When I blinked my eyes awake, I saw the blue sky through some leafy branches of the trees surrounding me.

There was a brief moment of confusion before I remembered where I was and what I was doing. Once again, I let out a little whine, but promptly got up and looked around myself.

Nothing had attacked me during the night. That was great and all, but… part of me felt a sinking feeling. The idea that I was completely alone in this world was disturbing and I really hoped that it was just this forest that was empty.

Shaking these thoughts away, I stretched with a yawn before my stomach grumbled.

“Ugh… good morning, chat… I really need to find food soon…” I said in a daze and took a deep breath before grimacing. “Ugh… and a shower…”

I was still covered in blood – although it had dried up already – and all the sweat from yesterday’s action didn’t help either.

And then I finally looked at the chat window and froze.

FouxMoux: morning!

0ur0br0s: so it’s real?

Eclipsoon: g morning

UglyRestart: finally

jifLover67: heya

mountchestnut: use appraisal

lovingh8ter: sup

brocode420: show us fire breath

I was greeted by a whole slew of messages, some of them saying good morning, some demanding I show them some of my skills, others spamming random nonsense, and all sorts of other things that I couldn’t even parse. The messages were popping up so fast that I could barely keep up with the relevant ones. Most of them were from viewers who I had never interacted with before.

“Wha– Uh, hey everyone! Welcome! Why are there suddenly so many people, though? Did I go viral?”

Once again, messages flooded my chat window and I could only pick out some keywords before they were pushed off-screen by new ones.

From what I could gather, I was apparently super famous now? Because another popular Vcuber had shouted me out? And also the Snitch admins were mad at me?!

“What?! Why?! What did I do?! Hacking… What?! They tried to ban me, but couldn’t?!” I stared in disbelief. “I didn’t hack anything! I’m the victim here!”

There was a wave of skeptics as usual, but now it was balanced by a different wave of people who fully believed the reality of my situation. It was split pretty evenly now, but it still annoyed me how many people continued to think that my situation was just some game.

That aside… There seemed to be a Snitch admin in chat, demanding that I take down my stream, saying that their company would sue me for hacking and other cyber crimes. I could barely catch what he was saying with all the other messages, but I caught enough.

“I can’t turn off the stream!” I opened up the description of the Streamer skill again and pointed at it. “See right here? ‘This cannot be turned off.’ I can’t do anything about this! Whoever set all of this up won’t let me! And no! It wasn’t me! I’m not a hacker!”

I huffed to myself.

What a thing to wake up to. But this kind of nonsense was something popular streamers had to deal with all the time, wasn’t it? Well, aside from the hacking allegations thing.

“How many people are watching right now anyway…?” I idly asked as I stood up and made my way over to the goo lake again in lieu of a proper breakfast.

My jaw dropped when I got replies. “What?! Five… six thousand?! That’s crazy! That’s a hundred times my normal viewership! Aaaah! What am I supposed to do now?! Why did it take getting isekai’d for me to finally get popular?!”

For a second I was torn on feeling happy at the popularity and overwhelmed by the number of eyes on me now. Then I shook my head and decided to ignore the anxiety and just be happy about it for the time being.

Meanwhile, the Snitch admin continued to badger me without giving up just yet.

“Look, I’m sorry… Michael… but I can’t do anything about it! I didn’t even know it was all streamed to Snitch until chat told me yesterday! If you find a way to take the stream down, then… go ahead, I guess…” It pained me to say it, but I also didn’t want any legal trouble.

Which was probably kind of silly to worry about considering I was in another world and currently slowly starving to death.

Well, whatever.

Mr. Michael, the Snitch admin, didn’t take well to my response anyway and promised to sue me up to my eyeballs and send all the cops after me. I just grunted at him in annoyance. Not like I could really do anything about it.

As I made it to the goo lake, I briefly contemplated bathing in it, but quickly dismissed the idea. I still ate that stuff, I wasn’t going to dirty it.

Then I remembered what I’d done yesterday just before going to sleep – buying the appraisal skill – and decided to finally test it out.

Just like with the heat vision, it didn’t take me long to find the subtle mental switch, although this one was a little different. Rather than a literal light switch, it was more like a gun I could fire once I had an appropriate target. The goo in front of me was acceptable, so I fired off my mental appraisal gun at it.

Life ooze

A clump of highly concentrated Ether mixed with water.

I blinked at the floating blue window.

“Huh… Neat. So this stuff is pure Ether? Or like… distilled Ether, I guess?”

I hummed and nodded to myself, before reaching into my pockets and pulling out the bottle once again.

I used appraisal on it.

A bottle of Refined Life ooze

A glass bottle filled with Refined Life ooze - A clump of highly concentrated Ether mixed with a small amount of water and Intra.

“We were right, chat! It’s the same stuff… Actually not quite. Apparently it has… Intra mixed in too? That’s the other kind of ‘mana’ right?” I said as chat messages poured in even faster than before.

It was honestly hard to read any of them at this point. That was… unfortunate, but hey. Popularity came with a cost, I supposed. Dammit, I might need to get the admin rights upgrade soon just so I could appoint some mods.

I grunted – which sounded a lot cuter with my tiny vocal cords than it would have before – as I placed the bottle on the ground and scooped up some of the goo – Life ooze – from the lake and ate it again, instantly feeling more awake.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I wonder what the difference is between them? Appraisal uses Intra… heat vision too. And fire breath uses Ether…” I frowned. “Some of the upgrades mentioned using more Ether and Intra. Hmm…”

I shook my head.

“Well, anyway. Since I have appraisal now, I should use it on everything!” I cheered and unsheathed my sword – which was still glowing, albeit much dimmer than yesterday – before appraising it.

Ether Volt

A blade with Ether-reactive circuitry etched in it, allowing the user to channel Ether through it, turn it into electricity, and shoot it out in bolts.

“Ether-reactive! Now it makes sense… Wait, bolts of electricity? I have a lightning sword? The heck? That never happened! It just started to glow! How am I supposed to make it shoot lightning?”

I frowned at the thing before waving it around, trying to get lighting to shoot out without success.

“Lightning bolt!” I shouted as I pointed the sword at a tree.

Nothing happened. Besides my face flushing in embarrassment, that is.

“Ahem… How does this work…?”

I brought the thing closer to my eyes to inspect it and after a brief moment of deliberation, I decided to carefully touch the glowing blade with my fingers. Luckily, it didn’t zap me or anything, it just felt warm and… I could have sworn I felt some faint buzzing there.

I scrunched up my expression as I tried to guide that energy or activate it. It said ‘channel Ether’ so I assumed that since I had Ether in me, I should be able to do that. But I had no idea how.

I huffed.

“Where’s a tutorial when you need one…?” Maybe channeling my Ether was a skill I needed to learn first? Or maybe it required a specific skill first? I had no clue.

I blinked as I remembered something.

“Wait, hold on…”

I navigated into available skills and opened up one of them just to look at the description again.

Craftsman:

Infuse Ether into your tools and hands to more easily create products from raw materials.

Empower - Infuse Ether into the resulting product, making it sturdier and more powerful.

“This is it, right…? Well, maybe not… It’s meant to be for something else. But maybe it will give me an idea at least…?” I hummed. “Hmm, I guess that decides what I’m going for next… Unless I’ll want to upgrade the skills I have…”

I shook my head and put the sword back in its sheath.

“Anyway! What else?”

I sat down and began emptying my pockets and using appraisal on everything just because I could.

First was the pen I’d found in the dungeon.

Ether-powered pen

A pen that automatically uses the wielder’s Ether to create and erase its ink.

“Oh, hey! It is a magical pen! I didn’t even notice it was draining my Ether. I guess it only uses a little bit…? Wait, doesn’t that mean that it’s practically an infinite pen since my Ether regenerates?” I blinked, then frowned, then shrugged. “That’s… cool, I guess. Doesn’t really help with the dungeon or the food problem but hey. Nice to have.”

Next thing I fished out the damn ‘Good luck! ;)’ message and the envelope it had been in.

Paper

A high-quality paper with a message on it.

Envelope

An envelope made out of high-quality paper.

I stared at the two little windows deadpan.

“Thanks, appraisal, I would have never guessed,” I said, my voice dry, before grumbling, “I guess it was too much to hope I would get some clues from it.”

Next up was the shard of my egg’s shell.

Egg shell shard

A shard from an egg you yourself have hatched from. Due to the personal connection you have with this item, it is usable as an incausal rift key.

I stopped and blinked at the unexpected bold text.

“...An incausal rift key? What the heck is that?” The term felt somewhat familiar… Where had I seen it before?

I pondered about it for a minute as I stared at the egg shard before noticing some viewers spamming ‘Limit break’ in the chat. My mouth made an ‘o’ shape as I requested the system to open the description of Limit breaks again.

I quickly skimmed through the text, mumbling the description to myself, until I found the key word.

“...Completing a limit break will unlock a new tier of all skills… skill slots… Oh here! Allow you access to incausal rifts and memory temples.” I hummed.

“Right… So it’s something to do with after I cause myself long-term trauma. Uh huh. Well, never mind then. Guess the fancy bold text is completely irrelevant then,” I announced before a wave of annoyed messages came through the chat.

I ignored them, of course. I had no plans on ever doing this limit break, after all.

Lastly, I fished out some of the coins I’d gotten from the dungeon.

Fate Weaver coin (copper)

A lowest denomination divine coin made by the Fate Weaver. A hundred copper coins can be fused into a single silver coin with the use of Ether.

I stopped and blinked before reading it again.

Fate Weaver? Fate Weaver?!

Combining this description and the fact that I’d found these coins in a dungeon… It implied that the Fate Weaver was the one to create the dungeons too. And if it had created the dungeons, had it also created the system itself? Was this Fate Weaver the god of this world? Surely not, right?

Right…?

…It said divine coin, though.

I shook away these thoughts.

I was probably overthinking it. And even if this Fate Weaver was the god that created everything then… Well, why not? The title was probably just a coincidence.

“...Huh. Well, alright then. I guess it’s just this world’s currency,” I said out loud, not letting my thoughts show. “Still don’t get why there’s an eight… or infinity on them.”

I briefly stopped, as a very good idea for why an infinity symbol would be relevant popped into my head, but I shook my head and stopped thinking about it.

“Well, anyway. That’s everything.” My stomach grumbled again and I couldn’t help but let out a little whine. “I guess it’s time to get back to the dungeon and hope to get food…”

But before I could, some chat messages caught my eye.

trelipideliberitation: clothes

I snapped my fingers.

“Oh. Right. I didn’t appraise my clothes. Let’s see then…” I closed my left eye, picked up my right sleeve, and ‘shot’ appraisal at it with my right eye.

Vcuber garb

Clothes made out of Blizzard spider silk. Provides minor protection from general damage, and moderate protection from heat and cold, and automatically adjusts its size to the wearer by using the wearer’s Ether.

“Hmm… No hints of my kidnapper here, either…” I grumbled. “Blizzard spider silk, huh? Fancy name. I hope to never see it, though. I hate spiders.” I shuddered. “And I guess this is why I didn’t feel cold sleeping out in the wild… and why it fits me so perfectly even though I have that rapid growing skill…”

I was a little torn. On one hand, I was grateful that my kidnapper had left me this so I wouldn’t freeze at night. On the other hand… screw that guy.

“Anyway! Dungeon time… Again.” I glanced at all the stuff littering the ground and moved to put them back into my pockets, but then stopped.

“Actually, why don’t I just leave most of my stuff out here?” I thought out loud. “It’s not like anyone is gonna steal it. And I doubt I’m gonna need all of this random crap in a dungeon anyway.”

It would just weigh me down. Not to mention, if I found another chest, I needed space in my pockets for the loot.

I hummed and nodded to myself before picking up just the vial of ooze and pocketing it. And then stood up and began walking to the dungeon once more.

On my way there, the chat kept flooding with more messages that I barely managed to read as they pushed each other up. Then one message stayed at the bottom instead of being pushed up like the others and my eyes went wide.

KaiEbikoOfficial: Nanaaaa what’s up?

“Ebiiiiii! I’m stuck in another world!” I shouted back with a grin as a mix of conflicting emotions flooded me.

I also idly wondered why her message in particular got pinned. Was it because I’d made her a mod? That wasn’t how Snitch chat worked, though…

KaiEbikoOfficial: whaaa

KaiEbikoOfficial: did the trucks get you?

KaiEbikoOfficial: and what’s with your voice?

“No, I got kidnapped by a phoenix! Look!” I opened up the ‘Find the culprit’ quest description. “The jerk reincarnated me and now I’m a kid!”

KaiEbikoOfficial: the heck

KaiEbikoOfficial: wait

KaiEbikoOfficial: hold on

KaiEbikoOfficial: are you for real?

“...Yeah,” I replied, my voice taking on a bit more somber tone. “There’s this whole video game system thing, and I have a skill that streams back to Earth, and I almost died like three times, and I’m literally starving to death because there’s nothing to eat here, and the Snitch admins are trying to ban me because apparently the skill hacked their site, and we can’t do that collab on Sunday anymore because I’m stuck here, and and and…”

I breath hitched and I belatedly realized that I was crying.

“Ebi… help…” whimpered as I leaned on a nearby tree and hugged myself.

KaiEbikoOfficial: holy shit

KaiEbikoOfficial: okay

KaiEbikoOfficial: okay

KaiEbikoOfficial: I got you

KaiEbikoOfficial: it’s gonna be fine

KaiEbikoOfficial: we’ll figure this out

I nodded my head and let out a pathetic, “Okay…”

Ugh… I needed to stop having these random emotional outbursts…

I blamed this prepubescent body for them.