"Not too tight? Not too short anywhere? Move around a bit, I need to make sure it won't slow your movements during any fights."
"Wait, fights? Who am I fighting?! I can't fight anything! I thought I was the cooking hero, not an assassin!"
"Well, stat-wise, you'll be the strongest one of any of us, so you'll likely be fighting all the scary bosses. You might even need to solo the guardian beasts or something."
"SOLO A WHAT?! I CAN BARELY SOLO A LASAGNA FROM THE CHILDRENS MENU! I CAN'T SOLO A BEAST OF ANY KIND!" Clara yelled, looking back and forth between everyone in the room.
"Just breathe. We'll explain it all in time. How's the outfit?" Ellis asked.
"Um… it's comfortable, and really soft," she replied nervously. Clara moved around the room and swung her knife a couple of times.
"Looks good, I'll keep the measurements for later," Laura said, jotting down some notes and retreating to the back of the shop.
The clothes Clara wore reminded her of a martial arts uniform she saw in tv shows, but instead of white, it was made from several shades of green. There were also a few details made out of red as per Clara's request.
"Hah, you look like an elf on the shelf!" Hol exclaimed. The half drunk bottle in his hand was swinging slowly from side to side.
"You look great. After we get some armor you'll be ready for anything," Ellis said, ignoring Hol's drunk remarks.
"And that anything? What does that consist of?" Clara worriedly asked. Ellis thought for a moment and tapped something on his crystal jar. From the item several images jumped up like level, a few small monsters, and a person with a sword.
"When you typically play games, you beat weak monsters at first to gain exp to raise levels, which raise your stats. Then, you sell drops and such to get money and upgrade your gear to match your level, so that you can become stronger. This all makes you stronger to help you fight stronger and stronger monsters."
"Ok, I'm following so far," Clara nodded. She remembered the time her brother tried to get her to play some game on his pc. Lions online or something?
"Good. Now some games have a level cap to keep people from one-shotting bosses with ease to keep the game balanced. Now you, Hol and I are a special case," Ellis continued.
"More special than fancy transforming weapons, that is," Hol perked up at the mention of his name.
"Right. Our main weapon scales in power with us since we can directly get higher level weapons by absorbing the monsters we beat. They can even sometimes surpass our levels after we upgrade them. And we also don't have a soft or hard level cap on us, so we can keep raising our level pretty much forever."
"So… I should just think of this as a game?"
"Eeeeeh, sorta. It's just a world built on different rules than ours. So, we have physics and time flowing forward, but there could be a world with time flowing back or built on stats instead of physics. We just know our world with physics, and where a world built on stats is a game, but there could be a world like this one with a game built on physics rules."
"... ok?"
"I made no sense, did I?" Ellis asked, turning off the hologram slideshow.
"No, no! You explained it pretty well. I'm just having a hard time adjusting. I mean, I died in my world and have no way back, and now I have to adjust to a whole new world as fast as possible while it took me almost 18 years to adjust to mine."
"Well… there could be a way for you to return ba-."
"HOW?!" Clara asked and grabbed Ellis' shoulders. It didn't hurt him, but it caught Ellis off guard.
"So, when the hero, you, gets summoned for a mission, upon completion of said mission you get to either stay or go back with a wish. You can go back and be rich in your world, or be better looking," Hol exclaimed, absorbing the empty bottle and pulling out another one.
"So what about you two?" Clara questioned, turning to the drunk man.
"We got summoned to get rid of a guy hell bent on world domination. The reason I decided to stay here is because I get to go onto adventures with my friends and have superpowers," Ellis said with a smile.
"I stayed cause I was drunk. But I got to have free booze and a giant ship which beats a 9 to 5," Hol blurted out.
"So if I help this world I get to go back with a wish?"
"Yep/pretty much," Hol and Elis replied simultaneously.
"So what was I summoned for?" Clara questioned. Ellis and Hol glanced over at each other.
"Well… you know those tower-defense games that send monsters in waves? Each wave is bigger and harder than the last?" Ellis began to explain.
"I saw a few like that, yes," Clara replied. Ellis smiled in response.
"Well, this world is going through something similar. About a week ago a giant hourglass started moving. According to it, a wave will happen and monsters will attack us. But not much is known beyond that other than a previous holy hero, like you, has fought them back and defended this world. That was a while ago. We summoned you since the threat seems to be coming back for round 2."
"EH?! So I have to fight a bunch of monsters?! I can't even fight other people!" Clara exclaimed and began to shift around in a panic.
"Don't worry! Think of it as a video game. Beat up weaker monsters to get exp, get levels, get stats, and hit stronger monsters with your knife," Ellis said, trying to calm her down. But this seemed to only make her panic worse.
"That seems really violent. Can't I just use a bow and help you guys from behind? Or a gun?"
"I wish you could, but there are a few problems with that. First, guns aren't as good as in our world. If a gun's attack is 1, it will deal 1 damage even if you shoot someone at point blank. And also, that knife is unfortunately the only thing you're allowed to use as a weapon," he replied with a heavy sigh. His jar transformed into a small white and golden form that he clipped onto his hip before continuing. "By the way, you should probably check the status and weapon stats now before we get you some armor."
Clara breathed out a long sigh as she focused on the little icon in the corner of her vision.
Clara Carnell
Class: Cooking Hero LV 1
Equipment: Small Knife (Legendary Weapon), Custom Martial Outfit Uniform
Skills: None
Magic: None
Clara pressed on the small knife on screen and a tree of lines leading to icons leading to lines popped up. The weapon tree expanded from her status and crawled all around the room. It looked like she was inside a tree where every leaf got replaced by empty knife icons.
Clara waved her hand around to touch them, but her hand phased through them, causing Hol to laugh.
"You look like a crazy person waving their arms around," he burped out. She looked around in confusion.
"You guys don't see this?" she asked, pointing to the only filled in glowing icon.
"Nope. Your status is exclusive to you."
"Oh…"
She tapped the glowing icon and extra info popped up.
Small Knife
abilities unlocked equip bonus: +2 attack, +1 agility
Below were the attack stats of the weapon.
"Wow…" Clara muttered.
She swung it around a couple more times and let out a heavy sigh.
"Ready?" Ellis asked, startling her. She was so lost in the status menu that she forgot he was there.
"For what?!"
"Call the queen. She should be able to explain everything I forgot to," Ellis explained.
The three of them began to walk back to the call room… well… two. Hol was swaying from side to side and missing almost every turn in his drunken state. At one point Ellis equipped a jar made of rope and dragged Hol along despite his protests.
Clara was getting more and more nervous as time went on.
Who is the queen? Will she dislike me when she sees me? Is she strict? What's a queen like in person in this world?
Clara shivered as she entered the room. She looked at the gem on her knife in wonder.
Why did you pick me? I can't even cook.
The gem seemed to shimmer for a moment, but it was gone the next second. Clara sighed and turned towards the wooden wall as Ellis began to set up the magic phone call.
"Hmm… testing, testing," Ellis tapped on the sphere and Clara heard some static ring out.
"Zzzzz-ing te-zzz-ng. Onl-zzzz-e? Can you-zz-r me now?" A woman's voice came out of the screen. To Clara's surprise, the queen was much younger than she had expected.
Instead of the portraits of old women that Clara was so used to seeing in her world, this queen was likely in her mid twenties. Her straight long hair was an extremely dark color, decorated by a crown made of golden leaves. Her skin was a bit pale, and heavy eye bags could be seen under her silver eyes.
"Hey there! How is our favorite *hic* little queen doing?" Hol yelled while leaning on the doorway. He waved his bottle at the young woman on screen and almost fell over.
The queen sighed and looked at Ellis.
"Is he drunk again?"
"Yeah… sorry bout that. But I needed him away from the, drum roll please, Cooking Hero!" Ellis replied, pointing to Clara. The queen's cold eyes scanned Clara with a hint of doubt, until her eyes fell upon the knife.
"Uh-mmnmm… hel-hello," Clara managed to stammer out. The queen barely glanced at her face and turned towards Ellis.
"Were you short on mana when you summoned the hero? She looks like skin and bones," the queen asked. The tone made Clara shivver, but Hol and Ellis still seemed relaxed.
"Almost. But just thank the knife it gave us something. Cause if this round failed, we would have to go heroless. And I don't think me and Hol can handle this alone. Maybe at level 500 or something."
"I see. Stop by the armory at Tiger's Fang. In the meantime, I'll find her some teachers for the rest. And I need one of you two to…" the queen glanced over at Hol and then turned back to Ellis. "Ellis, stop by my castle. I need you to go take care of something. As for you," she turned to Clara.
"I am Queen Elora. I am pretty busy at the moment, but we'll get to know each other soon. What is your name?"
"C-Clara Carnell," she squeaked out, unable to suppress the slight stuttering.
"Clara. Very well. Till we meet again Clara."
With that, the screen went black.
"What is the tiger fang?" Clara asked with a worried expression on her face. She still remembered the cold glare the queen gave her and it made her break out in a cold sweat.
"Well, we have our local blacksmith on board, but some of the best weapons are on the island of Tiger Fang. Called creativity because the floating island looks like a tiger fang."
"Ah, I see… wait, FLOATING ISLAND?!"
"Yes? I thought I mentioned this before, or did I forget?" Ellis confirmed.
"So uh… i-is everything floating?" Clara asked, shivering at the thought.
"Well, not everything. We have a continent that isn't floating. But most important landmarks are."
"Oh god. Why?" she mumbled.
"They float cause of a floating stone called Unobtanium. Throw it into a magnetic field and it floats like a charm. It's also the reason that our ship floats as well."
"… I see…" she replied, trembling at the new info.
"Don't worry. There are guard rails everywhere. And this ship has about 20 failsafes in case it stops floating."
"Ah, that's good to know," Clara smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Ellis pulled out a small glowing orb out of his jar and Clara watched it transform into another jar.
"What is that?"
"This is a portal skill. Very handy for when I want to get somewhere quickly. You'll get one soon too, so don't worry."
"Why are you setting a waypoint here?" she asked, poking the jar and muttering in awe.
"I need to see what the queen needs me to take care of, and Hol is too drunk for that. And this room is almost always empty anyways. Anyhow, let me show you to your room you'll be staying at and I'll see you in a few hours," Ellis replied, leading Clara into the hallway.
They went past several rooms, with Clara getting a small peek at the life of people on the ship. There was a large laundry room, a gym, fuel storage, a room full of spinning gears and moving parts, a pool, a pool game room, an almost empty pub, a cafeteria, and a small weapon storage.
The bedrooms were just around the corner according to Ellis, but the two were suddenly interrupted when a large butcher knife broke through a wall, flew across the hallway, and dug itself into the other wall just inches away from Clara's face.
"EEEEP! WHAT WAS THAT?!" the girl screamed in a panic.
"GET OOOOOUUUT!" a loud gruff voice yelled from the kitchen. "THIS DISH IS A DISHONOR TO YOU, TO THE CULINARY ARTS, TO YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR COW!"
The door flew off its hinges as a crying man was thrown out of the room. As he tried to get up, a plate full of burnt food crashed onto his head, forcing him back to the ground. As loud footsteps got closer, the man gave up on getting up and crawled away on all fours.
"Anyone seen Ellis?! I need him to get me another pupil whose arms don't grow from their ass!" the man yelled, walking out of the room. The man was tall and had quite a lot of muscle. His hair was blonde and eyes light blue. And if she had to compare him to anyone, he had the aura and energy of a famous chef from her world.
As he sighed he spotted Ellis and Clara and smiled. His smile sent a shiver down Clara's spine.
"Ah sh*t," Ellis mumbled.
"Ellis! There you are! And with a new pupil for me to train! I was just going to ask you for a fresh batch. Alright, c'mon! We have to hurry for today's feast!" he spat out word after word without taking a breath, and grabbed Clara's hand.
"Uuh what, uh, am, E-Ellis! ELLIS HELP!" she yelled as the man pulled her into the kitchen. Ellis shrugged and pointed to his jar.
"Sorry, but duty calls. I'll pick you up later, I promise. Waypoint Container!" with a flash of light, Ellis was gone.
"ELLIIIIIIIIIIIS!" Clara yelled to the empty hallway as the man from the kitchen dragged her to the now doorless room.