[ Unlimited Dimensional Storage ]
Inventory: [ ??? Cube (Lv.1) ]
***
“A metal cube?”
Yuu pulled out [ ??? Cube ] from his dimensional storage. It was a metal cube with dimensions of roughly 1 centimeter on each side. He didn’t know what type of metal it was made of, but the bite test confirmed the cube to be quite solid for the teeth of someone who maxed out his stats.
Since I’m in Isekai, I should be getting a mysterious dragon egg or a cute baby fenrir or a little slimy slime, but an unknown metal cube? What can this small cube even do? YEET!
The next thing Yuu did to test the cube was to throw it as far away as possible in the direction of the distant forest. It was mostly supposed to be fun and games until he remembered he had maxed stats the moment the cube flew further and further away in front of him.
Oh, shit… Fuck… Did I just lost it?
Yuu stood up from the swinging chair to gauge how far away the cube flew before he lost track of it.
Welp. I lost it now. The only reward that I got after I got sent to this world.
He let out a sigh.
But then again, what can a small metal cube even do aside from being thrown into things or melted away to create jewelry? Let’s try to find the thing tomorrow. It might be in the deep of the forest right now, but I’m not in a particular… rush…
Yuu yawned. It seemed that he was still tired despite having taken a nap. He had already reached the door to go inside the house to sleep when he heard a loud explosion in the distance, closely followed by the system window appearing in front of his face.
***
[ Hidden Quest Completed: Destroy the Hidden Goblin Village in the Great Forest! ]
[ Calculating Rewards… ]
[ You won’t receive any new reward/s. ]
[ Transferring reward/s to ??? Cube… ]
[ ??? Cube has leveled up! (Lv.1 > Lv.2) ]
[ ??? Cube gained a new function: “Return!” ]
[ Calculation Complete ]
***
What… the… fuck…?
What just happened?
Yuu quickly positioned himself to the street in front of the house, and launched himself to the sky. In the far distance, he saw a smoke rising from a newly-made crater in the middle of the forest. At first glance, it seemed like a meteorite landed there, but his gut feeling told him that it was the place where the cube landed.
Yuu returned to the ground and found himself pacing in the middle of the empty street.
The system said that the thing gained a return function, right? How do I use it? Do I just say…
“Cube. Return.”
[ You used “Return!” on ??? Cube ]
Accompanied by the thunderous clapping sounds made when breaking the sound barrier, Yuu could feel the cube returning to him at great speed as it flew toward his location.
Reading the situation, he stretched out his right hand and caught the small metal cube with all of its recoil.
It seems like I might have underestimated this thing. To think that this small cube could pack that much punch, I might as well calls it Mjölnir… hmmm... yeah… maybe not. The cube sounded better. I wonder what would happen if I just dropped it on the ground?
Yuu let go of the cube from his hand—
Stolen story; please report.
But what if it explode?
—and instantly put himself a distance away just before it landed on the ground.
***
Fortunately, nothing happened. The cube landed safely on the ground, and Yuu let out a sigh of relief. He went back to pick up the cube from the ground.
Phew, I’m glad that nothing… happened…
Yuu yawned once again. Looking up at the cleaved moon high in the sky, he realized that it was getting late. He stored back the cube in his dimensional storage, and went inside one of the houses to sleep.
***
It was midnight, and Yuu was tossing and turning in bed. He couldn’t fall asleep. The memory of not being able to control his speed, crashing through a town, and getting covered in the guts of the people he had accidentally killed from this afternoon was haunting him.
In this kind of situation, back on Earth, he would just downed a shot of cheap sake and a couple of sleeping pills to help him fall asleep easy.
Should I try banging my head—No. Instead of falling asleep, I’m going to end up breaking the wall… Hmmm…
As Yuu was thinking of ways to help himself fall sleep, he heard low voices coming from the direction of the town gate. Focusing on his hearing, he discovered that the voices belonged to two children—a boy and a girl—who were walking into the town, and in the middle of talking to each other.
“H-Hey, A-anna, are you sure this is a good idea? W-What if there’s still a monster here?” the boy anxiously said.
“Stop being such a wuss, Will. Remember that this is our only chance to get stuff for the people back in orphanage. Also, did you see that?”
“What…? I don’t see anything. It’s too dark.”
“Here. Use my torch.”
“Please tell me that—” A sound of foot stepping into a pool of liquid “What? It’s bloo—Ugh. Oh… no—blarghblarghblargh…”
It sounded like the boy was vomiting after seeing or stepping on the unrecognizable cyclops carcass that Yuu had just left alone on the street after defeating it this afternoon.
As the boy was vomiting, the girl was giggling with delight at the quandary her friend had to endure. She stopped giggling the moment the boy stopped vomiting. She said, with mocking concern, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, thanks to you,” the boy said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “There goes my lunch from yesterday.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. We’ll get to fill our stomachs soon enough,” the girl said without a care in the world. “And, look, you aren’t scared anymore! That’s good!”
“You know that I’m going to get back at you for this, right?”
“Don’t be such a vengeful jerk. This was payback for that time you framed me and sold me out to the noodle merchant.”
“But that time was a joke!”
“Then this one’s a joke too!”
“Hey, how’s this one a joke too? Mister Chang let you go after you just apologized to him, right? He didn’t even beat you or anything. He also went out of his way to pack you some noodles for you to bring back to the orphanage. You came out livelier than ever. That—That’s a joke.”
“That was that and this is this. Ugh. Forget it. Let’s go into that house.”
“H-hey, don’t go wandering alone.”
“Yeah, yeah… Wussy, stupid, William,” Anna muttered to herself.
Anna and William were approaching a particular roadside house with a swinging chair on its front porch. Unbeknownst to them, there was also a particular otherworlder who had been waiting patiently for them inside the house.
***
The moment Anna and William entered the house, they felt a mass of overwhelming pressure weighing down on their body. They couldn’t even see the man who exuded such pressure clearly due to how dark the room was, but they instinctively knew that the man was incredibly dangerous.
[! STAY. SIT. DON’T RUN. !]
They wanted to run with all their lives, but the overwhelming pressure pressured them to be seated.
“Good. Listen to me. I need you kids to guide me to—”
Yuu stopped talking the moment he noticed that the children he was talking to were losing consciousness from the pressure.
Fuck me… I thought putting a bit of pressure on them would at least keep them from running away, but to think they'd just collapse like this… so weak… and also, so light…
He gently carried them to a bed in one of the unused bedrooms, and covered them in a blanket he found from nearby dresser.
Yuu sat on the floor beside the bed after tucking Anna and William in. Watching the two children sleep, he was reminded of moments from his youth on Earth, when he cared for his own little siblings in the same way. His mind drifted into a nostalgic reverie, filling his mind with warm childhood memories with his siblings on Earth.
Oh, man… am I glad that I’d been able to see them successfully leading their own lives just before I was being transported to this—
Yuu was forcefully pulled from the past into the present the moment he felt a gentle tug on his right hand.
Apparently, Anna had held Yuu’s little finger in her sleep.
“Mom… Mom…” she mumbled, tears slowly pouring out from her eyes.
Under the moonlight’s shine that was seeping through the gaps of the closed bedroom window, for the first time, Yuu was able to clearly see the figures of the children in front of him.
He was already suspected that the children might be malnourished the moment he carried them into the bedroom, but this was worse than he had imagined. In his eyes, they were basically skin and bones. The girl, in particular, was tiny, and almost as skinny as a skeleton. It made him wonder and feel amazed at how they had managed to be so full of life and energy while chatting away when they arrived in the town.
If I heard correctly, they came here to steal food for their orphanage, right? What kind of rundown orphanage they came from that they can’t even get fed properly, and even have to resort to steal food from other people’s home… That is just… I need… to do… something…
Yuu fell asleep in place as the fatigue of his mind finally caught up to him. He didn’t release his little finger from sleeping Anna’s hand until he woke up the next morning.