Try not to die on us.” He said with a sardonic smile.
Feeling a bit more nervous about our trip after that, I tightened my grip on my spear, and we were soon walking down the road. The rest of the day was uneventful, the few mobs that we ran into were easily taken care of, Lily and I just feeling like outsiders to the more experienced group of adventurers as they chatted among themselves.
The next day, we left the road, and started heading into the forest. I quickly had no clue where we were going, but they seemed to know where they were, so I simply ignored it, and walked along after the group that seemed to think of us as just random followers who would get them some money.
Lily and I chatted occasionally, but our conversations would always end up just coming back to the fact that we may be able to get home soon, so we soon quieted down, just walking along in nervous excitement, which slowly faded into boredom the longer we walked.
“Do you think that they’ll still be searching for us?” I eventually asked Lily, after mulling over the thought in my head a bit.
“They better be,” Lily said tersely before continuing. “If nothing else, my dad will still be searching for me.”
“I heard your dad is a bigshot CEO of some company, what does he do?”
“He’s actually CEO of Santech,” She says, mentioning one of the biggest electronic device producing companies.
My eyes widen in surprise. I’d known her dad was a big CEO, but I’d expected it to be of some company that I’d never heard about, not the one who manufactured my keyboard.
“Well hopefully we show up pretty close to our town, if we end up in the middle of nowhere that would suck. If we’re close by they should find us pretty quickly.”
Lily nodded, and then we were back to walking in silence. Eventually, I started to wonder, and went up to ask the group of adventurers who had kept to their own group.
“How long is it going to be before we arrive at the crack in the air?”
“Day after tomorrow we’ll arrive,” one of them responded curtly.
I thanked him, then went back to Lily, and sighed, it was going to be a long couple of days.
The next day, things started to get more interesting. The monster attacks started to happen more frequently, and every now and then a monster I didn’t recognize would show up, likely four star mobs.
The first one I didn’t recognize was a large, long furred monster, with two extremely large arms, and Legs so small I didn’t think it had them until I got a closer look after it was killed. It dragged itself along by its arms, and would swing them with massive amounts of force at anyone in front of it, somehow not sending the tank flying when it hit him.
Eventually, I decided to ask about it, and learned that they had no clue about it either, he wasn’t any heavier than your average man in plate armor, though he did have massive amounts of strength and vitality. After a bit of mulling it over, I decided it had to be something like the sharpness runes. Instead of making the object sharper, it added a layer of force on top that would cut through first, so the strength stat was probably similar, adding force to something without actually making you physically stronger.
That way, there was some sort of force pushing against the shield that would stop the tank being flung away. That got me started on thinking about how the other stats worked. I knew agility made you faster, but did it increase the twitch time of your muscles, or did it simply add a force to make you move faster. And more importantly, did it increase your reaction speed in the same way that it increased your physical movement speed?
I was relatively certain that wisdom only increased your mana pool, as all of humanity starting with a mana pool of sub one would be unexplainable otherwise. Endurance I couldn’t figure out how it may work, but vitality, I started to wonder if we had something like a forcefield just over our skin, or if it actually toughened our skin.
Eventually, I stopped my musing on how exactly the stats worked, and started to watch the adventurers fight off the mobs that I hadn’t seen. They were impressively good, all of them clearly having higher stats than I did.
The giant furred things would slam their arms towards the adventurers, and the tank would always be there in position to block it, while one guy, with a dagger that seemed to be dripping some sort of liquid, practically seemed to vanish as he snuck around to the monster’s back before plunging his dagger into the monster.
The mages all this time were spamming spells, one of them being a fire mage, the other some sort of plant based mage. You would think the fire mage wouldn’t work well with the plant mage, but the plants seemed to ignore the flames. The plant mage was constantly making plants grow onto the monster, then having sharp thorns grow on them before starting to constrict.
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The plants were often torn off, but there would always be more. While the monster was restricted by the plants, the two warriors, one of them the leader of their group who was wielding an oversized battleaxe, sliced at the monster, and it wasn’t even a couple of minutes before it went down.
I would have whistled if I knew how. That thing was damn fast, but the tank was always there to block it, and the damage output of the rest of the team had been insane along with the constant cc of the plant mage.
Once they were done, they harvested the materials, and then left the body for the goddess to collect, as they would say it. I wasn’t sure if it would be the goddess or more monsters that got to the body first, but it was true that I had never seen a monster carcass that hadn’t been freshly killed, and the bodies would disappear if you decided to use the loot window.
Ignoring the convenient loot system, we continued our trek through the wilderness, me only becoming more and more lost, while the adventurers seemed to know exactly where to go.
I was trying to start a conversation with Lily, who was being unusually taciturn, when I saw all the adventurers tense up after hearing some loud screeching like noise. I was starting to worry a bit, when the leader shouted over at us.
“Watch out! You’ll have to fend for yourselves for a while!”
I wondered what he meant for a few seconds when it showed up. It looked like a pale white frog, except it was split down the middle, making it look like a siamese twin joined at the hips. The heads were round, and didn’t seem to have any eyes, and had a long sinuous neck, ending in a maw filled with teeth. Its four front legs, two on the outside, and two on the inside of the split in its body, all ended in extremely sharp looking talons.
I wasn’t too impressed, until it moved. That thing was fast. I blinked in horror as it flew towards the team of adventurers escorting us, only for the tank in his full armor somehow getting between the monster and the leader, who the monster seemed to be aiming at.
The monster and the tank impacted with a massive crash, and this time, the tank, while not sent flying, slid back maybe a meter, his feet digging furrows in the ground. I was busy watching the fight, with the tank constantly occupying one of the heads while the two warrior types occupied the other, when I heard a loud “shit!” come from behind me.
I turn around to see Lily facing off with one of those monsters with long fur which I still wasn’t sure the name of was. I instantly write up a frostbite rune, and release it at the thing, only to see it shrug it off after maybe a second. I wince and switch to ice spears, but the second my first one hits, going in maybe a couple of inches into its body, it roars, and flings itself at us using its massive arms.
I dodge to the left as Lily dodges to the right, and the thing turns on Lily, giving me free reign to release another pair of ice spears, which annoy it enough to switch targets back to me. Lily then casts a few of her lightning spells, and it turns back towards her until I hit it right in the neck with one of my ice spears. It turns back, looking furious, and I barely have enough time to down one of my mana potions before it’s on me.
Its first swing is scarily fast, and I barely manage to duck under the thing, glad it had aimed at my head instead of my body. As its arm flies past, I stab into it with my spear, but it only sinks in maybe an inch, even with the sharpness inscription. I wince, this isn’t going to be a quick fight.
The second swing I manage to dance back out of range of, but I’m out of spear range and have to launch an ice spear instead, the spear sinking in a couple of inches into the arm that just barely missed me.
The thing roars in rage again, and I notice that Lily is still bombarding it with spells, but even with the potions I’d lent her, she couldn’t last too much longer at the rate she was sending spells out.
I pull my attention back to the monster as it swings again, and this time I have to leap as high as I can to avoid it, barely managing to land on my feet, and still stumbling, too off balance to get a good stab in.
I do have enough time to imbue a sigil of toughness into my spear though, if I’m not going to be able to dodge all of the hits, I want to at least not have my spear simply broken through. I do manage to dodge the next few hits though, ducking under some, backing out of range of one, and thankfully not having to jump over any more of them.
The monster then raises an arm up and slams it down. I sidestep, and idly note that Lily seems to have run out of mana finally, as she’s running up to start fighting in melee. I then stab out as hard as I can into the body of the mob, and finally get a satisfying depth to my stab, actually going in maybe five inches down the blade. I rip it out, and am rewarded with a good deal of blood splattering out along with it.
I get a feral grin on my face as the monster roars yet again, but as it starts to attack even faster than before I stop being able to attack, when Lily finally gets into a good position and starts hacking away at the monster a couple times, before noticing that it barely cuts the thing, and she stops for a few seconds before trying again, this time cutting much more deeply, likely having imbued for sharpness sigils into her weapon.
The monster turns on her, and I take the opening to stab in again, catching it in the side of its torso, and tearing a pretty deep slice as it turns, but nearly tearing my spear out of my hands as well.The monster roars, but keeps its focus on Lily, giving me free reign to imbue my spear with a sigil of sharpness in addition to the one of toughness, and start stabbing away, this time sinking my spear nearly the full length of the blade into the mob.
The monster’s fur is slowly being stained red by all the wounds, but rather than slow down, it almost seems to be getting faster, Lily is starting to be very strained dodging it at this point, so I try to take its attention, but it just seems to be ignoring me.
Eventually, Lily missed one of her dodges, and takes a hit on her shield, which sends her flying. I curse, and begin to worry. Hopefully she’s conscious and can take one of the health pots I’d given to her, but the monster seems to still be focused on her.
Luckily, I can run faster than it can drag itself, at least with how wounded its arms are, and I manage to get between it and Lily, sprinting in and hoping I can stop it, or at least slow it down enough that Lily can get up. The monster stares at me for a second before slamming its arm through the space where I was, having stepped back out of range. I instantly step back in and stab into its face, only to have it turn away and only catch its shoulder with my blade.
I seem to have grabbed its attention though, as it slams one of its oversized arms down at me, then swings its other arm across, forcing me to step to the side then back to avoid them, and not leaving me any space to get a stab in.
I continue to keep up this dance with the monster, always stepping back into its range after a dodge to keep it from moving forward and getting to Lily, and start getting worried, Lily should be up by now right?
I glance back only to have my worry turn to annoyance. Lily seems to be just watching me fight the monster, but when she notices me seeing her, she instantly turns a bit red, gets up and joins the fight. I hold back my irritation as we slowly whittle down the monster that is finally starting to slow down, and once it’s finally dead I let out my frustration.
“What the hell were you doing? I was up here fighting for you to have enough time to get up and you were just watching?”
“I was just… I’m sorry.” She eventually says, having turned a light shade of red.
“If you’re so embarrassed about it, why didn’t you just join the fight earlier?”
She turns a darker shade of red and doesn’t answer, so I shake my head and turn away, unwilling to talk to her for now. We then notice the rest of the adventurers standing around, their hunt clearly finished, and they all seem to be smiling at our little interaction.
“So turns out you two have some moxie after all,” The leader lets out, a smile on his face. “Thought you two were a pair of cowards with how quickly you agreed to have an escort”
I tilted my head to the side, of course we would want an escort when the forest had five star mobs like the one the group of adventurers had just faced. “I mean, we sort of need an escort, you guys killed the thing we just spent a good half an hour fighting in a couple of minutes. And that’s completely excluding the five star mobs.”
“Well I know you need one, but you sort of lose face as an adventurer to admit it,” The man said.
“I’ve never been much worried about my image though, I just wanted to get to the gate,” i say.
“Gate? You mean the crack in the air?”
I wince, I’d tried to avoid calling it a gate in front of them, but I figure they would probably have found out about it eventually.
“It’s how we hope to get home. We came through one of them, now we want to go back through another one.”
The man seemed a bit confused, but nodded, before gesturing for us to come over with the group as we continue our walk, but I ask him to wait a second and harvest my monster first, even though there may be no one on our world who could turn it into something useful.
Once I finish, I actually join the other group, and they seem to be actually willing to chat with us. Apparently they had just seen us as two cowards who wanted to pay to get to our goal, so they had been completely ignoring us.
The rest of the day was spent chatting with the group of adventurers, who apparently didn’t have a name for their group. When asked why, they said they simply weren’t strong enough to have a name. They said once they started to hunt six star mobs they could be considered to be one of the most powerful groups, and that’s when they would get named by the guild.
Wondering why the guild doesn’t just let you use your own names, we set up camp and go to bed, Lily and I in our small ward net, and the unnamed group of adventurers in a much larger one.
The next morning comes seemingly the second my head hits my pillow, and soon I’m packing up my tent and bedding into my wonderful magical backpack, and we’re off to see the spot where they found the gate.
It’s about midday when we arrive, and I let out a breath I’d been holding in when I see it’s still there. Lily and I look at each other, then tried to hand over the money we owed, only to be refused, even after we insisted.
Thanking them for the help, we both step through the gate, and hopefully back to our own world.