Encounter(1)
After weeks this is our first encounter with our classmates since the king kicked us out.A few hours earlier:
"Hana, I wanted to give you something, but I kind of forgot about it"- I pulled the tea, coffee, and candy box out of my spatial storage and gave it to Hana.
"Thank you, Hikaru. But why make me a gift? Do you want to date me or something?"- Hana laughed at the thought
"No, it's just that you don't seem happy with yourself in the last few days."- Hana looked at me again, she seems angry.
"Well, yes, I am not happy. It's just things are too sudden for me. I know it had been a week but I am still in denial of this world or that it even exists in the first place, I want it to be a bad dream and then wake up from it. I am not sure what I should do or what will happen next. I don't know if you ever think about these things Hikaru. You realize that we are far away from home right now, and since we are reincarnations I don't think that we are able to return to our world, and I died because of you, if you haven't thrown yourself out off the roof then, maybe all of us we would be able to return to our world"- Hana slapped me hard.
"I am sorry Hana, but this world, it offers me something better than the previous one ever could. I am very happy to be here, but I never thought about you and how you feel, like I am sorry Hana. I don't know what to say. I just wanted to escape my previous life as much as possible."- I bowed down to Hana. It is true that I never thought that it will come to this point, I just wanted to get as strong as possible in this world so that we won't have to worry about other things that might harm us here, but never I once thought about Hana's feelings until I had seen her sad.
"I know, I already know that you wanted to escape your life and illness, but dragging other people onto this isn't good. You at least could have jumped when I wasn't even at school. I hate to see you suffering Hikaru, that's why I jumped after you, I wanted to stop you from jumping but in the end, the 2 of us ended up dying!"- Hana started to break down, getting angrier at me by the minute.
"Again, I am sorry that I never thought about you and your feelings. I am truly sorry"- I bowed down again and let Hana hit me.
Hana looked at me again, this time she looked like she snapped out of a bad dream.
"Look, sorry for hitting you, I shouldn't have reacted like this towards you Hikaru. I am here for you if you need me, and thank you for the gift"- Hana bowed down and hugged me.
"Thank you"- Even in this argument she took the moral upper ground, I won't let this go to waste, if Hana is going to take the moral high ground in every situation that she finds herself in then there needs to be someone who makes the hardest of choices, then this role will be mine.
"Hana, there is something we need to talk about. In this situation, you took the moral high ground, but we will need to do hard choices, allow me to make the hardest and most despicable choices that there are to make, please leave all these things to me. I don't want you to change."- Hana's face got beet red.
"Hikaru, I hope it never comes to this"- Me and Hana got up from the ground and gone outside the wooden cabin.
"So, what should we do today?"- Hana looked at me smiling, it seems that things are back to normal
"Well, we should scout the area more, maybe we should go to the adventurer's guild to and get so more quests, or we can go in the opposite way of Welcia city and maybe we will arrive somewhere else, and if there is some there maybe we can obtain some useful items or even skills"
"Well, let's go then. But first I want to tell you something"- We started walking but Hana stopped in her tracks.
"What it is Hana? What happened? Is someone stalking us?"- I looked around me to see nothing, the forest is quiet, but not too quiet, I can still hear birds and the like around us.
"I am wondering about our classmates and how they are fairing, I know that we got kicked out by the king but this is no reason they will stop caring about us, is it? I mean I still have some friends in the class I would like to see what they are doing. If we meet any of them either in Welcia or otherwise can we at least talk to them, Hikaru?"
"Sure, why not"
Me and Hana started to walk in the opposite way from Welcia, maybe it will reveal something to us.
!You might find some of your classmates at Welcia Academy, it is an academy in the outskirts of the city where people of this world and heroes alike are trained here in order to become stronger.!
"Sia says that there is some sort of school for magic in Welcia, maybe we can meet some of our classmates there but we must take into consideration one important factor"- I stopped walking and looked at Hana.
"What is that factor?"- Hana looked at me surprised.
"This is a world where magic exists and can be used by everyone freely and then we have skills. And plus they maybe already had brainwashed our classmates that because we are monsters now we are pure evil and humans are the only good race, and heck maybe there is even a skill that allows you to do just that."- Hana looked at me in shock, her face having an expression of fear
"You are right, we must be careful when we approach our classmates from our original world, but what can we do to prove we aren't hostile, what if they arrack us without saying anything?"- Hana's shock and fear subsided, is replaced by a want to solve this problem.
"Well, if the worst comes to pass then we will have to fight them, we won't kill them, only knock them out"
"I understand, that is better than killing them I guess"- Hana looked at me again.
We begin walking again, searching for any interesting points of interest that we might visit, maybe a dungeon where we can obtain skills or more money to buy skills from the skill shop.
While walking we admired the beautiful forest around us, it's still spring so most trees are in full bloom, Hana is admiring and picked some flowers that she likes, she is one hell of a scavenger, she picks everything that she finds and stuff is always higher in quality than normal, maybe if we learn how to make potions maybe we can start a side gig of selling potions.
After 30 minutes of walking, we came across something that looks like a training ground.
"Hana, stop, let's hide in the bushes, I hear something up ahead"- I whispered to Hana and the 2 of us hid in some bushes.
After 5 minutes of waiting 10 people came into the training grounds, they are our classmates, they are here, but for what reason are they there?
!You are stupid, what else would people do in a training ground Hikaru? I am ashamed that you can't even make a simple logical connection like this!
"Sia, I meant what are they doing so deep in the forest, I doubt that the academy is here"
!No, you are right. But the academy is 2km East of here!
There were 5 boys and 5 girls in there, there are 14 girls missing from there. We are only six boys in the class(me included) and there are 19 girls in total.
"Man, things here suck. The food is very stale and we eat dried meat on most of our journey"- One of the girls complained
"If you complain this way you will get kicked the same way Hana and Hikaru were kicked. Remember why are we meeting here right?"- One of the boys brought the girls closer together.
"Yes, we are discussing Hana and Hikaru and how we can bring them back, we already made appeals to the king to bring the 2 of them back and that we will need our skills but it had gone terribly wrong because of multiple factors, but now we need to find a way to bring the 2 of them back"- I looked at Hana and she wanted to make a move but I stopped her.
"Yes, we need some way for them to come back or a way for us to talk to them. I don't know what will happen next, but we need to find a way"- Why are so many people wanting us back all of a sudden?
"We need them back, imagine how much help they will be in saving this kingdom from demons and other monsters. Especially since Hikaru is a demon and Hana is an orc, we can use their high status and skills in training if we wished to and thus progress faster to return to our other world"
So, the deal here is that the faster we defeat the demons the better it will go for them. One thing that I learned from humanity up until now is that they demonize everything that they don't like. Demons in this world are likely not born evil but driven by humans to commit evil acts in order to survive persecution. They couldn't survive so they took arms against the humans and then started a war because their species was so oppressed, I know a medieval and corrupt society when I see it.
"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, the king needs to approve it first and then we can bring them back. But with how things look it won't be any time soon"- Another one of the girls spoke.
After some time of listening to their conversations, I can hear footsteps, but it's more like a big dog walking, coming directly from where our classmates are, it's almost like they are headed for us.
5 minutes later 2 big wolves with wings came from the forest, our classmates got scared and frozen with fear.
"Now Hana!"
"Sorry for being late"- We jumped in front of them
"Hikaru, Hana?"- They looked at us surprised.
"Yeah, it's us. Don't tell anyone that you saw us here ok?"- The wolves are almost ready to attack us.
!Creature: Magi Wolf, you can obtain the skill Air Platform from them if you predate them!
*Use skill: Shadow Tendrils*- I immobilized the wolves with my shadow tendrils and Hana cut their heads off.
*Use skill: Predator*- I predated the 2 wolves.
#Skill gained: Air Platform#- I gave the duplicate skill to Hana.
"They took it down in an instant!"- All of them were surprised.
"No time to talk, follow us and we can talk somewhere else.
"Ok"
The 9 of them followed us to our house near Welcia. On the road we told them everything that happened and where to find us if they need something or if we need something from them they should tell us and we will get that to them in no time.
This day was rough but at least I could see what my former classmates did and if they missed us, seems only 9 and the rest of 14 don't seem to care.