LEON'S POV:
Sleep came hard, tangled with sharp, disjointed images: Akari's face, red with a blush that looked too much like anger; her hand, impossibly strong, holding mine; the sound of my own voice cracking on a desperate shout. Even in unconsciousness, my body felt wired, humming with the aftermath of panic and the raw, indigestible strangeness of everything. When I finally drifted, it was into a shallow, restless dark, the inn bed feeling less like a sanctuary and more like a temporary holding cell.
So, when something nudged me awake, my first thought wasn't about monsters or magic, but a groan that started somewhere deep in my bones. My whole body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder, then badly reassembled. Every muscle screamed for more rest, for oblivion, but the insistent nudge, light but persistent, wouldn't allow it. Reluctantly, I forced my eyes open.
My room. Still intact. The air was cool, carrying the faint scent of wood and something... flowery? Wait. That shouldn't be there. I knew I'd locked the door. Habit, reinforced by the paranoia this world was rapidly instilling. So how...?
I pushed myself up onto my elbows, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with the heel of my hand. My vision cleared, focusing on the figure standing just a few feet from the bed.
It was a girl. Definitely not Akari, not Sarah. Someone I didn't know.
She was maybe around my age, standing there with this bright, almost impish smile that felt completely out of place after the night I'd had. My brain, still thick with sleep and residual trauma, struggled to catch up. She smelled... nice. Like peaches, maybe? And something else, something fresh and clean.
Even through the grogginess, my eyes registered the details. Long, beautiful hair, the color of a perfect peach skin, fell in soft waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep, vibrant blue, like looking down into the clearest part of the sea. She was slim, yes, but not frail; there was a graceful strength in her posture, and her simple clothes, a tunic and trousers made of a light, practical material in shades of green and brown that somehow still managed to look elegant, didn't hide a certain... subtle curves. She wasn't wearing armor or robes, just gear that looked made for moving fast.
She didn't look like a threat, not in the way Akari or Kaz or those goblins did. Just... cheerful. Which, frankly, was unsettling.
"Hi," she said, her voice light and friendly, adding a little wave. "Sorry to disturb you. I hope you were getting good rest."
Despite the confusion, despite the impossibility of her being here, something clicked. Abduction. Recruitment. The 'Key'. Kaz had mentioned someone might come.
"Kaz sent you, didn't he?" I heard myself say, the words coming out without conscious thought, a simple statement of fact in a world where the absurd was the new normal.
Her impish smile faltered for just a fraction of a second. Surprise flickered in those blue eyes, like hitting an unexpected bump in the road. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, her composure snapping back into place. She tilted her head slightly.
"Oh? You understand quickly," she said, her smile regaining its cheerfulness. "Yes. That idiot sent me. I came to take you."
"Take me?" I asked, pushing myself fully upright, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. My body still complained, a symphony of aches and pains, but adrenaline was starting to push through the exhaustion. "For what? Does my sister know? And Sarah?"
"To make you join us," she replied, her voice losing some of its lightness, becoming firm and direct. "It's not a request, Leon-kun. You have to join us."
Right. Not a request. Coercion, then. Par for the course. Join 'us'. Kaz's side. The Human God's heroes, hunted by the others. Was it any worse than being potentially assaulted by my sister, or being hunted by sister-assassins from other gods?
My life felt less like a path and more like a series of increasingly steep, slippery slopes leading into a dark abyss. It was going in the wrong direction anyway, had been for a long time. Maybe a hard redirect, even a forced one, was better than the trajectory I was on.
"Fine," I said, standing up. The floor was cold beneath my bare feet. "If my life was going in the wrong direction anyway, I'd rather go with you." It was resignation, not eagerness. A pragmatic acceptance of the least immediately terrible option.
"Amazing!" she beamed, clapping her hands together softly. "You're very reasonable, Leon-kun!"
"Why didn't Kaz come himself?" I asked, pulling on the single set of clothes Akari had deemed sufficient for my needs – a simple shirt and trousers. They felt rough, unfamiliar compared to my old clothes.
"Ah, his mana reserves were... severely depleted," she said, a shadow passing over her face for just a second. "He used too much power yesterday. He needs time to recover before he can move like that again."
Right. The fight with Akari. it had cost him. He'd risked a lot for me. Another variable in the increasingly complex equation of who owed whom what.
"Here." She walked over to the small table by the bed and placed a pen and a folded piece of paper on it. "For a note. So your sister and Sarah don't worry too much."
A note. Right. Standard procedure for sudden departure. What do you even write? 'Went with the cheerful peach-haired girl who broke into my room'? 'Got abducted, seemed like a better offer than being pinned by my sister'?
My mind went blank for a second. What could I say that wouldn't cause mass panic or reveal too much? I grabbed the pen, scribbled something brief. Had to leave. Don't worry. Will contact later. Stay safe. Leon. Vague enough. Hopefully.
I set the note down. She was already moving towards the window, that impish smile back. My room was on the second floor. Not high enough to be fatal, probably, but definitely high enough to break something important.
"Okay, ready?" she asked, turning back to me, her blue eyes sparkling with what looked like genuine excitement.
"Ready for wha—"
She didn't wait for an answer. Before I could even brace myself, she grabbed my hand again, her grip surprisingly strong, and with a burst of speed that made my eyes widen, she sprinted towards the window.
Air rushed past as she vaulted over the sill, pulling me with her. My stomach plummeted. The ground rushed up towards us. I braced myself for impact, for the sickening crunch of bone. This was insane. I just jumped out a window.
But impact never came. Just as the ground was about to hit us, the hand holding mine flared with a soft, golden light. Simultaneously, the patch of ground directly below us also began to glow, complex, glowing lines appearing on the earth like a giant, intricate circuit board. A magic circle.
The world warped. Not violently this time, but like looking through distorted glass. The scene below us rippled, shimmered, and then shifted. The inn, the ground, the village – it all dissolved, replaced by a new, unfamiliar landscape in the blink of an eye. We weren't falling anymore; we were standing on solid ground. Teleported.
"Wow! That was a good one!" she chirped, as if we'd just been on a fun ride.
Before I could even get my bearings, before the dizziness from the teleportation fully subsided, she was already doing something else. She pulled a small, smooth stone from a pouch on her belt. It pulsed with a faint light as she quickly ran it over my clothes, my arms, my head.
"What's that?" I asked, the confusion mounting.
"To remove tracking magic," she said, her focus intense as she finished. "Your sister, Akari, is an archer, right? They're good with tracking. We don't want her finding us too easily."
Tracking magic. Right. Akari had used it on me last night to find Kaz (mistaking him for Cloak). And she'd probably put it on me again, or maybe left the old one active. Of course. Just another layer of this world's surveillance.
"Okay, we gotta move!" she said, that cheerful urgency back. She grabbed my hand again. "This way!"
She took off running, pulling me along. My body, still protesting, somehow kept pace. As we ran, I heard a muffled CRUMP from behind us, followed by a wave of displaced air. I risked a glance back. The spot we had just teleported from was being engulfed in an explosion of light and force, leaving a smoking crater.
"What was that?" I asked, startled.
"Oops! Just destroying the magic circle," she replied brightly, like she was explaining why she'd spilled some tea. "Can't leave any traces! They can use those circles to track teleportation origins too, you know."
Destroying a teleportation point with an explosion as a clean-up method. Casual.
"By the way, I'm Noah," she said over her shoulder, still running. "We're heading to our nearest branch. It'll take a little while. There are other people who came yesterday, just like you, in the other branches. We'll meet up with them eventually, probably."
Other people. From my world. The rest of my class, or some of them? Trapped here too. Divided up into different "branches." This was getting bigger, and more complicated, by the minute.
"Okay," she said, slowing slightly as we entered a darker, more overgrown part of... wherever we were. "Almost there. Just... going to need you to trust me one more time."
Before I could even ask, she pulled a strip of dark cloth from her belt.
"Just a little blindfold," she said with that same unsettling cheerfulness. "Protocols, you know? Branch locations are secret!"
A blindfold. Of course. More control. More unknowns. Just keep trusting the cheerful abductor. Seemed reasonable at this point.
She tied the blindfold firmly, plunging me into darkness. My other senses heightened immediately – the feel of her hand holding mine, pulling me forward; the sound of her footsteps and my own; the rustling of unseen leaves; the scent of this new place, whatever it was.
"Just follow my hand, okay, Leon-kun?" Noah's voice was close, reassuring, yet carrying the undeniable authority of someone in charge. "Don't let go! Wouldn't want you to get lost!"
Trapped in darkness, pulled along by a stranger, heading towards a secret location with a group of other dimension-hoppers. It was a far cry from Akari's terrifying, blush-inducing lecture, but felt no less out of my control. Just trading one set of problems for a whole new batch of unknowns. My life was still going in a very weird direction. And now, I couldn't even see where.