Ray was struggling to breathe. He was kicking and flailing his arms and legs, trying to stop the stranger from choking him to death.

  “What the fuck do you know about Earth!” the stranger said menacingly.

  Ray had begun to go blue. He tried to speak but wasn’t able to. The stranger was just holding on too tightly.

  In what felt like forever, the stranger eventually released his grip enough for Ray to talk.

  “Speak!” he said angrily.

  “I’m from Earth,” Ray managed to choke out.

  This completely surprised the stranger. He had a contemplative look on his face. He hadn’t let Ray down yet, but he clearly relaxed his grip.

  “Where from Earth?” the stranger said.

  “Sydney, Australia. I lived in an apartment and worked as an accountant,” Ray responded.

  The stranger dropped Ray and started pacing. Ray didn’t know what to think about how this man was acting. Should he find a way to leave?

  Ray sucked in air like it was the first time he’d ever breathed. His throat felt raw. His chest hurt. His hands shook with adrenaline that had nowhere to go. He coughed once and tasted metal, then spat into the dirt and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  Miu shifted on his shoulder, still limp, still too light. Ray’s fingers tightened around her instinctively, protective and furious all at once. He kept his eyes on the stranger’s hands. Someone who could cross the distance in a blink and cut a head clean off did not need to strangle him to death. That meant the choking had been a test, or panic, or both.

  Ray hated that he could understand that.

  “What year was it when you found yourself here?”

  “2026, why?”

  “Who won the 2007 Australian election?”

  “Our good old mate Kevin 07.”

  The stranger visibly relaxed. He motioned for Ray to move through the trees to a small clearing where they set up camp.

  The clearing wasn’t much. A patch of flattened grass, a few old stones, and just enough cover from the trees that smoke wouldn’t rise in a straight column like a signal flare. The stranger moved like someone who had done this too many times to count. Not rushed, not cautious either. Just efficient.

  He didn’t just pick a spot and hope. He checked the treeline like he was reading it. He circled once, twice, then used his boot to scrape aside leaf litter in a few places, exposing bare soil. Ray didn’t know what he was looking for until the stranger nodded, satisfied, and started building the fire in a shallow dip between stones.

  “You always do that?” Ray asked before he could stop himself.

  “Always,” the stranger said, curt. “You want a fire, you pick a place it won’t betray you.”

  Ray didn’t ask what that meant. He already knew, in the way you know a bad rule because it has killed people before.

  Ray carefully placed Miu onto the ground near the fire they’d started. She still wasn’t moving. Her breathing was there, but barely. A thin rise and fall, like she was rationing air.

  For a long period, neither talked. Ray was wondering what the hell was going on. Could there be more people from Earth here?

  Ray attempted to Identify the stranger.

  [Identify Failed]

  “Don’t do that, it’s rude,” the stranger said, stoking the campfire with a few logs like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  Ray watched him for a moment and realised he hadn’t seen anyone move like this since he got here. Even the dark elves had a kind of arrogance to their confidence. This wasn’t arrogance. This was habit. This was someone who expected the world to take something from him at any moment.

  Ray reached down and adjusted Miu’s position so she was closer to the warmth, then froze for half a second when he realised he was doing it automatically. Like she was already his responsibility in the same way breathing was.

  The stranger noticed anyway. He didn’t say anything, just reached into his inventory and pulled out a small cloth roll. He tossed it toward Ray.

  “Bandages,” he said. “Not magic. Clean. Use them.”

  Ray blinked. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” the stranger replied. “Survive first. Then you can do the gratitude crap.”

  Ray didn’t love being spoken to like that, but he also couldn’t deny the relief that came with it. Someone competent was in front of him. Someone who wasn’t pretending Arkus was fair.

  He wrapped Miu as gently as he could, working around the darts and the cuts. He wasn’t a medic. He was improvising, and he hated that he could feel how close she was to the edge. Every time her chest rose, it felt like she had to make a choice. Ray kept glancing at the fire, then at the trees, then back at her, like watching harder would somehow keep the world from snatching her away.

  Ray was getting some meat ready to cook over the fire when the stranger pulled out an entire modern barbecue. A full six burner with a drying rack.

  Ray just stared, because it wasn’t a shabby iron plate or a spit. It was something you’d see on a balcony in Sydney, smelling like sausages and bad life choices.

  “I always loved these things back home,” the stranger said.

  “Wait… why do you have one of those?” Ray said. “Aren’t we in a fantasy society or something? Also, what the hell do I call you. Skirting the subject is getting annoying.”

  “The name’s Teddy. Teddy Conchino. As you’ve guessed, I’m from Earth as well,” Teddy said.

  “You’re the mobster that went missing in 2010. They thought you’d been brutally murdered by some rivals or something,” Ray said.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Teddy snorted. “Mate, I take offense to that. Firstly, I ain’t no mobster. I just enjoyed riding the bike. Tried making one here but couldn’t. Secondly, this barbecue was home made by me. The burners are modified and run purely on magic.”

  Ray stared at the barbecue again, then at Teddy. It was ridiculous. It was also weirdly comforting. Like the world hadn’t fully succeeded in stripping normality out of people yet.

  Ray couldn’t help himself. “You built that here?”

  Teddy shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “Took me months. Not the metal. Metal’s easy. The part that sucks is getting anything to run right without the System sticking its fingers in it. You want consistent heat, you need stable mana flow. Most people just slap a rune on it and pray. Then it blows up and they act surprised.”

  Ray huffed a laugh, then realised he was actually laughing. He hated it. He needed it.

  “So you’re, what, a blacksmith?”

  “Whatever gets me fed,” Teddy said. “Sometimes it’s blades. Sometimes it’s cooking. Sometimes it’s ripping someone’s head off because they get cute with a blowgun.”

  Ray shut up after that.

  “So… if you’re here, are there any other Earthlings?” Ray poked a stick into the fire. He was afraid of the answer. He didn’t want more hope that some of his family could have survived the catastrophe that was Earth.

  “I’ve come across nine off-worlders so far,” Teddy said. “Only one other was from Earth. He came at the same time as me. We died together, stupidly too. He ain’t around no more. Lasted a week here before committing suicide.”

  Teddy’s voice went flatter on the last words. Not dramatic. Just old.

  Ray stared at the flames, trying to imagine being here for a week and deciding that was enough. He’d been here, what, days? And already he understood the shape of it. Not the exact feeling, but the logic. The hopelessness that didn’t announce itself as depression. It announced itself as exhaustion. As being tired of learning new rules just to be punished by them.

  “Chris?” Ray asked carefully.

  Teddy didn’t look up. “Yeah. Chris. Good bloke. Loud laugh. Pretended he wasn’t scared. He tried to make jokes about it, like we were on some weird camping trip with extra steps. Then we died. Both of us. He came back different after the respawn. Quieter. Wouldn’t meet my eyes. Three days later, he walked out into the bush and didn’t come back.”

  Ray swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Teddy said, and the sharpness was back. “Be alive. That’s better.”

  “So… does that mean there’s a chance there are other people here from Earth?” Ray asked.

  “Well, I mean, you’re here, I’m here. I don’t see why not,” Teddy responded, starting the burners and adding sausages, steaks, and meat skewers onto it. Then he glanced over. “How’d you die anyway?”

  Ray cracked up in tears at that point. He wasn’t sure the memories of Earth would be a good thing. He looked at Teddy, who was studying Ray’s eyes like he’d seen that look before.

  “Oof, that bad?” Teddy said.

  Ray nodded.

  Teddy sighed. “Well, I’ve spent the last… what, twelve years? Getting stronger in hopes for a way home. Honestly, it kind of sucks here. There’s infighting everywhere, civilisation is about to collapse. If the System doesn’t take over, the tyrants are in full force. People are more interested in fighting each other than the System, meaning it’ll win eventually.”

  Ray hesitated for a second, looking even worse off. He looked down and mumbled, “No point trying to go back. Nothing’s left there anyway.”

  Teddy turned at that, sure he’d heard wrong. “Nothing’s left for you?”

  Ray looked up, tearful. “Nothing’s left for anyone.”

  The reaction was instant. Teddy’s whole posture broke. Not dramatic, not theatrical. Like someone had pulled a support beam out of him. He barely managed to turn the burners off before his knees hit the ground. His vision went black.

  Ray didn’t even get up to help. Not because he didn’t care. Because he knew that feeling. That moment where your brain refuses reality and the body starts doing its own thing. Teddy was having a panic attack, hard.

  Ray sat and waited, simply poking his stick in the fire as he contemplated the situation. For a while the only sounds were the crackle of embers and Teddy’s rough breathing.

  Miu twitched once, small and weak, like she’d heard something in their voices and it bothered her. Ray rested a hand on her side, steady and careful. She didn’t purr. She didn’t speak. She just stayed there, and Ray took that as permission to keep going.

  When Teddy finally managed to sit back up, Ray spoke quietly. “You alright there?”

  At first, Teddy didn’t respond. He sat staring at the ground, waiting for his vision to stop spinning. His entire twelve years of work wasted. Twelve fucking years gone. He should have just killed himself like Chris had. What was the point in living like this? Off-worlders were persecuted, attacked on sight, treated like they were better than garbage until the moment they weren’t useful anymore.

  Teddy looked up at Ray, eyes bloodshot, voice rough. “Please… tell me what happened. Tell me how you died.”

  Ray was silent for a minute, recalling the memory. “Not much to tell really. In around 2012, tensions began to rise with Russia and China. It just kept escalating. By the time 2020 came around, America was already in the early stages of civil war, not officially… but you could see it. Tension kept building but no actual war had started. 2022, there were small open skirmishes, but I guess that was enough. Russia attempted an invasion of Ukraine. It wasn’t going so well for them. Four years later… they still hadn’t made any real ground. After I finished a job interview, I guess the pot boiled over. I think nukes were dropped. System messages happened. I was told the Earth was destroyed so I couldn’t respawn there. Now I’m here.”

  Teddy stared at him like he was waiting for the punchline.

  “Daaamn, Earth actually went nuclear?” Teddy said, almost not believing it.

  “Apparently so. Honestly, I’m still a bit hazy. I kind of remember hitting a sign or something from the blast, but yeah…”

  Teddy stared into the fire like it might argue back. “Fuck. My whole goal was to get back there. Now I gotta work out what the hell I’m doing.”

  For a moment, Teddy’s hands curled into fists. Ray saw it, the rage trying to climb out of him. Not rage at Ray. Rage at time. At effort. At hope that had been dragged across a world and beaten for sport.

  Then Teddy exhaled, long and slow, and the rage went somewhere else. Buried. Filed away. Like it had happened before.

  Ray got up and turned the burners back on. “Guess I’ll do the cooking while you think about it.”

  Ray added a few items of his own onto the barbecue and started turning the sausages. Even though he’d almost been choked out by Teddy, Ray strangely felt comfortable around him. He wasn’t sure if it was because they were both from Earth, but Teddy sort of felt like Ray’s old man. Tough as nails on the outside, but ultimately a loving and caring man on the inside.

  While Ray was cooking, Teddy spent some time staring into the distance. It wasn’t long before something started bothering the old man.

  “Why are you wearing elven clothes?” Teddy asked. “Shouldn’t they have tried to kill you on the spot like the other ones back there?”

  Ray thought for a minute. “Oh, so that’s why you’re still wearing those clothes? Yeah… it’s kind of a long story. I can summarise it for you if you want.”

  “We have all night. May as well tell me the long version,” Teddy said.

  As Ray began taking the first items off the barbecue, he began his story. He started from when he first woke up, all the way through to being captured, put on trial, then being allowed to leave because he was a System Outcast. By the time he was done, the barbecue was finished and they’d been well into eating the food.

  Teddy chewed slowly through most of it, eyes fixed on the flames. Every now and then he’d grunt or shake his head like Ray was describing the dumbest possible way a world could function, and Teddy was annoyed that it somehow still made sense.

  When Ray explained the council and the Outcast title, Teddy made a noise that sounded halfway between a laugh and a cough.

  “So… you’re telling me that because the System tried to fuck you over, it may have accidentally saved your life?” Teddy said at the end of the story.

  “Pretty much. I don’t like not having access to some features, but I suppose it’s a decent trade off.” Ray paused, then looked at Teddy properly. “Now answer this for me. Why do off-worlders automatically get targeted? You seem like a nice enough guy.”

  Teddy pondered that for a minute, then shared a screenshot of a portion of his relations screen.

  “It seems that most off-worlders see this and think they should help the System, essentially allying themselves with it,” Teddy said.

  Ray was about to speak but was cut off.

  “I started at ten thousand in the positive, like your ten thousand negative,” Teddy continued. “Since I’ve not been listening to the System, my relation’s been getting worse over time, giving me less and less benefit.”

  Ray realised that Teddy obviously had no compunction about using Identify on him. As he had never told Ray about the relation with the System, just that he was an outcast, Ray felt that small prickle of irritation and shoved it down. He needed answers more than pride.

  “People see ‘benefactor’ and think it means ‘safe’,” Teddy added. “They start taking quests. Doing jobs. Acting like the System’s their mate. Then the locals see it too, and they don’t see a person. They see a walking problem. A snitch. A future enforcer. Someone the System is investing in.”

  Ray frowned. “So they kill them before the System can use them.”

  “Exactly,” Teddy said. “And sometimes they’re right. Sometimes off-worlders turn into proper little zealots. Then it becomes a loop. Locals kill off-worlders. Off-worlders band together. The System hands them benefits. Locals panic harder. More blood. Everyone gets dumber.”

  “So what happens now?” Ray asked.

  Teddy sighed. “I dunno. You’re clearly a noob to this world. I have no interest in getting involved, to be honest, but I can’t leave you the way you are either. You’ll die before the week’s out.”

  He sat thinking for a bit. Ray didn’t want to interrupt, so he finished eating. It took a while, but eventually Teddy spoke again.

  “Alright. I’ll give you ten days,” Teddy said. “In ten days, I’ll give you the pointers I’ve learnt along the way. If all goes well, you’ll be well past level twenty by the time I’m done with you. It won’t be easy. I reckon you’ll die personally, but let’s give it a shot.”

  Ray smiled. It was all he could ask for. He now had a mentor to help him truly get started in this world.

  It wasn’t long before his first lesson began.

  Never sleep where you set up camp. It’s a fast way for beasts or other races to find you. Use the camp as a trap if you can and sleep somewhere else, in the dark and the cold.

  Ray remembered a recent movie he had watched. You either get a warm meal, or a decent night’s rest. Not both.

  Teddy pointed into the treeline as he spoke, indicating a darker patch between roots and rock. “There. That’s where you sleep. Not here. Here is where you want them to look. Here is where you want them to think you are.”

  Ray glanced at the fire, then at Miu, then back at Teddy. “And if something comes sniffing around?”

  Teddy’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Then you learn if you’re paying attention.”

  As the night wore down, Miu started to rouse from her sleep. She didn’t speak. She simply settled into Ray’s sleeping body. She was feeling downtrodden. She had failed in her first and only goal, to be strong for her master. She needed to get strong and quickly so that they could survive together.

  Ray wrapped an arm around her without thinking. It felt protective. It also felt like a promise, and Ray wasn’t sure he liked making promises in a world that killed you for believing in them.

  When the night was over and they had all woken up, Ray filled Miu in on the situation. She was all for it. She couldn’t directly communicate with Teddy but managed to relay her thoughts through Ray.

  Once breakfast was finished, they immediately set out at Teddy’s instruction.

  It was time for power levelling.