A middle aged world elf man with short curly red hair and a light brown complexion in simple pants and tunic stepped up. "The lady's right." He extended his hand. "The name's Torcán," he said as my NA filled in the basics about him. He was a crafter with a farming specialty that had been added to our 'expedition' to help set up the new settlement.
"I was in the (...)." He paused as he seemed to struggle to find the right words. "The past incarnation of the world?" He nodded proudly. "You have to do, and by doing, learn. Just remember, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Take your time and experiment, and we'll have a whole base before you know it."
"How are you so calm about all this dude?" Sé asked.
"About what?"
"Dying and reincarnating?"
He bent over laughing, then blinked and looked Sé in the face. "Oh, you're serious."
"Y-yeah. What do you think is happening?"
He shrugged. "We're in a game."
"We are?"
The farmer nodded, then pursed his lips. "We went through character creation. What else could it be? A crazy god recreating a System for its maniacal plots? Naw."
I looked between the two, unsure what to make of this reality. If this was a game, I should be able to log off, right? While there was a menu I could think to bring up, there was no log off or exit button. "I don't think we're in a game."
He waved it off. "Well, no matter where we are, we'll be fine. Just take it slow, and we'll get there in the end." He made a wide gesture with his arms. "So, my main focus is on food production --farming, cooking, that sort of thing. What kind of specializations are you looking at..." He paused as he looked into his NA. "Aisling? Sé?"
"I'm a support caster -- utility mage," I said. "I'm not a combatant, but I'm hoping to learn enough magic so I don't have to fight."
Sé gave me a knowing look. The conversation about my sudden transition wasn't over, but I prayed to God that he wasn't going to out my perversion to the rest of the group. He looked back to Torcán. "Rogue. I decided to specialize with traps and poison."
"He wanted to be 'sneaky stabby'," I said with mock derision.
"Yeah, that!" Sé pulled a dagger from his bandolier and crouched as though he was hiding.
Both Torcán and I watched as he fake snuck around us.
"Awww... No stealth?" Sé pouted.
"I don't think it works like that, lad." Torcán laughed. "No idea how to do it, but listen to your Annex, and you'll figure it out." The farmer paused as he scratched the curly red locks on his head. "I don't know much about utility magic, but I know traps are very useful. It's a bit hard to get set up, but if you have the patience, you can hit above your weight."
"Yes!" Sé pumped his fist in the air with excitement.
"So what do we do now?" I asked.
Torcán crossed his arms. "Well, we should probably get a base going. The matched teams are new to me, I was expecting to have a bit more freeform choice for selecting a starting area. But, it sounds like we've got an evaluation ahead of us. I'm guessing we can go our separate ways once we've been determined that we know what we're doing."
"So, gather up materials? Or beat down monsters?" Sé asked.
"Gathering up materials sounds like a good idea."
Two women walked up to us. The one the left was on the shorter side, she was a world elf with sun kissed skin and her brown hair styled in a bob with short bangs, the Survivalist Blánaid. The other was a well muscled, taller, black arcane elf, and had her blue hair in a ponytail, the Mage-Knight Eimear.
I went stiff. They're going to be able to tell I'm not a real woman. That I'm an imposter.
"Hey. We're figuring we should go around and do introductions. It sounds like we're going to be stuck together for the foreseeable future," the tall woman said. "I'm Eimear, and this is Blánaid." She gestured to the other woman.
The smaller woman glared at me as I gave each of them a nod. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't say anything. I'm totally made. I swallowed and looked away.
"Nice to meet you," Torcán said, his eyes unfocussed for a moment. "Oh wow. That's handy. I know what you all can do."
"Yeah," Eimear said, "This Neural-Annex is pretty handy. Tons of new information at our fingertips." She put her left hand on her sword and held her right hand palm up in front of her. "I know kung-fu...." She laughed. "Well... Swordplay and magic, [Fire Orb]" she said as she conjured a small ball of magic in her right hand. "It's still pretty cool, suddenly knowing all of this stuff."
"It's the least they can do for dropping us in this place." Blánaid crossed her arms as she grumbled.
Eimear rolled her eyes.
"I bet we're going to need it to survive," Sé said.
"Almost certainly," Eimear said with a grin. "But don't worry. I will keep you all safe." She stood a little taller.
"Safe? Where's the fun in that?" A weaselly man of an arcane elf with tanned skin and deep-set green eyes that calculated everything, said as he stepped up. "I'm getting a party going to go out and fight. If we're going to make it, we need experience and gear." He turned to Eimear. "You look like you've got the right build for a fight. Want to join us?" My NA informed me that this man was our assigned healer, Niall. He was a Theurge, which combined divine and arcane magic, and his main focus was using Blood Magic.
"If we're all going out together, then yes." She held up a finger. "But only if we're all going out as one group. We should stick together. We don't know what will happen... But once we get a hang on this," her grin turned bloodthirsty, "then let's risk it for the biscuit."
"So, what should we do first?" I asked and turned to Torcán since he seemed to have the best idea of what was going on. Maybe he was our guide? He would show us the ropes rather than a bunch of popups.
"We'll need to get a base setup," Torcán turned to survey the clearing. "We should start by building basic housing, get some sustainable food and water, and basic crafting."
"Then you can work on that while the rest of us go out," Niall said.
"So long as you can bring back any materials we can use to help build out a base," Torcán said. "Crafting ain't going to be cheap or easy, and there are plenty of items we'll want that will require monster parts. Especially leatherworking, alchemy, or enchanting."
Blánaid's eyes went wide as soon as alchemy was mentioned and she raised her hand and turned to face Niall. "Take me! I wanna go hunting!"
"Can you fight?" He looked skeptical as he gave her a once over.
"Sure," she said with a twitch on her face. I could easily tell she was lying, and it looked like Niall had come to the same conclusion.
"Well, how about you keep the group here safe then?" He dismissed her, then looked back to Torcán. "We can talk about that when we get back. I'm sure we can come up with some kind of barter system, but it's pretty standard that you can keep what you kill."
"Well... You'll have to barter at some point," Torcán said with a knowing grin. "All the gear is crafted. If you want better weapons or armor, you'll need people like me who can make it."
"Tch," Niall clucked. "Fine." He turned to look at me and Sé. "What about you two?" He eyed me up and down, then seemed to dismiss me. "Well, you anyways?" He said as he looked at Sé.
"Hey... I can totally..." I said on instinct as I was filled with indignation before coming to my senses. I'd taken the Non-Combatant trait. Of course I wasn't going to be good at fighting, but the idea of being immediately excluded raised my hackles.
"Sorry dude," Sé said. "I've got to look after this chick." He shook his head. "She might be useless, but she's my responsibility now."
I breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't said that I was actually a guy.
"What? She your sister?" Niall asked.
"Dude, no way. It's..." Sé waffled as he looked for the words. "It's complicated."
"But what about us?" Torcán asked as he ribbed Sé jovially. "I don't have a combat build. So, until we get a base, what will we do if a monster finds us?"
"The weak will die," Niall said with a shrug. "It's a harsh truth, but it is what it is. If you don't want to die, then you should get strong... Like we're going to do."
"There's different kinds of strength," I said. I was getting tired of his might makes right attitude. "Go do whatever you're going to do. But if you're going to run off and die, leave us out of it. We're going to follow the System's advice and get a settlement going." I nodded to our guide, Torcán.
"I'll watch over y'all," Eimear said. She nudged the smaller woman next to her. "You joining?"
The wisp of a woman nodded. "It's not like I have a choice." She sighed as her shoulders slumped and she pouted.
"Well? Are they joining?" Aodhan, the one who started by cursing the sky, said as he walked over.
"Naw. They're a bunch of casuals," Niall said.
Eimear put a firm hand on his shoulder. "Sir," she said with deadly finality. "I don't mind if you have a different approach to surviving in this place, but you don't have to demean others."
"Fine... Whatever." The blood mage healer shrugged her hand off his shoulder.
"Screw that. We're in a new world, so I'm going to kill stuff. We've got ourselves a party. We're going to go find something to fight. You carebears can chill here and build your farms, but I'm here to win!" The mage grinned as he twitched his fingers, reflexively summoning and unsummoning small balls of fire. "Fianait and Seanán are in." My NA told me that Fianait was a Ranger Deadeye, and Seanán was a Fighter Protector.
It also told me that Seanán used they/them pronouns, which I thought was absolutely bonkers. Not that I dared to say anything about it given my own situation.
Fortunately, the fighter was going away with the party so I didn't have to deal with that complication.
"Then we have enough for a basic party," Niall said as he put his hand on Aodhan's shoulder.
"Don't touch me," Aodhan said as he glared daggers at Niall.
"Fine." The healer held his hands up in surrender. "Let's go kill some monsters," he said as the two of them walked over to meet with the rest of their party.
"Pleasant bunch," I muttered under my breath.
"We all deal with extremes in our own way," Torcán said with a kind smile that I could instantly tell had seen years of some kind of awful. "They'll come around... or they won't." He shrugged. "But either way, that's going to be their challenge to overcome."
"We're heading out now! Goodbye!" Seanán stood tall and waved at the rest of us with a grin plastered on their face, they were a world elf with tanned skin, and bleached white curly shoulder length hair with an undercut on the left side. "Please stay safe, and we will see you sometime later today." I couldn't tell if they were actually a boy or a girl, and it bothered me. What were they really?
Fianait, the tanned world elf with a pink pixie cut haircut nodded at us as the party vanished into the woods.
An old world elf black man with obvious wrinkles and gray hair walked in front of the trees holding a makeshift axe of chipped stone wedged onto a stick. "Haha! Got it!" He said to no one in particular. "I know how we get started now." My NA told me his name was Gormán, and that he was a crafter with an engineering specialty. And he picked elf? I would've thought that type of person would always go for dwarves.
"Let's get to work," Torcán clapped me on the back and walked to follow Gormán to chop down some trees.