"Where am I?" thought JohnWillStab in a state of shock.

JohnWillStab opened his eyes.

"Wait... wasn't I just with Lorb a second ago? Was that a dream?"

He looked down at his clothes and confirmed that they were the clothes he wore in the game at level one.

He felt the cool grass below and the gentle breeze above.

Above him, treetops obstructed the sight of what would have surely been the night sky.

"So... I've actually been isekaid? ... for real... and it looks like I'm back to square-one at least when it comes to the equipment..." he thought missing his expensive dagger.

He sat up and looked around, he was in a forest, seemingly alone.

"I can see, even though it's dark..." he thought looking down onto his hands, the colours all seemed normal, it's as if you just increased the brightness slider in a game.

He stood up, patting his clothes clean from the bits of grass only to feel a strange lump on his torso, two lumps actually.

"What the hell?"

He moved his hands over the spot a few more times over.

"I'm too skinny for man-boobs!" he thought moving his hands towards his face and feeling no moustache.

Speechless, JohnWillStab was starting to sweat, or rather he would have if he wasn't an undead.

"No..."

His hand slowly wandered down to where his "blade" should have been.

"NO..."

He felt around feeling a deep feeling of despair, as something very important to him was lost.

"WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON!?" he called out into the night, clasping his hands over his mouth when he heard his voice, it was clearly the voice of a woman.

"What the fuck happened?!"

"Where'd my dick go!?" he called out once more before punching a nearby tree.

The pain took a while to register, but when it did JohnWillStab pulled his arm back as he let out a yelp of pain through clenched teeth.

"LORB YOU ASSHOLE!"

JohnWillStab took a second to try and collect his thoughts.

"Alright... so I guess I've been isekaid now... and the rest should be somewhere here too... I should find them before the level-difference gets too big!"

"It looks like I'm in some forest... it might be too optimistic of me to assume it's the level-one zone, Grimwood... but it does resemble Grimwood... which means there should be a town nearby!"

"Wait, do I even have a starter weapon?" he reached his hand down to his hip and pulled out an iron dagger.

"Good... I have a dagger... I'm still a spear short though..." he sighed.

He started walking, he was undead, so hunger and thirst shouldn't be a concern for him, but being eaten by a wolf would be a problem.

"I sure hope there aren't actually any wolves around here... or sp-"

His words were cut short by the sound of rustling leaves above.

"Shit." he jumped back seeing a white sack hit the ground and pop releasing several webs.

"Spider!" he called out.

He was dressed in the default undead-dagger clothes, a black greatcoat, black boots, trousers and a white blouse with a red ribbon.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

From the feel of it, his hair was still the familiar ponytail and bangs look, though both got a bit longer.

The spider hissed as JohnWillStab took aim with his dagger, he wasn't sure how - but he suddenly felt uncanny confidence in his skills, everyone was set to be level one again, so JohnWillStab was by all means weak.

He flanked the spider, jumping at a nearby tree before launching himself at the arachnid, his blade penetrated the orange, fluffy hide of the spider, a yellow-green slime oozed out from the wound, moments later the spider fell from the tree along with John who's blow was softened by the spider's insides.

"So there are still spiders here..." he sighed, he felt a slight tingling on his right hand as a tattoo he (obviously) didn't have before appeared on the back side of his palm. "Level 1 - 12 / 100 XP" moments later it faded away.

"Of course there's a progression system..." he sighed.

He poked the place where the level info was with his finger.

Text appeared listing off his stats, there were only ten of them, stamina, strength, athletics, intelligence, dexterity, magic, perception, luck, charisma and weapon-skills.

The name of the stat, as well as its level, was printed on each finger, for example, JohnWillStab's middle finger had the luck stat on the inside and magic stat on the outside.

At the centre of his palm were the previously mentioned level and XP info.

"Alright, at least I can track my level and XP."

In the centre of the other side of his hand were his class and race info.

"Race: Undead human."

"Primary Class: Dagger"

"Secondary Class: Fist"

"Auxillary Class: Tenecirus"

JohnWillStab's eyes widened a bit.

"I still have the tentacle class?"

"Nevermind, I have bigger problems at the moment!"

He tapped his right hand again and the stats and XP info disappeared.

He looked at his coat and saw that it was bathed in the disgusting liquid from inside the spider.

JohnWillStab looked at the spider once more and noticed something strange, a rectangular organ.

He moved in closer, since when did organs take such geometric shapes?

As soon as he placed his fingers on the hard, smooth surface the box opened, almost like a blossoming flower.

JohnWillStab recoiled his hand, he jumped back bumping into the tree from which they just fell.

After a few seconds of nothing happening, JohnWillStab looked back to the spider, the organ was hollow, inside were two glass bottles of some green liquid, and a dagger, with a clean white blade covered in black tendrils.

"Is that... a loot crate?" he wondered.

"No... more like... a loot-organ?" he decided.

JohnWillStab grabbed both of the items.

"What is this liquid...?"

He picked the bottle up and looked at it closer, the liquid inside was green and see-through.

The bottle itself had a paper label attached to it.

"Weak poison antidote." it read.

JohnWillStab grabbed the bottle and slipped it into his pocket, suddenly he realised his pocket seemed a lot bigger on the inside than it did on the outside.

"What the hell?!" he placed the other bottle in his pocket, he looked inside and from the looks of it, a bottle which should take up the entire pocket by itself only took about one-eight of the single pocket.

"Is this meant to be like an inventory system?" he wondered grabbing the blade, as soon as he took it he noticed another thing, three small coins.

They looked like gold, but seemed too sturdy, on each coin was a "1" engraved.

"Sweet! It dropped money!" he exclaimed, he tried to pick all of the coins up in one go but as soon as he put too much pressure on the overlapping coins, two of them merged, the "1" being replaced with a "2".

"Woah!"

he grabbed the two coins carefully.

He put them on top of each other, but nothing happened, then he applied a bit of pressure and the coins merged again, this time a "3" appeared on the now single coin.

JohnWillStab tried un-merging the coins.

He tried shaking it, putting pressure on it, but nothing happened, instead he broke it in half, the two halves taking the shape of individual coins, one reading "2" and the other one "1".

"What a convenient system..." he thought before merging the coins and tossing them into his pocket.

He looked over to the spider corpse.

"God, I hope there are no lost kids around here this time..." JohnWillStab thought before laughing.

"This all feels so nostalgic!" he exclaimed.

JohnWillStab started walking once more, he had no idea where to go, so he hoped that if he just kept heading in one direction he'd leave the forest eventually.

"This was the first quest I did alone, when I still had really low reputation and when I met Arachnophobia."

He stopped.

"Arachnophobia... oh shit what about my pet!" he called out.

"Menu!" he called out, but nothing happened.

"Pet menu!"

"Pets!"

"Pet!"

"Animal!"

Nothing worked.

"Inventory!"

"Bags!"

"Skills!"

"Creatures!"

Again, nothing - looks like menus weren't part of this world in any way.

"Arachnophobia!" he called out in grief as a meow came from behind, he spun around and saw the cat, dark blue, almost black fur and kind yet tired-looking eyes that gave off a faint, green glow.

"Oh thank god, you're alright! Guess I just needed to call you by name, eh?" he laughed.

She meowed.

"I feel a lot better now..." he let out a sigh, falling onto his back only to feel a sharp pain from behind, his vision went dark as a voice whispered into his ear, the voice sounded cold, like it was violating his very existence.

Like it held his lungs in a vice and was slowly twisting it shut.

"You have died..." the voice announced.

"I WHAT?!"

"The reason for death was... " the voice hesitated.

"...What? What's the reason for my death?!"

"You died because of a pointy rock... you fell head-first onto the rock..."

"Congratulations... you're the first person to die in this world." the voice sounded less evil and cold and more disappointed.

"Anyway - you have the option of either respawning here in ten minutes or respawning at the nearest town now, otherwise you can have your soul annihilated." the voice explained.

"I'll take the town-respawn!" he wanted to say that but he didn't have a voice or mouth, he was just an instance of consciousness.

That said, the voice seemed to know what he thought because it said: "So be it, you will be resurrected at a nearby town, know that for every death, your XP penalty grows."

"Since this is your first death, you XP penalty is zero-XP out of your twelve-XP. the next penalty will be one-XP and will double every time you die. If you don't reach the required XP penalty your soul will be annihilated." explained the voice.

With that JohnWillStab felt his mind go blank.

Moments later he opened his eyes and saw himself in the centre of some town, tall, gothic-style buildings, an inn, a blacksmith, a few houses and a small general-goods shop.

A cobblestone road and tall lamps.

JohnWillStab looked around seeing no players or NPCs around the town.

"So I really did get transported into a world that resembles the game I used to play back on Earth... I'm a level-one undead, stuck with what most would call the worst class choices possible..."

Arachnophobia appeared behind him, sitting down beside where he stood.

JohnWillStab felt a grin spread across his face.

"I can't wait to get started!"