[PLAINS 1]

It’s still 8:17, but the sun gleams overhead with rays of pure energy.

Masaru feels not pain, but the springy alertness caused by a thousand blades of grass underneath.

The myriad chorus of the cicada is replaced with the smooth breeze of a mid-day on the hilly countryside.

There’s something strange and blue behind his eyelids. He can’t quite make it out, but there’s too much happening right now, so he pushes it to the back of his mind and focuses on the things he can understand.

A hundred well-meaning scents dance faintly through his mind as he obeys the call of the light and opens his eyes to see blue skies, rolling pastures, and small groves of trees.

“…Hell’s not as hot as I thought it’d be,” Masaru says with a bland look.

He takes a deep breath, curses under it, and sits up.

“…Way prettier, too,” he adds.

Looking over to the bottom of his slope, he sees a family of deer, concealed by the shade of the hill and the woodline. The stag, his mossy antlers harkening to an era of grandiose heroes and unlimited mysteries, regards the salaryman for only a moment before looking back to the trail and following his family back into the woods.

“So, death, eh?” Masaru asks, taking a rare moment to savor the absence of pain across his body. He stretches up to his feet and turns into the full brunt of the wind. “Not so bad after all. Maybe this is like one of those Otaku things,” he says.

He searches for the word, he much preferred video games, but he recalled a few of his high school friends were always buried in those mangas and light novels after archery club.

“A life in another world?” he recites as his eyes scan along the slope to a few rock outcroppings. “Yeah, an isekai!”

His smooth expression twists into a grin. He hasn’t looked this excited since he defeated “the Lunar One” in Sanguine Souls some years ago.

It’s as if his youth’s returned to him by a god-thrown bolt of inspiration.

“Alright! Hell yeah!” He shouts with a grin. “Dead or not, I’m here now. It’s time to see what this world’s made of!” He spins about on the slope, his feet moving fast and free without the weight of another day of work on the horizon.

He stops a second to note that his briefcase, sitting next to where he gained consciousness, has somehow made the trip with him.

“Hah! What’s up, old friend?!” He rushes back to the spot and throws the bag filled with paperwork into the breeze. “Never again. Not a single minute more! It’s my life now!”

The briefcase crashes into the hillside, tumbling with greater and greater speed until it scares off a nearby herd of beautiful black and white horses.

Masaru laughs, not caring for any of it any more than a freed prisoner from his chains. He takes off his two shined black shoes and throws them to the breeze as well. Shouting at the sky, he attempts to steady himself with the deepest, most satisfying breath he’s ever pulled into his lungs.

He closes his eyes to feel the freedom, and opens them again with a line of bittersweet tears as he looks down to where one of his shoes had tumbled off.

…There’s something moving behind the rock next to it, and it’s not a deer.

In fact, Masaru can’t quite make it out at all.

The calming breeze feels a little colder as he realizes he’s not alone on the slope. At the same moment, the sun begins descending from its position high in the sky, to the tip of the hill: moving far faster than it should.

He wonders to himself as he start down the hill to find out what’s behind the rocks.

Probably a goblin? Some quick EXP? Can I take it with just my bare hands?

These thoughts and more race through his head as he gives the outcropping a healthy berth, trying not to get too close to it in case he’s walking into an ambush.

“Hark, thee!” Masaru greets in an antiquated tone as he swings around to identify the thing behind the outcropping. “Any goblins around here?... Any cute girl supporting characters?” he asks with a joking tone.

He comes face to face with the pale face of a foreigner woman about his age, her partially bandaged face marred with stress, as if seeing yet another impossible puzzle present itself. She pulls in the length of her rifle to her bust to keep it at a tight low-ready. Masaru doesn’t know much about guns, not really, but he’s sure she could drop him dead in a second if she wanted to… and he did just ask around a rural nowhere for a cute girl.

For all she knows, he could be some kind of psychotic maniac.

He clears his throat; he’ll have to explain himself right away.

“Uh-”

“What the hell are you doing?” she interrupts as quietly as she can while competing with the breeze, “Get over here!”

He flinches, measuring his next move as he tries to reconcile the concept of danger around such a strikingly good-looking lady.

“Over… there?” he asks – not his proudest moment.

She looks at him as if his puzzle’s become increasingly stupid and irritating. “Yes! Over here, before it notices y-”

The distant whinny of a horse can be heard up at the top of the slope.

Masaru feels a presence behind him, and he’s sure it’s evil.

With his hair standing on end, Masaru looks behind himself to see up to the top of the hill.

Wrapped in the crimson rays of an abrupt sunset stands a grand black horse. It’s standing where Masaru had woken up on the hill. Atop the horse sits the wretched form of a massive knight: an ancient warrior of honor dressed in black, gray, and white.

Masaru dumbly raises his hand to point at the unknown figure. “That’s… is that a boss?”

The woman looks at him as if he had tripped her down the stairs. “That is going to kill us,” she hisses through her teeth as she brings up her rifle and turns the corner to take up her sights.

The horse gives a singular, gut-twisting neigh, a sound that reverberates through Masaru’s soul like the chill of a Winter’s storm upon exiting a warm house.

His eyes widen as he sees his enemy rally the aim of his steed and send them both hurdling down the hill at a gallop that would humiliate even a racehorse.