It took her a moment more to get her surroundings. The threat of attack made for a good distraction. But the initial confusion and panic started to wear off Yumi’s mind. Once she could start seeing clearly, she got a better sense of where she was.
Out in the distance, she could see primitive houses of wood with rocks on the grass roof keeping them in place. Everything looked straight out of old pictures. However, just at her feet was a dirt, slightly muddy path between rice patches. The two of them had lucked out in missing being soaked.
Lucking out just meant that their luck was spent on something else and left them potentially none to deal with the current issue. They had a mob of frightened or angry villagers all wanting answers and maybe to kill them. It was hard for her to really know. She was bad at reading faces.
Yumi turned around to help Yuki up to his feet only to get the uncomfortable sounds of farming tools being rattled as they pushed closer to them. ‘Any movement’s being judged a threat!’ She looked down at Yuki hoping he had an idea to get them out of the situation. This wasn’t something she had prepared for. ‘I thought I was going to be meeting my personalities! What is all of this about?’
Unfortunately for her, Yuki remained silent and just looked at her. She recoiled a bit as he seemed to be insisting on her handling the problem. ‘Yuki?!’ Movement from her got their attention and threat again. Yumi stared down the length of a scythe. ‘You’re making me do this alone?! Why?’ Her mind spun around ideas on what to do. This wasn’t the sort of thing that she was used to dealing with. Though she felt a little hard pressed to say that she would have prepared for such a thing as being threatened by villagers in an ancient Japanese setting.
The only thing working in her favor was that they didn’t attack straight away. Though it felt as though they might, if given the right provocation. Something that she wished to avoid. “U-um…we mean no harm?” She knew how badly that came out the moment she finished. Though Yuki said nothing, she felt like she could hear him laughing in his little corner. ‘We’re going to die…’
Chapter 387 – Trapped from Reality
Then she remembered that she was still in her mind and that this was all just a simulation. It wasn’t real. Such things were easy to forget when nothing about it looked like it was some video game or movie where you could see how fake things looked. Phoibe’s machine crafted a flawless reality.
Once Yumi reminded herself that the whole thing wasn’t real and it was all just digital information funneled into her mind she stepped forward without thinking about the consequences. This immediately set the villagers on edge that one of them lost their composure attacking Yumi. Clearly the young man that attacked out of fear expected something to happen. Hoe in hand, his swing was poor and wide, not meant as a weapon and he had no training to fight. It was purely improvised.
To his dismay and the others fear, the wood pole that the snapped. The metal flew back away from the villagers as they scattered a bit in fear. He really didn’t stand a chance against Yumi, but he tried anyway again. The wood only splintered and he lost what little strength in his legs to stand. He fell on his butt in the pool of water the rice remained submerged in. “D-demon?!”
The others quickly joined in with the man shouting the same thing at Yumi. Abandoned by the others, the man sweated heavily as he turned white filled only with terror at the end of his life in sight. Yumi didn’t fully expect such a reaction, though it sort of played out the way she hoped it would. They stopped threatening her and Yuki. So they were safe again. “Run,” she ordered to the man still trying to figure out if he would live to see his family.
She turned away and picked Yuki up from the muddy earth with them finally having peace. However, while he tried to remove some of the clumps of dirt, Yuki asked, “Was that such a good idea?”
“What?”
“Scaring them all like that with your power?”
“Hardly showed them anything I can do. I merely used a piece of my barrier as protection making it look like my body was stronger than it actually was.”
“But now they’re afraid of you, us.”
Yumi started to walk away not really sure why Yuki was being bothered by it so much. She planned on getting away from the village anyway. A shrug of her shoulders opened her response to him. “This isn’t even real. This is just some simulation, it doesn’t matter what happens here.”
“If that’s your choice…”
“Yes, for now let’s just get away from here. I’ve got no idea what they might try in such fear and I’d rather not mess around with them any longer.” Yumi set the pace for Yuki to follow as she marched herself out of the fields. “There’s gotta be a road somewhere around here…” That was her hope at least. The fake reality that they were inside wasn’t something that she had much historical understanding of outside of what school taught her.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The farmlands stretched for quite some distance in all directions. At their back, the village slowly shrank a little in sight, but nothing more seemed to change. Yumi’s current goal was the ridge she saw where the farm seemed to end, if only for a moment.
If she could use her speed, she would have been there in an instant, but Yuki didn’t have the ability. So she had to take time walking. It felt like it would be an hour at such a distance, though she had no watch or cell on her to tell time. Only the sun above and she couldn’t read that. So it took however long it did to get to the ridge. Which was overgrown in grass and weeds from the wilderness of the open expanse of an untamed Japan countryside.
It took a little to work through it all, but they found themselves in a break and back on dirt. She looked up and down the length. “A road!” she declared with some forced pride.
“That might be overselling it. It looks more like a place well traveled than designed.”
Putting her hands on her hips and taking in the entire stretch of land on all sides, she didn’t mind it that much. “Either way, it’s an open and clear path we can take, even if it is not what we’d call a road.”
Yuki poked around the area, but it was just a fruitless effort for him. “Any signs of the others?”
“None…it’s just us here.” Yumi stared down at the village. She couldn’t make out the details, but she saw them scrambling around. ‘They’re probably thinking I’m going to attack them. Wonder how long they’re going to be running around panicking thinking I’m coming.’ Yumi didn’t entertain the thought for long as she turned back to the road. “I know this is a long shot, but got a clue where in Japan we might be?”
He stared at her for a few moments in silence with a slightly indignant look on his face. “I’m not a walking computer of random knowledge.”
Which was about what she expected. Yumi started walking along the road in the current direction she faced. It was away from the village, though the other road looked like it also went away. It went somewhere and eventually they would find it. She just worried how long that would be at their pace.
Yuki didn’t seem to argue about the direction that she set. He just followed her closely without saying too much. It made for an awkward silence on the hours that they walked. The village was already behind some hills with open wilds before them. Around them the scene did little to change in any meaningful way. It was all very green and mountains set in the distance. Japan ended up looking big when it was on foot rather than by car.
Worst for them was that this fake reality had too many things that were unnecessary. A low growl came from Yuki’s stomach. ‘Hunger…but this isn’t even real. Why are we getting hungry? What would happen if we didn’t eat? Will we have to sleep as well?’ Yumi started having a lot of worrisome questions popping up in her mind. This wasn’t the sort of reality that she expected to have. It was too real for being false.
A large rock alongside the road gave them a good place to stop. Yumi pulled over and jumped up to the top. It was only three meters or so tall, but it gave her more of a view than ground level. While she looked around, Yuki sat on one of the stretched out pieces. “Still nothing… No signs of life, not even smoke.” She jumped down to the ground and leaned against the stone face. “I wonder when we’ll run across anyone.”
“If this is feudal Japan or even earlier, villages are going to be spread out. It might be days…”
“Looking at the situation, we’re going to need to find food and shelter. This isn’t the sort of world I expected to find myself in.” It made her think about Phoibe and where they actually were. “On that subject, shouldn’t Phoibe have contacted us or gotten us out of this? This can’t be what was supposed to happen, right?”
“She’s been silent since the three strangers showed up. So it’s possible that she’s lost control of the system again.”
Yumi leaned forward a little to look directly at Yuki. It was something that she had considered, but it didn’t make any sense to her. “But if that was the case she would have just shut down the power and we’d be out of this.”
“Maybe she got completely locked out. I don’t know, but the reality we face is the one before us.”
“But it’s just fake. So why are we getting hungry and tired while in here?”
“I’m not so sure we can think of this as a normal virtual world. We don’t know the rules that govern it. We’ll have to figure it out as we wait for Phoibe to rescue us.”
A sigh came from Yumi’s lips thinking about that. “Waiting…so you think we’re trapped in here as some creation of my mind, a personality inside me. And they’re god of this reality.”
“Just a guess right now. We’ve only been here for less than a day.”
Slumping against the rock at the thought of being trapped within the fake world for days or weeks hurt her optimistic expectations of being rid of all her problems in a few hours. “This wasn’t supposed to be the plan.”
“We’ll just adapt and figure things out.”
“Figure things out…” Yumi jumped out from the rock and stood in front of Yuki. She stared down at his seated position. “Speaking about that, what was that back there? You did nothing to help us get out of the situation and just left it to me!”
“Of course I did,” he answered and stood up looking to the rock. Slowly climbing up to the top that Yumi used to scope out the area. At the top he looked back down at Yumi. “This is your world in your mind. While we don’t understand the personalities that exist apart from you, they come from inside you. I didn’t make them for you with my power. You made them for some purpose. And this world is for you. It’s not done without reason.”
“How can you be so certain? More of your cliché story beats?”
“Reality doesn’t flow like a story. I’m not fitting this into a story. But generalizations can be made and organized like that. But no, the one controlling you before didn’t leave me with the impression that what they did was random. They had some intent, a plan. This might be part of their plan as well. I don’t know what they have in store. But if this is your world then it’s for you to be making the choices within it, not me.”
Yuki jumped down absorbing the fall with his legs before standing in front of Yumi. He fixed her with a very serious gaze that she knew he had in him. It was easy to forget how serious he could be when he wanted for how often he was silly and nonsensical. “You’re the main character of your story, Yumi. I’m not taking the reins in your story. I will follow you and advise you, but this is your path to walk.” He stepped out in front of her with the road stretched out inviting her.
She stared at him looking away from the road. “And what if I make mistakes?”
“Make mistakes, that’s part of life. Hell knows how many mistakes I’ve made. You just have to learn from them, that’s what mistakes exist for Yumi.”
“You make it sound so easy…”
“Compared to what we’re about to face, it is!” Yuki shouted as he backed away from Yumi.
In all of the arguing and debating, she had become completely distracted. It wasn’t until Yuki pointed it out that she noticed the ground vibrating. There was a subtle change, but something came behind her and it was big. She looked over her shoulder at what Yuki saw. A giant snake with the upper body of a human armed with a large hammer came upon them.
Yumi took a step back not expecting to see such a creature in the world. This world she was in quickly became far more dangerous and fantastical than she predicted. ‘What sort of world is this?!’