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After days of staying within Carne village, and gaining as much information about this world as I could, I knew we would have to leave soon.

My self-imposed goal of helping this kingdom wasn't something that would be accomplished by sitting around in some frontier town, no matter how much I liked the place.

This body wouldn't allow that.

Something bigger was out there, and while the old me would have ignored the outside world in favor of comfort, I knew that those old habits needed to die.

But when mentioning this to Aly, instead of the ready agreement I was expecting, he did something very unexpected.

He refused.

The boy looked me in the eyes and said he was going to stay here, in this village, while I went out on my own.

There was a light in his gaze when he made that statement, and as his words registered in my ears, I felt something lightening inside me.

A smile came to my face, no matter how hard I tried to keep the corners of my mouth from rising.

It wasn't something I could explain, but seeing him with such a determined expression on his face to stay and live inside the place that had terrified him only days before, was very admirable.

So I nodded.

It was the happiest I had ever seen Aly look. For the first time since the two of us had met, he genuinely seemed like a carefree kid.

The night passed quickly, and on the next morning I gathered my things.

I was ready to leave, but I wanted to stay in the village for at least another day or two.

After living there for a while, I could confidently say I was the strongest person in town, easily. The second-place would be Jugem, the level 12 goblin who led the rest of his teammates, but after sparring with him a day or two after arriving in the village, it was clear he wasn't any kind of match for me. While he was decent with a sword and confident in his movements, I overpowered him easily.

After that fight, I was a little worried the goblins wouldn't want to talk to me anymore, but instead I managed to gain some respect from them. Enri was right, they really were cheerful and energetic guys with good senses of humor. They were relaxing to interact with since I didn't have to speak much, and they would still fill the space themselves.

Eventually, though, I realized that I needed to apologize.

Every time I looked at those goblins, I remembered how I killed so many of them without any second thoughts.

I could excuse myself, saying that it was all because of the ingrained instincts of this body, I saw them as monsters and responded accordingly.

But that didn't help.

I lost sleep while thinking about how those living creatures had died for no reason, because of me.

I managed to find some free time, and walked up to Jugem, and a few of the other goblins in town, who had been taking a break from patrolling outside the wall.

But when trying to open my mouth, I was petrified.

My mind kept running through what I had to say, and how he would respond. Would he forgive me? Would he be angry that I had barely even seen his race as animals, and felt nothing as I killed them?

Sweat beaded on my forehead, and some part of me found it funny that even though I remained level-headed even while facing down a monster like the king of the forest, I could barely even think straight when in a simple situation like this.

However, even when it felt like I was choking, I managed to bite down and apologize.

I explained how I had killed plenty of goblins on my travels, and didn't think of them as creatures that deserved sparing. After seeing them almost kill Aly, I felt no mercy towards them.

But apparently, there really was no problem.

Jugem and the rest laughed me off.

Most wild goblins were considered part of hostile clans, and they weren't civilized at all. To Jugem and the rest of the goblins in the village, even if they shared a race, they had very different minds. Basically, the intelligent goblins living in town saw forest goblins more like animals than anything else.

I still knew that the goblins I had killed were sentient, though.

Even if these goblins saw the others as wild monsters, I couldn't bring myself to look at it that way.

They were thinking, breathing creatures. Although the village goblins had waved me off and said it was fine, there was still a heavy feeling in my chest.

I tried to shake it off.

...

Throughout the days in the village, I also made plenty of time to test out all of my abilities from the game, as well as anything new I might have discovered.

Knowing the full potential of any combat options I possessed was something that had to be done. I felt like entering a fight without fully understanding all my possible options was a death sentence.

So after work during the day, I made sure to take time for myself and go on walks outside the village.

At least, the others thought that these were just walks, but really, I was going out to experiment with all my skills.

After walking through the forest surrounding town for an hour or so, a rather idyllic scene appeared in front of me.

A small forest stream, weaving through trees and running into a pond, surrounded by the dense forest and reflected sunlight filtering in from the sky above. Various small animals could be seen all around me, and there seemed to be no monsters nearby.

I settled onto a large boulder next to the water, taking out the Sheikah Slate and beginning my experiments with an unwrapped sandwich made by Aly sitting beside me.

First were the Sheikah Runes.

By selecting which rune I wanted to use in the menu of the Slate, I then pointed the slate at the object or area that would be affected.

Everything worked perfectly.

Magnesis let me pick up and manipulate metal objects from a distance, and nothing had changed from the game. This was probably my least useful ability, since I was pretty sure that anything I could control with the rune I could also just pick up with my bare hands.

The next one I tried was the Bomb rune. This was quite interesting, since the rune let me create the explosives out of some kind of energy, but they didn't explode like normal. These bombs, when detonated, seemed to release a blue shockwave that blasted everything within the effective radius away at high speeds.

If this was an RPG and I was classifying attacks by damage types, I would probably say these Sheikah bombs had 'force damage,' instead of normal fire damage.

Then, I tested Cryonis. In the game, Cryonis had the ability to create pillars of ice from sources of liquid water. This was originally used to let Link get across things like rivers or lakes easily.

However, it worked differently in real life.

Instead of creating ice pillars, I simply froze the water source and then could thicken the layer of ice. Basically, it was an ability to instantly freeze water and then grow ice from that- a much less restrictive version than the game.

The Camera ability was the same as before; it let me take pictures which then could be added to the Compendium menu, which I had already begun filling out.

It seemed like instead of the formerly-titled Hyrule Compendium, I now had an entire 'Compendium' menu that was blank except for all the old entries from the game. Any piece of flora or fauna that I caught on camera could be entered into the Compendium, and I was able to fill out a description for it, and then find more using my Sheikah Sensor.

Instead of how the game automatically explained all the locations and descriptions of the item, I now had to do it manually, which was much less convenient, but made sense.

Immediately, I was able to think of a few uses for this new compendium feature.

By asking the villagers about what local plants were useful in this area and then taking pictures of them, I could write down their uses for later. Then, while on my travels, the Sensor could be used to help find large numbers of these valuable plants. Once I collected them I could use the plants to create new elixirs- or potions, as the villagers called them.

But by far, the most valuable and powerful rune in the slate was Stasis. The ability to freeze an object in time, and since I had upgraded this rune in-game, it was also able to affect living creatures.

This would be very useful during combat, since I could freeze an enemy for a second or two, and then attack ferociously while the target was immobile. The strategy was one I had used often in the game, and based on this body's instincts, Link had also taken advantage of it.

It seemed like overall, I could use these runes and the Sheikah Slate the same way that the game worked, except everything was more realistic. It all made sense.

But I also experimented with other game mechanics besides the runes. Specifically, I tried eating food to increase my physical attributes.

In the game, Link could cook meals that were able to buff him in various ways after being consumed.

I tried this with one of the meals I already had stored in the Skeikah Slate, and it worked as expected.

After eating a serving of the 'Hasty Steamed Vegetables' I felt extremely light on my feet, like I had suddenly lost half my weight. I moved much faster than normal, and when sprinting, it made my previous highway speeds look sluggish in comparison.

After the effects had worn off about five minutes later, I felt like I was coming off of a high, and I couldn't stop smiling at the sense of freedom it had given me.

However, I had to note that there were some enormous changes to how the meals affected me in real life compared to the game.

The major change was that I had to actually eat the entire meal before I felt my body begin to change. That was very important, since it meant I couldn't just eat a meal in the middle of an intense battle- I wouldn't be able to heal myself mid-fight by eating.

There was an exception to that rule, though. The elixirs I had in my inventory were much smaller than the meals, so I could drink them in just a second or two and immediately feel the increase in strength. Those were likely the best option for combat.

The second change to take note of was how I possessed a limited supply of food and buffs.

While in the game, if you ran out of meals or resources to cook with, you just needed to go out into the wilderness and scavenge for more. However, this was not Hyrule, and it was likely that none of the raw materials I used to create meals and elixirs could be found here.

I was limited to what was in the Sheikah Slate- and that meant I needed to only use the meals when they were absolutely needed.

But after realizing that, even though I knew it would severely limit my combat power, I didn't despair.

After all, I was a massive hoarder.

My inventory was filled with mountains of plants, meats, animals, and monster parts to cook with and make elixirs. Just by looking around in the menu I could get lost in the rows and rows of materials stored there.

I shook my head.

It would still be a good idea to restrict my food usage, though, since it was very possible I would go years or maybe the rest of my life without restocking. Even if I had hundreds of items now, they would eventually run out.

My experiments were mostly complete, and during them, it seemed like the hours had passed quickly. The sky was still blue, but the shades were turning warm quickly. Dusk was coming and I didn't want to miss dinner at the village.

I made my way through the forest quickly, almost running while clearly remembering the path to town.

However, after arriving at Carne Village, I noticed a small group had gathered at the gate.

It seemed like some strangers had arrived in town.

They were a group of people who were clearly adventurers.

With clean weapons strapped onto well-kept armor, and confident expressions on their healthy faces. Each one of the group had a small metal tag hanging around their necks, four of them had silver tags while the more impressive-looking two had copper tags. The group's seventh member didn't have weapons or armor, instead he wore a simple cotton shirt without a tag.

All the adventurers were surrounded by the town goblins and Enri, who seemed to have just greeted them and were welcoming the group into the village.

But among the entire crowd, one person drew my attention immediately.

The reason for my curiosity wasn't his large and imposing frame, or his dark full-plate armor, or the billowing red cape, or beautiful twin greatswords strapped to his back.

In fact, I barely even saw any of that.

My eyes were firmly caught by what hovered above his head.

Lvl 100

"Oh! Link, you're back! Could you help bring these adventures into the village?"

Enri greeted me warmly, gesturing to the group behind her, who seemed to still be looking at the goblins with caution.

While normally, I would probably note with some amusement at how this group had the same reaction me and Aly did during our arrival, I was much too distracted for that.

My eyes were still locked on the armored man in the back. The man with a level 100 hovering over his head.

He was covered head to toe in black metal plate, trimmed with gold lining, and a closed-visor helmet masked his face.

Overall, he was an impressive sight, standing at around seven feet tall, maybe more. His cape billowed in the wind and the two swords over his broad shoulders were delicately carved with metal serpents on their handles.

In the corner of my eye, I noticed something else, just above another adventurer's head.

This person was dressed lightly, in much less armor than anyone else.

Clad in a brown cape over a simple white shirt and black pants, her clothing still didn't take away from what was probably the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The cold look in her eyes that bordered on a glare detracted from the sight, though.

Over her hovered another astounding sight.

Lvl 63

...Wasn't the Wise King of the Forest supposed to be some legendary monster?

Right?

Aly did say that, right?

Im pretty sure he said that thing was very powerful, but it was only at level 33, and these adventurers are so much higher than that! Were they just incredibly strong, or were all high-rank adventurers normally like that?

Was Aly just overstating how powerful the king of the forest was? I mean, the attack I blocked from it did seem pretty weak all things considered, so maybe that made more sense.

I frantically tried to rationalize what was in front of me.

"Um, Link…?"

I blinked.

That's right, Enri just asked me to do something.

I was too busy staring at this pair of strangers for the past ten seconds to notice, though.

Who are these people?!

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*Author's Note*

Yes, yes, I know that there is not nearly enough Ainz in this chapter. I got a little too into explaining the Sheikah Slate things and suddenly used up a bunch of space. Normally, I like writing chapters that only have one major scene/topic in them, because otherwise when I'm writing it feels like the chapter is dragging on, so I felt like this was a good place to end off. Sorry about that.

But don't worry! Next chapter we actually get to see Link speak with Momon and Nabe! It's gonna be great, I promise!