Perhaps this wasn't as fun as it was made out to be…
That was the prevailing thought occupying Adam's mildly suffering brain as he trudged through semi-dense forest foliage, swiping leaves out of the way with his bare hands like a budget Tarzan. Sweat dripped down his brow, sticking to his lashes, and the humidity clung to him like a bad game tutorial you can't skip.
He was on his way to a town called Elysia—twenty whole miles away.
Twenty. Miles. On foot.
Through what was essentially the world's longest and least cooperative salad bar.
"Elysia," he muttered to himself between labored breaths. "Banger name, though. Why doesn't Earth have cities named that cool? We get stuff like Denton and Springfield. This place? Straight-up Final Fantasy DLC name drops."
Then he paused.
Wait. What was this world called?
Before he could even process the thought, his brain replayed the memory of Dea bailing on him like a co-op teammate who rage-quit after accidentally triggering a boss.
Her parting words? Something along the lines of:
"Hey, dude! I gotta zip back to the God Realm for... stuff, you know, celestial paperwork and sparkly bureaucracy—anyway, there's a town a couple kilometers that way. Don't die! Byeeee~!"
And then she glanced at what he thought was a floating holographic email before vanishing in an explosive puff of confetti, glitter, and—thank all the emotional support units in the sky—a total lack of Nier: Automata angst.
Adam blinked at where she'd been standing.
Typical.
Divine aid when you don't need it. Sparkly smoke bomb exit when you do.
Still, he chuckled to himself. The fact she was back to her fangirly, hyperactive, anime-mascot energy was a relief. Even if that meant he was now on a twenty-mile solo hike through the world's most overly ambitious nature wallpaper.
He let out a breath somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.
"Yup… just me, the trees, the bugs, and an unreasonable quest marker."
Adam had begun arguing with his boots.
Not out loud, of course. That would be a sign of complete jungle-induced madness, and he wasn't quite there yet. But in his mind? Oh, he was absolutely debating whether or not footwear could file a lawsuit for cruel and unusual terrain.
"Twenty miles," he muttered, brushing aside a leafy branch that smacked him in the face like nature's own slapstick gag. "Twenty. Entire. Miles. Through foliage thicker than JRPG side quest lore dumps."
Then he stopped.
There, just ahead, bathed in a shaft of sunlight like some sort of fantasy oil painting, sat a girl. Young—maybe twelve. Elven ears. Pale hair braided messily down one shoulder. Her small figure rested atop a flat, mossy rock like she had claimed it as a throne in the middle of the woods.
But she wasn't majestic.
She looked pissed.
Or maybe tired. Or maybe both. There was a distinct vibe of "I do not wish to engage with the main quest right now."
Adam approached carefully. "Hey there… Are you okay?"
The girl didn't answer. She stared at her foot instead—her right ankle was swollen and purple-tinged, propped up on her cloak. She didn't cry, didn't sniffle, didn't scream. Just glared at it like it had personally betrayed her.
"Your ankle looks bad," he said gently, crouching. "Can I help?"
"No," she said flatly.
There was silence.
Adam blinked. "…Cool. Good chat."
"I don't need help," she added, crossing her arms with all the pride of a pre-teen who clearly did.
"I mean," Adam gestured vaguely at the jungle behind him, "I'm not saying you need help, but the jungle does tend to be full of things that love the taste of defiant children."
She said nothing.
"I'm Adam," he tried. "Totally human, mostly non-threatening. I do sarcasm and emotional support. Occasionally cook rice badly."
Still nothing.
"…And you are?"
She hesitated. Then, finally: "Luna."
"Pretty name," he said with a smile. "Let me guess—you were out here looking for a magical crystal, ran afoul of a boss monster, and twisted your ankle in a dramatic turn of fate?"
Luna frowned. "No."
He waited.
Luna looked away. "I ran away."
"From what?"
"…None of your business," she snapped, with all the spitfire energy of someone very not ready to talk about it.
Adam raised his hands. "Okay. Got it. Vault is sealed, the lock thrown away, not even asking again."
She looked at him sidelong, clearly not expecting that. Most adults would have started a monologue by now. Or worse—tried to talk her into going back.
"You gonna lecture me?" she asked suspiciously.
"Nope."
"Call me irresponsible?"
"Nope."
"Say I'm just a kid who doesn't know what she's doing?"
"…I mean," Adam said, "I barely know what I'm doing, and I'm supposed to be some kind of Chosen One or whatever. So we're in the same boat."
That got her. Her mouth twitched. Just a little.
"You're weird," Luna mumbled.
"Thank you," Adam said solemnly. "It's a core part of my character sheet."
Luna eyed him again—suspicious, but a little less bristly. Her arms stayed crossed, but the tension in her shoulders loosened by about three percent, which was basically a confession of trust in pre-teen rebellion language.
"Alright, let's take a look," Adam said, kneeling beside her rock-throne with the gentleness of someone used to treating both wounds and emotions.
He pulled out the beginner-tier first aid kit Dea had tossed into his inventory—sparkle-coated because of course it was. The bandages had faint little chibi stars printed on them, and when you unwrapped them, they smelled faintly like cosmic bubblegum.
Luna stared, aghast. "Why does it sparkle?"
"Would you believe it's divine standard issue?"
"No."
"Smart girl."
She giggled slightly in return.
He worked carefully—cleaning the scrape, checking the twist, applying a cooling salve that hissed softly on contact like the item knew how much drama had gone into this injury. Finally, he wrapped the ankle with practiced ease, firm but gentle.
Then came a sudden, softly robotic voice—yet unmistakably sparkly-friend-adjacent—that Adam promptly missed because he was too focused on patching up the pale-haired elven girl, accompanied by the level-up jingle (Tuh-na Tuh-na~!) usually found in retro RPG games.
{+3 to Physical Strength!}
"There," he said, sitting back. "Won't win any magical surgery awards, but it should keep you steady until we find civilization."
Luna glanced down at the work, then away, her voice low. "…Thanks."
Adam didn't press. He just smiled and said, "Anytime."
All of a sudden, the forest rumbled. Trees shook and quivered from side to side as the land moved, as if accommodating something bigger and fiercer than the human and elf who had been sitting peacefully there moments ago. As the 'thing' approached, the stomping became louder and louder—a thump on the eardrums of both people, stunned like Skyrim NPCs.
"What in the name of God's green Earth is that!?" Adam shouted, losing his balance from the tremors in the ground. He clearly no longer considered suing his footwear for their lackluster performance earlier, very thankful to them for holding up right now.
On the boulder—turned into a non-comfy elven throne—Luna almost fell off. The magical soothing balm let out a sparkly shriek as it came dangerously close to being smeared on the side of the rock, or worse… touching grass.
Aside from her dread at whatever absolute behemoth was heading their way, one oddity in Adam's statement briefly confounded her. Her elven thirst for reason and knowledge flickered to life.
What was Earth? It sounded like something a dog might leave on the sidewalk. Was he taking an oath on dog poop?
And God? Singular? Was he a paladin or something with an extremely strict clause forbidding him from mentioning other gods?
Despite being a twelve—Hey, I'm nearly thirteen and that's basically fourteen—year-old, Luna was still an elf, and like all elves, had an immense thirst for knowledge. Adam intrigued her with his oddities—especially the part about a god petty enough to deny acknowledgment of others.
Leaving aside her terror for a bit, she pondered: Was he even a paladin? His actions said yes, but if he was taking oaths on dog droppings, probably not. Maybe he misspoke, caught up in the panic of the tremors. That made sense. Probably.
Maybe he was just strange. Or panicking. Or both.
Both were good.
Reaching the end of her linguistic musings—or rather, Adam's—she brought her attention back to the giant in the room. Or rather, the forest.
What was so big that the trees were parting from force?
She was pretty sure these trees weren't alive. They weren't that kind of species. Obviously.
So they weren't supposed to be moving.
Out of the forest walked a giant beast Adam had a vague idea of. Standing ten feet tall, with an ugly face and eyes perfectly symmetrical on either side, its golden irises barely distracted from the unmistakable anger—and was that hunger?—burning in its red pupils. A short layer of dark green hair topped its otherwise hairless head.
Its skin was lighter green, but still dark enough to fall into the "Dark Creature" category. Its muscular frame was absurdly jacked—bodybuilder-tier in places that didn't even seem humanly possible. It wore only a ragged loincloth and a necklace of bones around its thick neck. Its hands were rough and calloused, thankfully bare of weapons. Its mouth had two sharp fangs jutting down like a saber-tooth tiger—pure white, as if this monster actually brushed twice a day.
As it stood there, its muscle-bound legs planted firmly in the soil, the trembling forest canopy ceased. The terrorizer had stopped in one of the field's rare clearings, glaring ravenously down at the golden-haired human and the injured elven girl on the mossy rock.
Luna, fresh from her musings, stared in fear.
No screaming, though. She was above that, you hear!?
Adam, sweat dripping down his face, stood up and shouted—because whispering wouldn't exactly reach ten feet into the air.
"Hey there, big fella! Wouldn't happen to have conscious thought, now would you?!"
He squeaked. No, actually—screeched, full of nervous terror.
The behemoth answered with a thunderous roar, shaking the forest to its core. Its voice echoed through the clearing, making Luna's rock quiver and blowing both their hair back—her braid unraveling into a golden mess.
"I'll take that as a 'No,' then," Adam grimaced, slapping a palm to his forehead with an echoing splat.
Well… crap.
Luna took a deep breath and screamed,
"Of all the things we could've run into… it had to be a high orc!?"