Chapter 1
“Mnnngghh…” I groan “Why do I always wake up with a damn heada-…. Where am I?” I question while I rub the sleep out of my tired eyes as I look around, I see that this is definitely not where I went to sleep. I appear to be in some kind of forest, there are trees all around, with leaves swaying in the wind, The sun shines in the sky, and green grass surrounds my makeshift bed as I attempt to sit up.
All right, there are multiple possibilities, 1. I’ve been kidnapped. Problems with that theory are who the fuck would kidnap me of all people, and why would they leave me in a fucking forest of all places… 2. I’m in a new world. Problems with this theory… well besides it being physically fucking impossible who the hell would want to go through the effort of transporting me?
Thoughts run through my head at a mile a minute, as my heartbeat quickens, and I feel a sudden urge to move, or do anything. “All right, we’ll figure this out later, for right now… Breathe-“
*Beep*
Welcome Otherworlder to the wonderful world of Gesterai, You have been randomly chosen out of 7 billion other candidates to be one of the few thousand people to be brought here. Congratulations! Standby while the system activates!
*Beep*
Name: Unknown
Race:Human(Otherworlder)
Class:None
LVL:1
HP:100/100
MP:100/100
STR:10
AGI:10
END:10
INT:10
Titles-
Skills-
Unique: [Shapeshifter Lvl:1] [Temporal magic Lvl:1]
Racial(Otherworlder): [Disease Immunity] [Fast Exp&Skill Growth] [Universal Language Comprehension]
“Ughh…. Oww” A sharp pain runs through my head, as I seem to assimilate the knowledge of how to shapeshift, and use… time magic of all things. As the pain seems to subside I attempt to make use of this new knowledge “Fucking hate headaches… ok so…. This is just weird, I mean this is one of those types of worlds I guess but…” I mumble while shifting tiny bits of my arm around. “And.. Name Unknown? I’m pretty sure I had a name but… Ya know what it’s time for a new beginning… I’ll call myself Jack!”
*Beep*
Name Registered: Jack
Updating Status
Huh, It’s listening to me I guess….. Weird… all right let’s take stock, and then I can find out what the fuck to do. First, this whole system thing is…. Well not odd, I have read quite a few books about this exact topic, but I never exactly expected to be… well in a world like this? Either way not important, who knows if anything I know about the genre would even apply.
More important than my previous status as a shut-in reading books, however, are my 2 skills. They seem to have been…. Assimilated into my brain, I can use them as if I’ve been using them since I was a kid… I mean I’m only 18 so that wouldn’t be too long but still. It’s… weird to just be able to use an ability I never dreamed of using before, I mean I now have a… Female form? Which is weird to think about but also interesting… Not because I’m some kinda weird pervert but because well who was it who said ‘You live your life only knowing half of the human experience’… was that the quote? Something like that… The point being I can now know what both sides of the equation are like! The problem is shifting that much takes quite a bit of mana… in fact, all shifting takes mana, not to upkeep but to just do, minor things like shifting more mass into a fist don’t take much but the full shifting of the body takes quite a lot. Next is Temporal magic, which for all its potential power, seems to take up quite a bit of mana. Well, I can speed up my body and perception, and slow down the enemy, but for now, that seems about it.
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As I continue ranting, an unfortunate character flaw of mine, I start walking in a random direction. I mean, I think it’s north but I can’t see the sun, and even if I could I wouldn’t really know, always been horrible with directions. As I pass by the trees, plants, and bushes, trying to stop myself from tripping over the random felled logs, I continue to ponder the implications of everything I now know.
“Disease immunity is a racial skill? What to like keep us from getting sick from new world viruses… I guess that could be a problem, don’t want us to die from catching a disease, that’d be pretty pathetic” I mutter to myself “And skills in general… what are they? Should I start just throwing out random punches like a damn idiot… at the very least the unique skills should level up from use” I say as I shift into my ‘Female form’… Probably need a name for her… I’ll call her Elaine!
*Beep*
Name Registered: Elaine
Updating Status
“Wait… What?” I freeze “My… forms have names? That might be convenient if there’s an analyze skill or something I suppose. Although the whole [Shapeshifter] thing would give it away right?” I mumble to myself as I take in the new form, It feels… weird, not even in the normal sense of weird, but I feel like I’ve been living as a woman all my life. You’d think it’d feel odd to all of a sudden have boobs, and no longer have a... member, and It probably would if I didn’t have the [Shapeshifting] skill. It’s probably helping by smoothing over the transition, it just feels weird for it to all… feel normal I guess?
“Although my clothes do feel a bit stretched at the chest now…” I mumble to myself as I continue to walk through the forest, hearing the birds chirping in the distance. This world still has birds, or maybe it’d be weirder if it didn’t, in fact what is this world… Gerai, was it? What is it like? I mean I’d assume western fantasy- no I’d hope western fantasy, if it’s some kind of weird sci fi world, or if it isn’t even populated by humans, or any other fantasy race I know… That’d be problematic. Thinking about that I realize that my clothes are different than what I went to sleep with, rather than my normal T-shirt and sweat pants, a medieval European style white tunic, along with black pants and brown boots. It’s kinda pathetic that it took me so long to realize that I wasn’t even wearing the same damn thing I went to sleep with, feels like a big detail, to be fair though I have been distracted.
Although, why would I be wearing something different? Is the system or whatever else power at be that sent me here trying to allow me to disguise my status as an Otherworlder? And if so will that (Otherworlder) sub-race or whatever it is next to my race title even show up if analyzed? Can other people even see my status? So many questions… I mean, while we’re asking, let’s get a list of questions I need the answers to. First, what the hell are skills I mean I know what skills are, but they always have some kind of nuance in every book I read, so like… do all skills act like unique skills in allowing me to use them intuitively, or are do only unique skills act like that? More to the point, whatever they do they are sure to be useful, so how exactly do I acquire them? Swing a sword 100 times to get [Swordsmanship]? Second, It said that I was ‘Randomly chosen out of the 7 billion other people to be one of the few thousand people to be transported to Gesterai' or something like that, does that mean that everyone on earth was a candidate? Or were these candidates chosen out of 7 billion people from several different worlds to be here? For that matter, are there only a few thou-
As my mind ran in circles, I hear water running in the distance, and see a small creek through the trees. “A creek? A creek means a river, and a river means civilization!… Maybe” I reason to myself as I walk towards the clearing. Coming up on the small water source, I look at my reflection and see… A young adult woman, with short silver hair, wearing misfitting clothes with a curious expression on her face. “Huh, so that’s what I look like in this form that’s… I don’t know how I feel about that, although I am rather pretty, although is it impressive for this form that it’s bigger than my old body, or was I just pathetic?” I laugh at myself while I take in the surroundings, It was more of the same that I’d just been through other than the small stream. Some red flowers lay across the river bed, the grass was overgrown, and the trees were aplenty. The stream was running down… West I think? I mean the sun is shining in the opposite direction, and I just woke up so that sounds right.
“It doesn’t exactly look like anyone’s been here in a while… maybe if I follow the creek, I’ll find a river, and if I find that maybe I’ll find… well anything.” I reason while following the only direction the small stream is leading. As I follow it I think more about how my life led me up to this point. I was a recent high school graduate, taking a year off… doing whatever justifying my procrastination with the reasoning of ‘I’m finding what I want to do in life’ before I went to college. I had a fairly normal life, well whatever you’d call normal, I only had 2 friends, only one of whom I talked to often, the other was… weird. I did read a lot of these litrpgs as they are called, so I’m not unfamiliar with the whole idea of a system governing everything, I just don’t know how to take the idea that there is an actual world that runs off a damn game system. It just seems so odd, for a world to be dictated by it, or is it even dictated by it? How much damn power does the system have? Is it just showing up for m-
“ya know what, that’s enough of that, I’ll find out when I find people! And if I run myself into circles with questions about the world itself, not only is it unproductive, but I’ll drive myself damn crazy!” I say, louder than I really meant to “Ya know I should try something… Status!” I say out loud feeling more than a little embarrassed.
*Beep*
Showing Status…
Name: Elaine
Race:Human(Otherworlder)
Class:None
LVL:1
HP:100/100
MP:90/100
STR:10
AGI:10
END:10
INT:10
Titles-
Skills-
Unique: [Shapeshifter Lvl:1] [Temporal magic Lvl:1]
Racial(Otherworlder): [Disease Immunity] [Fast Exp&Skill Growth] [Universal Language Comprehension]
“Grrrrrr”
All my thoughts stop, and my body freezes, as while I’m looking through my status I hear a growl behind me.