Portal Game - Chapter 7 - Mystery

Elise stared in wonder at the magnificent swirling beauty that was the portal. James’ portal apparently. She’d let her brother feel important for now. He probably needed it. She’d just do as he said for a while and then do whatever she wanted later. For now, exploring Svlienia was her number one priority.

“Let’s go!” James said as he stepped through the portal. Elise watched as the ethereal tendrils of the vortex swallowed him up as he disappeared from sight. She could barely keep herself from jumping about with joy. This was actually happening! She was legit about to isekai! Sort of anyway. She felt for her katana at her hip, triple checking that it was secure before she followed her brother through the portal.

Within no time at all the world of Svilenia revealed itself to her. The auburn forest that her brother described was laid before her. Elise had seen many beautiful places, the first among them being the Lake District near Scotland. She’d been there on a trip with her friends from Uni last year. The sights there were absolutely gorgeous and that holiday was a memory that Elise cherished with all her heart. Yet, Svilenia has somehow found a way to surpass all of that. The view was nothing new to James, but to her, it was something marvelous!

As she was gawking at the autumn forest, she felt something strange in her head. Certain thoughts seemed to form in her mind, forcing her to give them attention.

{Welcome Otherworlder, to the Plane of Svilenia!}

‘Ah!’ Elise thought. ‘Shit!’

The integration that James had warned her about began. First came the transformation that gave her mana, and then came the rest. Needless to say, Elise hated the entire process. If it let her have powers however, it was all worth it.

“You okay?” James looked at her concernedly as he helped her up. Oh, it seemed like she’d fallen on her knees at some point during the process. Oh well. She kicked away a shampoo bottle as she arose. How the fuck did that get there?! She looked around to find 6 more along with an exploded tube of toothpaste. What the fuck? She chose to ignore them.

“Yeah, all good. Just that integration crap you told me about.” Elise answered.

“I figured as much,” James said. “A few notifications popped up on the Portal System about your arrival.”

Ah yes. The Portal System. The invisible screen that only James could see. She’d tried to interact with the portal earlier while it was deactivated, yet nothing had happened for her. The entire situation was strange beyond belief. She could accept that Svilenia had stats and magic, yet the thought that a portal needed an operating system was just ludicrous. If this wasn’t reality, she’d have thought there was something deeper going on, something not quite right. That’s how it always was in the stories. But this wasn’t a story, this was reality, and the entire situation was beyond her control right now. Asking questions that she knew would yield no answers served her nothing. She was sure that James felt the same way. He would have talked about it otherwise.

“Have you looked at your profile yet?” James snapped her out of her contemplation.

Her status! How could she forget! Elise pressed the mental button in her mind and the information about her profile was revealed to her.

{Profile:

Name: Elise Haggen

Race: Human

Level: 0

Class: None

Subclass: None

Health: 80/80

Mana: 80/80

Strength: 7

Dexterity: 10

Constitution: 8

Vitality: 9

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 4

Spirit: 8

Titles: [Otherworlder]

Class skills: None

General skills: None

}

Her fast reaction was to brag that her overall stats were higher than James’ when he was at Level 0, but then she saw her wisdom stat. Four? That had to be some kind of insult. Was her status trying to say she had no commonsense? Well shit! Elise was going to fix that as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, she’d avoid showing her profile to James. He did not need something else to be smug about.

“It’s not bad. I don’t have the portal-related title and skill that you have, but that’s to be expected.” Elise looked at James and smirked. “After all, it’s your portal.”

“Damn right!” James ignored the sarcasm inherent in her voice. “There’s a city about half an hour from here. My plan was to visit and find out more about this world, but now I’m not sure that we should go instantly. I think we should try and blend in first. Who knows how people might react to Otherworlders.”

“You’re overthinking it.” Elise rolled her eyes. “How do you even know that people are aware of what Otherworlders are? I’ve certainly never heard of people finding portals before.”

“You’re right,” James sighed. “I have no way of knowing, but the fact that an [Otherworlder] title exists is probably an indication that Svilenia has seen Otherworlders before. It would be strange if what’s happened to us had only ever happened to us.”

Elise didn’t respond to that. James had a point, but she doubted that any of his concerns were going to be a problem. If people getting transported to other worlds were common, surely she would have heard about it before. There would be news about missing persons everywhere, Right? If not, then there at least would have been an indication of such an event. Even if they weren’t the first people from Earth to visit Svilenia, how many could there have possibly been? Not enough to make people think badly of her and her brother for sure.

“Anyways,” James continued. “I feel like we need to be at a normal level before we enter any populated areas. I’m not sure what Level most people are, but 20 seems like a good guess. Blending in should be a lot easier at that point, and besides,” James took a breath. “If people become aware that we aren’t local, I imagine that would make us a target in some way. Having some personal protection other than the gun would be nice.”

Elise’s eyes lit up. James wanted to do a power-leveling session? Oh, she was so down. This was all a dream come true. The girl started thinking about her future build. If she leveled enough, would she become somebody who could split mountains in two? That would be so cool! Maybe she’d be able to walk on air? The possibilities were endless. Before she could further fantasise about future training arcs, she noticed something about the way James said that last sentence. Something that stood out to her.

“James,” She said. “If it came down to it, would you shoot someone to protect us?”

He looked at her, his expression a little hurt. However, the Mage Acolyte didn’t answer instantly.

“I don’t know,” James said slowly. “I’d like to think it would never reach that point, and I hope I never find out.”

Elise hoped they would never be put in that position too. However, if it were James that had asked her that question, her answer would be different. Elise would absolutely pull the trigger. She had already lost her mother and she would not lose anybody else.

“Now we look for things to kill, right?” Elise asked.

“Right...” James sighed as he deactivated the portal.

…

It turned out that James’ plan of leveling up quickly didn’t go as smoothly as he assumed it would. Elise was surprised as well. Like, she knew that there could be some complications. Their plan was to fight fucking monsters. Of course something would go wrong! Even with the gun, there were bound to be some mishaps somewhere. However, the problem wasn’t where Elise and her brother expected it to be. After all that excitement, there weren’t even any monsters to kill.

“Explain to me James,” Elise took a looong sip from her bottle of sparkling water. She was pissed off. “How the fuck did you find the only monster living in the forest and lead it home?!”

“I’m just as confused as you are” James answered, bewildered. “I mean, I didn’t encounter anything dangerous until just before I got back, but there should be something out there. It’s not like the wolf appeared out of thin air!”

“And yet after three hours” Elise glared at him. “We have yet to find anything.”

Yeah. Three hours of disappointment. Elise almost felt like she had been scammed. This was her dream come true and yet... Where was the dream? It was as if she had woken up to find a brand new Xbox on Christmas day, only to find the packaging filled with fucking sweets. Sure, sweets were nice, but Elise didn’t want sweets. She wanted her Xbox, just like how right now she wanted her monsters.

She took out her katana and started swinging it aimlessly against the nearby shrubbery. What else was she going to do to kill her boredom? Twiddle her thumbs? She had started out this expedition fully excited and eager. The autumn forest looked to hold much adventure and wonder, enough to make her feel fully content. She understood that they were there for a purpose; to find a way to wake up Mother. Yet why shouldn't Elise take joy in the journey? As they travelled, that eagerness and anticipation slowly vanished. James’s vigilance instead has turned into tiredness. The sights still marveled. The forest was still eye-candy more beautiful than she had ever seen, but it was empty. It wasn’t even the normal type of empty. There was nothing. Absolutely no sign of life. No birds singing, no squirrels in the trees. Not even insects! That was probably something to be thankful for though.

“Did you even notice how creepily silent it is here the first time?” Elise asked.

“Nope,” James responded. “I was too busy with, you know, accepting all the weird shit that was happening.”

“Huh…”

They kept walking for 10 seconds more until James stopped moving forward.

“You know what? I’m done with this! We’ve been walking for three and a bit hours, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I need a break.”

Elise stopped in her tracks as well. Unlike James, she’d been snacking throughout the entire journey so she wasn’t too hungry. A sit-down would be much appreciated nonetheless.

“Agreed,” She said. “ Do you want to have a picnic here?”

James shook his head. “Let’s go a bit further. If we walk another 20 minutes we should get to the path I found before. We’ll eat at the hill where you can see the nearby city. As great as this forest is, I want to look at something else for a while.”

Elise went along with what he wanted. She would have retorted just because she could, but the girl was curious about the mysterious city that James had mentioned. He hadn’t gone into much detail about the specifics of this place. Some of the excitement from before began to return.

Within no time at all the two had reached their destination. Elise gaped at the landscape that presented itself before her. It was truly wonderful! Snowy peaks. Expansive farmlands. A city with a castle that was waaay too big. You couldn’t get more fantasy than this without throwing dragons into the picture. That was a thought! Elise hoped there would be a dragon somewhere.

She sat down on the rug that James had brought and took a bite of her sandwich. Cheese and ham filling. Not her favourite, but not bad either. James was eating his fill as well as he looked on at the nearby civilisation with a confused expression. Huh? She followed his gaze and found a field of livestock grazing on the golden-green grass that populated the fields. She hadn’t paid any particular attention to the animals the first time she saw them but… what were they? At a distance they seemed just like cows that were coloured red, but a closer look showed that these things had 6 horns on their heads that curved back and outwards. The cows had wings too. Wings shaped like a bat. She wouldn’t have even noticed if one hadn’t stretched their wings out before lying down to take a nap. Dragon cows? Why don’t they just fly away though?

“Let’s just go and kill those,” Elise concluded. “They seem like monsters to me! We’d probably get at least 3 levels per kill.”

“Great idea! Let’s go and kill the livestock of the only nearby civilisation! I’m sure they’d absolutely love that!” James rolled his eyes, expressing his sarcasm if it wasn’t already apparent. “We’d end up in prison or getting killed by Svilenia’s version of the police, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid last time I checked.”

Elise sighed. James was so dumb sometimes. How did he not understand that she was half-joking? They ate in silence for the rest of their meal, neither of them really wanting to speak to the other. She really wished it had been her to find the portal instead of James. Elise looked up to the sky to watch the setting sun. They probably only had an hour left of daylight, probably less. Her first day in the world of Svilenia had more or less been wasted. With nothing better to do, Elise started thinking about the ways that James had screwed up.

“We want to go incognito right?” Elise asked.

“That’s the plan.”

“You should probably throw away all the crap from the bathroom that you just left out in the open then.”

James looked at her blankly, not sure what to say.

“What? You thought I wouldn’t notice? You do realise that if anybody passes by, it’s a dead giveaway of the portal’s location? Everybody’s going to realise that a shampoo bottle with the fucking hulk stamped on to the side doesn’t belong in Svilenia.”

“Oh come on! I told you before a lot of weird shit was happening and…” James froze solid for a moment and then he stood up rapidly, his face pale. He rapidly took out the Glock and looked around.

Elise, suddenly also on high alert, stood up and unsheathed her katana. “What is it?”

“At the portal. The wolf corpse was missing. It should have been there right outside the portal, right where I left it.”

Elise blinked. How could she have missed that! It was so obvious now that he’d mentioned it! She’d been so caught up in receiving her status that she hadn't even noticed the corpse’s absence. James must have made the same mistake.

“Maybe the corpse got eaten by some other animals in the forest.” Elise suggested, trying to calm herself. They didn’t seem to be in danger right now, but the fact that they’d overlooked something like this had got both their adrenaline going. “It’s probably nothing too much to worry about.”

“Normally I’d be with you there, but what animals Elise? Other than those cows over there, there aren’t any! Besides, if animals had done it then they’d have left a trace. Instead, there was nothing left! No blood. No bones. Nothing! If there was, then we’d remember it! ”

Shit. He was right. Had they already been found out? Did her accusation actually have some truth behind it? Or was something else entirely going on? This was too fucking strange, and it scared her a little.

“We’ve got to get back,” James concluded. “Replan and rethink things until we know what happened to the wolf. Safety comes first.”

Elise nodded and followed as he gathered all their stuff and broke into a jog down the hill into the forest. She took one last look behind at the beautiful landscape of Svilenia. The view was divine under the orange glow of the almost departed sun. Within minutes, the plane would be drowned in the darkness of night, with only the moon and stars to guide them. Elise briefly wondered if Svilenia had more than one moon, but now wasn’t the time to think about that.

Darkness descended and the howling of wolves was heard across the forest.