The name hung in the air between us. "Shera."
To me, it was just a name. To her, it was clearly meaningless, a sound without context. And that, more than anything, confirmed I wasn't anywhere near home.
Devika—the name suited her, soft and gentle—stared at me, her emerald eyes blinking slowly as if waking from a dream. The terror was fading, replaced by a dawning, reverent awe that made my skin crawl. It was a look I knew all too well. The look people give a weapon they don't understand.
Her gaze darted from my face, down to my bare chest, then quickly to the ground, a fierce blush staining her cheeks. Right. The nakedness.
On Earth, this would have been the primary problem. Here, it seemed vaporizing a ten-foot-tall monster was a more pressing social faux pas.
"You… you have no mana," she whispered, her voice trembling. "No aura. I can't feel anything from you. How… how did you…?" Her hand gestured vaguely towards the red mist and the distant, splintered tree.
Mana. Aura. The words were foreign, but I understood the implication. In this world, power was something you could see, something you could feel. I was a void. A blank space that had just unleashed annihilation.
To a world that read power like a book, I was an unreadable page. And that made me more terrifying than any roaring beast.
"I don't use mana," I said simply. "I just… hit things."
It was the truest, most pathetic explanation I had.
Devika looked at me as if I'd just told her the sky was made of cheese. "You… hit it?" she repeated, her voice cracking with disbelief. She had seen it, but her mind refused to accept it. To her, what I'd done was an act of god-tier magic, a conceptual blast that unmade reality.
To me, it was a finger tap and a controlled exhale.
I looked down at the dead ogre's remains. It was wearing a crude leather loincloth. It wasn't pretty, but it was better than nothing. I walked over, ripped it off the corpse without a second thought, and tied it around my waist. It was rough, smelly, and faintly sticky. Perfect.
When I turned back, Devika was watching me, her blush deepening. She wasn't looking at me with disgust, but with a strange, new intensity. She saw me perform an act of utter pragmatism after an act of impossible power, and the two things didn't compute.
She shivered, clutching the tattered remains of her robe. It wasn't from the cold; it was the aftershock of terror.
I sighed. I wasn't good at this part. The comforting. The talking. But I couldn't just leave her. That wasn't who I was.
I scanned the clearing, my eyes landing on the larger ogre's corpse. It had worn a ragged, heavy cloak made of some kind of thick beast hide. I walked over, tore it free, and shook off the dust and gore. It was heavy, but it was clean enough.
I walked back to her and, without a word, draped the heavy cloak over her small, trembling shoulders.
She gasped, the thick hide engulfing her. It was warm from the ogre's body heat, a grim but effective comfort. Her wide, green eyes stared up at me, a universe of questions swirling within them.
"We should go," I said, my voice low. "There might be more."
That snapped her out of it. "Right! Yes! My town… it's just past the Sunken Grove. We call it Shambala's First Gate." She stumbled to her feet, wincing as she put weight on her good arm. "I was gathering moonpetal herbs for the church orphanage when they ambushed me."
Of course she was. A healer, gathering herbs for orphans. The universe didn't seem to have much imagination when it came to crafting victims.
"I'll get you there," I said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
Her shoulders slumped with relief, the tension draining out of her so fast she almost fell. "Thank you," she breathed, clutching the cloak tighter. "Thank you, Sir Shera."
"Just Shera."
"Right. Just… Shera."
We walked in silence for a while, me in the lead, a half-naked savage in a bloody loincloth. Her, trailing behind, a small, cloaked figure dwarfed by my shadow. I could feel her eyes on my back, tracing the lines of my muscles, the network of old scars. I could hear her thoughts as clearly as if she'd spoken them aloud.
Who is he? Where did he come from? Is he a man? Or something else?
"You're not from around here, are you?" she finally asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"No."
"Where… where are you from?"
"A place where the sky only has one moon," I said, not looking back. "And the monsters wear business suits."
She fell silent again, likely trying to decipher that riddle.
We soon reached the edge of the forest. Below us, nestled in a valley, was a town surrounded by a high stone wall. Torches flickered along the parapets, and a warm, yellow light spilled from the open gate. Shambala's First Gate. It looked… peaceful.
For the first time since I'd woken up in this strange world, a flicker of something other than weariness sparked within me. Hope? No, that was too strong a word. It was something simpler.
A destination.
"We're here," Devika said, relief washing over her face. She looked up at me, her gaze full of a debt she could never repay. "How can I ever thank you? My life… it is yours. The Healer's Guild will reward you! The Adventurer's Guild too! You could become an S-Rank overnight!"
Guilds. Ranks. Rewards. The familiar structure of a society I didn't belong to.
I just shook my head.
"I don't want a reward," I said, looking down at the welcoming lights of the town.
I just want some answers.
My stomach rumbled, loud and undignified.
And maybe some pants.