"How long!?"
Archer hadn't meant for the words to explode out of him. They tore past his lips before he could stop them, as raw and shaken as the thundering of his heart. His voice echoed faintly between the trees, swallowed by the quiet of the dense forest in which they had made their temporary camp.
The girl — no, she wasn't a girl, was she? — repeated herself calmly, almost wearily.
"Two hundred years. I was quite young at the time of the attack on our caravan. Only fifty or so years old."
Fifty. Only fifty. Archer stared at her, feeling the strange vertigo of having reality suddenly incline at an unnatural angle. The fire's reddish glow flickered across her youthful face — a face that looked, to him, maybe sixteen. Seventeen at most. Not a woman who had lived half a century before becoming enslaved, nor someone whose memories stretched two hundred years into a past he could barely imagine.
It wasn't her age alone that stunned him. Age was just a number, and clearly this world didn't play by the human rules of aging. No — what rattled him to the bones was the unimaginable span of her enslavement. Two centuries. Two centuries of captivity, of punishment, of hopelessness. Archer struggled to comprehend a decade spent trapped in such a fate, let alone twenty times that.
He shook his head.
"But… how? How did you survive for that long as a slave? How does anyone endure two hundred years of… that?"
Elenor — he didn't yet know her name, but that was who she was — looked into the fire as though watching something hidden within the heart of the flames. Her voice, when she spoke, carried the weight of remembered suffering yet was laced with something like resignation.
"The beasts did not dare let me suffer too greatly. My punishments were rare. A slave of my kind is too valuable to risk accidentally killing. I was a prize to their Clan — a symbol of power. My existence was a boon for those filthy creatures."
"Your kind?" Archer frowned. "You're not human?"
She blinked at him, genuinely surprised. "Of course not. I am Fae Kind. You truly did not know?"
Archer's gaze was drawn to her hair — fiery red, almost glowing as the flames danced — and there, revealed for the first time, the slender pointed tips of her ears just visible through the tangled strands. He cursed softly under his breath. He'd noticed something off about her, something delicate and sharp in her features, but he'd assumed hunger and mistreatment accounted for it.
Now that he saw her ears clearly, there was no mistaking it.
"You're… an Elf!?"
Her eyebrows shot up. "Elf? The Fae have not used that word in many millennia. I am surprised you are even aware of the Elven name. You are a scholar perhaps, as well as a hunter?"
"No, I'm—"
He didn't get to finish. She had turned her attention away from him, inspecting the skewer of roasted meat he had given her. The expression she wore was faintly baffled — as though the cooked meat hiding under its thin sheen of grease had been expected to still be raw. She took a tentative bite. The effect on her was immediate; her eyes widened, pupils dilating sharply.
"What was that?" she murmured. "I feel… energy. More than one meal should grant."
Archer shrugged. "Elf is just the common name for your kind where I'm from. Fae is less used, but people know the word. So… let me get this straight. You're a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Fae-kind fire mage?" He snorted. "Yeah, I get why those goblin assholes wanted you."
But only part of his sentence mattered to her. She pinned him with an intense look.
"Your world. What do you mean by that, if I may ask?"
Archer didn't hesitate. He didn't see any point in lying — not now, not with the stakes already so high. And if anyone could offer answers, it was someone who had actually lived in this insane place for centuries. So he told her everything. From waking up disoriented in a forest, to discovering his new body and strange abilities, to his first fight with a goblin, to the homicidal hedgehog. He described the game-like System, the stat windows, the loot drops, his confusion and fear, and his frustration at being thrown into a life-or-death situation without warning.
When he finished, Elenor stared at him as though he had just announced he was the reincarnation of a long-dead god.
"You are a Contender!?" she blurted out. "But you should not be here! Not for many months! You should not be here!"
Archer winced and rubbed his temples. "Okay… that's a lot of emphasis on shouldn't. But you're right — I've been saying that to myself all day. Somehow, I get the feeling you mean that in a much more catastrophic way."
She nodded quickly, agitation making her movements sharper. "Contenders from your world should presently be undergoing their training in a place called the Tutorial. My father told me of it. He had the honor of adventuring with a Contender in his youth, some nine hundred years ago, during the Infestation before the last one."
Archer stared into the fire.
"Wonderful. So I get to miss out on all the fancy training and jump headfirst into the deep end. No safety net. No tutorial. No nothing."
His gaze lifted to her, exasperation flashing in his eyes. "What's your name anyway? I'm Steven Archer — Archer's fine."
"I am Elenor Faeweaver. And you do not understand the advantage you have been given." She leaned toward him, earnest and serious. "In the Tutorial, Contenders learn their craft, yes… but they do not grow stronger. It is a place of instruction, not power. Here — in the real world — every victory increases your strength."
Archer exhaled long and low. "Lucky me, then. I'll be slightly tougher than the others and have a pile of looted rubbish to show for it. Doesn't help if I die before learning how to do this whole Contender thing."
"You do not understand," Elenor insisted, sitting straighter, firelight glinting in her bright green eyes. "The greatest of your advantages is that you can be first to complete the Creature Dungeons. These pocket dimensions contain powerful monsters whose items and weapons are highly prized. Killing creatures inside is worth ten times the effort of killing them outside. And being the first to conquer a dungeon grants you a boon worth one hundred kills. A boon only the first may ever receive. Ever."
Archer paused mid-bite of his meat skewer.
"…Okay. That sounds actually relevant."
But even understanding the importance didn't magically fix his situation.
"I'm stuck in the woods," he said, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings. "I have barely any gear. I have no idea how to fight anything properly. And I sure as hell don't know where any of these dungeons are."
Elenor suddenly got to her knees, spine straightening as though pulled by an invisible force. Her expression became solemn — almost ceremonial — and she placed her fist against her chest.
"You need not face these tasks alone, Contender Steven Archer. I will act as your guide in this world. And your companion in the Creature Dungeons."
Archer blinked.
"Elenor—"
"I am already stronger than I have been in two hundred years," she continued, words flowing with unshakable conviction. "The healing gel and food you have given me… they are of immense value to the people of this world. To you, the gel is but a mild salve, the food merely nourishment. But to me, and others like me, they hold almost miraculous properties."
She took a breath, her voice softening but not losing its sincerity.
"My father was a companion and friend to a Contender, long ago. He spoke of the great adventures they shared, and of the bond they forged. I would honor his memory by offering you the same friendship he cherished."
Archer stared at her — really stared — seeing not just the frightened, mistreated captive from earlier, but someone with willpower forged through centuries of survival. Strength tempered by suffering. A person who, despite everything she had endured, still spoke of honor and friendship.
"Elenor," he said quietly, "when I found you, I saw someone in need. I didn't expect anything in return — not for killing those goblins, not for giving you food, and certainly not for clothing you. I'll gladly accept your help, believe me. God knows I need it."
He stood, then offered her his hand to help her rise. "But just so you know — you're free. You stay or leave my company as you choose. You owe me nothing."
She placed her hand in his, her grip surprisingly steady for someone still recovering.
"Thank you, Archer."
"So," he said, brushing ash off his pants, "where do we go from here?"
"At last I knew," Elenor replied, "there was a large town a week's journey to the west. We should travel there. A map of the Creature Dungeons will almost certainly be available from the Adventurers' Guild, if the town has a branch."
"Then that's where we go."
Archer kicked dirt over the fire until the embers faded into darkness. He reached into his inventory, pulling out two short swords with their sheaths. He handed one to Elenor and strapped the other awkwardly to his hip.
He had no idea how to use it properly, but the alternative — being unarmed — was worse.
Before they departed, Archer opened his Status Menu for the first proper look he'd had since waking in this world.
Status Menu
Steven Archer
Contender Rank: 1 (80%)
Class: Ranger
Age: 37
HP: 250
MP: 150
Strength: 8
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 9
Intelligence: 9
Ranger Skills:
• Sureshot – Level 1 (0%)
• Snipe – Level 1 (0%)
Ranger Passive Abilities:
• Locational Map
• Terrain Analysis
• Tactical Distance Assessment
There were more words there than in half his university exams combined.
"Sureshot" and "Snipe" sounded nearly identical, which annoyed him on principle. But the passives—
He focused on Locational Map.
A map shimmered into existence at the corner of his vision — a glowing, semi-transparent mini-map that hovered like an AR display in a video game.
Archer's jaw dropped.
"Holy shit," he whispered. "It's an honest-to-God minimap. The System is literally forcing us into RPG mechanics."
Could other classes share these? Was the System designed so different Contenders had to work together?
He tapped a thought experimentally.
Invite player.
Send Group Invite to: Elenor Faeweaver?
Yes / No
"Elenor," he said aloud, "you're about to see something pop up in your vision. It's a Contender ability — don't panic. Just accept the invitation."
He pressed Yes.
Elenor flinched at the sudden appearance of the glowing screen, but after blinking in confusion, she accepted. Immediately, a small green dot appeared on the mini-map at the edge of his vision, marking her location.
"Do you," Archer asked, "see a little map in the top-right corner of your sight?"
"Yes!" she answered breathlessly. "This is a Contender ability? And the green mark is you? But there is also a large box covering my vision — I do not like it."
Archer chuckled. "That's your Status window. Here — let me show you how to resize it."
It took a few minutes to walk her through minimizing and repositioning it. She adapted quickly. He liked that about her; she learned systems almost as quickly as he did.
Once she was comfortable, Archer tested something new. He turned, scanning the minimap. The radius was maybe a hundred meters — and there, near the edge, a red dot pulsed steadily.
"Target acquired," Archer murmured. "Let's see what we've got."
He led the way, Elenor following. After twenty meters, he spotted it.
A rabbit.
Archer groaned. "For God's sake. Why does everything here want to kill me?"
Still, remembering Harry the Homicidal Hedgehog, he nocked an arrow immediately. Just in case this rabbit had knives for teeth or exploded on impact.
He shot it cleanly through the chest.
"Elenor," he called, "go grab it for me? See if you get a notification."
She walked over, bent to pick up the rabbit, then suddenly jerked upright, her eyes wide.
"I have looted two pieces of Game Meat, a piece of leather, and a tin of healing gel! Does this happen every time? I do not want goblin meat if that is the case."
Archer laughed. "Yeah, animals drop different loot. I got weapons, clothes, coins from the goblins, but nothing edible. Leather's been pretty common too. Not sure what it's worth."
"Much," she said earnestly. "Leather is highly valued. And if crafting exists — and it does — you may craft many useful items. My father's Contender companion crafted items of great power. Armor with special effects, enchanted weapons…"
"That's good to know. Well — we've lingered enough. Let's head toward that town."
And so they set off, walking west, following the slow sinking sun through the endless green of the forest, two unlikely companions sharing a path neither could have walked alone.