A quiet meadow that never was.

The ever-escalated threats John faced inspired a desire to test the new function of parsing the false reality: creating barriers that held weak, even shockingly weak, adversaries. Given that he popped his combat cherry with a bitchy level 4 pixie, a mixture of curiosity and a desire to relax mean he'd start the test at a pitiful level one and go from there. Who knows, maybe I'll find some brainless, tiny monsters I won't mind sacrificing to open a room or two... Thinking on where he might find monstrous plant life, the tunnel opened and, once he verified that none were present to witness him, he stepped on through...

... and into the bathroom of a large park just three miles away from home. He froze for a half-minute, holding his breath as he waited for Wentworth to suddenly appear out of the toilet, or some other insanely powerful mage to come and scare the ever-living shit out of him... but this time, at least, none came, and he exhaled with relief for that much. He ducked his head near the sticky floor to confirm that none of the city's homeless had taken shelter in the muggy stalls of the men's room; with the dim moonlight trickling in from an overhead vent, his amulet let his eyes pierce the dark as if it were day, and so he knew he was alone. On leaving the stall John realized it was not by chance: the door to escape the men's room was locked, with no way to open it from inside. That's... perfect, actually. With no chance at witnesses or meddlers in his next parsing exercise, he could act freely without worrying too much about the time. Closing the tunnel, he parsed a small, metallic hatch onto the stained tiled walls, meditated until he was back to full, and prepared to step through into the maximum stretch of park he could create: at 4,000 feet in every direction from the door, it would swallow the entire park, the surrounding roads, and possibly even enough of the shops and neighborhoods that framed it to tap other biomes in the warped world he would create. He willed it down to a mere level 1 world, more curious than eager to curbstomp weaklings, and figuring nothing sentient could possibly be so weak. He equipped everything he had, checked the real door one more time, and opened the hatch.

Meanwhile...

The moonlight changed overhead, and Tita Kel'ureliva could swear that even the familiar woods of her homeland had changed with it. The Abyss was a strange, shifting place, of course, but some things were immutable for the moon elves: the face of their goddess, its phases, and her veil of stars were ever-present in their homeland. But the shift in Her cloak was not all that distracted Tita: foreign trees, so thin and frail, would have worried her more if she had dared to stray this far into the Deep Night alone. She was an apprentice healer, barely able to mend a wounded squire, and certainly not a capable-enough mage to defend herself. Her dress, a floaty one-piece of translucent silks, was so thin and frail that it molded itself into and around her cleavage, and provided no defense against whatever this strange place threatened. Her large nipples and ample, perky breasts showed through it slightly, enough to earn glances if she dared to be so bold in the Shallow Night, the daylight of her sunless people. This too she would never dare if she were alone.

But by the grace of Gaia, she was escorted by none other than her beloved: Thumalk Luna'sheek, a young elven man and the perfect match for an elven maiden such as herself. The two had a brief, but fiery four-year courtship, adults in the eyes of their laws and nature's laws but still coddled like children by their elders. [But we will not be quieted by them...! The link between our hearts is true, and burns brighter than even this alien moon above!]

"[Are you here, my love?]" Her heart fluttered at his words, spoken with those same Elven syllables as the century-old play, "The Fae in Our Stars". It was too new and too hot for the elders to respect it ("young adult's stageplay" they dared to call it!), but it burned inside Tita's chest alongside her desire for Thumalk. But lo! She was so lost in her fancy that she failed to answer that romantic idol of hers! "[Tita?]"

"[Here, my sweet Thumalk!]" She walked out into a clearing, near a curious structure bathed in moss. It could have been mistaken for a boulder if not for its peculiar, cube-like shape, and it was not the only unnatural structure spotted through the spaces between the starved trees. "[What a strange place we've found ourselves!]"

Thumalk finally cleared a brush, and found his lover. They could have been mistaken for siblings, with their matching platinum-gold hair, albino skin, and eyes that were merely different shades of verdant green that glittered in the ill-lit wood. Like her, he was lithe and light on his feet, hairless save for what sat atop his head, and wore that hair in long braids. Unlike her, his clothes begged modesty: thick hemps drawn harmlessly from plantlife, woven into a brown shirt and thick pants that included a large hoop to hold his long sword. The badge of his station, a lowly squire, was all that marked him a warrior and a man. "[Curious indeed, but were it not for the radiance of you, I would think it suspicious enough to warrant fleeing.]"

"[Should we quit this place, my love? Return to the elders before exchanging our poems?]"

"[Nay, not when you excite me with words so bright! The sun itself cannot hope to be a flicker in the darkest cavern next to what you feel for me... muted in turn only by my love for thee.]"

"[Such an old soul, to use the old tongues,]" she giggled, but even her musical merriment was just a cover for her building excitement. "[Were we only wed, here and away from prying eyes and gossiping mothers... if only we could exchange our love... physically...]"

"[When we are proper wed, we shall.]" He stepped closer, his head held high. She was just an inch taller than he, but he seemed so manly to her, as manly as moon elves could manage to be, there in his proud pose.

Her eyes went wide when she saw how serious he had become. "[Do you... do you mean to propose to me so soon, my dearest?]"

"[Only if you would promise to call me that for all our first millennium together, and beyond.]"

A warmth surged inside of her until she was nearly bursting into tears of joy. "[Oh... oh my- yes, my dearest Thumalk! My answer will be yes so long as the moon shines upon-]"

Creak.

Both of the young, newly engaged elves turned with a start at the sudden sound from the bizarre boulder. The moss upon it quivered, stretched, and finally burst apart as an unseen, steel hatch swung outward... and through this new hole in their reality stepped a foe out of myth, planting one bizarre boot on the ground, followed by another. The entity closed the hatch behind it, and regarded them with raised, thick eyebrows. The creature's form was almost elf-like, yet aberrant: its arms were too thick and sheathed in bracers that shimmered with blue light - the magical aura of a magical item, readily visibly to a moon elf, and not even the only one upon his malformed body - and the torso was too squat for proper elf dimensions, yet four inches taller than Tita and thus nearly half a foot above her fiancé. Strangest of all were its malformed ears: stumpy and close to the skull as if amputated, not even a third the size of a proper elf's ears. His body was accesorized with the sin of leather: the old, forbidden black art of slaying living things and transmuting their hides for clothing. It was the mark of a devil to the moon elves, and of an old, terrible era.

Tita took a moment to realize what she was looking upon, but Thumalk was already drawing his sword by then. "[It can't be, but it must... by the Goddess, Thumalk, it's a human!]" Tita gasped and nearly fell backwards, but looking at the thin, but sturdy back of her lover gave her steady footing. "[Worry not, my love: hideous and foul though this creature may be, he shall not withstand even my apprentice's blade. I will protect you, and dispatch him post-haste.]"

Fear and love mixed until she cried for her savior. "[My hero... my dear Thumalk...!]"

Across from them blinked the stupid, evil beast which lumbered into their world...

John stared at the slutty elf chick and her fuckboi-esque escort with raised eyebrows. They spoke in yet another foreign tongue, slightly changed from the hateful speech Alysha had used on their first meeting but clearly sharing some indescribable root. That he had found more traditional-looking elves gave him pause, though he couldn't help but ogle the bombshell tits on the woman. How can they be that perky and still look like D's, or double D's?! Do they have plastic surgery in... wherever they come from... wherever I am?

The man-boy spoke up, delivering some speech while pointing his longsword at John. A quick glance over their heads gave him their combat data:

Moon elf warrior
Lvl 1
16/16hp
12/12mp
Elves native to the Moon Glades Kingdom. As human-fae hybrids, moon elves have similarities to their forest kin, but are more unified against all outsiders. Their warriors are given only basic martial training to defend their spellcasting betters.
Relationship: -90

Moon elf sage
Lvl 2
14/14hp
48/48mp
Elves native to the Moon Glades Kingdom. As human-fae hybrids, moon elves have similarities to their forest kin, but are more unified against all outsiders. Their sages are potent healers, outdone only by the moon priestesses that rule their kind.
Relationship: -101

Their health values were pitiful, so much so that John was **** to take them out, nevermind that they weren't the mindless forest mobs he was hoping for. How could they be level 1 and 2? He was level 3 and he was just a pre-college American nerd with a penchant for wanking! A second later, his hyper-intelligent mind calculated their relationship scores for him, and left him shocked that they would both absolutely despise him without the benefit of cult of personality. "Hey, uh, I don't know if either of you can speak English?" He raised his hands, showing they were empty. The longsword's point didn't waver, so he turned on displacement just to be safe. "But I'm not look-"

"[I sense magic within him! He must be casting a spell!]"

Thumalk knew not the alien tongue of the humans, nor what their casting looked like, but he had no reason to doubt the wisdom of his sage and love. With his high-pitched battle cry, he threw himself at the enemy, his sword swinging through the fiend's illusion but rounding back to cut to the true mage's neck! Thumalk's spirit cheered as he imagined the head coming off in a clean-

Thump.

The blade rattled in his fingers as if it had struck the living stone of a mountain. Wide-eyed, he stared at the invader whose neck seemed unmarred by the chop of elven steel.

-4hp

John sighed. Thumalk kept the blade there, unsure of how this could be. "[What sorcery is this?!]"

"Look, this is becoming more irritating than it's worth, and I've got enough hot elf chicks for one temple!" John paused, and considered his statement. "I mean... I guess I can never have too many... and I have a dark elf, so a moon elf... wait, how many types of you are there? It's starting to feel like I'm getting stuck with pallette swaps-"

Thumalk withdrew his blade and spun the other way, hoping to put enough **** this time to at least break the monster's skin. "[No Thumalk, we must flee-!]" Tita's words were too slow to stop his twisting body from delivering a devastating blow... right into the pressed fingers of John's serpent's fangs, empowered to ignore the hardness of the blade and deliver all of its **** to its core.

84 damage

The elven steel was finely crafted, but not enough to stay in one piece under such an ****. The hilt and an inch of jagged steel was all that remained in Thumalk's grip; the rest of the beautiful weapon, crafted in his name at birth just twelve decades ago, became shrapnel.

12 damage

-12hp

John grunted as some shards bounced off of his skin and eyes, his Gamer's body protecting him even from that maiming effect. The elf twink had no such protection: he fell to the ground shrieking in agony as those same shards sliced through his legs, stomach, and shoulders. He cast the only healing cantrip he knew to prevent the wounds from bleeding out, but the pain was unbearable.

Tita cried out as if he were already dead. "[Thumalk, no!]"

"[R-... Run, Tita!]" His words slurred as he tried to keep from screaming again. "[Warn the others!]" But Tita knew where they were, now: though Thumalk had no training to recognize it, she saw now the subtle signs of a human barrier, just as the legends once told. They would never be capable of leaving without a fully trained Magi to break them out... and they had left in the dead of the Deep Night to escape precisely their attentions. Unless they managed to knock out or kill the mysteriously powerful foe...