This is great. I was the one who woke up first. My small body was placed at the edge of the shore, right beside the water tide, so when the waves rise, my head always gets hit. I look at my friends, still passed out nearby. They probably didn't wake up since, unlike me, they were conveniently placed in an isolated patch of grass, which probably aided in them being able to sleep more peacefully than me.
Let's think through this calmly. The last thing I remember was arriving the Training Center, and then when I entered the V.T.G, I was asked to pick a location. I wanted to choose Colata Beach since it would serve as a way to let Catalyn see other places outside of the city and the Macaus Plains. I did choose the Beach, but then the A.I went absolutely crazy and chose the Uninhabited Island.
This place didn't feel like the V.T.G, though. Everything was, how do I say this, real? It didn't feel like I was in Virtual Reality. I couldn't fly around and set dummies for training. This place definitely felt real.
I hurriedly bring myself over to Lena, who was the closest one to me. I dragged my tiny build over the rough sand, taking a few breaths in between to rest my easily tired body.
"Hey, big sis. Wake up will you? It's hard enough for me to move my tired ass yet crawl all the way here. Shit you're not gonna wake up are you?" I use my remaining strength to shake Lena awake.
Her eyes soon slightly open, then upon seeing the unfamiliar environment, she shook herself awake.
"Where are we, little brother?" She says as she slaps herself to force her consciousness to go into active mode. "Ah! I'm sorry. Come here, let me pick you up." She says as she notices me still on the ground wriggling my arms.
She carries me into her embrace and slaps off the grains of sand still stuck to my shirt. She then heads over to Catalyn, who was snoring audibly, calling my name every few seconds or so.
"Do you know anything about this?" I ask Lena.
"Uh..... yeah, actually. Ever since she started her training she's had this obsession with you. None of us know nothing, and she gets defensive whenever we try doing something funny. You might've not seen it yet, but, along with her extremely rare magic affinities, her mana pool stores much more mana than the ordinary person's. She's quite frightening really..."
"Is that why you guys didn't intervene at all earlier when she kissed me without my consent?" Kenneth asks, his tone sounding grumpy.
"Yeahh.... sorry," Lena apologizes, sounding remorseful.
There's this brief moment of silence where none of them talk, until Catalyn soon wakes up. Seeing her beloved master being carried by another woman, she immediately reached her hands out to steal me from Lena.
But she wasn't fast enough. Lena managed to dodge away.
"Give... master back. Catalyn is here..." Seeing as her plead didn't affect Lena, she instead casted a portal beside Lena's arms and reached hers through it, grabbing me. Oddly enough, this was the first time I saw Catalyn's magic.
Managing to take me from Lena, she hugs me really tightly. Lena, still shocked from it, told me she was going to wake up Lucas, leaving me with Catalyn.
"Young master... Catalyn is here." She says in an excited tone as she continues to hug me.
A few minutes later Lena brings back Lucas, who was now awake.
"Where are we? I remember that I was going to put on the V.T.G and then I got knocked out immediately." Lucas says, still a bit drowsy, probably from the sudden awakening. "Although I will admit, this place is kinda nice to fall asleep in. The wind hitting your face feels fucking awesome." Lucas says while stretching. He soon starts to stretch his body, while we discuss what our plans are.
"So.... if anyone hasn't noticed, we don't have any of our equipment.This is automatically weakens my powers by a really huge amount. Man, I miss the feeling of having that euphoric itch every time I put on the Amplifier. Lucas is already physically strong even without his gauntlets, so we won't have much problems in the brute force aspect." Kenneth explains.
"But that still leads to problems on my end. I'm still stronger than normal even if I don't have my wand and the other equipment I usually wear, but it does take a bit more work to use the spells properly." (Lena)
"Ca...Catalyn can help young master. Catalyn has large amount of mana." (Catalyn)
"Well, that's good. Let's start off first by exploring the island. Maybe build a temporary shelter, just to stay the night. And then we'll try to figure out where we are exactly and try to head back towards Fahndra. Sound good?" (Kenneth)
The others readily agreed. Firstly, all of them would scout the island's perimeters, and then place portals made by Catalyn in strategic locations, making a sort of "Y" shaped waypoint. The bottom part of the Y represented the starting point, and the other two ends the places where the portals would be set up, for easy transportation throughout the island. The starting point was the beach, where they currently were now.
We soon set out, looking nearby for some building materials to create. Finding a nearby forest, Lucas and Lena went on ahead to grab some sticks and stones (hehe) as building materials, plus some wild animals for food. Catalyn followed close by, placing a portal directly outside the forest's entrance. Catalyn and I stayed behind waiting for them. They soon came back bringing along stacks of branches and some leaves. Lena also had some berries she found nearby, although they hadn't been tested to see if they were safe.
Turns out Catalyn has her own personal "Dimensional Storage." Not the type that we use that takes the form of a small cube, but hers is accessed through a special portal that can store various items.
Finding this out from her, they handed all of the things they found slowly. Catalyn's abnormal mana pool contributed to her Storage being able to keep more items inside.
After grabbing some more materials, we spread out, with Lena and Lucas going opposite the forest, and us two heading deeper inside. If Lena and Lucas ever got lost, they could just use her Light Beam to fire a laser to the sky, although this will probably work better at night, since the color of the light she fires is almost white, but has a hint of yellow.
Bidding a temporary farewell to the two, we headed deeper inside the forest; Catalyn picking up a few building materials, plants and fruits every now and then. Luckily for me, Catalyn was carrying me the whole time, making sure I didn't touch anything.
"Young master. Watch your head." She only ever speaks in sentences that don't have any stuttering or weird stops in them whenever she's with me.
Seeing multiple sturdy branches that look like they could support the weight of two people, I ask Catalyn if she could teleport us there. She agrees, and now we have a better view of the area.
Now, instead of walking on the damp forest floor, Catalyn instead moves us around by using Spatial Magic to warp between two places using portals.
We eventually reach the end of the forest, and as the sea of trees stopped, another sea could be seen. This time the actual see emerges. So this was one end of the island.
Conjuring a temporary portal, we entered through it, to reveal that we had now warped back to the forest's entrance.
It was almost late in the afternoon. We decided to go ahead and look for Lena and Lucas, who were also probably done with their exploration by now.
"Young master, are you hungry?" Catalyn asks me.
"Actually, yeah."
"Don't worry. We'll find big sis and big bro soon." She was referring to Lena and Lucas.
Warping for a few minutes, we had finally found our two siblings, sweaty, and looking like they had just run a marathon.
"*huff* That was fucking intense. A Boreal Bear suddenly attacked us out of nowhere. I don't remember animals from the North being able to live in warm regions like this. Motherfucker seemed angry too, he was really aggressive with his swipes." Lucas said, panting for breath.
"That's odd though. What would a creature from the North be doing here?" (Lena)
The North was a primarily permafrost region. Cold, unforgiving. This was the Boreal Bear's habitat. And what was it doing here? They were particularly known for being able to swim great distances without breaking a sweat. And yet this far? The place they were in was probably near the Krodoa's version of the Equator.
The only out of the ordinary event I can think off is The Rumbling. This happened around a few days ago, when a large object suddenly blocked the sun for half a day. Along with the "solar-eclipse" that happened, there was also the loud noise that came with it. "The Rumbling" was the name given to this noise by Kenneth. The noise had been used to shut down many of Gaia's structures that were powered by mana.
Even though the loud noise was primarily used to disrupt structures, many monsters and magical beasts were affected, with many forming a horde that numbered ten thousand, but was promptly slaughtered by the trio that consisted of Lucas, Kenneth and Tyrone.
Maybe the same thing happened here. What if The Rumbling was nationwide? (Kenneth doesn't know this at this moment in time.) Both the supercontinents had a freezing north side to them. If I were to guess that since magical structures were hit, then it was probably purposely aimed at Gaia? It would be useless to use it on Hudra, since that area didn't evolve into doing this yet. Maybe I'm thinking too hard.
If The Rumbling did reach the North, then that could be one of the reasons as to why the Boreal Bear was seen here.
I stopped my brainstorming as I realised that a delicious smell was entering my nose. The three of them had set up camp and had already started to cook the food.
Once again, though my mouth was stolen as Catalyn did the same thing she did with the skewers earlier. Luckily the food, which was grilled Land Chicken, was somewhat seasoned more than normal so I could still taste the food even after Catalyn licked my mouth all around.
"I'm gonna get started on building the makeshift boat. It might take a while since I don't know jack shit when it comes to this- we'll switch up throughout the night to act as lookouts and to build the boat." (Lucas)
Catalyn, of course, without having any knowledge about this to begin with, was assigned to do her original job, which was to be my caretaker. She almost wanted to breastfeed me (can she even produce milk) when she saw me thirsty, but luckily Lena came in clutch and saved me. Taking out a bottle that she always kept on her, at least I didn't have to suck on someone's breasts other than my mom's tonight.
Soon I was falling asleep, and before I knew it, my eyes had closed. The warm embrace of Catalyn, to my reluctance, actually helped me sleep in the first few minutes.
In a white space.
"Yoo. How's your test going?" A man drinking what I assumed as alcohol was sitting in a chair, chugging a wholr barrel's worth of alchohol.
"Test?"