4. Chapter 3: First contact

CHAPTER 3: FIRST CONTACT

It wasn't a new situation for the mercenaries. Getting found out by enemies or random people while they tried to hide happened to them twice or thrice. And while getting payed was good, getting out alive was way more worth it. That's why Ygar first tried to talk it out with the two otherworlders in front of him.

"Hello there! We are merely passer-by's; we don't want any trouble."

The two otherworlders dressed in blue looked at each other, muttered to themselves a bit then one of them spoke again.

"We Tokyo police. We want ask questions you. Okay?"

Obviously, neither side could understand each other. Olva had recognized those as some kind of guards, after all the similarly dressed people patrolling around the gate. She knew that if she or one of the other three somehow brought suspicions, then it would be all over for them.

But what she also knew was that those seemed to be the same humans from her world. And that humans generally get discouraged quickly when things don't go in their way. She didn't know why those two guards were there, but seeing their behaviour and their expressions they clearly didn't expect the group of four to be threats, and they seemed tired. She knew she just had to discourage them, and raised her voice.

"Haksa, vehgi emal jesc I bawic davo."

She sneakily signalled to Velgard to do the same.

"Jekor kera itu gerv, fabile."

She chuckled internally, for Velgard had just straight up insulted the guards in his Barghest language. It seemed as the strategy was working, as the two guards seemed more confused than ever. One of them scratched his hair, while the second looked at them with a blank look. After a while, one of the guards simply waved them goodbye and left with the other guard in tow. As the noise of their iron chariot died down in the dimming sunset, Ygar allowed himself to breathe.

"Good thinking, Olva and Velgard. At least we'll be left alone for a while. But we have to be on the move. Velgard and Geld, you'll be exploring tonight. Meanwhile, me and Olva are going to rest here. If we aren't there when you return, we'll leave a message somewhere nearby." He said.

Velgard nodded, but the imperial was clearly offended.

"Am I to understand you're giving me orders, Ygar Fal Sodis? I may not have been blessed by the emperor for this mission, but I do not appreciate you telling me what to do."

A frozen silence settled between the four. While the three mercenaries glared at the imperial with angry eyes, he didn't falter. He was to be an observer for this mission. If he so wanted, he could speak before the senate and the emperor at their return, and all he said didn't have to be truth.

But Ygar smiled instead.

"You are right, Gelt. I should not give you orders. I should force you instead."

Ygar took out his axe from the backpack Olva was holding. Gelt eyed him cautiously while putting his hand on the guard of his sword.

"Do you see this axe? It has been blessed by Flare himself an untold amount of time ago, and is a heirloom of the Sodis family. Any metal it touches turns instantly red-hot. I could chop you to pieces with it. Or I could tell you the fact that my older brother, Melkar Fal Sodis is a member of the senate. And I don't recall an "Arturos" ever being part of the senate."

While a bit apprehensive now, the imperial still stood still. But Ygar wasn't done.

"I may only be a mercenary, but remember to not make enemies with someone you can't, Gelt. I have the will and the means to force my opinion. Now, either follow my orders or die right here and now."

The incredibly tense atmosphere stood still for a few moments, then died down as Gelt put back the sword in its sheathe in a frustrated movement. Ygar stood down as well. Followed by an angry Gelt, Velgard left the camp in order to accomplish his mission while Ygar and Olva got comfortable around. After all, they had just walked a whole day without interruption, taking the world around them as much as possible. Rest was necessary.

"Did you have to be that rough with him?" Asked Olva.

They were still under the bridge, having put a piece of cloth on the strange lamp to make it less obvious in the night. Now, the light was only visible if one precisely searched under the bridge. Both were munching on some supplies they had bought with the foreign currency, wondering what were those transparent bags made of. If they found out how it was made, many merchants would pay for that kind of knowledge.

"I know his kind." Answered Ygar. "He's typical of imperial minor nobility. Joined the imperial army, got a good rank thanks to his family's wealth and fame. Never ranked up too much as he doesn't have the actual skills, so incredibly frustrated. Then, he received the order to oversee us three mercenaries, a task certainly too lowly for his high self. But there's one thing nobles fear, and it's other nobles. Since I'm from a higher family, I had to shut him down this way since he wouldn't stop. He would have made us fail at our task."

Olva accepted the answer and leaned more comfortably against the wall. She was still struggling to understand this world. On one hand, it seemed the world of the gods. Chariots that didn't need anything pulling them. Stores filled with enough food to feed a hundred people for a week. Very few beggars. Lights seemingly constantly on. Happy and well-clothed citizens. No slaves. From her point of view, only gods could make such a society.Never in her life had she seen such a thing. Only in dreams and drunken conversations.

On the other hand, everything seemed dangerously fragile. She had seen so few of those blue-clothed guards, and even less green-clothed. There could be a murder, and no guard force nearby to stop it. Granted, it was reasonable to think that with the speed those iron chariots could pick up, any part of the city could be reached in time.Another thing bothered her: people weren't armed. Back on Falmart, it was quite common for men to wear a sword or a dagger at their waist. Even if they didn't know how to use it, bandits were made aware that there would be at least a little bit of resistance. And even if not bandits, many unknown monsters and dangers roamed the wilderness. Part of the mercenaries (such as her) role's was to deal with those when the army couldn't be dispatched by the local lords.

This last thought made her open her eyes and dig in the backpack at her side. She took out one of the many items they had gathered today with Ygar. It was a small book, made of smooth paper pages and slightly more rigid first and last page. She couldn't read the title, but the front cover displayed a stylized figure which she could easily recognize as a female elf. She had strange large eyes and way too skimpy clothes, but the long ears left no doubt. The quality of the drawing impressed her, but it also raised another question: did elves exist in this new world?She showed the front cover to Ygar and asked him. He took a moment to think about it, then raised his voice.

"To be fair, I'm not completely sure. That's definitely an elf, and we've seen many depictions of non-human creatures here and there. They all had strangely large eyes but let's put that aside. We haven't actually seen any of those. To me, it feels like they know they exist, but they've never seen them. It would explain how disproportioned some of the drawings are. Maybe they don't live in cities? Or they were exterminated? I can't tell."

They spent some time talking about both nothing and everything. From the culture, to the weather and even the season this world was probably in. Olva enjoyed those moments.

Her childhood had been rough. She was born as a snow wych. A tribal culture led by women, with men being nothing more than tool in women's political games. Together with her sisters, she had been taught the terrifying magic of the mountains they lived on. With it, they could cause avalanches, call for storms and freeze entire companies of men with rituals. Unfortunately, her tribe lived on the outer edges of the mountains, where their power was less powerful than at the mountain tops. The empire had cleverly caused fracture among the tribe with spies, then invaded as the women were too busy with their social status in the tribe to fight back. The empire had lost an entire column of men to an avalanche, but it only caused harsher measures against the survivors. She had been tortured, broken then sold as a slave. Ygar gad been the one who bought her, and showed her that all the empire wasn't just scum hiding under the cover of "civilization". In a sense, Ygar and Velgard both had been her window to the outside world.

Thanks to them, she had forgotten the narrow view of the world her mother had instilled in her. It was thanks to them, and more particularly to Ygar that she wasn't stuck in a frozen waste, fearing for her life being taken by one of the many female rivals in the tribe.

He was telling her about how he used to compete in archery with his brothers when he suddenly fell silent. And in the coming moments, she understood why.

Drunkards. Even if she didn't understand the language, the slurred way of talking, uncoordinated and inelegant laughs, irregular footsteps… It seemed alcohol had the same effect on humans no matter the world of origin.

She immediately grabbed the light and turned it down. Both stood silent as the noise approached. Unfortunately, they made their way down from the road and fell nearly face-to-face to the duo of mercenaries.

For some reason, it seemed extremely comical for the drunken group of four who burst laughing one after the other. They were quite young and didn't seem to wear some kind of uniform, all with a bottle in hand. One of them seemingly more daring than the others stepped forward and tried to hug Ygar while speaking incoherently.

"Koko ni gaikoku hito ni kite, watashi wa anata ni ikutsu ka no ai o ataemashou!"

Obviously, Ygar pushed him back. He didn't want to have to deal with a group of drunkards right now.

"We're leaving, Olva. Leave a message we're going north."

"Oi!"

The snow wych took out two small square pieces of metal from a pocket and left them on the ground. Leaving a written message would be too obvious, so they had devised a system where the symbol on the metal signified a cardinal direction, and the number of square metals signified the distance. Here, she left two pieces with a triangle on them, signifying they left north for about two leagues.

"Yarō, watashi o mushi suru no o yameru!"

Ignoring once more the drunkard, Ygar packed his gear, but made sure to be able to take out his axe from the backpack at any time. You never know.

«Ōi, watashi wa anata ni hanashite imasu !»

This time, the drunkard grabbed Ygar's shoulder and tried to force him to turn around. Tired of him, Ygar did turn around but pushed him back hard, making the drunkard stumble and fall on his bottom. As Ygar turned once more to make sure the straps of the backpack were secured, Olva's voice rang out.

"Oh no you don't!"

The sound of magic being cast filled the air, and suddenly one of the drunk men cried out. He was holding his hand which was already turning white because of the cold, and a metallic sound on the ground grabbed their attention to the knife he had been holding. She contemplated attacking further, but decided not to.

She was no murderer. She was a mercenary. These people were probably just a group of friends enjoying an evening, and she would have felt bad about punishing with anything worse the act of a man under the effect of alcohol. The three other otherworlders were looking at her with fear in their eyes.

"Bouh…"

Her soft voice made them flee screaming, the injured one somehow following, both screaming and crying.

"Thank you, Olva…"

She nodded to Ygar, then both took their packs and followed the river north.

"Today is a great day, mister Watanabe, don't you think?"

"Ah, surely miss Hano! Today we see the exclusive footage of "the other world"! If this isn't exciting then I don't know what is!"

Tonight, everyone in Japan was tuned to NHK world. Or even, the whole world was tuned to it. This was for a very simple reason: under the incredible pressure of both national and international origin, the Japanese government had to do something to ease everyone. Revealing that the first drones they sent showed "a new world" as well as promising some footage of it had been enough to ease the tensions. The TV channel NHK world had gotten the exclusive rights to the diffusion of said footage. The male presentator who had been filling the blanks looked at the left of the screen, the focused back at the camera.

"Ah, finally! Dear countrymen, dear foreigners, we have sent miss Shinomura, an esteemed colleague of ours to the other world along with a small crew. She will be the first one to give her impressions, and we applaud her courage. Of course, a JSDF squad will join her in the first steps of mankind in a new world! Aaaaaaand, the live is on!"

The screen turned to a picture of the now famous gate. It hadn't changed, still made of white marble and greek and roman style mixed together. It seemed the camera was set up on a car, with a woman on the side of the picture. Her name showing up on the screen was Nonoka Shinomura. She took a moment to inhale, exhale, then started to talk.

"Mister Watanabe, Miss Hano, it is a pleasure to represent NHK world today! I will be passing this gate shortly along with second lieutenant Itami Youji and diplomat Koji Sugawara who has been sent to open negotiations should there be someone on the other side! "

She approached the second lieutenant and was about to ask him a question, but something grabbed her attention on the side of the screen and she turned back to face the camera.

"Well, we're going in! I'll meet you on the other side!"

The camera followed her movements as she got in the military car along with the soldiers. The camera man was the last to get in. The engine rumbled, and the car slowly got inside the gate.

Then, the void.

Literally.

There was nothing to see, only a black horizon extending on all sides. The only points of interests were the gate they had just passed, and a source of light somewhere in the horizon. The car stopped as everyone took some time to comprehend where they were. Then they resumed their journey to the far light.

The car headlights showed nothing, only the mysterious black surface. One of the soldiers took a flare gun and shot to the side, but the flare flew as far as it could then fell to the ground with nothing to stop it.

The journalist in the car asked questions to the soldiers to fill up the silence, but they weren't really talkative. All she learned was that they were excited and apprehensive, and that a long and solid rope had been tied to one of the columns back in their world and to the car should they get lost. Sending a plea for help at the camera to her fellow journalists, the two presentator understood immediately and started talking.

"So, what do we know about this gate?"

Most of that had been said and repeated over and over in the news channel in the whole world, but it was better than complete silence.

"Well, not much. The scientists sent by the government to study it are sworn to secrecy, and they seem to uphold that oath really well! But there's been speculations, and many famous scientists have given their theories! Some speak of teleportation, some of warp gates, some of time travel, some even of magic! It's hard to say which is right and which is wrong, and that's why we'll welcome our specialist, Mister Tanaka!"

A man joined the duo of presentators on the screen and joined them in speculations. Ultimately, everything had been already said, so only the rare newcomers paid attention. After roughly twenty minutes of uneventful driving, they reached the light they had saw earlier.

It was a gate too, identical to the one that had opened in Tokyo. A blinding white light poured out of it. The car stopped in front of it, the silence only broken by the gentle rumbling of the engine. All looked at one another. The soldiers to the soldiers. The journalist and the soldiers. The camera man and the soldiers. The diplomat and the journalist.

It was a historical moment. Two worlds would meet today. A lot of feelings clashed. Hope? Uncertainty? Anxiety? Adventure? But one thing was certain, it was that the whole world was watching them. Everything could change based on how they handled this first contact.

The driver gulped and gently switched gear, driving the car forward. The light intensified, blinding everyone until they finally reached the other side.

It was night time. An unpolluted sky let the stars light the earth and gentle hills rolled the earth. On their side, a completely dark forest hid its secrets. The gate seemed to open on the top of a hill.

Of course, the air has already been analysed as breathable. As the soldiers got out of the car and started to analyse for threats, something made them perk up their ears. As the engine of the car was killed and everyone focused on their hearing, they recognized the noise.

It was barking. And small bells noise. And bleating.

Yes, without a doubt, as their eyes adapted to the darkness they saw a flock of sheep grazing not so far away. And nearby, a humanoid figure was turned towards them. One of the soldiers turned on his flashlight in the direction of the figure, and everyone held their breath.

Fur.

The figure was covered in a light brown, almost ginger fur. A simple green dress covered its body, and a gentle bulge at the chest revealed its gender. But most surprising of all was its head. It wasn't a human head. It seemed to be more a vulpine head than anything else, with large ears perked up on top. Her lower face was a snout and her canines gleamed in the artificial light. The fact that a tail swished back and forth behind her was also surprising.Seeing that Itami and by extension the entire otaku population of the world rejoiced. Monster girls were real!

She dropped the cane she was holding.

« ... Quis tu quis es? Angeli? »

Sugawara raised his voice.

"I'm here on behalf of the japane-"

As he tried to step forward, the strange woman stepped back, clutching the cloth of her dress.

"Milo, huc veni!"

Immediately, the dog who had been guarding the sheep came at his mistress' side, growling at the newcomers. No one moved in this tense atmosphere. Obviously, the soldiers didn't see her as a threat so they simply observed. The camera man on the other hand made sure not to lose a single frame of this completely unknown form of life.

As Sugawara tried to speak once more, she screamed, scrambled at her feet to grab her sheperd staff and then ran away, followed by the dog who continuously barked.

The first contact… Couldn't be said to be the best one.

Hello there, author here.

Sorry for the delay, had a busy weekend :/

Here's some answers:

Roblu321, ArchineerRob: Thank you! Comments like there are what keeps me going!

Dalradia: oh, it will. Although I have no plans to write the empire's invasion, I plan to stop when the mercenaries finish their mission since the invasion has been written, rewritten and re-rewritten so many times. But who knows, maybe i'll change my mind.

Feerzo14: It always bugged me at how a seemingly so powerful military force that is the empire doesn't have common sense like that when it comes to warfare. Guess we'll have to pin that to the original author who wanted to paint the empire as bad guys, and nothing more. Which is a shame, GATE could have been much better.

Kirov of the USSR: Oh, maybe they'll get what they deserve. Maybe not. Who knows?

Thanks for the kind comments everyone, and see you next publication!(I'll release it on time I swear (totally not wasting my time on Mordhau))