Vosh stares at the man, "Wait... Isn't this bad?" Vosh says while holding the man with a needle barely visible buried in his chest, no heart beat or breathing either. This man was definitely dead.
"Why did she do it?" Vosh thinks to himself after he picked up the body and ran back to the area Amanda was walking away from.
Vosh approaches her and she turns around unsurprised and unbothered by the sight of a dead body.
"Oh don't worry, he's fine." Amanda says without a care in the world.
"But won't people be angry about him dying?" Vosh asks curiously.
She throws a bunch of needles into the corpse, then he spasms a bit before the needle that was in his chest pushes itself out but not fully. He stops moving for a moment and then his chest moves up and down, suggesting he's breathing still but seeing as that he was unresponsive, he was likely still unconscious.
Amanda says, "Trust me, this guy would be annoying to deal with if I didn't do that."
Vosh asks in curiosity, "Why though?"
She pauses for a moment. She sighs and says, "I guess if you'll be staying here for a while, which you will since you have nowhere else to go you'll likely hear about me one way or another."
Vosh looks on in suspense, waiting for her next words.
Amanda continues, "But I guess you'll have to find out yourself. I'm not in the mood for story telling it seems."
She points at that man who's unconscious. "That man is always asking for sexual favors whenever he sees me which I always aptly deny. If he finds out I'm taking you inside, he'd only allow it if I granted him said sexual favors. He's quite skilled too, I don't think with your current equipment you'd be able to win against him even with my help. So i took the preemptive strike."
Vosh thinks and then says, "I don't fully understand, but that sounds horrible for some odd reason in my head."
Amanda tilts her head in curiosity but then turns around and starts walking to which Vosh follows her closely.
Vosh thinks to himself, "So that guy is stronger than me then?"
Amanda replies, "Don't get full of yourself just because you can cause an explosion of that magnitude. If it were four thousand years ago, you might've been considered remarkable but by modern standards you're above average."
Vosh asks, "Above average but still terrifying enough to make your teammate piss herself? I might not know much about the norms of this world but I'm utmost sure that was pure terror."
Amanda replies, "If it's Villa you mean, she's far too new to this job to know what true power looks like and besides, my team is far too weak. The only other experienced member there oh so quickly short circuited like a new born fetishist."
Vosh asks quizzically, "A fetishist?"
Amanda says, "Yes, a fanatic sexual fetishist to be precise, a masochistic one at that. Seriously, to obsess over something that would probably stretch and tear her muscles and also leave her unable to walk without pain.... Definitely a masochist."
Vosh asks her quizzically once again, "I don't quite understand what you mean."
Amanda turns around and responds somewhat annoyed, "Do you truly have no sense of the norms of this world are, or is this just your way of playing dumb?"
Vosh thinks for a moment about how to respond then does so, "It's hard to explain really. Some things are already apparent. Others just evade me plainly. I don't quite understand what's behind this myself so I couldn't tell you even if you ask me."
Amanda stares into his eyes for a moment as if searching for an ounce of suspicious behavior only to find complete calm.
Amanda says, "Keep your secrets then. At the very least, you aren't a conceptual or a monster so that makes you an ally."
Vosh thinks to himself, "For some reason I can't help but think that's a weird way of thinking, almost naive. But the person I'm talking to doesn't seem naive in the slightest. Could the people of this world truly be that close to each other?" Vosh then realized how strange it was that he was subconsciously under the impression that they would've been more divided. "Why did I think that in the first place? It feels less like it's derived from some piece of knowledge I had and more like a subconscious instinct." Vosh sighs to himself, "I really need to find my author. I just can't seem to have any definite answers about anything but I can't help but wanting to know."
Amanda, who was watching him get lost in thought from the corner of her eyes couldn't help but find his listless expression somewhat cute. "Well, I guess I can try and recruit him. It's irresponsible to take such a dangerous animal out of the wild and leave him in the city to fend for himself. Not to mention with such a powerful guy, we can use him as a training dummy to help the melee combatants get more powerful."
Amanda smiles deviously while side eying a zoned out Vosh. She clears her throat to straighten out her face to then ask, "Hey what's your name again?"
Vosh replies, "I am Vosh Void."
Amanda continues, "Ok Vosh, what are you going to do when you enter the city?"
Vosh replies, "I'm going to read a bunch of books. Gather as much information and find as many stories as possible, then find their authors to see if any of them are writing this novel I am in currently."
Amanda pauses for a second a bit shocked, thinking to herself "Is this guy just some weird mental case after all? He's in a novel? He thinks he's the main protagonist of some story book? How ridiculous! But then again, he doesn't seem very narcissistic although he does seem quite intelligent at least. Maybe he's just confused about something? There's that one group of people that believe we are just a reality being simulated by the imagination of a powerful being, could he be apart of it? I really don't know much about this guy...." Amanda continues talking to him, "Well in any case, you'll need to stay alive and not starve to death. You'll also need clothing, a bath and somewhere to sleep."
Vosh thinks about her words for a moment and then responds, "Yes, now that i think of it, this may take a long while to accomplish and until then I'll need somewhere to carry out my humanoid activities."
Amanda says to him, "Wanna make a deal? I provide you with all those things and you become an adventurer and join my party?"
Vosh thinks it over for a moment, "Well, I don't see any problems with that. Except, I want a day or two everyone once in a while for myself. I already feel the muscle fibres in various parts of this body has been inflamed and requires rest."
Amanda says to him, "Then we have a deal." Amanda laughs in her mind, "What a fool! He doesn't know he was obligated for frequent vacation days in any case. Those one or two days were going to happen anyway."
Vosh, thinks to himself, "So I probably shouldn't tell people I'm looking for the author of the novel I'm in. It doesn't seem to garner a very favourable response. Also, I should have taken more time to gather information on adventurer rules. It seems there may be hidden benefits..... Not that I actually need them." Vosh wonders how long he'll have to remain in this world.
They finally approach the wall only to find no one guarding.
"Oh right, Amanda incapacitated him. But only one guard?" Vosh thinks to himself wondering why security is so bad here.
Upon reaching the wall, Vosh sees a pitch black tunnel. He takes a stop to look at it but Amanda walks straight through and melts into the Darkness. Vosh decides to abandon all caution and follow.
After a couple seconds his eyes become assaulted by a bright light to which his eyes hadn't adjusted to. He puts his left hand above his eyes to shield his face.
When his eyes adjusted, he was amazed.
Buildings far exceeding the height of the wall, they looked old with vines wrapping around them. Some had trees growing out of them. The trees themselves ranged from colors between blue, boiler and brown. But that was just the buildings.
The beings that walked the city, looked nothing like Vosh at all. Various protrusions and appendages exist on every passerby and they all come in various shapes and sizes, however, they were all humanoid in physical form.
"Welcome to [Atlatude Outskirts]. This is the poorest part of the city that's also closest to the wall. The population is densest here but the people are all ok." Amanda says.
"There are places other than here?" Vosh asks, still astonished by what's in front of him, much less processing the idea of areas outside of this.
Amanda replies, "Yes, and they look almost completely different. We however will only be exploring the [Atlatude MidFlats] where all the businesses are located. That's also where I live or should I say.... Where we live?" She seemed rather hesitant about that last phrase. Nonetheless she shakes herself out of her daze and picked up her pace almost leaving Vosh in his stupor. "Tedious the day is." She says to herself as Vosh also picks up his pace to match hers.
After a couple minutes of walking, Vosh notices a visible change in the buildings. For one, the buildings with trees and vines growing out of them quickly vanished leaving only well built and relatively newer buildings to cover the area. They did have trees on the sidewalk, huge and old alike but they were all plain green trees unlike the beautifully multicolored ones from the previous area.
Amanda suddenly turns to a three story concrete building with a sign at the top of the door. The sign itself was a strange assortment of numbers and symbols that Vosh didn't understand but thought they were important.
Entering the place, Amanda flips a switch and suddenly it was bright.
It was a quiet and surprisingly large place with rows and rows of what looks like shelves with labelled bottles of various liquids. Right beside the door was a counter and a door on the wall behind the counter. Amanda however headed straight to the back of the room where a random door was.
Amanda seemed to tap the door in specific places and it slid into the wall.
She stops for a moment as if remembering something. "Oh by the way, I'm a very popular alchemist and this is my alchemy store where I buy and sell alchemical products. I expect you to help me managing the store and in exchange I'll give you decent pay." Her tone of voice wasn't quite as aggressive as before, it was as if she lost her anger and was too exhausted. She continues, "I'm feeling too tired to show you around the place, so go explore and figure it out yourself." she walks up the stair that lead upwards which was right next to a set of stairs that was leading downwards.
Vosh, who was still naked decided to look around for an extra bedroom. Which he does find on the top floor. It was an empty and dusty room. It was as if no one ever set foot in there before.
There was purple moss growing on the meter high window outside. The bed, though big had no sheets and was incredibly dusty. Vosh opened the closet and found nothing in there but dust. Vosh sneezed and suddenly from all the dust but it created a shockwave that blew around all the dust in the room, causing Vosh to sneeze again.
He decides to get out of the room as fast as possible to search for cleaning supplies. He ends up finding a room on the second floor with brooms, dust masks, cleaning gloves, cleaning chemicals in multiple variations and two machines he didn't know how to operate.
He takes up the broom and it's shovel counterpart along with some bleach and some kinda of good smelling purple chemical.
He cleans up the room, looks around and finds it looked much better. But the bed had dust stains, which he used his magic manipulation to grab and remove those stains.
"Wait, couldn't I have used magic to clean the room??!" Vosh suddenly realized. It did feel a bit odd about it however, usually solutions come to him as if second nature. Mayhaps it was because as a human being his attention span was less than his main body.
Vosh shrugs his shoulders and moves to check out the rest of the house.
Next to his room were more empty rooms. He decides to give up on finding any new rooms on the top floor, it all seemed to be a bedroom area. "But from what I can tell only Amanda lives here." Vosh thought to himself while walking down the stairs.
Immediately to his right after descending the stairs was a bathroom and next to that was a bath. Next to that was the cleaning supply closet he was in a short while ago and the rooms across from that were an experiment room and a library.
"It seems I've hit the jackpot for the information gathering objective." Vosh says to himself before checking out the next room.
But before he opened the door, he smelt a delicious fragrance emanating from the room. He opens the door to see Amanda in an apron and a ponytail mixing a pot of unknown good smelling stew.
"Oh, there you are. I've been wondering where you are. See that pile of clothes over there?" She points to the table to a bunch of folded clothes then continues, "That's what you'll be wearing from now on. While I personally don't care if you wear clothes, it's certainly unprofessional as you may turn around to fast and hit someone with that fat dick. I don't think the store could recover from that."
Vosh lifts of what looks like a mini pants and asks, "What's this?"
Amanda says, "That's called an "Underpants". I'm not sure why the average guy wears it, but in your case it'll keep your dick from sticking out from your pants everytime you walk, by keeping it in one place. I've also gotten you baggy pants because there's no way skinny jeans will be comfortable for you with that thing. However, rejoice! I've obtained a varying select on shirts and shoes. Also, don't ever wear shorts, it'll definitely poke out the bottom when you sit."
Vosh asks, "Is my penis really that big a deal here?"
Amanda says, "The average Penis here is barely eight inches. That thing is definitely double that size."
Vosh scratches his head wondering why, "I analyzed all the bio organic humanoid life in this reality, on this planet and others and developed the most average sized appendages. Mayhaps... On a universal scale, it's not that my penis is big, it's that everyone else's is small?" Vosh nods his head completely satisfied with the answer.
Amanda, who only saw him zone out and start nodding his head tries to take him back to reality bu asking him, "Hey, have you taken a bath yet?"
Vosh asks, "A bath?"
Amanda sighs, "You don't know what that is either?" She visibly cringes from a moment, imagining how he must have smelt before he vaporized the dirt and other stuff in that explosion. "It can't be helped, I'll show you how to take a bath when we're done eating."
Vosh sees her expression and asks, "Is that really ok?"
Amanda angrily says, "Shut up! Be grateful!" Then stirs the pot faster. She takes out a ladle of the stew, puts a small amount on a saucer and gives it to Vosh. "Taste it and tell me what it tastes like!" She says, still angry for reasons unknown to Vosh.
He takes it and taste it, "This is the best thing I've ever tasted in my entire life! Can I have more?!"
Amanda looks at his endearing and eager expressions to taste more of her cooking, she can't help but find it adorable. To her he looked like a child enjoying candy for the first time in his whole life. "My cooking isn't that good you know? Don't make too many expectations about it." She pours herself a bowl and then pours one for him.
He turns it at his head then suddenly stops to knock his chest trying to find a way to subside the heat that came with the stew.
Amanda giggles while watching him while thinking, "I guess this won't be so bad after all." As she uses her spoon like a normal person