-=Seventh day, Elizabeth POV=-

It’s afternoon.

I wake up and slowly crawl out of my incredibly oversized bed, fall on the floor with a light thud and-

“Huwaaa…”

-give off as mighty of a yawn as this little body allows while stretching as much as I can yet only covering a measly square decimeter of the floor.

‘Staying up late is bad…’ I think to myself.

I look into the corner of the room where a large triangular corner-desk stands.

Well, large to me at least.

On top of the table, right in the middle, there laid an open book next to a small lamp.

A book that I had stayed up reading well into the morning

‘I know it’s bad staying up late, but these otherworldly books are so interesting!’

I pout to myself and fly into the bathroom, then while hovering in front of the mirror I point at myself and sternly ask:

“Why are you like this?”

At first I didn’t know Plush and Shiona were from a different world, and they probably don’t know that I know either, only reason I do know is because of all of these books.

Well, I already had my suspicions, what with everything else in this… apartment they called it? Definitely doesn’t look like anything of this world, however only when I remembered how Plush had freaked out when he first saw the inside of this place through the books pages did I connect the dots fully.

In fact during my oh so very long life I’ve met many otherworlders, and this apartment can be said to have everything that those otherworlders complain about us not having in our world.

Now how could I have forgotten something like that before then?

…

…

… I think me playing stupid all the time is starting to take its toll...

Well, I kind of had to pretend you know?

I used to be the past carrier for the book after all, so I know most of the things it can do, however I still had to pretend to be as freaked out as Plush whenever he did something, even someone like him would realize something's if I don’t freak out when something deserving of a proper freaking out happens.

To be fair, I actually did freak out a little bit, I mean, some of the things that happened were actually new to me to, I just calmed down a lot quicker than he did.

Only reason he’s able to immediately start of with unlocking new abilities of the book is because I laid down the infrastructure for it in all those thousands of years before he arrived.

I’m going on several tangents at once here so back to the books on the desk.

The books were incredible, some were filled with maps which portrayed an entire planet while the only maps I’ve seen from this world only had our four Normic countries, while some books were filled with pictures and text explaining technology and animals I’d never seen before.

‘Damn shame I can’t read them, I haven’t seen anything this interesting since back home…’

Home.

*sigh*

‘God damnit I made myself sad again! Fuck off moodswings, I really don’t need you right now!’

In order to cheer myself up I flew into the kitchen and grabbed a popsicle from the fridge, I had pestered Plush to teach me how to make them earlier just for occasions like these.

Cy had even helped me make a popsicle mold proportional to me so I could eat them before they melted.

*munch munch* *gulp*

Having finished the popsicle I felt a lot better so I was able to start thinking again.

‘Speaking of reading, if I can’t read their language then how can they read ours? Maybe they have something that translates it for them like all the summoned heroes? What if they don’t even realize that what their reading isn’t… whatever language this is. But as far as I can tell from this book about animals and creatures from their world humans seem to be the only sapient species, and I’ve never heard about any summoned heroes changing race before.’

I doubt anyone else would take the old legends of the summoned heroes seriously, but through my journey to fix the book I’d actually met several of them, attended some summoning ceremonies while worming my way into a kingdoms upper echelons in order to access their lost city, trained a few of them as a teacher, followed one of them as a companion, hell, I even summoned some of them myself back in the day using a different artefact than the book.

‘Haa… Good times… Shame they’re summoned so rarely though, it only happens when a demon manages to break out from their lost city on their own.’

The reason I didn’t realize Plush was from another world earlier was because he acted so differently from any of the heroes I’d met before, they would always ramble on about flags, settings, obtainable characters and all that incomprehensible stuff, also whenever the king or queen that summoned them asked them to make their armies stronger using information from the heroes world they all responded the same way.

‘*No way! I don’t want to ruin my fantasy adventure by bringing in modern day technology!* was it?’

Well, they only stayed that way for a while though, one thing I noticed was that every hero seemed to go through one of three scenarios, the most common one being they died.

None of the heroes took this world seriously, for some reason believing they can’t be killed, because of this more than half of them died on their first proper expedition.

I took to calling this lot the ‘false heroes’, I mean they didn’t really act very heroic either you know?

Later I found out that the end kingdoms had started to use this term as well to ease the populus whenever their hero died, they said they’d gotten a false hero from their summoning and that their next summoning would certainly summon forth a true hero.

Ironically this second summoning usually never happened, the summoning rituals took a lot of money to prepare, this caused the countries who summoned heroes to have to raise their taxes tremendously, so when the populus heard they were going to do another summoning they usually revolted against the king and took over.

Well, even then the sheer number of heroes summoned made the remaining enough to take down a very good amount of demons, that’s why there’s a lot of artefact pieces above ground.

The second scenario was that they started taking the world seriously, usually this happened after the heroes came in contact with the death of one of their close allies or when they barely escaped death themselves.

These heroes realised how cruel this world was, they started putting their all into training themselves to become stronger while gathering equally strong and determined companions regardless how how attractive or unattractive said companions were.

These heroes stopped talking about their old worlds, stopped talking using terms from their so called ‘video games’ and ‘light novels’, however even these guys refused to make anything from their own world, though no for the much more noble reason of not wanting to cause unnecessary bloodshed between humans once the demon had been vanquished.

For these I coined the term true heroes, only heroes who actually acted like heroes yeah?

And then finally there's the third type of hero, though luckily there’s only been one of these so far.

Remember when I said I accompanied one of the heroes as a companion? Well because of that he became something different than the other two kinds of heroes.

Due to me being in his group he was able to brave many dangerous places and collect many lost artefacts that he then used to easily kill his assigned demon.

I may be bragging a bit but the only reason everything went so well for him was because I had come along.

The thing is, due to me he achieved this without maturing from the mindset of a false hero and because of this he did something no hero, neither male nor female, had ever done before.

Unlike the true heroes who were fed up with fighting and chose to live the rest of their lives peacefully he decided to keep fighting.

At this point he was strong enough so that the only ones who could possibly put up a fight against him were other demons, in other words the hero could do whatever he wanted to anyone else without them being able to say anything.

After having played around thoroughly in the En kingdome he traveled north, he traveled to an area which hadn’t been explored yet due to it’s constant frigid climate and decided to create his own country while he chose himself to serve as the king of the new country which he named Norther.

Although Norther hadn’t been explored yet that didn’t mean no one lived there, there were still many indigenous tribes of various beast-kins spread across the icy tundras, lakes and mountains which he forced to become a part of his country by using his overwhelming power as a successful hero.

Enough of the details, basically this guy turned Norther from an icy dessert into one of the strongest countries using his power, however by the time he bit the dust due to old age he still hdn’t decided which of his (at this point) hundreds of offspring would take the throne, this caused Norther devolve into what it is today, a constant struggle of force between his descendants for the position of king of the country made by the strongest hero to date.

This guy did have a name, I just don’t remember it, so instead I just call him king dumbass.

‘Ah!’

At this point I realized I had been standing still while thinking and talking to myself as though I was talking to an audience for a good number of minutes. When I realized that I remembered that I had something I needed to do and went out through the front door into the corridor and down the stairs to what looks like it would have been the ground floor, once I’m there I walk towards a large brick wall.

‘Uhm… There… There… And there… ‘

Having made up my mind I fly up next to the wall and touch one of the bricks. The brick in question fades away without making a sound.

In the hole that was left after the brick I put one of the books pages that Ronnie had helped me get, after I did that the brick re-appeared and covered the page, I then flew over to two other places and did the same before heading home to my apartment, good old two-o-one.

I didn’t know what it said on the door since it was in Plush’s and Shiona’s language but I assumed it was the number assigned to the apartment and by using the other doors around as context I assumed it followed the pattern of having the floor the apartment was on followed by how close it was to the stairs, and since it was the closest to the stairs on the second floor I assumed it to say two zero one.

I flew inside and ate a snack before heading back inside the bedroom, once there I started looking through the book that was on the desk once more.

This was a book I had found only yesterday, it was inside a paper bag which was inside a cardboard box which was in the attic on the top floor.

The box had writing on it that I didn’t understand, however thanks to this book I later learned that it read ‘childhood memories’.

Basically the book was a kids learning book.

And yes, I felt embarrassed as all hell for someone who’s a few thousand plus years old to read a book called ‘baby’s first (s)words’. At least the joke was a good one, well, once I understood what it meant that is.

As you can probably tell this book was about various bladed kinds of weapons, not sure who would buy an unexpectedly detailed book about swords for their kids when they live in the mostly peaceful world that all the heroes came from though.

I had already read through a large number of these kids book, soon I’ll be able to move onto ones that are meant for slightly older kids, if I’m lucky I might even be able to find one about numbers so I can make sure which number my apartment actually has.

The only way I could tell these were the first I should read back when I didn’t know what they said was that they were made of soft fabric so that babies don’t hurt themselves on any sharp edges.

I then sank into a trance as I started cramming everything that the books said into my memory.

…

…

…

…

…

‘...Wait no! Fuck! I forgot!’

I jumped down from the table and flew out to the door without even closing the book behind-

“Wait, no- Ah!”

*thud*

-only to realize that my wings had fallen asleep due to my bad reading posture and I fell to the floor my wings were assaulted by the feeling of bathing in metal shavings.

I began to drag myself across the floor to the door while waiting for the cactus covering my wings to disappear. I couldn’t get up since whenever I bent my back someone started throwing thistles at me.

Even after reaching the door I still had to wait a few seconds for my wings to go back to normal before I could fly up to the door handle and open it, but once I did I immediately made a beeline for the first floor where I had put the books pages into the wall.

In front of the wall there was a large blue image.

Enough power has been restored in order to further the recovery.

You may choose one of the following:

If you do not decide within [37 seconds] the decision will be made for you.

‘Oh thank god I made it on time!’

You have reset the automatic assignment timer.

Enough power has been restored in order to further the recovery.

You may choose one of the following:

If you do not decide within [40 days] the decision will be made for you.

‘I really should turn that timer off, but then again last time I did that I forgot to do anything with the pages for ten years.’

Last time I was here I had to restore Cy partially because I hadn't collected enough pages to restore her fully, that’s why the book can’t manifest her outside properly.

‘I’m sorry Cy, but right now I need to prioritise.’

There is only one inhabitant available for a full restoration.

Do you wish to restore inhabitant Barry Greymoon?

Restoring Barry Greymoon will require magic power equivalent to three collected pages.

Leftover magic energy will be spent automatically within [40 days].

‘Yes, I’m certain.’ I think as I try to catch my breath from flying her as fast as I could.

Inhabitant Barry Greymoon has been restored in room 203.

Barry Greymoon will not awaken until you enter his room.

Do you wish for the artefacts carrier to be aware of the new inhabitant?

Leftover magic energy will be spent automatically within [40 days].

‘Wait, there’s more magical energy left?.... Oh yeah! the necromancer guy! And no, I will talk this out with Barry and explain the situation before I let Plush meet him.’

Barry Greymoon will be kept hidden from the carrier until further notice.

With the magical energy available you can do one of the below things.

Leftover magic energy will be spent automatically within [40 days].

There is only one inhabitant available for a furthered restoration.

Do you wish to fully restore behemoth spider Cy Tha Adel?

Restoring Cy Tha Adel will require magic power equivalent to one collected page.

Leftover magic energy will be spent automatically within [40 days].

‘So there’s enough magic power left to restore Cy, but I don’t know… Actually, sure. You never know when a mountain sized spider could come in handy. Just make it so that Plush can’t actually summon her, if a behemoth spider suddenly appeared I wouldn’t be surprised if some country decided to dust off the old hero summoning ritual.’

Behemoth spider Cy Tha Adel of room 202 has been restored fully..

Behemoth spider Cy Tha Adel full restoration will be hidden from the carrier.

Not enough leftover magic energy to spend on anything.

Having finished my business at the foyer I start flying over to room 203 while thinking about a few things.

‘... Really though, for Plush to appear and bond with the artefact just as I finally recover enough of the artefact to restore its base functions… It can’t be a coincidence. Maybe the book’s telling me to take a break?’

I arrive in front of the room I’m guessing is room 203 and open the door.