My senses were assaulted when I stepped outside. The sunlight hit me first with its warmth. The temperature had to be near tropical. The air itself smelled rather earthy. It was the smell of the woods surrounding me. I could hear numerous birds chirping and leaves rustling in the wind.
I walked forward a bit before turning around to look at the house. It seemed to be in a rather cozy spot. The forge and the metalworks seemed to be in fine condition tool. Just to be sure I examined the surroundings.
There were a few things I was unhappy about. The first was that the ground the house was settled on was regular dirty and tree roots. This poor foundation meant that in the future, since this location seemed tropical, if any heavy rainfall came we’d most likely get mired in mud.
Second off, with the trees so close leaves would undoubtedly fall on the shingled roof. That meant the roof itself would rot out and need to be replaced much earlier than should be necessary.
Third, and finally, there didn’t seem to be a nearby source of freshwater meaning we’d need to use the magic crystals in the house… While that was fine for normal drinking water or cleaning, I needed large quantities of water to run my forge and craft metal objects. I had some water creation spells, but due to my lack of practice in the mage arts they were rather inefficient.
Basically, if possible, I wanted to move the house.
“Benson, is it possible for us to move the house?” I directly asked. There was no point being roundabout.
“Unlikely, mistress,” he replied, “The house itself has so many shield and reinforcement charms it’d be nigh impossible to move it. At least, not without a crew of mages as strong as Tenia.”
“Okay, if that’s the case then the first thing we can’t change the house, we need to change the area around it. Tenia, can you use wind magic to cut down the trees in about a 500 foot radius from the house itself?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Then, Benson.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“I need you to start digging up the dirt around the home. I’m going to go brew reinforcement and transmutation potions. We’re going to make a stone foundation.”
“Yes, mistress!” Said Benson before rushing off to do the job I gave him.
I looked over and watched Tenia cast several wind blades all at once, wiping out the trees in a massive area. She would be done much quicker than Benson. I felt a sensation in the pit of my stomach I hadn’t even considered by this point: hunger.
“Tenia, when you finish that task search the kitchen for any food and make all three of us something to eat. If you can’t find anything then I’ll have to either brew us nourishment potions or we’ll have to hunt something,” I said, making my voice loud enough for Tenia to hear me. She didn’t say anything back. Instead she simply gave me a ‘thumbs up’.
I walked into the house again. The sound of Benson and Tenia’s work echoed loudly, but the building itself never even so much as shook. The reinforcement runes were fantastic, even in this situation. I was glad I wouldn’t have anything troubling me while I brewed.
I quickly found myself in the potioneering workshop upstairs. I searched my inventory and found a ridiculous number of the necessary ingredients for the potions I wanted to make. Back in the game days I had a hobby of collecting every ingredient I passed while walking from mission to mission. I even programmed my NPCs Tenia and Benson to do the same. Thus I tended to have absolute craploads of unnecessary resources. Who’s laughing now, James! Telling me collecting worthless things was just a waste of time!
With a smile on my face, I set about using my potioneering apparati. Surprisingly, everything worked exactly the same as it had in the game days and I finished several potions in a matter of minutes. Using my magic ‘Crystal Flask Creation’ I was able to even store each in its own little bottle. Of all the spells in my repertoire, that one had to be the most efficient. In the early days potion crafting was a terrible thing to suffer through due to the expense of glass flasks… That and the fact that you needed to memorize an absolute crapload of things such as recipes and plant effects. I, of course, cheated and wrote down everything in several books that I kept in my inventory. Well, I guess it’s not really cheating if everyone does it that way. No one in their right mind would rely on memorization alone for potioneering. Still, it was tedious. Not to mention that every potioneering ‘master’ in the game had their own secret recipes hidden in their books that they kept secret. Whenever a potioneering master was ‘player killed’, if the random drop item happened to be one of their recipe tomes the killer would easily make 100 times his initial investment. I remember buying at least 7 other potioneering books off of player killers over the years.
With the freshly brewed potions in hand, I made my way outside again to find Benson completed with his task. The house itself was now suspended by four pillars of dirt above a huge pit. I was impressed by the sheer volume of dirt he moved.
I quickly set about using the potions to transform the dirt pillars into hardened stone and then I reinforced them with the reinforcement potions. With that done, the only thing left to do was to refill the pit with the displaced dirt but to leave about two feet under the house open in case of heavy rain in the future. This way we’d have reinforced stone pillars holding up our home. I’d be sure to make some runes to protect the house itself from other forms of natural disaster as well.
Tenia herself had just finished cutting down all the trees. It seems she stored them in her inventory, since the logs all vanished without a trace afterwards. I was a bit thankful that we didn’t have to process all that lumber. I was also thankful that the inventory doesn’t have a size limit rather than a ‘number’ limit. It could hold up to 255 stacks of items in each type of pouch. Since ‘trees’ will only be a single stack of items, no matter how many she added to it, then it wouldn’t do more than take up a single of her 255 crafting resource tab slots.
I used what little earth magic I had to help Benson move the dirt piles back in place. Tenia came back and, using a stone magic, crafted an elegant walkpath in front of the house. She then crafted stone foundations underneath the forge and metalworks crafting area too.
With the house base reinforced and the woodlands around us beaten back, the three of us decided to search the house for stored food. Unfortunately, there was none. We all looked through our inventories, though, and did find some boar meat from a monster boar.
Using the kitchen, Tenia quickly took the boar meat and fried it up. She seasoned it with a few herbs she pulled from her own inventory. The smell of the sizzling meat drew out my hunger pangs with fury. I had just eaten a delicious pork meal last night, and now I was about to have another one.
Thinking of my mother, of course, immediately filled me with an intense sorrow. I was coming to accept that I had been sent to another world… But I couldn’t help think about what was happening with my mom. Was my body still back in my room, connected to that virtual reality helmet? Was that body even still alive or had my soul been sent to a new world altogether?
I had just so many questions about my predicament, but nothing seemed to be answering them. There was no logout option. Hell, there was no regular menu option either. I guess, in the end, I was lucky enough my magic worked.
I thought that when people were sent to another world in stories they were given some kind of narrative from a higher being or something. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? Why had I been given nothing?
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After we finished eating, understanding that hunger implied we’d need regular necessities to survive now, we moved to the comfortable chairs in the sitting room.
“Okay,” I said, breaking the silence, “we’ve discovered a few things since last night. One, both of you are now very much alive.” The two nodded their heads. “Two, we’ve been separated from everyone else in the guild. Three, wherever we are seems to be very much real and not a dream. I know back in Xternity we were able to revive after death, but at the moment we have no idea if such a thing is possible. I don’t intend to find out if it is, either. For now I’m giving our little group here two main objectives: survive and find information about this world. Do you both agree with this?”
“I would like to add a third, mistress,” replied Tenia. “Your protection is both mine and Benson’s highest priority. Thus we’d like to add that to our list of objectives.”
“That’s fine. I don’t very much like the prospect of protecting myself… Still, if you both now have human emotions, we need to discuss your feelings and such in more depth. What do both of you think about me and about our current situation?” I asked, being careful about breaching the subject.
“Mistress is the one I respect the most. She is my creator,” replied Tenia.
“I feel the same,” said Benson. “You are akin to our mother. You designed us and gave us life.”
“Hold on a moment, you two.” I interjected. “I may have designed you both, but I am not the one who gave you life. I still don’t know what happened with that.”
“But you still designed us,” said Tenia with a knowing smile. “That is enough for me. My life belonged to you before my… awakening, and it’ll belong to you after as well.”
I held my hand to my forehead to stifle the pain of a migraine. It seems I’m being revered as the parent of these two NPCs… No, I should stop thinking of them as NPCs. I needed to think of them as real people. They had feelings. They had desires. They had motivations… And, if I’m being honest, both of them were far stronger than I was.
If they turned against me… I’d maybe have a 30% chance of escaping at best. Both of them were level 90 NPCs in the game, the highest level possible for automated guild staff. With each only 10 levels below me, their fighting potential was much higher than mine. It was particularly egregious when you considered that they both had complete combat classes. They didn’t have ‘personalities’ before. Each NPC had a small section where players could write in their personalities for roleplaying purposes, but there was no way for the game to recreate that due to technological difficulties. I hadn’t spent much time on them, but I remember the details I put in there. Benson was overly honorable and extremely loyal while Tenia was timid on the surface but brave in the face of danger. I’m not exactly sure how much of their personality descriptions were carried over, but it couldn’t hurt to test it.
“Tenia, what’s your favorite food?” I asked in a calm manner.
“Tea cakes covered with powdered sugar,” she replied with an innocent smile.
“Benson, if a man that you know for a fact is weaker than you challenges you to a duel,” I said, not losing any momentum, “do you fight him with your full strength or do you go easy on him?”
“I do not show mercy. To go easy on a foe asking to see your strength is an insult,” he replied smoothly. “Mistress, we are very much your children. I can assure you.”
I sighed and shuddered at the same time. These two seemed assured that I was their parent. It was comforting knowing I still had my bodyguards from the game days, but it was a bit off putting at the same time. Both of them continued to give me those gentle smiles, too. They knew I was suspecting them, yet they continued to offer reassurance. Perhaps, due to my natural untrusting nature, I had been cold to them… Back in the game days I had always treated them more like pets than anything. I particularly hated to watch them die or get hurt, though that was more to do with my own neurosis than anything. When they were virtual I treated them as pseudo friends… Why, now that they’re real, can’t I do the same?
“I’m sorry,” I muttered weakly. Both of them heard me, but neither reacted. They only continued to look at me with kind eyes and gentle smiles. It pulled on my heartstrings.
“Okay then, we’ve decided this will be our base for the time being. I’m going to start setting up anti-monster runes and anti-personnel runes too. Do both of you still have my ‘Key Charm’ in your inventories?”
“Yes,” they both replied in unison.
“Good. That means you can pass through my barriers. Please, make sure that you never lose them. Now that we’re accepting that we’ve been sent to a new world, we need to focus on gathering information first. We don’t know how strong we are compared to the local populace, nor do we know how they treat foreigners. Our first priority should be on gathering information. Benson, I want you to show Tenia the direction of the nearby township. Tenia, you’re to go to the township and observe it. Try to listen in to conversations between people and see if the language is understandable. If it is, I permit you to try and see if our currency can be exchanged there. I don’t know if Benson’s appearance would scare normal humans.”
Though, technically, there was no telling if this town had normal humans in it anyways… Bah, there’s no point worrying about it. I’ve read enough light novels to know that humans are always the dominant race, after all.
I took out a small pouch of coins. In Xternia, all currency was in ‘G’, which stood for Gold. They were simple gold coins with fun designs. The prices back then were rather simple, all things considered. 10 ‘G’ for an iron sword. 50 ‘G’ for a steel sword. 10 ‘G’ for a basic healing potion. 50 ‘G’ for a Healing Potion+, etc… Anything over 50 ‘G’ was considered expensive. I, however, had little problem with ‘G’ considering my position as the foremost crafter in the server. In fact, I set most of the higher tiered pricings myself. In my inventory I had well over 30,000,000 ‘G’. If this ‘G’ could be converted into the local currency, then we would be theoretically set for life. We could easily life comfortably without worry… Well, as long as we didn’t let on how rich we were. I’m certain, knowing human nature, that shadier individuals or groups would target us if we made too big of a splash…
I also needed to consider what was going to happen if we couldn’t speak the language. Our first goals then would be to fortify our base and set up something self sufficient. We could probably hunt monsters for food, but we’d need vegetables and other things. I could maybe make a small farm plot and have Tenia use earth magic to plow it. The only problem with that was seeding. I had no ideas about normal agriculture… I only knew how to grow the unique potion ingredient plants.
With a sigh I realized I was getting ahead of myself.
“I’m going to go enchant the repellant runes now. Tenia, you have your mission. Benson, you stay here and guard the house. Oh, and Tenia on your way, I want you to survey what kind of plants and ingredients grow in this forest.”
“Yes mistress,” she replied with a smile. I realized now that this, my first day in a new world, was going to be rather long. At least I was able to calm myself down. There was no reason to stress out. If things worked out then they worked out, if not we were at least safe.