IV: A hollow meeting, and a hollow stomach

"Now what's going to be for dinner tonight…?" Presto questioned himself, running through the woods, farming the monsters on level 45. He opened the inventory finding nothing is in there and gave a weak sigh.

Just as he looked up, his body shimmered once more, and all of a sudden, he was teleported into a view of luscious green with colours he has never saw. Presto slowed down his footsteps knowing that he was teleported to a different place. It wasn't supposed to happen since teleportation is viable only through the teleportation crystal.

He opened his inventory once again, and from there, went to the master console. He hasn't used the master console since he custom made his outfit, mainly because he doesn't like breaking the game too much, even though, he has already broken the game already.

"Hey Heathcliff, you hear me?" he called the game master through his console.

"Oh hi Naoki, you don't use your console that often. What's it that forces you to call me?" Heathcliff's face appeared as a hologram in front of the caller.

"So listen, I somehow got teleported, and ended up in a weird place… can you see what is this place?" Presto rotated the head 180 degrees facing forward.

"Hmm… I see, apparently, you somehow got teleported into the 'Hollow Area'."

"'Hollow Area'?"

"Yes. Hollow Area. Long story short, it's an area under development, but we abandoned this idea, yet we did not clean up this mess we made. Technically speaking, it's an area filled with bugs and errors, just like you, who broke the game. Maybe the Cardinal System registered you as an error as well, so automatically teleported you here as well."

"Interesting."

"Well, yes, you can-"

"Sorry, someone coming." Presto shut off the console and inventory.

With his tracking skills, Presto can sense all players and enemies from 100 meters away. One is quick and running towards him, reaching approximately in 11 seconds, the other is a larger entity, trailing just behind the quick one, and from this entity's size, it is definitely not a player.

He unsheathed his sword, and stood there waiting. The smaller entity ran past him just on the right, and the larger one still behind him.

3

2

1-

Presto spun around, the greatsword's tip shot out, a blade protruded from the front, and the handle grew in length in mere seconds, headed straight into the forest behind him, then it hit an object, immediately causing it to cry in agony, and a huge cloud of dust kicked up from the forest.

"Gotcha."

The handle retracted in the same speed, and as the tip retracted, the side blades shot out, changing into the greatsword, holding it with one hand.

The smaller entity stopped and spun around. The larger one, however, was stunned for a bit and dashed straight towards Presto.

As the large figure dashed out of the bushes, and stopped in its tracks, eying the greatsword user.

The Skull Reaper

The creature's eye gleamed red, and three health bars appeared from the side.

"A boss… wait, when was the last time I tried fighting one… Oh screw it." Presto held his sword up to his chest, to the right, and legs apart front and back. His defensive stance readied.

The reaper's blade pointed towards him, and dashed forward, the blades horizontal. Presto put the sword with the flat side towards him and blocked the swipe from the reaper fully. As both steel hit, sparks flew out and a screeching noise was heard. Presto quickly flicked the sword outwards, breaking the lock, and sending the boss flying.

"Good Lord, one second more I would be the one sent flying." Presto looked at his greatsword. Looking back at the reaper, it just flipped back on its feet and its scythes ready. Its health has been cut just by a slight little.

"Time for some retaliation." Presto held the sword up to his chest, the hand across to the left, and sword pointing right. Just as he tried to dash forward, his coat was grabbed and he was pulled backwards.

"Hold on." a soft voice said and put a dagger of an arm's length right up Presto's neck. "Who are you? Are you here to kill me?"

Presto turned his head, and there stood a girl with dandelion orange hair, with sapphire blue eyes. She wore armour only on her right wrist and chest, whilst leaving her waist uncovered, a belt across the black shorts, and a blue short cloak on her back. Most importantly, she had an orange mark above her.

"Now tell me who you are and what are you here for."

"Name's Presto, and would you mind releasing me now? Or else you will be the one who is going to die. I don't even know where I am right now." he replied with a weak smile.

"Fine." the girl moved her dagger away and released him. "Just a fair warning, should you have run in there just now, you would have been attacked by its stinger and cause you to paralyse."

"Ok then…" Presto put up his offensive stance once again and dashed straight at the boss.

"Wait! Did you even heard what I said?"

The reaper intentionally widened its arm scythes, allowing Presto to dash in front of him. Just as it raised its tail stinger and stab the swordsman, Presto faced the shield side of the greatsword towards the sky and reflected it completely, then proceeded to start a sliding motion, with the side blades out, cutting the boss' underside in one go.

With the health of the creature dangerously low, it started to rage and suddenly stared at the girl by the side, dashing for her. The girl jumped up to the branch of a tree behind her dodging the dash attack. She jumped again and landed on the reaper's back, stabbed it with the arm-long dagger multiple times. Yet, the reaper doesn't die and swiftly jabbed her with the tail stinger.

She was knocked off the boss' back, and quickly got back up, but just as she said, the paralysis kicked in, and she laid in front of the boss feets away, immobilized.

"So this is the end…" the girl muttered underneath her breath, desperately trying to struggle, as she watches the bloody red eyes of the reaper getting closer and closer. Fear embeds in her eyes. Just as the scythes swooping down, the creature screaming like the thunder, a white figure dashed in front of her, and in an instant, the figure was sliced into half.

"Well, you'd better thank me after all of this is over." the upper part of Presto said.

In the same moment, the paralysis on the girl was removed. "What an idiot." she looked at the split gleaming avatar, and returned her focus on the reaper. One dodge to the right and a block with the jagged edge of the dagger. She held off the boss for an astounding 20 seconds without backing off.

"Ow! That hurts."

"Huh?" the girl looked to her right, to her surprise, the split avatar growing back his lower half, and stopped gleaming blue, instead of yelling and fracturing into blue pieces like she saw all the time.

"Got to finish this quickly," Presto flipped his hood on and covered the rest of his face with a mask. "And give this thing a proper end."

The swordsman dashed into the fray, the side blades of the weapon gleaming in blue, and from behind, he slashed the boss into halves. The reaper screamed and cried as it's health goes down to nothing and ruptured into blue shards, disappearing into thin air.

"Well, that was fun." Presto calmly put his greatsword back in the sheathe on his back and removing the hood and mask to take a breath.

The girl stepped back in fear and her hands shaking uncontrollably, dropping the dagger, and her back found a tree. "Why are you still alive? You got cut into two halves! Who are you?" She quickly reached for her dagger in fear, only for it to be taken by Presto first, and given handle facing towards her. She then snatched the dagger and pointed at him, "Who are you?" she questioned again.

"Let's just say I'm just a gamer who broke the codes and rendered myself unkillable in this game." he sat on the floor casually. "And you have a lot more answers to tell me: Who are you, why are you here, why is your cursor orange, why do you accuse of me trying to kill you earlier, and why don't you just sit down, and we can have a simple relaxing talk about all of this. Also, my name is Presto." He thought of something, and quickly added, "Call me Nao if you feel like it."

Flustered by all the counter arguments, she became speechless and slowly sat down, the tip of the sword still pointing at the man in white.

"Philia. My name is Philia." She stopped for a moment to organize her answers. "I… I have teleported into this weird place some time ago, and… I killed someone, someone I'd thought I never meet. I am just keeping an eye out if you are one of them or not trying to take my life."

"Hmm." Presto opened up his inventory to check the loots dropped from the boss fight.

"And all these times I was being as careful as I could, defeating monsters, killing bosses, clearing dungeons, taking loot, all by myself."

"Uh-huh." Presto kept checking the inventory, saddened by the fact that nothing was still edible in his inventory.

"Then this time I enraged the skull reaper, I tried to take it to a forest where I can have an advantage of,"

"Gosh, we have to get some food before night." Presto sighed as he stood up.

"And would you please listen to me when I'm talking instead about caring about dinner!" Philia shouted in anger.

"Well yes, you got teleported here like me, survived on your own for some time, killed a person during this time and getting chased by the boss until I showed up. Now where is my thank you for saving your life?" Presto said as he looks around for any monsters that have a potential to drop edible items.

"Huh? Why?" Philia raised an eyebrow.

"Because I said so when I got sliced into half. Don't you remember?"

You'd better thank me after all of this is over.

"And you are the one who warned me about the stinger yet you got stung by it."

"Oh really? Becau-" Philia blushed a little when she remembered the words.

*Groowl~*

She immediately covered her stomach with her left hand, sword still pointing at the swordsman. And giving a weak smile.

"Because I don't-"

*Grrowwwl~*

Philia's leg started to shake, and her right hand lowered, and yet she still held her head up, her face clearly blushing from embarrassment.

"Remember any of-"

*Grrrrooowwllll~*

"It." She squatted down and sheathed her dagger, both hands on her stomach, trying to forget the hunger, her face buried downwards and finishing the sentence on a weak note.

"Somebody hasn't eaten proper food for a while, I guess." Presto looked to his right and found some boars. "We are eating pork-chops tonight." As he walked to the boars. "Stay here."

"Suit-"

*Growl*

"yourself."