Beginning at last

The dark of the deep forest he'd been experiencing was replaced entirely by something out of a fairy tale, well spaced fruit trees of all varieties filled a space about two hundred metre square, light streamed through between them to highlight the lush and perfect fruit that hung from their branches, the ground between each clear but for toadstools and flowers.

Naturally he froze as soon as he saw this, his eyes darting from plant to plant looking for the hypnotic bulb from his last experience like this.

"I don't see or smell that thing, my mind feels clear but this is definitely not right, at least it was hard to get to so it's probably not a trap"

Taking a step forward he tried to weigh up the chances of this being just something that naturally happened on Eden, a result of the mana rich environment.

"I think it's tended, I'll look for an entrance"

Skirting the perimeter carefully to figure out how whoever this place belonged to got in and out he found no sign of an entrance and wasn't stopped by anything.

"Right, I guess I'll just work on the list then…"

The quest required three of each apples, pears, lents and thorny quince. Collecting the first fruit marked and not being immediately attacked he slowly gathered the others, as the quest objective completion sounded in his mind he was still hit with nothing happening.

He slowly worked his way back to the entrance he'd made and watched the whole orchard as he took a few of each fruit from the closest trees. After his tenth extra he saw the first colourful spot of light drift between two of the trees 50 metres away. The first was light pink, the next pure white, a light green one zipped close to the last; it was at this point he scrambled back through the gap he'd made and rushed through the trees as best he could.

He was scrambling through the trail he'd made previously as fast as he could, he caught sight of a speck of light behind him and heard what he thought were whispers and giggles from the side twice before he finally broke through the edge and simply sprinted.

"Jesus, that was terrifying! I don't even know if they wanted to hurt me but I'd have taken some honest aggression over that, the hell were they?"

Calming himself and looking at his map he realised he'd run about three miles, he stood and watched the forest for a minute before trying to gauge the time.

"Probably a couple more hours yet, I'll leave the dungeon for today but while I'm out this way..."

He'd run far enough south it was really no closer than it would be from the camp but he didn't want to do this while Melissa was here in case she asked questions.

Shaking his head at his own softness he headed back towards the goblin forest and then followed the route back to the bear's den. He heard hunting whistles plenty of times on his way and was glad to see the hive still going strong as he passed it, the cliff face still stained gold in the strong sunlight.

The track seemed plenty clear still and he hoped that meant the little tikes were getting out and catching things on their own. Before he could arrive at the den he heard something large moving about and a couple of dull roars from where the cave entrance should be.

"Did the other parent come back?"

As he edged round to see the den proper he saw the cubs, though if it hadn't been for the fact there were three of them he wouldn't have made the connection. Two of them were arguing over position in the cave while the third lay outside on its back watching.

"It's only been two days! How are they this size already! I thought bears took months to grow!"

They weren't fully grown yet but were at least half the size of their late mother. He'd intentionally caught more fish than he needed thinking they would be suffering on their own, seeing the blood around the sunbathing ones muzzle they clearly didn't need his help afterall.

Leaving three of the fish anyway he slowly backed away and headed back down the trail before they noticed him lurking.

"I guess the mana just speeds up the ageing process, hopefully this just affects the wildlife or Clair and Dominique are in for a shock."

"Is it just the animals? Or does it include the goblins and Dwarves? Or us too, I don't want to have a child and see their childhood end in a week. At least I know why the boars aren't suffering too much"

Thinking about the potential implications his head began to hurt and he decided to just accept it as part of the weirdness.

"The take away message is I probably won't be hunting anything to extinction by accident, given how violent this world seems to be I suppose it can only continue to exist with such a strange set up."

By the time he arrived back at the dome he was already overly excited to be heading back to Earth, before anything he tidied up the camp and cabin one last time and checked over his quest reward.

[Quest complete: Gather the Fruit]

[400 exp]

[Pixie dust x 1]

[Congratulations Hermes, you are now level 14]

Hermes: Level 14

Exp: 00194/1500

HP: 450/450

MP: 105/105

Strength - 20

Endurance - 17

Agility - 22

Intelligence - 21

Wisdom – 17

Free Attribute points: 2

Free Skill points: 7

*Transfer energy – 8595

Skills:

Dimensional Transfer LV 7

Storage space LV 4

Flame LV 1

Grim touch LV1

Radiance LV1

"System, how much spare energy would I have after transferring myself and Melissa from Earth?"

[620]

"Brilliant, more than enough for whatever she wants to bring over. Next level up I can improve Dimensional Transfer too so I think I can afford to splurge on some recreational bits"

Thinking about the skills list on the store he decided to use up every drop of energy on building up his bank balance.

"After next level I'm not upgrading Transfer for a while, I need to get stronger first. I'll bring the big bank over this time too and empty the skill shop within a month"

He'd left a lot of the mysteries of this new world undisturbed so far, thinking about the lights he saw to the south, the mana vent, dwarves and that creepy fruit grove his mind finally rested on the lizard.

"Him first, dwarven tombs and mana vent hot boxing after."

After declaring his intent to the world, the rivalling of a small lizard, he stored his clothes and equipment and disappeared from Eden.

Seconds before the first crack of thunder.

.....

Appearing next to his bed this time he was welcomed home by a scream from behind and the sound of glass breaking.

"AAAAAAAAAAH!"

"JESUS! Sarah? What the hell?"

Having jumped and screamed in response he steadied himself on the bed post and, after another second of realisation, grabbed a slipper he found on the bed to cover himself.

"Smooth"

"You're covered in wine, this doesn't look good for either of us. You're helping her pack?"

"Yeah, she's down stairs, I'll let her know you're back"

"Thanks, I'm gonna go shower"

Shaking his head at the broken wine glass on the floor he headed off to get ready. He could hear the conversations and the burst of laughter downstairs and was getting even more excited to see everyone, they'd arranged to meet here for Melissa's farewell party, it would be the first time he'd had the whole group together and he was in desperate need of some socialising.

He figured they'd probably been meeting up plenty without him and was looking forward to the updates from them. He spent hardly any time enjoying the wonderful luxury of unlimited water before getting ready and heading down, not even bothering to grab his phone to check in with.

......…

"It was already dead? Mate why do you even bother to use weapons, just take a giant anvil around to drop like in looney tunes"

...

"Well there isn't any major norm with elemental spirits, they sound pretty dangerous and I agree with the idea but how do you stay on the good side of a storm? Like a rain dance or something?"

...

"Kobolds?!? That's awesome! Let's see… google says they do housework? I guess mining counts….. Yeah look "they get mischievous if you don't feed them", it kind of works… I guess"

…..

"Like a Pixie or something? No, if it laughs you run, that's real basic stuff, give me the zombies any day"

…..

"You killed the mummy bear!"

"You monster!"

"You all already knew about the bear fight! I didn't get this shit from you then!"

"You orphaned the fur babies!"

"They're fine! I gave them my honey and fish!"

"Letting them grow was a good call, their fur will be useful if they grow that quick"

"Josh! No!"

"You were fattening up babies? Daniel you sicko"

"I wasn't! It wasn't like that, Josh why?!?"

…..

"Mate, it's a lizard, you need to get over it."

…..

Hearing about the tiers and the existence of dungeons everybody got excited, there didn't seem to be much of a healthy middle ground for the slower growing new colonists between slime farming and killer insect hordes so having the safety and the potential rewards of the dungeons was exciting for all of them.

The conversation soon switched to party composition and it became apparent this wasn't the first time. Listening to their plans Daniel was looking forward to getting at least this group over as soon as he could, it was clear he wouldn't really be a part of the standard party and he didn't want the others to get too spread out level-wise ending up in the same situation.

"I want some time just me and Melissa though, she's used to managing teams it's no bad thing if she gets a little stronger"

After a couple of hours everyone knew it was past time for Melissa and Daniel to be heading back over, those who were staying made their plans of who they would be introducing to the fold.

Tom would be talking to Beth, Sarah would talk with one of her friends, a single chef called Emma, Josh had a couple of close friends he knew would be interested for isekie reasons and another who was a survival nut desperate for this kind of off grid challenge.

Emma had been looking into different research scientists who would be ideal but didn't know anyone personally, she would just be continuing her stalking as she perfected the "hit list" of useful experts for Daniel to abduct later, everyone else nodding along to her enthusiasm for this with poorly disguised looks of horror.

"Daniel, you message your butcher friend and have him round here for next week or sometime to initiate him, we'll organise our options for then too and you can do the demonstrations for each of the new guys on the same day, when you thinking?"

"A week if nothing goes wrong, I'll call him now. But can we call it something other than initiate?"

After organising the time with Bruce, who seemed in desperate need of the promised guys night, everyone headed upstairs and listened to the cost of each of the "essentials" Daniel sent over for Melissa, this would help them judge their own wish list items as he described what they could buy with the equivalent silver. The comparison really hitting home as he transferred the jewellery and valuables Melissa had provided and converted them into silver value.

[13 gold, 23 silver, 80 copper]

"Okay, so for all of those items Melissa had transferred you could buy a log cabin, figure out a transfer allowance amongst yourselves based on this and any amount you spend under it you can have the equivalent silver value to spend on your luxury goods over there, sound fair?"

After the delay caused by the new topic of Horned rabbit skewers which naturally popped up after this suggestion everyone said their goodbyes.

It was different from the other times, everybody knew they wouldn't see Melissa on this world again and it was unclear how long it would take for them to join her there. It ended with excitement and well wishes, they were both laughing as Daniel put his hand on Melissa's shoulder and finally transferred her over to his new world, their clothes falling to the ground.