The two players continued to gaze at the clearly out-of-place building before them. A building that wasn’t from Hazel’s world but Astrid’s instead.

  The house was slightly sandwiched between two other buildings, both surprisingly enough were from Hazel’s world. Looking down at the cracked and split ground, the pair noticed that there was a dirt path mixing together with the concrete street as if the dirt was part of the road as well.

  Following the dirt path, Hazel and Astrid realized that it led right toward the house they just stumbled across. Which meant the dirt path also belonged to Astrid’s world as well.

  Considering that their worlds were merged, Hazel and Astrid knew that they would come across something like this. Two structures from two very different eras and planets blend in with one another both naturally and unnaturally.

  Even so, being faced with that type of reality...was a harder pill to swallow than they initially thought.

  “Do you...” Hazel faltered. “Do you think anyone is in there?”

  “...Only one way to find out,” Astrid stated with a determined expression.

  The dark elf then took a couple of steps toward the medieval house before Hazel stopped her by placing her hand in front of her.

  “How about I do a little search first before we go in ourselves,” she suggested while pointing at her floating Astral Eye near them.

  Although the floating eye was invisible to Astrid, she still got the hint of what Hazel giving her and nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

  Once Astrid gave the go-ahead, Hazel mentally commanded her Astral Eye to enter the house before them. Hopefully, due to it being in Astral Form, it would simply phase through the house and keep them from opening the house, thus alerting whatever was inside.

  As soon as the floating eye made contact with the building, much to Hazel’s relief, it simply passed through like a ghost. The witch let out a sigh before placing her attention back on her Astral eye.

  With the eye inside, Hazel used it like a remote-controlled camera drone and scanned the area, curious to see what was within the house. Looking around, the house looked incredibly messy with broken chairs and a table lying all over the floor, leaving bits of wooden shrapnel in their wake.

  There didn’t appear to be anything living inside. Nor was there anything within the house that Hazel found useful. No important papers haphazardly lying on the floor or any mystical weapon that could prove useful to her or Astrid.

  In every sense of the word, this place looked like your typical abandoned house with little significance. Realizing this, Hazel felt a bit disappointed. She figured that there was something inside that could be useful, but there was nothing of the sort.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any living creatures inside,” Hazel informed the dark elf calmly. “The house is a bit messy though.”

  “Did you find anything interesting inside?” Astrid asked curiously.

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  “No, but I think we should go inside to inspect the place further,” She suggested. “There might be something I missed when inspecting the place.”

  “Right, then let’s go inside and get a better look.”

  Declaring their next move, Astrid proceeded to make her way over to the house as Hazel followed behind her. Entering the building, the two players explored the living room, searching for anything that could potentially tell them where this house came from.

  Looking down to see the scattered sheets of paper, Hazel and Astrid crouched down to pick some up and examine them. Clasping at a sheet, Hazel took note of how different the paper was compared to the ones from her world.

  The sheet was tanned like someone spilled coffee all over it with various ripped spots on the sides. It gave off the appearance of a fantasy/medieval sheet of paper like in an RPG or fantasy novel.

  Taking a closer look at the sheet, she read the contents to see what it was talking about. It appeared that the paper was a letter to someone, talking about the sender’s travels and what they were seeing during it. There was one keyword that caught Hazel’s attention.

  “Hey, do you know about a place called Mossley?” She asked the dark elf.

  Astrid paused to ponder over the question before giving a response. “I do. I’ve been there a few times when I was doing my reconnaissance missions. Why?”

  “Because I think that’s the place Portland merged with,” Hazel then showed the dark elf the paper. “This letter stated that the sender can’t wait to return to Mossley, which is here. You said before that you’ve visited this place before, right? Does that mean your home is near here?”

  “It is,” She nodded. “The entire forest where my people reside neighbor a kingdom called Briarhart. This Mossley town is located within that kingdom.”

  If what Astrid said was true, then that meant the dark elf was closer to home than they both thought. Which meant Hazel’s theory from before was slowly becoming a fact.

  “Okay,” Hazel beamed. “If what you're saying is true, then that means we’re currently in the Briarhart kingdom, which is close to your neck of the woods. Emphasis on woods, heh.”

  Astrid rolled her eyes at the joke, clearly unamused by her humor. “From what I remember, Mossley was a month's journey from my village to here.”

  Hazel turned to the dark elf with an arched brow. “Why did it take a month to get here? Did you have to walk here or something?”

  Although she stated that last part of her question with sarcasm, what Astrid said next surprised her.

  “I did,” She declared while nodding.

  Hazel took a moment to process her partner’s words, unsure of how to respond. She then said the first words that came to mind.

  “Why would you walk from your village to this town for a month? Don’t you guys have mounts or carriages to take you there? Maybe some flying griffins?”

  The dark elf shrugged her shoulders. “At the time, I was tasked to endure a long journey in preparations for future missions that would take even longer than my trip to Mossley.”

  “But still...a whole month?” Hazel questioned, still looking baffled.

  “Like I said. I’ve had longer and more tedious journeys. I still remember when I took a mission that sent me to the Port City of the Ruinvia Empire.”

  “And...where is that exactly?”

  “At the bottom of the Triumis Continent.”

  “Yeah, okay, so I think we might need to talk more about the geography of both our worlds since I have no idea what you just said.”

  It had become painstakingly obvious that Hazel had no knowledge regarding Astrid’s world. She didn’t know about the Port Town Mossley, the Briarhart kingdom, or even the Ruinvia Empire.

  She could’ve asked when they were in the Tutorial Dungeon, but they were more focused on surviving than anything else. Still, that wasn’t an excuse for her current predicament right now. Hazel only had herself to blame for not striving to learn more about the other world merging with Earth.

  But that was going to end now. Now that Hazel was finally out of the Dungeon, she needed to adapt to her current situation. And that meant it was time to do some geography lessons. For a moment, she dreaded the idea of learning, remembering her time back when she was in college before dealing with the apocalypse and monsters.

  However, if she didn’t attempt to learn about Astrid’s world, she was going to have a hard time adapting to their current surroundings. And Hazel couldn’t afford to let that happen.

  “Hey, Astrid...”

  “What is it?”

  “Tell me more about your world...”