Chapter 18: 18. Isekai

Livia blinked her lids but when she thought she had opened her eyes there was nothing to see. It still felt like air was blowing in her ears.

Then she found herself in space, with nothing but the pinpricks of distant stars all around. Her jaw dropped. Once her brain started working she tried to move, and she didn't feel stuck but she couldn’t even see her body. There was nothing to orient by, only the distant lights, but then she squeezed and she could tell she was still holding the big hammer. It became her focal point, that feeling.

“Uh, hello little lady.” A voice from behind her suddenly said.

Livia shrieked and a hundred panicked thoughts of strange drugs and kidnappings ran through her head. She turned around and there was a floating blue wizard’s hat with small five-pointed stars decorating it, the kind you might find in a toy store. Beneath it was a void, a dark silhouette but with a floating gray beard just underneath the hat.

Livia's first instinct was to get away, but when the distance between them didn't increase it was clear the beard was following somehow so she freely entered the collision, hammer first. But even as Livia's desperate arm went to strike and the beard was ruffled slightly, the blunt tool just passed straight through where the man’s face should be.

“Hah, I knew you were going to try that. No point I’m afraid.” The voice sounded way too young to belong to that gray beard.

The surreal nature of the experience finally let Livia disconnect from the danger her brain was trying to convince her she was in.

“What the hell is going on, where am I?” She tried lamely.

“Come now, you can figure it out, I know how many of these stories you’ve read.” Smug. The voice was being smug.

But what it was saying was impossible. Far less possible than Livia's brain just not working right today.

"You're being chosen, I'm the guide, and right now we're frozen in time," When it seemed like Livia had no response the beard added "And space."

“You can’t be serious, am I dead i-is this LitRPG heaven?” Her mind was barely keeping up with her new reality and she was on the very brink of freaking out.

“No, no. Nothing like that. You’re being recruited, kind of,” The floating beard said.

“What, like to Middle Earth?” She finally managed with a note of hope.

“What, No of course not, to the latest book you just read, you’re going to planet Ross.”

And that was when Livia freaked the fuck out.

---

… After what felt like a bit more than an hour later, Livia had finally gotten over her panic. The floating beard had tried to keep talking in the beginning, but when he could tell that he was making it worse he decided to wait her out.

She finally said. “So, I am not dead then,”

The beard responded quickly, obnoxiously chipper. Clearly it had been waiting. "Far from it, you’re very much needed and I know you know why, humanity is on the brink o-,”

"Just about to be," She interrupted with a glare. "Yes I know your situation. You're all fucked! This was the plan? This was the big reveal at the end of your story, the actual grand finale? ME!?" She was breathing heavily after that outburst. "This is something new, something worse than a joke!" She was getting worked up again, and facing the infinite patience of a time-locked beard wasn't helping. “I’m not even a soldier or anything, why me of all people, did your text really get so few readers?”

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By the end she had started shouting but now the beard talked over her. ”We have warriors, haven’t you been reading? We have mages, we have the [System]. It’s not enough. We face the Cloven, the Ogre Clans. The Foxkin Sects. Even the Mantis Trade Bloc's at times. And too many others. Even with a [System] of our own, I guess we didn't use it right. You saw what happened at our end."

Livia was still grumbling but the lack of choices made it hard to argue. And Mr Beard took the opening.

"You’re exactly what we need. Humanity distilled, pre-integration and with mountains of creative works memorized, outside-the-box thinking that’s what we need and you’re going to be providing it, whether you wish to or not I’m afraid. Planet Ross is no joke,” He was warming up to his subject now. "And you've got some grit too, I saw the scene with that bad dog at the park going for your hamburgers and you stubbornly giving it your forearm to chew instead. You're going to need that."

"What, you expect a girl to give up her hamburger's because of some stupid dog?" Livia didn't believe the tough words enough to really sell them, and they did not faze the beard.

“This can’t be happening,” she murmured to herself. “You’re all under siege, every town is suffering, what can you possibly expect me to do?”

The beard finally got to the vital part. “We’re not sending you to our time, we’re sending you a couple hundred years back, it's not very exact," Livia's stomach was twisting into knots.

"And as I said, we don’t need your fighting. We need you to innovate, promote culture and lay the foundations for institutions or rediscover lost or even new Classes. Whatever you can think of. And if you can’t manage that then at least make sure you get laid and spread some new genes, anything might help.”

She snapped, and just when he'd been finally making some sense. "I will not become some breeding cow for humanity!” She yelled.

“Sure, as you wish, now are you ready?”

“What, no wait. Is this all you can tell me?” Her sense of dread was cloying.

“We tried putting it all in those books, the stuff we figured could be useful to have known about earlier,” The beard seemed to hesitate before it went on. “The exact time we’re sending you to we’re unsure of the details, what with history focused Classes having sort of died out with our current situation,"

Livia was hanging on every word.

"What we do know is that we were relatively peaceful in that time and that it’s far enough back for you to actually change some things, even inadvertently. Just make sure you survive for as long as you can.”

The words made Livia glare again and she considered going on another tirade, but she was too sick of this situation, she just wanted it to end.

“Why me, you must have had options,” She said pitifully when it seemed the beard had no more to add.

“Yes, and we're sending others, but since we don’t know exactly where you will end up... We just tried our best to aim it roughly at humans," Livia did her best to convey a look of disbelief. "And roughly past 500 years ago."

Livia would have facepalmed if she could, but she was still squeezing the hammer and doing so half-heartedly seemed futile. The beard was still talking.

" ... and most of the Spell’s energy went to imprinting this guide and creating this bubble,” Its speech was coming to an end, but Livia thought she could spot a little smile of hope. “And like I said, we don’t need warriors. We need thinkers, so we wrote that book for nerds like you. And at least you got lucky having that big hammer, unlike the others. Good luck!”

And before Livia could think of another response her world turned dark once more and the rushing wind drowned out her surprised yelp. She had one last moment of hope that the spell would fail and she would wake up back at the Scoville library. It was not to be.

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