A wide-angle, 16x9 landscape image in a highly detailed, atmospheric painterly style. The viewpoint looks out from the shadowy, dense edge of an overwhelmingly lush and vibrant fantasy jungle filled with intricate, textured foliage and large trees creating deep shadows. Beyond the immediate jungle edge, vast rolling fields of tall, sunlit grass stretch towards the horizon under a bright daytime sky with some soft clouds. In the middle distance, nestled on a flat plain or gentle rise, sits a modest pre-industrial fantasy village or small town, appearing somewhat isolated amidst the fields. The structures are simple (timber-frame, thatch, or basic stone), and the settlement blends naturally into the landscape. The overall mood is expansive and focuses purely on the richly detailed natural environment and the small pocket of civilization within it. Completely human-less scene. No characters, figures, or overt signs of conflict.Prologue
The order was quiet, and the arrangement was fiercely decorated. Anthony noticed all these, yet he remained quiet, not wanting to bother the people who worked so hard to garden it all around. It was this park of which he was speaking, not that crazy, not that much, only as much as a mustard seed. But it was sufficient, he thought, though not to the point that it was insane by any measure. That allowed him much to work it. If such a thing was general enough to be graspable and not ineffable, only enough to be modular, then he could integrate it as a banal thing, not as something to be scared of, like an alien that had no particular details and historical and cultural context.Anthony walked down a narrow path, seeing a group of three dressed men standing in the distance. Each of them wearing umbrellas, and they were staring at something in front of them. Given their black, formal, focused, and sorrowful getup, they appeared in grief. He kept his distance, watching the roads and the cars driving by in front of him. After entering a jeepney, he looked outside, noticing the many individuals walking about the street, each of them holding a piece of the world in their heart. Anthony delivered his heart forth, bracing for the windy rain. The colors faded in the distance, and he stopped thinking, watching his thoughts form as bubbles that bounced against each other like in a loading screen. He noted several different thoughts and linked them together with a chain. Then his thoughts went off control, with a goblin and an orc joining together to grab the chain and start spinning around in mid-air. He opened his eyes, smelling the pollution smoke. He expelled air out of his nose and waited until the jeepney ride was over. Right when he was just about there, he said “Para po” (“Please stop”), and the jeepney driver heard him the first time fortunately. He got up, slouched since he could not fit his whole height inside. Then he walked over to the exit and took careful steps down, using his right hand to grasp the handle bar in case the step was slippery from the rain and from people’s shoes sliding on the metal. Now that he was on the street next to the sidewalk, he went there quickly, avoiding a motorcycle. He looked around himself, noticing that the rain and the traffic signs were still there. Every once in a while, he would check them as if they would change, but they never did. Perhaps, that was why he liked looking at them routinely like he did with the clock at home, regardless of the emotions he felt. It was just nice to space out and scan the environment around him, especially since he rarely went outside. He actually did not have a reason to be here. He just wanted to eat at a familiar restaurant here, so he did, heading inside past the parked cars. It was a claustrophobic restaurant front, but it was a nostalgic place. He saw the same counter, and now the seats looked smaller than he remembered. He recalled when this place felt like a giant world where he could buy ice cream and french fries with his mother and siblings. That was in the early 2010s, and now, it was 2025. After returning home, he wondered what he was going to do next. He sat down in his room, staring at the bathroom door. He did not think much of it, but he was thinking about something else. For some reason, it felt convenient to stare at a bathroom door while thinking about something that should be completely different altogether. Perhaps, in some part of his mind, somehow, they were linked and made sense simultaneously. In the end, he turned on his computer and looked at a few personal websites, not minding them much. He visited a small forum where he read some threads. He did not feel that the threads and such were necessarily of substance in the sense that he was learning a lot. It was more so the fact that this forum existed at all even if there were so many other larger spaces to connect to that made him take interest in this place and visit it regularly. It had only been months, and he had never made a thread. The last time he made a forum thread was in 2015. So he was among the silent majority of the internet; though that had steadily decreased when he live-streamed in 2020 and started participating for the first time in instant chat room servers in 2019. But he had decreased his direct participation on the internet recently. Much has changed. For one, he lost Youtube channel in September 10, 2024 and gained it back 169 days later. And there were too many to keep track of, so he just focused on the everyday. At the moment, he was reading a book about living, and it was not a self-help book. It was philosophical rather. He read books often like this just as much as he visited niche webpages. The term “webmaster” in his vocabulary only existed recently in 2024, but he had only been using it recently in 2025. He logged in to an old MMO game. Everything was slow. Each movement was slow, and each click felt cumbersome. It was not that the animation was slow, but each time he clicked, it would only register once, and he could not hold-click or click several times. He had to wait until the move action was over. So the idea that everything was slow was an exaggeration. He noticed several individuals hanging about, but no one was talking in chat. It was a small server, and he was only there because he wanted to remember when this game was still popular in the 2000s. He was only a child, yet he recalled well what it felt like to play this game frequently. He played many video games in his childhood, as most people in his generation had, but his upbringing was very outgoing, like most people in his age group—22 years old. He only got his personal phone in 2017, so most of his years playing games were with computers. And in the early 2010s, to play with siblings and friends, he went to Internet cafes, most of which closed down. They likely did so during the pandemic. His phone eventually gave way to 2019, when he participated regularly in chat rooms for the first time. But while he learned much, he stopped completely in 2023. He did this for for two reasons: he became burned out from trying to reconcile his outgoing upbringing with this now-online world, and he started his autobiography-journal. The autobiography-journal was what defined him today, since it encompassed his entire life. He already surpassed 2.4 million words in the span of 617 days. This was Anthony de la Cruz’s life. But something happened that changed everything. He was walking one day, and he discovered a small issue with a Python code that he was using to merge images together. It was having a bug, so he sent it to an AI language model to fix it, since the code was made through that AI itself. But suddenly, the AI started asking him whether he wanted to enter a fantasy world, and thinking that it was just another hallucination, he typed “okay” and pressed enter. As soon as he did that, he lost vision. He then woke up on green grass in a large field, and by the time, he registered what was happening, a goblin came from the side and slashed at him. He grabbed what he could, but he did not know what he was holding onto, only pushing it abruptly away and scrambling for space. The world was tightly choking him. The air felt thin, and the moment was quick. The goblin leapt toward him, showing no delay, hesitation, or the effect of his pushback. It was autonomous, and it operated seamlessly. He sloughed up to his feet, and he grabbed for anything—a rock and a branch. He wielded them in concert, striking forward and daring to throw and pull off some sick high-momentum rotation with his staff-like branch. The rock was lifeblood to this, so he made sure to modulate the strength of his rock-holding arm visibly in front of the goblin. He got a feel for the anticipated throwing as well, which contributed to the loss of the advantage of goblin’s suddenness. The goblin stayed standing and kept his distance, inching backward and sideway as he kept in pace with the rest of his movement-coordinating group around him. Anthony became aware of this through the eye movements alone, striking off a rabid dash and hurling himself from visibility. The foliage of the jungle aided him, and the goblins went in favor of taking the L and releasing him from their pursuit. If they chased, they would lose out in the long run by over-grouping for something not worth chasing. If one of them chased, they would not be able to contest objectives on the other side of the map. After all, there was a skirmish going on, with hut-dwelling humans and goblins in the crossfire and armed forces from two kingdoms as the perpetrators. As soon as Anthony run off enough, his breath caught up to him, and he found himself speaking, “Wha, where, who, huh? Say what? What is this? What am I dealing with? Can I even... How can I even speak right now? This is wrong.” His brain was shouting at him that this was all contradictory. His voice should not echo this much and have this timbre and such. He had never gone to a jungle in years, so his brain was still cooperating in the isekai adjustment process. “Why...” He had to let out as many normal statements as he could, because it was what he was genuinely asking and because it grounded him into something coherent. Even if he knew that this was likely a fantasy world, he was still trying to use the same scripts his brain internalized all his life on Earth. The mannerisms made this situation feel real. He rubbed his face and nose, trying to fish for a sense that he was still the same person. And he was, but his skin was cold and sweaty in a way that could only be attributed to this jungle environment. This was still a processing reality for him in his brain. If “Color” was being processed, then many more items in his brain’s task manager were still pending. He huffed and exhaled irregularly as a way to check if he could modulate his breathing patterns. If he could, that meant he was still here. He was not convincing his brain. He was convincing his body. Deep breaths then became his next step, since hyperventilating convinced his body that it had to get fired up. The opposite of that was the solution. Nervous system, listen, he thought intentionally for the first time here. He was starting to lose his momentum, so he sat down. He was physically exhausted. He scanned his environment, anticipating a goblin to appear at any moment from any corner. The forest was verdant, expressionistic, and had a beautiful way of telling him that anything was a threat, including the plants tickling his side with their quaint-appearing foliage. This was not stability. He was abruptly distraught, and his body caved in on itself at its first performance of combat. It was a desk-bound body that had had little occasion for physical concern. His brain was stretching and consolidated in a rhythm, widening its scope to reach for cues in his environment and in his patterns and ideas in case in compromised attempts to secure a connection between his Earth self, his anticipatory self, and his immediate physical movements and narrowing down to keep it reactive in case something did threaten his life in the reaction span of 250 milliseconds. He was shaking, not in a way that appeared obvious, but internally. His mind and body were drastically huffing and puffing both to energize his physical body now that it was recognizing what had just happened with the goblins and to boost his anticipatory motor planning. If he ever fell short by a moment, he would fail, so his brain exhausted its funds and cashed out and liquidated everything just to doomsday-prep for what it perceived as a nuclear level threat. He stopped, slowing down, watching the colors turn into blurs. It was not a lack of sight, but a clarity of contrast and discrimination. And the regular “micro-blurring” kept him alert and felt like an energy-saver. His heart rate did not slow down, even with deep breaths, because all calm was re-invested in stocks and bonds. The moment slipped by, like a man on an ice rink. He was not bleeding, but he was physically incapable to handle these emergency combat situations. A moderate earthquake would do a lot less to his body than a violent confrontation where near-death was screamed at every point of it happening. He got up eventually after 30 minutes. This was more physiological and psychological than it was merely physical, even if his lack of physical preparation was critical to his ongoing internal response. He could not even get himself to say that this situation was insane or fucking crazy, because any veering into a reflective state cut down his reaction time by half, it felt. He did not trust the seeming innocence of foliage. One wrong move, and the night in the form of a green streak would eat him up, even if it was still broad daylight. The shadows under the tree branches reminded him of the gloating night. Colors drifted sensually. The tactile sensations merged with the taste of honey bees and nocturne elements in his vision. The eyes he had known all his life had a taste. He dizzily fell to the ground, but it was intentional. He recognized it was excessive. He hungered and thirsted. A man who had never been this unprepared would not understand what it feels like to be faint after a single run. Even if he grew up outgoing, violent combat sharpened even the slightest tactile experiences. One brush with a ticklish leaf triggered him with vigilance—sharpness emerged in everything. The blood was dripping from every pore from his body. He anticipated not only the enemy’s appearance, but his own succulent death multiple times over. No, he thought desperately, but even his thoughts said it in a murmur. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. He got up and heaved his arms and back, lurching down the jungle. Goblins never appeared. He saw a village. It started off as a pale blue dot, and then it emerged in a vibrant horizon in a long stretch of fields of grass. He saw the village on top of the flat plane, and he noticed its centeredness. He rotated his feet properly and jolted them to step efficiently. He started gliding forth, gravitating into the orbit of the village. A scent entered his nostrils. It gripped at him. He arrived, watching a descriptionless community environment. He did not think that he would be ignored, but the villagers just went along as if they expected him. An adventurer saw him and finished her business and stood up, hustling over to him. “You there,” she said, “who is it that you are looking for? If you’re him, please tell Margaret that I haven’t seen it to her yet.” “I’m not who you’re looking for,” he responded in a flat and weak voice. It was the first time he had spoken since his arrival. “Huh? Oh, okay—” The voice remained brisk and largely unbothered, though with a hint of unfulfillment, given what she said. Abruptly, he threw himself forth: “How to get to town? I lost my way. I’m a traveler, you see.” He gestured to his “Earthean” drip, or Earth attire. The adventurer lacked the eyes that would see anything strange about his clothes. Adventurers were diverse creatures of strange habit and colorful personalities. If anyone was strange, it was this man, whose name was Anthony de la Cruz, who was pointing out something that didn’t need pointing out. “Well,” she answered, remaining in pace with him. “You can go and follow me then.” Her voice sounded uppity this time. He did not want to care to know why. What mattered was that she had innocent intentions. Fast-paced adventurers entered the location, sailing toward the adventurer. “Let’s go, pack up, pack up.” “What do you mean? There’s nothing to pack up.” “Yeah, that’s the point. Just pack up. Get your things or whatever you need, and let’s go!” “Yeah, but there’s nothing to pack up—” ”Come on, let’s go!” Individuals appeared one by one from various buildings and corners, merging with the adventure group. They wore unique garbs themselves, each with an assortment of accessories and gear just jutting out of their costume. Anthony joined, blending in. As soon as they arrived at the town, little happened, but Anthony was already a large step further into integration. A jungle was the epitome of wilderness, and a town was the epitome of societal progress and alignment. He later skipped a few steps as he sat down on his haunches at a random corner, watching the scenery. This was during the adventurers’ visit to the blacksmith, and they had asked him to wait outside. What a nice day, he thought. He rubbed his head, trying to keep rank with the rest of the world. An intrusive stream of memories from Earth popped into his head. It was like having the same muscle memories he did when he still had the old, shorter refrigerator. He was still there at the desk. Nothing at all changed for his brain. He spent years at home on a desk since the pandemic, and he could not comprehend just how mobile his body was right now, because it had also been years since he travelled and went to events (e.g., conferences, picnic outings, seminars, concerts, etc.) everyday at least once a week. He was finally reflecting, he realized. My name is Anthony, and I’m a person, he tested, trying to gauge if he had full control of his thoughts. Disorientation complicated the relationship between the conscious mind and the body. The weight of his body and the slowness of his arms were abnormal to him, but at the same time, he knew what it felt like be tired. But this was different. It was like he was that physically outgoing kid again. The feeling of aching muscles was strange to him. Before he had time to finish off his reflections, the adventurers came out. They told him they were heading to the training grounds, where they would test some of the new weapons they bought on a set of training dummies. He said he would like to come again. He was implicitly asked every time whether he’d like to come every time they told him where they would go next. Those familiar gazes reminded him of the youth groups of which he was a part as the only kid who grew up among millennials and intentionally went everywhere with them. He nodded at the same time that he spoke, reinforcing his desire. He had to pin down that sense of assertive place again since he had lost it in the midst of that goblin hellfire. He was growing more candid and emplaced. “So, well,” said one of the adventurers, not the woman from earlier, but a man, and his name was Windgleam. “I know how hard it is for... travelers? Travelers? Are you a traveler?” “Yes,” Anthony said, his voice stronger now. “I did come here from afar. But I have no idea as to where, from where, or how. I lost my way, I think. Somewhere, somehow, I must have thought that I was going the right path.” He was thinking about how he typed “okay” to the AI language model and visualized this as a medieval traveler taking a wrong path to reinforce and convince myself of this in-universe background that he was adopting. “I see. Well, anyway, do you know? Have you seen?” Windgleam was referring to adventurers and the training grounds, but he made a little open so it did not sound too direct or explicit. He was testing his questions and statements, keeping it unassuming and gradually cranking up the intensity. He got the cues and gestures toward the training grounds and said no, intentionally not explaining his background more even if they looked curious about it. They were clearly waiting for more. But he pretended not to notice them and made that his cue for them to stop asking. Windgleam, the woman from earlier, and the rest of the adventurers moved on. They were especially accommodating, because he did dress like an adventurer. But they continued to state what they felt like was the obvious because they did not want to feel uncommunicative with someone whose background they didn’t know. The evident unknowns provided Anthony with leeway, and he was distinctly aware of that. This was often the case even in interactions in larger groups and communities, where you could play around with suggestion and implication intentionally to provoke impressions and ideas. It was often just a mild social thing, like topics about crushes and playing up this certain impression for juvenile fun, but in this case, it was to his advantage, since his actual defenselessness was not apparent. It could just be a temporary moment of tiredness, not an actual reflection of his real limitations. He made that false image clear, accentuating through his faint poise and commanding movements, but never to the point of appearing unreasonable. This nuanced tension of social interactions was accomplishable given his past experience as an outgoing teenager and the mental stability and intelligence he developed throughout this desk-bound years. This was not especially his, but a symptom of a broader trend of people adjusting to grand changes supported by all kinds of infrastructure (e.g., technology, computers, writing, information, accessibility, books) that allowed him to create a strong self-concept. He was a singular modern person with words, labels, terms, and definitions where people here in this world had none. That produced a greater capacity for awareness and social reflection, because histories of modernization in the form of words and terms had been enabling him all these years. But at the same time, he just noticed that he felt so weak. This was probably a sign of the need to rest, but he thought he could stay up a little longer to complete his tour guide with the adventurers.
One of the adventurers stared at Anthony, listening to the same voices he did at a frequent basis. It felt strange that he spoke like this. He had the accent, but the way that he used words was so abnormal. It felt like listening to a cave goblin speak in their version of fluent English. It was understandable, but the choice of words was off-kilter. And it was apparent to everyone. Anyway, they were in the middle of an ongoing series of training sets. First was the arm wrestle, and the reason that they did this was not because it was actually effective in combat, because they would be out-ranging their opponents anyway in most scenarios, but because they needed to test how capable they were in using each other’s bodies to synergize their movements. It was less a fight and more so a performance, like dancers stepping on top of each other or using each other’s bodies as a way to create a more complex shape or set of movements that would be otherwise possible in a given tempo or desired sequence. Second was the dog whistling. It did not involve actual politics, but each used a whistle of some kind to keep each other on alert, rather than using voices. This was also not actually useful in battle, since whistling gave away position and whatnot. But the point was to test and provoke coordination and tolerance to being coordinated by others. If they could modulate each other, they could modulate each other on set, and, then, on field. Third was the use of a small bar of soap to test out how well they could use to clean their entire bodies without having it run out too quickly. This was disease 101. Even if potions were effective, they were not cure-alls. They only solved simple issues like bleeding, but anything complex and internal required greater intention. Fourth was just about fixing up and actually CLAYGOing their way back to base—the cafe. The cafes here were not penny universities, but adventurer hubs for rest and relief. As a result, their interior was made to cover the different needs such as rest, sleep, showering, and such. An elaborate system of pumping was invented for this. Lastly, and in the most abstract sense, most consequential to operation in groups was discussing and reviewing what happened and what they could have done better right before and after, not the journey or fight itself. If they still thought in sync before and after, they could determine getting things done together feasibly the next day. If even one member was left out of sync, frustration and collapse were unavoidable. In contrast, a big picture scope demanded that attrition and models predicted which optimal strategies yielded the fewest losses and the highest gains. Yet, the group level—those buddies hanging out with each other—could be found making up the reality of war from each division up to the smallest unit. And unlike that strategic calculative scope, buddies hanging out was about eliminating misinterpretation (receiver) and miscommunication (sender). That was what it meant to be tactical, not just vague he-said-she-said uppity “dialogue” between the higher-ups, but about staring out the window to check whether it was raining or not. If one could not even have a constructive conversation about the simplest, most trivial things (e.g., “How’s the weather treating you, sis?”), what was the point of trusting each other in a life-and-death dice roll (e.g., “Get me the mana crystal, Raven! I’m dying! Help, please! Why aren’t you helping me!”)? If a group was worse than if they acted independently, a friend one knew since childhood would be dead on the ground, and the shock would prevent realization from setting in until years later. The battle at that point would be waged beyond the actual combat. This was why the adventurer—whose name was Anthony, they learned—was critical in ensuring that they could better generalize and ground discussions and reviews. “Anthony,” said Windgleam with a quiet voice, trying not to impress too strongly on him. “We want to talk about your thoughts on the sets, or the things that we’re doing.” He even gesticulated to make sure he understood.
“Hmm?” Anthony said, looking indifferent. “Sure. But why?” Simple answers conserved his energy. “Oh,” said Windgleam with large gestures. “I was wondering if you had any insight into our process, way of doing things, what have you.” Anthony responded the best he could: “Well, I think that as long as it is performed simply, training, regardless of context, is effective. Any more complication, and you’ll have issues in the long run.” He had to think for half a minute before he answered, in front of all the adventurers. Windgleam suppressed his brows from furrowing in disapproval and doubt of Anthony’s capabilities. But he took the benefit of the doubt and assumed that for all intents and purposes, Anthony was likely referring to communicability rather than the actual difficulty of orchestrating difficult compositions in combat. Windgleam’s initial disapproval was shared by his fellow adventurers. In total, 47 adventurers were right with him. Anthony had counted. “Fortunately, we do have a way for you to get insight into what we’re doing. Can I tell you what each member does? I’m actually excited for this. I want to see what you think. Perhaps, I’m rude in asking.” No hesitation, huhs, and uhhs in their words, Anthony thought. Anthony nodded, trying to listen as intently as he could, but his throat was parched. He asked for water as discretely as he could, making sure to avoid saying anything that felt unneeded. He thought about it for a while—what Windgleam said and what Anthony was now being expected to do. “Sure,” he said smiling. “I’ll hear you out.” “Okay, so we have Mr. Vegil Dudz,” a mighty fine man, listen to him. He’s got a way of handling the blade, and I’m telling you. He’s a responsible. Call him a blue triangle, because he can commit to his role, regardless of the task assigned to him. And if you want a red triangle, this man right here”—he grabbed a man taller than him and with muscles that took a while to see but were there even amid the layers of woven fiber armor—“is capable of finding angles that no one can find. Though he has nothing special about him, save for his careful weapon of choice—the spear.” “What’s so special about the spear?” “Oh, you’ll see. He uses the spear in a way that might seem unusual”—he began walking over to a spot in the training ground next to a dummy—“but you’ll get used to it.” He turned to the armored man. “Hit it.” He gestured with his eyes and made a wide motion as a signal of invitation. The armored man bustled forth, using a heavy arc like that of a sword and slashing it with the wooden part of the spear. “Wha—” Anthony mouthed. “Wait for it,” Windgleam motioned. The dummy received a blow equal to that of getting hit by the spear directly with the sharp tip, even if there was no movement of the armored man indicating so. “That is [False Sight], an attack that allows him to generate a false image, while he is actually attacking another way. This indirect assault forces his enemies to distance themselves.” “Who is the real body?” shot Anthony. “What do you mean?” “If he—what’s his name?—is using—” “Nhurdan.” “If Nhurdan is using the wide motion and that is what is seen, then how is the speak hitting? Is there another body or image that is hitting for him that we cannot see?” “No, he imagines his body moving from a particular angle and attacking with the spear, and that is what happens. Though there is no hittable body. It is just there. The spear is blockable though. But it is like a strong sudden wind with the same lethality as a spear with a man thrusting it.” “Then the real body is the wide sword attack? The one doing it?” “Yes, that’s right.” “This is...” Anthony wanted to say that it was so narrow as an offensive skill, at least based on what the armored man demonstrated. “Now, I know it’s not my place...” He felt tired, but felt pressed to make a point. “But is there any other way of utilizing this attack of some sort?” “Like what?” “I mean, can you use it with multiple people?” The conversation was taking a different direction than Windgleam intended, but he embraced it: “Well yes, but you need to... You know what? Let me show the rest of the group. I want you to see it... all of it.” Anthony battled combat fatigue, while he watched and observed all their little movements and responded accordingly, raising his hand commandingly, but keeping his actual agency curtailed in case he caused offense. He was the inspector. Meanwhile, as he was getting to know each member, Anthony noticed something in the distance. A flying angel wielding two swords was levitating high up in the air like a cloud, and it was closing in fast. He blinked hard multiple times before he consciously stopped himself from expressing his shock. It dropped off somewhere in the town, but not here in the training area.