"OOF"
"OW"

Me and someone else both just fell into this room. I thought I was bleeding out but apparently I'm fine now? And where am I?

"Ow ow ow ow" the guy next to me kept saying, clutching his head. I managed to do a break-fall on reflex and just had a bit of pain in my back from the landing, but I think he fell right on his head.

"A-ah, my greatest apologies" one of the other guys in the room said. Wait, we were surrounded! The guy right next to me looked to be about the same age as me, and probably Japanese, while the other guys in the room looked incredibly sketchy, wearing robes that covered most of their body. I get up and notice I'm wearing what looks like Gauntlets. I close my hand into a fist, and as I do, mini-bucklers appear in my hands. The mini-bucklers have a light blue gem in the middle of them. I open my hand again and they disappear. The guy next to me gets up too.

One of the robed guys starts saying something like an incantation.

"I am the source of this power, please mend the person in front of me. Erste Heal."

A faint light shimmers from his hands and almost looks like it gets absorbed into the guy beside me. He then stands up to his full height, and I see he has a sword.

"Thank you, I feel much better now, but what was that?"

"That was healing magic, Lord Sword hero."
"Did you call me the sword…" He now notices the sword in his hands, and starts shaking his arm
"Woah woah woah" I raise my Gauntlets and take a step back. With his shaking his arms the sword is going everywhere, I don't want to risk getting cut by it.
"Ah, I'm sorry" He stops shaking his arm. "The sword is… it's like it's glued to my hand."

The sword in question looked like an iron sword with some gold inlays, and a dark blue gem right on the Hilt.

The main man in the robe talks again "Yes.. All of the legendary weapons are bound to their wielders, and can't leave their person. If you had a sheathe you would be able to let go of the sword"
Me and the guy with the sword look at each other now. I really can't keep calling him 'the guy with the sword', even if it's just in my head.
"I guess we're in this legendary hero business together, huh?"
He slightly hesitates in responding. "Yes, I guess we are"
"My name is Ash, how about you?"
"You can call me Katagi. I suppose more formal introductions can wait until we're more acquainted with our surroundings?"
"I was thinking that too, just in shorter words" I responded with a smile.
He smiled a little too, looking like he was holding back a chuckle. A good little bit of humour helps break the tension in a situation where neither of us know what's going on. Katagi seemed to be rubbing his right eye. Maybe he got something in it?

"Heroes, if you would come with me to see our king, I believe he can tell you all you need to know."

That seemed to be the best course of action for now, so we followed him up several flights of stairs, and through several corridors until we arrived at the throne room. There were three other people in the throne room. One of them was quite obviously the king. He was sitting on the throne and wearing a crown, and one appeared to be the king's attendant, who was standing near his throne, but off to the side. And standing in front of the throne a respectful distance away, was someone who had a giant axe strapped to their back. The length of the axe appeared to be only a little shorter than its wielder.
The man with the axe spoke "There you two are. I've been waiting!"
The attendant piped up "It has been five minutes"
"Heroes, please line up before me and introduce yourselves." The king seemed to have a worried expression when we came in, but now that he's addressing us he sounds as commanding as a king should be. I don't know what to think of him yet.

"My name is Sorezo Katagi. I am 18, and was about to finish high school before being summoned."
So that's his full name. In Japanese culture you say the last name until you become close, right? I'll keep calling him Katagi for now.
"Alright I'll go next." The guy with the axe said that. Man, I should really break that habit.
"My name is Ben Bernhard. I am 22, and was fighting off some monsters attacking my family's farm when the Axe chose me as its wielder."

"And you?" The king looks at me now.
"My name is Ash Kane. I am 17 and… I'm not sure what else to say about me"

It would be pretty embarrassing to say I died in a fight, right before I'm supposed to serve as a legendary hero. Although I don't know exactly what we're supposed to be doing. Katagi beat me to the punch.
"Your majesty, why are we here?"
"My apologies. I need to introduce myself, and I will explain the plights that befall our lands. My name is Hersch Einsbrey XII, and I rule the kingdom of Einsbrey, where you all are right now. It is the biggest kingdom on the mainland. The reason you have been summoned is because of a series of natural disasters happening all over the world. My task to all of you is to discover your powers as heroes, and use them to help the people of this world"
A very fair task. I could see Katagi nodding as well. Ben was still smiling. Is he always smiling?

The King continued "Furthermore, I have received a report that in one month's time a far greater calamity may befall this world. Your secondary task is to prepare for this."
Ben then cut in. "I checked out the Dragon Hourglass on my way here and it shot a beam of light at my weapon, and now I see a countdown that's about a month. Does that have something to do with it?"
"Yes, it does. All of these calamities started when the sand in the hourglass started moving, so I fear whatever may come to pass is related to the time in the hourglass running out."
But what do we do right now? What can we do?
"What should we do right now?" I ask. I realized after I said it I didn't include any honorifics, but the king didn't seem to mind.
"Right now you should check your statuses, and have Ben show you around and explain what you need to know about this world. I will give you all 200 silver to start you off."
"Understood!" Ben replied, and we all followed Ben out of the throne room.

"What does 'check our status' mean?" I ask Ben.

"Do you see the three dots on the bottom right corner of your vision? Focus on those."
"Oh I did notice that, but I thought I just had something in my eye." Katagi responds.
"Woah!" Both me and Katagi exclaimed when screens appeared in front of us. Well I assumed a screen popped up for him too.
My screen said:
Ash Kane | LVL 1
ATK: 9
DEF: 11
MAG: 6
MDEF: 9
SPE: 10

I guess if I'm a brawler, my magic wouldn't be very high. I'm surprised my defensive stats are as high as they were though. There were also a bunch of secondary stats like Strength, Vitality, and Endurance. There were a few more, but they didn't look important. Strength was I guess how physically strong I am. It's pretty weird that how hard I can hit and how much I can lift could be different. They weren't, but it's possible someone's attack could be wildly different from their strength. Vitality appeared to be how well your body reacted to poisons and sicknesses, and Endurance was physical stamina.

"This is like a video game…" I start saying. Katagi is seemingly having a harder time understanding this.
"Are these my capabilities as a numerical value?" Katagi asks
"Yep." Replies Ben. "How are your stats looking?"
"Well I'm level one, and I assume Katagi is too. My stats seem pretty focused towards defence and speed, but still with enough attack to pack a punch."
"Yes, I am level one too. All of my stats are 11?"
"Oh those are very good stats for level one. Understandable, since the weapons are making you stronger than you'd normally be. For a normal person in this world, their stats at level one are between 5 and 8."
"Why are his stats all higher than mine?" I ask Ben
"His Sword is a Holy weapon, which is more powerful than our Legendary weapons. At my level he'll most likely be stronger than me too."
Ben is being pretty helpful, but I realize if he's a resident of this world, and somebody who fights…
"Ben, how about your stats?"
Ben's smile grows even wider like he was waiting for me to ask that question.
"Well if you must know, I'm level 29, and my attack stat is over 100!"
My eyes widened in surprise. He had such a lead on us! Although if I had to guess the stat spread of the axe, it seems likely his highest stat would be attack by quite a bit. Katagi had been pretty silent through this.
"Hey Katagi, how are you doing?"

"Ah! I was looking through the menus we have access to and I found a help menu."

Ben immediately looks deflated upon hearing that. He probably wanted to boast about his knowledge on the weapons a bit more. Me and Katagi read through the help menu while we were going towards the main town. Ben had apparently read it earlier.
I'll summarize what I read. Our weapons can absorb materials to gain new abilities and stat boosts, so I should try to absorb everything I can find. My weapon can also copy other weapons of the same type, and gain bonuses from those as well. The weapons I get have two stats, the ones I get when I equip it, and then some permanent boost I get after having the weapon equipped for a period of time, called Equip Bonus, and Unlock Bonus respectively. There's also something that sounds exclusive to me, being called the "Gauntlet Power Up Method". This power up method makes me receive one point every time I level up, then allocate those points to skills to make them more powerful. It's useless to me until I get a skill, but it sounds like it will be very helpful later on. One last thing, all heroes have access to something called SP. I don't know what it stands for, but it's the energy consumed when heroes use their weapon exclusive skills. For that reason, only heroes are aware of SP.

On the way to the market I absorbed a pebble, a stick, and a leaf and got some unimpressive looking weapons out of it.

Rock Gauntlet, Unlock Bonus: +1 DEF
Equip bonus: +1 DEF

Wood Gauntlet, Unlock Bonus: +1 MAG
Equip Bonus: +1 MAG, -1 DEF

Leaf Gauntlet, Unlock Bonus: Plant Appraisal
Equip Bonus: +1 ATK, +1 SPE, -1 MDEF

At least plant appraisal sounded pretty useful. For the time being I kept the Leaf Gauntlets equipped to unlock it. I had also tried putting a silver coin in my gauntlets, but instead of giving me a new weapon I saw a new number in the top right of my vision: 100G. Ben then explained the money of this world. One silver is worth 100 copper, and one gold is worth 100 silver. Platinum coins exist too, but they are very rarely used, and are worth 100 gold. I tested if I could take the silver out again, and I could, so I put half of my money into my gauntlets.
It seemed like a pretty long walk, but we finally arrived in the market. I took a look at produce to try and guess how much this money is worth compared to money in my world and concluded one silver coin is about ten dollars. It looked like the cost of raw materials was the same as my world, but finished products were cheaper in comparison.

Even now that I'm at the market I don't know what I'm going to get. Of course there isn't just produce here, there's shops for almost everything around here, but I didn't come here for anything specific.

Ben puts his hands on me and Katagi's shoulders.
"Alright gang let's split up!"
Ben then dashes away from us, leaving me and Katagi in the middle of the market. Both me and Katagi stood there for a minute just looking around and unsure of what to do. It appears neither of us are very social.
Katagi then spoke up "I'm going to find a weapon shop." Katagi then set out in the opposite direction Ben did.
That was a good idea, but would I find Gauntlets at a weapon shop? If it was a general smith maybe, but if not, I should probably look for a shop that sells specifically armor, since I'd be more likely to find Gauntlets there. I tried buying some produce to see if it would unlock more weapons, but after putting some produce in it it's clear I wouldn't get much more weapons out of that.

Fruit Gauntlets, Unlock Bonus: Fruit Appraisal
Equip Bonus: Mp restore (small), -1 DEF

Vegetable Gauntlets, Unlock Bonus: Vegetable Appraisal
Equip Bonus: Sp restore (small) -1 MDEF

Meat Gauntlets, Unlock Bonus: Meat Appraisal
Equip Bonus: Hp restore (small) -1 ATK

I believe the restore bonus increases my natural regeneration of that thing. Unfortunately I haven't unlocked Plant Appraisal yet, so I don't know how the appraisal skills work. I still think Plant appraisal might be the most useful out of those.

I went back to looking for an armor shop, although I ran into a problem I never considered. The signs are written in a language I don't know. I just look for a sign that has either an anvil or armor on it. As I'm walking down the road looking at the signs as I go, I end up bumping into someone.
"Oh I'm sorry, I was looking at the signs"

The person I bumped into was a girl with black hair. Somewhat thin, but looked to be also somewhat muscular. She looked to be about my age.
"I'm sorry too, I was looking at the produce.."

"Why are you over here then?"
"It's probably best if I stay away from it. I can't buy it anyway…"
Her stomach growled.

Ah what the hell I don't have much else to do at the moment anyway.

"I'll buy some food for you. In exchange could you please show me where the armor shop is?"
"Really?!" She was looking at me with stars in her eyes. "Ahem" she calms down a bit.
"Are you a starting adventurer too?"
Well I guess I am
"Yes?"
"I'll also show you the ropes as well! Well as much as I can. I've only officially been an adventurer for a few days."
"That's a few more days than me, so sure thing."

We ended up going to a restaurant. The food was about one silver, close to what I was expecting. I tried some of the food in this world as well. Compared to food from my world it tasted a little off, probably due to different worlds produce evolving differently, and it also tasted pretty thin. The thin flavor I couldn't figure out. The hungry girl looked like she liked it though. Oh yeah, I'm going to break that habit, and I'll start by asking her name.
"What's your name?"
"My name is Maria. I've always wanted to be an adventurer, but my family was against it. I ended up spending the last of my money buying my equipment. It doesn't help that I also picked the worst time to become an adventurer…"
"What do you mean by worst time?"
"Starting about two days ago the level of all the monsters in the area went up. Since then the only thing I could hunt on my own were the Cardboard snakes right outside of Castle Town. But they don't give any exp, and the cardboard they leave behind barely sells for anything. The last thing I ate was an apple I could just barely afford.."
"What monsters were you hunting before?"
"The next strongest monster in the area is a Killer Rabbit. The last time I fought one it almost managed to bite my hand off. Now that it's stronger than last time I don't want to try my luck."
"How about we travel together? Maybe together we could beat that rabbit and get out of this catch 22."
"What's a catch…- never mind, I understand what you're trying to say. That sounds good to me. I'll send a party invite."
Party? Oh yeah I think I saw something about that in one of my menus, but I didn't put any thought into it. I definitely didn't think I'd be travelling together with anyone this early.

Party Invite received from Maria Alsely

I accept it.

"It's still pretty early in the day, so let's get going!" Maria stands up from the table.
"Yeah, I think it's about time to get started!" I replied with a smile.