Chapter Two - The Perks of Being a Protagonist

As my hands sunk into the soft, warm mounds on my chest all my thoughts suddenly stopped working. I even stopped coughing and retching as I stared down at the body “beneath” my eyes.

I squeezed twice, paying close attention to the sight of the thin, delicate fingers digging into the breasts which were clothed in a ragged black shirt. I could feel the sensation of the fingers grasping the pliable, but firm flesh, and also the sensation of the pliable but firm flesh being grasped by fingers.

I looked up at my surroundings with wide eyes as I suddenly realized what had happened.

I was body swapped by that assassin??

As my mind calmed down from the shock of being dumped into the middle of a dark, fetid sewer filled with rotting filth, I was able to evaluate my position more clearly and understand the situation I was in.

After all, waking up in a strange situation was the crux of being an Isekai protagonist!

A smirk grew on my face as I realized that I had the perfect solution to this conundrum. Who did that assassin think she was going up against? God King Yuto had long prepared against this kind of trickery.

Simply put, the magic was a high level soul aspect spell. It was likely at least S grade, but given that it had even passed through the passive magic ward glyphs inscribed on my armour it could even have been god-tier. Soul aspect magic itself was rare, as the ingredients and ritual requirements required to break through even the first prestige class were troublesome to obtain.

However no matter how strong the caster was, or how high level the spell, soul transference magic had one major flaw. This was that an original soul always ‘fit’ better in the original body. Like the way a transparent plastic mold fits a figurine in its original box, there’s no way that a different figure can be comfortably crammed into another figure’s box!

The whole idea behind soul transference was forcefully bumping two souls out of their original bodies at the same time, and then sending the victim’s soul far away while cramming your own soul into the victim’s body. But this was an unstable situation. As long as the victim could get back in range and deliver another good jolt, the attacker’s soul could be forced out of the victim’s body and the victim would be naturally ‘sucked’ into their original packaging.

And since I was an Isekai protagonist, I had the exact tools I needed to make this happen. Being prepared for the unexpected was the basics of becoming powerful, after all.

My smirk grew wider as I accessed my status HUD and saw the familiar coloured text and information blocks overlay on my vision.

The status HUD and all of its benefits was a special perk that only I had in the entire world. It was an intrinsic part of me, a benefit given to me when I ‘joined’ the world ten years ago. Unlike my body, this protagonist perk was tied directly into my soul. It was my soul. No matter what kind of “in-game” magic someone cast on me, it was impossible to affect the “out-of-game” elements.

And so, despite temporarily triumphing over me in battle, that assassin was guaranteed to lose the war. She had probably spent thousands of gold and planned this attack for months and months. But it would only take me two swipes of my mind to return to my castle and take back my body.

First, I swiped to my inventory screen. The contents on my body were displayed on the screen. It was currently quite empty, reflecting the inventory of the swapped body that I was inhabiting, so I paid it no mind.

The second swipe took me to my pocket dimension. This contained all my situational items. The pocket dimension was where I had retrieved the wand of teleportation, which I had used to send the assassin to the sewers. Which of course ended up targeting me after the soul swap.

In hindsight, I should have been more cautious against the intruder, not knowing their capabilities. I was too arrogant, facing off directly against the assassin when I should have let my guard deal with her. But it was the same arrogance that caused me to aim the teleportation spell for the sewers instead of the prisons in my castle. The prisons had various runes that nullified magic and would have immediately placed in me in the assassin’s grasp, so if I really had sent myself into the prisons I’d be in a much worse position.

In other words the cockiness that got me into this predicament was the same cockiness that would allow me to grasp victory. Don’t underestimate my protagonist luck, villain!

I had two items in my pocket dimension that would get me back into play. First, a scroll of teleportation that targeted a teleportation circle, a.k.a. Recall scroll. Second, a wand of force - a.k.a. Magic missile, the most basic soul aspect magic in existence! It was a targeted spell, which meant it couldn’t miss, and even though it was not a particularly damaging spell, the soul aspected damage was not something my current armour set was strong against. The spell would definitely provide enough of a jolt to the soul to push the assassin out.

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In other words, it was the perfect plan. This assassin was about to be defeated by baby’s first magic spells.

I chuckled as I stopped grasping the breasts and held my hands out in front of me to receive the items once I removed them from the pocket dimension.

The screen displayed five empty inventory slots and then stopped loading.

What?

Where was the rest of it?

Where was my masterwork vortex sword? Where was my completed Solar Champion armour set? My gold? My wands? My scrolls??

I swiped back and forth between the regular inventory and pocket dimension several times at a more and more frantic pace as my item stash failed to load.

What was this bullshit? A fucking UI error? Inventory bug?

“Where is my stuff?!” I exclaimed.

The voice that came out of my throat was high pitched and cute. It echoed through the tunnels as I sat in shock for a moment, staring at the five empty slots of my once glorious pocket dimension.

I slumped back against the rough, slimy wall as I stared blankly into space.

“It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

My confidence shattered as I thought of all the countless rare and expensive items that were now probably bugged out of existence. There was no way the assassin would have those items now, since she couldn’t have access to my “out-of-game” pocket dimension. Even if- Even if she was somehow another protagonist like me, she would gain my physical inventory, but definitely not my account stash. This was logical. There was no game or world in existence that transferred your stored inventory upon death.

So I could only conclude that all my precious gear and items had been deleted from the world forever.

Tears budded in my eyes as I felt a wave of emotion well up inside of me.

Countless hours of hard work, lost forever. Countless rare and priceless artifacts. My pocket dimension was my last hope, my last lifeline. Without it I didn’t have any options. Even if for some reason I couldn’t confront the assassin directly, my backup plan was to use the items within the pocket dimension to prove my identity.

A heavy feeling grew within my heart as I realized that I was stuck. Stuck in this weak body. Stuck in this stinky, disgusting sewer. Stuck in this stupid buggy world. I buried my head in my arms as I curled my knees up to my body.

With my eyes closed I swiped to the status page.

My god tier stats, which were all higher than 100 were gone. My God Prestige and S-Prestige classes - gone. My titles - gone.

The kingdom management tab, the artificer crafting tab, the spells tab, all gone.

With great reluctance I looked at the class info box.

Shadowed - Level 32

Tailor - Level 8

Total Level: 40

I sat up slightly as I opened my eyes as I focused on the second line.

“Tailor? What is this bullshit?”

I navigated to the class information page.

Tailor - Basic Class

Sew, weave and stitch your way to a prosperous life. Manipulate cloth and thread to make practical, functional and great looking clothing! The perfect class for an aspiring fashionista.

Stat Bonus - None

Abilities

Level 1 - Mend

Level 2 - Sew

Level 5 - Cleanse

I grabbed at my hair with both hands as I stared at the screen. Who in their right mind picks Tailor as a class? Crafting classes were the worst classes in the world! The only people who picked them were talentless nobodies whose only hope of survival was to squeak out a living selling goods on the street. This was an NPC class, not a player one!

I let out a long, tortured groan. There was no way I was staying in this body. It was already ruined. Once a person spec’d a class, there was no way to change it. When I first arrived in the world I spent three weeks researching the class system and chose Marauder for its stat bonuses and combat ability. I then avoided multi-classing for the next six months until I came up with the perfect combination of offense, defense and utility.

Marauder gave me the highest raw physical strength boosts and had a number of physical abilities. I prestiged it into Weapons Master and then Commander, the latter of which granted me the ability to effectively lead armies.

Squire was a weak and difficult class to level, but once past the first prestige it had a ton of powerful options such as Fortress and Dragoon. I took the light aspected Dawn Knight and then progressed to Lightbringer. This granted me incredible combat magic in addition to a minor amount of healing and rejuvenation.

Scribe was a utility mage that specialized in creating magical items. It lead into Tinkerer and Artificer. This allowed me to craft items that covered my weaknesses and ensured that I always had access to the strongest level gear for my level.

Together, these three classes combined into a combination which was best described with two letters.

OP.

But now some lucky jackass had stolen my body, wiped my pocket dimension and locked me into a low level character with a crafting class in its second slot.

I closed the HUD and just curled up into a ball for a long time bemoaning my fate. I wanted to die. It would be better than continuing in this messed up life.

As I moped with my head buried in my arms I felt something brush lightly against my leg. I ignored it, but then I felt more tingling sensations on my other leg, and my left arm. The sensations became enough to break me out of my inner turmoil as I opened my eyes to see numerous long, black bugs with hundreds of legs and six-inch long antennae crawling all over me.

I screamed, jerking up to a standing position as I brushed off the giant bugs, which were wrapping themselves around my limbs. I had to wrap my fingers around one of them to yank it off my arm as I threw it violently away. It hit the far wall, splattering in a gooey mess.

I jumped around, rubbing my limbs frantically until I was certain that there were no bugs on me, then I beelined it for the light that was streaming in from above.

I was definitely going to mope around and be sorry for myself later.

First, it was time to get out of this disgusting sewer!