"So," Rose said, sitting across from me at a table. We were alone in a back room of the fort, two guards stationed by the door. "Who are you?"

I leaned forward. "Is this a private room? Warded, or something, so nobody can hear?" She nodded. "Okay. Well, the truth is... I'm just a guy."

Rose rolled her eyes. It was probably the sexiest eye-roll I had ever seen in my life, and I say that with zero exaggeration whatsoever. There were some people who just made everything they did attractive somehow, and Rose amped up the eye-roll to 11. The slight press of her tongue against her sculpted cheek, the utter dismissal in posture, that brief moment where here eyes were perfectly rolled to the back of her head... It all came together perfectly. Okay, got that out of my system.

"You know, Malcador..." She distinctly pronounced each syllable of the name, signaling that she didn't think it was my name at all. Very sharp, though technically not true thanks to game system fuckery. "I find you can learn the most from asking questions when you already know the answer to them. Simply being told an answer can often leave you with more questions than anything, but comparing one answer to another? You can learn much, there. So. I will ask again, now that you know I know the answer. Who are you?"

"I'll be honest. I don't know what answer you think you know. To me, I'm just a guy, and that's all I have for you."

I could have told her about the time loop, the dimensional travel, etc, but I decided not to. First and foremost, I held fear deep in my heart, and the idea of someone knowing I was in a time loop was pretty terrifying. Time loops kind of inevitably made relationships imbalanced—I would always know about her more than she knew about me, and every time she spoke to me she'd have to consider that it might not be a permanent conversation. That was a heavy burden to bear, and while I could bear it by trying not to care, I didn't want to make anyone else suffer through it. Maybe there would come a time where being honest and open was worth it, a time where we were so close together that not telling her would be a greater slap in the face than anything, but at the moment, we hardly knew each other. The secret, thus, would be safe with me.

She leaned back in her chair. "What is the name of the kingdom you are in?"

"Uh... Is this a pop quiz?"

"What is the continent's name? What year is it?"

"S-Sorry, I didn't study." Fuck, is it too late to quickload and interrogate Timothy or someone? I don't want to re-do all that stuff...

Rose smiled. "Questions you know the answer to truly are the most informative."

What the hell is going on? I felt out of my league here, honestly. Let no one say I ever claimed to have a gigabrain (I think), but I had zero experience being interrogated, and definitely no experience being interrogated while fighting the urge to say things that would make the hot interrogator role their eyes at me.

(Rose, for her part, was out of the plate armor and wearing a reasonably tight-fitting set of hard leather armor. She had a muscular frame, visible through the simple clothes she had on beneath the armor, but not so muscular as to hide the softness of her feminine body. It was interesting, in a way; she had clearly spent a not-insignificant part of her life exercising and training, but that only accentuated her attractiveness. I wasn't sure if it was possible to have muscles develop in a more attractive way than this. In order to preserve what self-respect I have left, I'll not describe her chest in-depth, beyond to say that it was respectable in size. You wouldn't consider them "large" or "small", but rather, just right. Oh... Crap. There went the last of my self-respect.)

Rose pointed at my chest. I looked down, and saw nothing but my t-shirt. With the pop-culture reference. I doggedly refused to name what it was referencing out of embarrassment, and if I had one regret in life, it was buying a plethora of these shirts as a teen and wearing them forever out of apathy. How could I have known I wouldn't be given an easy change of clothes when suddenly teleported to another dimension slash world out of nowhere?

"The symbol of the Heir of the World," she said, "as seen on the Meditator."

"Ah." Some things were coming together, there. "Not expressing knowledge or a lack thereof here, but would you kindly define both of those terms, just so I can see what you know about them and compare? You know what they say about questions you know the answer to."

She smirked, then smoothed her expression. "The Meditator is a statue of a man in a meditating posture, located on a nondescript dirt field since the founding of the kingdom, and perhaps the founding of the entire continent. There are none living who recall a time before it was there, and on its chest is the symbol of the Heir of the World. No force could move it, and any attempt to build around it was forestalled by a mysterious energy which undid all construction overnight, on top of regular demon raids razing everything to the ground. The Meditator has sat and meditated for millenia, untouched, immovable. Incidentally, I checked its resting place myself earlier, and it was gone."

...

.....

......

"And this has to do with me because...?"

She rolled her eyes. Hell fucking yes.

"Allow me to continue explaining, as I have oh-so cleverly deduced through sheer wit that you are ignorant of the world. The Heir of the World is described in a flaming tablet elevated above the Temple of the Goddess located at the top of the Dragonmount, which pierces the heavens. The tablet speaks of prophecy."

Hark, as the legions unending swarm,

So shall come the Heir of the World,

With fire, soul, death, life, and nature at hand,

he shall Unite the Five,

and Inherit the World.

Hmm. An actual prophecy? That feels kind of old-fashioned somehow. Everyone mocks prophecies nowadays, but few actually use them anymore.

"That could be anyone. Look at how vague it is. So many symbols, specifically designed so that anybody can fit into the mold if you squint."

"Fire, soul, death, life, and nature refer to the Five Arcana. Everyone is born with a Talent for one specific Arcana, and are completely incapable of learning any other school. Some say it is arbitrary, some say it reflects a deep level of the soul, but in any case, nobody known can use multiple Arcana. It has long been said the Heir will be most likely identified by a mastery of multiple Arcana. The legions can now easily be understood to mean the Excursed summoner."

I rubbed my temples. That was why she threw the rock at me after seeing my healing spell. That was why she stared at the shirt. Oh my god. I should have asked about the cult. They kept calling me a cultist and I just ignored it. There was a lot on my mind, okay? Fuck, Hilda even mentioned the Heir. Oh my god. I bungled this so hard, and now the bear trap named Rose has locked herself around my neck. Fuck.

As I lashed myself in misery, noticed the door was slightly ajar. I leaned to the side to look around Rose, and saw a wide purple eye staring at me through the crack in the door. There was a blur of movement, and it was gone.

I leaned back, a drop of sweat trickling down my brow. Was that Hilda? Weren't there two guards out there? Did... Did she knock them out? Was she listening? Is she listening now? Oh god oh god I've made so many mistakes. I would quickload if I wasn't afraid of being karmically punished for it.

"So," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Let's say I am this Heir of the World." Rose nodded. "What would you do?"

She spread out her arms. "The world is a game, Malcador, and I play to win. There is no better side to be on than the Heir of the World's, I would say."

"Does sacrificing yourself count as winning the game?" I asked. It was a pointless question, and maybe a revealing one, but I couldn't help myself.

She rose a shapely eyebrow. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I have no self-sacrificial streak. In any game, there are times where you will be uncertain over whether you will win or lose, but the true defeat comes the moment you give up. You will often win games you thought lost, simply by continuing to believe you can win, even when there seems to be a one hundred percent chance of failure."

Ah. I had misunderstood. I couldn't ask directly about the past incidents, for obvious reasons, but Rose had likely guessed upon seeing the troll between her and the fort that the whole skirmish was just about killing her. She couldn't have ran past the troll and left it to the soldiers because it likely would have targeted her, and you don't run from Giant Trolls. Her only option from the beginning was to fight the troll and win. In a way I felt a little embarrassed to have misunderstood, but well, there you go. Self-sacrifice was just a lot easier to understand than maintaining faith in victory against seemingly impossible odds.

"Forget I said anything. So, you're on my side, theoretically. What's our endgame?"

"What else but Uniting the Five and Inheriting the World? It says so right on the prophecy, which I just recited."

"The five being?"

"You are lucky that there have been millenia dedicated to analyzing the prophecy. A flaming tablet floating above an ancient temple of unknown origin is bound to attract attention, but in any case, it is believed that 'the Five' refers to a member of royalty from each of the five primary species: the humans, the elves, the dwarves, the beastkin, and the demons. There have been times of uprest and revolution in history, but always these five remain dominant in their respective corners of the continent."

"So you are not-so indirectly suggesting I travel the world, grab a member of royalty from each of the five nations dominating the continent, then go up to the top of Dragonmount or whatever and fulfill the prophecy?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Theoretically, I—"

"Please drop the theoreticals already. We both know who you are."

I threw my hands up in the air. Cold as ice, hard as steel. "Okay, okay. O mighty Rose, please infodump me on the world and explain our next steps."

And so she did.

To summarize, one could visualize the continent as something of a rectangle with an ocean on its left side and (potentially) endless wastes extending out infinitely from every other side. The fertile rectangle had Dragonmount, a quite original mountain, piercing the middle and extending up to the heavens, with the aforementioned Temple of the Goddess at the top. The bottom right had the Kingdom of Pendrack, the bottom left had the Dwarven Mountains, and the top half had the Beast Empire. The lines were a bit more messy than that, and the Dwarven mountains stabbed into all regions, but all in all that was that. The Demon Realm was located in the Wastes, and as you can imagine there was constant war due to demons (and their monsters) flooding from the wastes in an attempt to take the fertile land for themselves. The Beast Empire took some of the blow, but a lot of it was focused on the Kingdom, due in part to an ancient tradition of a Hero arising in the empire whenever a Demon King began a serious invasion. They were archenemies, whereas there was just bad blood between them and the Beast Empire. The elves, incidentally, lived primarily in the Everlasting Forest surrounding Dragonmount, but could be found in forests across the continent.

My quest would be to travel to each of these regions, convince a member of the local royalty to come with me, and then, in the end, climb Dragonmount.

The door wobbled many times during this explanation, but I pointedly did not lean to the side to see why.

"We will go to the Everlasting Forest first," Rose said, speaking matter-of-factly as if the matter had already been decided, "then to the dwarves, then to the beastkin before finally plunging into the Wastes for the demon princess. I believe there is only one at the moment, but the demons are frightfully secretive, so who can say."

"Woah woah woah. You can't just... just say that."

"Say what, exactly?" She cocked an eyebrow.

"Like, the whole plan. You just said a whole continent-spanning plan. You can't do that. It's basically spoilers. There's this law that if you make a long-term plan, it either has to be hidden from sight, or it has to go wrong, because otherwise you've spoiled things. You just said it out loud. Now everything will go wrong. You could have at least only told me about the elf part, but now I know the whole thing."

"That... That is the most ridiculous nonsense I have ever heard in my life, and I mean that sincerely. It is just a plan. Reality will not bend to counteract a plan. What happens will happen, but it will not because I stated a plan out loud."

"You just don't get it."

"I suppose I don't. Do you have any sensible objections, or are you being antagonistic for fun?"

"Not an objection, but why that order in particular?"

"We are on good terms with the elves and things may go peacefully there. The dwarves are apathetic but not hostile. You will very much not enjoy what you have to do in the Beastkin kingdom, and so we are putting that off for as long as possible. The Demon Realm is even more dangerous, however, so it shall come last."

"Is that a difficulty cur-... You know what, nevermind. I'm on board."

It may have seemed like I was going along with this a little too readily, but the fact of the matter was, I basically had the God of this world telling me explicitly what to do on a floating tablet that, for some reason, was perpetually on fire in the most important place of possibly the entire world. I wasn't about to argue with that. Incidentally, we both left the significance of her skipping "returning to the kingdom for human royalty" in her plan unsaid. Perhaps I would ask her about it later, already knowing the answer.

"Perfect. As a Paladin I am not bound to this fort and can travel with you, as long as the Holy Church agrees this is done for a holy cause, which I believe no cardinal would contest. This also means I have no soldiers under my command, and as the rest of the soldiers are under strict orders to rennovate this fort in preparation for a potential invasion, I suspect none will be coming with us. I would have turned them down if they tried, in any case, as the power disparity between us means they would only slow us down. We must make haste, for obvious reasons."

Power disparity, huh. It might be safe to assume that attributes and levels were a universal system, but only I had exponential growth, or maybe everything came down to skill levels. It was an interesting question, but not necessarily an important one. Likewise, I figured a spearman or mage or two wouldn't slow us down too much, but I had to assume she knew what she was talking about here. And I wasn't about to invite some spear dude to follow us anyway.

I glanced up, above Rose's head, and saw the door silently shut. God, why did it have to be so ominous.

"Okay. When are we going?"

Companion Unlocked! Princess Rosalyn of the Penndrack Court, Third of Her Name, Fourth in Line to the Throne, has joined your party!

The answer to my question was answered only after an hour or so of more interrogation. Rose wanted to know everything about my powers, abilities, etc. It wasn't particularly interesting. I explained how I learned magic from chants, she arranged for me to learn spells, I couldn't learn non-novice spells until my skill level was higher, etc. I got the basic Fire/Water/Earth/Wind attacks from Timothy, though, and a simple Telekensis spell from the Mystic dude. There were no Nature mages here, and if there was any Cursed spells left for me to learn, nobody knew, since Hilda had vanished without a trace.

I continued to keep the whole time loop business secret from her, for the aforementioned reasons. I had to laugh, though, thinking about how she might react to the knowledge she gutted the Heir of the World due to thinking he was a doppelganger too lazy to dress up as a soldier instead of a Heir cultist. (Incidentally, the Heir Cult worshipped the Heir as superior to the Goddess, rather than considering him an apostle of the goddess granted divinity to carry out her Will.)

Rose didn't publicize my identity as the Heir of the World, though I got the feeling at least some people "knew." The statue being gone was public knowledge, and while my present... build didn't match the statue, the fact Paladin Rose was arranging so much stuff for me sent a significant message. My jeans and t-shirt (with its telltale pop culture reference) had been replaced with a plain tunic covered with hard leather armor fairly quickly. On my part, I didn't exactly want to publicize my identity, since in a way it still didn't really feel real, and I would feel like the hugest sucker alive if I blabbed around like "Oh yes look at me I'm the Heir of the World prophesized for millenia" only for it to turn out not to be true. Heck, even if it was true, I didn't exactly want to say it until I had gone through a much more epic adventure that made me feel like the title fit. I supposed I would have to say something to the elves, though.

It felt like no time at all before Rose and I were on horseback, saddlebags filled with perishable goods and tents, waiting for the portcullis of the gate to open. She seemed pretty gung-ho about all this, but thinking about it, she had been assigned to a backwater fort under a... kind of half-assed fake name and identity, so she probably had her own shit going on. I didn't really mind the situation either way. If nothing else, she had the good heart I didn't.

The portcullis rose at dawn, and off we went to the Everlasting Forest.

End of Arc 1