Theo followed the armored woman wanting to ask questions but found herself unable to start. She had always struggled to talk to people, and meeting an armed stranger in the woods after killing a bunch of giant rats did nothing to break the ice.

  Theo yelped when someone dropped down from the trees above. Theo hadn’t sensed her and she thought she caught the feeling of a skill in use before their presence suddenly there.

  “Vara, who in the hells is this?” A new woman asked, and Theo made a point to memorize the name. She had been bad at it back on Earth, but she had been trying to improve before and she wanted to continue the habit.

  The new woman wore the same armor as Vara, though where Vara had thicker plates of some kind of leather, the new woman wore a lighter version made from the same material.

  ‘Less restrictive.” Theo thought to herself as she stammered out her name.

  “Hi uhm- Im Theo...” She forced a smile on her face trying to seem more friendly. But the two women just looked at her while Vara gestured with a wide shrug.

  Cringing inside Theo let the silence linger on before Vara eventually spoke.

  “No idea Mels. But I’m sure you saw her fight. I’m taking her to the captain.” Vara glanced at Theo before speaking again. “Could you maybe run ahead and see if the medical squad has anything for her to cover herself with?”

  Theo glanced at her body before a blush crept up onto her checks. She was still in her ruined clothes and was now covered in a fair amount of rat gore.

  The second woman, Mels apparently, gave Theo a look before nodding. “Yeah, they should. Be right back.” Then she took off into the forest at a light jog.

  “Vara?” Theo got a nod from the woman before she continued. “Thanks. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen anyone. Kinda forgot about the whole…” she gestured at herself. Now second guessing her behavior in her head. The feeling of awkwardness increased as Vara looked at her with a calculating look.

  “So what’s the deal with the ra-” but Vara cut Theo’s question off.

  “Let’s just do this all in one go when you meet my captain, okay?” She seemed to realize something. “Sorry if that was rude, been a long day and I’d rather only go through it all at once.”

  Vara rubbed her face, leaving a streak of dirt across her cheek. Theo resisted the urge to say something.

  A few minutes later, Mels came back with a clean brown sheet. Passing it to Theo who thanked her as Mels fell in behind her and they continued on in silence.

  They arrived at some kind of forward operating camp, a few soldiers were milling around and Theo sensed the presence of a person hiding in the trees as they approached it, a sentry if she had to guess. While others were milling about, playing cards of some kind or maintaining their gear. A tarp had been strung over a table with a map on it and a gruff looking man was staring at it as he received a report from a dirt covered man wearing the same kind of armor as Mels.

  “I couldn’t push much farther, the rats were swarming the trees when-” The man looked up as Vara and Theo approached. Mels splitting off to linger nearby like she totally wasn’t eavesdropping.

  “Vara… and?” The scout spoke, drawing the other man’s attention from the map.

  “Captain. Harrol.” Vara saluted her captain and then nodded at the scout who had spoken. “Found her by the flank. Wandered up on me like the forest had spit her out.” She glanced at Theo. “Very capable. Helped me eliminate a tier two swarm that rushed her.”

  The captain looked at Theo.

  “Greetings. I’m Captain Jaza.” He was rough looking. Age had set into his face and it looked like he kept it at bay with pure stubbornness. His armor was nicer, but not clean. No one around here was clean that Theo could see. Well except the people wandering around what must have been the medical tents, their shirts and pants well fitted and marked with a white triangle on the shoulders.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Theo.” Theo said, defaulting to the canned greeting she always pulled out when she put on a social mask. She forced a small smile on her face to hide the anxiety she was feeling around new people.

  “Could you tell us why you were out there? Not exactly a safe time for travelers.” He said, there was a tone in his voice that Theo couldn’t place.

  “It's- It's kind of a long story uh.. sir.” Theo stammered out, but he waved her to continue.

  It wasn’t exactly a long story, Theo mentioned integration and how she had been at home and then suddenly thrust into a new place with a System quest. That seemed to answer something in the captain's mind as his stance shifted from subtle hostility to something bordering on curiosity.

  What followed was Theo skirting the details of the trial the captain made assumptions about what he called “rifts” and while Theo didn’t not not trust the man, she was fine playing her cards close to her chest until she had a better footing in this world.

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  With her sword, she had an instinctive understanding of where it was, and could even call it to her hand should she choose to do so. But the feather wasn’t bound in a similar way and she had no desire to even hint at its presence.

  After the questions ended, the captain told Vara to get her squad and go back to town. Both as an escort for Theo to insure she got registered with the town of Sophius and to give the squad a much needed break.

  Vara was given orders and a report to deliver to their headquarters for a replacement squad and Mels seemed to think Theo was the main reason for the return to town and treated her like a savior from grueling labor.

  Theo had some of her questions answered in return, though she still had too many and would have to seek answers from Vara’s squad or the town. But the captain revealed that since the integration things had grown pretty hazardous outside of the town walls for lone travelers and the swarm of rats that had attacked her wasn’t even close to the size of the swarms that attacked the walls nightly.

  They were out here trying to figure a way to stop them, the captain voicing his theory that there was some kind of rift out there that was spewing the monsters forth, but so far they hadn’t found a thing.

  Theo could tell the situation was tense and put it in the back of her mind to maybe see if she could come out and lend a hand, but put that question off for the moment when she heard Mels talking about a bath and a hot meal.

  Theo was still quite gross from her adventure and would have traded away a limb to soak in a tub or scrape the dirt from her body under a scalding hot spray of water.

  When they drew close to town, the first thing Theo noticed was the forest had been burned back thousands of paces from a large grey stone wall that radiated magic.

  Signs of battle were everywhere with more than a few still smoldering piles of rats that workers collected the best meat and cores from before burning the rest. Two lightly armored soldiers with staves held like spears walked from pyre to pyre to add a gout of flame to reignite fires as they sputter and spat from the large quantity of rat bodies being thrown on top with inhuman strength.

  Was it even inhuman strength anymore? The captain had been stronger than Theo, by quite a bit from what her mana sense had told her. But she had no experience using it to gauge actual strength. The flowers had all been relatively the same when it came to their levels of mana, and only Bruce had truly given her that feeling.

  Vara and her squad felt somewhere around where Theo was in tier, but she wasn’t sure if it would be rude to ask and yet again decided to wait with the more basic of her questions until she knew her situation better.

  When they neared the walls, Theo saw large barrels sticking off of turret mounts that each had their own person manning them. Like the rifle Vara had, but much larger and with a source of mana inside of them that leaked into their surroundings. The closest gave off the feeling for intense flame, but one of the smaller ones stationed near the portcullis were a different element she had no point of reference for.

  A handful of people were lined up to enter the city, it didn’t take long for a guard in tough looking metal plate to interview them and send them on their way. Instead of being interviewed by the man Vara and her squad simply got a wave as they passed before Vara told her squad to go enjoy their leave as she turned to Theo.

  “Alright, let's get you registered and then I’ll help you get the lay of the land. I'm guessing you don’t have any money?” She asked and Theo nodded before she spoke.

  “I do have a few monster cores, can I sell those somewhere? I'd really like to get a few changes of clothes…”

  Vara snorted before waving her to follow and Theo had to admit she kinda liked the woman’s curt attitude. It meant she could avoid talking and making an awkward fool of herself.

  Their first stop actually turned out to be a small market pretty close to the town entrance and Theo let Vara bargain for her smaller cores while she tried to get an ear for the value of such things.

  The small wind aspect cores she had kept that the apes hadn’t wanted along with the others were sold for a currency that looked like chips of crystal and Vara gave her the rundown of how much basics would cost as well as paying for a set of clothes that she waved away Theo’s offer to pay, even though she now had more than enough from the more valuable of her cores.

  She kept the blight core in her bag, it was much larger and when Vara had seen it, told her to keep it until they reached the town's municipal center as the guard would surely want to buy it for a better [rice to create for the use of one of their mana cannons.

  The city was compact, made from the same stone as the walls, everything was organized and in neat rows, like it had all gone up in one day under the plan of one person.

  The people of Sophius had added their own flare to their homes or shops and colored banners and signs hung from nearly every wall and surface. It was what Theo might call quaint looking, except for the fact that a large portion of the populace had some kind of weapon visible on their persons.

  Most were the mana rifles she had seen, but a fair amount used spears or swords. She even saw one man walking around with a pitchfork that looked like it was used for fighting the crops and not harvesting them.

  The people varied as much as the colors and weapons did. Short and tall, Hairy or scaled. The majority of them were typical humans and all their varying shapes, but there were more than a few of the more magical variety. Lizardfolk, a few goblins, anthropomorphized animals, fur and tails included. There was so much that Theo found herself looking at everything and everyone in wonder and Vara more than once had to call or nudge her to continue to follow.

  The smell was good too, none of the smells of a large city she had been to open Earth, or any of the worse smells and sights that had been described in some of the stories she had read. Whatever they did for trash and sewage management might even be better than some of those cities Theo had visited.

  Vara helped her with the registration process, expediting the wait through her rank within the city guard. It was quick and Theo sent a thanks to the System for not making her learn a new language. She wondered if it was being translated for her, or if everyone here just spoke English as she read carefully through the forms to make sure she wasn’t signing a magical slave contract of some kind.

  When they stepped out back into the city, Vara offered to show her inn her squad like to loiter at when not on duty and Theo accepted. The woman had become much more relaxed beyond the city walls and Theo was glad to have an excuse to follow her around until she got her bearings.

  Compared to the forest this was so much more stressful and even the idea of asking random people on the street for directions made her heart race more than her careful hunts back in the giant forest.