Bump, bump, bump. I can hear the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I’m sweating like crazy. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. The cause of my stress this time is the fact that blood eyes guy, the cute boy, and I are currently kneeling in front of the King. We don’t even have to say anything, Cherilyn is speaking for us, but it’s still insanely stressful.

The throne room is a long stone and wood hall. The throne is elevated on a platform with three stone steps leading up to it. It’s carefully crafted out of some sort of dark wood that I don’t quite recognize. The King himself isn’t dressed in what a normal fantasy monarch would dress in.

The golden crown with jewels in it is there, but the clothes are all different. Instead of a red robe, he’s dressed in a decorated animal pelt. He has gauntlets made of iron on, and several necklaces of what appear to shark teeth. I can’t help but think that he isn’t actually a King, but a warlord.

His hair is grey and disheveled, and comes down to his shoulders. Standing next to him are apparently the two most powerful magic users in the entire Kingdom: Runicez & Iryis. I don’t know much about Iryis, but I can’t help but despise Runicez. He’s the reason I’m in this situation in the first place. I think back to how this happened.

><><><><

“Maybe grow your hair out a bit, and put all the black hair in a ponytail, and let the white hair hang over your face?”

“Yeah, that would probably be good. I can’t think of any better hairstyles for you and horu hair though.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Aaah, he’s so cute! I just want to grab him and snuggle with him. I really want to hang out with just him and nobody else. We’ll date for six months, before we start living together. We’ll get to know each other really well, and eventually I’ll get pregnant. We’ll get married right away, and have two more children after-

“OK, that’s enough you two. I’m happy you’re getting along but we still have things we need to do.” Shut up, Cherilyn! Let me have this!

“Let’s make this clear. You three were summoned here for a reason, and you’ll be expected to meet the Kingdom’s expectations.” Oh no. No, no, no, giving me any kind of responsibility is an incredibly bad idea, trust me, I would know.

“So, as I told you before, all three of you have died, and then were summoned by this Kingdom to fulfill a specific purpose. Essentially, your purpose is to help preserve the stability of the Kingdom.” 

“So we’re the heroes that will help protect this Kingdom from its foreign enemies?” says the cute boy.

“I mean, you could see it like that I guess, but your job is certainly a lot less glamorous than that. You see, an evil sage has been going around the continent, causing so much death and destruction, it’s wound up causing an alliance of nearly every country on the continent to kill him.” 

“So we’re being sent to defeat this evil sage and save the world?”

“He certainly isn’t a danger to the world, and you certainly aren’t going after him, you’ll just die. Moving on, most of the army of Uclait is outside of the country right now, tracking him down and assisting in humanitarian efforts where Nilus has struck. This Kingdom has a vested interest in killing him, because he killed the entire royal family minus the current King.”

That statement shuts us all up. So I guess she really meant it when she said if we went after this evil sage, we’d just die. Still though, to cause something that major? Just what the hell is this guy? Why is he doing this? I don’t have any information to go off of though, so I’ll try to stop thinking about it for now. 

“In order to figure out just what the Kingdom would do, the current King sent Arcana Iryis out to find a solution. He wound up making a deal with a Great Phoenix to appoint 6 possible new rulers. This is where you three come in. After the current King dies or steps down from rule, the new ruler will be voted on. You’ll be promoting national security by supporting whoever the winner is.”

“And just why do you believe we’re actually capable of that?” Is what the blood eyes guy says.

“Clearly you don’t know that it’s standard for those summoned to other worlds to be granted super op abilities.” is the cute boy’s response to that. 

“What are you even talking about?” is the blood eyes guy's understandable reply.

I cringe at the cute boy’s words. This is real life, not some light novel. Please stop talking, I have a high opinion of you, don’t ruin that. I was even just thinking about having children with- alright, I guess that was kind of creepy on my part. I’ll try my best to forget about that.

“He’s actually kind of right. You see, heading through the rift between worlds causes one’s soul to gain a lot of energy. This causes otherworlders like us to grow at a rate extremely rare among this world’s natives, so as long as you train at all, you should be able to become stronger than the average basic human pretty quickly. People of this country, and all the countries that border this one respect strength, so it should be a relatively easy task.”

So he was right, we are overpowered isekai protagonists. We just have to train for a bit, and actually work for it. That comment was still cringey, though.

><><><><

The four of us are all walking through the castle together, giving us a tour of where we’re allowed to be and where we aren’t. I caught a glimpse of a mage training area and saw them creating an awesome pillar of purple fire. I was absolutely stunned, but Cherilyn pulled me away. I’m really starting to not like Cherilyn at this point.

All of a sudden, an old, balding man in mage robes and a thin beard that came all the way down to his knees stops us. He starts saying something completely incomprehensible, since I don’t understand the language. Cherilyn responds in English, and they start having a conversation in two completely different languages.

Blood eyes guy tries to enter the conversation using English but the old man didn’t understand a word he was saying. I guess Cherilyn’s blessing works both ways. Anyway, the old man takes out a small box from his robes and opens it. Inside are three, glowing, light green orbs that capture my attention. Green isn’t my color but I still think they’re quite pretty.

“Alright guys. These orbs are imitations of my blessing. They only translate one language, and they won’t help you with reading and writing so you’ll have to learn that on your own, but at least you’ll be able to understand the natives.” 

Oh, so we don’t actually have to learn a new language completely from scratch. That’s good. The cute boy and the blood eyes guy look really upset that they have to learn to read and write again, but I don’t mind. I’m kind of excited to be honest. I actually tried to learn Japanese several times in my old world. I never succeeded, mind you, but I did have quite a bit of fun memorizing all the symbols and reading about the grammar. It got frustrating sometimes, but I still have good memories of the whole process.

“Go and grab one of those. Hold it up to your throat where your vocal chords are and listen to what Runites says.” Cherilyn says.

We all walk over to Runites. I;m a bit nervous so the cute boy and the blood eyes guy grab theirs before me. The old man begins repeating the same sentence over and over again. We all take the orbs and hold them up to our vocal cords. The orbs turn into a fine mist and absorb into their throats. After a while, I can understand what the old man is saying.

“This is a sentence. This is a sentence.” Is what he had been saying.

“All done now?” He says.

“Yes, I can understand you clearly. What about you two?”

I nod, only half listening to what’s being said. I’m far too amazed at what had just happened. Such a simple thing completely removing something as complicated as a language barrier. Amazing. That’s the only word I can describe it with. 

“Come on then, summons. You’re being granted an audience with the King and his generals, don’t make him wait.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Is the only thing that escapes my lips. That completely takes me out of my admiration for those little green orbs.

><><><><

That brings us up to the present. Anyway, Cherilyn got angry, but Runicez didn’t back down, then Cherilyn told us to not say a word, and now we’re here. I still have no idea why this is even happening. I don’t even know the cute boy’s name yet… I just want to go back to talking with him… While not saying a word about what I was thinking about him… What kind of freak would he think I was if he knew what I was thinking?