Chapter 0: The Gamer and The relocation to Another World

My name is Suzumiya Kaede. I am a college student, who is an avid Net Gamer. I often operate the keyboard earnestly to avoid getting headaches. The Final Boss’ HP displayed on my screen “disappeared” just two seconds ago. My eyes are about to close. It means I don’t have much HP (real) left. I haven’t slept properly for about 4 days. I shall tell you my tale.

「I can’t sleep now. I have yet to finish this and participate in the distribution coming next in the game…」

I wanted to keep going, but my body didn’t listen to what I said. I fell on my keyboard and let go of my consciousness.

There was a reason why this happened to me. Everything happened 3 days ago.

I finished taking the remaining credits of the University this year. Therefore, I felt a sense of liberation and euphoria, so much that I began my Net Gamer life to relieve the stress I’ve got from the University days. I truly became addicted to it.

At that time, I didn’t care about sleep. So I didn’t sleep for 3 consecutive days.

The first two days were quite good, but after that, it began getting tough. I haven’t slept for three and a half days, including the time before I started the game. My head hurt and my fatigue increased tremendously.

I should have stopped during that time, but I decided on, “Okay, let’s continue until I get the next weapon”. It usually took about 2 hours to get one. Newly weapons often appeared within a short time frame. But, 10 hours passed and I got no new weapon. I said to myself, that I would stop the game and go to bed once I got a new weapon.

I decided to stop the game and go to bed. However, on this precise moment, something appeared on my computer screen. The “contact” has finally arrived. A contact from the organizer that would help me defeat the Final Boss. It said, “Please gather in 15 minutes at a fixed time”. That’s right, now it was Tuesday at 10:30 pm. It was the fixed time.

Fixed time. What did that mean? It was an abbreviation for Fixed Party, and as the name implied, it was a fixed moment and time where a fixed party tried to defeat the same boss in order to gain experience points and items. If I avoided this call, then all the 11 party members except myself would be in a dire situation.

No matter how much my head hurt, I had no choice but to do it. With that determination in mind, I moved to the meeting place, performed my decided role as usual, and defeated the Final Boss. It took me 2 hours.

The result was the scene at the beginning.

—

When I woke up, I was in the woods. I could not see the usual familiar ceiling of my house. I looked around in a hurry, and all I could see was bushes and nature. There were countless of trees with thick trunks that grew in the surroundings. The ground had a blackish humus-like soil, and many weeds grew around me.

Of course, I don’t remember coming to such a place. This confused me as hell.

Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable and checked my clothes.

Although I didn’t remember changing clothes, my current outfit was not the usual jersey I wore while playing Net games. Instead, I wore plaid clothes and athletic shoes to go out. Judging from the brightness, inclination of the sun and temperature, it may be around 4 pm. As far as I could see, the vegetation was similar to Japan, so the weather wouldn’t be that different.

I decided to move from where I was, so I stood up and started walking. However, I felt uncomfortable again. I felt that my pace of walking was much faster than usual. I tried to jump lightly in a vertical way.

I jumped about 1m off the ground. I don’t ever recall jumping so high before. Moreover, I felt an indescribable discomfort when I fell down. Besides, my legs, which were not that strong originally, landed smoothly in the ground from that high. I didn’t feel any pain whatsoever.

「What a weird dream… 」

I spoke to myself as I pinched my cheeks. It was painful. Speaking of which, I’ve heard stories such as, “Pinching your cheeks in a dream causes your brain to create pain on your own, so pinching your cheeks is not enough to judge whether or not you are in a dream.” Maybe this was that case. I tried to think of a different method to see whether this was a dream or not. But, I didn’t come up with something. I was in the middle of an unknown forest, so I decided to get out of this place for the time being. But, how could I get out of this forest? I heard people say that “when you are in distress, you must move along the ridge”, but unfortunately, this was a flat land, so you couldn’t use that method.

There were no stumps around and there were no traces of human hands. I couldn’t hear the sound of water. So, I couldn’t think of a way to get out of here.

I was looking for a stump and noticed that this vegetation was very close to Japan’s vegetation. The plants that were growing were all familiar plants. Well, my brain was not imaginative to the point of creating something new in a dream. There was no point in thinking about it, so for the time being, I went straight in one direction.

Originally, in a forest, one’s sense of direction could get messed up if one just went into a straight line while avoiding the trees. But this was my dream. Even if I kept walking straight in this dream, then nothing wrong would happen to me. In fact, I could find something along the way. Maybe.

As I proceeded, I found something strange. I didn’t know if my eyes were tricking me or not. But, I found a creature that looked like a dog.

However, once I looked closely, I noticed many differences between this creature and dogs. The creature stood about 10m away from where I was standing still, so I couldn’t see the details very well, but I knew that it was different. The ears were sharper, the hair was green, and the long fangs stick out from its jaw. I was not familiar with most dogs, and this creature could have been a breed of dog I didn’t know about. But, it was indeed too different to be just a different dog breed.

It had six legs. Although it had six legs, the creature was not an insect. Its back legs split into two legs like Sleipnir*. However, for whatever reason, I didn’t feel any unnaturalness in walking, and I approached the creature slowly as if I walked normally. Of course, such a creature didn’t exist on Planet Earth, and it didn’t appear in the MMO** I was playing at home.

I didn’t know its name, so I called it “green dog”.

I wondered if it was a mild creature, because it left the place quietly after it noticed my presence. I could no longer see the green dog in the surroundings.

I checked the surroundings again to make sure that there were no dangerous things around. Then, I thought about the creature again. That was obviously not Japanese. Maybe my brain as a gamer created a game-like creature in a dream by connecting real animals and myths together. I wondered if I created other game-like things.

But there was no keyboard, no mouse, and no graphic user interface here. I didn’t know how to operate inside this weird dream, so I decided to say game words as much as I could think of.

「Menu. Status. Item Show…Oh! 」

A translucent window appeared in front of me, and I screamed involuntarily. I was surprised and turned away, but the window seemed to follow me.

「Do I have an excessive brain of a gamer that even brought the game to my dreams…」

Checked the status while talking to myself.

—

Name: Suzumiya Kaede

Age / Race / Gender: 20 / Human / Male

Level: 1

HP: 51/51

MP: 1012/1012

STR: 16

INT: 42

AGI: 22

DEX: 34

Skills: Information Manipulation Analysis, Complete Mastery of Different World Languages, Magic Qualities, Martial Arts Qualities, Otherworlder***, All-Attribute Affinity.

—

Oh gosh. Wait a second. I didn’t know how, but my MP was quite high. INT and DEX were also a little high. When I kept looking at the MP and got curious about it, a window that was much smaller than the status screen displayed before my eyes.

—

MP: 1012.00 / 1012.00

Description: Magical Power. Consumed when using magic and similar skills. 10 is the relative number set as the average MP of the human race in this world. On the left side is the current amount of MP, and the right side is the maximum amount of MP. 0.1% of the maximum amount of the MP is restored every single minute from the time when the MP falls below the maximum value.

—

It displayed even the decimal points.

Apparently, my MP was high. I also tried to appraise my HP, but it showed only a numerical value of health condition and toughness. It seemed that the amount of natural recovery had not yet been decided. I wanted to appraise the rest of the status, so I turned my eyes to the status screen again. I felt that I saw something that should not be overlooked, so I saw it twice… Otherworlder, Complete Mastery of Different World Languages.

I tried to appraise it again.

—

Otherworlder: Unique / Rank: 10

Description: Coming from a different world gives the otherworlder a wide range of effects on the status, such as skill acquisition rates, among others. The effect varies depending on the otherworlder position in the original world. This world has set rules, the higher the rank of an ability is the more powerful that ability should be. This world also works by improving the ability to be greater than it originally was. However, if you came from a world of lower rank than this world, then your ability will decrease.

—

Was this the reason why I was able to jump so high? No, that was not the problem. Of course, that also bothered me, but there was something far more important. Different world? Certainly, the pain I felt when I pinched my cheeks seemed strangely realistic. Even the forest, soil and vegetation seemed too real. Did that mean that this was a different world, and not a dream!?

But the vegetation reminded me of Japanese vegetation…But that dog was clearly not Japanese and I had never seen it before. Would I be able to create something new in my dreams? I was not a specialist in brain science and dreams, so I didn’t know the details.

But, anything of this made sense.

If this was a dream, then I would wake up in a short time. However, on the contrary, there was a high possibility of this place being a different world if I didn’t wake up in a whole day.

There would be no problem if I were dreaming. But, for the time being, I will assume that this place is a different world and act accordingly.

I had no basis whatsoever, but for some reason, I felt like I was in a different world.

—

Information Manipulation Analysis: Unique

Description: You can appraise what is in sight. There is no need to touch the target/object and it won’t consume your MP. It is also possible to analyze concealed information that could not be analyzed by a regular appraisal. In addition, the status displayed at the time of appraisal can be hidden with your consent.

—

It was probably because of this skill that I could appraise that information a while ago. Was this the higher-level of the appraisal skill?

It seemed that I could also manipulate information. If I truly had unique skills or rare skills, it would be troublesome for someone to see it. So, I was a little bit grateful to have a skill capable of rewriting my status.

I didn’t know how to rewrite it, but I could try.

Since I was able to appraise without saying “appraisal” or “information manipulation analysis” earlier, maybe I didn’t need to chant. I wanted to hide the “otherworlder” word from my status.

When I thought about that, the display of the word “otherworlder” changed to “otherworlder (concealment)”. Apparently, my status updated at real time without the need to reset it. I wondered if that word became invisible to others.

I tried to appraise the “otherworlder (concealment)”.

—

Otherworlder (concealment): Unique / Rank: 10

Description: Coming from a different world gives the otherworlder a wide range of effects on the status, such as skill acquisition rates, among others. The effect varies depending on the otherworlder position in the original world. . This world has set rules, the higher the rank of an ability is the more powerful that ability should be. This world also works by improving the ability to be greater than it originally was. However, if you came from a world of lower rank than this world, then your ability will decrease. Not displayed with the regular appraisal skills.

—

It seemed to be okay.

I had no guarantee in this world that someone could use other abilities other than appraisal to see other people’s status. But, this was better than nothing.

There was a possibility that my skills were not particularly rare, but since it was not possible to determine which one was rare, I hid my skills for the time being.

It seemed that I could hide my status as well, but by doing that, it would show that I hid my status on purpose. That would make me a suspicious person. I didn’t know if this value was normal or not, but it did not make much sense to hide it.

Since the MP did not decrease since a while ago, then this concealment probably didn’t consume any magical power at all.

When I thought about appraising other skills, I noticed that the green dog was looking at me from about 10m in the direction I walked earlier on.

「Grrrrrrr… 」

It looked menacing. It seems that I won’t be able to avoid it.

Next

*Sleipnir (pronounced “SLAYP-nir”; Old Norse Sleipnir, “The Sliding One”) is the eight-legged horse of the god Odin. Sleipnir is one of Odin’s many shamanic helping spirits, ranks that also include the valkyries and Hugin and Munin.

**An online video game, which can be played by a very large number of people simultaneously.

***Someone who came to a world of swords and magic from some foreign universe.

Please enjoy this new series!!!!!!!!! 🙂

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