The golden plains of Asgard were ever so fruitful, as Balthazar imagined it filled with the tangy scent of Platinum++ Asgard Pekoe. An exquisite black tea. Though considered overall bitter to the taste in the flavor text, it was rare enough to bring in a great deal of capital.

Sadly, today that didn't mean very much; even with all the gold of the nine realms.

YGGDRASIL, a game that had hardly lasted over ten years was now coming to an end.

The crunching of twigs and rock under his feet reached his ears. Yet the soothing sounds hardly wiped away the sorrows that filled his heart. Many friends had come and gone. After his body was burned at work, this was the only place he could hold close. His wife had left him because over thirty percent of his body was covered in scar tissue. When his marriage fell through, he had nothing left but the Red Union, and soon that was going to be gone as well.

Coming to a stop, his eyes moved to the sky that filled the horizon of this virtual environment. Then his head slowly drifted to the side, a tingling sensation running through his spine.

Hugging his Grimoire against his chest tightly, he let the feeling pass him by.

Phantom pain from a bad event was drilled into his mind. Now and then, Balthazar swore he could feel the heat melting away his lungs and charring the side of his face.

For a brief second, he closed his eyes and then opened them again. His friend, Constantine Omega Alpha stood there in his true, snow-white, lycanthrope form right beside him. Constantine was gussied up in a shiny gilded Greco-Roman armor piece known as the Breastplate of Herakles. A World Item they had gained by completing a particular limited-time quest series during a hidden event.

If it weren't for the game's limitations when it came to facial expressions, Balthazar Rasputin could've frowned at that moment. Instead, a little speech-bubble appeared with a frowning face that contrasted with his avatar's stoic expression and blue empty eyes.

"Five minutes… Give or take…" Balthazar's eyes were now focused on the clock in the upper right-hand corner of his vision.

"You really shouldn't focus on the clock. You might just run out of time," Constantine snorted.

"...Shut up and pick more tea," the words slipped from Balthazar's lips in a low mutter.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Constantine reached out an arm and placed it on his friend's shoulder pretending to squeeze.

The game didn't share physical feelings such as warmth, smell, or even the taste of the air. Even then, Balthazar stood there frozen as he stared at the fuzzy arm of his compatriot.

"...Would you believe me if I said… Nothing in particular?" Talking was hard, but all the same, it was due to his injuries. Balthazar was sure his friend was used to his bouts of labored speech.

"No, Bal. I wouldn't believe you if you said such a thing."

"...Good… Because I said nothing in particular."

"You ass."

"...You know it..."

Constantine shook his head, "You're lucky Friendly Fire is off my friend."

"Hmm... Am I though...?" Easily able to hide the smile on his face, Balthazar's gaze dropped to the ground. His sights traced over the golden grass and the fertile soil at and around his feet.

"Oh, hush. At least in a few more minutes, you'll no longer have to worry about keeping the Guild afloat. There's no one left except us, and soon it'll all be gone. Am I right?"

"Well… You're surely not wrong…"

"Are you pretty sure emptying our treasury into our inventories has any symbolic meaning?"

"...Our characters… Should be wealthy in their afterlife, right?"

Balthazar held a brief standing staring contest with Constantine as time refused to stop. Neither was going to blink, the game wasn't going to have it. So, without warning, Balthazar leaned back on his heels and fell backward.

With a prerecorded 'thud,' he simply stared to the sky now as it was almost midnight. The stars were beautiful, but they were far less convincing than the ones back at their guild headquarters.

"You're talking like the servers shutting down are going to kill something," Constantine sounded amused as he had already gone along with Balthazar's plans. Though there was this strange sense that the wolf agreed with him.

"You… Know as well as I do that games are just windows into another reality…" Balthazar snickered, quoting his friend when they had a similar conversation some time ago.

"Ra-Ra-Rasputin–"

"Con! Stop it..." Balthazar nearly snapped when his friend started to sing.

"Oh come on, for ole' times sake?" Constantine playfully pleaded after having been cut off.

"Yeah… I don't think so…" Balthazar's eyes flickered over to the clock again. There were less than three minutes left. It was almost midnight and the entire world was about to be shut down.

"Did you hear if they were making another game?" Constantine crossed his arms over his chest.

"No… They're not going to be making another one. Or, at least, it hasn't been announced, anyway…" Balthazar shook his head as his hands curled under the book that he held to his chest.

Each of them had a World Item, the Grimoire he held, and the chest plate that Constantine wore. These two items were what kept their Guild from being destroyed. His item in particular was a World Item which his entire build was ultimately built around, the Book of the Beyond. The book allows the user to cast any spell with maximum efficiency regardless of karma for those with the Death Priest Class, a rare class that requires the user not to be undead. As a Grimoire, it also has a series of related spells.

"How about those disappearing… people, though…?" Balthazar changed the subject.

"Disappearances?" Constantine sat down brushing his clawed hand through the grass.

"Well, we have… less then… Two minutes so I'll send you my new contact information. We'll talk about it later." Balthazar observed a private messaging window that appeared in front of himself and pasted his contact number registered to the Kyoto Arcology. Pressing send on the window, he glanced at Constantine who opened his user interface.

"So you moved under the old Capital, nice to know." Constantine laid on the ground, letting his arms rest under his head. This was as close as they could get to stargazing.

"Huh… One minute remaining…" Balthazar closed his eyes, listening to the ambient music for the area. Little to no movement even reached his ears and his minimap was clear for the most part. It almost felt like he could fall asleep at any moment and soon the music he was so used to hearing vanished only to be replaced by a gentle breeze.

"Hey, Bal." A much deeper voice that emitted from Constantine startled Balthazar, who's eyes immediately shot open.

Balthazar's eyes were narrowed on the sky above them. He could no longer smell the musty apartment he called home, let alone the recycled air that was running a bit thin lately. On top of that, even the main HUB was gone.

"Con... what's going on?" Balthazar questioned as he sat up, immediately noting the sensation that came over him. Feeling the dirt and twigs from the surrounding woodland falling off of his lavish Divine-Class magic robes.

"Where did the HUB go...?" Constantine asked absently, locking his eyes with Balthazar. Strangely enough, Con's twelve-foot frame appeared quite a bit more intimidating than before.

"Your mouth is moving when you talk… And your voice… How did it get that much deeper?" Balthazar fidgeted with his grimoire as he stood up alongside his friend. Wiggling his toes in his boots, shifting his legs in his baggy pants, and wiggling his glove covered hands, Bal raised a brow at the sensations.

"And yours seems a bit smoother. Easier to talk? Hm. Think it was a full-neural update or something?" Constantine placed a hand under his fur-covered chin.

"The amount of data needed to support such a thing… I don't think so. Something else is going on here..." Balthazar placed a hand on his face, feeling down along his jawline until he reached his throat. The pain phantom, it was gone along with the constant strain of scar tissue. There was no evidence that they were still in a game, other than how they looked.

"This doesn't look like where we were in Asgard." Constantine peered over their surroundings, noting the trees and the lack of tea leaves.

"Without a minimap, I don't know where we are…" Balthazar hugged the grimoire tightly as if it gave him a sense of security.

"Ah, you blinked." Constantine pointed toward Bal with the end of his right index finger's claw.

"And you're quite a bit more animated…" Balthazar hardly made an expression as he listened to the sounds of the forest. "And everything else seems a bit more natural…"

"..Wanna bet we just got isekai'd?"

"Isekai'd...? Trapped in our video game avatars?" Bal glanced down to the magic book before looking back up towards the massive werewolf. "Perhaps… Though how is that scientifically possible? I mean..." He cleared his throat and shifted side to side, scanning over their surroundings with his eyes. "It's every Otaku's dream to do that…"

"So, how much you betting?"

"...That's a sucker's bet… I know when not to take risks..."

"So how do you think it happened, Bal?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think Truck-kun came crashing into our rooms while we're all hooked up?"

"Nnnngh… No."

Balthazar shook his head at the idea of dying from a truck somehow getting several stories up into his apartment and crashing through his room. There weren't any highways or major vehicular avenues near or above his place of residence.

"Then, what do you think we should do to confirm our theory?" Constantine asked with a look of confusion on his furry scruff of a face.

"Well. There is no Hub… Can't log out… I don't… I'm not…" Bal wasn't sure what to say, or how much to share. "I think these are our bodies now."

"If that's true, then I am a happy man! Now, I just need to check something." Constantine exclaims as he prepared to peer down into his waist guard to see what he was packing downstairs in his true, furry, form.

Midway, Balthazar slowly turned away from the man and loosened the belt that kept his robe tightly around his neck. Once his collar was loosened, with his back to his friend, Bal did the same. Checking to see what was under his robes, caused him to raise a brow. "You know, I never… Expected a homunculus to have something so impressive..."

"Hell yeah! I'm huge! I'll have to make a mental note to check my human form later..." Constantine's obnoxious exclamation took Bal's attention by surprise once more.

"Well… You got some good blood flow... Or is it long and floppy?... Don't answer that. Please." Bal, unlike Constantine, seemed to keep his tone composed and low in volume. There was no telling who or what was nearby.

The last thing he wanted was to go up against a Dragon, though that could make for some good resources. Looking to the sky, however, there wasn't even a bird in sight amongst the stars.

"It's a rock, Bal. It's a rock."

"I told you not to tell meeee~!"

"No, I'm serious. I'm not joking. Look at that big rock over there." Constantine snorted with a hidden smirk, waving his hand dismissively, as he was pointing at a large rock near them.

"Oh." Near-stoically Bal furrowed a brow as he peered over towards the boulder-sized rock resting between two large trees.

As an awkward silence fell over the area like a blanket, Constantine's ears twitched like high powered satellite dishes. It was apparent he could hear something in the distance with his now-enhanced sense of hearing.

"You hearing something… Constantine?"

"Yeah, the crackling of a dying fire. Think we should see if there's someone nearby?"

"Won't hurt. If we did get Isekai'd, maybe we were summoned as Heroes? Or villains… Though part of me doubts that." Bal spoke quietly as he silently used [Detect Life].

Within a few seconds, he could see colorful shimmering auras in the distance through the trees. What he assumed to be an entire village was nearby, teeming with life, but as he peered around from where he stood… There were four life forms much closer to their position.

"Hey, Constantine. How many people do you smell in that direction...?" Bal gestured a hand freely to their left while keeping his other arm clenched around his grimoire.

"Smell? Just 'cuz I'm a Werewolf doesn't mean you can treat me like a bloodhound..." Constantine grumbled before doing as he was asked.

"And here I thought you were the apex predator," Bal's arms crossed over his book as if to keep it secure; cradling it like a baby.

"Oh shut up, ain't nothing stronger than me in these woods! But yeah... four... or maybe five people is what I'm smelling. Also, this forest smells lovely… Ha... I could get used to this…"

"So could I… So could I. The only actual trees I've seen are plastic or in the Kyoto Natural Archives," Bal exclaimed as he barely lifted his feet as he shuffled quietly on over to a nearby tree. His eyes resting on an insect that was eerily similar to a stag beetle buzzing its wings against the bark.

"If this is a dream, I don't ever want to wake up."

"...You're not alone in that assessment. Though I doubt we'll be waking up and I refuse to believe I am in your dream..." Bal reached out with his right hand and grasped the beetle with two fingers before it could fly away.

Once Bal caught the beetle, it couldn't escape from his grasp. It pulled, it tugged and scratched and tried to bite down on him with its mandibles. The poor little thing couldn't escape. Just like its mandibles, his fingers slowly enclosed upon the exoskeleton and orange goop exploded onto his face.

"Poor beetle-san… So cruel, you are Homunculus-san."

Licking some of the goop from the side of his cheek, Bal cocked his head toward Constantine. "Tastes like… Weird… Almost nutty but bitter… Better than a cockroach though."

"...You ate a cockroach!? What is wrong with you? That's so gross! Ew!"

"Eh... My mom couldn't afford food for a week after she was fired from her job… I ate what I could… Rats aren't that bad, and they're pretty big from all the chemical dumps."

"..but, but, don't they carry disease and stuff? How could you eat rats!? But other than my disgust with that, I can understand it was necessary. I feel sorry for you and your mom having to go through that."

"It was from when I was a kid… No other choice. Plus, I cooked it… Pretty badly." Bal was licking his fingers as he was content with the orange goo that was the beetle's insides.

"I see… Anyways, let's get on going to see these campers. By the way, I checked their smell again, and I think they might be females. Not sure, though." Constantine said before walking on through the forest on his hind legs.

"...Perhaps you should take on your human form," Bal urged whilst following close behind him. Taking what appeared to be a black fox mask with white linear aesthetics similar to his gloves from his item box, Bal put it on. The mask only covered his eyes and nose. "I mean… As to avoid panic or from being attacked."

"..Nah. We just need one for information. If they run, let them." Constantine denied, ignoring his friend's urging to take on a less threatening form. It didn't appear that he was understanding why he should hide his true form from a bunch of, what he assumed to be, humans.

"Right. Throw caution to the wind… Very much like you… Huh?" Bal smirked subtly, listening to the branches rustling above from the clean breeze that was passing through.

"Hm? Something wrong, Bal?" Constantine called back quietly, as they were getting closer to the camp while looking up into the trees.

"Not necessarily… Just that your lack of caution is… Unsettling." Bal shrugged to the question as he gave his answer in kind, feeling as if the forest was far more alive than it first appeared.

"Well, you'll never get anything done otherwise. Besides, I'm the front line fighter. What's there to worry about? We've gone against greater numbers before with just the two of us."

"You're not wrong, but that was also when we knew we could respawn even without resurrection." Bal was being skeptical about this new reality they found themselves in. The uncanny realism compared to YGGDRASIL was far from comforting.

"Well, if we die, we die. What's there to worry about?" Constantine asked as he passed by a tree, leaving a claw mark on the bark.

"Dying."

"Face it like a man, Homunculus-san."

"At least you'll be the first to be plastered... Hey… Do you think Heteromorphs are affected by Alcohol?"

"That's more like it! And I dunno… Some probably are. Others aren't. I believe a Homunculus and Werewolf can be affected as we aren't undead, though Homunculi are iffy at best. You'll have to check. Anyways, be quiet, we're almost there." Constantine warned while taking a few sniffs of the air.

Nodding his head as he went along with Constantine's claim, Bal still wasn't so sure about just waltzing up to a random group of living folk. For one, Constantine was a massive twelve-foot tall monster and Bal himself was just an advanced form of a Homunculus. The only thing they had going for them was their levels being a hundred.

As he began to pick up the scent of burnt wood, Bal ran a hand through his reddish-purple hair. Reaching into his item box, he pulled out a bottle of Honeyed Essence and popped the cork with his thumb. Bringing the refined glass vessel to his lips, he sniffed the sweet aroma before taking a swig of what felt and tasted like thick, mango-like, nectar.

"Ah…" Bal murmured as he slowly lowered the item from his lips and let the neck of the bottle hang between the tips of his fingers. "That was rather refreshing…"

"..I can't believe you right now. Anyways, we're here." Constantine announced quietly, stopping behind a tree while looking at the encampment and taking care not to step on some stupid cliché branch with his large feet.

Bal joined him, peering around from the opposite side of the tree toward the camp.

Standing around a smothered campfire were five shapes. Two of which were crouched around the small circle of rocks that lined the burnt pieces of wood. They appeared scantily clad compared to the other three, especially the giant purplish scarlet armored hulk that stood with them. Out of all of them though, only one had wings in the form of six swords hovering behind her back. Then lastly, a small figure in a red cloak wearing a mask was looking right at them.

"..do you think she's aware of us? I'm betting she is." Constantine asked in a low voice, debating if he should wave at her from behind the tree for the fun of it or not.

"Considering you were shouting about your dick earlier… Constantine… She might as well be."

"I wasn't shouting, though! ...right?" Constantine queried in an alarmingly hushed voice.

"You might as well come out now! We're already aware of you two thanks to the loud one." Evileye shouted out to the two hiding behind the trees, the other members of her party beginning to stand and face them, arms at the ready.

Sipping a bit more of the nectar, Bal rounded the tree without much hesitation. There was no reason to hide. Using silent magic to invoke [Discern Enemy] on the beings there, it appeared the pipsqueak yelling at them was the highest level of the group.

Four of them were humans, Bal was sure of that. However, the fifth one appeared as if she was not amongst those of the living. "Big Bad Wolf… Try not to eat little Red Riding Hood…"

"Oi! She'd be more of an appetizer, not a meal. 'sides, I don't eat human toothpicks, or a vampire posing as one, anyway." Constantine complained in admission.