Archive Of Potentialities.

Chapter 4: The False Dreamer.

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I've met my fair share of strange people in my admittedly short lifetime, I've been through high school after all.

It was a cesspool of personalities, some more eccentric than others.

But the strange people I remembered didn't hold a candle to this person who introduced himself as Satoru.

No, it wasn't the fact that he seemed to have an ability for anything, or his strange blue hair and golden eyes, or his ambiguous looks.

It was something more obscure, I couldn't clearly state what exactly I found strange about him, but I could just sense that I haven't really met this person. I was simply looking at a facade.

I highly doubted Satoru was even his real name.

But…

“So, are you Japanese?” I found myself asking.

I doubted him, but I couldn't bring myself to suspect him.

Walking next to me on this street that seemed like it came straight out of a sci-fi novel, Satoru turned his annoyingly beautiful face to regard me.

He wore the same expressionless look that I had come to be familiar with in just a short time.

“I am…or was,” He answered, almost seeming wistful. But his face didn't change, so I wasn't sure.

“You're an otherworlder too then….”

Frankly, I still hadn't come to terms with being in another world. It was frustrating, and what made it even worse was that I had no one to blame.

“Yeah. That reminds me, Nathan. How much do you know about this world?” He asked, reaching his hand out to pull me out of the way of ….is that an orc?

“I don't really know anything. Those people didn't really have the presence of mind to educate their captives. They talked a lot about the Nasca and Tempest Empires and a few other things, but I can't really call those snippets ‘knowledge’,” I answered, my eyes fixed on the receding figure of what really seemed like an orc.

An orc dressed in a suit.

“Well, that's to be expected..also,” he stopped and chopped me on the head with his left hand.

“Stop staring, it's rude,” he continued.

The way this younger looking person kept treating me like a child was…surreal. Oddly, I wasn't too annoyed.

“Can you blame me? I thought monsters would be hunted in worlds like this. You know, in dungeons and all that,” I grumbled.

Satoru gave me an amused look, before shaking his head and resuming his walk.

“That's not how things work here. All sentient races are equal. It's been like that for almost a thousand years now,”

Why's he speaking like he's been around for that long?

“So, it wasn't always like this?”

I honestly found that hard to believe. Even back home, for a long time, people found it difficult to recognise some of their fellow humans as equals, despite looking the same in all but skin colour.

What were the odds that humans would go above and beyond to coexist with beings like monsters?

Change rarely complied with ideals.