I woke in the morning with a pounding headache, and simply lay there for a while, images of the past few days chasing each other around in my head. I'd killed, I'd seen more killed, but for some reason, the images that hurt the most were the expressions of Alya, Lilya, Iosyo and Grigyo. I didn't know how long I lay there, unwilling to get up, when I heard a knock at the door. They shouted something I didn't understand, and I shouted back "One second!" ignoring the fact that they wouldn’t understand me. The shout made me wince with my pounding headache. I was soon dressed back up in my new clothing and armor, which felt like it should be far dirtier than it was with how much blood I'd seen.

Opening the door, I was greeted by someone I assumed to be a maid, more because of the mop and broom she carried rather than due to her clothing. I nodded towards her, she utterly ignored me, and I headed down in the hope I hadn't missed breakfast. I soon traded in my room key for same porridge that seemed to be the most common breakfast food, and sat down next to Blake, who was eating his meal in silence. Taking a bite, the corners of my mouth turned down. It seems I had missed breakfast. It was cold, and congealed to more of a jelly texture rather than the soupy one it was supposed to be. I finished it off regardless and sat there, wondering where everyone else was.

I was considering going upstairs to try and find everyone else when Alya and Grigyo slowly made their way down the stairs, Alya holding her head and looking a bit green. I winced, I felt pretty bad due to how much alcohol I had the other night, but Alya clearly handled the morning after even worse than I. They came over to the table with me, sat down, and Alya waved over the serving girl to get some of the cold porridge. Alya grimaced as she put the spoon in her mouth, and Grigyo played with his food, seemingly not willing to eat.

Soon after Lilya came down, then Iosyo, both of them seemingly unaffected from how much alcohol they'd had the night before. I glared at them for a bit until the image of Lilya's expression after losing Dmiyo passed through my mind, my glare fading into an empty expression. The two of them seemed to enjoy their porridge about as much as the rest of us, the cold goop only there to fill the stomach.

We all silently sat there for a bit, before I stood up, deciding I was going to drag everyone out of the city to do something distracting. Blake on the other hand, had no plans to leave.

“I’m staying here,” he said in a haughty tone.

“With what money?”

“We went out hunting while you were gone. I know how to get money now, so I’m not going anywhere.”

“And you’ll get back to earth how?” I say, giving him an expression showing how ‘intelligent’ I find his idea.

“You’ll find it and come get me then.”

I ground my teeth, what was he thinking acting like I was his lapdog. Regardless of if I would have told him if I found a way back to Earth, I was annoyed enough at this point to not come get him. Turning away, and dreaming of leaving him here forever, the rest of us headed out.

We walked in silence, the only noise the squeaking of our powered cart, until I tried to start up my language lessons again with Alya. She obliged me, going over the stuff I couldn't remember, and tryied to pantomime or point out new vocabulary. Lilya and Grigyo soon joined in, Grigyo even taking out a small drawing pad to get some words across, his art very impressive for a child. As we exited the city, the crowds started to die out, and we sped up, heading out into the forest that seemed to make up a majority of the nearby area, only slowing down as we reached a clearing.

The practice weapons were soon taken out of the cart, Alya staring at one of the extra sets wistfully, me not knowing how to comfort her. She soon managed to shake it off, handing me a practice sword and shield. Alya was soon giving lessons to Grigyo and me, while Lilya and Iosyo went through the movements that Alya was trying to show us. I didn't notice any improvement, but continued to practice, having Alya correct my posture, grip, or swing at various intervals.

Soon we got on to sparring, Lilya pairing up with Iosyo while Alya took turns sparring with Grigyo and me. After getting beaten even more handily than Grigyo, we got to hunting, exploring the forest. We didn't have any luck, probably due to how close to the city we were, but we continued to explore until late in the day we found a small stream and set up camp beside it. We all filled our water bottles, the crystal clear stream reflecting our worn expressions as we did so.

We went to bed early, but after a few hours of tossing and turning in my bed, I got up, going outside to see a small campfire with Lilya sitting beside it. I sat down by the fire along with her, and we sat there in silence, both of us watching the flames dance, wishing we could burn away the thoughts that plagued us.

I woke up in the morning realizing that I'd nodded off beside the fire, and I had the blanket I'd brought covering me. Feeling thankful for whoever had done that, I got up with a groan, feeling terribly uncomfortable from where a rock had decided to lodge itself into my arm, and covered in leaves. I brushed the leaves off me, and noted that everyone else was already awake and sparring, so I took a practice sword and shield from the cart and joined them.

The days started to blend together after a bit, we would travel for a few days outside the city, hunt for a couple days, then head back to the city. The syth cores were always absorbed by one of the people in our group, and I began to feel awkward having gotten a core from a monster that I had only seen once. On the other hand, I'd gotten a pretty good strength boost, my eyesight was insanely good, and I was pretty sure I regenerated wounds much faster than normal; the burn I'd gotten from rescuing the kid had been gone within two days, so it's not like it was a bad thing.

We continued this for a couple weeks, and then I decided I had enough mastery of the language to start searching for gates back to earth. I had figured out the word for gate after dragging the group to the center of the city, where I had found out there was a gate to another world. The other world was quickly shown to not be earth, as it had the same amenities as the city on this side of the gate, buildings made of smooth stone or wood, with roofs seemingly made of one giant piece of bark.

We started to head around to smaller towns, where I would find one of the guards, and I would ask if anyone spoke in a similar fashion to the english I would speak in as an example. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any luck, and the days stretched into weeks. Every small town we visited seemingly had monster attacks every day. I’d thought that the attacks on our outpost had been out of the ordinary, but it seemed now that it was only around the larger cities that monsters were scarce enough that there weren’t constant attacks.

The small towns were where a large majority of the hunters stayed. I’d wondered why the large city hadn’t had too many people walking around with weapons, but it made sense that they would be gravitating to the towns where you could actually hunt. None of the attacks stood out though, and time started to blend together, the attacks bleeding into each other. I slowly grew more fluent in the language, and I slowly grew better with the sword and shield I was practicing with daily.

Eventually, I decided to make my own sword and shield, but I wasn’t quite sure what material to make it out of. I was starting to regret not taking more of the wyvern’s scales, but eventually I made a simple sword and shield out of steel boar bones, fusing in warg claws into the sword to add some weight to the sword.

One attack, I even decided to test out my sword and shield in live combat. It was an attack by goblins, almost all of them short for their kind, only eight feet. I’d recently found out that monsters strength was largely proportional to their size. They would eat cores of other monsters, and grow in strength and size, similar to how humans would grow stronger the more they enhanced their mana. I’d found this out after in a previous fight a twelve foot tall goblin had attacked a camp, and even my explosive bullets had only ripped strips of flesh out the giant thing, only cracking its bones rather than penetrating past them. It had eventually been taken down by Alya after I’d taken a few chunks from its shoulder and chest, but I reaffirmed that I needed to upgrade my guns.

Testing out my melee weapons had been intense in a fashion I wasn’t used to compared to fighting in the back with my guns. The goblins would swing their arms at me, or try to kick me, and I would get my shield in position to block, being knocked back a foot or so each time, diving back in to get a cut on their legs or stomach — the only places I could reasonably reach. The fight drove a spike of adrenaline through my body. I was faring reasonably well, until a ten foot goblin came by, its leg crashing into me like a freight train. It sent me a good two meters backwards, and made an uncomfortable cracking noise come from my forearm. Wincing, I dropped my sword, drawing my revolver from its holster, sending all six bullets flying into the beast as I stepped back.

The electrical bullets caused it to spasm, the freezing bullets gave it the worst case of frostbite I had ever seen, and the explosive bullets fared better than they did against the twelve foot goblin, sending flesh flying, some wet, some frozen into chunks. I was letting out a breath when the thing screamed, looking to me with animalistic rage. There wasn’t a hint of sapience in the being as it charged at me.

I grabbed my sword off the ground, dropping my revolver to save the time it would take me to put it in its holster. I dove to the side as the goblin went flying by me, not wanting to block it when it had its full mass behind its charge. I rose, charging into the beast from behind as it turned to see me, lunging forward in a long thrust, my sword ripping straight through the stomach of the beast.

It screamed again as I tried to pull my sword out and failed. I tried to hold on as the beast swung around, enhancing my body with as much mana as I could to increase my grip strength. I had to let go of the sword soon after though, as it swung behind it with its slightly too long arms. I watched carefully from a fighting crouch as it turned to me, the sword sticking out from its stomach like a giant splinter.

I was getting ready to dive aside if it charged me again, when it fell to one knee, before slowly collapsing to the ground, the rage in its eyes not fading even as it bled to death. I shuddered, and looked around, the rest of the goblins were just now being mopped up, and Lilya joined me as I walked over to retrieve my sword.

“Big goblin,” she said in the language I was slowly coming to understand.

I nodded, a motion that meant the same in both of our cultures, though people here just tilted their head down once rather than the double bob of the head I was used to. After sheathing my sword, I walked over, grabbing my pistol that had been stomped into the ground by the goblin. I checked it over, made sure it wasn’t damaged, reloaded it, put it back in its holster, and gave it a pat for saving my ass.

A week later, there was even an attack by another wyvern. This time however, the monster was significantly smaller, and far more fragile, my bullets not bouncing off the scales, though they did only penetrate a few inches. Regardless, I took the scales, covering the front of my shield with them, as they were still stronger than the Steel boar bone base it was made of.

Absorbing the core was an even worse experience than before though. While the last time, I had simply shut down due to pain, passing out, this time it seemed to stretch along just under the threshold of passing out. The minute of pain was excruciating, every second absolute making me feel like my skin and bones had been replaced with molten lead. By the time it was over, I was a sobbing wreck, curled in the fetal position on the ground, throat raw from my screaming. I was surrounded by the nearby hunters as I became aware of more than my pain, but I shakily got up, Lilya giving a short explanation. I wasn’t sure exactly why absorbing the wyvern cores caused me such pain, but at least my vision had improved yet again, though I wasn’t excited to get used to my newfound strength yet again.

Along with the monster attacks on the towns nearby, I got started on something that I wasn’t too pleased with.

“This is for children”

“Is useful”

I tried hard to get across the idea that what was happening was demeaning, but my slowly growing language skills failed me, and eventually I turned to the object of my embarrasment: a children’s picture book. The written language was quite simple, but had 28 letters rather than the 26 of my native language. I had picked up the letters quickly. I’d always been more of a visual learner, but when I had been started with a picture book, I thought it was too far. Was it too much to ask for a dictionary?

Eventually, Alya’s pushing got me to read it, and while I still thought it demeaning, it did end up being helpful with learning due to having simpler words to read. Even if the pictures did make me feel like my intelligence had been insulted.

I quickly took to reading, soon finding that they didn’t really have books for middle aged children, either being simplistic for learning how to read or full on textbook size. After the picture book debacle, I read through a couple of the textbook sized stories about one hero or another. Even if I could only get a general idea what was happening, I did pick up some new vocabulary from it, and I figured re-reading the material would help more so.

The next couple of weeks spent searching for a gate to earth were fruitless, and I was starting to think that I should just take a break from the constant searching, when news came in that distracted me from my goal. I was in a small town, with small walls and nothing but an inn and a general store, more an outpost for hunters than an actual city, when it arrived.

The county (or city-state, I wasn’t yet sure) we had been hiding in, which I had found out was called Kyren, had declared war on the Tesser. My first thought was surprise they weren’t already at war, but it seems they had been ignoring the raiding in dove like manner. Now though, the hawks had finally been released. One of the largest towns in the region had been attacked, and this time the country would retaliate.

I couldn’t get any more information than that, regardless of how the group tried to explain it to me, my mastery of the language not at a high enough level. I did decide instantly that I was going to attempt to join the war efforts, and the entire group agreed with me. I soon discovered that the military wasn’t averse whatsoever to hunters joining the fight, having a separate division for any hunters to join. The military would even feed and transport us to any battles. We hired a maid to take care of Grigyo for a while, and we all marched off to war.