New Faces

-Hibernation period ended-

-0800 Hours. Initiating wake-up sequence-

-…-

-Initializing Empyrion OS … initialization complete-

-…-

-0801 Hours. Wake up sequence complete-

-Good morning, Yalda (＾▽＾)-

When I woke up, I was in the children's room of the old house we’d been staying in. The change was so jarring that I had to take a second to process it. Indena was at my bedside and watched me closely with a mildly intimidating gaze.

“I knew you’d pull through.” She put her head down on the bed and breathed out a deep sigh. “I don’t know what you did, but you got us back here in one piece.”

Wait, what did she mean 'I got us back here?' The moment I fired the cannon I was out of commission. No way I would have been able to lug her back like that. Based on what she said, I assumed she didn't bring us back here either.

“No. I used my mana cannon and got wiped out.”

Her expression turned confused, then she tapped her hand on the bed.

"You’re sure you killed that grim reaper, right?" she said in a drawn out breath.

"To be honest, I'm not sure. From what I saw before passing out, he was gone."

I got a direct hit. He definitely exploded. And from the daylight coming in from the window, things were back to normal outside. I wasn't going to let my guard down completely though.

Indena wasn't content with my uncertainty, but for now we couldn't make heads or tails from it.

“Then if it wasn’t you, who did get us back?”

I heard a voice just before passing out. Whoever it was, they had to have been our mysterious saviour. I vaguely remembered them sounding like a woman. My head was so hazy that the details weren't very clear, even after performing a deep memory search.

"I think there was someone else with us," I suggested.

"Why didn't they help before?" Indena shook her head.

Maybe they did? Who knew what they might have been doing for us in the background of that battle.

“Well, whatever got us back here, we'll have to thank ‘em later," she said. "I think they healed my wounds, because I feel great.”

Me too, actually. You know what? That made me wonder something. Did this world have healing potions at all? What RPG wouldn’t?

Okay… This was real life, not an actual RPG, but still.

"Indena, have you ever heard of health potions?"

"Hmm…" She considered my question with a fist to her chin. "Yeah. Never used one before. They're not as powerful as healing magic, but you won't age from using it. Downside is that you need mage blood to make it."

Blood? Yuck. Never mind trying to get a potion. I'm not a vampire.

"The more powerful a mage you take blood from, the more potent the potion is. They're super expensive, so we won't see those anytime soon." She stood up, then got me out of bed and we started walking to the door. “Um… By the way, while you were sleeping something really weird happened a little while ago…”

“Hmm?” I cocked my head like a curious bird. “What happened?”

~☆☆☆~

Let me sum up the events that unfolded this morning while I was hibernating.

About three hours ago, Indena woke up to the sound of a loud crash outside.

*KABLAMMO!*

“Was that a car crash? What the fu–” she used a really nasty word that daddy told me never to repeat, especially after stubbing a toe on the dresser.

Thinking the noise was a possible lingering threat from our battle with the reaper, Indena went to investigate. When she got outside, she did indeed see a car broken down in the front yard.

Two people were in the car, both were unconscious, but alive. Luckily the snow seemed to soften their crash, so she dragged them back in and started treating their wounds quickly. Both were stabilized, but they still needed more treatment.

She wanted me to use healing magic on them, but at the time I was still out cold.

I forgot to mention something. In all that mess with the Reaper, I leveled up a lot. My Incantation Points went up a lot too, so I could use support magic much more, including Lesser Heal.

Not wanting to waste any more time I jumped out of bed and raced downstairs to heal the two people laying on sleeping bags next to each other.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man! I’ll heal you up as fast as I can!”

A pulse of light entered them and any wounds they had on them started to clear up.

One of them was a woman, probably just a bit older than Indena. She had short cinnamon coloured hair and what looked like a school uniform and skirt. She had a little shield looking necklace with a glowing blue star at the center. Seven other stars were engraved on the edge of the shield shape and were glowing.

The strangest part of her was that she had a manona crest on her arm bracelet. That could explain how they got here all of a sudden, but where'd she get that?

Actually, that brought up a whole lot of other questions too, but I'd have to wait till she's awake to ask them.

The other person was a man, probably just a little older than the woman. He had a really fancy looking blue coat but it was covered in dirt and cuts all over. A little dried blood too. He kinda’ looked like a young businessman.

“I think this one’s named Yamin.” She pointed to the girl. “Then this one’s name is Marek.”

“How do you know that?”

Indena whipped out two red looking crystal cards. Each had words written on them in the Euron language. That was what we were speaking right now, by the way.

“These are identification cards. Found them in their pockets.”

I felt like pulling those out was a bit of a violation of personal space, but at least we had more info on them now.

“You took those cards from them?”

“Hey, I gotta’ make sure these guys aren’t freaks.” She glared down at Yamin with a distasteful look. “That one especially.”

Yamin didn’t look all that bad. She looked kinda' nice, actually. Why did we need to watch her "especially?"

“What’s wrong with her?”

“It's the necklace.” Indena tossed the ID cards on the table. “Never trust someone with one of those."

That necklace didn't look bad at all. It even had stardust in it, which was what caused those stars to glow, especially the blue one in the middle.

"You're crazy," I said to Indena.

"Bet your tone would change if people like that were hunting you down," she said in a somber voice.

"Huh?"

She made it sound like someone was hunting her. Particularly harmless looking teen girls with shield necklaces.

"Forget it," she waved me off. Just keep watching them. Anything changes, let me know. They’re gonna’ be hungary, so I gotta’ make some food.”

"Wait!" I tried to pry further into what she meant, but she just didn't want to talk about it anymore and left for the kitchen.

Was I just supposed to stare at these two now? I mean, I could do it, but that sounded so boring to watch someone sleep.

Ahh, you know what? I needed to make sure they would be okay. Watching them wasn’t an issue at all. To keep myself busy, I found a dusty book on one of the shelves and started reading it.

It was all about this guy who woke up one day and learned he was in a whole new world. It felt oddly relatable...

~☆☆☆~

I finished the book after about two hours of reading. It was pretty short at only 20,000 words, but it was part of a series, so there was much more to check out if I had the time later.

Neither of the people were awake yet, so I decided to go check up on Indena in the kitchen. With all that time she was probably…

Oh, she was sleeping in one of the kitchen chairs. There was some food in a pot, so she must have finished cooking.

You know, she deserved more rest after all this.

I went back and got her a blanket and pillow, then put the pillow behind her head, and then covered her in a blanket. She looked all cozy.

The boredom came back pretty quickly since I was effectively alone, so I kicked back on the couch and started surfing through my systems to see if anything interesting had changed there after the fight.

-Yalda Asamo :: Level 20 Arch-Exceed :: Type 3 Exceed :: Female-

Age : 7 :: DOB - 509/09/05 (ED) ::

:: Homeworld = Eden ::

Serial Number : 282-475-249

Theta Level : Theta (normal form)

“Arch-Exeed?”

Apparently that was my class. I’d never seen that before, so it must have just popped up when I hit level 20 after the Reaper fight, which I guess made it one of those fancy prestige classes or something.

Hey, at least it sounded awesome! Not sure what it ment yet.

For the most part, this leveling system had a lot of superfishy elements. I mean, ‘superficial’ elements. For instance, levels didn’t really raise anything besides giving me skill points to upgrade powers and utility. I guess it mainly relied on me learning new abilities on my own. Although I did get a few powers when I leveled up before, like the lesser heal spell, but it did seem to come in response to the situation rather than the level itself.

The copycat ability kinda supported that idea. It almost seemed like the main way I was meant to acquire new skills was by relying on copying them from other people.

Not a bad system, but extremely simple. Daddy wasn’t much of a gamer without me. The good news was that I could pretty much build myself however I wanted.

While skimming through my systems, I noticed a new tab in the stats menu titled “Party.” Opening it up showed Indena’s name under my own.

“Oh! We’re in a party together.”

This must have happened when I pinned Indena’s vitals to my stats screen. I could see some general information about her in the menu…

-Indena Taioshi :: Battle Mage :: Human :: Female-

-Age : 14 :: DOB - 502/08/26 (ED) ::-

-:: Homeworld = Eden ::-

Indena was only 14 years old? *Snicker…*

She didn’t have a level, which made me think that the system couldn’t fully translate her skills into video game logic, but she was a battle mage class. I honestly couldn’t think of a better one for her.

Under all that was a little info on her body, like her blood pressure, brain waves, diatery needs… All the stuff a doctor would want to know.

Get this; it said she’s “prone to spurts of high blood pressure.” Big surprise there.

This info was interesting, but it looked like there were some hidden tabs in the party screen, so clearly there were things I haven’t unlocked about it yet.

“Ugh…” I heard a grunt from the girl on the floor.

Yamin, started rolling around on the floor. It looked like she was about to wake up!

Uh…what should I do?! Should I go get Indena?

Before I had the chance to, Yamin rolled over on her side and smacked Marek in the face! That looked suspiciously personal…