"The Underworld? Are you saying we're dead? What the crap are you talking about? We're just in a random alleyway."
The girl he now knew as Nera looked straight into his eyes with the same nonchalant demeanor as before. This unnerved him.
"Wait, why did I even ask "Where are we" ?", Allen was puzzled by his own question and was wondering if what just happened with that creature was causing him not to be unable to think straight.
"Did you happen to look at the moon earlier tonight? What shape was it?", she asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"...Yeah, it was a full moon, What does that have to do with any-", His eyes widened at a sudden revelation as he looked up to the sky above. What he saw did not make any sense. There, shining brightly amongst the clouds, was a crescent moon. Allen could vividly remember seeing a full moon earlier that night and the moon was also half-full just a few days ago. Realizing this, Allen took her words more seriously for now and in a more relaxed tone asked her another question.
"Alright, I guess I'll go along with us not being where I thought we were, so what did you mean by "Underworld", and what is this creature that tried to make a meal out of me? Is all of this just some sort of weird holographic projection or something?"
"Nah, this is a part of the Underworld, an entirely different world where lost souls linger for a while. However, it occasionally leaks out into our world in different appearances like this, and living folks like us can sometimes wander into it as well. I'm telling you all of this so you can maybe avoid this happening again. I may be pretty awesome but I can't be everywhere at once."
Allen ignored her bragging and responded, "So that creature was a lost soul? What about that woman I saw who tried to give me a golden sword?", he then faltered back as her expression suddenly darkened unexpectedly for a moment.
"Heh, so that was the scenario you saw. No, they're anything but lost souls, they're specters. Monsters of pure miasma that feed on both the souls of the dead and the living. They'll conjure illusions of pure fantasy to corner victims and their entire bodies are capable of draining both the life and mana out of people.", She stated as she gestured to the remains of the "specter", a large pile of bark and vines she was currently standing on that were slowly disintegrating into dust.
"Huh?"
Allen hurriedly got up to his feet from the ground and walked up close to Nera leaning over her enthusiastically.
"Mana!? That means there's magic too, right?", Allen was a lot more eager to hear what she was talking about now.
"So that's how you were able to jump off a building like it was no problem and take out that monster in one hit. You must be a mage or something.", Allen could not help but grin at the thought that there may be mages in the world.
'All of this is crazy, but if there's a way for her to teach me how to use something like magic myself it could be worth it.", he chuckled creepily to himself. Images of him shooting fireballs out of his hands and levitating cars with his mind suddenly popped up in his head.
"No, I can't use magic, and it's not something I can teach you how you use."
Allen tensed up, "How did you know I was-"
"It's written all over your face. When you've spent as much as time I've had looking at people's faces you get a knack for reading them. By the way, let's just say my abilities are more science-based and leave it at that. Knowing too much more will probably just cause you more trouble anyway."
"Maybe I was right about the shock-absorption shoes then?"
"Ah, I see.", Allen replied in a completely disinterested tone.
'if there's no way for me to learn how to use magic myself then it's definitely not worth enough for me to get involved with a strange girl who seems to fight freakish monsters on a regular basis. I'm just going to go home and disregard this as a weird dream brought on by exhaustion and hunger.'
"Well, it was nice meeting you again.", he proclaimed halfheartedly as he waved goodbye and walked away into the mist only to be eventually stopped by what felt like a brick wall made out of ice.
"Ow!", He grabbed his nose in pain. He felt all over the fog and was bewildered to find that the mist itself was solid and there was no way for him to get through it.
"Uhh...", he walked out of the mist sheepishly. "Could you explain to me how I can get the hell of here?"
Instead of answering him immediately, she walked over to one of the walls of the alley, slumped down onto the ground, and pulled out her earbuds and MP3 player from out of the pockets of her tracksuit.
"There's no way for us to get out of here until the Underworld recedes, which it should soon now that the specter has been taken care of. In the meanwhile, I'm just going to listen to some music."
Allen, not completely believing her just yet, walked to the other side of the alley that was also blocked by mist only to be met with the same icy barrier. He spent a couple of moments ineffectually trying to force his way through until he eventually gave up and resigned himself to his indefinite confinement.
He walked about out of the fog and looked over to Nera listening with closed eyes and sat down beside her.
"Uhh...name's Allen by the way.", Allen rubbed the back of his hair in unease at the awkward introduction.
She seemed to be too into whatever she was listening to pay him any mind. He then observed the digital display on her MP3 player.
"PANDEMØNI∩M, huh. I never heard of them before. Mind if I give it a listen to pass the time since my phone is completely on the fritz right now?"
She silently reached for one of her earbuds, moving some of her hair out of the way causing Allen to catch a glimpse of her metallic ears. Besides their gray color and various grooves along them, they were perfectly identical to normal ones made of flesh and blood. Something so advanced it could probably only be found in Atelier City.
'Prosthetics...that must be what she meant about reading faces.", He wondered what exactly happened to her but decided to push these thoughts down and just listen to the music. It was an electronic rock band with a female vocalist. The singer had a hauntingly melodic voice and the song seemed to be about betrayal, deception, and corruption.
As the song reached its conclusion, Allen thought out loud to himself, "It's strange how beautiful this song describes how crappy the world is."
Nera opened her eyes for the first time since she started listening to her music in subdued surprise. "I guess I'm not the only one who can read minds."
***
A little bit more time passed and they suddenly heard a whistle coming from the fog. Following this sound, two figures emerged from it. First they were vague silhouettes but gradually their forms became clear.
The first was a tall man wearing a silver suit of knight armor and wielding a large weapon on his back. His armor was very angular with the front of his helmet being flat with dotted cut-outs on the lower half of it for the purpose of ventilation.
The second figure was a woman of average height dressed in a black hoodie and pants with white musical lines scrawled all across them messily. She whistled exaggeratedly as she twirled a small golden harp on her finger. Her nails were painted the same onyx color as the strings of her instrument.
They both gradually got up to their feet and backed away from the fog as the two figures approached.
“Who are you guys?”, Nera asked tentatively.
“We should be asking you two that. We’re traversers, we came to deal with the specter that was here…”, the mysterious woman glanced around, spotting the scattered remains of the monster that were lying around in the alley. “...but it looks like that was already taken care of.”
“Yeah, by me.”, Nera walked up to the gray-haired woman and pointed a thumb at herself for emphasis.
“Oh, is that so?” The older woman then leaned in to scrutinize her more thoroughly before suddenly throwing her arm around Nera and smushed their faces against each other, much to Nera’s shock.
“Aren’t you adorable!? It’s really impressive a kid like you can deal with a specter of that level. Without any scratches at all I might add too. You must be pretty talented. C’mon, tell me your name!” Nera let out loud protests and struggled to get out of the hooded woman’s grasp.
While she fawned over Nera and he was unsure of what he was going to do, Allen was about to try to approach them but was stopped by a raised hand from the armored figure.
“Don’t be alarmed. That’s just Madame Harpe’s way of showing affection.”, the man’s deep voice reverberated through his metallic helmet. He seemed much more composed and collected than his associate. Allen trusted in his words and stopped in his tracks.
‘This guy looks and sounds like he’s straight out of a medieval legend. And that armor he’s wearing is exquisitely cool. Are these guys like the guardians of the magical society Nera talked about earlier?’
Nera eventually managed to escape with an exasperated sigh and a light blush on her face from embarrassment. She then angrily pointed at the woman Allen now knew as “Madame Harpe” and sharply rebuked them.
“Mind my personal space you crazy-eyed lady! I don’t even know who you are, so don’t go breathing down my neck already! I’m not some pipsqueak you can smother to death!”, Nera yelled this out loudly but was ignored by everyone else. Harpe only tilted her head to show any indication that anyone heard Nera.
Allen spoke up. “You guys. Who are you supposed to be anyway? I know you called yourself a traverser but I have no idea what that means.”
“Hmm, sounds like you don’t know much about anything do you? Well, I wouldn’t mind informing you a little if that’s the case. For starters, I’m Harpe and my ally over there in the walking silver fortress is Hache.”
Allen and Nera glanced over at the armored man called Hache and he simply nodded his head. They both wonder how these two started working together with them seemingly being polar opposites.
Harpe then put her thumb to her chin and closed one of her emerald eyes in thought.
“As for your second question, Traversers are pretty much the cleanup crew of the underworld to describe it in an unglamorous way. Our job is to traverse through its different spills and get rid of the trash known as “Specters” and clear away the stains known as “miasma”. We even have a title to show for it."
Name: Colette Bossuete
Title: D-Rank Traverser
Physical Ability: 5
Technique: 8
Merit: 6
'There's really a title like that?'
Harpe dramatically took a half-bow as if she was receiving a standing ovation.
“You're welcome.”
“If it was not for Traversers like Madame Harpe. The world would be overrun by those vicious beasts.”, Hache proclaimed.
“You too might be able to become one. I can help you both become Traversers.”
“Really!?”, Allen uttered in disbelief. He did not think his chance to have a huge breakthrough would come this unexpectedly.
While he was sorting his thoughts out, Nera replied to Harpe., “Sorry, but if I was going to be a Traverser, I’d do it on my own terms.”
Harpe took this nonchalantly and continued. “Too bad, there’s still the boy though. I’ll ask this first, have you ever been in a life or death battle before?”
Allen was caught off guard by this question but eventually answered with a shake of his head.
“I see, I guess neither of you would make good allies after all.”, Harpe stated in mock somber. She then raised up with her back straight and her arms behind her back.
“Hache.”, Harpe uttered this one word so uncharacteristically serious and foreboding that it made the hairs on Allen’s neck stand up.
“Why did-”
Before he finished his sentence, Nera suddenly tackled him to the ground. Allen watched as if in slow motion as a silver ax swung through where he had been standing next to Hache not even a second prior.
They both rapidly got back to their feet and backed away from the two they previously saw as “protectors”.
"Dammit Hache, looks like you missed 'em. I was hoping we could get this over with quickly in one fell swoop." The knight's associate bemoaned.
"I guess we're going to have to do this the tiresome and exhausting way.", her words sharply contrasted her apparent whimsical attitude. Harpe’s mannerisms became even more lackadaisical than before and her voice took on a menacing tone as she shed the sheep’s clothing she had worn prior.
Nera looked at Allen worriedly, “I'll be fine no matter what, but you should probably hurry up and run away."
"What!? You may be strong, but you can't seriously think I'm the type to just leave you here to deal with these two your-"
"You should listen to her.", Harpe interrupted."Your role has ended here, extra."
"Harpist Craft, Page 7 - Hymn of Conveyance."
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