Fleur sat on a bench just outside the facilities, a bar of various nuts in one of her feet. She idly eats it as she watches Dave and Sakura leave the facility at last. He spots Fleur and waves, which she somewhat embarrassing returns with her own wing. The three walk to the gates, Dave trying to assure Sakura that the two would be safe on their travels. After a hug Fleur and Dave leave Birchlea. The guards wish them safe travels. She suspects she missed something huge. She was waiting on them for quite a while.

  The moors surrounding the town were calm and uneventful, with most of it spent with Dave exploring his menus more. “I found some quests.” He casually remarks, tapping a box on his menu that she can’t read. “General Quests, Character Quests, Grand Quest and Hunt Quests.”

  “You have quests on all of those?” Fleur shifts closer to look at the shaky boxes, with only two of them containing additional boxes. He shakes his head, tapping one of the smaller boxes.

  “Grand Quest,” Dave starts, “Pick a class.”

  With that grand revelation, now the two were walking back to town, Dave’s face sporting a bright crimson as Fleur yells at him. The guards couldn’t hold back their laughter between mentioning some of the stuff each class can do once they had passed into the village and Dave could start going through the classes. One actively slid down a village entrance post as she tried to tell him about one of the base magic classes.

  “Whatever class you pick, make sure you swap to it from something like [Soldier] or [Warrior].” The other guard takes deep breaths as she stretches a wing towards a spear and sword respectively. “Not kidding about that. If you start and go something like [Aspect Mage] someone is going to seriously hurt you for it. Men can change to any class as long as they have it unlocked.”

  Dave stares in shock before slowly looking back to his menu, the shaky boxes holding a radial ring of small pixel art, depicting him in each of the base classes wielding their preferred weapon. “That class isn’t good?” He manages to stammer out, clearly having some interest in the class.

  “It’s good,” Fleur simply responds, “A good centaur [Summoner] damn near killed me just five months ago. I still have a big fear of [Detonate].” She shivers for a moment before composing herself. “The real reason is because of the armour you get from [Warrior], [Soldier] and [Warrior]. Tin. We’ve never found tin ore in this world. pewter, bronze, and the like are completely new to us.” She takes a breath. “So pick [Soldier] and then make your real choice.”

  Dave slowly nods, before pausing at the sight of a spear on the [Soldier] pixel art. He clicks a box and is slowly enveloped by a white light. The three harpies stood in awe as they watched him finally pick a class. At first the spear he now held came into view, the light slowly fading after fifteen seconds of burning itself into their corneas. Fleur has to blink away a spot in her vision as Dave slowly comes into view. His armour was clearly tin, a helmet resembling an open sallet sat uncomfortable on his head, jostling around as he moved around, a soft clinking emanating from the armour. An undecorated cuirass sat on a new green quilted gambeson that extended to his knees. Vambraces sat comfortably on his forearms, defusing to nudge despite the rest of his armour shifting about. No armour sat upon his legs, although his original sweatpants had been replaced with thick black leggings and his trainers with leather boots that ended a few inches above his ankles, laced up tightly.

  She much preferred this look to his midnight black outfit. “Damn, you look like a real infantryman, instead of that discount assassin look from before.” Dave pauses at her words, before bringing the cheap spear into his vision. He stares at the copper spear, crudely shoved onto a flimsy pole of wood. Even the flint spear felt more sturdy than this. He idly waves it and the three cringe at how the pole wiggles slightly. “Yeah, we can get you a better spear from my sister, if you’re staying as [Soldier].” He considers this, before reopening his menu. “Harpies can’t change classes, but the men can just do it freely for some asinine reason.”

  His next class change is into [Aspect Mage], and no visual effect shows him changing class. There's a small pause before he opens his menu. “I didn’t get anything.” Fleur narrows her eyes before he speaks again. “My stats are the same, I didn’t get anything new gear or weapons.” There’s a small pause before he gasps, realising. “So that's why I went to [Soldier] first!.”

  “See, he's not helpless.” Fleur glares at the guard responsible, who stares back unabashedly. Fleur turns to Dave, who is back in the class menu. She watches him change back to [Soldier] much to her surprise.

  “This feels better. Like I’m honouring her, even if she tried to kill me.” Dave mutters, the harpies staring at him as if he'd grown another head. He looks up from the spear to their very taken back faces.

  Fleur had finally tired of this, daylight was burning and she was almost desperate enough to abandon Dave at Birchlea and go fly to Millwater before taking a job at Silverfield. Instead she held her tongue and tried to politely gesture that the two had to leave. Dave thankfully took the hint, the two saying their goodbyes before leaving.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The two were already worn out when they left, casual chatter as they walked across the moors around the town. Moors bled into green and living plains, the soft and thick grass tickling Fleur’s talons as she walked through them. Birds fly overhead, along with a few harpies heading west. The soft winds sway the grass as the two traverse the calm lands, eventually entering a forest as the sky starts to turn orange. The two chat about anything that comes to mind; quests, individuals and places, informing Dave of the precarious world around them.

  The two come to a stop at a clearing, A quick fireplace is set up with little issue aside from Dave almost burning a finger. Dave idly tends to it as Fleur sets up a single small tent. She pours some of her mana into a small jewel at the top of the tent. “There we go.” She steps back to watch a silvery translucent magic shield form around their tent. “That’ll stop just about every animal, aside from a feathercaster, or a centaur or lamia.”

  “Feathercaster?” Dave looks back at her, then past her to the tent with curiosity.

  “A giant beast with a taste for harpies. The Old World Harpies almost had them extinct, but then left them alone to grow and harass us. Dastards. If one finds us, we won’t live long enough to worry.” Dave pales at this as she sits down, reaching into her void bag. “Fruit or nuts with your bread?”

  “Fruit please.” His voice is quiet.

  The sun finally sets past the horizon, the two watching the limited stars gently twinkle. Dave’s eyes had been set on a small green dot in the sky, by his guess, another planet. Fleur simply commented that he might be right, but she wasn’t sure.

  “We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” Dave comments, “There’s no light pollution, shouldn’t we be seeing other galaxies?” He points to the green dot. “Reckon there's life on that planet?” Fleur pauses at this question, thinking hard.

  “Probably.” Fleur noncommittally mumbles, not sure of her own answer. “It looks so small, how could life possibly be on that? Even if it is far away, it’s so small.” Dave merely smiled.

  It wasn’t long before the two retired to the tent for the night, the moon gently shining on the land.

  Dave doesn’t like the feeling in his gut when Millwater finally comes into view on the next day around midnight. A quaint town next to a river with around thirty houses and a bathhouse. Aside from the bathhouse clearly being dilapidated and unused, nothing was inherently out of the ordinary. Fleur, however, felt rather excited at seeing her sister again. “Years!” She muttered as the two explored, looking for a blacksmith. Finally a simple house with a blacksmith logo came into view, huddled away near the market square. “Bingo, The Aquamarine Anvil. This is certainly my sister’s place.” She smiles at the happy memories of the name while Dave nervously looks around. “Head in and get your armour traded for something actually decent. I’ll buy provisions for the way back. Help us pack when I get back as well.” With that simple note she takes flight, leaving Dave to nervously step towards the door.

  “Well, hello handsome.” A harpy of silver robes and bronze feathers enters his vision, a container of vials in her wings. Amber eyes focus on him as she eyes up his armour. “Look what I’ve found, a man in valuable, but very early armour. Level 3? Less?” He doesn’t like how she easily dissects his situation. “Clearly in need of some assistance from yours truly.”

  Dave looks at the vials again, unsure what to say but eventually settling on “Who are you?” with as little emotion as he can muster given his bewilderment. The smell of a scam starts to reveal itself to him, a long forgotten memory of receiving a phone scam as a child resurfacing.

  “Well, I sure have the deal of a lifetime for you.” She gestures to the vials with a grandiose wave of her wing. “In exchange for a piece of that oh so valuable tin, I am willing to part with,” she pauses for effect, raising a wing to her chin in false consideration, “Twelve of my patented Level Up Vials!” She pauses in fake shock before quickly speaking again. “Oh my apologies, I would hate to lowball such a gentleman willing to hear me out. How does twenty sound?”

  “How much EXP does this even give?” He tries to buy time while trying to think of how to get out of this, realising she's practically in his face now. He never even noticed her walk towards him.

  “Enough to get you to your current max level, now then, thanks for the sale!” Without his content she reaches for his helmet, he steps back to get away but she recloses the distance. He goes to protect his armour when she suddenly leaves his vision, a set of green wings in his face. Dave sighs in relief, having to slide down the wall onto a sitting position.

  Fleur was not a happy harpy, She’d left him alone for approximately thirty seconds, realised he would probably need some money just in case and came back to some strange harpy trying to steal from him. Her talons wrapped tightly around her throat, the strangled sounds music to Fleur’s ears. Only when the scam artist was slowly turning blue and her eyes slowly turning towards the back of her head did Fleur let go, watching her gasp for air and cough heavily. “What?” She asks Dave when she notices his horrified expression. She looks back, uncaring, to the harpy making a racket on the ground. “That bitch was trying to scam you out of your helmet for fucking fruit juice. Have you never seen-” She stops herself, realising he couldn’t have seen the fruit yet. “Nevermind. She's a scammer and we’re seeing my sister.”

  Fleur practically shoves him inside the shop, levelling one last glare at the scammer. She slowly rolls herself over to her front, getting on her wings and knees to start to hack and splutter. Bronze wings slowly give up as she lies on the floor.

  “Damn it, almost had that.” The scammer mumbles.