One Hundred Years of Technology – Part 1

“Don’t move.”

It was morning. I barely had time to drag my consciousness from the sweet embrace of Hypnos when I realized there was something weighing down on my midriff. Oh, and a cold and hard blade pressed against my throat.

That sure woke me up.

“Any wrong move and I’ll kill you right here.”

For a second there, I thought my luck had finally run out, and Yzara decided she had had enough of me. However, the voice I heard from above me, despite being female, wasn’t hers. The woman straddling me, her thighs firmly holding my torso in place, looked tall, with her blonde hair braided in a long ponytail. Her face was like that of a doll, and her attempts at making a frown somehow made her look cute. She had long, loose dark brown shorts and an olive green, short-sleeved blouse—showing a fair bit of the little cleavage she could muster—that didn’t quite cover her flat, toned stomach. She was thin, but had with visible muscles on her arms.

When my eyes fell on her long, pointy ears, a strange rush of excitement reached my already racing heart.

An elf?! Where did she come from?!

But then another emotion struck me.

Wait, why does she look so darn familiar?

“Woah there, lady,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “What’s this about? Is this really how you should introduce yourself? Waking someone up so violently?”

“I don’t care about good manners.” That much is obvious. “Just answer my question, or I’ll end you right here,” she said, pressing her curved blade—a scimitar, maybe?—further into my throat.

“Alright, alright. Name’s Takashi. I’m a Hero. I just spawned nearby.”

“…A Hero, you say?” Finally, for the first time, I saw her smile—no, scratch that. It was a smirk, as if her prey had just managed to catch her interest. “You should know by now how this will end if you keep telling jokes.”

“I’m not joking,” I responded, trying to keep my cool. “Can’t you tell Luribel is now a Polis?”

That seemed to have caught the woman by surprise.

“So that’s it, huh? You’re the one who founded this Polis?”

“That’s right.”

With one swift motion, she sheathed her scimitar, and stood up.

“No one is stupid enough to bet their neck on such a bad lie.”

Finally, I’m free!

“So, care to explain what this is about, lady?” I asked as I stood up from the bed as well.

“Don’t call me ‘lady’,” she retorted. “The name’s Fianna, the Sharp Edge. I’m the leader of a passerby group of adventurers.”

Fianna…? Fianna… Oh, I do know her!

No wonder she was so familiar. Fianna had been an NPC in Arcforge. She was an elf who turned her back to magic for personal reasons and used physical attacks instead. She was a bit of a lone wolf, but the Heroes could recruit her to their own party if they managed to complete her quest.

And I guess elves do live a long time, so it’s feasible she survived this long.

But that fact brought with it a whole other can of worms. Obviously, in Arcforge, NPCs didn’t actually have any “lives” before the beta servers were booted up for the first time. Stuff like “elves live for a long time” were just pieces of lore, and didn’t actually affect anything in-game.

So did the lore get transposed to this real version of Iditath?

But I couldn’t muse for long, as Fianna continued her explanation.

“We stopped here in Luribel because we noticed the town had been cleared of the White Death. And then we came across you two. Guess you’ll keep your heads for a while longer.”

You two… Wait, what about Yzara?

I immediately started panicking. After all, the Demon Queen was sleeping in the room next door, and everyone in this world believed she was the source of the White Death. It wasn’t a stretch to say that she was public enemy number one. These adventurers couldn’t kill her, but if they found out I was associated with the Demon Queen, my neck and I would be in a lot of trouble.

Interrupting my thoughts, Fianna looked over to the entryway. “Keil, you can bring her over.”

“Roger, Boss!” I heard a male voice say.

Two figures appeared on the entryway. One was a human man, dressed in a baggy white linen shirt, a harness, and loose brown trousers with a laced belt. He had his medium-length, light brown hair in a short ponytail, and that sort of annoying 1000-watt smile you’d see in boy band members. And he was ripped—not the sort of over-the-top, artificial muscles of gym bros, but muscles you could tell were actually used for something. And what were they used for? The longbow on his back, ripped straight out of period dramas.

Next to him, however, was a girl dressed in a priestess outfit, holding a priestess staff. Her hair was cyan, her eyes green, and she was quite cute to boot. She seemed vaguely familiar, but before I could pinpoint where I knew her from, her face drew a big smile, and she ran in my direction, her staff falling to the floor.

“Takashi!”

She practically lunged into me, wrapping her arms around me in a big hug.

Damn, she’s so soft!

“Oh, I was so worried!” She said in a cute, high-pitched voice.

But then, I felt her lean into my ear, and her voice whispered in a very familiar timber.

“(Deal with it for a while. Just until these punks get off our back.)”

And then everything fell into place.

I could only smirk.

No, I hadn’t suddenly won a popularity contest or anything. This was for sure Yzara, using her innate powers to hide her demon features, pretending to be a human priestess. Without the horns, the tail, or her wing, she looked almost unrecognizable.

After hugging me for a few more seconds, Yzara finally let me go, but still stood next to me, arms wrapped around mine, as if asking for protection—just close enough that I felt her softness rubbing on me.

Damn her and her psychological attacks!

“Look at the cute little couple!” The man said, trying to hold in a laugh. “Should we really have been this aggressive with them?”

“Let them be. It must have been scary to be woken up by complete strangers,” Fianna added. Wait, does she actually have a heart? “But we had to be careful. It’s not every day we come across uninfected humans in the Wastelands.”

“Right… infected humans. I’ve heard of that, but I don’t know a lot of details.”

The combination of those two words sent a shiver down my spine.

“Guess we have a lot of information to share, then. I want to know how a couple of humans managed to find their way around the Wastelands on foot without getting infected. And how you managed to clear Luribel of the White Death in the first place.”

Gulp.

My heart skipped a beat. Somehow, I’d have to lie to these clearly very serious bunch of adventurers about how Yzara and I met. It wasn’t going to be easy, that was for sure.

As if deciding that was the perfect moment to cut the sharp silence between us, my stomach growled. Loudly.

“Eh, sorry about that. I guess I haven’t had anything to eat since spawning.”

“And food isn’t exactly easy to come by in the Wastelands… Very well.” For the first time, Fianna actually smiled. “I’ll bring over a table and some food from the Airdrake.”

“The Airdrake…? What’s that?”

“Our airship.”

“…What did you just say?”

“Outside,” she said, motining to the window.

Only then did I notice the massive balloon visible right outside the window.