Fuck.

Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Fuck.

Looking around at the mountains around me, there isn't much else to say.

Not, when a minute ago I was inside my favorite game store, back in Philadelphia, talking to the guy that ran the d&d oneshot we played that afternoon. The game was already done, and we went on to talk about a strange character concept, like what character I would like to live as if I were isekai'd to a xianxia world…

Figures that I shouldn't have said yes to his last question about actually crossing over.

Because I did. I fucking said yes, and I fucking crossed over, and now I'm here in the middle of fucking nowhere, and the asshat that sent me here isn't around for me to rip apart!

I felt justified in my rage, but some more detached, more clinical part of my mind was becoming more and more alarmed. The anger I felt was fast becoming all encompassing, and soon, strange, new instincts were beginning to take over.

My clothes felt unbearably restrictive, so I began ripping them off, every single piece of them. Then, with a mighty roar and a strange, breaking, crunching noise, I felt my insides rearrange themselves as my perspective started to change: my eyes were getting further away from the ground, right until I fell forward, coming to stop on my hands that were turning into the large, clawed paws of a bear.

The last thing I remembered was starting off in the direction of some strange shrieking birdcall that came from the forest a bit further up the mountain.

***

When I came to, I was lying in a ditch, next to a recently upturned tree, my hands and face full of quickly drying blood. My mouth tasted metallic, and I had to pluck a feather from between my teeth. I kind of expected to be nauseous but felt nothing of the sort.

Everything seemed to point to the fact that I really got the character I asked for, a dwarven werebear. Fuck.

I took stock of myself: physically I seemed fine, no injuries, no random tufts of fur left over from my transformation – though that did not seem to stop me from being covered in a surprising amount of coarse, rusty red body hair. Under all that I was stocky and extremely well-muscled, though not to an over-exaggerated level. Still, looking at the definition of my arms, and the obvious power in them, I was not at all surprised that I managed to tear out a whole tree in my rage.

My mind wasn’t in such good shape: the shock of my situation was only exacerbated by my loss of control. Only the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to stay myself prevented me from flying into another rage. Sure, being a werebear does sound nice, as an abstract idea, when you are talking about it with a beer in your hand, inside a nice, cozy bar with a new friend. Regeneration, multiple forms, claws the size of daggers, more strength than you know what to do with. What wasn’t mentioned as more than a quick aside was how the werebear side came with instincts of its own, violent and unrestrained, perfectly willing to take control.

And even if we had taken the time to talk about it, nothing can prepare you for the feeling of foreign thoughts taking over your mind and snuffing out your awareness, only to later let you wake up to deal with the consequences.

The idea that those instincts would take over again, that I would have to live with periodically loosing myself to some madness I was injected with, was absolutely abhorrent to me. I would need to seek out a way to wrest back control and cage them up, before they turned my life into an even bigger hell than it currently was.

Instead of wallowing in hate and self-pity, I decided to get back to where I started, to get my clothes back and because the place should have also had all the stuff I chose when creating this bloody character.

Well, I should probably stop referring to it as a character, given how this seems to be the new me…

At least the trail I left was easy to follow, even after I made a swift detour to the river, I could hear nearby to wash myself off. It wasn't all that big, no more than 20 feet across, but it was clear, and I took my time, even as cold as it was. My new body could take it.

Walking back, I relished in the fact that I wasn't limping: growing up and living with a shorter left leg in my original body, it was downright delightful to be able to walk normally.

Not much of a silver lining, to be honest, but I'll take what I can get.

It took me about an hour to get back, at least that's how long it felt to me. This was enough for the sun to set completely, but dwarven darkvision came in handy and allowed me to find the place.

The campsite was as I left it, a cliff wall with a moderately sized cave opening wrapped around a small clearing, surrounded by old growth forest.

It was pretty much empty, except for the clothes I have stripped off, but a quick look inside the cave showed a large pile of supplies.

I quickly got dressed and went to check out the stuff in the cave. Looking the pile over, I found pretty much exactly what I have expected, food, various tools and whatever useful supplies I managed to look up in the various rulebooks and online resources or managed to convince Liam I should be able to have when setting up my character.

I planned on going over all of them, both to check that I got everything and to familiarize myself with the different items. But that was for later, for now I went straight to the most prominent item, a finely crafted axe, about as tall as my new form, with a large bearded axehead and a completely metal shaft wrapped in leather.

When we were designing my character, we spent quite some time on what weapon would suit them best. I wanted something that would work in both my regular form, as well as in my bipedal werebear form, as well as bring out the best of my enhanced strength. We considered maces and other blunt tools, but in the end kept to the classics: a sufficiently large and heavy axe. We got some reference numbers from the internet and did the napkin math to see if scaling those numbers up would remain viable...

Had I started out with regular human strength – even on the top end of what is possible on Earth – the axe would have been way too heavy to use at 25 pounds. But I had enhanced strength. Better yet, I had multiplicatively enhanced strength: both my nature as a werebear, as well as the two feats I ended up with doubled the scale on which my initial strength operated, resulting in a total multiplier of 8. And the equivalent of a bit above 3 pounds on what was practically a polearm in my hands was more than manageable.

Picking it up and swinging it around a couple times confirmed my expectations: I wasn't struggling at all. I wouldn't be using it one handed, at least not until I can figure out how to shift to my bipedal form, but that had more to do with relative mass than with me not being strong enough.

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The other prominent item on the top of the pile was a large, leather-bound book, probably containing the instructions to my classes and cultivation in general – but as darkvision only goes so far, I had to leave that one for later.

The rest pretty much seemed as it should be, bags of grains and flour, a pair of empty barrels, two buckets, dozens of empty sacks, rolls of canvas, rope and string, bundles of candles, bottles of lamp oil, various tools, three javelins, a whole bunch of pots and pans, including a Dutch oven and a cauldron. And a small, five-gallon barrel of beer.

Wanting to be able to take a look at the book, I decided to try and get a fire going, so I went and brought back some dry branches from the forest and proceeded to build a nice little fire near the entrance to the cave.

I'll have to admit that it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get the initial flame with just the tinderbox from my supplies, but some liberal application of lamp oil did the trick, and soon I had a good fire going.

The light it gave off was enough to allow me to read, so I got the book, but after I read the first few sentences, I went and got the barrel of beer, along with a wooden mug I found among the cooking supplies. Because the book started with a letter from Liam.

So I poured myself a pint of what turned out to be a rather good dark beer, drowned it, poured another one, and got to reading:

Hey Quen,

How do you like your new surroundings? A beautiful view, fresh air, the sound of birds, plenty of ki for a beginner. Perfect, right? Bit of a shame that there's no people around, but that's what you wanted, so who am I to argue and convince you otherwise?

Anyways, seeing that you are reading this message, you have found your stuff. Everything is there. Mostly. I mean, I had to make some changes, as this world doesn't exactly work like the game back home, so instead of your axe being actual adamantium, it's steel that's been reinforced by ki – same difference, really, but transparency and everything, you know. Also, the spice pouch you wanted wouldn't work as is in this place: items that are capable of charging themselves are considered, and, well, actually are, rather high-end things, so I changed around some things: it will still give you whatever spices you want, but instead of doing so on its own power, you'll have to feed it your ki. To make up for this, I enhanced its capabilities a bit: instead of just spices, it will be able to make you any edible liquid you want as well. Oh, and as that wouldn't work with a pouch, I made it into a cup. Have fun figuring out the details!

As to the questions you most probably want to shout right into my face, let me start with "why": because I wanted to. I realize it's whimsical, but you have to have some eccentricities if you actually want to live after cultivating for centuries, and not just survive. On their own the locals either go zen and detach themselves from the world, or they start to play power politics and lose themselves in the struggle for more of the same. So, shaking the place up with a couple of new faces will do some good, especially as I am both giving you all a leg up as well as choosing you for how much mayhem you may create based on your characters and ideas.

Yeah, you are not the first I brought over, and you won't be the last. And there are others here, who arrived on their own, without my interference – how else would I have first crossed over if there wasn't a natural way to do it?

As for the next big one: I will not be bringing you home, but nothing prevents you from finding a way on your own like I did. Don't worry too much about how long it's going to take: there is some variance, especially when I travel a lot, but usually each year back on Earth means three or four centuries here. Counting local years for the latter.

Here's some practical knowledge for you as a bonus: while the local days are practically just as long as back on earth – about 23 minutes longer, if you want to go into the details, the years are much longer, 517 days each. Makes for long winters in this fine valley of yours.

And the last question I will answer for you: you are on your own from now. You have what you bargained for, you have your chance. I will be looking, but I am not going to interfere like a hand of god to save you. You live or die by your own luck and ability.

Now on to more important things: your future. You really choose the hard way, asking for only an instruction book for your classes instead of the knowledge directly, but on the other hand, you were right that it does give you more potential – so long as you don't fuck it up. So here is some advice regarding cultivation to get you on the right path:

The locals would tell you that cultivation is like architecture: building something impressive out of the different building blocks available to you. They say that body reinforcement is the foundation, on which you build, with your dantian, your soul realm and your inner world. Leaving behind the earlier techniques, concentrating solely on whatever new things they managed to get their hands on. And they would be wrong.

No, cultivation is more of a multiplicative system, where each of those elements can be trained separately, pretty much without any limits. Just doing one or the other is obviously not as effective, but theoretically simple body reinforcement could get one into the same leagues of power I'm operating in.

So, my recommendation would be to never stop training with any of the early methods just because they are seemingly superseded by a more powerful option, but to do both – or rather all you have access to – instead. Yeah, this is slower than just jumping all in on the new stuff, but if you wanted fast, you wouldn't have chosen to forge your own way like this.

You being a werebear and having access to the knowledge regarding your classes is also going to give your cultivation additional dimensions: options and specific techniques that would otherwise be unavailable to you. You won't be locked into a level progression for these, but neither will you gain anything by reaching some arbitrary milestone or anything. And do take into consideration that spreading yourself too thin or trying for things you aren't ready yet are real dangers you will have to overcome.

As for the knowledge you have actually chosen to directly start with, well, I found that it's best not to dump it all at once on people. So, for the next week or two you'll be remembering things that you never previously learned. Both sleep and using the knowledge help speed up the process.

One more thing: if you ever get into a detailed discussion with the locals regarding cultivation, they'll warn you against doing things recklessly for fear of deviation or some other such nonsense. Quite simply you don't need to give a flying fuck about those warnings: while deviation exists, its nature is completely different from what the locals believe. They think deviation is a consequence of not following their cultivation manuals and thus introducing impure ki to their bodies. That's bullshit.

Here's the truth: ki harbors intent. Both inherently and intentionally. The ki in a person's body is subconsciously exposed to the survival instinct of said person – which can be translated as it gaining a basic intent of survival. This helps in many ways: people without explicit cultivation knowledge can still train, just by taking in ki into their bodies, and it will work as a non-structured version of body reinforcement. Among other things, it will prevent such pesky little things like cancer as you know it.

The trouble starts when a cultivator tries to add some new kind of intent to their ki intentionally: the survival intent needs to be either replaced or brought into harmony with the new type of intent. There are many methods to do this, but the problem is that these methods aren't perfect – or rather, that people can make mistakes using them. And a serious enough mistake may bring the intents into uncontrolled conflict, making the original survival intent run wild. Detached from the whole of the person, their idea of self, just clinging on in specific areas of the body not cleansed of it yet. Now, imagine what that does to the previously suppressed cancer cells in these areas. Yeah, it's not pretty.

Anyway, your nature as a werebear and the regeneration it grants you prevents this from happening to you. I won't go into the details of why now, but I'm pretty sure that you'll figure it out on your own. Eventually.

Looking forward to what you make of yourself!

Best of luck,

Liam Devonshire, a.k.a. Li'am, the World Shaper

It wasn't an overly long letter, but I was on my fourth beer by the time I got to the end. A part of it was the number of revelations included, the other part was the implication of how little Liam cared for my and others' lives and how callous he was about dropping us into what amounted as hostile territory. At least I had a measure of immediate power stemming from my nature as a werebear.

I decided that I had enough shocks for a single night and went to dig out the bedroll and the blanket from among my supplies and go to sleep, instead of continuing with the book.