When I had awoken, I am greeted by yet another unfamiliar ceiling. The bed I'm laying on felt stiff, but it wasn't uncomfortable, per say. From the corner of my eye, I can see Aqua Heartia leaned against the wall. Instinctively, I try getting up, only to be stopped by an unfamiliar hand. I glance over to find the same man that had stopped me from giving chase to those bandits.
"Ah, Sir Mage. You've finally come to. It seems like you had exerted all of your mana in rescuing our village."
What is this guy talking about? I fainted because I barbequed a couple of bandits alive. Anyone would be sicked by that, and yet, he's giving me a look of adoration?
"I am the Chief of this humble village called Somara. While our village may be small, please do not hesitate to ask for anything you desire as a reward. We will do everything in our ability to accommodate you."
Then, an awkward silence ensued. Oh, right. I'm supposed to respond here, aren't I? I had spent so long without speaking to people that I nearly forgot to reply.
"T-thank you, Chief. C-could you leave me be for now? I would like to recover my strength."
"Why, of course. Excuse my rudeness. At supper, would you like my wife to bring up your food?"
"That would be fine, thank you."
The village Chief gave a polite bow, and quickly left the room. Once again, I was all alone in a small, cramped room.
… Hah…
Alright, I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed right now, so let's set some things straight.
After being crushed by a truck while saving a couple of kids on Japan, it seems that I had been actually transported to this new fantasy world with magic. What's more, I'm currently living as the 19-year-old avatar that I created on some sketchy website.
It would then be safe to assume that I had been transported to the same game that I created, except that this really wasn't a game, but my new reality. I glanced at my arm, and unsurprisingly there was a blood-soaked bandage in the same place that I had been struck: this much proves that I am really living in an alternate world, and everyone here is a real person rather than an NPC.
I really am in another world.
A place where I can start over.
I took a deep breath… and let out a long sigh. For the first time in many years, I let myself break out into a genuine smile.
Every day when I wake up, I don't have to be reminded of the years of accumulated failure that is my bedroom. When I look into the mirror, I'll no longer have to face the man who had ruined my life and made me into a failure. I won't have any more excuses for why I can keep acting pathetically.
Feelings that I had repressed for decades began to resurface. While they were nowhere near close to being completely gone, I felt for the first time in my life that I could begin to work on myself.
From here on out, I am going to live as a proper human being.
I am not going to waste my second chance at life.
At some point, I had fallen asleep again, only to wake up when the Chief's wife had brought me dinner. She had meekly entered into the room and left without saying a word. By the time I had finished eating, it was already dark outside.
Oh boy, looking back, that certainly was emotionally exhausting. It's not as if I was bawling my eyes out, but having the realization that I had a clean slate here was an extremely liberating feeling. With that being said, I need to actually come up with a plan in order to get my life together.
First of all, I needed money. While these villagers were grateful for saving them, I can't relapse into my old habits and leech off of them forever. Sadly, I had squandered the last 20ish years doing nothing, so I can confidently say that in terms of marketable skills, I have none. Although, it wasn't as if I didn't have any methods of making money.
Now, it was possible that I could become a magic teacher or a court magician, since I got the impression from the bandits that magic-users were particularly rare or powerful. But think about it—how was I going to land a position like that with no connections or a history? If I were to work under someone, they'd find it awfully suspicious that some random guy without any paperwork just turned up out of the blue.
No, that wouldn't work at all. Furthermore, while I knew how to cast magic, I had no idea how it actually works. I couldn't teach anyone so long as I relied on my videogame system to cast it.
That just left me with one other choice for the time being—adventuring.
If I remembered correctly, there should be plenty of dungeons in this world, and where there were dungeons, there were explorers to plunder them. While this did seem like kind of a dangerous job, I confirmed in the previous battle that my magic was powerful enough to kill. Besides, I don't think I'll try to become the 'greatest adventurer to ever live' or anything like that, but rather I'll be happy if I just have enough money to be content. There must be weaker dungeons I can grind until I get a hang of things, right?
Furthermore, I need to be especially careful to not let my new power get to my head and regress to how I was in my previous life.
Before I was booted out of my home, I was arrogant and complacent in that I just assumed I could continue existing without providing anything. I was human garbage, and I can't let myself forget that if I want to move forward. In any case, I need to re-learn how to socialize ASAP—I haven't had a proper conversation with my voice in so long. For now, I'll stick to the politer side of things so as to not offend anyone.
I have to remember that I'm in a different world now, one where human life isn't as valued, and where I have little to no knowledge of what common sense is. I could be dragged off and executed for accidentally disrespecting a noble or someone in charge if I'm not careful, for all I know.
Next, I have to make careful note of my shortcomings, both in combat and as a person.
My first fight with the bandits had taught me that mages were particularly vulnerable in close combat. While my new body was much healthier than my previous one, I was still nowhere near considered "strong".
To make up for my physical weakness, I guess I'll start doing physical training every day. I've also heard that training was good for your mental health, so that's a bonus too. Just because my circumstances had changed doesn't mean that I had changed—if I wanted to improve myself, that would be something that I have to actively strive toward.
I checked my status to see if anything had changed. Next to villager, which was now level 2, I had gained two additional jobs: hero and mage. With the recent events that transpired, it seems that in this world, you can unlock 'jobs' under certain conditions. My guess was that when I saved the village, I had gained the 'hero' job.
I'll have to look into the 'job' system more in depth.
Huh… what's this? Upon closer inspection, each job had unique skills, abilities, and buffs that only those with the job equipped can use.
For example, Hero appeared to be quite a powerful job, since it gave me a +10 stat boost on all of my stats. More importantly, though, it allowed me to use the 'Overwhelming' skill, which apparently dilates time at the exorbitant cost of mana. Honestly, this ability sounded quite broken.
With this in mind, it would be best to have as many jobs equipped as possible. Currently, I only had two job slots due to my Bonus Skills. Thankfully, I can use my Character Reset skill, and then use my Bonus Points to acquire more job slots. I'll have to look into that later.
I then spent the next hour or so reconfiguring my Bonus Skills after doing a Character Reset. My primary goal is to get strong as quickly as possible and hit up some dungeons, if there are any nearby.
With that said, I needed to level up, fast. I unequipped my Bonus Weapon Lv 6 since that was taking up the majority of my Bonus Points, and selected skills such as Essential EXP Reduction, which reduces the amount of EXP needed to level up, and Essential EXP Gain, which increased the amount of EXP gained. Now, I should be able to level up 20 times as fast. I really don't think that these two skills were designed to be used in tandem, but my life isn't a game. I'll take whatever advantage I can get, fair or not.
As I unselected Bonus Weapon Lvl 6, Aqua Heartia also disappeared into a puff of light. I had a suspicion that the weapon would disappear when I removed the skill associated with it, and I was right. I can sleep easier knowing that in case if it ever were to be stolen, I can simply just unequip the skill and re-equip it to get it back.
Whew. What a night. Trying to figure this all out in my head after so many years of internet poisoning really tired me out again. I'll have to get a pen and notebook later to write down the results of my tinkering.
True to my promise, I did a light workout before I went to sleep. I never paid much attention in middle school gym class, but even I, an ex-veteran NEET, knew the basics of pushups, pullups, and sit-ups. About half an hour later, my skinny body felt sore, but good. I wiped myself down with a wet towel, and soon fell asleep on the hay bed.
