Chapter Two

  “Y-You are in the village Siltha, in the center of the Draconic Kingdom… master demon.” The old man was gaunt to say the least, his cheeks sunken, as were his eyes, with dark circles beneath, and his body was not much better than skin and bones. Ulbert listened to his answer and looked around at the others as the villagers, in ones and twos, left the cages in which they’d been cast. Some of them were better off, but none of them tremendously so.

  “Draconic Kingdom…” Ulbert repeated the phrase, “Siltha village… these were definitely not locations in Yggdrasil…”

  The old man gasped, his sunken brown eyes widened.

  “Yggdrasil?” He asked with the words slowly drawn from his mouth.

  That had Ulbert’s renewed attention, the NPCs of the game never used the name of the game itself, that would be far too meta, something the shitty devs were known to hate. “You know the word, old man?”

  “From the bards, my lord. Only what they sing in their songs and tell in their legends…” The old man bit his lip, and sensing the deep yellow eyes of the goat faced demon intensifying, he went on. “It’s said that the six gods who founded the Slane Theocracy, came from such a place. That every hundred to two hundred years… more come. The Greed Kings and Demon Gods also came from there… even the Elf King is said to have descended from that place.”

  “Elf King? What is his name?” Ulbert demanded.

  “He only calls himself ‘The Elf King’ he has no name, My Lord.” The peasant shook his head, “Not that I know of. If my Lord Demon wishes to know more, my lord would need a bard or historian, and my lord will find none of those where the beastmen rampage…”

  “The beastmen… why are they here?” Ulbert demanded and filed the previous statement away for later.

  The old man slumped from his knees to all fours and stared at the ground, “I… I don’t know. Always in the past, they have raided, crossed over, seized our people, and then gone back to their lands. We have been a larder or…” He spat into the dirt, the little glob of white spittle coalescing beneath his eyes and turning brown with the soaked in earth, “breeding stock for them to harvest as we do cattle. But now they invade, they have eaten half our country. Our Queen fights, our armies fight, but always we fail. Our heroes continue their struggle, but it is in vain…”

  He raised his head, his entire body shaking as he looked up at the goat demon, “Were you summoned here to fight them… or…?” He shivered, “Are we now just your meat instead of theirs…”

  Ulbert bristled, the beastmen reminded him far, far too much of the CEOs of his old world. ‘I never thought I’d be grateful for the saturation of the isekai genre… at least I get the concept of what’s happening to me…’ He thought to himself and then pondered, ‘I’m here… so what do I do? Those beastmen are nothing, not even worthy of being called trash mobs at my level. And if this is another world, I should find out how well my skills work. Damn I wish Momonga was here. He’d have some idea of what to do.’

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘I could go find this country’s Queen. Is she just another oppressive tyrant… or is she a more heroic figure? He does say she fights the invaders. But even wolves will fight for sheep against other wolves invading their territory. She might be no better than they are.’

  ‘So many questions…’ Ulbert pondered more and more, ‘Was this invasion happening everywhere? What about those gods, the way he talks about them, they’re gone, they could be other Players. What if I wasn’t brought here alone? What if… what if the rest of the guild is here?’ On impulse muttered the phrase, [GM Call]. Nothing happened.

  He reached out to tap with one finger to bring up his data screen.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Wait though…’ He thought as he felt the ghost of a change when he made the attempt to access his inventory. He tried to concentrate. His MP was the first thing he saw, followed by his HP, stats, exp, and his unfortunately almost empty inventory. All he had on him was a world item he’d picked up. ‘If I concentrate, they’re all visible to me. But the game functions are no good.’

  ‘Think, Ulbert, think. First you were standing in a swamp, you were about to enter Nazarick and surprise Momonga with the others. And then you were here. There’s no way this is a game update. So what did Punito Moe say? When you’ve eliminated all other options, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So I really have been isekaied to another world…’ He swallowed the lump in his throat and thought about the world he’d left behind.

  ‘My brothers… my sisters… my family… there’s not much chance of going home again, if this is anything like fiction, but even if I could go back and see them… who would willingly return to that world? It’s not like they cared that much…’ It was still sad, and on some level, a core in the pit of his heart, he felt a vague sort of ache that he knew would never really vanish.

  But up above, the sun was bright, the air around him was clean, the field he’d found himself in was beautiful. Of course… there were monsters here that were but fictions in the old world. ‘Then again?’ Ulbert paused his thought and stretched his limbs out, the strength felt real, and clearly it was real enough, given the pile of beastmen corpses. ‘Those monsters are pathetic compared to me. Are they all like that?’ He pondered without answer and then realized...

  ‘I need to test out my skills, and… besides…’ His teeth clenched and he swiped his hand away to cast some of the blood from his claws, ‘That felt really… really good.’ The old man was silent the whole time, and the villagers were still and staring, human women and men clutching one another and their children, too afraid to flee or speak, lest they provoke their rescuer to become their new oppressor.

  “This will be fun.” He said, and demon wings sprang from his goat back, he grabbed his tophat, tipped it toward the human and said, “Thank you for the information, human.”

  ‘I might as well step into my new role.’ He chuckled internally, “In gratitude, I will spare you all. Go, and tell those you meet that ‘the game has changed.’ And say it exactly that way.” He instructed in a booming voice, ‘A nice enigmatic phrase is always best for circumstances like these.’ He thought, and then jumped skyward, his wings carrying him higher and higher with every beat of their batlike leather, the wind so high even he could not hear whatever the old man and his people shouted, whether it was a question or praise or what, he neither knew, nor cared to know.

  After all…

  There was a new game to explore, and Ulbert’s heart thundered with excitement as he began to play it.