The sun was beginning to rise, shining its light on the city. Alther got out of bed and yawned.
He looked at Bob who was still snoring face-first in his pillow, then got out of the room, heading to the kitchen.
Calvin was sitting on one side of the kitchen table, lazily sipping from a mug of coffee and eating a ham and cheese sandwich as usual.
"Oh, good morning," Calvin said without looking up. "Slept well?"
"Yes. Good mourning. Syeep naise." Alther said in a horrible accent.
Calvin finally looked up, raising an eyebrow.
"Man, you really learn fast, huh? You've been learning English for like what, 5 to 8 hours?"
"Thhanks. Maagic class usee memory a lot."
"Hmm, so they have magic schools in your world? I guess that makes sense."
Alther didn't really understand what Calvin said this time. He couldn't help but to think back of the events from yesterday. It really was a really eventful day...
After he explained what happened to the superhumans, they came to a conclusion. Somehow, Bob and Alther must have been sent here from an alien world. That or there was a very advanced country that figured out how to harness mana here on Earth and had tons of mythical monsters. Which was very unlikely as they'd probably be already discovered.
Was how they got here via some sort of random space fluctuation or a spell from that world? Other strange animals were randomly being sent here recently too, including hundreds of motionless stone wolves than appeared one by one. Luckily, they all appeared in an old lady's house instead of somewhere in public. She was quite distraught, but at least she was easy to hush with some cash.
It also helped that she very gullible and managed to be convinced that the stone wolves appearing was just a magic trick, just a prank that was going to go on TV. Ethan heard her muttering "Kids these days..." to herself as he was about to take his leave.
When asked how, the bandits claiming that the trip to Earth happened when they were attacked by a truck didn't make sense, but they didn't seem to be lying either. Even stranger was how they claimed there weren't any trucks on their world. Were things from Earth somehow getting sent there too?
Bob and Alther were put through an x-ray test, where it was found that while they had very close anatomy to humans from Earth, they had some strange organs that weren't present in Earthlings. Alther claimed those organs were for manipulating mana.
Afterwards, Ella was asked, no, forced to tutor Alther and Bob much to her dismay. The reasons were "You're the only one other than Ethan with telepathy!" and "You've only been lazing around and doing nothing ever since joining the organisation!".
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Normally, Alther would have refused to learn, but now that he realised he was trapped in a different world, he should at least learn some means of communication. He really missed his old world though. Did his bandit subordinates miss him? If only they knew if he was fine.
"Hey, are you alright?" Calvin suddenly asked. "You've been spacing out for a while."
"Oh! Am finee!"
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Haliton was eating his breakfast peacefully at the bed and breakfast inn he rented for the night, gnawing on a steak while combing his beard. Some other dwarves were giving him weird looks, but he didn't really care what they thought. He would eat steak for breakfast if he felt like it!
Unbeknownst to him, what they actually found weird was him combing his beard while eating, not his breakfast.
As he drank some beer from a mug to wash it down, he felt very content. Rest days were the best!
Suddenly the door was violently shoved open, slamming on the wall loudly.
"Hey!" The innkeeper yelled in anger. "You want to pay for the door if-"
The moment he saw that the dwarf in blue uniform entering, he shut his mouth and gulped. What was the police doing here?
"Oh, sorry. Just a bad habit of mine!" said the officer. "Haliton? Are you in here?"
Haliton spat out his beer, coughing violently. The innkeeper was mad but decided right now was not the time to shout at him.
The uniformed dwarf walked up to him.
"Ah, so you're Haliton! Just like on the picture. Come with me for a moment."
"Wh-what did I do?" Haliton stammered.
"No need to be tense. You see, we're just questioning you for a bit. It's nothing serious, really!" the officer said cheerfully.
This did not reassure Haliton one bit and made him more anxious instead.
Following the policedwarf, he was bought to the station where he saw Uellor too. They were asked to wait for a bit before being ushered into a room.
"You've been suspected for theft from the scrapyard." the same officer said cheerfully.
"What?" Haliton and Uellor exclaimed in union.
Haliton was filled with panic. How could the truck have just stolen without even telling him? But if it didn't have any weight changes, where did it put what it stole? Could it be that it did the repairs right there and did it so well there was no change in the weight?
"Don't worry, it's not confirmed, just suspected! You see, the guards noticed some materials were missing."
Uellor and Haliton explained what happened nervously.
"I see... you two don't seem to be lying. To think there'd be a machine like that just running around like that!" the policedwarf smiled.
The two suspects heaved a sigh of relief.
"That being said, we don't have any leads on its location. We'll have to trouble you two to help search for it!"
"What? B-but my job..." Haliton stammered.
"Not to worry, we'll send a letter to inform your superiors of the incident!" the officer said. "You can think of it as paid leave! Oh, but with a quest to do, naturally."
Haliton did a double take before feeling ecstatic. To think he'd get to take another day off and no punishement!
"Haha! Isn't this great, Uellor-"
"I... but I don't have anyone to water my plants! And no one to man my shop!" Uellor was horrified.
"Ah, a shop owner with no staff. How unusual!" the officer laughed. "Well, too bad for you then!"
Haliton patted Uellor on the back in sympathy as the gardener put his face into his palms.
...
As the two dwarves left, the officer stopped smiling. Urgh... having to fake smiles in front of people was tiring. It was so much nicer when there were no crimes and he could just kick back and relax, spinning himself on the swivel chair in his cubicle!
He wrote a letter, printed and few copies of them and sent them to a few adventuring guilds. Somehow, he had a feeling those two dwarves probably weren't going to actually find the truck. Random adventurers weren't the most reliable people, but they should be alright at searching for things at least.
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Elsewhere, later in the afternoon, the bandits were trying to find leads on the truck for revenge.
"Gregor! The adventuring guild is looking for the machine too!" a bandit reported.
"What? We can't let them find it first!"