Otherworldly Trials [LITRPG Adventure]

"So, that's how it is."

Mikella explained to everyone, with Zeke, Lyle, and Janet standing side by side as they faced the entire otherworlder crowd, including Tigger who watched with pale faces at the news.

It only took a moment to explain the situation, and after telling them the news about how the residents in Arcelot felt about them, it didn't take long for the news to hit.

"That's just fucked up," One of the otherworlders, a young man, said with a frown. "How is that fair? We just got here, and it wasn't even by choice!"

Several otherworlders agreed with his statement, raising their fists as though in defiance to the news. Zeke was just glad they weren't planning to riot here.

"What's the point in getting angry about it? What matters is that we're here and we can get stronger. It doesn't matter what half of the world thinks of us."

Zeke turned to find the one who had been leading the group while the Journeymen were out. Mark appeared, wearing his now reinforced leather armor, gifted by them, which was leagues better compared to his military uniform he wore back at the forested tower.

Out of everyone, Mark took it upon himself to take the training to heart, not because of his military history, but because he was the sort to look out for himself as well as for others. He knew better than anyone that the training provided here was worth its weight in gold in this world instead of getting a simple job and a stable living.

He was also the otherworlders' official leader, relying on him for most of their personal matters while the Journeymen focused on their training. If anything, Zeke and the others relied on Mark to keep a handle on the more unstable otherworlders, relying on his leadership back during the tower days.

"But Mark, there's no way we can live like this," Another man shouted, more sympathetic than hostile. "We're like prisoners here. What's the point of all this if those guys out there are gonna treat us like monsters when we get out?"

That word got Zeke to grimace inwardly. He hated the fact that this felt closer to a prison than actual housing. Forced schedules to keep up with their training, waiting for their meals sent by them, ensuring their living was unhampered with Zeke's daily-life runes–He kept it at the back of his mind, but that was how it looked from an outsider's perspective.

"You'd rather we take the chance and live it rough out there?" Mark simply said, pointing at a random direction with his thumb. "I don't know about you, but I prefer to keep my head out of the clouds. I know what's gonna happen to me out there if I just leave right now."

"I-I'm not saying I wanna leave or anything…" The man said, hunching his head down his shoulders. "I know we're lucky to be here and everything, but…"

"I know," Mark interrupted. "I know what you mean. But complaining, whining, or anything like that won't matter. To them, we're just cattle to be slaughtered. That's why these guys are training us, leveling our skills so that we can advance faster. Compared to back in the tower, I never felt more powerful in my entire life."

Mark showed an example, flexing his well toned arms while muscles bulged. A surge of kinetic energy flashed as he punched the air, and a small pressure wave ensued from it.

To Zeke, it was like a light breeze, thanks to his over-the-top training and skills, but the otherworlders looked at him in wonder and awe. To them, this was the kind of power that was actually reachable, proven by Mark himself. He grinned at the sight, and probably thought he looked cool as hell in front of them.

"I never want to go back to those days in that god-awful forest. Where every day felt like it took all I had just to survive another day. In here, I can take my time and really figure out what I want to do. I can get stronger, faster, smarter–I'd be a fool to not take the chance. It looks bad now, but it'll be nothing for us if we just keep pushing forward."

"Hell yeah!"

A rather enthusiastic female voice shouted out, revealing Elly, a very charismatic girl who led along with Mark in the tower. She also wore her leather armor, but it was more casual compared to Mark's battle driven attire. She was focusing as a crafter, her rare Engineer class giving her the chance to create schematics that, unfortunately, required materials the Journeyman can't easily get, hence why she was here training with everyone.

Mark just shook his head, though a small grin was plastered on his face as everyone else followed along. Zeke felt relieved, and he noticed the others in his group felt the same way.

It would've been bad if the otherworlders were demotivated after hearing this. They could have just not told them, but Zeke just didn't like the idea of withholding more information than he needed to just because they're not at the same level range. While there are some parts he had to withhold for their sake, It just felt wrong to not let them know about their own fate in this.

Seeing this, Zeke had an idea. It felt rather childish, but the amount of motivation that was parading around the group made him think that the idea was worth going for. In the corner of his vision, Tir nodded along, out of sight of the other folks but still visible in Zeke's mind.

"I think this would work," Tir said, approving of Zeke's idea. At this point, he got full access to his thoughts and understood the entire idea that he only just vaguely formed seconds ago. "We can make it happen. Just give me the order and I'll see it through!"

"Jesus, Tir, you're gonna ruin me."

Zeke spoke back to him in his mind, grinning to himself. While he didn't have to talk out loud when Tir is in his mind, or even out in the open world, his expression was caught by the others. Mikella instantly caught him, not needing to be his Mind Construct to read him like a book.

"He's got that smile. He has an idea."

"Shit, run for the hills!"

Lyle said as though on cue, grabbing the chuckling Janet and dragging her away from Zeke who rolled his eyes.

"It's not for you," Zeke said, then his grin returned as he gestured at the group with his chin. "It's for them."

"Oh, thank god. I'm down with that then."

"You're an ass, Lyle."

"You didn't disagree to it," Lyle snapped back, getting Janet to shrug without even a bit of shame.

…..

Seeing the determined looks on everyone's faces, Zeke decided to explain Tir's existence to them for his plan to work. Strangely, all it took was to explain that Tir was like that paperclip telling you what you want to know back in the old days when opening up a software program. Zeke immediately shut anyone up who dared say that the thing was annoying and wasn't worth it. Tir was too much of a good boy to be directly compared to that.

But it was enough to easily answer anyone's question regarding Tir's abilities of how he can enhance Zeke's mind and help him show what he planned on doing to them. Then, he explained his plan.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Everyone wanted to run away, their motivation drained and their will to improve vanished.

"Oh come on, at least give it a chance," Zeke shouted, trying to stop everyone from running by putting up barriers around them. He decided to ignore how he literally turned everyone into prisoners just now. "It'll be worth it!"

"Won't it be better if we just go out and level ourselves?" Mark said, trying to be the voice of reason for everyone in the group. "If we did, we can get stronger and advance like you guys did."

"Unfortunately there's no dungeons available, and the monsters around here are just too strong to fight against," Mikella explained, showing a saddened look for that situation as well. "And no, we can't powerlevel you. You won't get any experience even if you take the last kill. The system is fair like that."

"You mean unfair," Elly said, pouting as she crossed her arms.

"You want some stupid rich smuck to immediately get super strong and bully others weaker than him, all because they weren't rich enough to go hire bodyguards to level themselves?"

Mikella's short, but very vivid reasoning for the system's fairness got Elly to widen her eyes in realization, getting her to deflate easily.

"No…"

"Good."

"That's besides the point," Zeke intervened, getting back on topic. "It won't matter how many levels you got on your status. What matters the most is how you fare in a fight. You're right that just training alone isn't enough. That's why I decided to make this."

Zeke said as he distanced himself from the others and, with Tir's aid, created a screen with his barrier and showed the schematic he planned on creating.

In other words, a training simulator. He was surprised at himself for not doing this earlier, but realized that the amount of specific runes he needed to create were vastly different compared to just creating a gravity field like he did with Mikella and the others.

In this particular one, he intended to create a field so that the otherworlders can actually practice against simulacrums, projected constructs meant for training. It was the same as the Hell Barrier he created back in Eve Glade, except rather than facing tough physical challenges, this would be better to face against enemies intending to kill you.

Once he showed the schematic to them, he thought at the back of his mind how he intended to make this work and how long it would take. Tir came in to save the day, giving him an answer he never expected to receive.

"Just half an hour?" Zeke asked, befuddled.

"It's gonna take more than half of your mana, so you can't participate yourself. It's not gonna regenerate easily either, since it's gonna require you to use The World," Tir explained, his voice as clear as crystal in his mind. "But if this works, you can not only use it whenever you want, you can even bring it with you when you get out of here."

"It can be mobile too?!"

Tir and Zeke took it upon themselves to create this top of the line training simulator, all the while the others watched with awe at Zeke working relentlessly on his runes with his floating pens. Honestly, Zeke figured it was the floating pens that were taking their interest the most.

"Hey!"

His ears picked up Clara's voice shouting, turning his attention away while Tir took care of it for the moment. What he loved about Tir is that he could take over when Zeke had to deal with the outside world, and the pens just floated seamlessly with no loss in efficiency. Clara came running at them, waving her hand while Brucey stayed comfortably at the little pack behind her back.

"Hey Clara," Mikella said. "You came here to train?"

"Yeah, I just met up with Alissa and she said she's gonna be going out, so I wanted to come here. Is that alright?"

It wasn't as though Clara couldn't come here before when they were being situated. Even after two weeks. Clara wanted to give the otherworlders some time to settle down. After the excitement with Tir from yesterday, however, she couldn't keep it in any longer and wanted to visit.

She looked over at the otherworlders and with no hesitation smiled and greeted them all. Most of them greeted her back, almost in unison like an excited club, while others just looked amazed that a child was holding a wooden staff for training. Some of the particulars were curious about the pack behind her that had a sleeping bat in, not told earlier about her bat familiar.

Zeke wanted to greet her as well, but before he could, Mikella snapped her fingers in realization.

"Oh, right! Clara, you haven't met Tigger yet, right? He's near the same age as you."

"Oh, no, I haven't," Clara answered, getting Mikella to look over and, with her powerful sight, picked up Tigger who looked over at her, wondering who just called him.

"Tigger! Come on over! This is Clara. She's, uhh, the same as you–someone too young to get the system."

Her explanation was enough for Tigger's attention to be seized, so he walked over to their side. Tigger clearly looked nervous, as it was obvious since all Tigger saw were grown adults around him since coming into this world.

Zeke, however, noticed how Clara looked at him. And it was as though the world around her froze.

Her eyes were wide, and she stood stock still. As Tigger approached her further and further, Zeke's keen sight noticed how Clara's cheeks turned slightly pinkish, and her eyes just kept getting wider and wider at the boy coming in.

"Uhh… hey," Tigger said, scratching his cheeks awkwardly. "My name is… Tigger," He said, though he quickly looked deflated when he mentioned his name. "I know, it's dumb. You don't have to say it."

"Tigger…" Clara said, her tone sounding almost wistfully as she kept staring at the boy.

"...Clara? You gonna introduce yourself?" Mikella also seemed to notice Clara's strange behavior, tapping her shoulder.

Clara flinched, her mouth opening and closing as she looked over at Mikella, then at Tigger, then suddenly at the ground. Her feet fidgeted, and her fingers curled together.

"Uhh, uhm… h-hi. M-My name's… C-Clarla."

Clara bit her tongue. It wasn't super obvious, enough that Tigger didn't notice–but anyone who had their system initialized did.

Clara, of course, noticed; her cheeks burned even hotter and before anyone could even say anything–she ran away, leaving everyone behind as she went over the other buildings and disappearing from sight.

"Clara?" Mikella asked aloud, almost shocked that Clara had the gall to run like that.

Meanwhile, Tigger forgot his nervousness and just stared blankly at the girl that ran away from him. As if by instinct, he raised his arm and sniffed his pit to check something.

"...Did I scare her off?" Tigger asked, looking over at Mikella who was just as shocked as Tigger. "I don't think I stunk that badly."

"No… no," Mikella shook her head. There was a smile on her face as she turned to Tigger. "She's just… shy."

Everyone can tell that her earlier actions were definitely not 'shy-like', but nobody bothered to answer back. All the while, Zeke had the misfortune to watch all that from afar and his mind whirled.

It was even worse when Tir suddenly spoke up.

"Wow! It looks like Clara's got a major crush on him!" Tir said, his voice sounding enthusiastic in Zeke's mind. "Was that 'love at first sight'? I never saw that happen before!"

Zeke could no longer hold in his rising panic as Tir's words finally put everything into place. It was happening. Clara was actually crushing hard on Tigger, becoming a woman of her own.

He only just remembered her crying out his name two years ago, yelling out 'Bobo' with so much affection. But of course, who could blame her? She was growing up now. Of course she would find other boys and find attraction, and she was even old enough to get herself a boyfriend.

"Zeke! Calm down! Your thoughts are going haywire! The rune array is–"

A loud explosion took place right in front of Zeke's face, who had his head near the rune array while he was working on something off-mindedly. Everyone nearly shouted at the sight of the explosion, shocking everyone out of the scene to find their runist completely covered in soot and ash.

Due to not focusing hard enough, and especially during a rather complicated rune array he had never tried before, got the rune array to hit a snag and end up overflowing with mana before eventually combusting. He heard Mikella run over to his side, wiping away at the smoke surrounding him as she coughed from the powerful smoke tinged with intense mana vapor within.

"Zeke! You alright? What happ–Oh…"

She looked wide-eyed at him, seeing him in his state. Zeke looked down at himself, feeling a little hurt from the explosion, but otherwise he didn't really see anything wrong–

"Oh god, his arm!"

One of the otherworlders screamed, and soon everyone followed as they all looked at Zeke in shock and horror. Zeke turned to his arm, which he just realized felt completely numb from.

There was nothing but a bloody stump there, being closest to the rune array explosion as it was already practically cauterized. Instead of screaming in pain, or panicking at the sight–Zeke just let out a breath.

"Goddammit," Zeke cursed, then he turned his head around before asking. "Has anyone seen my arm? Should be around here somewhere…"