“Hey, Eduard?” Kay sidled close to the half-elf as they were gathering up the bodies of the snake-like monsters they had killed. “I have a question.”

“Sure, what is it?”

Kay hesitated. “It, well, it might be a bit rude, so tell me if I should drop it.”

Eduard nodded. “Sure, you can’t know if something is rude without asking about it.”

“Okay.” Kay paused for a moment, then rushed the question out. “How are you a half-elf?”

“What?”

“How are you a half-elf? Most people with similar bodies can have kids together, right? But the kids are either one species or the other, kind of randomly, or with certain combinations you always get kids of one species. So how are you a half-elf?”

“Oh!” Eduard laughed. “That question. No, it’s not rude. And well, no one is certain, but there’s a running theory that most people accept.”

“What’s that?”

“Half-elves were a thing before whatever caused everyone to be able to make kids together happened, so it didn’t change anything there. There are a few other species that were able to do the same thing like dworcs and such, and they didn’t change much either. I hear that half-elves and other mixed species people used to have a really hard time having kids of their own, but whatever changed fixed that.”

Kay frowned as he thought. “There was an actual noticeable change to the world like that?” Like a patch?

Eduard shrugged and grabbed a few more snake things. “That’s what people say. There was a tier eight that supposedly lived before that happened who talks about it if you ask, but they vanished centuries ago, so…” He shrugged again.

“I wonder what could have changed the entire world like that?”

“The people who believe in gods say it was someone with a lust or sex based build getting to tier ten, and they changed the world as they ascended. Others think there might have been some insanely huge magic that did it. No one really knows.”

“I hear that a lot around here.” Kay mused. “A lot of theories about why certain things are the way they are, but no real answers.”

“Well, how would you find out?” Eduard asked. “The world is big and there’s a lot to find out.”

“I get that, I just…” He sighed. “I’m used to being home, where a lot of things are understood. There aren’t a huge number of things that we haven’t discovered.”

“I bet that’s not true.” Eduard grinned and nudged Kay in the side with an elbow. “You just haven’t discovered what you haven’t discovered.”

Kay laughed. “Ha! That’s probably true!”

The amphibious snake things had weird fish-like legs, and bothered people fishing in the two rivers. An infestation of them had been enough for a group of fishers to pay for them to be removed, and it had been an easy little payday for Kay and the as of yet unnamed party of Alice and co. That was a bit wordier than “Alice’s Harem”, but it didn’t annoy Korz and it made Alice and Eduard laugh.

The monsters were small and not very strong, so they killed them easily and threw the bodies in Kay’s body holding sack. The things, which Kay still hadn’t heard a name for were good eating according to Korz, but they were smart enough to avoid fishing hooks, and to steal fish from those hooks. They needed to be agitated into attacking and then cleaned up. The twenty-five they’d killed was considered “a decent swarm” and worth a collection of silvers for killing them.

On the way back to the city, Kay stopped next to a large rock a few feet off from the road. “Hey, can I have a second to test something?”

“Sure.” The others stopped a ways back.

Kay pulled some blood from his canteen and focused on compressing it. The basketball sized ball of blood shrunk down as he focused, becoming the size of a golf ball over the course of a few seconds. Kay very deliberately ignored the voice in the back of his head that was asking unimportant questions like, “Is that how physics is supposed to work?”, and focused on the blood. He imagined a very small opening for the blood to release from. He checked behind the rock for anything he didn’t want to damage, then let it rip. With almost no noise, the stream of pressurized blood shot across the gap, and the top third of the boulder suddenly shifted in place, then fell onto the ground.

Kay slowly put the remaining blood back into the canteen, then carefully walked over to the boulder. The cut was smooth and clean, just like the one time he’d seen a pressurized water cutter in action.

“That… that’s a bit scary.” Alice said from next to him as she stared at the smooth rock surface.

“Yeah, but it took a bit to charge up.” Korz replied from Kay’s other side. “So it isn’t some super weapon he can whip out whenever.”

“Once you get to tier three I’ll bet you can do some scary magic too.” Kay muttered to Alice as he looked down at the new rock that was once the top of the boulder.

“Wait, you’re tier three now?” Alice spun to face him. “That’s awesome!”

The rest of the walk back was spent congratulating Kay and debating ways that he could make the pressurized blood saw attack faster. They also talked about better names for it. Apparently “blood blade” was out, because with some practice Kay would be able to make slashing attacks kind of like wind blades from some video games he’d played. The idea of combining the two came up as well, but everyone agreed he probably wouldn’t be able to do that until he got the skill to a higher level.

The line back into the city was short, and the guards passed them through easily. One of the guards gave Kay a nod as they passed.

“I still can’t believe you just happened to run into the Blood Mage that was causing you and everyone else problems and killed him.” Korz muttered, noticing the same nod from the guard. “I guess it’s true that Outworlders end up in important events more than regular people.”

“Korz.” Alice scolded him. “You know that isn’t something anyone is sure about.”

“It could be that people just remember it happening to Outworlders more than they do non-Outworlders.” Verndan added, one of the few things he’d said that day. “Like how people remember bad things more often than they do good things that happened.”

“I guess that could be it… But what about…?”

Kay listened as the party discussed famous Outworlders, both modern and historical. As he’d expected, some of them were evil, some where good, some were assholes, and some acted like saints. As with everything else, it was a mixed bag of people that ended up being shifted into another world.

As they discussed it, Kay’s thoughts branched off from the discussion. His friends. The last memory he’d had was with them in his apartment. Had whatever that had dragged him to Torotia happened while they were together? Were they here somewhere too? Or had they ended up in some other world? Hopefully he just didn’t remember the event that had made him an Outworlder. His friends had become his second family after his family had died in that car wreck, and he hoped they were all okay.

Turning in the job for what was becoming a somewhat meager reward to Kay and then taking his portion of the monsters’ bodies for himself, Kay split up from the as of yet unnamed party of Alice and co. Alice laughed again at the name, and they all wished him a good day as well as made tenuous plans to team up again if a good job came up.

Kay stopped by the house and stored the bodies for later. Hopefully Eleniah could show him how to prepare them when she got back, and he could maybe start learning the cooking skill. He would probably never be a Chef or Cook or anything, but it would be nice to be able to help more with the everyday things around the house.

“Speaking of cooking…” Kay muttered to himself. Why don’t I go around and see if I can find the things I need for pizza? He asked internally. If no other Outworlder had the idea to get rich off of one of the best foods ever, I’m not going to limit myself! He laughed and steeped out of the house. The odds of him being “the inventor of pizza” in this world were low. Without planes and the internet, it was harder to spread goods and information, so someone had probably made pizza somewhere else, and it just hadn’t spread here.

He walked around different markets, and stopped by a few bakeries, checking out their dough and trying to remember his pizza making attempts back home. One baker got suspicious and asked Kay what he was doing staring at him, but he calmed down when Kay told him the truth, that he wanted to make a dish from home but didn’t perfectly remember how to make the dough. The baker offered to let Kay watch in the back as they made dough for a small fee, and Kay promised to think about it.

As he stepped outside, Kay figured he would probably take the baker up on it. He’d only made pizza entirely form scratch once, and that was with his mom when he was really young. He smiled at the memory of him and his mom rolling the dough out and having a great time, with his sister as a baby cheerfully watching along form her highchair. He sent thoughts of love out to all of them, including his firs mom that he didn’t really remember.

A rush of movement from his right had Kay jumping back and grabbing for his punch dagger. His assailant slammed into him and forced him into an alley.

Kay stumbled back as the attacked pushed him, then he recovered his balance and drew his weapon. Movement from behind him had him spinning to face whoever else was in the alley.

Coultron, the annoying Graceful Success member grimaced angrily at Kay. “You and your whore teacher have ruined, ruined, ruined all of my plans! I’m going to-”

“Shut up and hit him!” Someone growled form behind Kay, and he turned to see another two people rushing at him. “We don’t have all day!”

Kay did his best to fight off all three of them. He slashed out with his punch dagger at one while he tried to open his enchanted blood flask. Blocking an attack with from some kind of club left his face open however, and he received a handful of powder to the face. He couldn’t help but breath some in, and within seconds his vision started to fade. He stumbled against the wall and slowly slid down it as he lost feeling in his legs.

The last thing he saw before unconsciousness took him was Coultron’s angry face staring down at him, a dagger in his hand.