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The following is a fan-based

FICTION

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation and other products set in the same universe are all owned by Rifujin na Magonote, Shirotaka, Shosetsuka ni Naro, Media Factory, and Studio Bind.

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Chapter 1: Path into Adventurehood


At this point, when one hears the term 'isekai', they know the situation: poor guy, potentially a NEET, got hit by a truck and somehow got sent to another world.

That's... not exactly how it went for me. Sure, life wasn't the best but... I didn't get hit by Truck-kun. Oh no, I got hit by something worse. Or rather, my face hit something very sturdy known as the ground from several dozens of meters. I should have trusted my gut feelings when I was fixing the antenna back home. Huffing and puffing, dad was the one that was best prepared for this kind of stuff, but he had caught a cold and couldn't do stuff in that condition with the kind of windy day this was supposed to happen. Nothing big, it was just me partially stretching beyond the balcony's railing to get a small part of the device replaced. Things should have been fine if... I hadn't put some of my weight on the railing. The thing was two decades old and it was groaning like crazy as I focused on fixing the damn thing. Then... it snapped and I was... falling. Really fast, and the rush concluded with the sound of-

...Nothing. No 'Crunching' noise to dignify my demise before it really happened, maybe as the final thing to remember. Maybe I didn't hear because of the trauma just numbing my brain, but then I woke up. I wasn't dead. When I woke up, I also wasn't excited. Far from it. Now, imagine waking up with a heart attack, expecting death to come and claim your butt any moment now as you have seen yourself fall towards the painful floor, your brain still twisted by the vertigo and... my breakfast trying to make a prison break through my mouth. I think that last one was what spared me from fainting. The feeling of bile rushing upward and through my throat before splattering on the ground sure shook me off the ground. It was disgusting, my lips twitching in discomfort at the acidic aftertaste of that unpleasant reaction and... I finally found my eyes moving around and catching details.

Where the fuck am I? And why am I alive?

John Bukharin should have died, no questions asked... so, what was going on? Why wasn't I a pancake? Sure, I was glad of being alive but... nothing comes from free, and I doubted this was the afterlife with the fact I threw up my breakfast and the place I was in that very moment was the furthest thing from heaven. Actually, it looked like a slum. No cold wind around, only a stench that forced me to leave the alley itself and... enter a main road of some medieval city. People of various kinds, all wearing old-fashioned outfits and... non-humans. I frowned, thinking that maybe this was some hallucination. That I was actually having a nightmare of this kind but... I recognize when I throw up for real. I was awake and this place was... real.

I decided to test this theory by looking around. Nobody paid much attention to me. I was as flamboyant as other odd ones around in terms of clothes, at least compared to their style, so I had a calm time finding my way into learning a few details I could get out from merely walking around. First, the general name of the settlement I was wandering within, which was the Citadel of Roa. From what I could get through a quick operation of info-gathering, the Citadel itself was ruled through a noble republic system, where noble families would detain the mayor either through election or dynastic imposition. I couldn't get much more beyond that except... that I was now stuck in a very difficult situation.

No money on myself, at least of the kind which could buy me food, water and other resources I would necessarily need to survive. I was mostly stuck in a circumstance where I couldn't find a working position without running into the issue that was the lack of class mobility. It was rare for people of my current 'rank' to rise up to nobility or even what would best represent medieval bourgeois, which was the role of merchant.

I definitely had no means to become a merchant. Not only due to a lack of things to sell as I was whisked into this crazy place without anything else beyond my clothes and , but because I would require recommendations and years spent under tutoring as a protege from an old merchant. It wasn't the best situation to start my new life in, but I soon found a ray of hope coming from a very hazardous place to seek a job: the Adventurers' Guild.

This business was one of the biggest ones around the world in terms of making a potential fortune out of it. Sure, there were limitations and anyone starting it would have to start from Rank F and reach Rank C before getting some income running for any long-term plans but... I was a man stuck in a different world from mine and with a need to survive within an unknown environment. So, I decided to bite the bullet and see where this would take me. Registering took a while, but I was relieved when I found no major requirements stopping me from seeking admission.

Quoting the kind lady at the reception: "People either find their way into making it a stable job or they could quit whenever they feel the need to.". It sounded awfully nice in terms of contractual obligations... but then I noticed that those that tried to cheat the system weren't exactly pardoned with ease. One look at what would happen in case of failing the job translated into paying twice the amount of the reward back at the guild left me a bit unpleasant at the idea of picking the wrong fights.

Which is why I didn't plan to take anything that I knew I couldn't do. My first mission being... cleaning someone's attic of a rat infestation. I didn't have any weapons on me and I didn't want to stain my shoes with rats' blood, and that's why I decided to take an alternative route to kill the pests. First, I asked if the one that requested an adventurer to deal with this mess, a family dad with a wife and a single daughter, could give me a water-filled bucket, a sack and a bit of time. He looked skeptical about the request, but complied to those as I carefully moved around the attic and captured all the rats I could see. Which was harder than it sounded, yes, but I was actually relieved to find two distinct details that made the matter easy: 1) The rats had eaten something within the dusty and rotting place that fattened them up, so their speed and capacity to crack into walls was almost non-existent; 2) there were no holes in the nearby walls. The little turds had set their 'nest' within some boxes, which was easy to deal with as quickly as possible.

Once all rats had been captured, I took a moment to walk outside by the courtyard in front of the house's entrance with both the sack and the bucket and I dropped the sack inside the water, using the bucket lid to keep the rodents inside as they drowned. Not my finest activity, but considering I didn't have other equipment to face that kind of shitty job, it was the cleanest solution I could think of. Much to my relief, the family decided to keep the dead rats as 'fuel for their fireside'. I wasn't sure how convenient that was, but I didn't hesitate in giving up the killed pests and getting a signature on my papers that the job was solved.

First mission done and I got a single Asura Large Copper Coin. A quick exchange by comparing the price of some products sold at the market confirmed that this coin had the value of 10$. And I would need another one of those to at least afford a day at the local Inn. Cue two more missions being dealt with as quickly but calmly as possible.

Second job was to fix someone's rooftop as it had been struck by a stray magic spell. I didn't need to bring any material, just help around the owner of the place as the old big guy was a carpenter until a few years ago and just needed someone to do all the hard work for him because he didn't have the 'body to handle that kind of hardship anymore'. He was two times bigger than me in most of the visible sizes, so I had reason to believe he was just BSitting me to see someone go through that labor while he conveyed his 'pearls of wisdom' about the past and how mistakes shaped his view of the world. I wasn't exactly paid for that, so I focused on the job itself, completing it after just two hours of working my ass off.

Third and last mission of the day was technically the most frustrating of them all. A 'fallen noblewoman' requested for a young man to sing her a serenade. Now, had it been a Milf-grade 'fallen lady', I wouldn't have had any issues with it. Sadly, said 'noblewoman' was around her 70s and looking as decrepit as someone with that introduction would appear. I wasn't surprised, but she was totally 'swooned' when I decided to just copy Dante and go for 'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare'. It went so well that she kind of tried to persuade me into some sort of 'sugar-granny' kind of arrangement. The thing is... that I could tell it wouldn't have worked, even if I was into old ladies. Sure, she had the money to pay for the mission, but through the conditions of her small house, I doubted she had the income to pull something as incredibly expensive as that arrangement. She didn't mind me saying no, conceding that it was better to at least 'have heard a beautiful song from a handsome man than not'. I retreated to the guild feeling immensely dirty and in need of a shower.

Considering the time period? I doubted there was something like that. Maybe I could try and find a way to bathe but... not today. The sun was slowly going down to make space for the night, so I couldn't do much but focus on getting one of the few remaining rooms in the Inn for tonight. The host was a nice fellow and I was relieved to learn that paying for the night meant I could also get some of the dinner served at the establishment. The place was nice, and I found myself drawn to enjoy the homeliness. It was only as I went to my room, laid on the bed and stared thoughtfully at the wall that I realized that while this wasn't the worst situation... it kind of was when it came to going back home.

Did I actually die and got shifted into this place? I didn't exactly get reincarnated as this was my body so... what was going on? Who brought me here?

I had so many questions in that regard... and even more as I had to also think about what to do in the next few days. I knew that if I did seven more F-Rank missions, I was going to be promoted to Rank E. And from there, I would gain more but still need 25 E-Rank missions to get to the next rank. It wasn't impossible, at least from what I could do now and... I decided to give it a try. To do more and... maybe eventually retire at either Rank B or Rank A. High hopes for a living, but if I manage to go through a steady growth both in equipment and personal experience, that shouldn't be too difficult.

And with that thought, I managed to brace through a week filled with jobs from the guild. I had the chance to study from some books, to get a knife and a shield while also acquiring a cheap old but light armor to wear for the time being, but also get a consistent amount of budget coin for any big long-term projects for any need to drop the guild for a reason or another. The place was nice, some of the adventurers here were the most jovial people... but I could tell the difficulty was going to pick up as soon as I got to Rank E and found my quick and earnest pace into dealing with missions slowing down considerably.

Nothing dangerous, but it took more time off to handle each while also providing twice the rewards that a F-Rank would give. By the end of that week, I had gotten six E-Rank Missions under the belt, ready to get the rest remaining for Rank D done as swiftly as possible... but then something unusual happened. Until that moment, I never had to deal with a job that required more than a single individual, so I was a bit surprised when the kind receptionist asked me to do her a favor and help someone that was struggling at the moment. Someone with the same rank that had been facing a couple of scams as of recent times.

The girl was a healer, blonde-hair and light-blue eyes. She stood with a petite frame and a fairly shy expression on her face as she fidgeted on the spot.

"I-I'm Zenith. Nice to meet you, John."

A nervous handshake and a polite exchange of names, that's how, I think now after so long, our renowned group would then come to be...


AN

Sorry Rudy... or not.