"Rui Neon, are you still practicing with those useless axes? Our child has barely slept!" Olivia, a mature woman with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes, refused to release the collar of her husband, who had just been swinging an axe at a tree.
Rui Neon, however, wouldn't hear her out, for he was too busy trying to figure out the correct method to throw the axe.
He moved a bit to the left and then returned to the same position, dragging his wife Olivia with him as she gripped his white collar tightly.
Rui Neon studied the movement of his hands, the strength of the woman he married, and the scent of the coming wind.
He swallowed the air, puffed up his chest, and threw the axe right at the tree. "A HIT!" he screamed loudly, grabbing his wife by the waist and lifting her.
"Put me down! We are outside!" she yelled, her fair cheeks still bright red.
If you'd ask Rui Neon, he would say that it wasn't accidental and he had been doing this ever since he married her. Just like how he would learn the difference between northern and southern winds and analyze the patterns of a bird shitting, understanding his woman was no difficult task.
He put her down and rushed towards the tree while his wife just sat down on the freshly cut green grass, thinking about what just happened.
"Hmm, I swear the axe was vertical and exactly at 90 degrees when I hit the tree!" Rui inspected. "Did someone intentionally change it? Or did I miscalculate it?" Rui thought, but he was sure the latter was impossible.
Ever since Rui was a 13-year-old boy, he would watch as the Romans fought against the Persians with fewer armies live on TV, or read about how Arabs defeated two of the strongest empires. All he could think of were the weapons they carried and fought with.
"I want to fight like a Spartan! And a Persian!" he would say. "I will ride a horse like an Arab! And lay siege like a Turk!" he would repeat as he held his 'fight sword'—a rolled-up paper.
But soon he would grow up, save enough money to buy himself a nice pair of gloves and a metallic rod that he could use as a sword.
And in his 20s, he would spend time traveling to South Asian countries in hopes of learning real weapon arts.
Rui believed that fighting with weapons was far more honorable than killing a man with a gun, because with a sword, the person would at least have a chance to put up a final fight.
And he would often enforce his ideals on his wife. The incident where it shocked her the most was the night after their wedding, where the young bride was expecting something awkward but instead was met with facts about all the glorious weapons he had learned.
For some time, she felt as if she was blessed by God for giving her a nerd who could protect her, but soon she realized hearing 1001 facts about swords every night wasn't it.
He, Rui, was sure of his weapon knowledge and the fact that the axe had hit the target. "This wasn't my fault!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, while his wife giggled, watching him in frustration.
He looked back at his wife. "She was with me, it wasn't her," he thought. He had never seen such a thing happen since he was just 16. "Am I losing my skills?" A sea of self-doubt rushed into Rui's heart.
But before he could even try to calm himself down, a swift, sudden movement brushed past his right leg, straight towards his wife. "Alfrey?" He shouted, thinking that was his son whom his wife was talking about—well, she did imply he was wide awake.
But the sudden gaze at the thing made Rui's hand immediately go towards one of the axes stuck in the trees.
"Honey! Duck!" He yelled, but his wife, who was just a doctor at the local overpriced hospital, did not have many reflexes apart from wondering why her husband was suddenly yelling about ducks.
Just as her brain could register it, a small green creature out of a fantasy book she used to read jumped right before her. Its claws were huge, and its smile devious with a thousand tiny needle-like teeth and a bright red eye.
But the creature was not strong enough to make her afraid, for she knew she could depend on someone whom she had entrusted her entire life to... her husband, Rui Neon.
BAM - SPLAT!
Rui Neon, who had been training to throw axes recently, struck gold and split the green goblin in half. All of its gooey green blood splashed everywhere, and Olivia started vomiting as she lay right next to the torn corpse of the goblin. She could swear some of the blood went into her mouth.
Rui rushed next to his wife. "H-Honey, what was that?" he wobbled like a toddler. Olivia stood up with Rui's help. "Don't ever do that!" She buried her face in Rui's chest and started sobbing.
"Saving you?" He laughed.
Rui had not only managed to learn to use almost all weapons at such a young age but also to annoy his wife even after saving her life. But today she did not fall for his rage bait, for she had something much worse to worry about.
The couple looked over at the decaying body of the goblin. "T-This is not possible... It would take hours before actual decomposition takes place... not this fast." She wanted to touch the skin of the goblin, but her husband stopped her from doing so.
"I've only read about this in fantasy novels... to believe such a creature coexisted in our world, living in the shadows with us?" Olivia became more and more curious as time went on.
It wasn't her fault either; the fault would be her brother Orion's, who would force her to read all kinds of fantasy novels and games, but she was more interested in the yaoi aspect of some of the novels, which infuriated her husband often.
Her curiosity was broken when she found her husband trying to rub something off her head. "Is it the blood? It is sticky," she replied as she glanced at Rui Neon. She found her husband's face to be shocked; his eyes were widened, and sweat was dripping down.
"Honey...? Stop scaring me... you know I don't take your jokes well..." she insisted, but what Rui saw would freak anyone above 30 years old but excite anyone below it.
A floating icon that, no matter how many times Rui tried to sweep it away, he found his hands slipping through it as if the icon was a hologram.
"Stand still!" He said, frightened, but he made sure to look around while gripping the axe in hand. "Is someone trying to be funny?" repeated in his mind.
"Rui... honey, did you buy a weird rotating hat?" Olivia noticed the same on her husband's head, but unlike him, "It's a character icon!" she yelled.
"Character icon?" Rui questioned. He stopped trying to shake it off her head; instead, he switched to his own.
"It is something you have in a game; it helps you identify between a player and an NPC..." She said with a hand on her chin.
Rui, who had never played any game in his entire life, did not understand a single word she said, all except one: "in a game?" he repeated.
"We are not in a game! Unless it's a project by our beloved, trustworthy government, it's not going to kill us or, possibly worse, attract attention!" Rui's immediate dilemma was about how people would react to him having such a weird icon floating around his head wherever he went.
As the couple tried to understand what was going on, they soon felt the air getting colder in the middle of the summer noon, and ironically, the sun itself was being hidden by large storm clouds.
And out of nowhere, a gentle and feminine yet robotic sound spoke.
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Rui's face whitened with fear, as did Olivia's, who immediately started to look around her, trying to find where the sound came from.
And then the sound repeated, but now a giant interface in bluish-cyan color for Olivia and a yellowish for Rui came before them.
"Another hologram?" Rui said before trying to punch it away.
But Olivia, who had been a doctor for more than 6 years, was comfortable with such high-stress situations and started reading.
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"It's just like those games my brother forced me to play..." She thought, looking at the colorful User Interface and the organized, game-like design.
On the top right, there was a search button; on the left, a mail option, most likely for the quest mentioned earlier by the robotic voice.
Following the mail, there was a book "An Encyclopedia perhaps?" she wondered. And there was a large empty place right below with a warning.
"Wrong Location!" It mentioned. Olivia looked over again and again, trying various methods to interact with it, but nothing helped her out. "There is a limit to what a doctor can do," she thought.
But Olivia knew there was something else missing. If it really is a fantasy setting, then shouldn't they have been transported into a different world? Or did the world itself transport itself in here? Thoughts filled her brain, and none of her doctor's degrees helped her regain any understanding.
And then came a glimmer of hope... But the hope itself was a devil in disguise, as she found out what she was missing.
For entering another world, the characters in the games and the novels would die an unexpected death, but today her husband, Rui, had prevented such.
What if that caused them to get a system? Will Olivia and her husband truly be able to use it in their everyday life and make things easier and potentially be rich?
A big smile was pasted right on her face, and she called her husband down, who had just been tired of trying to get the interface off of him.
"Just press the X button on the top, honey," she smiled.
Rui did just that but was weirded out by his wife's strange smile. He had only seen that smile whenever she wanted something from him, like the day before she wanted to have a kid or the day when she made him buy the most expensive house in town.
And how they are 100 million dollars in debt.
"We are going to get rich, honey," she said.
And that was the nail in the coffin for Rui. "Another financial ruin."
All of a sudden, the interface and goblin were much less creepy than her.
In Olivia's mind, with a system, they can pay their debts, send her child to a good college, and even rule the world, free from oppression, because what's going to stop them? With a system, they might be able to conquer the world! Maybe unlock magical powers or a dragon... 3 dragons, and the entire western continents are theirs.
All because they haven't been transported to another world because the death was stopped.
But just as she was about to scream "we are rich" at the sky, she found a rather anti-climactic event happening right before her.
A giant cruise ship, 3 planes, and a freaking moon all came crashing down at their house, killing all of them. Normally, most people would get to say something right before they die, but luck was not the same for Olivia or Rui Neon.
It was just plain death... you get it? 'Plane' like how they died from the plane, etc.
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But they need more context; they won't understand if I don't say something more...
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Fine, I'll st-