Rin I

Stare at the ceiling.

Throw out a random curse-word.

Stare at the ceiling again.

Throw out another curse-word.

Remember you're hungry.

Remember you're angry.

Remember that you're broke.

Remember that this bed, and this room, are both dirty.

Remember that the closest thing to a shower is somehow finding a waterfall.

Remember that the closest thing to toothpaste is rubbing ash on your teeth.

Remember that the closest thing to washing detergent is horse piss mixed with water and some green herbs.

Become angry some more.

Remember that you're still hungry.

Try to get up.

Remember that your ankle is injured, and will possibly get infected.

Remember that it hurts to walk, it hurts to breathe, it hurts to exist.

Remember that you've been stuck in this shithole of a world due to dumb luck.

Remember that your family that was relying on you is gone.

Remember that five years of medical school were washed down the drain.

Remember that the closest thing to a friend, or to home, is an incel who has less confidence than a hamster.

Remember that while you're stuck on this bed, unable to catch some shut-eye, the masses down there are so loud that even if the pain and hunger were gone, you still couldn't sleep.

Become even angrier.

Rin Takahashi was not having a good time. Not a good time at all.

She heard about these things happening once. One of her former friends, a literature student, told her about it, but she didn't care much. The knowledge went in through one ear and out the other. The 'isekai' experience. Traveling to another world. And about how the literary genre became so oversaturated with garbage that it eventually turned a 180 and became almost extinct. Which she was glad for, if not for the irony in it happening to her.

Was it all bad? No. Not really. Magic was cool, and casting it certainly felt nice. Nature was nice as well. But all that effort in her past life… wasted.

Imagine spending years on something, only for it to be completely invalidated due to no input of your own.

She could almost imagine it. Somehow scrappin together enough money to open a clinic. A general practitioner, which wasn't her aim, but it'd be what she would have to do with. And the tools she'd have in her disposal.

Which would be… what exactly? A stick? Bloodletting? A herbal tea?

Or maybe the other approach would be better.

'Hmm, yes, based on my diagnosis, you probably have tuberculosis. Probably. It could also be lupus, but it's never lupus.'

'Lupus? What's lupus?'

'Don't worry about it. You don't have lupus, you have tuberculosis. Probably.'

'Tuberculosis? Is that bad?'

'Hmm? No. It's easily treatable. Just take tricyclochloro-something, forgot the name of it. Anyways, take this medication twice a day for a week after your meal, and you'll be good to go.'

'Really doc?'

'No. I'm afraid I don't have that medication. In fact, no one does. It doesn't exist. Well it does, but not here. You wouldn't get it. Point is, you're gonna die, sorry. Moving on. Next patient!'

Her teachers always told her she needed to work on her bedside manners. But the career as a doctor was probably dead. So… she was still kind of salty about it. Especially since she could have used all those years of hard study to make some friends or make some money.

Now she had none of that.

Except for some magic.

Which apparently was impressive?

But was it really? Really? She didn't think so.

According to Riku's math, she was almost level 20. Which is a fifth of Yggdrasil's level cap. And even then, he said that reaching max-level was when the game truly began, as it apparently took more time to get a full set of Legendary tier gear than to level up to 100.

So even her magic, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't impressive, even if burning things was admittedly, extremely fun.

She continued to stare at the ceiling.

"There's a spider web in that corner. I wonder…"

Rin lifted her hand. She tried to at least. And she tried to cast a spell. Any spell. But nothing came out.

"You live for now, spidey. You better not crawl into my nose while I'm asleep or I'm burning down that web of yours in the morning."

She laid on her back on the bed in a rather curious position. One of her legs, her right one, was extended fully, while the left was somewhat bent, at the knee. Looking at it from a certain point of view, her legs combined looked a bit like the letter 'P'.

This pose hurt the least out of all the ones she had tried. Lying on her side was a no go, as that made her shoulders hurt. Both of them.

"How did I get my ass kicked so bad? I'm supposed to be the ranged damage dealer. Riku is the one supposed to be getting his ass kicked. He's the man. He's supposed to be the one taking damage, not me. Ughhh…"

She tried to lift her head a bit, to stare at the wall instead of the ceiling, but she could only hold this pose for a few seconds.

As her head plopped back onto the shitty pillow that was filled with hay, a long strand of golden hair dangled in front of her eyes.

It was a strange sight. Not one she had gotten used to. And not because she dyed her hair. She hadn't.

It's just that usually when this happened, the hair was black, and now it was blonde. Not better, but different.

"I haven't even looked at myself in the mirror properly. Beyond the reflection I saw in the stream, I don't even really know what I look like. I kind of rushed the character creation part. Mostly this is based on one of the basic templates. It looked good then but… why didn't I choose something that looked more like myself? Why? Was I unsatisfied? I was attractive… a bit overweight maybe, but I had been going to the gym, so that would have fixed itself eventually. This is… I don't even have the words for it."

Rin lacked the words to describe what she felt regarding her new body. In many ways, she would call it an upgrade… but was there such a thing? Her body, everything she had studied led her to the belief, no, the certainty, that the body was who you were. Your personality, your memories, your genetics, everything working together, everything influencing the other parts of the body, the countless cells working together, all culminating in the sensation we call 'personhood'. A living, breathing, human being.

Hormones affected one in various ways over time. During conception, during puberty, and in the cases of women, during the monthly menstrual cycle and should it occur, during pregnancy.

All of this would affect one's personality.

Then there was the matter of the environment that also influenced these things.

Hell, even the diet. Long has it been known that even minor changes to gut flora can change not just your health, but your personality as well.

Everything she knew led her to the absolute fact, that the brain was what held your memories, and though this can be influenced by the body and environment, the brain was what you were, ultimately. And now?

Was this really her brain? Her old brain? Or was it a new one?

If it was her old one, how did it get into this body? Why wasn't there a conflict, or a rejection? Science could do many things, but a brain transplant was unilaterally considered impossible. Using technology, it was possible to reverse aging, heal chronic wounds, and even replace organs with their cloned versions grown via stem-cells, ensuring that organs would not fail. But the brain, and the inevitable neuron decay that occurred, was still a work in progress. Last she heard, somewhere in South America, they used brain scans to copy the memories of an old man. The memories were there, locked away inside the old man's head, but he couldn't really access them, since he was almost a century old. But there was a way around this. These memories were uploaded onto tiny artificial neurons made via nanotechnology. And in turn these could then not just be implanted back into the original's brain, and act as neurons, and in so doing improve brain function and cognitive recall, but they could even be implanted into the brain of a third party, and give them memories they never experienced. One of her classmates even once said that they used these medical procedures alongside VR technology to download advanced combat training, survival techniques, hand-t0-hand combat experience and various languages directly into the brains of soldiers. Purely experimental, but it wouldn't be long before that 'I know Kung-Fu' scene from 'The Matrix' would become reality.

Yet, science was NOT perfect. If her brain were placed in another body, she'd need immunosuppressants, and she'd need to take them for months, if not years.

Yet, she felt fine. Apart from the ankle pain and the hunger, there was no pounding inside her head, no stitches, no urge to regurgitate, no fainting. When she came over to this world, for the first day at least, she felt some panic and confusion, but after that she felt like an olympic athlete. Rin could even touch her toes.

So that wasn't it.

Was this body some sort of cybernetic or biomechanical construct?

Well… no. No, that would be dumb.

This left the third option, however improbable. That this was a real actual flesh and blood human body, and it was hers. Like she was born into it. Yet that wasn't the case.

So where did the memories and personality come from? Were they scanned and copied into this body? Was her existence fake? Merely just a copy?

Riku didn't think so. He, lovable idiot that he was, simply said 'What if our souls got transported into our Yggdrasil avatars?' Then he accepted this explanation as sufficient, and carried on.

That would require her to accept the existence of the soul as a fact, but… there was nothing that went against this theory.

It was… strange.

She should have felt cognitive dissonance, yet she didn't.

She should have felt body dysmorphia, yet she didn't.

She should have had occasional difficulties in controlling her body, a step too long or too short, yet she didn't.

Her new body was as if she were born into it. As if she had it all her life. Weird.

It was great, but what happened to her old one? The one she spent more than 20 years in back in Japan? The one her mother gave her?

Was it just gone?
Was it walking around by itself?
Was it braindead, or just dead?

The formerly black-haired and now golden haired woman didn't really want to know.

Thinking about it wasn't something that she wanted to do. But what else was there? For the past week survival had occupied her mind enough that she could avoid thinking about these things.

But now, inside this room, there wasn't much to do. This meant naturally that the mind would wander. Listening to some music would be nice… but that wasn't really possible.

Well… there was music from down there, but she wasn't really fond of it.

"If only I had my iPhone 99…" Rin lamented.

But soon enough she was broken from her trance.

Knock, knock.

"Who is it?" Rin responded.

"It's me. I'm heading down to eat. Are you coming with me?"

Ah, it was Riku, of course. That dumbass. Her first instinct was to shout at him, but that quickly vanished, and cooler heads prevailed.

"I can't. My leg hurts. Just bring me food up to my room."

There, a sensible response.

"Alright." Riku replied and left.

Riku was… not a bad person, per se. Certainly his Yggdrasil knowledge would come in super handy. Without him, she was likely to 'split her build' as he said. Or worse, do 'magic deviation', which she didn't quite understand. He had a lot of terms for these things, and a lot of rules that weren't rules but you should follow if you don't want to be left behind. He had a lot of rules like that, and a lot of advice.

Advice such as…hybrid classes are for the most part, shit. Good for leveling solo, but bad for organized raids and PVP.

Advice such as…don't become a multi-caster. AKA, if you're going to be a shaman, be a shaman, don't be a shaman and a priest. If you're going to be a mage, be a mage, not a mage and warlock.

Advice such as… heteromorphic races are kind of shit. Unless you find a super rare build in which class and race levels combine perfectly. In such cases, they could be good, or even OP?

And then he even had a song he'd memorized for PVP when it came to level gaps.

"How did it go…Ah yes."

Rin recalled the song she had heard Riku singing to himself when they were killing giant rats in the sewers in some shitty city she didn't care to remember back in Yggdrasil.

If it's one, it can be easily won.

If it's two, victory is up to you.

If it's three, there's little guarantee.

If it's four, prepare for war.

If it's five, your death has probably arrived.

If it's six, you'll find yourself shitting bricks.

If it's seven, you're definitely going to heaven.

If it's eight, it's too late.

If it's nine, you'll certainly whine.

And if it's ten, say amen.

A nice little poem. Apparently levels in Yggdrasil were that important. She asked Riku what max level characters could do, and he simply replied that a level 100 in Divine Gear's biggest problem with facing down a hundred level 60's would be in which way to kill them without getting bored.

So yeah, apparently it was incremental. Each level gave you more and more strength. Perhaps Rin would have noticed this strength that she's gained over the past week, if she weren't wounded and exhausted.

Still, the prospect of hitting a high level did excite her. Not that she knew what a high level was.

The peasants said that magic was rare, but if you asked Rin, their family tree was a circle, and everyone there either had one chromosome too few or too many, so their opinion was worth exactly zero to her.

She had faith however. Riku would probably be able to get them to a decent enough high level, and they'd probably make decent money and live a decent life. But what then?

"Can I go back? Do I want to go back if I can? Why am I even here, in this world? Who brought me and Riku here? Are we the only ones? Was it God? The Buddha? Dumb luck?"

Questions for another time.

She'd have loved to have answers for many questions about this new world, such as her location and the customs in this land, the general strength of the native inhabitants and the biggest threats, why her and Riku could understand and speak to them but not read the letters, where the closest bath and healer were… all important things.

The wounds would…probably be fine. For now. Infection shouldn't set in that quickly. And walking would be most likely doable. Tomorrow anyways. Walking today was not recommended.

But tomorrow… walking would be within her capabilities. Even if she had to use a stick, she would walk. She would walk even if it hurted. All to find that noble bastard that took her money. The money she worked her ass off far. The money she bled for.

Food. Clothing. Medication. Sanitation. Relaxation. If there was a city nearby, money would get her these things. At least enough to the point where the new party of two could operate at a level where they wouldn't be in danger of dying to a random slime.

It still made her angry. She hadn't committed murder before, but based on how primitive this world looked like so far, it would probably be common enough that no one would bat an eye.

"I wonder what would hurt more? Death by electricity or death by fire? On the one hand, the electricity can definitely kill them quicker by inducing a cardiac arrest, while on the other, the fire can burn off the nerves in the skin. Hmm… that's an interesting question… Wait, what am I thinking? There's no need to murder people, yet! Yes, I'm sure we can find some way to retrieve the money. Maybe I can go invisible and sneak inside… but this invisibility spell is pretty shit. Hmm… I'll think about it tomorrow."

Rin had murder on her mind in order to reclaim her gold. Her greed approached that of a goblin, but thankfully she wouldn't resort to that level. Not yet.

But she was broken out of her musings by another knock on the door.

Knock knock.

"Who is it?" Rin asked, careful to say the words in as neutral a tone as possible.

"Food delivery!" A female voice came from the other side.

"Come in!" Rin quickly responded.

And in came a red-haired young girl with a sizable chest, carrying a tray full of all kinds of food. Delicious, yummy food, that definitely smelled absolutely exquisite.

"This world may be a technologically stunted shithole, but the food back on Earth can't hold a candle to the food here. And I'll be damned if I have to eat protein paste again even if I somehow get back home. Nah, never again. I'm going to be eating well, no matter what."

For the first time that night, a smile spread on Rin's face.

The morning was different to the night prior. Instead of sharp pain, it was merely a dull throbbing that woke her up. That, and exhaustion.

A good night's sleep was something that did not come to Rin that night, though luckily her sleep, or whatever scattered remnants of it she had that could be called as such, were blessedly dreamless.

At least she still had some food in her belly from last night. It ought to hold, for a while that is. She knew that recovering patients needed rest from exertion, proper sanitation and a steady diet.

Rin had one out of three. And that was pushing it. But Fortes Fortuna Iuvat. Fortune favors the strong. Remaining in this place wouldn't lead to anything positive, and thus, with all her might, she managed to throw the bedsheets off her and climb out of her bed.

Time to wake up Riku and get moving.

However, as soon as she managed to get on her feet, she realized that it might be a more difficult prospect than imagined. Her leg was positively throbbing. Walking unassisted wouldn't really be feasible, to say the least.

She contemplated asking for help from some of the staff. It would be easy to shout and wait for help to come. But she didn't.

A part of her felt positively repulsed by the idea. Being able to call down fire and frost, wind and winter upon your foes brought with it a certain pride. She could not allow herself to let some inbred backwater peasant slut who's eaten more cocks than loaves of bread, to carry her like she was a withered old charity case.

So, Rin leaned against the nightstand next to her bed and surveyed the room for anything useful. Her eyes caught the sight of a chair next to a wall.

It was about a dozen feet away.

It wouldn't be difficult to use the chair to support herself, at least for a while, and then use the handguard to get down the stairs and then use Riku as walking support.

The problem was… how to reach the chair? It was a bit far for her in this current position.

She glanced down at her leg. The dried blood and the purple bruises didn't look good.

The blood on the sheets also didn't make things look nice.

She did take a bath… but she probably needed another one.

But was there time?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

She didn't know.

But she did know one thing, the thought that her hard-earned rewards were taken by some ponced up self-proclaimed noble made her blood boil. She wanted that money, and she wanted it now.

A thought came to her, unbidden, almost instinctively.

She lifted up her hand and aimed it at the chair. Blue arcane circles manifested around her fingers. "[Mage Hand]." She intoned as the spell was cast.

The chair began to levitate, and she had no issue directing it where she saw fit. The chair was glowing a light blue due to the effects of the magic, so if a bystander were to see it, someone from Earth, clueless about magic, he'd be confused, to say the least.

A glowing blue chair floating through the air. The thought made her chuckle.

But she directed the chair where it needed to go. Right in front of her, and she dropped it gently on the wooden floorboards. She released the spell.

A smirk spread across her face.

"I don't need help, not from anyone. I'm not a cripple, and I'm not helpless. I am strong and I will take what is mine."

A smell reached her nose.

"A bath first, though."