I woke up extremely uncomfortable, and sore all over from my awkward sleeping position in the tree, but after climbing down and stretching out, the feelings started to fade a bit, and I noticed another couple of sensations I needed to take care of. After walking off a bit to do my business, I started to contemplate the other sensation I needed to take care of. I was hungry.

I thought for a bit, then decided that since I wasn’t sure if any plants would be edible, it would be safer to hunt some monsters for their meat. I went back to the area I woke up and noticed Lily still blissfully asleep, tempting me to shake her out of the tree she was sleeping in.

Holding back from the temptation, I shouted at her until she woke up, rubbing her bleary eyes, and nearly falling out of the the tree all on her own before catching herself. A bit disappointed that she didn’t, I give a short “come on, let’s get going,” and wait for her to slowly climb her way down the tree and start following after me, yawning repeatedly.

We walked for a while without running into monsters, which was bad, because I was hungry, when Lily mentioned what I’d been thinking since I woke up.

“I’m hungry.”

“And next craw or molt we find we’ll have something to eat,” I reply.

“Ewwwwww, I’m not eating a monster,” Lily says, her face filled with disgust.

“You probably already have if you ever ate in game, most of the meat is monster meat.”

Lily’s face turns a bit pale, and she gets quite quiet for a bit. The silence doesn’t last nearly as long as I would hope however, she’s soon back to her usual self.

“Well I’m still not going to eat a monster, just find some fruit or a town.”

“I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if we’d seen any fruit trees, and we don’t even know if we’re in the same world as before, anything we don’t know about could be poisonous. At least we know that molts and craw are edible. And we have no clue where any town could be.”

Lily let out a small humph and turned away, clearly not willing to take my words into consideration. On the bright side, it meant lovely silence for the next hour or so of walking, until we finally spotted something that could lead us to civilization, a road.

We both perked up at the sight of it, but at the same time I became very worried. Rather than the asphalt roads I was used to, it was paved with large stones. Remembering my walk between cities in game, the road seemed to be built the same way. I sighed, it had been likely that the game world wasn’t simply a game, and it seemed I may have my official confirmation.

Lily seemed to not even think about the road not being asphalt, and simply started walking along it, ignoring the oddity. I shook my head then followed along behind her, carefully looking around in case of monster attacks.

Maybe thirty minutes later, and Lily has gotten over her excitement over seeing the road and has begun to ceaselessly complain. Complaining her feet hurt, she’s bored, why don’t I know how to find edible plants, she’s sooo hungry, on and on. I agree with her on the hungry part, but have to mention that the reason we’re bored is because there haven’t been any monster attacks, and because I have no intention of holding a conversation with miss arrogant. It may be a bit hypocritical of me, but I’m not in the mood to put up with a headache on top of my hunger.

It has to be the fortieth time she’s complained about being bored when we finally get attacked by monsters, a group of four craw. I smile, soon I’m going to have a delicious lunch. Lily and I each launch ourselves at two of them, splitting up to fight. I easily dispatch my first one with a few ice spears, then use my normal spear to finish off the second one, turning around just in time to see Lily finishing off her second one.

She has a small smile on her face from the fight, that soon disappears when she turns to look at me, but I ignore it. I then get to harvesting some of the craw meat. Once I’d gotten a decent amount, I realize a problem, I don’t know how to cook it when I don’t have steel and flint.

Eventually I decide to ask Lily to cast some lightning spells at a small little campfire I set up, and it ignites the tinder without any issue, though it does send some of the wood flying. I’m soon cooking, and while at first Lily is just saying we should just keep going, once the craw meat is cooking, and the lovely buttery crab like smell starts wafting around, she starts sending glances towards it, not being nearly so subtle as she seems to think she is.

Eventually, after I’d started eating, she gives in and asks in a way.

“Well I guess I could eat a monster…”

“Hmmm? What was that?” I question, trying my best to keep a blank expression.

“Could I have some of the food?” She oh so quietly asked.

I considered teasing her a bit more for a moment, but decided I didn’t want her to snap, and she’d already asked properly, though without a please, so I simply handed over some of the craw meat which was roasting on a skewer.

We finished our meal in silence, our hunger leading us to simply focus on the food, and we were soon stuffed full of food. I leaned back for a short moment, before groaning and getting up.

“We should probably get going, we need to see where this road ends up” I mentioned as I started walking.

Lily put on a disgruntled expression, but didn’t disagree, and we were soon back to walking, though this time with full bellies. The walk was relatively peaceful, with only occasional attacks by monsters, which were welcome as they gave us something to do other than walk in silence.

Eventually, I decide to break the overbearing silence, figuring with my stomach filled I could at least try and have a conversation, if a headache came out of it then so be it. “So Lily, why did you decide to go hunting anyway? I’m pretty sure you don’t need to risk it. You could just have your followers powerlevel you if you wanted to level.”

She thought for a moment before answering. “I just want to get stronger on my own merits. It’s why I play games.”

I was surprised, she’d actually given me a proper answer instead of giving me some arrogant comment. Even so, I had to hide my retort about having an army of followers, before letting out a slightly more diplomatic version. “Why use your own face in game then? If you want to get stronger by your own merits, wouldn’t it be better to be unknown?”

She shrugged. “It’s for my viewtube channel. Playing with my subscribers in game is a good way to help have their continued support on my channel. Besides, they tend to be useful.”

Thinking about how useful was for stuff like hunting down innocent people like me, I simply let out a sound of affirmation before letting the conversation fade.

“So why are you out hunting? I’m sure you could become plenty rich just inscribing weapons.” She eventually asked me, having been shooting glances my way for a while.

“I guess I’ve always just dreamed of something like this. Game turned reality, where you can get stronger just by hunting. When it finally happened, I just didn’t want to let the opportunity slip away.”

Lily tilted her head to the side in thought, the walk fading back into a slightly more comfortable silence than before. Our walk continued in peace, when we finally started to see other people walking along. I smiled, we had to be close to civilization.

We were continuing our walk, when I decided to listen in to a conversation two other people were having about where some monsters were, which made me smile in relief, I could understand them.

This clearly wasn’t Earth, the people walking along were obviously adventurers, but at least I wasn’t going to have trouble understanding the language. I instantly started to wonder, why was that? If they were speaking English here, were they speaking other languages in other parts of this world?

I was musing on why they were using the same language, though it did have a few words I didn’t understand, when we came upon a wall around some farmland, something I was sure I recognized.

I held in my belief, and looked over to Lily, who seemed to be feeling as uncomfortable as I felt, and we continued our walk among the farmland, until we finally arrived at the city, and I let out what I had been thinking up until then.

“It’s Kurheim, we really are in the game world. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be calling it a game still.”

“Fuck!” Lily cursed.

My eyes widened in surprise, I knew she was the type to curse around people she didn’t need to maintain an image around, but I’d have expected her to be a bit more restrained considering she now knew me.

Lily soon noticed my reaction, and quickly looked away, hiding her face. Apparently she hadn’t thought about me being there. Ignoring the embarrassed Lily, I continued my walk into the town.

We were soon at the adventurers hall, and we entered, wanting to get some information, and hopefully find out how to get a backpack, I had no clue how I was going to collect loot without one.

We grabbed a number and sat down to wait our turn, and soon we were called up to the counter. A pretty young lady was at the counter, and gave us what seemed to be a perfectly genuine smile as she began the conversation.

“What can I help you with today?”

“I would like to sign up as an adventurer, and was hoping I could learn where to get one of those magical backpacks. Oh, and is there any way to get tested into a higher rank?”

“The guild will loan you a backpack if you don’t have the money, you’ll have to pay it back with interest though. As for signing up as a higher rank, if you feel like you can handle it I can get a guild trainer to test you.”

I’d thought that the requirements for completing ten quests of a rank were iron clad, but apparently they were willing to bend the rules a bit, perhaps because there weren’t any orbs or wargs for beginners to hunt nearby.

I thanked the young lady, Raisa by her nametag, and she went into the back to fetch the trainer. She was soon coming out with a small man, and brought him over.

“This is Tarben, he’ll be testing you. You should feel proud to have the guild leader himself decide to do your test,” she said with a painfully bright smile.

Tarben didn’t say anything, just gestured for us to follow him, and soon we were in a small arena, and he grabbed out training gear for both of us, handing it over, still not saying a word.

I grabbed the spear, and then decided I had to mention something. “Um, Tarben sir? We’re both mages as well, so you should probably test us on that first.”

Tarben let out a grunt that sounded vaguely like he was agreeing, and pointed out a target, which I assumed meant he wanted us to cast spells at it. Lily went first, casting a variety of lightning spells that I couldn’t really tell the difference between, only noting one of them hopped to different targets, and one of them seemed to stay on the target, flickering on and off for a while before fading.

I then went through my repertoire of spells, and when I was done, I looked to Tarben, to see him take up his weapons and get in a fighting stance. Assuming he meant for me to fight him, I matched him while Lily decided to sit out at first and watch.

I led in with a stab towards his chest, which was easily swept aside by his spear, and he stabbed outwards at me, but quite slowly, clearly holding back, making it easy for me to dodge. Deciding I wanted him to take me at least a little more seriously, I stabbed out again as fast as I could, then swept my training spear towards his neck as he dodged to the side.

His expression didn’t change though, he simply ducked under, pushing my spear further in the direction it was going, throwing me off balance, and then stabbed out at me, much faster than before, letting me barely dodge it.

If I had been in my game body, I’m not sure I would have been able to dodge that, only the extra agility from my training in real life had let me get out of the way in time. Ignoring the sweat on my forehead, I continued to stab out at him, and he continued to foil my plans to hit him, and he kept getting faster and faster, and soon I was becoming covered in the dust that marked where I had been hit.

Eventually, after I’m pretty sure I would never get the dust out of my clothing or hair, he stood up straight, then gestured for Lily to come over, who had spent the entire time laughing at me getting my butt handed to me.

Her joyful expression faded as she went up to face Tarben, switching to a wary one, and she took up her sword and shield, taking a stance in front of him.

Her fight went much the same way mine had, easily dodging the early combat, but quickly becoming overwhelmed by the speed that he could put out. Wondering if we had even come close to seeing the instructors limit, I watched the fight, trying to figure out what I could do if I was facing someone that strong again.

I hadn’t been able to come up with anything by the time Lily had finished her fight, and she came over looking very annoyed. I just grinned at her red dust covered face, and then we went up to Tarben, handing over the training weapons which he put away in trunk.

Tarben then gestured for us to follow him, and we went along as he went back into the guild. We met up with Raisa who excitedly asked “So? What rank are they?”

“High three star.” Tarben answered, the first words I’d heard from him.

I had to admit, I was a little disappointed, I was hoping I’d be judged strong enough to fight some four star mobs, but I guess I could accept the result. Wondering if I could make it to four star if I allocated my points, I was interrupted in my musings by Raisa handing over the same form I’d filled out my first time at the guild.

I filled it out much the same, only changing my name to my real life one, and handed it over, then accepted the prick on my finger with only a little bit of a wince. I know I’d taken some pretty painful hits and still kept fighting, but even a tiny needle still hurts when you know it’s coming.

She then put the blood on the dog tag like guild tag, and it let out a short glow before she handed it over. Lily soon got hers done as well, and then it was back to talking for the cheerful looking receptionist.

“Remember not to lose your guild tags. And here’s two backpacks for you, you’ll need to pay back 50 gold, your earnings will be garnished until you’ve paid it back in full.”

I was honestly surprised at how cheap the backpack was, and thanked her for the information before Lily and I went back outside, we needed to figure out what to do. We now had a lifeline over in this world, but we needed to get back to our world somehow.

“Any ideas on where we’ll be able to find another gate?” I eventually asked Lily as we walked along, hoping she’d have more of a clue than I did.

“It’s probably best to just explore pretty far away from town, if they were in more populated areas, then they would’ve been much more common knowledge, so they’re probably in more isolated areas.”

I tilted my head to the side, it made sense, but what about the ones that spawned monsters, those seemed to have no compunctions about appearing in places such as cities. Figuring it didn’t matter, we were just going to have to figure it out as we went, I hefted my empty backpack on my back, then decided it was time to go make some money.

We were going to need quite a few things to start searching for a way back home, and money would make everything so much smoother, from a ward net so we could stay outside longer periods of time while searching, to simply hiring other adventurers to search for a gate for us.

I mentioned as much to Lily, and she simply nodded before we headed off to hunt.