"Not that kind of game world. Weren't you listening?"

"Nope. Other kind of game world, other kind of game world… menu! Settings! Stats! Transform! Uh… henshin!"

"We need to get out of here. No rush, presumably, but I don't have a ton of food on me right now."

"I have a bunch of energy bars, and I would trade all of them for a pair of pants," Shiro informs him. "Oh, a road that conveniently leads out of the middle of nowhere! How very Soulslike."

Sora really really really hopes that this is a Legend of Zelda road and not a Dark Souls road.

Shiro yawns. "What time is it, bro?"

He doesn't need to check his phone for this one. "Time for an adventure, sis."

He steps off the path to take a leak behind a nearby tree during a rest. They're… not out of shape, exactly, but neither are they the kind of people who go for long walks in the evenings, and Shiro isn't wearing shoes, so they're not going as fast as they possibly could be.

A bush giggles while his back is turned to it.

It's not literally impossible that Disboard has a native species of laughing plants (the tree he's facing has bark with deep violet speckles and oddly squarish leaves), but he's not betting on it. Time to hurry it up.

Shiro is leaning against a tree on the path when he gets back.

"Who's hiding over there? I heard someone laughing."

"What makes you think it wasn't me? Apart from me being a baritone, that is."

She smacks her forehead in mock surprise. "Of course, I forgot about the canister of helium in your pocket! How silly of me."

"What does that mean?"

The speaker is a tiny green-skinned humanoid, with vines curling through her hair and a pair of diaphanous wings sitting on the bough of a tree. It wasn't there just a moment ago.

"What does what mean?"

"Helium! Heee-liii-uuum. I've never heard of it before. Sounds spooky."

"Helium is a thin gas that raises the timbre of your voice when you breathe a little of it. If I used helium and laughed I'd sound more like you."

"And what happens if you breathe a lot of helium?"

"Then you pass out and maybe die."

"Hmm," the fairy says suspiciously. "That sort of clicks in my head. You're not lying to me, but…"

"Clicks in your head?"

"Oh, I don't know any languages, I just use magic. Suuuuper convenient, but when you run into a word that doesn't mean anything you've ever heard before you still have to learn what it means. Otherwise it just sits there as a bunch of syllables. Heeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiuuuuuum. He he he."

Languages were not on Shiro's mind until just now. People in magical destination worlds ought to have the decency of speaking English, or at least one of the United Nations official languages. Can you imagine a version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where Tumnus and Aslan and the White Witch each spoke different languages? Preposterous. That's why C.S. Lewis wrote portal fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien didn't.

Sora is thinking along the same lines. This is going to be an incredibly lame isekai tale if he has to spend six months learning a new language through immersion.

"I don't suppose you could cast that translation spell for us?"