Dead Nerds Society: What Do You Mean My Guild Was Also Isekaid? Chapter 7: The World Outside

"That’s a great idea and all, but I need to bring my wife on board with it. No woman would be happy to be left inside while her husband goes to the woods with an unknown younger woman, after all. What do you say about coming ho to et her?"

Mutt was that kind of guy. A man who valued his wife and cared about her feelings above anything else. A true gentleman in every sense of the word.

"That sounds good. I would like to et her, yes. I don’t want to make her think that I am her rival or anything."

Cecilia understood he was being considerate of his wife’s feelings and wanted to do the sa. If she were on the other side of the equation, she would want to be treated the sa way, after all.

After so more banter and a last mug of coffee, they walked to Mutt’s ho, and Gertrude went to do the butchering, with Marya in tow.

:::

"Margarete, I’m ho! I brought a guest!"

"Welco ho, my dear!"

Mutt announced his arrival at the door, giving ti for his wife to ready herself. The voice that ca from inside was gentle and warm.

They walk into the house to find the woman sitting on a rocking chair in the dining room. The house is simple and rustic, exactly how Cecilia imagined countryside houses to be.

There are no sofas, but wooden chairs and a table. So chests on the corner completed the furniture.

Margarete was a pale woman who seed to be reaching her late twenties. She had beautiful golden hair cascading in swirling locks on her back and striking blue eyes. Despite those two traits, her facial features scread ’NPC.’

The one biggest feature right now, though, was her belly. The fully grown belly of a woman nine months pregnant. Cecilia had seen pregnant won before, in the hospital, when the nurses would take her to the garden in a wheelchair.

"My love, this is Cecilia, the girl I rescued yesterday. I brought her to et you."

"Oh, hi, Cecilia. I’m sorry I can’t stand to greet you properly. I’ve been feeling a bit weak lately. It’s probably because the baby’s about to co."

"Hi, Margarete. No, it’s okay. I understand. Have you been eating well lately?"

Cecilia lived long enough in the hospital to learn so things from hearing the chatter of the nurses. Including so telling symptoms of pregnant won with anemia.

And the woman in front of her was indeed pale. Not only that, but her skin was also visibly dry and with so bruises. She was breathing heavily, and the feeling of weakness also added up to that.

"Well, I can’t say it’s been too bad. I only miss the at."

"Darling, did Orion go to the farm?"

Mutt interrupted, asking about their son, and she promptly answered.

"Yes, he went to help with the harvest. He will bring so fruits and wheat on his way back."

"Is that so? I wanted to introduce him to Miss Cecilia as well. He’s our eldest son. He will be twelve next month."

Cecilia barely registered that information, because her mind was already fully focused on Margarete’s health.

"Mutt, why isn’t Margarete eating enough at?"

"Well, you see... I’m the only hunter in the village, and the monsters have really been more nurous and aggressive lately. So I often return without catching anything."

"It’s not his fault. The other day he ca back with a nasty wound in the arm. Gladly the mayor had a potion in his ho and gave it to us free of charge."

"Yeah, if it wasn’t that, I wouldn’t be able to hunt ever again. But today was a lucky day, as I killed not one but two dire hares. Gertrude is butchering them as we speak."

Cecilia rembered the nurses saying that anemia in pregnancy wouldn’t be enough to cause miscarriage, but that it could weaken the baby, leading to higher risk in their first weeks of life.

She activated her Appraisal technique.

[Na: Margarete

Race: Human

Character Level: 4

Jobs: Seamstress (4)

Nation: Drakestadt

HP: 12/12

SP: 1/3(11)

MP: 5/5

Attributes

Skills

Techniques

Status]

The stats screen opened by Appraisal only showed the most important data first. To get more information, the player had to open the subnus. That was to avoid a big screen taking over your field of view every ti you used it.

((No wonder she feels so tired... Her Max SP is drained down to 3. And, probably, her regeneration must be very slow right now. That’s why it’s still on 1, even though she’s sitting. Okay, let’s open the status screen.))

[Status:

Anemia

Pregnant]

((Yup, as I thought. Well, the solution for it is quite simple.))

"Margarete, I’ll perform so healing magic on you. Just hold on a bit, okay?"

"Ok."

Cecilia closed her eyes, trying to rember the incantation for the spell that would heal minor illnesses. She could just say ’heal,’ but that would be too flat and uncool. Unbecoming of a proper priestess.

"Anphorion Lysara. Nythea lytha, anthyra phorion."

(Journey of Return. Death fades, rebirth continues.)

After finishing the chant, she takes a deep breath. When she exhales, a soft, silver mist escapes her mouth. The mist flutters with spectral butterfly wings, covering Margarete and slowly adhering to her body.

After a brief mont, it shines for an instant and then vanishes.

"What was that...? I feel so much better now!"

Cecilia quickly checks her with Appraisal.

[Na: Margarete

Race: Human

Character Level: 4

Jobs: Seamstress (4)

Nation: Drakestadt

HP: 12/12

SP: 3/11

MP: 5/5

Attributes

Skills

Techniques

Status]

She opens the status window, but there is only the ’Pregnant’ status. It worked perfectly.

((Now that I’m calm, I see that she has a job, though it’s quite low level. I wonder what her skills are.))

Cecilia opens Margarete’s skills to check. It would be considered rude, or even offensive, to do that to a player. But Margarete was an NPC, or so Cecilia thought, so she had no reservations about it.

[Skills:

No skills.]

((Huh? No skills? How does she do anything? Whatever, I’ll check that later.))

"Thank you so much, Cecilia! I’m really feeling so much better now!"

"Hehe. It was nothing. Just a minor spell."

"No, really. I’m so grateful. It was beautiful..."

Satisfied with the results of her healing, Cecilia turned to Mutt, who was watching it all with his eyes full of wonder.

"Okay, the anemia is gone. Mutt, make sure to prepare a healthy al for her today. She had an illness brought on by a lack of eating proper food, especially at. It’s quite common in pregnant won. I will head to the forest to hunt."

"But... alone? I couldn’t..."

"Worry about your wife. I’ll be fine. I am an adventurer, after all. I can deal with so asly monsters. It’s the least I can do, after you found yesterday and brought safe and sound to the inn."

"That was nothing of importance..."

"So this is also nothing of importance. Isn’t that so, Margarete?"

Margarete smiled in agreent.

"She’s right, dear. Didn’t you just see what she is capable of? If a woman says that she can do it, she can do it."

Defeated, Mutt slumped his shoulders.

"Okay, you win. Just please promise that you’ll be safe. I don’t want to have to go rescue you again."

"Hehe, don’t worry. I promise."

"That reminds ... Why were you really in the forest yesterday?"

((Eeeeehh... I forgot that there was that question I dodged earlier because Gertrude helped .))

"Darling, it’s rude to pry into other people’s lives. Can’t you see she’s uncomfortable? And right after she just perford that spell for us!"

Margarete is a woman perceptive enough to understand that there was sothing deeper going on, from Cecilia’s reaction alone. Sothing that wasn’t related to her ability in combat and that it would be better not knowing.

"Alright, I’m sorry for prying. But before you go, I want you to at least take you to talk to the mayor. It’s important to keep him inford of such things so he can do sothing in case you don’t co back."

With that, the situation was settled. All that remained was for Mutt and Cecilia to go to the Mayor’s house.

:::

As they walked through the village’s streets, Cecilia couldn’t help but look around everywhere. The sights were at the sa ti familiar and absurdly alien.

So of the houses there are still the sa that were built five hundred years ago. A testant to the superior skills and materials available at the ti.

Cecilia was part of the workforce that built the place, and the streets were still exactly the sa from when they were built... which would be five hundred years for the village, but just a few weeks ago for Cecilia herself.

The biggest difference that made it all so uncanny was the level of detail and individuality of objects. Gas have limited stocks of textures, so things like building stones were very uniform everywhere.

That’s sothing that distinguishes a ga from reality at a glance.

The streets’ cobblestone wasn’t an exception to the rule. They were the sa everywhere... in the ga.

But not here. She could see that even though the original tiles were still there, two important things were very different from the original.

First, floors in gas tend to be composed of flat surfaces to save rendering processing. There are several things that you want to be really detailed in a ga, and the floor is rarely one of those. Even with rugged terrain, the valleys and peaks were smooth.

But here... every individual stone was its own thing. It felt exactly like walking on real cobblestone streets. They each had their own format, with grooves and notches filled with sand and gravel, always uneven.

But the second was even more eerie. It was possible to see how the original square sets of stones were copy-pasted from one another... but the wear and tear of the centuries of people walking around and weather falling down was different for each one.

Inside the tile there was variation, but all tiles were clones of one another. Yet, here the stone of the corner was broken, there it was not, and over there it was broken differently. So had moss, so hadn’t.

That was the single most terrifying thing she had seen since waking up this morning. The concrete, undeniable truth. This was the world of the ga, but it was reality. A five-hundred-year-old reality.