Growling, the yao leaps towards the elf with its claws outstretched. 

The human draws his sword, but Lisu is faster. In a flash, running with more speed than I knew she possessed, she leaps over to the yao and punches it in the face. I stand there in disbelief, bow forgotten in my hand. What is she doing? She’ll get herself killed!

  The yao shakes itself, eyes narrowing in on Lisu with a snarl. Lisu shows no sign backing off, instead raising her chin and staring back at it steadily. The yao tilts its head in confusion, before advancing on Lisu. Before it can reach her, however, it stumbles, clutching its face in pain and falling on the ground. It writhes on the ground for a minute, before dissolving away, its essence dispersing into the wind. I realize that Lisu just one-shotted a powerful yao despite never having fought before. It looks like her Mary Sue powers are at work again. Lisu quickly rushes over to the elf, who’s sprawled on the ground.

“Are you all right?” she says in perfect English. I don’t even bother to ask where she learned that.

“You saved me,” the elf says wonderingly, sounding completely lovestruck. “Thank you so much!”

Lisu helps the elf stand, while he makes starry eyes at her. The human rushes over to his friend. Now that the danger is gone, I am able to get a closer look at the pair.

The elf looks straight out of a Lord of the Rings book, and wears clothes that look like they belong to a RPG. He has long blond hair parted to one side, with multiple braids running down his hair, and a long scar runs down his right eye. His face is delicate and angular, with high, arching eyebrows and narrowed eyes. The human is a mildly handsome boy around my age with dark brown hair and amber brown eyes. Other than his cloak, which is a royal red color, he’s dressed entirely in white: a white suit, white pants and white boots. It contrasts with the elf’s black garb. 

“Are you a knight or something?” I ask the human.

He smiles. “I’m merely part of a humble guild seeking to right the world’s wrongs. My name is Lucien Basilicus, and my friend over there is Alduin Mirazana.”

Alduin scowls. “I can introduce myself.”

“Wow, are you guys from Anglia?” Lisu asks, which prompts another round of gushing from Alduin about how smart she is. 

“Thank you, I’m not really that smart. Just really intelligent and charming and beautiful,” Lisu tells him with her best attempt at a humble smile that actually looks more smug. 

“I’m sorry to trouble you more, but do you know your way through the forest?” Lucien interrupts with a bashful smile. “We left the rest of our guild at the start of the forest to scout.”

“Of course. I know the way!” Lisu says, saddling onto the horse. She leads the way through the woods, riding the horse in a slow canter. Alduin follows her like a lovestruck puppy. Lucien motions for me to pull back, so I stop and wait for him to catch up to me. 

“That girl has some sort of Mary Sue Goddess power, right?” he confides in me. 

“How did you know?” I ask, surprised.

“I’ve seen a few people in Anglia who have that sort of power, although not to this degree. I knew something was off the moment Alduin started fawning over her. He’s usually not so quick to warm up with strangers.”

“Yeah, it’s really annoying. I have a friend who’s the same.”

  “You’re not affected by her power, right? I saw you roll your eyes when Alduin was talking about how great she was.”

“Are you not affected by her seduction powers too?” I asked, surprised. I had assumed that the reason for my immunity to Lisu’s power was because I was reincarnated. Did that mean Lucien was also reincarnated? He didn’t really remind me of any of my classmates from the real world, but he could have been sent back earlier by the cultists. 

“Yeah, my great-grandmother was a fairy or something,” Lucien shrugs. “Supernatural beings like fairies or demons aren’t affected by seduction powers.”

“So elves don’t count as supernatural beings,” I muse. I wonder if there are elves in the Jun Dynasty too, but so far, I’ve only seen humans and the occasional plant or animal turned human. 

“In fact they’re extremely susceptible to magic,” Lucien laughs. “It’s really funny sometimes. But elves have super strong magical prowess. That’s why most sorcerers and wizards are elves.”

That explains why Alduin is so infatuated with Lisu, even more than her family members who have known her for years. “Is Alduin a sorcerer?”

“Kind of,” Lucien says, but doesn’t elaborate. “So are you one of those animal monsters from the Jun Dynasty?”

“No,” I reply, not wanting to tell him that I’m reincarnated. Instead, I decide to be vague. “I don’t really know my family lineage, so maybe I was descended from one of them. I didn’t know who was immune to seduction powers before this.”

“I won’t push further if you don’t want to talk about it,” Lucien says, sensing my discomfort. He shifts the topic, and we continue to chat. I decide that Lucien is a good friend to have. He’s very easygoing and has a lot of interesting things to talk about. 

We continue walking through the forest behind Lisu, who is somehow on the right path, and eventually we come out of the forest back to Fulian. Near the edge of the woods, huddled around a fire are three Anglians, who also wear cloaks with the same pin as Lucien and Alduin. One of them, a dwarf, jumps up as we arrive.

“Lucien, Alduin, you’re finally back! I told you not to go out so far!” she scolds them. 

“Sorry, we just got a little lost,” Lucien says cheerfully.

“A little? You were gone for an entire day!” the dwarf lectures, before seeing us. “Are those people from the Jun Dynasty?”

“Don’t worry, we speak English,” Lisu assures her. “Not to brag or anything, but we just saved Lucien and Alduin from a yao.”

The dwarf side-eyes Lisu. For a second, I’m hopeful that she’s also immune to Lisu’s powers, but she breaks out into a huge smile, walking over to Lisu to clap her on the back.

“Thank you for taking care of those two,” the dwarf says. “They’re hopeless outside of battle. I’m Vofola, by the way.”

“Do you want to join us for dinner?” a girl sitting by the fire asks. A fluorescent shield that changes colors with the light lies propped up next to her. “We have plenty of food to spare.”

“Thanks,” Lisu beams, which sends Alduin into a cataclysmic state. He literally falls on the ground clutching his heart and moaning about how amazing she is. No one else seems to think it’s weird, except for Lucien, who seems on the verge of laughing. 

The final person of the group, a boy with a samurai haircut and a longbow strapped to his chest, speaks up. “I’m Horacio and that’s Perrine.”

We all sit down, gathered around the fire. Vofola is frying long sticks of some meat on the fire; she takes it off and puts it in a bread bun.

“Oh, you have hot dogs in Anglia?” I ask. “I thought that was only an American thing.”

“Dogs?” Vofola says. “That isn’t dog meat, that’s pork meat.”

“No, I meant the name of the food is hot dogs.”

“That’s not what they’re called,” Vofola replies. “Where did you get the idea? And where’s America?”

Lisu waves her hand. “Ah, don’t worry about Hu. He has an imaginary country called America that he constantly references.”

I’m about to refute that America does exist, but then I remember it doesn’t. Not in this universe, at least. So instead I say, “Sorry. Master Jiang must have taught me the wrong word for that food.”

“You speak English very fluently, even with a few mistranslations,” Vofola tells me. “But your accent is so weird. Now, Lisu’s accent on the other hand-” 

“I know,” I sigh. Everyone tells me that, but I’m too lazy to fake a British accent every time an Anglian comes. Vofola has finished preparing all the hot dogs. She heaps homemade tomato sauce on each one, and passes the not-hotdogs around. I take one, biting into it. It tastes wonderful, not in part because I’ve been parted from American food for so long. For a while, we sit around eating the food, savoring the taste. 

“So why are you here anyways? Are you part of a guild?” I ask curiously.

Perrine glances at me. “You don’t know? The Phoenix Guild is practically the most famous guild in the Westlands, after what Lucien did.”

“What did Lucien do?” I ask. The more I venture out of Fulian, the more I realize I'm out of touch with the current events after spending half of my life on a mountain. 

“He defeated one of the most powerful demons!” Vofola says. “After defeating the evil Obsidian Prince, he’s been called the Hero of Light!”

I straighten up after hearing the name. The computer had told me that the Obsidian Prince had been defeated, but I hadn’t thought that I’d have met its conqueror so quickly. This is a chance to find out more about the four demon children of the Demon God King, since Lisu and I will have to face them later. “So how did you defeat him?”

“He fought him and he won,” Alduin says with a ‘duh’ look on his face. Alduin hasn’t warmed up to me at all, despite his love of Lisu. He hasn’t talked to me once over the course of our walk except to give me disparaging remarks. 

“No, but how did Lucien fight the Obsidian Prince? Did he use any special techniques or weapons?” I ask. 

“I kind of forgot what I did. It was all a blur, really,” Lucien replies, before quickly diverting the topic. “Anyways, are you two cultivators?”

“Oh, I’m just a girl,” Lisu says not-so-humbly. “I guess I’m just so awesome that I defeated the spirit without even knowing how to cultivate!”

Now that Lisu mentions it, the move she pulled must have been cultivation-related, because no normal punch can defeat a yao. I guess this is the start of Lisu’s god-mode cultivation process.

“Are you a cultivator?” Perrine asks me. 

“Yeah,” I say. 

“That’s so cool!” Perrine exclaims.

“There are tens of thousands of cultivators in the Jun Dynasty,” Alduin says dismissively, before turning to Lisu. “Being able to manifest cultivation without even trying, however…”

“Do you think I started to cultivate?” Lisu asks me excitedly.

I sigh. There’s no point in trying to deter her. “Yes, it seems like you used some kind of wugong move to defeat the yao.”

“Well, of course that’s expected of me!” Lisu boasts. “You know, because I am so humble and benevolent. I can’t be a good person if I can’t save people from monsters.”

I try to hold back my annoyance. Was it possible that Lisu could get more insufferable?

“So why are you guys here?” Lisu asks.

“There’s an evil organization called the Vindicta Society who has been going around, conquering land and declaring themselves the ruler of this world,” Lucien says gravely. “The leaders went to the Jun Dynasty for some reason, so we’re trying to stop them.”

I jolt up, hearing the name the computer mentioned. “The Vindicta Society?”

“Yes,” Alduin groans at me. “Didn’t Lucien already tell you that?”

“We were tracking their whereabouts and we followed them all the way to the border of Anglia,” Lucien explains. “We fought them there, but they won against us and escaped into the Jun Dynasty. We managed to snatch a slip of paper explaining that they were going into Yucheng.”

Lisu and I look at each other. Yucheng is the capital of the Jun Dynasty; what would the Vindicta Society want there? 

“Why would they do that? Are they going to try to assassinate the Emperor?” Lisu asks fiercely. “They won’t dare to! I’ll fight them myself if it comes to that!”

Lucien shakes his head. “No. It seems like they’re going there for a potential alliance. However, the Society hasn’t reached Yucheng yet. It seems like they’ve stopped in the area around here for some reason.”

I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach. A potential alliance with the Emperor is something that would ruin the Jun Dynasty. I’ve read enough history books to know what happens when a colonizing superpower makes a ‘truce’ with a smaller empire they’re trying to conquer. Spoiler: it never ends well. If the Vindicta Society is here, we need to stop them now, both to prevent them from getting to Yucheng and to fulfill my quest.

“We should fight them now!” Lisu shouts. “I can totally defeat them, because I am just that awesome.”

“No, I think we should train more,” I rebuke. I don’t know if Lisu can die with her Mary Sue powers, but I don’t want to find out. “Lucien and the others were defeated the last time they fought the Society. And that was five people, one of which was able to defeat a powerful demon. You’re only one person! Plus, you haven’t had any proper training in wugong.”

“Oh right,” Lisu remembers, as if she’s so confident in her greatness she’s forgotten that she barely knows any wugong. “Well, I can train with Master Xia when we get back.”

Great. Now I’ll have to see even more of her. Why do I keep doing this to myself? 

“So you live near Fulian?” Vofola asks. “We’d like to set up camp next to a town, to recuperate after our defeat and train more.”

“Yep! I live in the town and Hu lives on the mountain,” Lisu says happily. “You can stay at Fulian or the mountain. We’ll have so much fun together!”

Alduin makes love eyes at Lisu again, which prompts me to silently gag. 

“Alright, tomorrow we’ll go to Fulian with you,” Lucien smiles. “But first, I think it’s time to sleep.”