“Hail to you, Deva,” said a female voice.

  Ryan blinked, staring at the woman on the other side of the desk. He sat in a comfy chair in an odd room, but he couldn't quite take his eyes off the person in front of him. She had an ethereal and alien beauty to her, odd-shaped eyes and ears that pointed outwards like the anime depiction of an elf. Six objects, vaguely cross-like, three large and three small, rotated above her head in opposite directions like some sort of odd halo. The strangest part about the woman's appearance, however, was her lack of color. More than anything, she looked like a hyper-realistic pencil drawing. Her solid gray eyes, consisting of no sclera, iris, or pupil, stared back at him as though she were waiting for some sort of response.

  Ryan racked his brain trying to remember how he had gotten here. Wherever here was. The last thing he remembered was sitting on a train. “What happened,” he asked, because it seemed like the only question that made any sense.

  “Your train derailed,” said the woman.

  “Oh,” said Ryan, as though his response had been perfectly logical and well-reasoned. If his train had derailed, why was he here? Again, where was here? Why couldn't he feel much? Like the woman's monochromatic appearance, everything felt dull, like his memories were long distant and happened to someone else. The girl smiled, which, on her extremely attractive face, practically made his heart flutter. However, it was an oddly muted flutter.

  “Well, we are currently running an RPG-like fantasy world. You can join that as is, or you can wait for your next round of reincarnation.”

  Ryan just stared at her, watching as the big and small chunks of whatever it was rotating around her head slowed, and then switched directions. “Um... Wait... Am I getting isekai'd?”

  Her lips formed a rather pretty pout, as she appeared to be thinking, unfamiliar with the word perhaps. Her expression brightened, and she said, “I suppose so, unless of course you wish to just wait until your next reincarnation.”

  “I guess I'd take the RPG fantasy world,” Ryan said, still sounding rather unsure. Everything just felt so off.

  “Great,” the woman said cheerfully with an almost grin that nearly broke his heart.

  Ryan opened his eyes. The hard floor beneath him was warm and the smell of food proliferated the small cabin, proving that Ping was awake. He sat up with a grown and squinted against the dull glow of a lone threshlight. Ping was nowhere to be found. Tor was still laying under his thick quilt, softly snoring. Ryan scooted himself closer to the edge of the wooden floor, looking for his boots on the dirt doma portion of the building. He hung his feet over the edge and tried to rub away the not-quite-dream/not-quite-memory by pressing his palms into his eyesockets. The recurring vision of the monochromatic woman was probably never going to truly leave him. Next to the stove, he found two bowls of cooked grain each topped with a fried egg. Ryan grinned. Thank the gods for Ping.

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  ***

  “Okay, so you harvested your own wood for the haft material and to make your own charcoal. You also mined and smelted your own ore before forging the blade. Do I have that right?” Haroan asked.

  “Yeah, that's about right,” Ryan said.

  The big man gave a loud sigh. He was built like a dwarf, but had the height of an average human. He also sported a well?cared?for beard, which would have made his stouter folk proud. He ran his large hand through his unkempt, dirty?blonde hair and scratched the back of his head.

  “But why?”

  “Well, I wanted to know each step of the process and collect the best materials for the end product. You know, if we start with better materials going in, we should get a better product out, right?”

  “But you could have just picked better materials out of the supplies we had. You didn't have to go do it yourself. You should honestly probably just focus on smithing until you get to Journeyman. Journeyman is where everything changes and gets real interesting.”

  “Yeah, you've said that before, but I haven't quite decided if I actually want to be a smith. What if I want to focus on herbalism or some other trade? What if I want to, I don't know, take the mountain and terrace it and turn it into some food production system or a Fortress? What skill is that?”

  Haroan shook his big head. “It's that kind of talk that makes people think you're not right in the head, boy.”

  “I don't actually mean I'm going to terraform the mountain, I just... You know, I don't know if I really want to focus on one skill.”

  “I get it, boy, but listen, just get your smithing skill up to 40. As soon as you hit Journeyman, everything changes. You can still dabble with all the other shit, but... My guess is once you get it to Journeyman, you're not going to want to.”

  Ryan nodded. Not necessarily in agreement, but acceptance that he was being given advice by someone who was trying to do the best for him.

  “All right, boy, I got another question. What's with this... diamond shaped point on the back of your axe?” Haroan asked, pointing to the odd-shaped point on the other side from the blade.

  “Well, I based it on a tactical tomahawk, the point is for, you know, digging and chipping away at things without damaging the blade. The flat ends on either side of the haft are basically hammers.”

  Haroan nodded for a moment and then began asking a question. “What is, uh…” he trailed off, the toll of a bell catching both of their attention. It didn't have the frantic cadence of a warning bell, nor did it have the slow, steady ring of a village meeting.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ryan asked.

  Haroan stared toward the town's center with a vaguely perplexed look. “I think that's supposed to mean the lord is dead.”