The polearm felt rather light in April’s arms. She twirled it around, trying to pinpoint any increase in her ‘Strength’ stat the HUD showed. Realising she was naked and didn’t know how much the weapon weighed without the stat boost, she blushed.

  April hurried to put down the polearm, grabbed a sizable rock, hefted it in her palm, and then picked the weapon back up. She furrowed her brows while waiting for Emma to come closer.

  There was an increase. April’s eyes travelled back to the brown wooden shaft and shiny, reflective steel axe bde and spearhead at the top. The bance was good, and it looked sturdy for what it was. But she had doubts she could use it efficiently. It wasn’t exactly a rifle she had grown accustomed to in her previous battles.

  “How?” Emma’s stare was full of disbelief. “How are you so…”

  “We must move.” April moved to grab the woman, but Emma avoided her. “We really have to.” She pointed at the sky, where a couple of raiders noticed their comrade’s demise and were heading here to investigate.

  Emma followed the finger and failed to avoid April's second attempt at grabbing her. She yelped as she was lifted up in the princess's carry and gred. “I can run. I am not slow.”

  “Of course not,” April didn’t argue, finding it a bit awkward to carry both the long weapon and Emma. The rocks were also poking at her feet unpleasantly. She gnced at the dead raider’s thick leather boots but decided against taking them as they looked to be far too rge for her or Emma’s feet.

  Besides, despite it being annoying, her skin wasn’t easy to pierce unless she stepped on an actual bde. “But I am faster,” April repeated, accidentally touching an inappropriate pce. “... it was an accident.” She began running, trying to find a pce to hide. Or at least a spot where it would be easier to hold their ground.

  “You accidentally touched my ass.” Emma’s voice chilled even more than the cold air. “And you didn’t answer. How? How are you this strong? Where are we? What happened? What was the light before we lost consciousness and woke up here? What… What is all of this…” she helplessly trailed off.

  April had no answers. She still remembered the first days… Not just days, weeks, and months; she had helplessly wandered a new hostile world. While people around her tried to rebuild and explore, she could just fight. There had been no good answers then, and there were none now. Emma was already doing good by not breaking down into tears.

  “We are in a new world,” April began, a little confused about something. “You should know that.” She observed the woman’s reaction. “Instials Union was very adamant about teaching people about the first transfer.”

  “The first…” Emma’s expression was thoughtful. “But the Instials Union was dissolved hundreds of years ago… Most of their territories were destroyed by the Machines… Their knowledge depositories too…”

  “Hundreds of years…” April’s mouth was dry as her attention travelled to one simple number dispyed on her HUD—[Age: 542]. So many years… She had been left rotting for so many years.

  The absentmindedness didn’t escape Emma. "What’s wrong?”

  April… Didn’t feel like expining. “So you don’t know about the Overseers.” She found it impossible. It should be common knowledge.

  “I…” Emma tried to remember. “I do… There are… were. There were theories. Too much knowledge was lost. We reformed… Then we did it again. It happened several times until we finally pushed the Machines back and destroyed their control centre. The Overseers…were just a tale.” She knitted her brows, trying to recall unsuccessfully. “What are they?”

  Once again, April was stumped. “Uh,” she tried to find the best way to expin and failed. “Well, nobody knows. Their MO is simple. They drop humans on a dangerous pnet. Wait for us to clean it up, and once we have, they come and gather us to repeat the cycle… We think.”

  That was the best guess, the brightest of April’s time—she cringed at the thought of her being ancient—she could come up with. The newest transfer just reinforced the guess. And despite her fears of asking for more information, Emma has just one thing to say.

  “I see…” The bck hair fluttered in the wind as Emma stared at the empty sky until something caught her attention. “They are close now.”

  “They are.” April still had not found a suitable spot. She didn’t think the trees would help. The scattered army had retreated into the woods, and these eagles could see through the canopy. They would find her there.

  “There are people there,” Emma spoke again, pointing to the side where three naked men were looking at them with suspicion.

  These three men were old, out of shape, and scared. They looked like civilians thrown out in the wild without anything to their name—which they likely were. “Everyone got taken here. They are scattered all over the world.” She paused, waiting for Emma to react, and when the woman didn’t, she had to ask. “Do you have a family?”

  “Hmm?”

  “They might be here, somewhere,” April tried to keep her voice gentle.

  Emma trembled before sighing. “Being tactful doesn’t suit you.” She pulled away, the bck hair sticking to her face. “They are dead. I had some friends, but… I joined the military for a reason. The most I had were comrades, and even then…”

  “That’s… Was that because you were—”

  “What?” Emma’s head snapped towards her. “I was what?”

  “Never mind.” April decided to keep the words ‘unpleasant to interact with and sharp-tongued’ behind her teeth. She also chose to not address the fact that ‘she’ was the one in charge and ‘she’ should be able to speak freely. Something about this woman made her hold back.

  “What do we do about them?” Emma also decided to move on. She looked at the halberd in April’s arms with apprehension. “Can you use it? And you didn’t answer—can you use magic? You are impossibly quick and strong.”

  “You ask too many questions,” April grumbled, feeling like she was slowly boxed in. The mountain looked scable, but traversing it would leave them too open.

  But there was one option ahead—a gaping maw at the side of a steep wall of rock. The very hole that had spewed out the rge ball of psma that had swallowed the Overseer ship.

  “... I just…” Emma's expression wavered. She turned from a bold warrior, holding her head high, to a disturbed little girl in a snap. “I am scared…” she whispered. “It helps me calm down.” Her mumbles barely carried past her lips. “Keep thinking. Keep asking. Don’t rest. When you rest, the bad thoughts come running. That’s what Hein used to say. But you killed him.”

  “Ah,” April had killed just two men. She had to wonder which one it was—the general or the first soldier she had pummelled to death.

  “Oh,” something occurred to Emma. “You were so fast then too… Brutal… Efficient… Fast… Too fast… Hein was my squadmate. Good man. Bad drinker. You killed him, but now you drag me around. Why? Why… Why… why?”

  But then the moment passed, and Emma’s expression cleared. Her eyes regained calmness and inquisitiveness.

  April’s lips twitched, wondering what she should say. This Hein… She had simply been angry and unprepared for how powerful her new body was. It had been an accident. But how could she tell that to someone who had lost her friend…

  Instead, April chose to speak about how they would proceed. “We will enter that…” She wanted to say ‘cave,’ but now that they were closer to the opening, it became clear it was anything but.

  The opening that had vomited out the very powerful and destructive projectile turned out to be a meticulously carved entrance resembling that of a grand fortification. The rocks surrounding it were decorated with engravings of squiggles—that could only be a writing she didn’t recognise. Its surface was smooth and level otherwise, clearly a work of a skilled craftsman. The front of the pce was burnt and clear, the psma ball having carved a sizable field in its passing, leaving nothing behind.

  All that was missing from the opening into the underground was an actual gate! And as she stepped closer to the pce, inside she also saw stairs leading downwards. Her step slowed down as she searched for any guards. The pce looked lived in, even if there were no obvious paths leading towards the entrance.

  “What is that?” Emma followed April’s gaze and furrowed her brows. “It looks suspicious.”

  There was no need to point that out. She already knew it did. But one look at the sky, and she was running full speed again as the raiders kept multiplying. She could maybe take two of them if she was lucky. But at the moment, there were already six eagles heading for her position.

  “Whatever is in there, we will have to gamble,” April resolved herself, tasting the air—expecting it to have a note of energy to it. Or at least heat remains from the recent attack the pce had produced.

  But there was nothing. The entrance was quiet and serene. She could not see much through the darkness, her artificial eye trying to adjust to the ck of light. She inhaled, knowing this was the st chance to turn back.

  Yet, she stepped forward, passing an invisible line, and she suddenly felt like she had stepped into a different world. It might have been an overstatement, but there was definitely something otherworldly about the air inside the cave. Her right eye quickly adjusted to the surroundings, showing a straight path forward, and she noted the ck of any signs of something capable of destroying the Overseer ships passed through here.

  The woman in her hands shifted, gring at the darkness. “Won’t this be a dead end?” Emma sniffed the air.

  “It is still better than fighting in the open. This tunnel is wide enough to fight with a halberd while narrow enough for us to not get surrounded,” April reasoned while continuing forward, her naked feet spping against the cold stone floor.

  But Emma remained unconvinced. “What about magic, though?”

  “...”

  “You didn’t think about it, huh? Are you actually an idiot?”

  “This is the best option, and that’s it!” April snapped back, not admitting to anything. “I am not stupid. Why don’t I just drop you?”

  “Why don’t you?” Emma wondered again. “I asked before… But why did you pick me up?”

  The repeated question made her hesitate. There was nothing she could use as a distraction from the topic, either. The corridor remained quiet and empty, with the occasional steps leading them beneath the mountain’s base. “I wanted to learn…” Realising it was too vague, she added more. “Learn about what happened after I… After I was put into a deep slumber.”

  It didn’t seem like Emma understood. She crunched April’s words, trying to understand the reasoning. “You wanted information.” She concluded. “And what do you mean by a slumber?”

  “When you found me…” She stopped, seeing the pathway split. There was also a noise behind them, indicating their pursuers had entered the pce. “Which way?”

  “You are avoiding answering again,” Emma grumbled and gred at the darkness again. “I can’t see.” She finally concluded. “How can you? What are you?”

  April continued to advance, choosing to go left. It led upwards and, hopefully, towards another exit. The air was not stale, meaning there had to be a way the pce was ventited. She just needed to find where the air was getting in and out.

  More sounds in the tunnel startled her. She grew tense, considering if she should put her capture down. There was something…

  “Are they gaining?” Emma looked back before giving up as the darkness refused to split before her gaze.

  “No… That…” April heard it again—the heavy breathing and the click of something hard against the stone. “That sound is coming from ahead.” She prepared for a battle.

  Enkiari