PROLOGUE I, ACT I, PART I
You were grinding on Spiral Abyss to collect all the Primogems you needed to get the upcoming banner for Childe. After many attempt on trying to make him come home, you still managed to fail getting him. You used your money, grinding yet he seems to never come home.
Oh how desperate have you become as were trying to get him for your character collection after playing this game for years.
The game has ended a month ago but you can't bring yourself to delete the game as it brings you so much fond memories. Especially during the pandemic that had happened during your teenage years.
You were too much of a fanatic to let it go easily. It's the same thing with Minecraft. That game lasted for a decade and still somehow managed to be trendy to the teenager. You began to yawn from the sudden drowsiness started to hit you.
Did the effect of energy drink worn out? You wondered before exited the Abyss and was about to call the day. You looked at the clock and to find out how late you stay up.
"Wait... It's fucking 9 am?!" You said in frantic manner before you began to cloae the game and went to your kitchen in hurry and grabbed another can of energy drink with some food to make sure you don't pass out.
You hurriedly open your classroom group chat to only realize you were missing a class and is now 30 minutes late. You began to open your Zoom to attend your class before your computer screen abruptedly started to glitch.
"Right now?! Really?" You groaned as you tried to restart it but it did nothing. "Great, guess no games for a week then."
You don't really care much of your studies situation because you believe in luck will come to you to help despite your gacha rolls said otherwise.
You looked at your computer hopelessly before turning off the plug that was connected to your pc and wifi just to save your bill.
You were about to eat the food at the dining room before you heard your computer making weird noises. Confused and creeped out, you turned around and saw your computer screen opened up Genshin Impact.
You immediately freaked out and didn't know what to do as you never deal with this situation before. You can't certainly turned it off. You can't even exited from the game as well.
As soon the door started to appear, your hand began to touch with the mouse to find a way to close the game instead the door began to open and you could feel the bright light started to shine brightly at you to the point it covered your whole room and you had to shield your eyes.
You can feel slight tingle feeling as the light started to consume you and the bright light started to become dark in your vision before you fell into slumber.
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"Hey! No fair! Paimon also wanted that." A voice shrieked which was the first thing you heard. The other voice were quite unadible for you to hear but you can tell that they were arguing.
Your eyes began to flutter and immediately squinted at the sudden brightness. As your eyes began to adjust to the brightness, you sat up and rubbed your eyes. You yawned, trying to process what just happened to you earlier.
"Look! He's awake!" The awfully high pitched voice is quite familiar to you. "Quick, Aether, give him that fried egg before he dies." Aether also a name is an awfully familiar name especially to be hearing that voice.
The least you expected was to be shoved egg to your mouth. You were so confused that you just ate it without caring if it was cook badly or not.
Somehow eating that egg made you feel powerful and more alive than drinking coffee in the morning. You wondered why their face were so blurry before you forgot that you weren't wearing any glasses.
"Thank you, kind strangers... Is there any chance that one of you have seen my glasses? I can't see properly without them." You said, coming off politely which the least you expected. Did the egg you eaten made you seem less rude? You wondered.
"Oh wait, let Paimon get it for you." The high pitched voice said as you waited patiently. Her words began to process thoroughly in your brain before you began to look shock.
Paimon... Aether... Wait- Your thought were abruptly interrupted by the exclamation, "Yeah, here you go!" She handed to you, your glasses.
You put on your glasses and there's no doubt that the two figures were the famous hero that has been carrying Teyvat and the emergency food.
Your brain somehow taking this very well than you expected to be. You should be experiencing a breakdown and disbelief that you would convince yourself that this is a supposedly to be a dream.
You looked at your hand that does not look like the normal human hand that you expected to see. Something kept feeding in your brain that this was a reality. A temporary one.
"Uhmm... Can you tell where are we?" You asked as you looked your surrounding. You felt that it might be relevant for future or at least on which story line you are entering.
"We are in Monstadt, currently we are searching for the Statue of the Seven and helping Aether finds his sister." Your guesses would be that this took place in the game beginning rather than in the manga.
"Say, how come you passed out? When we found you there were a lot of hilichurls around you." You went quiet for a moment.
How are you gonna explain it? You somehow managed to warp inside their world after playing for 12 hours straight just to get Childe? Definitely gonna make you sounds too insane for that.
"Well... Umm... I just remember I was eaten by a light and the next thing I know, I'm here." Technically that's true but they don't need other details than that surely.
"Eaten by a light?!" Paimon shrieked and shuddered at the thought of being eaten by the light. "Though, Paimon is surprised that the only thing that seems to be in pieces is your pants." She said as you immediately looked at your clothes.
You immediately frowned to see your Dream's merch was being torn apart and you realized that you are barefoot when you clearly remember you were at least wearing your Snorlax socks. "I definitely didn't bring Mora to buy myself new clothes for this."
"Paimon, my backpack." Aether asked. You turned to him and wondered that if you were gonna wear his clothes. Though, you were quite self-concious to show your stomach.
"Here you go, Aether." She said as she suddenly reappear in front of Aether. That's quite impressive to see with your own eyes instead. You wondered where the heck does Paimon go when she disappeared. Aether's head? Or does she have like a mini home or something?
Aether began to rummage through his small backpack to reveal bunch of swords, bows and books coming out from it. Your eyes widen at that sight. Now you have multiple question about that.
His face began to lit up before pulling out his shirt and his scarf. Though they look much simpler than the one he's wearing. "Wear this in the meantime. We shouldn't let you catch cold." He said as he smiled softly and handed the clothes at you.
Seeing this pretty boy smiles definitely is not good for your own heart. "Thank you so much." You said as you took the clothes and immediately changed not caring about your surrounding honestly.
You finished putting on the shirt but the shirt felt a little bit tight. Well either that or you have to wear the torn hoodie. Though your body somehow slimmed down than you actually are.
You turned to Aether and noticed the red blush on his face. "What's with the red face?" You asked as you raised your eyebrows.
His face began to darken before he looked away. "N-Nothing." He stuttered and avoid your gaze on him.
How does one man like this can be cute as fuck? Your heart definitely skipped a beat there. It makes you want to tease him for blushing but you decided not to since he saved you after all.
Suddenly, you smell something was a slight burnt smell before you looked at the pot to see them was cooking Mushroom-Chicken Skewers.
"Are you gonna let that food burn?" You asked as you pointed at the pot before Aether began to panick and immediately took out the food from the pot.
You sworn that you saw the water began to fill up in the pot when he took out the food from it. Is this because of how the game just work?
Though, you really do want to try Razor's Puppy Paw Hashbrown.
"Sorry it's a little burnt." Aether placed a plate of Mushroom-Chicken. Despite he said it was a little burnt but it looks much more appetizing than your sad attempt on trying to recreate this dish.
"Oh no, it's still look good. Thank you for the food." You said before eating the food. Despite it's just looked so simple, it taste so good. Much more than you expected it to be. "Woah, this is so good! What did you even put in this?" You asked, maybe you could learn how to cook it here.
"Just a fowl and a mushroom." You just gave a disbelief look. Is that only it?! You sworn you could taste a little taste of black pepper and hint of barbeque sauce in this.
"Paimon think it's just Aether being a very talented chef." You didn't even noticed Paimon was next to you, eating one of your Mushroom-Chicken Skewers.
Oh, how you wish you could strangle the fuck out of her for eating your food. Though, you have to be patience with her since she did save Aether from his despair and loneliness.
"Where do you come from anyway?" Paimon asked you as you sighed. Another crisis, either you tell them you are from another world or just being so omnious about it. I guess it wouldn't harm to tell them you are from another world as well since Aether also as same as you except much cooler.
"I can tell you much that I am not from this world either. I did learn a few couples of things about this world before I was brought here actually. Though, how do I came here and return back to my own world is a mystery to me."
You don't think that they need to know about you knowing everything about them and people here. Truth to be told, you rather be here and die here rather than going back to that nasty, cruel, lonely reality.
"You also come from another world too? So are you a world traveler like Aether?" Paimon asked as you shook your head.
"In the world I live, people don't really believe in another world. They just shrug it off as a reality that we create or classify as crazy. Really, I'm just a student. Nothing cool." Somehow, that managed to pique their interests on you.
"What do you even study?" Paimon asked curiously. You really hated the fact that you had to shatter their expectations. You got an absolutely failure in almost every subject.
Although, you did pick up few knowledge about psychology and fortune reading out of boredom and curiosity of course. Not quite sure if you could even do a fortune reading that quite accurate but hey at least you tried.
"A lot of things. That's for sure." You smiled before getting up. "Do you mind if I join you two on an adventure? You might need me and I probably can help you find your sister whereabout."
You said but you were a little worried that you might held them back and things might change because of your involvement but, you really don't have anyone to turn to except them.
Aether's eyes lit up and looked at you with a hopeful look. "Really, you could?" His eyes were desperate in trying to find his sister and you knew that desperate feeling very well.
"You bet. Only on two conditions, you have to trust my words and help me find a certain deck of cards. It would speed up the process of finding your sister." You really need a deck of tarot cards. Your reading might miss a little bit on the spot if this in real life but since this is Genshin world, it will be very accurate.
"Deal." He said as he put much confidence with you. This definitely going to tire you out but you felt bad not to repay their kindness.
"Also do you have a weapon I could use? Preferably a sword." You really hope that your Minecraft pvp and imitation on any swordfighter you see in movies or show skill would help you on this one.
"Feel free to look at that pile of weapons to see which you are liking." Aether pointed and you head to the pile. This is really a lot of weapons that you could use.
Speaking of which, you realized you do not have the capabilities to use magic. Do you get blessed by the statue to use magic or you somehow obtain vision?
Curious, you looked at your hands, trying to concentrate elemental energy on your hands but it did nothing.
You just sighed before taking a sword. As soon as your hand touched the sword, a screen appeared right in front of you to show stats of the sword. You looked at it in surprised.
"I didn't expected to see that." You accidentally muttered out loud which made Aether gave you a confuse look.
"See what?" Aether asked. You assumed he has never seen the screen before and this is one of your special abilities for playing games.
The sword you were holding was a fillet blade. Three stars but the refinement rank was 3. Probably best settle with this sword. It immediately said it's equipped to you.
You swung the sword around and to your surprised it's quite light than the swords that you have held before. "Now how do I...?" You mumbled before your sword started to slowly fade and you could felt a little heaviness at your back.
"Well, time to move now before it's getting dark." Aether said as he sketched his map quite roughly yet detailed before he began to stuff all the weapon in his bag before giving it to Paimon.
"Why does Paimon have to carry your bag?" Paimon said in annoyance before disappearing right in front of your eyes and reappearing after a few seconds later, empty handed as if the bag was disappeared.
"So from here, where do we go to find the statue?" He asked while looking at the map with Paimon.
Both of them trying to figure out where to go for what it felt like an hour. You sighed before looking at the sun that seems roughly around at west, indicting it's probably 3 pm or so.
"Can you hand me the map please and the pencil so I could mark where are they?" You asked and you hoped that your memory won't fail you this time.
He nodded before handing you the map. For some reason, when you touch it, it was exactly as same as the way you would open the map in the first place. You can see a faint indicator on the map so you draw a circle as an indication for the statue.
"The closest one near us has to be at... Starfell Valley. Which is... northwest, roughly 354 meters away." You said before handing back the map.
"Are you sure you are not from here? You seems to know a lot about this place." Paimon asked, looking at you suspiciously.
"I've been studying this place, remember? If I know nothing, I wouldn't have offered help now, would I?" Paimon still have that suspicion look on her face.
"Guess you do have a point." Paimon shrugged.
"Let's get moving now shall we?" Aether said as you nodded and following him behind while Paimon disappeared in the thin air.
Your heart started to feel a little heavy and have a feeling that bad things might happen sooner.
TO BE CONTINUED