“Well, girls… I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?” I asked while controlling my mech. We were still flying over the ocean, but I was finally able to make out a distant shore on the horizon.

“Bad… bad news first.” Jocelyn said with a shaky nod. “Then you can cheer us up with good news.”

“Well… first of all, without the machinery on the Emergence, I can’t recharge my mech’s mana engine. We’ve got enough to make it to land, but after that… Also, I have absolutely no idea where we are.” Seriously, we could be on some remote corner of Deckan for all I knew, though I seriously doubted that would be the case.

“And… the good news?” Casey looked towards me in hope.

“We have limited food, water, and funds. My mech is going to need substantial repairs after using that card to escape, and we don’t have access to the equipment we need to repair it.”

“I said the good news!” Casey slapped a fist against my chest, causing the cockpit to shake as my arms briefly jerked.

“Uhm… we aren’t dead?” I did my best to show a bright smile to the two of them. “You two have that caravan thing, right? Shouldn’t there be a way to send emergency messages through it?”

The sisters looked at each other briefly, before shaking their heads. “If we had something to write on, we could ‘sell’ a distress message. There’s a special value that we were taught to use for items that contained emergency messages.”

Hearing that, I actually felt a bit relieved. “If it’s just something to write on, I keep a notebook and pen on me for whenever I want to jot down ideas. I’ll get it for you once we land, and we can get started.” Thankfully, we were close to the shore now, and it didn’t seem to be just some small island.

Casey hesitated, but ultimately nodded her head. There wouldn’t be any use in rushing things before we got out of the cockpit. Even if that metallic face were to appear now, the most we would be able to do is some evasive maneuvers.

Once we landed, I controlled the mech to crouch down, its right arm angled to provide a more convenient walkway down to the ground. Then, with a hiss the cockpit opened. Along the way, I had done basic atmospheric scans, simply to make sure the air was breathable. As such, I wasn’t worried when I opened my helmet, enjoying a breath of fresh air.

The other two seemed far more interested in climbing out of the cramped mech, both of them slipping on the arm of the machine and crashing into the ground with a loud thud. Shaking my head, I climbed out as well, calmly walking down the arm to go help them up.

“Showoff…” Casey muttered as she took my hand, pulling herself up as I moved to help Jocelyn as well. “You said that you have a notebook?”

I nodded, reaching into one of my vest pockets and pulling out the deck of cards I used to store my everyday items. Simple things like a bedroll, a few rations and bottles of water, and of course my notebook. When the card was activated, I began flipping through the already filled pages and tore out an empty one for Casey. Then, I pulled the small pen out of the spine of the notebook and passed it over as well.

Casey nodded her head thankfully, taking the notebook and using the hand of my mech as a writing surface. Both Jocelyn and I followed her to look over her shoulders at the content that she was writing.

‘This is Casey Spyre, Merchant Guide of the Emergence. The ship has encountered an unfamiliar race known as the Metongs, and were forced to flee. Myself, my sister, and one other are now stranded on an unknown world, supplies low. The fate of the ship is unknown. However, it is unlikely that many survived. If anyone encounters this race, proceed with utmost caution. They appear friendly, but are highly hostile.’

After she wrote the note, she held out her hand. A golden glow emerged on her palm, before a coin appeared. And above that coin, a holographic window similar to the system’s prompts appeared.

Casey chose to sell the paper for a value of seventy-three duchats, less than the price of a simple meal. It took a hundred duchats to make a pound, the standard unit of currency in Deckan. No doubt, the ‘seventy-three duchats’ was the special value Casey mentioned.

Surprisingly, the coins appeared in Casey’s hands only moments after she listed the item for sale, causing the lycan girl to let out a relieved sigh. “They’ve gotten the message. If we’re following the rules that they gave us… the next thing that should happen is that they send us a note with the same value. That note will tell us to sell it back at a higher cost, so that we can get some emergency funds to buy necessities.”

I gave a small nod at that, glad that something was working as it was supposed to. “In that case, I’m going to see about finding some shelter for us.” It was unknown what the nights would be like in this world, so I didn’t want to take any chances. Not to mention any potentially dangerous creatures that could be lurking around here.

Reaching into my jacket again, I pulled out my deck of spell cards. Once I found the two that I wanted, I slipped them both into the slots for my card gun. Then, I aimed it at the sky and pulled the trigger, firing off the effect of the first card.

This card was rather simple, mapping the surrounding terrain and creating a holographic display in front of the caster. It wouldn’t show anything like lifesigns, but it would map out any geographical features, as well as any plants or animals that remained still long enough for the scan to finish.

I watched the projected map taking shape in front of myself, my eyes sweeping over it to identify our surroundings. Behind us was the ocean, which I had no intention of entering for shelter. And ahead of us… was a wide grassy plain. I had used the card in hope of finding a cave or something that we could use.

“I don’t suppose either of you are druids?” I asked in a hopeful tone, only to see them both shaking their heads. A sigh escaped my lips as I shook my head sadly. “Then we’re doing this the hard way. Casey, you keep an eye on the market platform. If you need to, hide in the cockpit of the mech. Jocelyn, there’s a mountain six kilometers to the southeast. We’ll head there together and try to find a cave.”

“Eh?! Why are the two of you going off alone for that?” Casey asked in an incredulous tone, causing me to smirk towards her.

“Because if we don’t find a cave, we will have to make one. Would you rather stay in the military-grade mech and watch for the message, or dig through solid stone?”

“I’ll stay with the mech, thanks.” She immediately quieted down after I told her my reasoning. Since I knew what Jocelyn’s familiar was like, I knew that she would be helpful in digging a hole with me, even if we weren’t able to find a cave.

Looking at the girl in question, I found a playful smile on her face. One that she quickly did her best to hide after noticing I saw it. As I led the way, the two of us walked in the direction of the distant mountain.

“So what’s the story with you two?” I asked curiously after about five minutes of walking, wanting to break the silence between us. “That card couldn’t have been something that the captain gave you at the last minute. There just wasn’t enough time for that.”

Jocelyn hesitated for a moment, before nodding her head. “It should be fine to tell you now… Actually, when we were hired, she gave us a box of ten cards. They were all encrypted, so we didn’t know what any of them were for…”

“At the time, she told us that we couldn’t tell anyone about those cards… she said that if something happened, she would tell us a number. We had to take the card for that number and follow her directions carefully. We were… confused to say the least.”

After saying that, Jocelyn hugged her arms to her chest. “Earlier, after we entered warp. She suddenly sent us a message saying to take card number eight to the hangar, and get in the mech that was prepared.”

“Eight?” I blinked in confusion, looking towards Jocelyn. “Are you… sure you grabbed the right card? The one you grabbed was ‘escape plan three’.”

Jocelyn’s eyes went wide, looking like she was about to panic. “N-no, that was definitely the card in the eighth slot! It was even in a small, laminated package with the number eight on it! There’s no way we got the wrong card… right?”

I thought about that for a moment, coming to two possible conclusions. Either the captain had placed the cards out of order, or the ‘escape plan’ cards only started from six onwards. If it was the latter, then the first five cards would have been methods to fight back, and she would only use an escape card if a situation had seemed hopeless.

She really had no idea what kind of danger she’d be facing, did she? Encrypted cards were rare, for multiple reasons. First, the fact that you couldn’t identify what the card was prior to casting it meant that it would be difficult to resell the card. Secondly… you could only cast an encrypted card once. That meant it would be impossible to first cast the card to identify it and then sell it.

Finally, encrypted cards did not naturally store the mana needed to cast their spell. In essence, they lost all of the advantages of a normal spell card. And given the fact that the card required the use of the Over Drive, taking roughly eighty percent of the mech’s mana to cast, it was likely to be a third or fourth tier spell.

Unfortunately, I still had no idea the exact purpose of the card. If it was truly a fourth tier spell, then it could have sent us anywhere, even to another realm like Earth or Desbar. “Priests of Leowynn are able to sense the direction back home, no matter the distance, right?” I suddenly asked, looking towards my walking partner.

Jocelyn gave a firm nod, closing her eyes in focus. She lifted her hand, pointing unshakingly at the sky. Her hand was more steady than I had seen it in a while, no doubt being guided by the power of her faith. “So… we’re definitely not on one of the main worlds, then.” I said with a reluctant sigh.

However, this also confirmed that we hadn’t been transported to some unexplored realm. If we had, then from what I had heard of this blessing, her hand would have pointed towards some method of crossing back home. So we were either in another world of Deckan’s realm, or she was pointing towards whatever world was the ‘main world’ of this one.

I thanked her for that, glad that we at least had narrowed down the possibilities for our present predicament. Now it was just a matter of finding shelter, and hoping that Casey could secure food and water for us. Anything beyond that… well, I’d just be happy if we don’t get randomly attacked by powerful beasts.