“Oh, the partner digimon comes standard when humans come here. I didn’t set that up. I’m like only… 40 percent of the reason you are here. I don’t specifically need you to do anything in particular. The system for human chosen was set up aaaaages ago and I had nothing to do with that.” The kid stops walking with him once a campfire is visible.

“You should be fine from here. And nobody is really supposed to know I’m out here. Lillithmon would be pretty mad if she found me outside.” Slight wince at the thought of being found.

”Don’t die! And try not to freak out too much once you realise this is real. Dreams don’t usually stay this consistent and have this long a continuity of consciousness in them. Even the ‘longer’ dreams will have plenty of timeskips. Meh, You’ll figure it out eventually. Off you go now.” Lucemon gives Al a little wave onwards.

"Okay, if you say so. Stay out of trouble I guess!" Al waves back to the kid before continuing into the camp.

He hasn't really been paying attention to it, but Lucemon does have a point. The longer this goes on, the more unlikely it just being a dream seems. He decides if he's still here whenever he wakes up, he's going to officially start really treating like this like it's real.

The campfire is surrounded by short and stocky green… well, goblins! The goblimon are aptly named. Stocky things that if they stretched up straight would reach around chest height on a 6 foot man. They have much bigger heads then the usual fantasy goblins though, more beastial than impish, with long jaws and very big eyes. They look a lot less real than Lucemon did, like a detailed cgi version of a cartoon design rather than a real creature that could exist.

“Oi! Who's out there! If anyone is looking for easy prey you won’t find it here!” One of the goblins yells out into the dark, once the silhouette of Al becomes visible to them.

Man, that's weird. Is this what VR games are like? Al never got around to playing any, couldn't afford to splurge on a headset. If this is real, he might never get the chance...

He shakes his head as if to shake that thought out of it. "Not looking for trouble! I was just looking for a place to rest for the night and an angel showed me the way here," he shouts back as he takes slow, careful steps towards the fire until he's actually in the light.

The apparent leader of the Goblimon looks suspicious of him. “Angemon? Here? I doubt it, we would all be deleted by now if the celestial host was about. And what the hell are you anyway? Some kind of armourless knightmon? A wizardmon without the robe?”

Some of the Goblimon grip their clubs a little tighter, but don’t make any hostile moves just yet.

One of the scrawnier goblimon pipes up. “Maybe e’s human?”

The leader one scoffs. “Humans only come in small.”

Huh. Maybe that's why Lucemon mentioned Al's age?

"I'm human, yeah. You've probably only seen kids before, or maybe humans with dwarfism. I'm an adult." If he was honest with himself, he didn't really feel like an adult, and the possibility of having been isekai'd to a fantasy world wasn't helping with that, but he was definitely at least physically mature.

“Look pretty puny for a champion form. Can Adult stage humans do magic or something?” The scrawny one asks, it seems to be the curious one of the bunch.

With Adult forms if you werent physically strong there has to be something to make up for it, thats just how things worked. No big muscles, no obvious weapons, to the scrawny goblimon magic seems the last option available to the bigger than normal  human. He is being modelled as like some kind of robeless wizardmon.

Leader goblimon seems a lot less wary also, but still dismissive. “Only children get chosen. I heard it from a Shamon.”

”Well maybe it messed up, this doesn’t look like a rookie stage human to me, and he don’t look like no kind of digimon I ever heard of.” Scrawny goblimon retorts.

"The angel-- I don't know if it was an Angemon specifically, or some other angel-type. I'm new here, obviously, since I just got here from the...human world, I guess, earlier this night. But yeah, the angel I met did imply that something was different about me being chosen. That might be why it was me? Anyway, at least as far as I know humans don't really, uh, get magic. But I didn't know that this place existed until I fell into the library computer I was studying at, so maybe I just never heard about it. Humans don't really just, get stuff when they grow up, in general, though, other than getting bigger and a bit stronger and growing more hair. We just train and study to develop skills, like everybody does I'd guess."

He stands just inside the light of the campfire for a while, his thoughts sluggish with tiredness. "But, yeah. Any chance I could rest here? I understand if you don't want to just let a stranger sleep in your midst. I don't know if human medicine works on goblimon but I could at least be an extra pair of hands if you need help moving stuff tomorrow?"

The leader Goblimon squints at Al. “Hmm… if we made you go back out there you probably wouldn’t survive the night. No offence but humans seem to have pretty weak adult forms. I bet almost any Rookie stage could beat you. Plus even if you decided to betray us I bet you couldn’t hurt anyone too bad before we all woke up and beat you to death.” He mentions beating someone to death extremely casually. “You don’t even have sharp teeth.” He flashes his own impressive fangs to demonstrate how important sharp teeth are. “So sure. Why not.”

Theres not much for him to move if they did want help with that, the camp is just a firepit and some pelts laying around. Not even enough pelts for all the goblimon to have one each to themselves.

Al hadn't really inspected the camp before, his 'maintain proper levels of social eye contact' routine just kind of automatically activated. This is pretty spartan, though. Maybe that's how they like it, but if not he hopes he can help them get somewhere a bit more comfortable.

Man, though, where is going to sleep? He doesn't know if he's ever slept straight up on the ground before, without even a sleeping bag or something.

That doesn't turn out to be a problem, though, since once he finds a spot that isn't too close to anyone else's and lays down, puts his hands under his head, and closes his eyes, he's out like a light.

Scrawny Goblimon pokes him awake once the sun rises, using his club.

Poke poke poke.

He groans miserably but does wake up, slowly.

Well, he definitely has a headache, and some neck pain.

He is also definitely not in the library, or anywhere on campus. He is in the woods with a bunch of goblins. "Fuuuuck."

He quickly sits, rubbing his neck. Alright, so, he really has been isekai'd. Shit. "Fuck!"

Okay, lock in. This is not a safe place to have a breakdown in, even with the goblimon. He shakes his head, strokes his hair back a few times, then stands up. "Alright, I'm up."

“We was getting up to go look for meat. Thought you probably didn’t want to be left sleeping alone on the ground all unable to run away if something comes.”

The firepit has been filled in (only you can prevent forest fires), and the pelts picked up. The whole camp, such that it was, is packed up and ready to go.

"Thanks, 'preciate it." Al does some stretches, before pulling out his digivice from his pocket and looking at it for a bit, as if staring at might let him divine some information about its function, before remembering something. "Oh, right. Might need to wait until morning to find my partner, if they'd already hatched," he mutters.

"Mind if I tag along with you guys? I'm no good at hunting but I might be able to forage for so something, and I'll try and keep out of your way." Hopefully he can spot...something, as they walk. He really has no idea what he's looking for, other than they're presumably a digimon. Maybe if he can figure out how to get this gizmo to do more than light up its screen he can get some more info out of it?

The goblimon looks disgusted. “Didn’t say we was going hunting. We aren’t ferals, or nightmare soldiers. We don’t eat other digimon.” Al is being judged heavily right now.

”We are only looking for meat, just because we are virus digimon it doesn’t mean we are evil.” Judging squint at the human. What has he been learning from angel digimon. Because of course angels would fill his head with how evil virus digimon are.

”You can come if you want but if you find any meat, you share.” Some digimon needed to be reminded to share, and maybe that applies to humans.

The digivice remains inscrutable, for now.

"Oh, uh, sorry. In the human world, you can only get meat by killing other animals. If you don't want to kill them, you have to eat vegetables, or things that the animals make that you can convince them to let you take, like unfertilized eggs, milk, or honey. Maybe that's fucked up, though. Sorry. And yeah, sharing seems reasonable"

Unfortunate, but not unexpected. He just wishes he knew whether he'd managed to bust the digivice already or if it's normal for them to not do anything.

“Are animals people? Or can they be people? Even the most feral digimon could become people with enough time. It is fucked up that the human world doesn’t grow meat. Not that much meat grows here anymore….”

This tribe used to be bigger, and have a few ogremon, but there is less and less food to go around every year. Now the scrawny goblimon is a sad goblimon.

"Some of them can get pretty close, but other than humans they mostly aren't people. It's still not nice to kill them, though, or at least I don't think it is, so back home I'd try to not eat meat."

Al feels a bit bad about souring the goblin's mood. "Do you know why the meat doesn't grow much here anymore?"

“World is ending ain’t it. Something to do with data not coming back is what a shamon told me. Servers gonna end up like the Dark Area eventually.” Resigned sigh.

”But thats no excuse to be eating other digimon.”

"Uh, shit. I'm sorry to hear that." Well, this is an isekai story, so obviously something was going to be up. Hopefully he'll have more tools to help than just this green-tinted flashlight. "The human world isn't in the best place right now either but it's not literally ending. I guess, if I figure out a way to go back, I'll try and find a place for you all there, if we can't fix whatever's wrong with this world."

“Having to eat meat from animals would be weird. But If all the Adult humans are like you it’d be a nice change to be the strongest thing around though.” The scrawny goblimon is only scrawny compared to his peers, he still has hard wiry muscle on his thick and long arms that look much stronger than thin human arms do. He flexes to demonstrate. 

Leader goblimon was trying to be nice and letting them have their conversation, but everyone has been ready to go for aaaaaages. He gets sick of waiting.

”OI! daylights burning. You can walk and talk if you two are so enamoured with each other.” The other goblimon snicker at the implication.

"Sorry!" And Al will stop holding everyone up. Not like he has much to carry.

He'll keep his eyes pealed for anything...partner-shaped, he guesses, as they walk, but still talk with the scrawny one if he's up for it. "Humans have figured out some ways to turn vegetables into stuff that's pretty close to meat. It's not exactly the same but it's decent at least. And hey, if we can bring digimon, maybe we can bring whatever lets meat grow here and grow it in the human world too. Then humans wouldn't have to hunt for it either."