Friends in a Foreign Land

They continued walking and joking around in their newfound languages when Hazel spoke up, “Who all is a dwarf now? Is Alexis a dwarf?"

"You’re just hoping she’s shorter than you." Willow quipped.

"No, Alexis isn’t a dwarf. I was told that Liam, Celeste, Miguel, and Dakota are all dwarves now."

Nolan looked confused, "Dakota? But he was taller than me."

"Yeah, evidently he pissed off his goddess. He's a dwarf now." Arden said with a laugh.

"Dad, my race doesn’t say human. It says Human/Elf" Willow said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, mine too," added Hazel

Arden shrugged, "Y’all have been saying Regina was your mom since she took over when your bio-mom left. And she’s an elf now so I guess it makes sense. The gods took you literally. That'll create some fun conversations when we have to explain that Regina and I have never been more than friends. Speaking of Regina; she, Alexis, Eric, Ramiro, and Mira are somewhere to the southwest. All the dwarves and Wendell are together somewhere to the north. If we’re heading in the correct direction, we’ll find the village of Wildemill today. I don’t know what all your deities told you, but our marching orders are to try and reconnect with our groups while helping all the places we pass through on the way. They hinted at there being something else for us to do but wouldn't come out and say it. A city called Dugu Senuma was mentioned several times so I'm thinking we'll end up there. But when I asked about it, I was told it was about a thousand miles away and not to worry about it."

"A thousand miles!?!? Why couldn’t they just start us off there?" Hazel asked.

"We’re not strong enough," said Nolan quietly. "Robani mentioned the city as well. He teased it as if it was a goal to aspire to." Nolan adopted a deep voice, "'Who knows, you may even become powerful enough to one day cleanse all the undead from Dugu Senuma and return it to it's former glory!'," Nolan continued in his normal voice, "He went on to tell me that no one has gotten close to that city and survived in hundreds of years. We have to get much stronger before we go there."

"Exactly! It seems like the gods are hiding some things. I want us to get stronger as quickly as we can. If I'm just being paranoid, it won't hurt. If I'm correct and there's trouble coming, we'll be better prepared to handle it," lectured Arden. "And while we’re all starting off at level 1, the gods did bring our skills and some of our stats over so we are better off that most level ones."

“This is going to be a new experience,” Nolan said. “I’ve been a lot of fights but if this is anything like most fantasy worlds, life is cheap and we’ll have to take them in order to keep ours. I don’t like that.”

“Yeah, killing folks is one of those things that stays with you. Perhaps the healing spells I have will work on mental trauma as well. Either way though, we need to get some experience. Let’s see if we can form a party and start hunting as we travel today. Maybe bring down some deer or something here in the forest." Arden went silent for a moment before saying "There we go. You get the prompts?"

[You've been invited to party with Arden]

Once everyone stated they had received and accepted the invitation, Arden continued, "Great. I can see your health bars and such now, too! Looks like because I formed the party I can influence the split on experience. I’m going to just go with an even split, if that’s okay with everyone.”

Seeing no objections, Arden continued, “Now we start grinding levels. Cilena stressed that while we are stronger for our level than most folks, we’re still going to be weaker than folks who have more than a few levels on us. Over the next few years we're going to get to see and do things we've only ever imagined. Some of it will require us to get dirty. We'll probably fight some monsters and even some people. But we work together and keep a central guiding principal, to make the world better for us having been here."

Arden paused and let the weight of the moment sink in as they walked. After a few moments, Willow spoke up, "Dad, did you get that from a boy scout handbook or something?"

They all burst out laughing.

Arden pretended to be angry, "I knew I should have left y'all at home!"

"How many levels are there?" asked Willow, getting them back on topic.

Arden shrugs, "I didn’t think to ask."

Nolan spoke up, "I was told there is no cap but that each 25 levels is considered a tier. Something like 50% of the population doesn’t make it past 25. Of the 50% that make it to tier 2, most will never exceed level 50. Tier three goes from 51 to 75 and I was told that only about 15% of people make it that far. 5% make it to tier 4. And less than 1% of the world makes it to tier 5, which starts at level 101."

“Well, there’s our first goal. Make it to tier 2,” Arden said with grin. Before he could say anything else a screen appeared in his vision.

“You just had to saying something, didn’t you,” Nolan said jokingly. “See what you did?”

“Our first quest! Sweet.” Arden replied.

“Actually,” Willow cut in, “We already had two quests. Have you not looked at the quest page?”

Immediately Arden, Nolan, and Hazel all pulled up their quest page.

Arden quickly pulled up the quests:

“Interesting. I suddenly feel compelled to find and complete quests,” stated Nolan.

“I think that’s the point,” said Hazel with a chuckle.

Shaking his head, Arden replied, “I fear that soon we will have more quests than we know what to do with. That said, if you get a quest that the rest of us don’t have, see if you can share it with us. Quest rewards will help us to level up faster.”

After getting confirming nods all around, Arden continued, “Let's see, what else was there… Oh, time is a bit different. I already told you about the 25-hour days. A week here is only 5 days. The days aren’t named, just numbered. Folks who work for others typically work 4 days a week. Each month has exactly 5 weeks. And a year has 15 months. And there are 5 holidays that happen in between the various months. Those holidays mark the change of seasons, of which there are five as well. I forgot to ask what the names of the months were, though. We’ll have to learn those along the way."

Nolan looked over at Arden with an eyebrow raised, “Seems the gods have a thing for fives.”

“Yeah. It’s kinda strange. I’m surprised our status page only shows four stats instead of five.”

"Before you go down that rabbit hole,” Willow cut in, “When I asked if I’d be able to talk to Mom or Alexis, Aservia said that each party has a way to communicate with the other parties.”

"That’s true. I have two sending stones. One to communicate with Regina’s party and one to communicate with Liam’s party."

"Oh, I have one of those, too," Hazel said happily. "And so does Ewan. That way he and I will be able to keep in touch if we're ever split up."

"If we have these stones, why haven’t you used them to reach out? Nolan queried.

"Each stone can only connect to it’s partner once per day. I figured I’d save ours until this evening. Seems like the others are thinking the same."

The party continued moving through the forest chatting away without much thought when Arlo suddenly started barking and ran forward to the top of a small rise about 20 yards ahead. Willow started to yell at the wolf but Arden shushed her. Nolan was already near the top of the hill, his new monk speed allowing him to nearly keep up with the wolf. He dropped to his stomach and crawled over the rise. The rest of the party eased up behind him.

Nolan slid back down a little ways and whispered, "Goblins. Honest to god Goblins. If the new body and status screens didn’t convince me I was in a new world, the nearly dozen goblins on the other side of this hill damn sure does."

"We’re not ready to fight that many. We should go around." Arden whispered.

"And risk them following us? Look, they’re not that big, maybe just a bit taller than Ewan."

“Have you ever killed someone or even fought for your life? This isn’t something to rush into, especially with my daughters and grandson here,” Arden pleaded.

"Looks like they know we’re here,” Hazel said from the top of the rise. “They’ve formed a circle and are whispering too."

Arden looked up and saw Hazel at the top of the rise, looking at the goblins. "When did you go up there? Get back down here."

While Arden scrambled back up the hill, Hazel continued to narrate what she was seeing. “Oh gross. They’ve carved a man up and have been cooking and eating him," Hazel said as she stood to her feet and yelled out a magic spell before throwing a bolt of fire at the goblins.

“Shit!” Arden yelled as he hopped to his feet and equipped his weapon and armor. Everyone else jumped up and ran up the hill, everyone equipping their weapons and armor as they moved. They all arrived at the top of the hill in time to see nine creatures all standing around three feet tall, with foreheads slopped back between pointed ears. Their eyes were a sickly yellow and their skin tone ranged from gray to green. One of the goblins was screaming while patting out flames on his chest while the rest were drawing weapons.

[Congratulations! You’ve learned Goblin!]

Arden stopped at the new system message and called out to the goblins, “Why did you kill that man?”

The goblins all looked to one another, surprised that this human spoke their language.

“Can we discuss this?” Arden tried again.

One of the goblins threw his spear at Arden. “Guess not,” Arden said as he blocked the spear with his shield and charged forward behind Nolan, who had reacted a touch quicker.

"Protect Ewan," Willow told Arlo as she cast a spell that made her staff glow green and charged down the hill chasing after her dad and uncle.