1 Episode 0 Gamers and Other World Transitions

I, Kaede Suzumiya, a college student who is a net-gamer, fought back a headache as I operated the keyboard incessantly. The boss's HP bar on the screen disappeared just two seconds ago. And my HP (real HP) is running low. I haven't slept for about four days now.

"Don't sleep yet, you have to participate in the distribution ....... I think.

I think, but my body won't let me. I plopped down on the keyboard and let go of my consciousness.

The reason why this happened is because of me three days ago.

I had finished taking the credits I was supposed to take this year, and in my euphoria and sense of freedom, I had crammed my schedule full of games that I was addicted to.

My euphoria was so great that I didn't even notice that I hadn't had any sleep during those three days.

The first two days were fine, but after that, it got really tough. I hadn't slept for three and a half days, including the time before I started the game. My head hurt and my fatigue was at its peak.

I should have quit then, but at the time, I was determined to keep going until the next weapon dropped, but for some reason, the weapons that normally had a drop rate of at least one in two hours didn't drop for about ten hours. I was about to call off my plans and go to bed, when the call arrived.

A message from the organizer of the boss defeating PT: "Please gather at the fixed time in 15 minutes. That's right, it's 10:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Time to fix.

Fixed" stands for "fixed party," and as the name implies, it is a party with a fixed number of members that repeatedly defeats the same boss at a fixed time in order to gain experience and drop items. If you fail to do so, all 11 members of the party except yourself will be inconvenienced.

No matter how much it hurts my head, I have to do it. With this determination, I moved to the meeting place, performed my assigned duties as usual, and defeated the boss. It took about two hours as usual.

The result is the scene you see at the beginning of this article.

When I woke up, I found myself not in the familiar ceiling of my house, but in a forest. As I hurriedly looked around, I saw that the trees in the area I could see were mainly broad-leaved trees, about one meter thick, growing at a certain distance from each other. The ground was black humus-like soil, overgrown with weeds. Of course, I don't remember ever coming to a place like this. I don't understand.

You suddenly feel strange and check your clothes.

I don't remember changing my clothes, but I'm not wearing the jersey I wore when I was playing netgear, but my current attire is a plaid outfit for going out and sports shoes. Judging from the brightness, the tilt of the sun, and the temperature, it must have been around 4:00 PM. As the vegetation is similar to that of Japan, the climate will not change that much.

I decided to move on from here, so I got up and started walking, but here I felt strange again. I felt that my walking pace was much faster than usual. Thinking that it might be something, I try to jump vertically.

I don't remember jumping that hard, but I jump about one meter off the ground. Moreover, when I fall, I feel an inexplicable sense of discomfort. Also, my legs, which were not very strong to begin with, were able to catch my body from a height of one meter without any difficulty.

What a dream. ....... What a dream.

I said to myself and pinched my cheek. It hurt. By the way, I've heard that "even if you pinch your cheek in a dream, your brain creates pain on its own, so pinching your cheek is not enough to judge whether it's a dream or not. I thought that this was probably the case, and thought about what to do, but then I reconsidered, "If it's a dream anyway, let's enjoy it. But even if I wanted to have fun, this is just a forest. At any rate, you need to get out of the forest, so you think of a way to get out of the forest. When you're in trouble, you're told to follow the ridge, but unfortunately, you can't use that method because this is flat land.

There are no stumps in the area, or even any signs of human activity, even if I tried to guess the direction by looking at stumps. There was no sound of water, and I had no idea how to proceed.

When I was looking for a stump, I noticed that the vegetation here was similar to that of Japan. The plants growing here are vaguely familiar to me.

Well, I guess my brain is not imaginative enough to create something I don't know in my dreams.

There's no point in thinking about it, so I'll just follow my instinct and go straight in one direction.

Normally, this would be a bad idea in the forest, since I would lose my sense of direction while dodging trees, and I would not be able to go straight, but this is my dream. But this is my dream. My dream cannot be such that the forest continues even if I keep walking. Therefore, if I keep walking in one direction, I'll eventually find something. Maybe.

As I continued, I found something strange. No, I don't know if I should call it a thing. At first glance it looks like a dog.

But if you look closely, there are many differences between it and a dog. It's about 10 meters away from here, so you can't see much detail, but it's still distinctly different. Its ears are sharper than I've ever seen before, its body hair is green, and its long fangs stick out from its upper jaw. I'm not an expert on dogs, and up to this point, you might have thought it was a breed of dog I didn't know. But there was too big a difference for it to be a breed of dog.

It had six legs. It has six legs, but they are not like insects, and the hind legs are split in two like Sleipnir. In spite of this, I don't feel any unnaturalness in its gait, and it walks slowly as if this is its normal state. Of course, such a creature does not exist on Earth, and it has not appeared in the MMO I was playing.

For the time being, it's inconvenient to have a name for it, so I'll call it Green Dog.

At any rate, it doesn't seem to be a safe creature, so leave the scene quietly so as not to be noticed. I was afraid that I might not be detected by its scent, but fortunately I was downwind of it, and I was able to leave without being noticed until the green dog was out of sight.

After checking my surroundings and making sure there was nothing dangerous, I thought about the creature I had seen earlier. It's clearly not Japanese. Since my brain is a gamer, I must have created a game-like creature in my dream by randomly piecing together real-life creatures. If this is the case, then perhaps the rest of the game is also game-like.

But there is no keyboard, no mouse, and no graphic user interface here. I don't know how to operate it, so I've decided to say everything I can think of.

A translucent window appears in front of you.

A translucent window appears in front of you, and you squeal. I was so startled that I looked up, but the window seemed to follow me.

I guess I'm the kind of gamer who brings games into my dreams...

I check the status while talking to myself.

Name: Suzumiya Kaede

Age / Race / s*x : 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 otherworldly languages, magical qualities, martial arts qualities, otherworldly, affinity for all attributes

Is this high? I don't know how to look at it, but MP seems to be very high. INT and DEX are also a little high. When I looked at the MP and wanted to know what it was, a window much smaller than the status screen appeared.

MP 1012.00/1012.00

Description: Amount of magic power. It is consumed when using magic and some skills. The average magic power of the human race in this world is 10. The left side shows the current amount of magic power, and the right side shows the maximum amount of magic power. 0.1% of the maximum amount of magic power is recovered every minute from the point when the magic power falls below the maximum value.

The decimal point is rounded down.

It seems I have a lot of magic power. I also appraised HP, but it seems to be a numerical value of health and sturdiness, with no fixed amount of natural recovery. I looked at the status screen again to appraise the status further, but I thought I saw something there that I shouldn't have missed, so I looked twice. --A person from another world, fully mastering the language of another world.

I appraise it with trepidation.

Otherworldly Unique/rank 10

Description: Coming from a different world has a wide range of effects on your status, skill acquisition rate, etc.

The effect varies depending on the rank of the world you came from.

The higher the rank, the higher the rank, and the higher the rank compared to this world, the greater the improvement in ability. If you come from a world with a lower rank than this world, your ability will decrease.

Is this the reason why I could fly so high? No, that's not the problem. Of course I care about that, but there is something more important. Another world? It's true that the pain when I pinched my cheek and the terrain seemed strangely real, but is this not a dream, but another world?

But at least the vegetation is Japanese... But that dog is clearly not from Japan, and I've never seen it before. Would something completely unknown to me appear in my dream? I'm not an expert in brain science or dreams, so I don't know the details, but I don't think that anything I don't know much about is likely to appear in my dreams.

Even if I think about it, it doesn't make any sense.

If it's a dream, it won't be long before I wake up. If you don't wake up for a day, there is a high possibility that you are in another world.

If it's a dream, there's no problem, and I'll just assume that this is another world and act accordingly.

I don't have any evidence, but for some reason I feel like I'm in another world.

Information Manipulation Analysis Unique

Description: You can analyze what you see. You do not need to touch the object, and it does not consume magic. It can also analyze hidden information that cannot be determined by appraisal.

With your consent, you can hide the status of the object when it is appraised.

It is probably because of this skill that information can be appraised earlier. From the way it is written, it seems to be a higher level skill than appraisal.

It also seems to be able to manipulate information. It says that it's unique, and if it's a rare skill, it might be troublesome if someone sees it, so it's nice if you can rewrite your status with this.

I don't know if I can rewrite my own status with this method, but I can try.

Since I was able to appraise my status earlier without chanting "appraise" or "information manipulation analysis", I guessed that I probably didn't need to chant, and I thought that I wanted to hide the "otherworlder".

The moment you do, the "otherworlder" display changes to "otherworlder (hidden). Apparently, the status is updated in real time without reciting it again. I wonder if this makes it invisible.

Let's reappraise "Concealment".

Otherworldly (Concealment) Unique/Rank 10

Description: Being from a different world has a wide range of effects on status, skill acquisition rate, etc.

The effect varies depending on the rank of the world you came from.

The higher the rank, the higher the rank, and the higher the rank compared to this world, the greater the improvement in ability. If you come from a world with a lower rank than this world, your ability will be reduced.

This is not shown in the appraisal.

This seems to work fine.

There is no guarantee that there is no other way to know a person's ability in this world, but it is better than nothing.

～There is a possibility that some skills, such as "predisposition," are not particularly rare, but since it is impossible to determine which ones are rare, all skills are hidden for now.

It seems that status can also be hidden, but even if it is hidden, the fact that it is hidden itself will be revealed. I don't know if these values are normal, but I don't see much point in hiding them.

MP is not decreasing, so perhaps hiding does not consume magic power.

When I thought about appraising my other skills, I noticed a green dog looking at me from about 10 meters away, in the direction I had just walked, although I wasn't sure if it was from earlier.

"Grrrrr...

It seems to be threatening me. It doesn't look like he's going to let me go.