Have you seen TN's cover? I think it's pretty cool~

About the last chapter, I guess it could feel like Lia and Abby's relationship is fast, but they have been together for more or less 4 months, not counting the additional time spent in the game, that has a 4:1 hours ratio, and in that time Lia finally found someone she did not want to be separated with. Certainly, it wasn't a strong desire, but considering who we're talking about, I say it's plenty.

As for Abby, well, considering how straightforward she is, and how she had to held back for a loooooooong 4 months: i don't remember if I said that I had hinted this couple in the chapter "the school and the dojo," but with that I also talked about how the two would have to get naked in the same room each time they changed clothes. Can you resist not touching the girl you love, naked and only a few centimeters away from your grasps?

That's why Abby didn't waste time after they became a couple. I consider having sex a way to pleasure your partner and to reaffirm your closeness, but nothing more. It's not that important to me, so the same is for my little couple. Also, Lia wouldn't have said no. She's not experienced in relationships and she could care less about sex, first times and the likes, so Abby took a tiiiiiiiiiiiny bit advantage of it and just went and had sex with Lia.

If you want to know when their first time happened, it's after Fuji's catacomb and after they met up with Miranda and Nathan.

To clarify the first four chapters, they were just to give a base idea of what kind of charas Isa and Cynthia are (well, I didn't give all of Cynthia just yet~ ;) ), that is why I only gave the name of the mobs they encountered and said that this and that happened without giving details. More details will be given in vol 3.

At the end of the day, what I want to say is, you can treat vol 2 just like a big break from the story, cause there will be no plot advancement. It's also the reason why vol 2 is gonna be short.

Atlas had finished his training and obtained his class, so he was now in front of the entrance to Jurta waiting for Electra and Gaea to arrive. The entrance was just a paved road with a toori towering over it every 5 meters, it passed through the lowest point of the circular mountain range and was half a day's walk away from the nearest town.

In front and to the left of him was just a big open space for various kilometers, to the right there were more mountains, this ones indicating the borders of the empire. He wanted to do some hunting while he waited, but there was nothing near that was worth it, so he just sat on a rock and waited for the girls.

Electra and Gaea appeared in a relatively inconspicuous manner. Electra came flying down while carrying a petite girl, who was clearly not fine with heights. When the two landed, Gaea complained and pouted for a bit, making it clear that it was not her idea to use such a "crude" method to arrive and that she had absolutely no fear of heights.

They traveled toward the north, as Jurta was at Woh's southern border, delimiting the end of the western part of Hyria, and they didn't want to leave as they decided to explore this part of the continent with Abigail and Lia. Miranda, Nathan and Abigail knew each other for a long time, and even if they were not interested in the modern asian culture, seeing how the "progenitors" of their most-loved martial arts lived intrigued the three.

Notable occurrences were Atlas' their first encounters with some of this empire's monsters:

While walking through a forest, Atlas had spotted a hand hanging down from a tree in the distance. Thinking some child was abandoned in the forest and he had used all his remaining strength to climb said tree, Atlas ran to him as quickly as he could, not giving time to Electra and Gaea to warn him.

When he was near enough to the tree, the hand turned red and stretched out to grab him. Atlas silently clicked his tongue for not realizing it was a trap sooner, but he still did not regret taking such actions. He tilted his head to the left as with one hand he reached out to his bō. Another hand sprouted out from the stretched out one, which would probably attack him from behind in a few seconds, leaving him no other choice than to duck. As he ducked under the two red arms, he used his bō to hit where the two arms connected while he called forth an earth wall behind himself.

Dashing forward, Atlas heard something hit the wall a couple seconds later. As soon as he reached under the branch from which the red hand came from, he could see the "Level 15" appear slightly above it. the original hand plus three more began darting toward him, but Atlas had already finished casting a wind blade to severe the branch from the tree. Before it was severed though, a hand managed to reach him, making him feel a searing hot pain on his shoulder blade.

Another time was when Atlas carelessly tried to refill his water pouches in a river. Some scaly blue-skinned hand grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the river. What he saw was an humanoid monster, as tall as Gaea a child, with a beak as a mouth, a carapace on his back and a bald spot on the top of his head. The monster quickly swam near Atlas and began to claw at his face, which prompted Atlas to fight back, but not before taking note of the creature's webbed hands.

Battling underwater proved difficult, his movements were slow and he could barely defend himself from the mob's onslaught as he tried to reemerge to breath. At some point, Atlas was a bit irritated. It didn't happen often, but when it did, he had the strangest ideas. As proof of that, that particular time Atlas decided to drown the monster. Yes, he wanted to drown a mob that lived underwater.

Atlas created a sphere of water that enclosed the creature's head and pumped mana into it. The end result was pretty ironic, as he was actually successful. Most likely, the water ball didn't let the river's water enter it, so even if it did contain oxygen to let the mob breath at the beginning, the more he breathed the more he exhausted his reserves of oxygen, which lead to his death.

Once, Electra, Gaea and Atlas found an isolated wooden hut. It was clear by the foul smell in the air that inside was either an evil NPC or a mob. Electra took out her two tonfa and they were almost instantly covered by a thin layer of holy energy. The fact that she was a Succubus, one of the Dark Races, slightly weakened its effects but not by too much.

Ready for battle, she kicked the door open just to find an one-eyed old woman in the middle of the room. A room full of strange symbols wrote in blood, one or three skulls, a pile of decomposing bodies and lit candles. Electra carefully moved forward and when the woman was in her range, she slashed her tonfa in a crossing diagonal pattern, kind of like an X, sending at the malign NPC a ranged holy attack. Electra wanted to interrupt the old hag from chanting, but she didn't want to risk getting too close.

Seeing as how the previous attack sent the cyclops flying on the wall, leaving a bleeding cross on her back, Electra just decided to finish her from a safe distance. Atlas and Gaea didn't intervene, as they saw how easily the creature was beaten. Though Gaea rarely needed to lend an hand, both because they were in a relatively low-leveled area and because Atlas and Electra (mostly Atlas) needed combat experience.

While Electra loot the objects left behind by the woman she found a paper umbrella, which surprised all three of them as they never heard of such a drop. Following the reasoning that it could be a rare item, she quickly went to pick it up, but as soon as she touched it, an eye and a mouth appeared on the umbrella.

Electra instinctively leaned back as fast as she could, but the monster's tongue still managed to wrap itself around her head. It began releasing electricity which first paralyzed Electra and then it tried to fry her. "Tried" because Gaea had already appeared near the two and, using her sword, she severed the thing's tongue. A few centimeters after the blade passed the severed tongue, Gaea forced the sword to turn at around 90° to slash horizontally at the mob. She had been so fast it didn't even notice it had its tongue cut in two when it died.

Lastly, they once cleared a dungeon which treasure later gave Atlas the ability to teleport. The remarkable monsters were only the two bosses. The first was a chinese dragon long about 50 meters, it specialized in water magic, while the second, which seemed to be commanding the dragon, was a small ogre-like creature with sharp claws, wild hair and two small horns on its forehead. Its speciality was illusion magic, denoted by the fact that both Atlas and Gaea instead of the hideous creature saw a little girl tied to a horn spouting from the dragon's head. This meant that Electra either had a strong mind, or the Succubi were resistant to illusions to a certain degree.

The formation in the fight was the following: Gaea at the front, confronting the dragon head-on, with Atlas behind, supporting her, while Electra flew around over the dragon's head to target the second boss. Seeing as how the smaller boss was commanding the dragon, the three thought that perhaps, if they killed him, maybe the dragon would become docile or something. They tried to not think about the possible situation where the dragon went mad.

After a few exchanges of blows, the ogre noticed that his magic did not work on Electra, so he stopped hiding himself behind an illusion and focused on the other two players. He did not try to use illusion too unrealistic or impossible, there was no way they would get tricked if a second before they were fighting a dragon and a second later they found themselves playing in a lake. That is why the little boss' tactic was to mess with Gaea and Atlas' depth perception and cause a kind of akinetopsia, or motion blindness, which led the two fighting the dragon to think Hyria's server was lagging.

Such a thing caused a great health loss for the three of them, because Gaea and Atlas' movements were incapacitated the dragon found time to deal some blows to Electra too. When they entered critical condition, Electra unwillingly seduced the ogre. It was something she rarely used, because she also swore to never use such a thing in front of other male players or NPC. Also, the ogre was pretty ugly.

Electra's skills as a succubus included a minor branch of the illusion magic skill tree, that aided her in tricking the prey augmenting her beauty in his eyes. As she did that though, she had to move sensually, using a dancing skill, which resulted in her stripping.

Since the opponent seemed proficient in illusion, she was even more hesitant in using that combo of skills, but in the end it worked so she was glad. As to why she had to distract the small boss, it was because Gaea as a paladin had healing skills, which were promptly used. After all three had recovered a decent amount of health, Electra stopped distracting the ogre, but didn't attack him immediately, else he would instantly break out of his daze.

This didn't stop Gaea from attacking the dragon though, and while she did that, Atlas began charging up is most powerful attack. In the end, it worked out. Kinda. The monster was able to evade Atlas' attack, but by concentrating solely on it, he lost sight of Electra, who reappeared behind him and pierced his heart with a flame-enchanted tonfa.

When the ogre died, the dragon stopped moving, causing the three to freeze. They were ready to attack, but if the dragon had no hostilities and they attacked, it could turn into a problem. So they waited, gripping their weapons hard with cold sweat running down their backs. The dragon roared and after a little while, he began to shimmer. One minute later, when his roar ended, the dragon seemed to be made out of light.

The light compressed itself into a small sphere which spun faster and faster after each rotation as it began to disappear. The three had always maintain their guards up, but still had to cover their eyes as the light was intense. When the light completely disappeared, from where the center of the sphere previously was, a naked woman in fetal position could be seen gently descend to the ground.

Later, the they found out the half-dragon half-human young woman had been tricked by the ogre, or Amanojaku as she called it, and was manipulated through her rage and frustration. Afterwards they escorted her back to her village, where the chieftain gave them a reward each. This was how Atlas ended up learning the teleportation skill.