Gilbert held his head.

"You must be messing with me."

Ethan, who stood by his side looked fairly spooked too.

"Excuse me?" 

Alther was very confused by their reaction.

"But how is this possible?" the old man gritted his teeth. "That... that has to be some kind of bad joke. There's no way that can be true!"

Alther felt a vein bulge on his head. He finally let them read his mind after a lot of pressuring and in the end, only shared memories from moments before he died. And now they claim he's lying?! What was this nonsense?

"I doubt it's that type of effect though. He seems like an actual person from a different world." Ethan mused.

"He might have been affected by an anomaly after coming to this world!"

"What even are the chan-"

Watching the two of them discuss nonsense he didn't get, Alther couldn't help but turn to see Bob's reaction. Bob was apparently not paying attention. He sighed.

"At least tell me why you're reacting like that," Alther said, annoyed.

The two of them stopped, albeit with reluctance.

"Okay, I'll keep this short. We have stuff to investigate." Ethan rubbed his eyes. "You know that machine that killed both of you?"

Finally, Bob reacted, flinching. Alther couldn't blame him. Talking about him dying previously was very unpleasant.

"It's apparently the prof's truck. This guy."

Ethan tapped the old man on the shoulder, who immediately swatted it away.

There was silence for a bit. Finally, Alther processed the information given to him.

"What?" he said. "You're saying that thing, belongs to him?"

Bob took a step further away from Gilbert.

"Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Anyway, if you don't have any more questions, we'll make a move first." Ethan nodded. "We've heard of several other animals that might have been sent over from your world too, so I'll try to read their minds too. Probably will be harder to communicate with them, but it's better than nothing."

Alther wondered how that worked. Didn't that boy's ability bridge language barriers? Perhaps it was just most effective on humans, he concluded.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In reality, Ethan simply didn't know how intelligent animals from that world were

"Trucky would never commit murder... there's no way those memories are true..." Gilbert mumbled to himself.

Alther thought of explaining what actually happened, but decided against it. The last thing he needed was the old man to go nuts on him.

Bob suddenly spoke up.

"Oh, boss thought there was a person inside so he used magic and almost destroyed it. Then it got mad at us and killed us."

Alther gave Bob a slap on the face.

Gilbert suddenly raised a hand. Alther immediately went on guard.

Just as quickly, Enthan slapped the hand away, sending something flying away. There was the sound of metallic clanging as it hit the floor.

Alther looked over and saw a kitchen knife lying on the floor, much to his alarm.

"What the hell, prof? I could have cut myself on that!"

Gilbert glared fiercely at the two bandits.

"You can come at us if you want!" Bob shouted bravely as he hid behind Alther. "It's not like we knew anyway! We needed to rob to make a living back there anyway! And it's us who died in the end!"

Alther silently created an invisible mana barrier around himself. He thought to himself that from now, he had to be more careful about people in this world. They could be still fairly dangerous, even without conventional magic.

Giving Alther and Bob one last glare, Gilbert stomped out of the room.

"Let's go," he said.

Ethan waved to Alther before walking out of the room.

"Try not to rob or kill anyone. It's against the law here." he winked.

Well, Alther thought. It was against the law back there too. Not that he actually killed anyone in his world, however.

As the door shut, Bob looked around nervously.

"Boss... maybe we shouldn't stay here with them..." he said.

Alther's looked downwards.

"Where else would we stay?" he sighed.

----------------------------------------

"Pipi! What were you thinking?" the elf girl said.

The bunny leapt from the deer into her hug, nuzzling her affectionately.

"Be more careful with him next time, alright? He won't always be so lucky to find someone willing to help." the deer said, somewhat smugly.

"Oh, thank you so much!" she said.

She waved to the deer and started heading off with Pipi in her arms.

"Hey!" The deer yelled.

"Huh?" the elf turned around.

"Um, aren't you forgetting something?"

"I- I did?" she tilted her head slightly.

The deer felt very exasperated. Shouldn't the elf understand that someone who helped should get a reward? It would be awkward to say it out loud, however.

"You know, the thing?" 

"What thing?"

"Argh! Fine, I'll just tell you." the deer grumbled. "Shouldn't you be giving me a little soooomething? I brought Pipi all the way here, you know! After travelling so far, my back huuuurts! Also, Pipi doesn't understand me so I couldn't tell him what to do. You should really teach him Rolgh!"

The deer was obviously exagarating. The distance wasn't really all that long in the first place. If carrying something as light as a rabbit gave her back pain, not getting a reward was probably the least of her worries.

"Ehhh? I'm sorry, I didn't realise!" 

The elf girl was very gullible, however.

She ran off, leaving Pipi with the deer and came back with a basket full of leafy greens. The deer ran off gleefully after taking it.

As the elf held Pipi, she gave him a strange look.

"Pipi, I feel like something is different about you... I can't quite put my finger on it though."

"Pip!" Pipi said.

The rabbit could understand her, though he couldn't speak the elven language with his vocal cords.

The demon was fuming from her sentence. Of course there was a difference! It estimated that the 'stupid' rabbit's soul was now at least 5 times stronger.

"I'm going to take you to mommy, maybe she'll know what happened to you."

The little girl hugged the rabbit as she walked home, humming all the while.