Arika, There is still so much to learn.

Putting aside processing the facts that Elder told me about, there’s a statue of my Grandma’s character— of myself, on the town square, and now it made sense why they wouldn’t risk walking me to the town as myself. It does make me feel awkward and anxious as I look around me, wishing the necklace Elder gives me really worked.

“Don’t worry much about it, Lady Arika. My Distraction Magic is one of the best, and that included items made from my magic!” Rana said as if she could read my mind, reassuring me as she patted my shoulder. While it does make me wonder if she could really read my mind with magic, it also somehow calmed me down.

As I observed around me, there’s only people with Elf ears— Elves that inhabited the town. So maybe, what Elder told me was real, after all. Some of them stopped by asking who I am, but Elder dismissed it as me being a lost child that had somehow ended up in the forbidden forest from the city next to this town. I don’t even want to think that they’d be suspicious down in their heart, but it looks like Elder’s words were enough to convince them.

Makes me wonder what kind of person he is. He kind of interests me much more than the twins, after all… in many ways than one.

“We’re here.” Elder simply said with his deep voice as he opened the wooden gates to a house that is rather isolated compared to the rest of the lively Elf town that belonged to fantasy stories. My logic figured out it might’ve been Elder’s house, or something like his office. It could’ve been both at the same time, as from what I observed, it looked like a living space with documents scattered everywhere.

“Come on in.”

Elder unlocked the door with a whiff of a magic wand I didn’t even realize he was holding most of the time until now. As we went to the comfort and safety of the house, I couldn’t help but ponder about what question I should ask first.

There’s too much that I didn’t know about this world of Elves, and how it correlates with the game my Grandmother used to play. Heck, I just remembered how I got here in the first place; my wish of seeing my Grandma. Yet, there’s a gutting feeling down my stomach that it’s probably not a wise idea to just ask ahead about my Grandma, as ‘Angelica’ is supposed to be her in this ‘world’, technically.

So what I end up saying, as Rama closed the door to the house, was;

“So… who and what am I, exactly?”

A question that sounds philosophical once I put it into sound. Had I asked this in my other life, it might’ve been, but with the situation I have on hand right now, it’s more to a genuine need to know.

“That is something I probably could not answer by myself. From the look of it, you– Arika, was it? You couldn’t be the exact Mage Hero Angelica that I knew.” Elder sighed as he leaned back to a pillar on the house. “Yet, I’m sure you’re a Blessed One. There’s no way any human would survive upon their extinction without being an immortal Blessed One.”

“What happened to other humans? Why are they… extinct?”

My lips were shaking as I mentioned that. The fear just struck up late on the fact that I am the last human remaining in this world.

“A combination of time and plague, really.” Elder raised himself from leaning to get himself immersed in searching through the scattered documents, as if he’s trying to show me something “Damn. Where did I keep that one… Rama, help me out here.”

“Okay. The age really has gotten to you, Elder…” Rama sighed as he helped out Elder, though he flinched a little once Elder stared at him fiercely at his choice of words. I could hear Rana chuckling to herself, too.

What Elder picked up with Rama’s help was out of my prediction, however. Instead of a proper document, it was a book akin to a story book. A crudely handdrawn one, even.

“I figured out this would be an easier way to explain human extinction than any documents.” Elder puffed his chest proudly, rather childishly for his appearance and age. “I drew it myself, just in case any new children would’ve asked.”

…What kind of old man gap moe is this?! Putting aside such irrelevant thoughts that invaded my personal space, I took my seat that Rana had lended me and listened to Elder’s explanation.

~*~*~*~

Long, long time ago. Us Elves live with mortal beings with smaller ears known as Humans.

While most of them are mortal and have shorter lifespans, some of them are blessed by the Goddess and gained both the fast recovery akin to an immortality and the humanly power to master all styles of magic to their choices compared to most Elves who could only focus on one to two choices of magic despite their larger mana pool throughout their lives.

These kinds of humans are referred to as ‘Blessed Ones’. They are humans who fell from the sky. There are many theories about the alien nature of the Blessed Ones, yet one could be certain that they don’t speak much of our common languages though they could understand us, and thus they aren’t much talkative compared to other humans that we lived with.

By the time the Blessed Ones ascended to our world, we were in a war with the demonic advances from the Hellscape– demons that were led by a Demon King and caused most of our animals to turn into monsters and fight us, in disagreement of Elves and Humans’ joint effort in building our own civilization in this world.

Blessed Ones were our key weapons to gain advantage in this war. Thanks to them, especially one of the most well known as Mage Hero Angelica, the Demon King was defeated for good. Peace came by our lands once again and most of the Blessed One returned into the sky for their eternal slumber.

However, as years passed by, mortal Humans who lived with the Elves were affected by a mysterious pandemic– one that spouts from the remnants of the demonic wars– known as the Demon King’s Last Effort. While Elves could survive the pandemic by researching through their long lifespans, humans went extinct first before finding a solution to the pandemic….

~*~*~*~

“Wow. So it’s like human-exclusive Covid but even worse as it actually wiped the humans out.”

“What are you talking about?”

The words that I spouted out of my modern, 2020-ish Earthly consciousness wasn’t something that Elder, Rana or Rama would understand, and I completely get that— it’s just that I wanted to pull one back at them over an overload of information.

Yet, there’s one thing I could be sure of by now. This world is exactly the world from my Grandmother’s favorite online game— or one of the futures of it. The little details match what I knew of its lore, after all. If I wasn’t wrong, despite being a popular online game, the game never got a sequel for some reason– I searched for it a little more after my Grandma’s passing. There are few contradictions, but I could put them aside for now in favor of learning more of my role in this world.

“Anyways, for some unknown reason, I’m descending to this world without some core memories, huh…”

“That is correct. Which is why, it’s better not to cause panic by announcing your existence until we know what’s going on. There are still Elves who are afraid of the demons, after all. A lot of older elves, like me, were survivors of that war. Some might’ve taken your descent as a warning of an upcoming invasion, even though it shouldn’t be.”

Elder puts back down his storybook to a table, sighing softly as he does. There are still a few questions I’d like to ask regarding the matter, but the melancholic look in his eyes stopped me from my track. I wondered if the very specific topic of past Demonic war and human extinction he had to live with laid as a foundation of his trauma and worries.

“I see, it’s a sensitive topic, then. Thank you for telling me regardless of that.”

“Don’t worry. It was my job to guide the Blessed Ones then, I see no problems in updating the current situations to another one even thousands of years later. Especially one we could properly communicate with like this. I’ll get us some tea.”

Elder smiled gently at me as he patted my head, before leaving the room to get some tea. It made me feel funny in the wrong ways– curse my interest in such sexy older men. I guess a thousand or more years older than me still fits that typing, even more than my ex-boyfriend….

“It can’t be helped, give him time… After all, the Elder lost his wife due to the Demon King’s Last Effort….” Rana commented rather nonchalantly. I blinked in surprise as I turned to Rana with a rather forced smile on my face.

“Eh?”

“Yeah. Elder lost his wife some hundred years ago. She was a human…” Rama chimed in.

So he’s widowed?! Wait. That does make it feel hotter… Rama said his wife was a human, and I am sort of one, though I’m a Blessed One. Does that mean I have a chance if I try? Since I’m in another world, maybe I should seize the chance of getting a hot new boyfriend, even if he’s an Elf older than I am!

“Hm? Why are you drooling, Lady Arika?”

“Ugh, I feel like she’s imagining gross things just from her expression alone.”

Rama’s irked face doesn’t really bother me much. To my trained eyes, he felt like a kid compared to the charming old man in front of me. That aside, I feel like I shouldn’t have pry further on the topic for now. From what I learned from Elder, there’s a chance he doesn’t know as much as I also don’t know.

“There’s still so much I don’t know… I guess I can put wooing a charming old man aside for now…”

I mumbled loudly, not realizing that the twins heard me clearly. Unfortunately they did and their reaction to the whole ordeal I just spoken out loud was;

“She just spoke out her feelings! Gross!”

“Ahaha, I get it~ Elder’s pretty handsome, after all! He was my first love as a kid until I moved on!”

Rama was disgusted, and Rana just nodded in agreement. I blushed so hard that I felt like I’d faint at that spot alone out of embarrassment…