Eloise stood near one of the bookshelves when a shallow knocking sound came from downstairs. With a thud, Eloise closed the book she held in her hand and placed it back on the bookshelf. Without making any loud movements, Eloise stepped to the table her wand was on, listening closely if more sounds will come.

As Eloise went down to the 2nd floor, another set of knocks sounded below. Someone’s actually knocking on the door. She went to one of the rooms she could see the entrance from and examined the first person Eloise saw other than herself in this forest.

A kid stood in front of the door. His clothes looked like they belonged in a medieval fair or some sort of fantasy convention. Nothing a modern person would wear in a forest.

[Assistant - Lv. 4]

The kid had a higher level than Eloise, too. She might have leveled-up to level three during her past few days of planting and farming. At the very least, civilization existed somewhere. The kid might be the hope to escape this forest.

Downstairs Eloise went, her wand chucked in her belt behind her.

Eloise opened the door with hope in her eyes. The kid, looking closer, seemed to be a teenager, maybe a couple or a few years younger than herself.

The visitor smiled a smile Eloise saw many times—a polite smile of an employee of a store greeting a customer—and then the visitor said something. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Language. The sentence he spoke, sounded like he spoke with intent, not random sounds. Eloise’s face twisted into one of disappointment. The visitor’s smile similarly slipped off. Whatever language Eloise got from that very first book wasn’t the one that would help communicate with people here.

Just in case the language Eloise picked up wasn’t old and dead that’s used to read old texts and books, Eloise tried greeting the guy.

“Do you speak,” she paused and opened her System, looking at how the language is called. “…Osmela? Osmelian?”

The same smile returned to the kid’s face, and this time Eloise could understand his words.

“Good day, miss. Are you living here?”

“That I do,” she said both the truth and the lie. If you picked up a quarter on the ground, you kept it. “And who are you?”

“The name’s Joachim,” the kid introduced himself. He continued by summarizing that he traveled with merchants to a town nearby. But then a powerful monster appeared from the forest and as far as he knew, Joachim himself was the only victim.

Town! And nearby! But monsters. Eloise remembered the shadowy form of the monster from the library’s windows. Could it be the one that attacked them? If the monster wandered around the forest, there should be a way to get out of the forest. If not for those snake-dogs. They always show up further in the forest.

Joachim shifted his feet, and a wooden knife’s scabbard shifted, while a pouch on the other side jingled.

Right, not a city in a modern world, people could try to rob her in broad daylight.

“And why did you come here?”

“I was backtracking to the main road for safety when I saw this clearing and thought this was the forest’s dungeon.” Joachim shrugged. “But it was too quiet, and then I saw the tower, figured maybe someone was staying here.

“By any chance, could you take me to the town?” Joachim placed his hand on the pouch. “I’ll pay.”

Eloise sighed. The forest got another person stuck. “Can’t. Been trying to leave the forest, too. You can try going to your main road, but the monsters are pretty active around the clearing.” Totally not because of the restaurant “Minefield” and the food it provides.

Joachim scratched his neck.

“Well come in otherwise.” Eloise took a step back to allow for passage. “But leave the knife near the entrance.”

Joachim gave it a thought. Monsters could return at any time and a single encounter with any of them would be simply death. And the young woman was suspicious, at least not dangerous. And she never told him her name.

Joachim fixed his slipping smile. Better look like good intentions are for sale. He took off his scabbard with the knife and placed it on the ground next to the door.

The woman turned around and he saw a stick haphazardly wrapped in bloody rags. No, that’s a wand. She’s definitely dangerous.

The woman showed him into a guest room, and he took a seat on one side of the table, on the fluffiest sofa he had ever sat.

The woman left the room for a moment. And Joachim jumped up and down, feeling the softness of the sofa. Soon she returned and brought a cup of unknown beverage. The woman placed her wand next to herself and sat on the opposing side.

“You can call me Eloise,” the woman said, finally introducing herself. “Want to hear the good or bad news first?”

“The good news first, of course.”

“The good news is that this tower’s safe, monsters can’t enter the clearing.”

Joachim almost jumped up from the sofa. “Is that true?!” People only whispered of such things in rumors and passing, about how capital’s walls are protected this way.

Eloise nodded.

Joachim grabbed the drink and gulped it down. It had flavor… of something. Too light to tell. He placed the now empty cup down. “What about bad news?”

“The bad news is that you’re stuck here. While I’ve made some attempts to leave, the snake-like creatures with dog heads are a little too powerful for me to deal with. And they always, always pop up if you go out of the clearing just a little too far.

“Unless you know a way to escape the forest without encountering them, you’re just as stuck as I am.”

Joachim paled. He whispered, “Do you mean Scalescythes?” While he saw them being annihilated by the adventurers, he himself had no fighting experience. And the young woman in front of him was lower level than Joachim, too.

She shrugged. “No clue, my [Analyze] prints out ‘Unknown’. Taller than me, agile snake bodies, same heads as Twotails…”

Joachim interrupted her, “Those are Scythescales.”

Another suspicious point, how could her [Analyze] not know of Scalescythes? Did she not hear of this monster from anyone at all?

Eloise crossed her legs and leaned forward. “And if you want to stay here… what can you do?”

Of course, no freeloading. “I can do Assistant work, I can also pay.”

“Oh? What work exactly do you do?”

Joachim blinked. “I just assist… things. Be it carrying something, or cooking, or helping to write or count something.” Assistants were in every store of every town, where did she even come from?

A smile sprung on Eloise’s lips. “Great. You can pick any room on the 2nd floor. And don’t go upstairs to the 3rd one, you might collapse the whole tower and accidentally die.”

A shiver ran through Joachim. That didn’t sound safe. He just nodded without a word.

“Come with me.”

Joachim stood up and followed the woman to the kitchen. A bigger kitchen than what Lord Trowor had.

Eloise circled her arm around the room. “Do you know how to use anything here?”

And she didn’t?

He indicated the stove. “May I?” Eloise gave him a nod.

Joachim walked up to the expensive-looking stove, he placed his finger on an indent on the side of the stove and used a skill.

[Use Object]

With a blink, a fire appeared on the stove. Smooth, steady flame. Unlike the stoves in general households, this one even had controls to change the fire strength.

Joachim looked back and saw Eloise with surprise on her face.

“You could do that?” Before Joachim could answer with anything, she continued, “What else is in this room that’s usable?”

Has this woman really never seen an appliance in her life? Or was she some sort of princess escapee from the stories who wanted to see how commoners lived?

When Joachim pointed out a sink and explained that the water comes from there, she looked at him like he was insane.

But once she saw that water did indeed come from the sink and that the water was drinkable, Eloise just declared that the drink he had in the cup before was now forbidden.

Joachim just shrugged at that, he didn’t like the weird flavored drink anyhow.

The woman looked outside through the window into the reddening skies.

“Let’s go, maybe you’ll be able to make use of them, too.” Them?

They left the tower, with Joachim’s knife now at his side again. Eloise said it was just in case. But that made him wonder where were they going.

He didn’t have to wonder long, after crossing the clearing and arriving at the outskirts of it, Eloise wielded her wand and stepped out of the clearing.

Now Joachim noticed that the clearing was sort of cut off from the forest. He drew the knife and followed the woman.

After a few more minutes of walking, Joachim arrived at what could only be called the fields of death. An area of ashes and corpses. The grass barely grew here. His eyes shifted onto Eloise. Then back to the death in front of him.

“What happened here?” Joachim tried to walk forward, to get a closer look at the situation.

But the woman extended her arm and stopped him.

“Don’t move,” she said and pointed a few steps further with her wand. “There’s a magic trap there. You don’t want to step on them. And there’s a lot of them.”

Joachim gulped, stepping back.

The woman continued her explanation. “Lots of Twotails fall here, but now there seems to be less of them already.”

Was this why the initial journey through the forest only met with straggler Twotails? But that would be impossible because the dungeon still existed. Then maybe the new Twotails just didn’t reach to this extent yet.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Eloise’s index finger pointed at a freshly charred body. “Can you do anything with the bodies? Cook their meat or something?”

Without taking a step Joachim leaned forward. “If it was fresher, I could.”

Eloise clapped her hands. “Great.”

Leaves shuffled on the side of the death zone, Joachim raised his head. Twotail walked in, sniffing and looking for raw meat to eat.

[Twotail - Lv. 2]

Joachim gripped his knife tighter, fingers whitening from the pressure. He took a step back, Eloise wouldn’t let him fight the beast, right?

Then Joachim saw how Eloise pointed her wand at the creature and a ball of flame blazed out of it. The flame went straight for the creature, crashing into its side and knocking it down. That didn’t look like the power of a low-level mage.

The creature sprung up and dashed after the one who injured him, Eloise. Joachim took another step back, she was the more powerful here. He could prepare to run in case something went wrong.

Eloise just stood watching the dashing monster get closer and closer. What was she doing? He was about to take one more step back when out of nowhere a flame manifested with force. The monster flew into the air before it fell headfirst growling. With a crunch, the growls ended

Eloise pointed at the fallen beast. “Fresh, right?”

Joachim just nodded. Eloise dragged the corpse out of the trapped field and he carried it back to the tower. The dinner was fresh monster meat. He ate together with a mage that had no common knowledge and had weird magic knowledge instead.

I want out of here already.