Fated Meeting

𝗛𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗿𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝘁ō

After sleeping peacefully I woke up with a very bad headache after five hours or so and I was on the verge of vomiting. The update was successful and urged me to explore the new update by the activity log.

When I open the character menu there were clear differences before and after the update.

The first thing was the rectangle that houses the tabs, previously it was just a dark blue rectangle but now it was more similar to the night sky with tiny stars in them and also there were three smaller boxes above which had the symbol for close, minimize and maximize.

I could also hold the edges of the floating rectangle with my finger or with my mind and adjust their width and height.

Inside the character menu were grey rectangles with white text which says:

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ʙᴏᴀʀᴅ↓

ᴘᴀꜱꜱɪᴠᴇ ꜱᴋɪʟʟꜱ↓

ꜱᴋɪʟʟꜱ↓

ᴍᴀɢɪᴄ↓

ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠɪᴛʏ ʟᴏɢ↓

ɪɴᴠᴇɴᴛᴏʀʏ↓

ʜᴇʟᴘ↓

ᴍᴀᴘ↓

The character board still had the same stats, blessings, curses, buffs, and debuffs on me however there was a silhouette of me with my equipment on it. I hold the area around my chest and two texts saying "White long-sleeved shirt" and "Leather armor".

It seems that my status bar was moved here which was currently saying that I am not in combat.

I checked the new skill and magic tabs briefly then I checked out the help tab. There was a new section to it which said "Organisms" which was separated by "Plants", "Monsters", "Demons" and, "Demonic Creatures". There was barely anything in it though with only a few monsters and demonic creatures with very vague descriptions of them not to mention that both the plants and demons section was empty. The floating question mark states that it will record all organisms that I have fought or learned about them and it also states that their descriptions will get better, the more I learn about them.

Inventory was a simple text box separated by lines and that text says what item I have currently in my backpack. Megu seems to use an x plus a number to tell the amount of what item I have.

For the last thing, I opened the map and immediately saw the map of our campsite and also the trail of where we came from. I zoomed out and then saw a map of Kliyer with a few spots missing since we never go there.

Some spots were also black and white implying that I forgot what it looked like on a detailed level which also includes Bellken. The roads that we took and our trail to our campsite were mostly colored.

I tapped all of the question marks to read them for later and got out of our shelter.

I saw them backed up to a tree; Looking at their miserable faces, it seems that they had a harder time with me for some reason.

"You, you seem to be fine," Astoria said on the verge of vomiting.

"What happened with your update?"

"I theorize that the update filled our brain with more information than we could handle at once and this information was foreign to us making it harder to understand which overloaded our brain," Alice said in response to my question while trying to stand up.

"I see, this UI is very similar to MMORPG UI's after all so I probably understood most information," I said to them.

'If Alice said that we are being fed information that might be the reason we were able to navigate the character menu so easily but what kind of information were they fed this time and wait when we got the character menu for the first time none of us got any headache...' I thought. 'Eh, I don't really care so why am I even asking.'

I waited for them to recover and we decided to continue our journey. They seem to be interested in MMORPG after I said that it was similar to our character menu; I reluctantly speak trying to not be nervous with their gazes falling upon me.

I introduced them to things like videogames which then became a talk about entertainment before explaining to them that for us common people, things such as war and fights for survival were no longer a concept to us due to countless politics and each country's destructive power that could affect the whole world.

I finished around midnight when it was my time to be a lookout. They decided to fall asleep after listening to my talk and I breathe a sigh of relief and drank water.

'Oh, thank god, I didn't screw anything up.' Now that I'm finally alone, I start to calm down.

I took out my drawing materials and drew a detailed grey tree with a swing attached to it. As for the background, I put a forest of trees a far distance away from this single tree.

As I began to color the leaves and grass with my pencil, my death perception alerted me and I quickly rolled my body to the side.

Three arrows pass me and hit the tree. I covered my mouth and silently spoke to them.

"Were getting attacked, they don't know your existence yet, hide and attack when given the chance." They silently agreed with me and slipped into the trees.

Astoria climbs a tree, Alice ran away while being escorted by Freya and while they do that, I threw my sketchbook to the side then a middle-aged man jumps at me with a sword ready to slash me on my sides.

I drew my longsword partly to block it then he backflip to retreat then my death perception alerted me and immediately knew that multiple arrows were about to hit me.

When I try to run for the trees, my death perception stops tingling so I stop moving and stood still like a statue as seven arrows passed me.

I hear a grunting noise ahead of me from what seems like a female and the middle-aged man becomes distracted and looked back. Before he could react, as my longsword reaches for his neck, I stop before making contact leaving only a centimeter gap between my longsword and his neck.

He moves slightly and I warned him.

"Don't try it," I say briefly and he stops moving. After a while, Astoria comes back with a middle-aged woman with dark skin and long pointed ears.

'Dark elf?'

Said dark elf had an arrow pointed at her throat by Astoria and after another moment, Freya and Alice come out of the trees with two young human men knocked out who were carried by Freya.

We all waited for the other to talk but none of them speaks. This awkward silence last for a minute before the middle-aged man which had my sword against his throat.

"We're sorry for attacking you, we thought you were those things."

"What do you mean by that?" Freya questioned not letting her killing intent subside which caused the dark elf to bear her killing intent.

Of course, Himura does notice such things part of it because he was too weak to notice.

I move my longsword closer to his throat and urged him to speak up. "You may have met them already but there are creatures that are infected by some sort of tentacles monster. Those monsters are not the cause of this but only the result of the pandemic"

He explained and Alice muttered something to herself.

"The godless land's curse."

"That's right, but a few months ago, it became worse because a creature, probably a demon managed to control the damn thing and now created a barrier which prevented us from leaving. I believe, it should be snowy at this time, and yet there's no snow to be found." He explained dreadfully and my party became somewhat fearful.

I, of course, stay calm, not realizing the threat and the man speaks again.

"If we want to leave this place then we will have to kill it however, even now, we still haven't found where its lair, so why don't we put down our weapons and talk instead more in-depth about this okay?" He raised his hands meaning that he is surrendering.

'But we're already talking.' I wanted to retort but for some reason, my party looks at me for approval.

"? it's fine"

Confused, I say my answer as I sheath my sword then the dark elf woman's killing intent disappears.

Freya drops the two men to the ground then they grunted in pain meaning that they were awake the whole time. They scratch their head as they made their way onto the other side of the campfire.

I pick up my sketchbook and other drawing equipment and threw them into my pack.

"I must say, you are good with a blade, boy." Seeing as I was probably the youngest here, I reply after a moment of pause.

"I'm not, I only have level three on my swordsmanship level," I say briefly, showing that I still have no trust in them.

As I attached the pack to my bag with the help of my teeth, I can hear their shock. I look back to see them and even my companions with shocked faces.

"T-to think, my level seven swordsmanship was equal to your level three swordsmanship." The middle-aged man said with a worried face.

I stay expressionless not knowing what to do in this situation.

The man thinks deeply before coming to some sort of conclusion which he does not say. "Well whatever, let's introduce ourselves, shall we?"

He put his hand on his heart and bowed slightly. "Names, Shin Klaudian, a former cursed child."