"H-Hero?"
Kris became a flustered mess, watching with slight awe and confusion as Dawn's transformation came undone, and he saw an ordinary girl whose height placed her on the short side. It took her a minute to convince him that no-she was not a witch nor a magical girl.
Standing up close to the boy, Dawn once again couldn't but notice how good-looking he was. He had a rebellious air that screamed bad boy. She counted at least three piercings in each ear, with his arms and hands covered in tattoos. His raven hair was styled in an undercut, and his onyx eyes glared at her with distrust.
'With a pretty face like that, this boy belongs to a modeling agency!'
Dawn could feel her inner fangirl stirring but forced herself to remain calm, not to mention the feelings of nervousness that came with being in close contact with such a good-looking person.
Instantly, Kris's body reacted to the potion and glowed, his wounds healing.
"Wow, this stuff really works-Ouch! What the? I thought this potion was supposed to heal my wounds?!" The boy glared at Dawn; just as he was about to stand, the pain in his left side flared.
"It's a two-star {Healing Potion}! For serious injuries like a cracked rib, you're going to need a three or four-star potion, and those are expensive as hell!" Dawn paid no heed to the boy's glare and stood on her feet, dusting herself off.
"Sorry about my outburst." Realizing his mistake, the boy apologized, presenting the image of an apologetic kitten.
'So freaking cute~!' Dawn squealed like a crazy fangirl inside her head, but her face remained calm and nonchalant. Or at least that was the image she was trying to portray.
"Don't worry about it! Now, it's time for me to continue my journey." Dawn said to her hero. Allowing Neko-chan to hop into her arms and climb on top of her head.
"You're leaving? By any chance, are you heading towards a different district?" Kris curiously asked.
"Yeah, but I just don't know which one yet," said Dawn as the girl honestly hadn't made up her mind.
"The only districts near District W23 are District X24 and District Y25. The entire District of Z26 has become nothing more than a monster's nest," Kris explained as Dawn nodded her head.
"You know, sometimes I forget how the setting of World Savior matches that of this world. I wonder what made the author use our world as the background for her story," Dawn mistakenly muttered out loud, earning a puzzled look from Kris.
"What are you talking about?" he asked her, and Dawn flushed with embarrassment at the fact that she spoke her thoughts out loud.
"Sorry, just speaking nonsense! Please forget everything that I just said!" Dawn nervously scratched the back of her neck.
Opening her system, Dawn pulled up a map of the world and was shocked when she saw pieces of the world's landscape had changed.
'Like in World Savior! When the invasion began, landscapes transformed, and strange islands suddenly appeared. Everything that happened in the book is now happening to my world, but why?'
Dawn asked herself, wondering if there was a chance she had transmigrated inside the book, which was another popular trope seen in web novels.
'But the city I lived in is still as I remember it, minus a few key changes such as mysterious forests, giant rats, vultures, and wolves. If I indeed transmigrated. How could Misty be here?'
Dawn debated with herself, lost in her thoughts, unaware of how the boy's eyes rested on her.
Constantly repeating the same facts over and over again, feeling herself close to breaking down and screaming at the sky. Dawn felt a warm hand touch her wrist and saw a pair of concerned onyx eyes looking at her.
"Hey, are you okay?" This one simple sentence calmed the raging storm building inside Dawn's head.
Closing her eyes, Dawn took a deep breath and pushed all her anxieties and fears aside.
"Yeah, I'm good! I was just a little caught off guard for a second. Seeing the world end can do that to a person!" Dawn smiled and joked, but there was no mirth in her eyes.
"Okay, but you still haven't answered my question." The boy fixed his eyes on the girl who was his savior, patiently awaiting her answer.
"Honestly, I don't know."
Dawn thought back to her notes and decided to test out one of her theories to see just how much this world resembled that of World Savior.
In the early part of the story.
Ara, the heroine of World Savior, had the unlucky fate of being a resident of District Z26, a city-state with no safe zones, and was one of the many dragged inside the {Labyrinth of Diyu}.
The {Labyrinth of Diyu} was what shaped Ara's once timid and cowardly personality into the ruthless and cold character that fans loved.
'Ara was trapped in the {Labyrinth of Diyu} for the entire duration of the tutorial. But after defeating one of the five final bosses, Ara made her way to District Y25 and fought against a {Lvl 15: Flame Griffin}.'
The Flame Griffin was a powerful monster, but it stood no match against Ara, who was levels above it. The author presented a flashback panel, showing how the griffon gained its current rank by empowering itself by stealing the mana of its prey. The last prey that it caught was an ice-elf that it held captive in its territory, a volcano.
'In the world of World Savior, ice-elves were a strong race of elves with high levels of mana residing in them, which was why the Flame Griffin kidnapped a member from that race. Mindless side note, they're breathtakingly beautiful creatures~!'
Dawn had always been a sucker for long-haired beautiful male characters, and it took nothing more than a solo panel illustrating the male ice-elf's enthralling features for the short girl to fall head over heels for him.
Even though the ice-elf had lost his life to the Flame Griffin, nothing more than a cannon-fodder character from what Dawn remembered. She still felt downhearted over its death.
'We are still in the first month, and if Ara existed, she should still be trapped in the {Labyrinth of Diyu}. It took the griffin three months to completely absorb all of the ice elf mana, meaning it should still be weak at this point. If this world is anything like World Savior. I want to see if its characters also exist!'
There was another reason Dawn choose this to be her first theory to test out.
'Out of all the characters and monsters introduced, the Flame Griffin was the weakest. Not to mention, the friendliest.'
At least, it was when she compared it with the rest of the raging supernatural beasts and the unstable minds of the other characters Ara either encountered or surrounded herself with. Dawn felt safe with the Flame Griffin.