“A new type of monster with the power to overwhelm and annihilate a village before help can even arrive is very high priority. Tell me what you would handle first, a guy who can fix one person a day, or a monster that can break a hundred a day?”

Touché.

“They’ll try to find you, but not yet.”

“So what are we doing until then? Running like mad?”

“Hahaha I’m not the running sort. Neither is Kel, right Kel?” Grey turned his head over his shoulder and grinned at Kel.

“I am definitely the running sort.” Kel waved one of her hands as if to wipe away the very idea that she would be as dumb as Grey.

“Ah by the way Kel,” I said also looking over my shoulder, “haven’t you been speaking way less since we met? What’s up with that?”

“The author hasn’t settled on my character type yet so he’s shifting my speaking style around until he lands on something he likes. Or he has no idea how to write a female character with emotions.” Kel shrugged and kept walking.

“Ah! Wait, Newb!” she said with a look as if she had just understood a shocking truth about the world, “you have the traveler skill too don’t you? Grey said you do. Why am I still carrying all the stuff?” Declaring such she threw her bag on the ground and began pulling out tents, rope, fire equipment, oil, lanterns, bedrolls, rations, and waterskins. “This shit is yours and Greys, carry it.”

“Do I have to?”

“It’s fuckin’ free and you have to train skills to make them useful. Do it.”

“Fair point.” I sighed and picked up the stuff, stuffing it into an oversize sack provided by Kel and putting it, surprisingly easily, on my back.

*ding*

“Huh?” I look down and pull out my status plate.

NAME: I swear ill get to it

TITLE: Enigmatic

AGE: ???

RACE: Human

LEVEL: 1

CLASS: Beginner

STRENGTH: ???

VITALITY: ???

SPEED: ???

AGILITY: ???

LUCK: ???

INTELLIGENCE: ???

DEXTERITY: ???

MANA: ???

SKILLS: Origin. Enigma (+Absolute Severance/ {{RESTRICTION}} Motion/ {{RESTRICTION}} Concentration). Traveler (+lighten load).

“ISN’T THAT WAY TOO FAST?? I only picked the stuff up!”

“Don’t worry too much, traveler levels really easily. I think it also goes up faster when you travel with higher level people, like power-levelling in videogames.”

“Oh right of course. Wait videogames? How do you know about those?”

“Oh didn’t we tell you? Grey isn’t a foreigner but I am. Kel, from the states. Nice to meet you.”

“EHHHHHHH? Really?? Wait. Grey isn’t????”

“Yep. You didn’t ask but there are like a hundred foreigners in Taron, which is this country. The one you’re in. Which I guess could also be taken as there are only like a hundred. And yeah Grey is Taron, born and raised.”

“So you were summoned?”

“Yep. I was playing Horizon Zero Dawn© in my living room when a portal opened under me. Nearly shit myself falling through.”

“Don’t let her lie to you she totally wet her pants when she got here.” Grey laughed haughtily.

“AHAHAHA—“ and was promptly interrupted by Kel spinning in place, effectively decking Grey with her massive bag.

“I spilled my drink on myself okay? Ask the priest who was there he probably still has the can.”

“Monster?”

“Ew what? No it was rootbeer.”

“God Bless America.”

“Fuck Yeah.” Kel nodded sagely while Grey stared at us like he was looking at a llama proposing to a carrot.

“Wha-”

“Shhh it’s okay. I understand.” Kel put a hand on his face.

“Aaanyway so if you’re a PC does that mean you also have rare skills?”

“Actually yeah! I got traveler you know, and also ahh gimme a sec.” Kel reached into her pocket and pulled out her status plate. “Alright I’ve got traveler, gamer, simple magic amplification, herbalist, environmental resist, status magic resist, mental resist, and prodigious archer.”

“One of those sounds way cooler than the others.”

“The archer one right? When I saw that I started trying to shoot flies with a finger-bow and sticks. I could.”

“Holy shit that’s badass. Then why-?”

“Am I a glorified wagon merchant? Easy. Money! You’re in a new world right? So you wanna travel right? Well how do you fund that? The answer is to join the army, mercenaries, or merchants. Or in my case, two of the above!”

“So merchant-slash-mercenary?”

“Merchant-slash-army actually. I was recruited early on, but most of what I do is deliver cargo between cities and deliver merchant goods to towns on the way. I make a killing.”

“Teach me sensei.”

“The road is long young padawan, but fear not, for I shall show you the way.”

“Alright break it up dorks (Kel: “he got that from me”) the one who is going to be training you is mostly me. Kel can teach you about magic and archery but I’ll be doing the combat training.” Grey thrust a thumb into his chest proudly.

“Grey vice-sensei will teach me about swords which are awesome but not as cool as magic?”

“Ha! You’ll be disappointed if that’s what you think. Kel’s magic is only cool because she can amplify it.”

“What?? Really Kel sensei??” I was horrified, does that mean I can only make finger lighters?

“It’s still magic though.” Oh right, finger lighters are fucking badass.

“Ah, wait a sec. You said Grey was a local but he definitely knew what McDonalds was earlier!”

“I snack when I game. Call it a freak coincidence that Micky D’s was my snack of that particular evening. Also McDonalds is one of the funders for RDL so it makes sense.”

“Or maybe only people eating Micky D’s get transported and my room came with ‘cause I had so much? HOLY SHIT. THAT’S WHY THERE ARE MICKY D’S ALL OVER THE WORLD. TO SEND PEOPLE HERE!!”

“Shut the fuck up dumbass.” Fuck the shorty, I’m onto something here. Don’t forget this, 12% promise it’ll be relevant.

“Alright we’re in the mountains now so why don’t we start training?” Grey said while shading his eyes and looking up towards the peaks above us.

“Sure! Are we gonna fight?” I said taking off my bag.

“What you and me?” Grey’s eyes widened in surprise. “Aahaha no you’re going to fight monsters!”

END OF CHAPTER 4

“Dodge it!! No left! There you go! Now! The wing! The wing!”

“Ah! Now! Use fire smash!”

“Oh no! Newb! Newb hang in there!”

I’ve been frantically trying not to die, and quite well I might add, while these sadistic sluts gave me useless pointers and ate popcorn for the better part of a day. Barely an hour after dawn I went up into a nest of rock slimes and ‘corons’, a fanged bird the size of a bear, and tried to stay alive for the entire day. This completely retarded training was the brilliant idea of my well established companions.

THE PREVIOUS DAY

“You’re going to fight monsters.” These words filled me with excitement only a mentally unstable sadist with violent tendencies could understand. After all, training is the first step to becoming the hero, or at least OP enough to call yourself the protagonist, because let’s be honest, MC means OP. Anyway, after giving me a crash course in magic that consisted mostly of “just picture what you want to happen and magic’ll figure it out” followed closely by the moderately more helpful “It’ll be stronger if you’re good with that type of magic. Almost everything up here is rock or wind type so I’ll teach you fire for now.”

“Eh? Wouldn’t fire be virtually useless against those types?”

“Yep! That’s why it’ll force you to get good at it really fast.”

From what I gathered from that explanation is that the key to magic is having a clear image of what you want the magic to do, then telling the magic to do it by a sort of push of your mana. The description was remarkably similar to what you might read in a book so it pretty much made sense. Once Kel pushed mana into me I knew what moving my mana felt like so all I had to do was let it happen. I started with a fireball just because it’s a fireball. Picturing the mana igniting then moving into a ball shape, I then imagined it being thrown then exploding. After doing that I pushed mana onto my hand and watched it take shape. It was only a third the size I imagined but it was definitely a fireball.

“Ooo first try~ Your mana is garbage but your control is pretty good!” I grinned a bit then chucked the ball at a tree. With a small pop it exploded and spread a few small flames which fell onto the tree before dissipating.

“I take it back, your control is awesome! Nice one! Well, your mana is still garbage though.” Don’t cry me, tears will only dampen your roaring flames.

“Alright you have the idea down now so practice later. This is the hard part.” Grey called over from a small clearing he was standing in. “Grab your sword and come here, I’m going to show you the only combat oriented subskill traveler has.” I stood up with a mixture of regret and excitement. Moving towards Grey, I lifted my sword as he pulled out his. (Still not a euphemism)

“I’m glad you’re excited but put that away for a second and just watch. You’ll need to see it at least once.” I lowered my sword and backed off. Once I was far enough away, Grey vanished.

“And now you’re dead.” Hearing his voice behind me when I was nearly 15 feet away brought me dangerously close to needing new underwear.

“WHOOoooOOOaaAAAA! How did you do that?? Show me! Show me!!”

“Ahahaha it’s nothing spectacular. You remember how you were told that traveler grants load bonuses and speed bonuses right? Well to close distance with an enemy you just use traveler. It also helps for running away.”

“Alright I got this.” I immediately took a stance and faced Grey, who had taken a few steps back. > I sprinted towards Grey while activating the skill.

“No-no-no you’re doing it wrong. You need to picture what you want the skill to do.” Kel hid a smirk behind her hand. “Maybe it will help if you yell out your skill like some kind of anime protagonist! It should help you get a feel for the skill like you do with magic.”

“Oh that makes sense. Ok one more time.” I again took my stance and charged Grey. “Wind become my legs! Traveler!!” This time Grey struggled to contain a grin while Kel fell over, taken by some disease that forced her to expel the air from her lungs.

“What??” I glared. “I’m thinking about speeding up and running behind Grey. Why isn’t it working?”

“Oh that’s right! I’ve got this one Kel!” Grey raised his hand and hopped up and down mockingly.

I threw my sword at him.

“Traveler isn’t a buff skill,” Grey said while dodging my blade, “It’s a movement-oriented spatial control skill. Every rookie is taught the skill types in training. You can’t think of speeding yourself up, but instead shortening the distance you have to move.” That sounds like some end-game wizard bullshit, but fine.

“Fold the map to make the distance you have to go shorter. Horseshit.” I grumbled under my breath. Once again I faced Grey and this time imagined squeezing the ground between us till the spot behind him was right in front of me, then I took a step. Looking behind me I saw Grey grinning while sporting a very bro thumbs-up.

“Look at that. Ya did it kid~ But it still took you twenty seconds to pull it off so you could probably only use it once in any kind of combat scenario.”

“Yeah I can see how that would be a problem. Still though, if I practice, this could be pretty OP. How did you train traveler Grey?”

“Hmm? Oh I don’t have traveler. I was using godspeed slash to fuck with you. Totally forgot traveler could do that. Ahahaha well it worked out huh?~” I lit mana in my hands and spread them to either side of me.

“Bro-hug bro. To thank you for your help.”

“Fuck that” Grey turned and bolted. It turns out that playing tag between traveler and godspeed was pretty good practice.