Prelude: To Domathra (Isekai/LitRPG/OP MC)

Tara breathed deeply, teetering on one foot as she struggled to stay balanced. Her arms wobbled at her sides as she attempted to counter her sway.

“Stack over the ankle. Do not concern yourself with your arms, child. 

“Your foot contains a triangle of stability. It runs from the big toe to the little toe to the heel. Build your base over that shape,” Myra instructed, his disembodied voice somewhere near Tara within the void.

She focused on her foot and found the stable base he described, but he acted as if that was all she needed.

It was not!

When he had asked her to balance on one foot, she thought it a trivial challenge without purpose, yet closing her eyes had made the challenge impossible, and she still thought it had no purpose! When would she ever need to balance on one foot with her eyes closed?!

Whoosh!

“Mmm!” Tara whimpered, shirking away from the gust of wind that blew the hair from her face.

“Calm yourself, keep your eyes closed. That punch was not aimed at you, and you would not have dodged in time even if it was. Find your center, child. You should work to maintain balance in your core,” Myra chided calmly.

“Maybe if I knew what I was supposed to be learning, I would be more invested in this training,” Tara grumbled, all her restraint used to keep the comment cordial.

“My tenets, child: discipline,” he responded.

Tara bristled, her frustration mounting as she wobbled, her weight rolling from her heel to the ball of her foot.

“I can make my bed in the morning just fine,” she growled.

“Ah, this is exactly what you must learn, dear Tara. I am quite strong, you realize? What do you hope to gain by reducing my tenets to something so small? You risk yourself doing that with others,” he said, his voice calm, though Tara blanched as she realized the magnitude of her insult.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” she started.

“Peace. I would be a poor teacher to rise to every challenge a student makes,” Myra chuckled. “Discipline is doing what must be done, and refusing what must not.”

Whoosh!

Tara dodged to the side, keeping her body in place, but shifting her head out of the way.

“Uh,” she grunted, smacking the side of her head on a wooden rod. She flailed her arms as her legs and core screamed, struggling to regain control. “I thought you weren’t gonna hit me!”

“I did not. This stick has not moved at all. You are the one who ran into it.”

Tara bristled again, reestablishing her posture and tightening her core. What an annoying contrivance!

“Not every action needs a reaction, child. This world was not created for you alone, and not all that moves does so in consideration of you. 

“You must carefully determine which actions you respond to, for every response takes something from you. Nothing is free, least of all your time and energy,” Myra explained.

“Semantics,” Tara grumbled, rubbing the side of her head and immediately regretting it, as the movement once again made her wobble.

Myra chuckled.

“Discipline is similar to balance in many ways. Neither is static. They require constant effort and attention.”

Tara squeezed her core, attempting to hold herself in place directly above her foot.

“Focus on your body, child. You do not stand still while balancing. Your core makes constant corrections, your hips burn, and your entire body works to stay in the most stable position. In balance, like discipline, instinct will only get you so far. They are skills that must be learned.

“Though I tell you it must be learned, I tell you it can also be trained. Take comfort in this, for it means you can be sharpened ever further,” Myra finished, and though Tara’s eyes were closed, she could just imagine him with all four arms crossed in front of him, his eyes closed, and his head nodding sagaciously.

Tara could not deny the more literal parts of his lecture. Her hips were burning, her core worked constantly, tightening and relaxing as her trunk attempted to sway this way and that, as if a tree in a breeze. Had her body always been prone to swaying like this, or was it only because she was standing on one leg?

“Why is it you have decided to instruct me in discipline first?” Tara asked. 

She found that occupying her mind, at least in part, with talk helped her maintain her balance. Although he had just lectured about balance requiring attention, she found that if she spent all her attention on it, she would overcorrect and lose her balance completely.

“As I said, I hope you will learn on your own where your strengths and weaknesses lie. However, as a new student, I will tell you that what you lack most right now is balance, and I do not mean the kind you are demonstrating at this moment.

“You have a tremendous will for determination, Tara. I have personally seen you commit to risky actions without hesitation after deciding you have no other choice. This is admirable, but as is written, no single tenet by itself is supreme. Even too much determination can be detrimental.

“If you commit to an extreme action immediately, you risk going overboard, missing details that could have led you to a different course, perhaps a more peaceful one,” he lectured pointedly.

A vision of the ogre’s eye exploding flashed through Tara’s mind, and her balance wavered. She stumbled over with a yip, trying to place her other foot down to steady herself, but finding only air below her.

Before she hit the ground, two meaty hands gripped her shoulders, lifting her fully off the ground and placing her gently on the small pillar raised a couple of feet off the ground. This was what she had been balancing on before, though she did not understand why she could not just practice on solid, level ground.

“I see the question in your eyes. You are on the pillar because the ground is a crutch. Consciously or subconsciously, you will rely on the ground, the knowledge that it is there, to catch you when you stumble. The pillar eliminates such reliance,” Myra declared.

Tara stared at the pillar below her, taking extra time to get her feet under her. Yes, it was to make sure she was balanced, nothing to do with the color in her cheeks. Her fall had not even been that embarrassing, really.

“Peace, child. It is a teacher’s duty to pick his students up when they fall, and you will fall many times during my training. These are not failures; they are opportunities, for it is by them that you will improve.”

Tara sighed, his reassurance only making her dread future training even more. With an expectation to ‘fall many times’ more in her mind, she closed her eyes and once again raised her left foot. This time, she breathed deeply while bracing her core and crouching down.

—————————————————

“A tunnel, you say…interesting,” Grantwell said, stroking his chin.

“Yes, they are digging out toward the Gloam as we speak, though it is taking quite a while considering the extra distance,” Nephthys confirmed, her arms crossed.

The two sat in a private room within the guild, similar to the one they had met in last week. Nephthys was on a chair, and Grantwell was opposite her on a cushioned bench. 

A low table sat between them, an unlit candle to the side. Nephthys glanced at the window across the room, noting that the sun was beginning to creep low, lengthening the shadows spilled across the room.

With a casual wave of her hand, the candle scooted to the center of the table and lit itself, though neither she nor Grantwell even acknowledged the action.

“Why are they suddenly digging so far out? If all they needed was spores, surely just a hundred miles out of town would be sufficient,” he asked, glancing up at Nephthys.

“Oh, I assumed you would have heard by now. One of my people trimmed the Gloam. It has receded back to its position from two hundred years ago,” she replied casually.

“I…see. Not many venture into the Gloam willingly, so I am unsurprised the news has not reached me….

“You say this person ‘trimmed’ the Gloam? What exactly does that mean?”

“He burned it. There is a blackened strip of land stretching from about a hundred miles north of Gloamview to just north of the Dry Hills, though I just checked earlier today, and even now there are buds of new life beginning to climb through the char,” Nephthys explained.

Grantwell sat frozen with his hand on his chin. He looked as if he were touching a live wire, the electricity rendering him motionless.

“You okay, Grant?” Nephthys finally asked, after the silence lingered long enough to become uncomfortable.

“What? Oh, yes, thank you. Apologies. I was just…trying to reckon with…

“You say the Gloam was ‘trimmed’ all the way to the Dry Hills? That’s…what, something like four to five hundred miles in the north/south direction? All the way across the continent, from west to east, that’s another one thousand, maybe eleven hundred miles…correct?” he asked, as if hesitant.

“Yes, that sounds right to me, though I do not know the exact square mileage off the top of my head,” Nephthys replied, her head tilted to the side.

Why is he so interested in the specifics?

Grantwell leaned back heavily against the bench’s backrest, withdrawing a flask from his robe. He uncorked the top and took a heavy draught, gulping at least three times before hiding it within his robes again.

Nephthys did not realize he was such a drinker, but she would not judge. She was nearly reliant on energy drinks back in her previous home, and running a branch of the adventurer guild in a hostile, medieval world was probably far more stressful.

“Did we overstep? When I saw how much the Gloam had advanced from its position two centuries ago, I, admittedly, made the decision without considering how it would affect others—” Nephthys started.

“No! No, it is quite all right. In fact, this is tremendous news. No one will complain about the Gloam retreating from our doorstep,” Grantwell assured, following his exclamation with a sigh.

“If I may, who is ‘we’? You have spoken several times of ‘your people’, Miss Adel—Nephthys. Who exactly are you referring to, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“My guild, Nemesis. Hannibal is the general of our military. He is the one who pushed the Gloam back,” Nephthys replied, withdrawing a skin of fruit juice from her inventory. Grantwell wetting his throat had made her thirsty as well.

Actually, she was not ‘thirsty’ per se. It was strange. Her body did not need to drink, yet her mind wanted something tasty. She wondered if it was maybe similar to how she had to have something to sip on while playing Prelude, a contrivance of the mind rather than any actual thirst.

“A guild? I see. I wasn’t aware you started one,” Grantwell said, obviously wanting to ask for more information without prodding.

“Indeed. Do you know what happened two hundred years ago, Grant?” Nephthys asked, sipping on her juice with a wrinkled nose. It tasted ‘off’ somehow. 

It must be the container, she realized. It was probably made of an animal’s stomach or something, and it was leeching a gamy taste into her juice.

“I was not in Ashreach yet, but my understanding is that the expeditionary forces from Vadenlaud collapsed almost immediately,” he answered.

“Yes, it was the Gloam. When the large contingent began moving through it, the spores did their work. Folks were driven mad and began attacking each other. The thing of it was, no one knew why at the time. The uninfected thought the infected had simply betrayed them, or possibly been driven insane by the long march from the coast.

“What I meant specifically, though, was what happened after. Factions splintered, and many powerful people began trying to kill each other. It was a mad rush to claim whatever resources one could, ensuring one's own survival as well as that of one's family and faction,” Nephthys explained, her tone neutral.

She felt as if she were talking about something serious, so she was thankful for her body’s tone of forced neutrality in this instance. How could she explain that it was all just PvP, that it was all just a game?

“I see. That sounds…dangerous,” Grantwell responded carefully.

“It was. Nemesis was the guild I founded during that time, and as far as I know, we are the only guild still around—the only guild in its original form, at least. 

“My understanding is that there are various clans and tribes throughout the Peaks that can trace their origins to some of the original guilds, but they are…shadows of their former selves.

“Within Nemesis, we call this period the Era of Conflict. It was constant fighting, constant strife, constant war. Nemesis remains, however, and we are the only faction occupying the Crater, at the moment,” Nephthys finished.

Grantwell stared at the table before him, his arms crossed, seemingly contemplating. Suddenly, his left hand unfolded, reaching out and patting Nephthys on the knee.

Nephthys became wildly uncomfortable before remembering that there were two people occupying Grantwell’s body.

“Thank you, Yvette. It was a trying time,” she said with a small smile.

No, it wasn’t! It was just a game!

“I appreciate you being so candid with us, Nephthys. It should go without saying, but allow me to assure you that neither Yvette nor I will speak of your guild without your authorization. I presume you have kept it under wraps thus far for a reason, and we will respect your secrecy,” Grantwell assured, Yvette’s arm resuming its crossed posture.

“Thank you, but as I am sure you have guessed, I have not revealed this information without purpose,” Nephthys replied, looking Grantwell in the eyes.

“I would like some information of my own, and I have a suspicion that things in Gloamview are going to become…hectic in the near future.”

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