Chapter 4- First human encounters

It had been two days since the unusual happening of a crack in the so called Outer Wall of the world. The Inner Wall being the one who separated the three: Underworld, Middleworld, Highworld.

The wall was, in a way, self-regenerative meaning it started closing almost right after it opened, making it even more impossible for ‘travel’ between different worlds. However the ones who had come to investigate this case, had said that the crack was undoubtedly one that connected to somewhere else and something most probably had passed through to either enter the other space or to come from there in here, though on the scene, nothing was found.

Another weird fact was the big change that had occurred in the magic concentration. The mana hadn’t come from the other side, they were sure of that. However that meant that it was something of their world that had caused it. There were no known creatures powerful enough to open holes in the wall except the gods and all the gods that were currently in Middleworld were being watched and cared for (what are they? Kids?). Also no god had come from the Highworld or they would be able to tell immediately since they always guarded the inner walls and watched them carefully with some quite high-level magic devices.

After those two days, everything went back to normal. The crack closed and the magic went down to its normal levels leaving the investigators with nothing more to work on except the earlier acquired information. Thus they concluded that the cause might have been some kind of ancient artifact and that maybe nothing had actually passed through. These were just speculations but with nothing more to do they only had to report to their higher-ups/bosses/masters (or the big guys) and leave the thinking to them.

***

With the business in the forest having calmed down, things in the surrounding villages also returned to normal.

In one village in particular, the high mana levels had caused quite a bit of problems. Some of the villagers had fainted during the whole thing, some had become sick and thus the still healthy ones had to take care of them.

The forest was quite a bit of distance away so the casualties weren’t anywhere close to severe but the people with low talent for magic- which were many in these kind of remote places- had caused a bit of an uproar and thus everything was far from normal during those days.

…

As per usual practice, the young ones, mostly males of the village had gone out in their usual patrol. What for? The biggest reason supposedly was to protect their homes but with nothing but magicless animals around, the most they had to get rid of were few snakes, maybe wolves. As disappointing and boring as it may sound they continued to practice this kind of activity with the pretext of protecting, training and sharpening their senses.

“Haaaaaaaahh!”

“What’s with that unusually long sigh?”

“This gets boring by the day. I thought we would get to see something after all that commotion and whatever but it’s… haah…”

Young ones are as young ones do. And, after three good hours of wandering around, their eyes once full of curiosity were now colored in shades of laziness and drowsiness.

Almost all of them were nowhere near what one can call strong. Their guards were down and they could probably be killed with one shot. Only one was still wary and gave a soldier-like feeling that was betrayed by the unusually bright eyes and big smile. Hearing the two lazy bones talking, he couldn’t resist interfering and maybe teasing a little.

“What, you’re tired already, San? Such a shame.”

Hearing this, the boy who had talked first was a bit startled and looked at the man a little nervously.

“No teacher, I didn’t mean that.”

The man was called Hercul (Hercules without an –es :p ). He was the strongest man in the village and the one responsible for teaching the children and the teenagers how to fight and at least be able to protect themselves. He had come to this particular place because it was the place where his grandfather had been born and now he lived in here, in the place of his roots.

“Well, you can always go back home, get settled in, find a beautiful wife and go farming like all the others. You don’t need to enter a life of fighting.”

“Teacher, I’m still fifteen,” the boy, San said after becoming red in the face while the others around laughed.

“Then, it means you can have a bigger family.”

Now completely red and almost Luffy-like (Gear 2nd) he was frantically looking for something to say back.

“Besides, my grandfather married at twelve.”

And thus he found something to say back.

“Teach, your grandfather was kidnapped by a crazy aristocrat lady because he was too cute, and she forced him to marry her. That normally doesn’t happen to people.”

Hercul looked at San a bit surprised as a big grin formed at the boy’s face.

“Besides, you’re still single yourself.”

“Hahaha.”

All the people around started laughing and this times it was the man’s turn to get tomatoes in place of cheeks. He faked a cough and went back to his position in the small squad, ready to leave the situation behind.

And then something caught his eye.

It was part black, part colorful, especially yellow, and completely dirty. It was breathing and some other buzzing noise was also coming from it. He stopped dead on his tracks causing the people behind him to startle and finally stop laughing. Looking at the direction of his eyes one of the few girls talked.

“A human?”

“What?” All around turned to look at her and then again back at their discovery.

“Oh, so that’s hair,” said the second girl.

“Lola, Kida, are you sure?” asked the third and last girl of the group, Maya.

The group slowly walked toward the supposedly-human thing and then one of the boys started poking on her with a stick.

“Yep, it’s human.”

“Oy. Don’t poke with a stick at people.”

“Well, if it wasn’t human it might have bitten me. I never poke at the unknown with my own hand.”

“No, don’t poke at all.”

“So what shall we do with this?”

“Don’t ignore me, you little…”

“Calm down, Kida. We’ll take care of him later. I’ve even found a place to bury him. It’s perfect.”

“You calm down, Lola. The last frog tragedy is already more than enough tragedy for me.”

“But it wasn’t a tragedy. They were sacrificed for the greater good.”

“Oh, enough. We shall return to the village now my cute dear students.”

Hercul finally interrupted the soon-to-be verbal catastrophe that had started and calmly, as the grown up in this situation, took the possibly human girl with one hand and shoved her up his shoulder (like a sack of potatoes).

***

--Reveka---

It had been three days… maybe. Night and day were still there but my sense of time had been broken since I started pulling those all nighters to play games a few years ago.

At those times I could stay awake for full five days straight. But there I was, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, nor my hands moving, nor my legs walking and even my mind was not working well.

It had been a while since I left the forest. I was hungryyy. The only thing that was keeping me from fainting was the awesomely annoying voice that had been buzzing on my ears non-stop for the whole time.

“ShUT UP!” That’s the last thing I said before losing it, fainting right there in the middle of who knows where and falling as per usual face-first into the ground.

…

So the question now is: where am I?

I looked at my surroundings to see a small… house… room. It reminded me of those village houses in my fantasy books. The floor was dirt-covered. There weren’t many things in there in the first place, but what was there was in a sorry state.

*grumble*

My stomach was protesting worse than before. I looked again at my surroundings in search of something eatable.

Nope, nothing.

I had this feeling that I was forgetting something important. I looked around again and again, the quiet allowing me to concentrate and think a bit more clearly.

…The quiet…the quiet???

Where’s Bride?

I remember that before I fainted I asked her if she could turn into a more normal looking sword and she ended up becoming a katana-like sword (I felt my inner otaku squeal at that time…).

Then I fainted. And now I’m here.

That meant that someone found me, someone possibly human if he lived in human-like houses. Looking at the sorry state of the place, however, I couldn’t help but shiver. If they were humans that didn’t even know how to take care and clean up their homes, then they are bandits or something?

My first time of having a clear thought-line was interrupted as the door opened and I immediately stiffened.

Three girls and a man entered inside.

The man gave a warrior-like type of feeling. He was big, with big muscles, a face that hadn’t been shaved for several weeks and short dark hair.

“Oh, you awake little gal?”

Like I said I was frozen stiff so my much awaited answer never came and silence ensued for several long, long seconds.

“You scared her. Look, she won’t answer,” said one of the girls. She had a sweet look, with soft brown eyes and honey-colored hair. She was at least a good two years younger than me.

“You cannot say that Maya. You cannot judge a person by her appearance. Right now she isn’t answering because she might be thinking what the best way to make our blood splatter the walls is and how she should decorate our severed heads.” The one to talk this time was the second girl, a girl that looked like she had come to me after watching a badly-made horror movie. She had dark bags under her almost black eyes. Her hair was dark brown, her face pale and she wore a Cheshire smile in her thin lips.

“That’s only you, Lola. Hey, my name’s Kida. Who are you?” The third girl was a tomboyish pretty-looking one. She had brown hair and a freckled sun-kissed face.

Somehow unfrozen by the earlier flow of the conversation I tried to tie a few words together.

“Ah… Rev… i…e.”

“So your name’s Revi?”

Oops. Oh well, whatever. I nodded to avoid answering and once again silence took over.

“Aaaah. This is getting awkward. Herc, can you hurry up with your questions so that we can all get out of here.”

“Oh yes.” The big man… Herc?... talked and then smiling harmlessly enough, looked at me.

“So miss, what were you doing in our village’s outskirts?”

I looked at him suspiciously and tried to remember if anything resembling a village was near when I fainted. Nothing came to mind so I once again looked at the man this time feeling somewhat lost.

I have a feeling that he somehow understood.

“Do you know where you are?” He asked, not so sure of the question.

To avoid answering once again, I shook my head.

“Then… you must have some idea how you came here?”

Right now in my mind I was trying to work up some kind of believable enough story to tell, or, as things stood, I couldn’t get any more suspicious. And I tried to start saying something.

“I don’t…do…not…k-know.” That’s what I was able say and before continuing I was suddenly interrupted.

“Could it be that you’ve lost your memory?” the dark-looking girl said enthusiastically and bright-eyed.

“Maybe they kidnapped you from some foreign continent and shipped you off to here but lost you along the way. You were once the favorite lady concubine of the prince of some unknown kingdom and the other jealous wives paid a secret organization to get rid of you. They were planning of frying you and feeding you to cannibals but…”

Wow, what an imagination. She was somehow making a whole scenario and story and if wanted she could have made a book out of it.

“Oh, shut up Lola.” The tomboyish girl luckily interfered. “So is it true? You’ve lost your memory?”

“Ye-yeah…I think.” My answer was as lame as always.

“Well that would explain your idiotic way of talking.”

That stabbed me deep. She didn’t need to remind me. I know it. But how is it my fault? It’s already become engraved into my speech and my mouth’s for the eating, not for the talking.