I’d been wandering around this damned, seemingly endless forest for a while without seeing any sort of sign of intelligent life around. It was a pain in the behind, quite frankly. Sure, it hadn’t been pitch black the first while so I had been to see just fine, and it wasn’t terribly cold either, especially considering my sad excuse for clothing. That said, by now the sun had already started peeking through the tall forestry – or, in other words, dawn had broken.
Now, I hadn’t been that concerned about never getting to be all chummy with other people again – I mean, it wasn’t like I had much interest in that even before this anyway. So yeah, that were never that much of an issue – the thought of never getting to finish those games I had on my backlog had arguably felt worse than that. Oh, and then there had been the, you know, lingering thoughts that I’d be starving to death out here.
But, praise be, I’d now come to accept matters and forgo my worries of material loss and petty matters such as food and water. Ah, how dangerously comfortable living the life of a blessed modern life were – how stupid one’s ignorant youth can be. What wouldn’t I have given to never have to learn the harsh lessons of reality…
“Gyaaah!!! What the hell is that thing?!” I screamed, sprinting away as fast as I possibly could. “Stay away, whatever you are!”
Yep, I have this vague memory of some famous quote pertaining to keeping your mouth shut, and how you shouldn’t tempt the mother Fortuna by uttering unnecessary comments. Guess I ought to should learn a thing or two from those olden famous quotes.
So what happened here? See, after stumbling around for a while, eventually wandering into some kind of freak of nature’s territory – a monster’s resting place – and I’d ultimately been set running full tilt away from the spot. Perhaps it’d mistaken me for its morning snack, or it was just really pissed I’d awoke it during its beauty sleep. In either case, it looked like a boar, but with a few key differences: for one, it had a demonic-looking horn sticking out of its head; and I could swear its eyes were literally blazing, shining all red; and that tiny little detail where it looked to be, at the very least, thrice the size of any boar I’d even seen…
Thankfully, as I’d quickly come to learn, this new body of mine had an excess amount of stamina. I had no trouble sprinting all out for an extended period of time and, sure, raw fear combined with the vast amount of adrenalin that was surely pumping through my veins probably had something to do with it – having the embodiment of distilled terror on your heels kinda does that to a person – but I still doubted I’d been able to keep this up as I used to be. I’d not exactly been the active type after all.
Still, everything considered, I was doing decently well running away, given this current, somewhat vertically challenged body of mine.
Though, perhaps the biggest advantage I had over this monster, were precisely my smaller size and being more agile as I zipped forth in between the trees. Meanwhile, the monster’s humongous size meant it was struggling to move as smoothly between the vast amount of trees riddling our path forwards, even grazing and bumping into bits and pieces along the way. That didn’t seem to bother the monster all that much though, it just smashed its way through the more brittle obstacles.
“I’m sorry alright, I didn’t mean to walk in on your territory or whatever! Can’t we declare a truce?!”
I was shouting like a madwoman at the monster in a desperate attempt to engage in some peace talk – not that it looked like the type that would be up for having a peaceful discussion, even if it did understand me. It was, quite evidently, not working all that well. Still, can’t really blame me for trying out of pure desperation, right?
Then it happened. As if I’d gotten some sort of cursed debuff to my Luck-stat along with this new body of mine, during my mad dash from the creature I noticed the forestry starting to open up. There I got a clear view of the landscape:
It was a beautiful view, unpolluted and untouched by modern civilisation. There was a crystal clear stream of water flowing past, ending in a grand big waterfall down a steep drop to a large body of water – while being no expert on the matter, I would hazard to guess you’d call it a “lake.”
Had it been any other day, I might’ve stopped to admire the scenery, but alas.
“Oh you gotta be shitting me?!” I screamed, drops of sweat flying everywhere as I quickly scanned across the place.
By all accounts, my only obvious options were looking to be to either continue my dash through that damned forest, accept my oncoming doom, or swim across the stream. There were, however, problems with each of them:
First, continuing to try and outrun the monster inside the forest were a no go. I was barely able to do it as-is, and it didn’t seem to be giving up anytime soon, and, even in this freakishly stamina-filled body, I’d get tired sooner or later.
Second, to just stop and accept death were completely off the table. Like hell I was going down like this. At least not until I’d been able to give that hag a good punch in the face! Hmm, what’s that? “But the goddess didn’t look old, though”? …Shut up!
Third, the lake wasn’t so wide it wouldn’t have been impossible to swim over, but with the stream looking to be quite strong I had my doubts one could make it across. Plus, well, I’d never learnt to swim. The latter of which was the main issue with this option.
Fourth bonus option, awaken to my true potential and make bloody rare steak out of the blasted creature.
So, what would it be? Which option do we go with? The fourth was obviously not going to be happening so that one’s off the table.
“Up yours, you shitty goddess!”
I opted for the swim across-option, ran upstream as far as I could reasonably afford to before it caught up to me, dove for the river and flailed my arms wildly in what I vaguely pictured to be a swimming motion. My idea of a “swimming motion” were…
“Gah, cough! Thish, haah, shure ispf dihif– Gaaah!”
…not giving the best of results however, as I were unable to even get halfway past the strong river current; and in the end I were propelled by the stream down the waterfall.
My last thoughts were filled with regret for all the wrongs and mistakes I’d made, and my eyes saw flashes of my lift until this point in time. Everything from the happy moments, to those less so, it all flew by in a blink.
Goodbye cruel world…
Moments later, everything went dark.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Welcome to Frionia, o great Heroes!”
Those were the first words the group heard, coming back to their senses after being summoned by the goddess.
They were now standing in the middle of a great big marble room with tall pillars surrounding them. The room looking big enough to easily hold a small nation’s worth of people, it was quite the novel experience for the group.
“Ooh~ There sure are a lot of them this time around. The Goddess truly favours this country, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, milady, it’s as you say.”
The source of the voices: first, the one that welcomed them, an older man donning priestly robes – the one who’d been first to address them; second and third were a girl around her late teens, and a rather buff man clad in what looked like a butler’s outfit. Next to those two stood a very well built man wearing leather armour, with a sword on his right; behind them, stood what felt like a small army’s worth of guard-looking types.
“Oh sweet! Now this is the stuff!”
“Oh man, it’s the fantasy setting I’ve dreamt of!”
“It’s just like the goddess told us.”
“So, when do we get to use our powers?”
“Well then, isn’t this quite an impressive reception~”
That was a small selection of voices railed amongst the others, mainly the boys, as one would expect. The last of which belonged to the class’ own royal highness herself, the Earthly resident bit– to Peyton.
“Honoured heroes, I, royal princess of Frionia, welcome you to our kingdom.”
With a clear and lovely voice, the princess greeted them to the world. She looked elegant as anything, with a beautiful white dress contrasting against her lovely flowing blonde hair.
“Holy shit, she’s hot.”
“How old is she?”
“I bet she’s–”
“Who cares about that. Where’s the monsters that we’re hunting?”
As expect, the animals of the class couldn’t hold back from quietly whispering amongst themselves.
“We will now be checking your abilities and aptitudes. If you be so kind to line up by this crystal.”
The priest told the group to go and place their palms on a big round crystal ball. They all did as he instructed, and one after another they each got their “Status” read.
While it didn’t seem as if the whole class had been transported, it was still a fair few of them present. Eleven, to be exact. However, despite the numbers present, the whole checking process went by reasonably fast. Reason for which were that all they needed to to for the check to be complete, was to place their palms on the crystal while the priest having his assistant scribbling something down – the details of their so called Status.
As each of them touched the crystal, it shone in varying shades of an assortment of colours. Ranging from a vibrant red, to deep green, and azure blue, and all in between.
Chad’s lit up a blazing red; Peyton’s a blossom pink; John’s an amber orange; and so on. The whole process had gone by without any problems eventually it was down to the last two: Kate and Bailey.
Kate stepped forward and did as the rest had, and much like her personality, her colour were a calm and beautiful subdued shade of blue.
Figuring it might’ve been her imagination, Kate felt like the priest’s reaction were…not so favourable when she got her status checked. It had looked like he had a somewhat complicated look at first, but he quickly shifted back to processing the remaining students as if were nothing.
The last to get tested were Bailey…
“What’s this–?!”
When the crystal lit up a brilliant white, the priest’s face turned into one of sharp surprise. He then looked towards the princess, and then back to the crystal.
“Wait there, I need to confirm something,” the priest told him.
By the looks of all the natives present, it was clear that something big had just happened. The princess, wearing her usual lovely sweet smile, looked intently between the crystal and onto Bailey.
* * *
As it turned out, Bailey had the most rare aptitude of them all: an affinity for White magic.
Everyone had an aptitude for a certain class of magic, including the ones you might expect, such as earth, water, fire, wind, and so on. The actual list were much more complicated, but that were the basic forms they’d been taught as a part of their blessing from the goddess.
What made the white aptitude so special were not only that you’d not be limited to just one school of magic you’d be able to fully master. But the truly amazing part of it were that you had the ability to use magic spells that were especially powerful against demons.
The demon threat were ever looming over the world, and white mages were one of the strongest weapons that humanity had against them. While not all white mages were by default strong and mighty, one of the white class that had been summoned as a hero could reasonably be expected to cut above the rest.
“Man, I’m so jealous,” complained one student. “I mean, you got to be all close and stuff with the princess.”
“Oh, come on, you make it sound like there were way more to it than it actually was. I had a meeting with the King and her, that’s all.”
“Oh fuck off man,” another chimed in. “‘That’s all,’ you say? You’re not stupid, you know what kind of stuff happens as a result of being acknowledged as the important one.”
“Yeah, totally,” the first continued. “I bet you’re gonna get invited to have some royal action, if you know what I mean, sooner or later.”
This were the point were the other group of the summoned, the decent of the bunch, had something to say.
“Will you give that disgusting kind of talk a rest already?” Peyton told them off. “I can’t believe you right now.”
“Yeah, totally,” the ever trusty follower, Phoebe, piped up.
More of the girls’ team agreed to various extents, some even going as far as labelling them as deviants. Even the odd guy call them out on their dangerously vile behaviour. While perhaps, depending on who you asked, a bit far (or possibly not far enough), they could have at least waited until they were alone.
“Seriously, have you all just completely lost your minds all of a sudden?” Peyton continued. “You all should be aware that kind of talk isn’t acceptable anymore.”
“I mean,” speaking up for the first time since they arrived, Johnathan said, “I don’t care for discussing nightly escapades with any princesses, but you do realise this isn’t our old world anymore, right? Social norms and, heck, even laws of our old lives will be completely different. Social standards? Drinking age? Weapons laws? ‘Common sense’? What’s that? Nothing of that will apply in this world, and even if some laws and civil standards might be close or even the same to what we’ve learnt, the vast majority of it will most likely be grounded in a completely different set of values.
“Going by all the information we got from the goddess, this world is around the later part of the middle ages by our standards. While we can’t really just convert it like that – given the presence of magic, monsters, and whatnot – I’d say that’s about right. And you have to remember, for example, that the middle ages weren’t exactly famous for its spectacular respect for the rights, and graceful treatment, of women.”
“…” Phoebe remained completely silent, not out of awe for his sudden burst of spoken dialogue – usually a man of few words – but due to be wordlessly boiling in anger. “Y-You– Are you seriously going to excuse that kind of speech like that?! It doesn’t matter what the norms are here, you still shouldn’t be acting like a degenerate caveman anyway!”
“I mean, I’m just stating facts, and educated guesses from what I’ve– what we’ve all observed and gathered from the information we’ve all been imparted with by the goddess.”
“You–!”
“Pheebs,” one of the other girls stepped in to pacify the seething Phoebe, “let’s just leave it at that for now. We’re all tired and would like to rest. We’ve been given our own rooms and everything, so let’s just head there. Alright?”
“…Alright, sure.”
And so the events and interactions for the summoned heroes’ first day came and went. Few of them were able to sleep properly during their first night, though. For some, the reason were fear for what the future held for them; and others, it was due to being far too excited about getting to slay their first monster; or simply to be properly taught to show off their magic skills.
