The courtyard that they were currently in as they walked had decorative designs along the stone floor and gardens galore. Flowers such as roses, orchids, and hydrangeas littered their surroundings. With the peaceful rhythm of humming and pollination to accompany it in its orchestra. This all juxtaposed the rather plain courtyard within the barracks walls as they stepped into it. The night was in full motion, skewing their full view of it but one could make out simple weapon racks and what seemed to be practice dummies. Leon’s group was guided to one of the many rooms along the inner wall. The guard guiding them stood beside the door and gestured in. No words were uttered, probably due to the blatant language barrier but the man’s facial expressions through his helmet didn’t make it seem like he wanted to even if he could.

Upon entering, many beds and a few bedside tables with wax candles were seen. A few small square windows let some moonlight in. The floors creaked as the group shuffled in. Leon hadn’t hesitated to take the furthest bed, striding across the room, noting the sad state of the room. The floors weren’t only creaky but straight up sickeningly fragile. One of the boards visibly cracked underneath Leon’s weight. As a man on the rather light side in the weight department, that truly insinuated the worst for the quality of the wood.

Reaching the bed, it didn’t look any more appealing. The bed could be described at best as a pile of hay with a cloth on top. ‘It is a barracks, I guess…’ Leon thought, trying to look on the bright side. ‘I shouldn’t expect that much.’

Sitting down, Leon was delighted to know that it felt better than it appeared. The others that entered alongside him were also taking in the scenery, some murmuring words of dissatisfaction while others couldn’t hide their audible confusion and mild fear. With the pope’s presence gone, all the minor things gnawing at some of them resurfaced.

Leon laid on his back and just looked up at the ceiling. It had been a long day. One second, he’s working, dealing with shit people, getting fired, getting beat up by said shit people… followed by being teleported to a weird valley where he got a game-like RPG class from a disembodied voice, got teleported again, met a pope who he didn’t like, then met a king of another world. All leading up to the grand finale of being stuck in a rundown barracks with strangers and not one single drop of any hint as to where his sister was or anyone he knew.

To say he was in the greatest of moods would be pushing it.

A voice of a man caught his ear. “Hey…”

Turning onto his left side, Leon was met with a man occupying the bed next to his. It was dark in the room funnily enough, so it was hard to discern his features. ‘Who gives candles but no way to light them…’

Based on his voice, Leon assumed he was likely a middle-aged man. Without thinking too deeply about it, he replied.

“Hey.”

The man perked up slightly at the casual reply. “I’m Nick, pleasure to meet you.”

“Leon,” was his short reply.

The man’s previous zealous wavered a bit but he persisted onward through his conversational partner’s disinterest.

“Quite a weird set of events, wouldn’t you say? This has either got to be the greatest and most expensive prank or I must be dreaming.” To which Leon softly snickered, lightening the mood and giving Nick more confidence to resume speaking.

“Yeah. One second, I’m sitting on the couch watching television. The next, I’m in a giant library or something with a weird butler guy that honestly gave me the creeps.”

At this, Leon’s eyes widened as he propped himself up to sit on the bedside. “You were sent to a library?”

“Yeah… you weren’t?”

Leon shook his head, not certain if the man could see it. “No. I was sent to a fake valley with a disembodied voice talking to us.”

It explained a lot as he didn’t know where Drake and Julia went. It seemed like people got different introduction areas and then were sent to random destinations afterward. Anything besides that, it was up to speculation.

Nick went on to describe the rest of his experience. There had been hundreds of people in the grand library with him. The butler told them about Earth integrating into a multiverse and all that, lining up with what Leon went through. Finally, they underwent a search for their class being sent to a similar starry sky as Leon had.

“What class did you get?” Leon asked, attempting to understand everything.

The man waved around a long stick of sorts that flickered in and out of view as it grazed the moonlight’s rays pouring into the room through the shabby windows.

“This floating board says I’m a ‘Magic Lancer.’ Not really sure what that means, this whole thing reminds me of that one roleplaying board game some kids used to play when I was younger. What was it called…? Ah. Tombs and Flying Lizards or something. I didn’t play it so I’m not too familiar with all this stuff.”

Leon internally laughed at the misremembered name of the original iconic roleplaying game that affects all roleplaying games that followed. The class ‘Magic Lancer’ was odd though.

“Magic Lancer? That’s strangely specific, I just got one that said support.” It was vastly different from the simple archer or warrior classes his coworkers got.

The man shrugged, “Yeah, kind of weird. I’m not totally in the dark for these things, I know stuff like swordsman or ranger are normal-sounding classes, yet I ended up with this. The skills explain a bit more, I suppose. One is a thrust skill and the other says that I can imbue my lance with magic.”

It was a longshot calling that stick a lance, but Leon accepted it as being close enough. The contrast between their classes made Leon reflect on the path-finding event. ‘Those stars… there were a lot of them. I guess it’s to be expected that there would be unusual ones since there were evidently way more of them than normal classes I could state with all my game knowledge. It makes sense now why so many people didn’t return from their class soul gazing or whatever. As the voice said, people could be consumed by different paths. I guess some people got attached to similar but incorrect classes for themselves.’ Suddenly remembering that he was having a conversation, Leon decided to elaborate with the man.

“So, you’re a hybrid then,” Leon concluded as he explained how these types of things were normally split up between physical and magic-based classes in games. Nick’s class, from what he could tell, was a physical class that utilized magic to make himself stronger. They discussed stat points, making Leon painfully aware of his lacking stat points once more.

“What do you think of the pope?” Leon inquired, changing the subject.

Nick paused momentarily, “He’s… kind of creepy. Like the butler guy I met. The pope reminded me of some guy I used to work for. Always smiling and… ah, I don’t know… just like… untrustworthy? Like he was putting on a front.” Proceeding to scratch his head.

“Did you notice anything odd besides that? Like did you feel more comfortable around him? Calm?” Leon pushed further.

“No, not really? I guess… now that you mention it, I do feel a bit more uneasy now that he’s gone.”

Leon found it truly a spectacle. Nick was somewhat aware of the pope’s peculiar behavior, not because of the aura he gave out but because he had experienced something similar. ‘I guess it makes sense, his smile did give me the heebie-jeebies.’ Leon wasn’t sure if he’d say that the pope was trustworthy or not, but he definitely felt that there was something… superficial about him.

‘Ah, I’ve been too hung up on this whole pope and voice aura thingy. The voice makes sense since… well it’s a disembodied voice. The pope is… well a pope. They tend to be the charismatic type. That’s that.’ Leon finalized, pushing it to the archives of his mind.

Somewhat realizing his acquaintance was done thinking, Nick spoke. “I think we should probably sleep; we’ve probably got another long day ahead of us,” laughing a bit towards the end.

Leon smiled. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

‘For we are brave warriors, meant to fight the demon lord. Being given only the best to support our endeavors.’ Lying his back on the cloth-hay bed. Leon found talking with Nick to be more enjoyable than he’d originally thought. It was nice to release his thoughts. Leon had never enjoyed meeting new people. His original disinterest reminded him of how persistent Julia was in making friends with him when he’d first started working at the restaurant.

With the conversation done, Leon’s ears became keen to the whispers and mumblings of his other roommates. One man was quietly sobbing on his bed, saying something about wanting to go home. It was a reminder for him that they weren’t there by choice. ‘I’m just happy I didn’t end up counseling someone like that.’ Leon digressed, turning to his right side to face the wall.

‘I hope you’re all fine.’

The sounds developed into ambient noise as he faded into some much-needed sleep.