_

After wandering around for a while, Naoto had once again run out of steam sitting down and leaning onto a tree. They hadn't made much progress from their starting point. They had been aimlessly wandering around the fields before deciding to huddle up in a small forest.

As they both relaxed and caught their breath, Naoto's stomach grumbled. "Agh- I'm really hungry." Naoto spoke quietly. They had been walking around for almost an hour, and Naoto hadn't eaten anything except breakfast that day until now, so the hunger was quickly catching up to him.

"Why do you never eat during lunch breaks, Senpai? Are you too busy doing pervy stuff to eat anything worthwhile?" Naoto snickered. She had seemingly gotten back her cheery attitude.

While Naoto was glad she was back to normal, he didn't appreciate being accused of doing dirty things. "Shut up. I don't eat because my parents always make too much food every time at home, so I always get my filling in the evening." He responded to her.

Nagatoro began thinking of ideas, before something clicked in her head. "Senpai! I know what to do." She said cheerfully, before checking inside her bag. She had just now realized that her bag had been transported with her, and they might have some worthwhile stuff in there.

She stuffed her hand into the bag before pulling out a Homemade Bento. She opened the small box. She was lucky to have remembered to pack chopsticks into her box, which she took out, before grabbing a rolled omelet.

"Senpai, say ahh~" Naoto turned around to see Nagatoro holding the food right in front of his face with chopsticks, along with a wide smirk on her face. Naoto's face instantly went redder than a tomato.

"I-I can feed myself, thank you very much." He said, attempting to yank away the chopsticks. Nagatoro reacted quickly and pulled them back. After multiple attempts of Naoto trying to fake the chopsticks, he was left with no energy, to which Nagatoro patted him on the head. "Either I feed you, or no food for you." She giggled.

Naoto didn't seem to lose a single ounce of embarrassment. Instead, his face only got redder and redder as he reluctantly opened his mouth, to which nagatoro fed him the omelet.

"How is it?" Nagatoro asked with a look of happiness in her eyes. She seemed to genuinely want to know what he thought of her cooking.

Naoto was still chewing though, so it took him a few more seconds to swallow his food enough to speak. "Izz Gwood." He said while still chewing.

"Good to know that even here, my food still tastes amazing." Nagatoro said, to which Naoto quietly nodded. After sharing the Bento togheter, they both relaxed for another while before standing back up and getting ready to continue their journey.

"Senpai! Someone lit a campfire over there!" Naoto jumped out of excitement. They had been walking around the forest for a while now, and they hadn't really found anything yet. The most they found was a lost pouch on the ground, which was seemingly dropped by a careless explorer.

"Maybe it's one of our friends!" Naoto said, speeding up slightly. He was already tired from walking so much, and it was already starting to get dark. Even if it wasn't one of his friends, a campfire meant they could rest up and recover.

Nagatoro picked up her pace as well, instantly getting herself ahead of Naoto. "Wanna race, Senpai~? Or are you two much of a wimp?" She smirked at him as she went full speed ahead.

She was completely aware that the best way to grind his gears was to call him a wimp, which was proven when he started to pick up his pace as well, making his best to surpass her speed, but being left in the dust quickly as Nagatoro continued to run full steam ahead.

"Naga-huff-toro! Wait up!" Naoto was too exhausted to run, struggling to catch up as she left him behind. All of a sudden, he heard the sounds of rustling to his left, he couldn't even turn around when a small party of Slimes jumped out of the bush.

"N-Nagatoro! Help!" Naoto yelled, quickly taking his stick and pointing its sharp end at the Slimes to keep them at bay. One of the slimes suddenly attempted to jump at him, to which he swung his 'weapon' at it, launching it against a tree with full force. The impact caused the slime to splatter against the tree, leaving only its goop behind as it dissolved.

The rest of the slimes continued to tackle him repeatedly. And while he was able to fend them off for a few seconds, he was quickly overwhelmed as they threw themselves at him. Despite being made of a near-liquid substance, a Slime could make their body more dense for a small moment when tackling an opponent, which felt similar to being hit full force with a football.

Naoto was pushed back and fell to the ground as the slimes continued to throw their bodies at him repeatedly. While ot wasn't life-threatening, he would still sustain severe injuries if this kept going for much longer.

"Help!" Naoto screamed. Nagatoro had already heard him the first time, and was rushing back to help him. But having no real equipment of her own, the best she could do was try to drive away some of the slimes with a stick.

As Nagatoro struggled to keep the slimes from hurting Senpai, she suddenly saw something flying towars them. It quickly passed by her sight, before landing right on one of the slimes, killing it. Now that they could both see it clearly, they realized that it was a makeshift spear out of wood and small chips of stone, strung togheter quite efficiently with some rope.

Nagatoro looked at the direction the spear came from, and what she saw brought infinite relief to her heart. It was everyone who had been at that table a few hours ago. Gamo, Yoshi, Sakura, and even Hana and Naoto's two friends, Hino and Takao.

Before she could welcome them with open hearts, they had to deal with the Slimes first. Naoto had managed to get up again thanks to Nagatoro keeping the Slimes at bay, picking up the spear, which was lodged in the ground, thanks to it being pretty light, Naoto had almost no trouble picking it back up, thrusting it at one of the slimes, skewering it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Group were getting closer with each step. They had apparently heard Naoto screaming for help and came to aid. Nagatoro could tell that whoever crafted that spear had given everyone in the group one, as they each had one lodged into their backpacks ready to use.

Now being armed, Naoto had no trouble disposing of the rest of the Slimes, just now having finished off the last one as he exhaled in exhaustion. "You're right, Nagatoro. Maybe -huff- I should exercise more." Naoto joked. As he was catching his breath, a though popped into his head. Just how many slimes did he kill?

He quickly opened his Menu while waiting for the others to get there. Just as he had expected, at the corner of the Menu, instead of 'Level 1' it said 'Level 3' in big, bold letters and numbers, checking his Statistics, he noticed that all his Stats had increased by about one to three points each.

"Great! I leveled up! Seems like it won't be that hard to get stronger, at least for now." Naoto thought to himself before closing the Menu and catching up with Nagatoro, who was already walking towards the others.

_

"What were you guys doing all this time? We've been looking for you." Nagatoro pouted while sitting with everybody at the campfire. It was pretty well built, as it was clear that whoever constructed it knew how to get the most out of their fuel consistent of leaves and wood.

"What do you think? We've been looking for you two, when 'whatever this is' happened, all of us woke up relatively close to eachother. My guess is that it's because we were a,l huddled up at the table." Gamo remarked, tossing some wood into the campfire. Weirdly enough, Yoshi didn't repeat anything she said, simply looking around the place like an amazed child,

"By the way, Paisen," Gamo continued as Naoto turned his gaze towards her, Gamo gave Hino a couple of jokeful slaps in the back. "Your small friend here has been a big help to us. He helped us set up the campfire, and he's the one who made those spears." She said with a smug tone in her voice. Hino was visibly bothered a bit, turning around. "I'm not that small!" He whined, to which Gamo chuckled.

Naoto nodded. "Yeah. I expected as much. Hino went to a Boy-Scout camp when he was young, so he has a lot of experience with things along the line of survival." Naoto said. As random as it was, they were really lucky that Hino had been telephoned along with them.

"Anyways. Besides that, what have you been doing? Have you found anything helpful?" Nagatoro asked the group, to which they instantly reached into their backpacks.

One by one, they started to show what little they had gathered togheter. Apart from the impressively crafted spears, they had only collected some small chunks of wood and rock. Besides that, they each still had all of their school materials as well as their phones. Sadly, the phones didn't seem to function.

Naoto and Nagatoro seemed slightly disappointed at the fact that their friends hadn't many any real progress either. But nevertheless, they were togheter for now, at least.

_

As the night slowly settled in, everyone started to get a bit cozier. Hino had left with takao to a nearby river in an attempt to catch fishes to eat, while Gamo and Yoshi were gathering leaves and ripping chunks of wood from the trees nearby for the fire.

Sakura and Hana had decided to scout the nearby areas to see if there was a better place to settle in, leaving Nagatoro and Naoto alone on at the campfire. Naoto was quietly watching the fire, occasionally fanning the flames with his sketching book. Nagatoro was sitting quietly next to him, simply watching him do his thing.

"Senpai~" She decided to do what she did best and tease him. "I know we're alone, but please don't plan on doing anything gross. But knowing you, it'll be hard to hold back, won't it?" She snickered, to which Naoto blushed.

"N-no. I-i wasn't thinking about doing dirty stuff." Naoto assured her.

"Are you sure?" Nagatoro responded teasingly, smacking his head. "You know I can't trust creepy senpai. Creepy! Creepy! Creepy!" She continued to smack his head while Naoto didn't do much about it.

As much as it bothered him, he honestly didn't mind, he knew who Nagatoro was, and he knew that she never meant it seriously. It was just their way of talking to eachother, and to be honest, he thought the way they communicated had a certain charm to it.

Naoto stopped fanning the flames, leaning his head on his hand. "You know, I haven't had much time to think about it, but once we find a way to effectively survive here, what will we do next? How can we make it back home? Will we even be able to? What will happen to our families?" Naoto pondered on it. Nagatoro had realized that Naoto was being serious, stopping her playfulness and simply listening to him.

"Don't you wonder it too?" Naoto looked at Nagatoro. His face had an emotion which seemed to be conflicting between sadness and pure curiosity.

Nagatoro thought for a while. "Not until now, no. But don't worry, we'll find a way. We've always found one. Just like when we kicked the Presidents butt." Nagatoro joked. "And even if we don't, we atleast have our friends."

Naoto looked at her and smiled. She was right. Whenever they were togheter, certain things just seemed to go right. Everything a problem or doubt rose up, she'd help him overcome it, no matter how, even resorting to purposely ticking him off. Thinking about this, he couldn't help but say what he wanted to say at that exact same moment.

"And we have eachother."

"..."

"..."

The silence refused to be broken, as the two of them simply stared at the campfire, visibly getting more red with every moment. For a moment, it seemed like it was just them two and no one else, staring at a campfire while talking to eachother.

Nagatoro, being who she was, felt like the best way to break the silence would be with teasing him with something along the lines of calling his statement 'Creepy'. But she just felt unable to say it. It felt as if his statement had been to genuine to simply be labeled as 'Creepy', especially from his tone when he said it. Nagatoro pondered for a bit, staring off into the sky. Before looking at Naoto with a smile.

"Yeah, as long as we have eachother."

This time, Naoto had no stutters to give. He didn't have an attempt at sloppily trying to take back what he said. Maybe because it was too genuine to take back? Or maybe because the fact that she felt the same brought too much joy to his heart for him to think up anything. With no words to give, all he could do was give her his purest smile, nodding at her statement.

"S~up."

"S~up!"

Their moment in time was cut short as Gamo and Yoshi came back from collecting scraps of wood, leaving it aside the campfire for fuel later on.

"What were you two love-birds talking about?" Gamo smirked.

"Love-Birds!"

"S-Shut up. We weren't talking about anything." Naoto responded back with a slightly bothered tone. Gamo didn't even bother to respond back, simply staring at the both of them with a mischievous grin alongside Yoshi.

Eventually, Sakura and Hana came back as well, but before they could inform them about what they had found, Hino and Takao came running back holding a makeshift basket full of fish. "Guys! We caught something!"

_

As Hino and Takao roasted the fishes on the campfire, the others were sitting next to them, ready to hear about what Sakura and Hana had found.

"We went quite far into the distance, but we didn't find anything worthwhile until the end." Hana commented while staring at the fish being grilled with drool practically seeping out of her mouth.

Sakura pointed her finger towards the direction they had gone to explore. "There's a big cave about five minutes from here. It was scary and dark, though, so we simply decided to go back." She had also noted that from what they could tell, the cave didn't seem natural, as it clearly had human prints and structures from inside and outside.

"A cave, huh?" Naoto responded quietly. He decided that it was time to put his admittedly limited knowledge of RPGs to use. "If it has human prints left behind, we can assume there's things inside as well. If I'm not wrong, it should be considered more of a dungeon than a cave from your description." He commented, to which Takao gleefully turned around.

"I have an Idea! How about we go exploring tommorow. If Naoto is right and it really is a dungeon, we might even find something useful." Takao noted. He seemed very excited about the idea of exploring a dungeon, which Naoto could understand.

"We'd have to be very careful, though. Isn't there, like, monsters and stuff?" Gamo asked. While she was definitely not into Videogames, even she could understand the most basic elements of RPGs and Fantasy games, especially since Takao had already explained what they were dealing with some time ago, even discovering the Menu Hologram by himself.

"True, but with these spears and some torches, I don't think there should be a problem, right?" Hana responded. She, unlike Gamo and the other girls, was somewhat of a loner like senpai, and while she did have friends, she mostly just spent her time drawing Art or even occasionally playing Videogames, so she also had a sufficient amount of knowledge on what they were dealing with.

After a short discussion regarding what they should bring and how they should go about it, they all agreed that it'd be best to explore the cave early in the morning, as the daylight provided them the slightest of advantages. They had finished their discussion just in time for Hino to bring the fish to everyone, which he had roasted and seasoned with some herbs he had found while fishing.

Naoto was still hungry despite having shared Nagatoro's Bento, so the second he grabbed his skewered fish he bit into it. "Mm...Mmm! Fish from other worlds taste much more delicious than at home." He commented while enjoying his meal, to which everyone nodded.

As the group slowly prepared to get to sleep on the ground, Naoto looked at the sky. Things could've been much worse, but at least he had the people he cared about most on his side. Whatever happened, he could take it as long as he had his Party with him. "Maybe this could end up being fun." He pondered to himself before lying down on the grass and slowly drifting into sleep.