Jokingly, my brother and I wondered what it would be like to live in Atreia, and we opted for different places.
I was fond of Elysea, thinking I would stand a chance as an artist there, or maybe a writer, while my brother thought Asmodae fit him well, harsh lands challenging his survival skills and giving him yet another reason to always carry a sword.
I also had more experience with the game, having played a good two hundred hours, while my brother had only endured my fangirling. Sorry, Toby. I'm not sorry at all.
"Tiny," Toby said on one of our walks through the woods, "have we been here before? Shouldn't there be a pond here?"
I looked around and decided that, yes, in fact, we were in a part of the forest neither of us had seen before. Why we ended up here was a mystery to me. The woods around the village we lived in weren't really that big anymore after succumbing to modern machines in favour of farmland.
"Did we get lost?"
"We never get lost, Toby. You know this forest better than me, and even I never get lost. It's not possible to get lost here."
"You're probably right," he said, but his hand moved to the hilt of the katana he always carried with him on these walks.
Something rustled in the bushes. Only now did I realize that our surroundings had been dead silent before. Humans never walk silently, especially in a forest. But the leaves under our feet hadn't made a sound.
A growl echoed from the trees around us, and another answered, then another. I doubted, by that time, that we were still at home in our little Northern European joke of a forest.
Slowly, a snout crept out of the branches in front of us, and before I could go "Awww!" at the sight of a worg, Toby had stepped between the animal and me, sword drawn.
"By what you've told me, these things are not friendly. Is that correct?"
"Well, if your level is at least twenty above theirs, they won't attack."
"Tiny, we are level one."
"Shit. You're right. Where's my spell book when I need it?"
The first worg leapt at us, and kissed a blade. That katana wasn't just for show. But the worg also did not die. It fell to the ground and whimpered, and apparently that angered the other two worgs enough to say "Well, fuck that, they got Timmy. They die."
Safe to say, things didn't go that way. I dodged the second worg's attack, grabbed a dead branch from the ground and swung it at the third worg, while the second succumbed to my brother's blade. The branch broke, the worg went down, and the air started flickering in a blueish light above it.
"Loot! Heck yes, loot," I shouted, and, following what seemed like an instinct (but wasn't, as this way of looting does not and will likely never exist in the world we evolved in), reached out to the light with my left hand.
A control panel appeared in the light, and I tapped the "Select All" field in the down right corner of it. Thick Rawhide and a Worg Claw. Material and misc to sell.
Following my example, my brother looted the two worgs he had cut down. I decided at that point that ending up in a strange video game world wasn't so bad.