After making sure that the girl who had been knocked out was okay, Astoria climbed into the wagon to check on the other girl. She was still sitting in the same place staring blankly forward. "I wonder what happened to her..." Astoria said quietly to herself.

Ladriel had heard her and answered, "I was captured before the others, so I saw her before she became like this. She managed to escape, but it didn't take long for the three men to find her. I didn’t see exactly what happened, but when they brought her back, it seemed like all the fight and life had gone out of her. She just stopped responding to anything. It’s like she shut down. At first they thought they had beaten her too roughly, and they tried in vain to heal her with healing potions. I heard them say that they were going to try to find a healer once they got to Geddon. I’m sure that whatever happened to her can be healed. Anything short of death can be healed by a priest of the Church of the Phoenix, for a price, or so I’ve been told.” 

"So... where can we find one of these priests?" Astoria wanted to help this poor soul. She thought she had problems back in the real world, but it was nothing like what people in this world faced.

"The nearest church is in Elivaster. If you want to get there, then we'll need to follow the road back east to Oliend and then go north from there.” Ladriel sat down on the edge of the wagon and leaned back against the canvas, closing her eyes.

"I think we should help her, but since we need to pass through Oliend, we should first go confront the woman who sold me to these creeps. I'm sure she must have some information that can help us, and she needs to be stopped." Astoria considered something. "Do you think that the local lord would arrest her if we told him about what happened to us?"

"In such a small town, I'd be completely surprised if the person in charge wasn’t somehow involved in all of this." Ladriel's mouth twisted in disgust.

"Okay, it sounds like we'll have to take justice into our own hands then." If the authorities wouldn't help, then she, as the hero of her own story, would have to do what she must.

"It's pretty likely that you'll be noticed if we just waltz back into town. This wagon stands out too much as well. Not only that, but it's slow and it restricts us to using roads, which might make us vulnerable. We're going to need to leave it, I think." Ladriel spared a glance for the girl on the ground, who had begun to stir. "How about we take what we need from the wagon and sneak back into town on horseback during the night?"

"Um... that sounds like it could work. Think she can ride?" Astoria gestured toward the girl in the back of the cage. 

"She can ride in front of me," Ladriel said as she looked over at the girl.

Just then, the girl on the ground grumbled and sat up. She seemed panicked momentarily and looked around with wild eyes before realizing that they had prevailed. "We did it? We're free? Thank you! Thank you! I thought we'd never get away!" She hopped up into the wagon and gave Ladriel a huge hug, then ran over and did the same to Astoria.

"Well, it turns out we're not exactly free and clear yet." Astoria explained the situation to her. The girl's mood dampened visibly more and more as she finished filling her in. "By the way, I'm Astoria, and this is Ladriel. What's your name?"

"I'm Tilly. I don't know how to fight or anything so I don't know if I'll be of any help to you... I was just a cook's apprentice at The Gilded Sparrow inn. That's in Elivaster, you know. I really don't know what to do..." She deflated and plopped down hard onto the bed of the wagon and began to cry with her head in her hands.

Astoria felt bad for her. She wasn't exactly a hardened fighter herself, but she had at least wanted a life of adventure. Tilly, on the other hand, had just wanted to live a normal life. "Do you have any family that you can return to? Maybe someone who can keep you safe?"

"My parents live in the capital. My dad is one of the city guards. If I can get there in one piece, then I'll be safe. It's just so far away though..."

"Tell you what, Tilly, stick with us for now and we'll do what we can to get you safely to your parents. You said you're a cook's apprentice, right? So at least you can cook. God knows I can't." Astoria gave Tilly a reassuring smile.

Tilly sniffled and wiped her runny nose on her soiled dress before nodding faintly. "Thank you so much. I can never repay you for this," she perked up a little bit, "but I'll cook anything you guys can scrape up!"

"It's settled then! You're with us. Is that okay with you, Ladriel?"

The elf nodded her assent. A notification window popped up as it had when Ladriel become her companion.

Astoria and Ladriel hopped down from the wagon and went over to examine Lyon's corpse. Ladriel went through Lyon's belt pouch and pulled out a few small vials that looked to be health potions. Afterward, she unclasped the belt of their former foe and took his long sword and sheath, equipping them.

The two went about collecting everything they could find on the men and the wagon and putting it into a pile.

They recovered all of their belongings that the men had taken away when they had each become captive. Astoria kept Bren's dagger, which was razor sharp and an improvement over the one she had taken from the goblin. She also kept a fishing rod they had found, as well as two of the health potions. Astoria examined each of the items that she intended to keep for herself.

Ladriel had brown leather armor that looked light and easy to move in. She told her new companions that she was a ranger. Ladriel had a finely crafted green longbow and a quiver bristling full of arrows with green fletchings that she hung from her belt. Astoria wondered just how they managed to capture her as she exuded a deadly grace once she was fully equipped.

Tilly put on the clothes she had worn before being taken, a simple white dress that had a navy blue trim. She said she didn't have any combat training, and chose to not take a weapon. There were three packs in the belongings of their captors and Tilly had taken one and filled it with food and the one frying pan she found in the supplies. "There looks to be enough food for a few days here. Nothing fancy, it's mostly dried meat and stale loaves of bread... so we might want to try catching something with that fishing rod if we want to eat something decent. They do have some herbs and salt so we could do something with fish if we catch some."

Astoria remembered that they had stopped by a stream the night before and she did have that stolen fishing skill. Maybe it would be of some use to keep them fed at least. "Let's head back the way we came and we should come to that river eventually," she suggested.

"We should keep off the road, but we can follow it from a distance. First, let's ditch the wagon." Ladriel had the horses take it well off the side of the road into a thick, wooded area. The wagon was now just barely visible from the road. It wasn't perfect, but it'd have to do. "I was taken from behind by the three men when I was traveling down the road alone between Egris and Elivaster. That's why I no longer trust the safety of the roads in this kingdom," the irritation was strong in her voice, and Astoria could tell that Ladriel blamed herself for not being more cautious while traveling.

"Okay. Let's get moving. It's going to take us a long time to get back to Oliend." Astoria and Ladriel each took a horse. Tilly would ride with Astoria, while the fourth girl would ride with Ladriel. It took all three of them to get the dead-eyed girl up onto the horse, but once she was there she seemed to be stable. With their belongings packed on the horses, they set off, following the road from a distance through the forest at a steady trot.

While they rode Astoria decided it would be a good time to have a look at her status. There were notifications to read, so she opened them up to have a look.

Astoria was happy to see that she could once again get stronger. She carefully thought about where she wanted to distribute her points. Considering she was going to be using daggers and a bow as weapons, she placed two points into agility and one into dexterity. As for the other three points, she decided to play the long game and put them all into luck. With a higher luck stat, she hoped she might be able to avoid situations like this in the future. At the very least maybe it would help her get luckier when using her Kleptomancy ability. With that done, she decided to check her status page, as well as her new companions' pages.

Astoria was more than a little impressed by Ladriel's status page. It was no wonder she had more than held her own against Lyon. If she had had a bow and distance from him, the fight would have been over instantly. Astoria wondered if her companion would be willing to teach her some skills and decided that she would ask when they stopped for the night. She focused on the Wild Instinct ability and read the description.

Interesting, she thought to herself and then had a look at Tilly's page.

Tilly's status page was tragically bad. It seemed that people were not gifted by the creators of the game with equal stats to start with. Astoria thanked her lucky stars that her stats had started out as balanced as they had. Tilly would probably be useless in a fight, as she had proven in the fight against Lyon, but bravery was not something she lacked. Astoria wouldn't have tried to do a thing against Lyon if she had this girl's stats. Astoria hoped that she could convince her to take a weapon or learn some combat skills, but she decided it could wait until later. Astoria was also surprised to find that Tilly had so much charisma. The final thing that Astoria noted was that Tilly hadn't gained any experience from the previous battle. That made her curious and so she asked Ladriel, "Why didn't Tilly gain any experience from the fight?"

"Because she didn't do any damage and wasn't officially our companion. The two of us got experience because we were directly involved in slaying them. Even though Tilly tried to help, it wasn't enough to gain her any experience. However, since we are now companions, we will all gain experience so long as we are nearby. Experience is shared for a party of up to five people. Any party larger than 5 will have a heavy penalty on experience, unless there are special skills or abilities in play such as those employed by military commanders."

Astoria took in the information and was glad that she now had people with her who could fill her in on things she didn't know about this world. She supposed that a normal villager wouldn't have many opportunities to gain the large amounts of experience needed to reach high levels. Taking that into consideration, it wasn't too surprising that Tilly wasn't a higher level.

Astoria took in her surroundings and could only describe the forest they traveled through as beautiful and bursting with life. There were trees of all sizes and types, and Astoria recognized that most of them looked similar to oak trees. Acorns littered the ground and crunched beneath the hooves of the horses. After a few hours of travel, the forest grew thinner and gave way to an expanse of rolling plains as far as she could see. The fields were peppered with wildflowers of numerous colors.

All of this reminded Astoria of hiking trips she had taken with her father before he died when she was little. He had liked spending time outdoors and spent a lot of time fishing, hiking and hunting. Astoria and her sister had gone camping with him several times that she could remember and they had hiked to mountain meadows that were as breathtakingly beautiful as this. Sadly, her father died in a car accident when she was 8, changing her family life forever. The memories of him were bitter-sweet and she was sad to admit to herself that they had already begun to fade. There were a lot of things about him that she could hardly remember anymore, and the thought of it was so heart wrenching that she turned to the side and bit her lip, trying to control herself as tears began to well up in her eyes.

"We'll be able to travel faster if we go back to the road now. There isn't any cover to hide behind anymore anyway." Ladriel steered her horse in that direction and Astoria followed close behind. They slowly made their way back to the winding road.

"We should stop and eat something. I'm aching all over and I want to get off the horse for a bit," Tilly complained.

"You can eat while we ride. We'll be able to stop pretty soon for the night," Ladriel immediately shut down the idea. Astoria was thinking it'd be nice to get off the horse as well, but decided to suck it up and didn't voice her own complaints. Just as the sun began to set, they finally arrived at the river where they would camp for the night.

Astoria climbed down from the horse and felt extremely sore after an entire day of riding. Her back ached so much that she could hardly believe it. Riding a horse was something she'd definitely have to get used to if she wanted to get around in this world though. It's not as though she could hop in a car. Tilly clearly felt the same way as she did and plopped down on the ground after getting off the horse. Ladriel seemed fine, however, and hopped down from her horse looking like she was used to riding. Astoria and Tilly helped to get the other girl down from atop the horse, and then Ladriel led the horses to a tree where she tied them up.

Astoria grabbed the fishing rod, which was broken down into two pieces for easier travel, and went to the riverbank. She found some worms in a container in one of the bags that belonged to the men. She baited her hook and cast the line. It took time, as fishing always does, but she got a bite and used the crude wooden reel to drag the fish onto shore. After about an hour she had caught 4 fish and received a notification.

She was happy to find that this skill wasn't as useless as she had originally thought. They would not have to eat that stale food tonight. Ladriel made a fire, and once there were some good coals, Tilly took the cast iron skillet out of her bag and placed it over the red, hot embers that she had pushed to the side. Astoria used her iron dagger to clean the fish. Somehow, the way she had seen her dad do this a long time ago stuck in her memory, and she managed to do a decent job. She was able to remove the spines and most of the bones as well. Once finished, she handed them over to Tilly.

Astoria washed her face and hands as best she could in the cold water, and then went over to sit beside the fire and rest. The water had been just as frigid as before, but she didn't mind so much this time around.

Tilly salted and seasoned the fish. She folded them over and then removed a small container of lard from her bag and proceeded to fry up the fish. 

Astoria was really surprised at how good they turned out. After eating, she decided it might be a good time to find out how skills could be learned in this game. “Hey, Ladriel, this is going to sound like a dumb question, but how do people usually learn skills? Could I learn some of the things you know? In particular, your special archery skills, perhaps?”

Ladriel actually let out a little laugh before responding, “Seriously? Okay, so you can learn skills in a few different ways. The easiest way is to have someone teach you a skill. There are skill trainers who are masters of their respective skills in various large cities who will teach you some of what they know for a cost. There are also different guilds around the world, and if you join one, they will typically help you out with skills as you move up their ranks. The other typical way to learn skills is by finding a skill book, although those are about as rare as spellbooks. There are guilds such as The Golden Quill, which is a scribe guild that has amassed a large collection of tomes. They hoard them and don’t sell them cheaply, either. Your special ability, as far as I know, is unique. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to steal skills from people.”

I hope that she isn’t thinking that I’d steal skills from her. “So, does that mean you can’t teach me since you’re not a trainer?” Astoria asked, feeling a bit crestfallen. 

“No, I can teach you some of what I know. Unfortunately, some skills have basic requirements that must be met before you can learn them. My two special archery skills are one example. You need to have at least a level 10 Archery skill to learn them. I could try to show you a thousand times and it just wouldn’t work until the minimum requirements are met. It’s a little late today, so how about I teach you something tomorrow when we stop to rest?

“Sounds great! Thank you so much!” Astoria could hardly contain her excitement. She wanted to learn as much as she could so that she could continue to grow in strength. 

"We'll camp here for the night. I'm going to stay up and keep first watch. Astoria, I'll wake you up when Murasaki reaches its zenith," she pointed toward the violet moon that hung low in the sky. "That should give you about half the night to sleep." The smallest moon was already a third of the way across the sky and the large cherry-colored moon loomed on the horizon.

They didn't have any shelter, but the grass was soft and Astoria was so tired that falling asleep didn't take long.

Astoria awoke to Ladriel shaking her quietly. Bleary-eyed, Astoria sat up and rubbed her arm across her face. She started to speak, but Ladriel quickly shushed her. Alarmed, Astoria looked around for signs of trouble but didn't see anything.

"I was walking around the perimeter of the camp and saw the tracks of a dire bear," Ladriel whispered very quietly to her, "and just a few minutes ago, I'm pretty sure I heard it moving around somewhere on the other side of the river. That thing is gonna be trouble. We need to get away before it spots us, if possible."

Almost on cue, a gigantic shadow lumbered along the riverbank on the other side, making grunting noises. It was much larger than any bear that existed on Earth. Four giant fangs glinted in the light of the moons as the beast came closer and she got a better look. Two of the fangs stuck up through its snout and were about 8 inches long. The other two were just as long and hung well below the lower jaw. Astoria felt fairly certain that the bear could snap her in half with a single bite. "Let's wake the others and go?" Astoria asked as quietly as she could.

"It's too late for that. It would hear us and would run the horses down in no time at all. Despite their size, dire bears are very fast." Ladriel held her long bow at the ready and nocked an arrow. Astoria grabbed her own bow from her side and did the same.

Great, she thought to herself. She focused on the bear, trying to decide her plan of attack. Astoria didn't think for a second that this was going to be easy. Hopefully the two of them would be agile enough to dodge the thing, since the claws on its gigantic paws looked just as wicked as the fangs in its mouth.

"I'll try to stun it. Fill it with as many arrows as you can. I can only fire one stun shot every minute and it will only stun the beast for a few precious seconds." Ladriel brought the string of her bow to her cheek and the arrowhead emitted a soft yellow glow. This immediately caught the attention of the bear. It stood on its hind legs and let out a deafening roar that pierced the silence of the night. The horses reared up and tried to escape but they were stuck. The thing had to be the size of a truck. Before it could charge forward, Ladriel loosed her arrow. The arrow sunk deep into the shoulder of the bear, causing it to let out another roar which was cut off as it smashed down into the ground losing all control of its body, stunned.

"Now!!" Ladriel yelled, utilizing her high dexterity to nock and loose another arrow in the blink of an eye. Astoria fired off an arrow that was badly aimed due to her being so panicked. It missed and she cursed in frustration while quickly nocking and firing another. Her second arrow hit the beast in the middle and sunk nearly all the way into the body of the bear leaving only the end sticking out.

Luckily, Ladriel was a much better archer than she was. In the few seconds that the bear was down, she landed 4 more arrows into the beast. One of them pierced it completely and flew out the other side. It had to be her other archery skill, Piercing Shot. The bear began to stir and charged across the bridge. Astoria couldn't believe that it was still moving with all those arrows sticking out of it.

The bear was bleeding heavily but it took no time at all before it was on them. Ladriel pelted the bear with two more arrows as it had charged across the bridge, and it only seemed to enrage it further. The bear completely ignored Astoria and lunged toward her companion, but Ladriel was very quick on her feet and managed to roll backwards as the giant paw of the bear swung through the spot where she had been only a fraction of a second earlier. The force of the blow was so powerful that it smashed a boulder when the paw hit the ground.

Tilly had woken up and was dragging their addled fourth companion over to the horses several yards away. Meanwhile, Astoria fired another arrow hitting the bear in the back. It roared and turned its attention to her. 

I'm going to die. This is it. This thing is going to smash me like a bug. She fired another desperate shot at the bear and managed to sink an arrow into one of its eye sockets.

The bear thrashed and pounded the ground in rage and pain but it wasn't going to give up on killing the things which had caused it so much pain. It would kill its hated enemies or continue fighting until its last breath. It swung a paw at her and she was unable to dodge as fast as Ladriel had. A glancing blow connected across her upper left arm, sending her skidding several feet across the ground. Her health bar immediately dropped by 40 points and she was bleeding from a gash the claw had put into her arm.

The bear was about to finish the job when Ladriel distracted it yet again, saving Astoria's life by shooting two arrows in quick succession into the monstrosity. The bear was moving much slower now due to all of its blood loss, and even though it turned and tried coming at Ladriel again, she was easily able to move back a dozen paces all the while filling the beast with bristling arrows. Eventually, it let out a low groan and collapsed to the ground, breathing its final few breaths before the light went out of its eyes.

Astoria reached with her good arm into the pouch at her belt and quickly downed a potion. Sweet relief came to her as it started working. The cut that had been about three inches long on her upper arm knitted itself shut and the bleeding stopped. She couldn't believe it. She had managed to cheat death yet again. Astoria couldn't help but start laughing like a crazy person as she sat in the dirt.

"Are you okay?" Ladriel rushed to her side, soon followed by Tilly. They looked her over with worried expressions. 

“I’m okay…” Astoria got back up onto her feet. She couldn't believe that they had actually been able to kill that thing. She checked to see how much experience it had given.

"So much experience for just one monster..." She couldn't help but get excited over how close she was to gaining another level. She would not be weak and helpless forever. One day she would be a beacon of light in this fucked up world. They managed to make it through the rest of the night without any more problems. The next morning they packed up and left the gigantic bear corpse behind as they continued on their journey to Oliend.