Terry lifted a spoonful of the magenta-colored "curry" to his mouth and stuffed it in. In his carefree, pre-isekai days, he never would have dreamed of eating anything such an unappetizing shade of purple. Terry liked to think that he'd grown as a person after eating so many monsters. As a curry, he'd admit that the food was only so-so. As human food that brought on oceans of nostalgia, it was glorious.

"Oh, this is so much better than murder-bird," he groaned.

"Murder-bird?" asked Eliza, as Kelima shook her head.

"Yeah, big bastard of a bird monster. Looks like a mix between an ostrich and a velociraptor."

"I know those!" said an excited Eliza before she burst into laughter. "You call them murder-birds?"

"Had to call them something," said Terry around another mouthful of the pseudo-curry.

"And you eat them?" she asked, mystified.

"Beggars do not get to be choosers in the endless, monster-infested forest. I've eaten most of the monsters I killed. At least, the ones that vaguely resembled edible creatures. And didn't have acid in their veins. And weren't goblins," said Terry with a shudder. "Oh my god, their blood smells so bad."

The spoonful of pseudo-curry that Kelima was lifting toward her mouth was immediately put back down into the shallow bowl. Eliza gave a sage nod of sympathy.

"I think that one is a right of passage. We all learn it the hard way, but we learn it the first time."

Terry and Eliza spent a little while picking each other's brains about their post-isekai experiences. It seemed that Eliza had been an unwilling resident of Chinese Period Drama Hell for almost five years. Compared to Terry's handful of months, that sounded like an eternity of misery. A perception that Eliza mostly backed up. Soon, though, they were talking about all the things they missed from home. That turned out to be pretty much everything from cars and air-conditioned grocery stores to streaming video services and smartphones.

Terry took pity on Kelima from time to time and tried to explain some of what they were talking about. Anything involving the internet was a lost cause. He had a lot of in-depth technical knowledge about it, which he initially imagined would help him explain it. It did not. He swiftly concluded that Kelima's lack of even the basics known by a casual internet user was an insurmountable stumbling block. Radio and television were a little easier since there was magic that let things like images and sound be sent and received. However, the idea of using such technologies for purely entertainment purposes was a much harder sell.

"That sounds like a waste of a really useful tool," she said.

Terry and Eliza traded a glance.

"Yeah," said Terry. "You're not entirely wrong. People from our world, or some parts of it, had a lot of free time. This was one way that they filled it."

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"They couldn't think of anything else to do?"

"They definitely could," said Eliza. "They just chose not to."

Kelima looked at Terry and Eliza like she was certain they were conspiring to make fun of her in some obscure way that she couldn't understand. When neither of them so much as cracked a smile, she went back to shaking her head. It seemed the truths they were telling struck her as so bizarre that she couldn't quite wrap her head around them. That was when Terry decided to stop trying to explain things. He was worried he was going to break the noble girl's brain.

"You know what I miss that I never imagined I would?" he asked Eliza.

"What?"

"Celery. Man, there have been times when I would have stabbed someone for a single stalk of the stuff."

"That's like Nutella for me. It's everywhere in the UK. I never thought once about not being able to get it. I don't even think they have hazelnuts in this world. Or, if they do, nobody's figured out that you can eat them yet."

"Ouch. That's tough. If I liked peanut butter more, I'd probably be in the same boat. Coffee," said Terry wistfully. "I miss coffee so much."

"I was never much for coffee. At least they have tea here. It's not very good tea, but they have it," said Eliza with an expression that was equal parts glad and disdainful.

There was a short pause while everyone idly ate a few more bites of food. Terry finally looked over at Eliza and spoke.

"I have to ask. You said your class is arch-lich, but you don't really look like an undead skeleton monster."

Eliza huffed out a breath and said, "A fact for which I am enormously grateful. My soul really is tucked away somewhere very, very safe in a phylactery. But I got this body instead of a skeleton. I'm not sure why, except that it's a lot easier to travel looking like a person and not Skeletor. I do worry what will happen if this body gets seriously damaged, though. I'm not sure it even can heal. Most days, though, I tend to think of myself as more of a necromancer than a lich. They're really not that far apart in terms of a job description. I just have the whole immortality thing working for me."

"Is that for real?" asked Terry.

"That's what the system tells me."

I thought you said this wasn't a system world, Terry said accusingly to other-Terry.

It's not, said a clearly unhappy other-Terry. At least, it's not supposed to be. I wonder if she got a construct like me, and it's just manifesting like a system. This is one of those times I wish I had a supervisor I could call.

Kelima, looking very hesitant, posed her own question.

"Aren't liches usually evil?"

Eliza didn't seem to take any offense. She just shrugged.

"I guess. I haven't done anything that I'd call evil, but it's hard to know exactly how good or evil anything a system tells you to do actually is. Take me being here, for example. I was just told to come here and secure the Undeath Gate."

"Wow, that's amazingly vague," said Terry.

"Right? Am I supposed to secure it from some particular group? For some particular group? Am I supposed to just keep everybody out? I have no idea. Not that it usually matters."

"Why is that?" asked Kelima.

"The first thing most people do when they show up here—which isn't often, mind you—is try to kill me. Once someone starts lobbing holy magic and fireballs at you, there isn't much you can do but fight back. Same goes for people trying to cut your head off with a holy sword. Nobody ever tried to just talk to me until you," she said, gesturing at Terry.

"That's definitely their loss," he answered. "You're great."

Eliza shot him a bright smile, while Kelima glared at him.

"What?" he asked the noble girl.

"Where is that charm when you're talking to me?"

"It's a limited resource. I have to save it up for pretty liches, and people I want things from. I can't be lavishing it on every random girl who follows me into the forest."

Before Kelima managed to work up a cutting remark, Terry frowned.

"How long have we been sitting here?" he asked.

"A couple hours, maybe," said Eliza. "Why?"

"Didn't we just leave your minions back in the cavern harvesting ore? Will they stop on their own?"

Eliza's eyes went wide.

"Oh no!"

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