Chapter 1:

II

Was it worth it my hero?


Leaning towards the monitor, Edward stares at an e-mail from an irregular address.
He reads the e-mail out loud,
"Why do you always play like a Goody Two-shoes in video games?", he speaks as fiddles with his hair.
Edward sends a reply "Does it bother you?" with an irritated expression on his face.
He receives a reply, which reads
"It is of great concern to me.
Let me ask you again, Why do you always play like a Goody Two-shoes?"
"I am not telling you", Edward replies.
The reply reads, "I can do this whole day. I'll keep spamming. If you block me, I'll keep spamming you from a different ID. So tell me now, why do you play like a goody two shoes?"
"Do you really wan'na know?" he speaks under his breath.
He looks up at the ceiling and yells at the top of his voice,
"BECAUSE I CAN SAVE PEOPLE IN THEM!",
he takes a deep breath.
He receives another e-mail from that address immediately, "Very well" it reads.
In middle of the dead silence and the sound of computer fans spinning, a portal opens up point blank infront of him.
"What in heavens is th-?" he freaks out and falls off his chair. He notices multiple snake like hands coming out of the portal as they start to wrap him from his waist below. The hands start to drag him in the portal as he struggles to free himself from them, he tries to push, bite, smack and every idea that hit him in the futile resistance against the hands.
The hands overwhelm him and drag him into the portal. As his body gets half way through the portal, he starts screaming,
"HELP!" he cries.
He hears a beautiful melody, perhaps a flute being played, his body gets completely submerged in the portal as he loses the feeling of his lower half, leaving his head the only thing sticking out of it.
The melody calms him down and makes him unconscious as he gets completely submerged in the midnight dark portal.
"Beautiful", A whisper that appears to be coming from a mysterious fogged figure.
"So this is how you look, my hero" says the fogged figure,
"huh, It seems it will take time", giggle,

"Listen well my Edward, you need to grow, you need to explore, there will times where you will need to fight and take one's life, but you need to stay strong and keep walking towards tomorrow",
It prays "May the great raven spirits protect you",
The figures starts to disappear as Edward slowly begins to gain conscience. "see you later", it whispers as it vanishes into darkness and Edward slowly opens his eyes.
He hears a voice, "Skadi, he woke up".
"very well",
He finds himself being stared by an unfamiliar person from an uncomfortably close distance. He rattles and lifts his head up in a haste, hitting his forehead against the person's chin unintentionally. As he gets a better hold of his senses he sees a beautiful girl with short blue hair sitting on his right side. She was holding a wet cloth with which she was aiding him, who had been down with a high fever. There was a man with a slender body, dark skin and long silver-blonde hair on Edward's left, he was holding his chin after it had collided with Edward's forehead.
"Are you alright?" the girl asks,
"no, it hurts",
"I wasn't asking you Alwis" she says to the man holding his chin.
"I am fine", Edward replies.
"Where am I? Who are you guys?" Edward enquires,
"We found you unconscious in middle of the Whel forest route." she answers,
"Oh! And how rude of me, I forgot to introduce myself", she continues,
"My name is Tania", says the beautiful girl with the sky blue hair while beaming a warm smile, like a fairy.
"Your clothes, you don't seem to be from any of the neighboring Kingdom, or to be more precise, you don't even seem to be from this continent. Where are you from exactly? I am curious" Alwis questions Edward. The intensity with which the question was asked, made Edward feel like he was attending a nation level exam.
"hey hey take it easy, this poor fellow just woke up and was having a really high fever just a few seconds ago. And here you are bothering him with your questioning. Let the lad breath for a second",
"Tania, give this lad some water. And Alwis, keep your questions and queries to yourself for a while." says the women who was driving the carriage with a confident and kind smile on her face while looking at Tania. Then she scolds Alwis.
Tania hands Edward a bottle of water. Edward accepts it and starts to gather his thoughts on what is going around him.
He remembers himself being pulled in a dark portal and finches for a second. Out of a habit he looks around himself and starts inspecting the people near him. He notices that the man named Alwis has unusually long and pointy ears. Then he looks at Tania, he remembers that it is unusual for someone to have blue hair, at first he thought they were dyed, but the longer he looked at them the more they were screaming to him that they were natural. And the women with the bright scarlet hair didn't bother him that much, he just thought that she was just super-ginger, but what bothered him the most about her was the heavy looking armor she was wearing.
After all the thought processing, and thinking of all the possible outcomes he comes to a conclusion.
First, he had been transported to an another world by the portal he was pulled in before.
The huge amount of anime he watches, the manga he reads and the unhealthy amount of time he spends playing RPG games, or to put them into simple terms, his 'geek sense' had assisted him coming to this conclusion.
Or second, he was being pranked.
He thought of the second option being the least likely one. Then he thinks of the possibility of him being in an another world. He freaks out in his mind for a second, but then calm down and tries to think of the positive possibility of him being the legendary hero who had been summoned to save the troubled world from a creepy stalking witch.
But then he remembers the number of times the main protagonist had to die to achieve his goals. And that looked painful.
He again freaks out, not showing any signs of changes or panic on his face. He then again calms down and thinks of the possibility of it being a pranks but still being the least likely one.
Silence continues for a minute, only to be broken by the person who cause it.
"Oh! Let's introduce ourselves to each other", says Skadi,
"I am Skadi. The guy is Alwis, he is a Dark Elf, as you can see for yourself. And you know Tania, as she had introduced herself to you before. And what would your name be, fellow lad?"
"My name is Edward Parker", he answers as he takes a pause,
"Can I ask a questions?", he asks.
"Go ahead"
"Can you guys tell me how and where exactly you guys found me. And are those real?", He points toward Alwis's ears and asks.
"What do you mean by, are those real? Didn't she already tell that I am a Dark Elf.", Alwis glares at Edward as he replies.
He points his thumb towards Tania and says, "As she told you before, we found you lying in middle of the road while passing through the Whel forest. You were blocking the road so Tania and Skadi got off the carriage and went to check upon you. I said that we should just move you out of our way and continue. But Tania said that you were having a really high fever and that we should help you. I didn't care either way. So we just let you on our carriage while Tania treated your fever. That is all there is to it".
Tania pulls out a pouch and hands it to Edward and says, "We found this stuff on the ground near you, though this was yours".
Edward takes the pouch and checks the stuff inside of it. He finds his mobile, a powerbank, a fountain pen, sleeping pills and his wallet.
"Thanks for taking care of me and my stuff", Edward thanks Tania.
Tania blushes and says, "You don't need to thank me, it wasn't a big deal".
"So now that you have warmed up to us, I would like to ask, what where you were you doing lying there the road?" Skadi asks.
Edward thinks that it will be risky to tell them about the portal, so he says, "From what I can recall, I think I was kidnapped and the next thing I know is that I woke up here".
"So you don't know how you got there? Well it can't be helped", replies Skadi,
"I don't know where I am currently, I don't know what to do next. I am totally lost", says Edward with a concerned expression.
"if that is the case, then why don't you join us? Can he join us, Skadi", Tania looks at Edward asks and then turns towards Skadi to confirm.
Alwis interferes, "HEY! Wait, we can't let an unknown person join us like th-",
"I don't see any problem with this, Edward seem to be a nice guy. And Tania seem to be really excited about him joining", Skadi stops Alwis in middle and replies.
With these sudden chain of events, Edward throws the second option of this being a prank out of the window. He then comes to the conclusion of him being teleported to another world.
Edward, who a is geek and self-proclaimed otaku, couldn't have been more exited about being thrown into a fantasy world setting. For a person who dreamed about being a hero and saving people, after being bought to a fantasy world, it was like a dream coming true for him.
"I would love to join you guys, but first" Edward who suddenly got energetic asks,
"what you guys exactly do?".
Skadi gives out a sigh and replies, "For some reason I was expecting this. We are just travelers who have left or have been casted out of their village or kingdom. We go place to place exploring and meet new people. Well we sometimes get into dangerous situations too because of quests we often take",
She asks, "On that note, Edward, do you know magic or are skilled at wielding any weapon?"
Edward got excited upon hearing that magic exists in this world, he replies, "I don't know about magic, because I never tried it, but I think I can use a wield a weapon or two".

"Well it is going to be exciting"
"Welcome to our group, Edward", Skadi and Tania welcome him to their group while Alwis sits in a corner and sighs.
"Where are we currently heading to?", Edward asks.
"We are heading toward the current location of a nomadic tribe called Halotisisic. They are known for their long heritage despite being a really small tribe. I have some business with their elder, Wicshek, so we are heading towards where they are." says Skadi.
Skadi goes back to driving the carriage while Alwis takes a nap in the corner. Edward goes through his stuff once again while Tania curiously stares at them.
She picks the pen up and asks Edward, "what is this stick used for? Is it one of those fancy magic wands?",
"This? This is a fountain pen", Edward replies.
She gets surprised when she is told that that was a pen.
"Amazing! This a pen?! How do you use it?" she gets excited and all jumpy as she asks,
"there is a small tube inside of it in which you fill the ink in and then you put it back in, then use it to write", he answers.
As vague as the explanation was, it was still enough to amaze and satisfy Tania who was seeing it for the first time, as it was something new to her, unlike those orthodox feather pens that Edward thought they used.
"What do you guys use as a pen? It must be feather pens, right?" he asks,
"Feathers pen? Wow that is a great idea. But no, we use pens crafted from the scales shed by the Bulgeon fish. There are found in abundance so it is quite easy to get their scales. But some people illegally poach them while they are still permature. And that is really wrong, they should respect nature and it's ways of wonders"
That wasn't the answer he was expecting, he never expected that here they would be using some fish's scales as pens.
"Sorry for interrupting your chat, but we are about to reach Halotisisic's camp. Tania wake Alwis up."
Edward peeks out of the carriage to look at the camp they were heading toward.
"I don't see anything in front of us", says Edward.
"What? Who said it was in front of us. Look up", says Sakdi.
Edward peeks out and looks up. He witnesses something that he only had read in stories and seen in films. At this very moment he realized that he really was in a totally different world from the one in which 'he' had been.