A/N : Hi everyone! This is my first time writing fanfic in English so my apologies for some of the mistakes and stiff dialogue in the story.
A/N : Please feel free to leave suggestion and criticism in the comments and let me know which part do I need to improve.
"The reason that I call for the meeting today is because we need to improve our..." a man who seemed to be a leader explaining to the group of people sitting around a long table in meeting room.
'What a boring day' David thought to himself. The meeting had only just begun but he already wanted to go back to his home and spends his time creating a new character for his new Skyrim playthrough. He was thinking about making his new character a mage assassin.
"So David, what do you think about that," the man sitting at front of the room asked. Just as he was about to replied, he feel dizzy as if someone was shaking his body.
"Hey Kjeld wake up. Wake up," Intense shaking woke David up from his dream.
"What are doing sleeping till 6? You wanna get a pick axe shove up on you ass." a bulky man who looked around 50s shouted angrily at him.
"Imm pops, I'm getting up" David replied lazily and hesitantly gets out of bed.
'That's right, I'm still stuck in this game' He still couldn't recall how he got stuck in this world.
One moment he was sleeping on his bed and the next morning we woke up in this shabby cottage.
"Still not awake yet. It seems I'll have to reconsider taking you on hunting trip tomorrow," the man walked into his room again and gave him a disappointing look.
This man is Kjeld the elder, the father of his new body. Kjeld the elder's voice slaps him back into his new reality that he was trying really hard to settle in. David was no longer David Young, junior sales executive anymore. He had trapped in the body of Kjeld the younger.
He had read some reincarnation and stuck in a game world novels but most of the time MCs got a cheat or at least they could bring up a stats screen view levels and skill levels. But to his dismay, he still not able to bring up his skill tree and progress let alone having a cheat.
David tried to level up his combat skills such as one-handed and archery but in order to level up he first needed to hit a living being with a weapon. The problem is unlike playing video games you can't just slash a person for no reason. He could not only get arrested by the guards in worse case, he could be killed.
Not only he was pretty sure that unlike playing Skyrim, this world will not scale the power of its inhabitants according to his level so there is high chance that someone could one shot him. That is why until he figures out how this whole world works, he had no choice but to lay low. First he needed to figure out who his character was and which quests that his character directly involves were.
Even as a veteran who had played Skyrim for many times David had a hard time recalling who Kjeld the younger was.
Kjeld the younger is the son of Kynesgrove innkeepers Kjeld the elder and Iddra. Kynesgrove is a small mining town located just the south of Windhelm. Kynesgrove plays no significant role in any of the main quest or side quest in Skyrim so David must at least travel to Windhelm to start some sort of quest. Also David thought he arrived just before the start of Skyrim because the high king Torygg was still alive and the Stormcloaks had not started open rebellion yet.
So David had some time to get used to this world and prepare for the upcoming crisis. Kjeld the younger was the kind of character that the developers created only just to give the players a sense of living and breathing world. As far as David remembered, there were no important quests related to Kjeld the younger except for mining radiant quests.
David used to think that is previous life on Earth is a dull and monotonous one. Oh! how wrong he was.
David now as Kjeld had to spend eleven hours a day hacking away in the Steamscorch Mine for malachite ore. The only time he stoped working during the day was when he took one hour break for lunch at noon. The working conditions were very tough in the mines because of hot steams coming out of earthstreams within the mines. If not for the work of Dunmer mage Dravynea who regularly maintained temperature in the mines, he might have collapse and passed out from heat stroke.
As someone who was so used to the modern living conveniences, the life in medieval period is tough for David. Everything from sleeping in hard wooden bed with no mattress, food to excretion was hard for him. Pooping is especially difficult for him to get used to. People here used buckets to poop and put their poops away in storage at the back of his house to be used later as fertilizer for the cabbage farm.
When he asked Kjeld the elder about toilets and pooping for the first time, he was so shocked his father replied "What the hell are you asking! Did you lose your bucket again? Go take that bucket at the back and stop asking me these stupid things."
The only choice that was not the bucket was to dig his own hole in the ground, dumped in there and the cover it up. The things that David used to take for granted had now become the things that he missed the most. David used to think that living in a video game world would be amazing but now he doesn't think so anymore. Trapping in a sci-fi world would be a lot better in terms of living standards and comfort than being stranded in this backwater world of Elder Scrolls. The only enjoyment he had in this life was to go on hunting once every week with his now father, Kjeld the elder.
Tomorrow, David would go on a hunting trip with his father so he needed to work earlier to make up for his absence in the mine. After having a warm cabbage soup which is mostly tasteless with some bread, he went to the mine to start his daily routine. He arrived at the mine before anyone else, so he got to choose his own mining spot today rather than the mining at the spot that others usually left for him.
He decided to mine at a spot near the entrance as it has a better airflow compare to the rest. Just as he walked to the mining spot, he noticed a book called near the small earthstream.
"Dravynea must have dropped this book the other day" he muttered.
Suddenly, he heard someone coming from the entrance, just as he was about to read this book.
"I'll be damned. The brat come in to walk early," a slim woman with a brown hair talked to another woman who looks a bit older than her.
"Hey kid, that's my spot. What are you doing here? Go and mine at your usual place at the back" the older woman complained looking annoyed.
These two were the Uriel sisters. The elder one was called Gemma and younger sister was called Ganna. They moved here from Cyrodiil to start their own lumber mill but to their dismay, the Jarl forbade them from cutting the trees down since they are sacred to Kyne, the Nordic Goddess. Now both of them are stuck in Kynesgrove, working their ass off just to pay off their debt from failed lumber mill venture.
"Oh! shut it Gemma, I got here early today so I get to choose my own place. If you don't like it come early tomorrow." David retorted.
"Hush now, Gemma. Let him take this place today. At least you got to give him credit that he sometime even a brat like him tries hard sometimes." Ganna replied.
"You are getting soft on him, aren't you Ganna. Just watch, he'll turn back the way he used to in no time." Gemma said sarcastically. They walked past him to the mining spot at the back of the mine.
David had been stranded in Skyrim for almost four weeks and when he originally arrived to this world, he didn't know why people treated him like crap. After thinking back hard, he realized that the original Kjeld the younger was not a good person. He used to treat others in the Kynesgrove like they were beneath him just because he was the son of the settlement head and the successor to the Kynesgrove Inn.
Not only that despite his Nord origin, he was a vocal supporter of the Empire which attract the ire of the Stormcloaks supporters including his own father. Because of that he is known to others in the settlement as the scourge of his father's holdings. David rolled his eyes whenever he recalls the memories of original Kjeld the younger.
During his lunch, David went back to his room to start reading the book that he found in the mines. His sit on his bed in the most comfortable position and slowly opens the book. Suddenly, he felt as if there was something trying to split open his head and try to go into his brain.
After a brief moment of intense headache, his consciousness clear and sees a notification showing Alteration increased to 2 and the level progress bar almost filling up to advance to level 5. Not only that the relevant knowledge on Alteration had automatically stored up in his mind. He did not even need to read the whole book; it was as if a bunch of information was projected into his mind from this book.
David almost jumped off his bed out of excitement. 'Finally, a notification shows up in my mind. So there is a high chance that I have the ability to access my skill trees and menu, I just need to find out how.'
David suddenly regained his hope to get stronger in this world. 'Now I just need to find level up one other skill reach level 5.' Out of all the skills the only skill that does not need resources to level up what so ever is Sneak skill so David decided that he'll try leveling up his sneak skill.
David went up to the mess hall to have lunch and went back to mining while trying his best to hide his excitement at the prospect of being able to level up. During night time, after telling Kjeld the elder that he was going to train himself for tomorrow hunting trip, David went out to the empty plot of land near his house to start leveling up his stealth skill.
After looking around to make sure no one was around he started walking around in a couch position. David rolled his eyes when he thinks about how awkward it would be if the others see him walking around while couching like an idiot. As time passed, David grew more and more tired and decided to continue training the next day.
The next morning, Kjeld the elder and David headed out the forest to northeast of Kynesgrove near the dragon burial mound. Unlike other parts of Skyrim, these forests are considered to be sacred so it was prohibited to cut these trees down.
That is why the lumber mill projects of the Uriel sisters failed. The lack of lumber mills meant that there were fewer people living and working around this area compared to rest of the forests in Skyrim. This lead to the greater wildlife population compared to other forest.
Even though the forest was under the protection of Kyne, people were still allowed to hunt in this forest. However one had to careful about guarding beasts of the forest. Whenever the hunter met with a guardian beast during his hunting trip, the hunter must offer his gain for the day to the guardian or else, he would not be able to leave the forest.
Two Kjelds walk along the trails until they found a nice spot where they could easily track deer's hoof prints. Despite tagging along with Kjeld the elder for a couple of times on hunting trips, David is still amazed by how quickly his pops aura changes from a simple mining worker to a veteran hunter as soon as he found a fresh deer track.
The Kjelds slowly followed the track while keeping track of wind direction. Deer could smell things from 100 yards away that human could barely smell right next to their nose. David had to pay great attention to the wind direction and make sure he always stayed in the downwind so as to keep the deer from getting his scent.
The stealth training he did last night pay off big time right now. He felt as if he moved silently compare to previous hunting trips. Kjeld the elder signals him to stop as they could start to hear an animal moving around 200 meter right in in front.
Kjeld the elder intended to flank the deer and so signaled David to approach it from left side while he approached it from the right side. Following Kjeld the elder's signal, David slowly approached from the left side. He was starting to get stressed not only from walking slowly and carefully while avoiding from steeping on to leaves and branches but also from paying great attention to the wind direction.
After moving for around 75 steps he could now started to see the shape of the deer. David stopped moving and prepared his stance to draw the bow as soon as the deer was in his field of vision. 'Relax, relax you can do it man.' he encouraged himself.
As he drew the arrow, he felt the time slowed down and his senses were so heightens that he could even hear the breathing of the deer in front of him. Just as he was about to release his arrow, another arrow fly towards the deer from the opposite direction and hits its back. The shot from Kjeld the elder was not able to kill the deer and now it started to run away.
'Focus, David, focus,' encouraging himself David took aim to the place where he thought the deer will pass through and releases his arrow. The arrow, traveling through the air in a curve trajectory, moved quickly towards the deer and pierced its neck. The deer didn't have to suffer for long. It was killed almost instantly.
This spooked David a bit since this was the first time he killed anything bigger than a cockroach. But his bad mood disappeared as a notification showed up in his mind 'Archery increased to 3' and after that 'Stealth increased to 4'.
"It seems the deer didn't notice me and this allows me to land a stealth critical hit!" David concluded. Level increase in his two skills pushed his overall level progress to level 5.
[You leveled up! Choose an attribute to advance] notification prompt appeared. He could now see his own basic stats. [Magicka : 100, Health : 130, Stamina : 110, Perks to increase : 5].
Now that he could somewhat understand the path for his growth, he was more determined than ever to go out, explore Skyrim and find out who trapped him here. "I'll play with your game for now but know this I'll find you wherever you are and drag myself out this place." David swore in his heart. "From now on, I'll be Kjeld."
