《Taken to Another World by Mistake》


 Chapter 1: The Biggest Mistake

    My story starts with a simple mistake and yet the biggest mistake of my life. At the end of English class, I got up and left. Completely forgetting my backpack. I''ve always been forgetful. I''ve never regretted it more.


    I went back to grab my bag only to see Royce, Allie, and Sebastian still in the classroom. They are all good looking, sporty, and have excellent grades. Their parents are rich and they practically rule the school. Unlike them, I was average looking if we are being kind, overweight, and my grades were "not reflective of my potential". My parents moved regularly for work so I had yet to make many friends in my new school. It was not like these three bully me or anything but we also had very few interactions. We might as well have been living in different worlds.


    As soon as I stepped into the doorway, it took me no time at all to realize something was wrong. They were standing completely still while coloured lights swirled around their feet. The first thing that sprang to mind was that there was some kind of electrical short or something and that they were being electrocuted.


    Touching someone being electrocuted just means you get electrocuted as well. That said it was not like I could turn off the power as I did not even see a cord or plug that could be causing this. So I decided that I would try to push them out of the electricity one at a time with a flying leap. Even if I got electrocuted and couldn''t move, the momentum should knock us both away from the electricity. It was the best I could of in the heat of the moment.


    "I''ll save you! Just hang on."


    I started running at Allie because we all know you should save the cute girl first. Unfortunately, as soon as I actually set foot in the classroom the coloured light gathered at my feet too. Then everything went dark.


    When I woke up, everything was white. At first when I saw white, I thought I was in a hospital room. But I quickly realized that this wasn''t a hospital room. There wasn''t a ceiling. There weren''t even walls. It was just white everywhere.


    As I lay there trying to clear the haze from my mind, I could not stop thinking about something I had read of many times. The main character of countless manga and light novels that I read growing up found themselves in the same situation when they died at the start of the story. This looked very suspiciously like that. I could not stop thinking about if this meant I was dead.


    I mean I would not exactly miss my family. Not being beaten or yelled at by my mother who became an angry drunk every night and not having to clean up after my father who became a sloppy drunk every night would be a relief. Likewise, I properly deleted my internet browsing history after a dark point in my past so there was no embarrassing material left behind for them to find. I didn''t exactly have a lot of close friends thanks to all the moving about we did.


    Still, I was too young. I did not want to be dead. I had so much more to live for. I mean I had not even been on a date yet. Surely death by coloured lights wasn''t a thing was it?


    Come to think of it, why did I even die? Did it have something to do with the odd lights around the feet of the others? I did not even have a chance to touch them or even get close to them really before everything went dark...


    Just as I was trying to make sense of what happened in front of me appeared two rather strange women. One was a beautiful young woman in a very expensive looking dress. That dressed showed off a body that any model would kill for. She had long blond hair and beautiful blue eyes filled with a sense of mischief. Well, I say that but whenever she looked at me they were filled with a look somewhere between disgust and annoyance.


    The other woman was dressed as a super strict school teacher with pale white skin, black hair and eyes that I did not have the courage to look into. She made me feel like she knew everything there was to know about me and she disapproved. She kept changing between a teen about my age, a middle aged woman, and an old crone. The different ages had the same colouring, clothes and features so I was pretty sure they were all supposed to be the same person but there was no warning for when she was going from one age to the next. Throughout the following conversation, I was thrown off my mental rails as she would be constantly changing, even mid sentence, between her three ages.


    Before they could speak, I started the conversation with my clever wit to take control of the impossible situation I found myself in.


    "Wha-" (I said)


    "*Sigh* Shut up. So this is the mistake. I knew he would be inferior to the other three but isn''t this a bit too much Arachne?" (???)


    "Well, it isn''t like we actually need him to be a hero or anything Chance. We can just put him down somewhere and leave it at that right?" (Arachne)


    "We can but then he gets to keep our blessing until he dies rather than someone that actually deserves it." (Chance)


    "Well we can''t exactly set him down somewhere he will be instantly killed. The Accords are rather strict about that sort of thing. Though I really think they should look the other way in cases like this waste of space." (Arachne)


    "I agree but they take everything so seriously. Just like someone else I could mention!" (Chance)


    "Now now, the battle between our heroes will begin shortly. There is no need to start early. Besides, we have to deal with this problem first." (Arachne)


    "Hmmm...." (Both)


    If you are wondering why I didn''t say anything during all of this, it is simple. As soon as I was told to "Shut up", I was unable to say a word. I wasn''t even able to move much of anything besides my eyes. So I became a silent observer on the discussion about my fate.


    "I have an idea. Since he was called here by mistake by both of our powers why don''t we both take responsibility for him. We will allow him to pick his gender, race, and name. Then I will provide him with a random class and random stats between 1 and 1000. Also, I will randomly determine his starting location from all starting locations where he will be safe from immediate death." (Chance)Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    "Random?" (Arachne)


    "Oh yes. Completely random! I am the Goddess of Luck after all. *wink*" (Chance)


    I''m pretty sure I wasn''t supposed to be able to see that wink but you should really turn away further if you don''t want people to see that. Also, I mean really ladies do you think you are fooling me with this? Isn''t this just you trying to find a way to kill me without breaking your precious rules? This is in now way at all how being summoned to a new world is supposed to go!


    "Excellent. I concur. Once we have disposed...I mean dealt with this mistake we can get back to what we are meant to be doing. Now then miserable sack of worthlessness, think what gender you wish to be. I can''t stand the sound of your voice so you won''t be speaking." (Arachne)


    *Hmm. I mean I already was a boy...*(Me)


    "Male it is. Well as male as something like you can ever be, as you clearly will never be a real man. Now what about your race?" (Arachne)


    *Hey! I wasn''t finished deciding.*


    "I heard you say something about being a boy. That is good enough for you. You should feel privileged that I am even paying this much attention to you. No backsies now. Look to the future and decide your race. Quickly." (Arachne)


    *Umm. Do I get to know anything about the world I am reincarnating into? What races exist? What are the characteristics of each race?* (Me)


    "Nope. The Accords do not require any of that. Just say the race you prefer so we can get this waste of time over with already!" (Arachne)


    I realized I could think without broadcasting my thoughts to these two harpies so I decided to give this choice some proper consideration. This was something that would effect me for the rest of my life. The problem is that I did not have enough information. What if this was a world of dragons and other wondrous creatures with no humans in sight? Was there magic? Was there martial arts that allowed one to become immortal? I mean I always thought it was silly to just stay human when there were so many better races out there. Elves tend to live a long time and are good at magic. So they are really tempting. But these two are not going to set me down anywhere safe and there will definitely be some kind of trap designed to kill me quickly. If I choose elf, I could potentially live for a really long time but that is only if I survive what these two have planned for me. Well in that case, maybe I can try...


    *Ancient Bloodline Golden Dragon* (Me)


    "Hahaha. Very funny. Like I would waste the power to reincarnate you into something like that. You must choose a low power humanoid. Ummm, it is not that I don''t want to spend the power but rather that this will allow you to more easily adjust to the world. Yes that is it." (Arachne)


    *Bullshit!* (Me)


    At this point, I realized that I just called out a goddess. Why did I realize this you might ask? Because my body and soul suddenly became more terrified than can be easily described. I was overcome with a fear like I had never felt before. A fear of HER.


    "You will speak with respect to me you piece of shit. Now pick your race and quickly!" (Arachne)


    Right. Race. Got to think of a race. Oh. I know. I always thought they were amazing.


    *Elf!*


    "Fine. Took you long enough. You DO know that we have MUCH better things to be doing right now don''t you? Now then, last but not least, what name will you choose for yourself in this new life?" (Arachne)


    Hmm...I really should think about this. Something suitably cool would be good. I do not want to keep the name from my last life. In that life, I was a loser. In the next one, I was going to be a hero. Maybe I should keep my last name and just change the first name...


    *...* (Me)


    "No name at all huh? Done!" (Arachne)


    *Wait! That is not what I...* (Me)


    "Shut up." (Arachne)


    And once again I could not communicate or do much of anything really. If looks could kill though...


    "I am done here Chance. I also just got an idea about what our blessing for him should be!" (Arachne)


    "Oh really! Do tell. I have had a few thoughts about it but none are really tickling my fancy." (Chance)


    "Why don''t we allow him to be able to know our thoughts about him at any time? A status window only with our thoughts about his progress included!" (Arachne)


    "Hahaha. This could be really fun! I love this idea. Well, I guess the only thing left is for me to roll the dice. Let''s see what your stats, class, and starting location will be shall we, waste of space?" (Chance)


    At this point, a giant slot machine appeared facing me. Starting from the left, there were eight windows with plaques above them. In order from left to right they read, Strength, Agility, Endurance, Magic Power, Resistance, Charm, Class, and Starting Location.


    Chance promptly pulled the lever and made a big production about not knowing how everything would come out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, every single stat eventually landed on the same thing, a single vertical line. Even someone like me could figure out that this was probably the number one in this world. Keep in mind there were 6 stats and supposedly I could have gotten up to 1000 in any stat. Yea there was no rigging going on with this machine. Definitely not. I found out later that a 0 or less in any stat would lead to instant death which is probably why my stats were as high as they were given the way the goddesses were going about things.


    My job came up blank. Apparently, I was not to have a job. At the time I hoped this meant my lack of a job would be a total cheat where I can learn any skill and become a completely over powered existence. It was either that or I was again completely screwed so I decided to assume it will be a cheat for the sake of my sanity.


    Lastly, starting location was completely incomprehensible. I mean everything up to this point had been spoken in English which I could deal with. But the location was just a bunch of squiggles. What language was that? And what in the world did it mean? Why do I have a sinking feeling about this...?


    It was around this point that I noticed I was getting very sleepy. I tried to fight it.


    "Oh how unlucky! Those were terrible but again there are no backsies okay? Well, you can always hope for better next time. Not that there is likely to be a next time but hope springs eternal right?" (Chance)


    "Right. Now that this is sorted we can finally get back to what we are supposed to be doing." (Arachne)


    "Battle of heroes! I will totally beat you this time. You don''t stand a chance against my all new heroes!" (Chance)


    "We will see about that shall we?" (Arachne)


    It was here that I finally lost the battle against my growing exhaustion and fell asleep.

 Chapter 2: Waking up in my new world

    I woke up slowly. I tried to stretch but it felt funny so I stopped. I tried to roll over and pull my blanket up but neither seemed to work. There was no blanket and for some reason moving my body felt really strange. I tried to remember where I was.


    Then I remembered that white space and those two crazy self proclaimed goddesses. Suddenly, I was wide awake and staring straight ahead trying to make sense of everything. That effort was rudely interrupted as I quickly realized that I was staring at a rather blurry green thing. Was it a tree? Maybe it was a green ceiling? The more I looked the more sure I was that the blurry green thing above me was a tree. After realizing that, if it was a tree, that would mean I was mostly blind in the middle of a forest, I decided it was definitely a roof.


    Rather than ponder more on what I was able to see, I thought it might be good to figure out why my vision was so blurry. I tried to rub my eyes but for some reason my hands still weren''t listening to me. I quickly decided to not think about that either. Why my vision was so blurry was a complete mystery that couldn''t be solved right now. Yep. No way of knowing so time to move on again.


    So this was a whole new world. I wasn''t sure if I should be excited or terrified. Once again my thoughts were interrupted by the new situation. I saw a brown dot flying toward me. It stood out because it was a totally different colour than the ceiling. I quickly decided to ignore it as it was probably just a bug and decided to go back to thinking about having been moved to another world.


    Just as I was realizing that I would be unable to see my family again, the brown dot landed on my nose. I was able to see it much more clearly now. It appeared to be a pretty little bug with wings. Around the time I was trying to decide what kind of bug it was, my world was filled with PAIN. Endless horrible pain like nothing I had ever felt before. Broken limbs were mere love taps in comparison. This pain was the worst. To be honest, at the time I was unable to think of literally anything. I was just immersed in the sensation of never ending pain.


    The pain lasted forever. No really. During all of that time, I have no memory of anything but pain. No memory of any thoughts or anything else. Just pain.


    Eventually, after a truly timeless period, I woke up to an emotionless voice. I would like to say it made some sense but it was a completely unintelligible garble. Those damn goddesses didn''t even pass on the language of this world to me. Really, they were absolutely terrible at their jobs. Where was the customer service department? You can be sure I would be sending many long complaints to their manager just as soon as I found it. I will definitely be asking for a refund...


    I tried to look around to see who was speaking but failed pretty fast. I could move my eyes but my eyesight was terrible and I couldn''t move my head at all. I was curled up on my left side and was unable to do so much as flip myself over.


    When I looked to see where to put my hands to turn over that way, I saw my body. It was not the body I remember having before I came to this world. I was naked so I could see it in all of its glory. Of course, there was not much to see really. It was wrinkly, red and tiny. I was a baby. An infant from the looks of it.


    My neck was too weak to even turn my head. My arms were too weak to turn myself over. Yea, I was stuck. I must have been a seriously newly born child. Now given that I had already been here for a while writhing in pain either I was created as a premature baby, time passed really slowly while I was in so much pain, or I just wasn''t aging after being made as a new born. Lets assume that I was premature. I did not want to try to live as an infant for the rest of my life and I didn''t want to even think about how embarrassing it would be if that pain only lasted a few minutes or something.


    To sum up, I am currently under what is definitely a tree seemingly in the middle of a forest in the body of a newborn. Yea, this new life just kept getting better and better. Well, I did not see anyone and I did not hear anyone anymore. So where did that voice from before come from? I thought that surely, I should have parents around somewhere as babies don''t just appear out of nowhere.


    "Waaa! Guwaaaa!"


    I tried calling out a few times but all I was capable of doing at this point was crying so yea. Come on parents. You already left your child to suffer horrible pain for a long time. Surely you can come get me now. Anyone?


    It was while I was waiting for someone to show up that I realized I was not in pain anymore. This was a massive improvement. I mean I can not say again how much that hurt before. I was not hungry or thirsty either. This was just weird. I have definitely been here for many days. I have no memory of eating or drinking. I spent a good while trying to convince myself I wasn''t dead and that the goddesses had really put me into a new world alive. Not that I would have put it past them to make me an elven ghost but surely they didn''t. Right?


    While thinking about this and that, I kept crying my head off. Where are they? I have been crying for ages now and no one has come. Well there are a few of those brown bugs flitting about. But I hardly think the bugs are the ones who spoke earlier given they are about the size of a grain of rice.


    Not crazy. I was absolutely not crazy. There was definitely a voice earlier. I clearly heard it. So who was talking? Were they just going to ignore a screaming child? Hey, I might be dying over here! Come check at the very least!


    No response ever came. Eventually, I had to give up on the idea that someone was going to come find the source of the noise I was making. Seriously, did I just not have parents or something?


    Once I realized no one was coming, I admit I may have spent a moment cursing those two so called goddesses. Okay so it was at least five minutes. But I think that is only reasonable given where I had ended up. I mean really in what world is it okay for a god to kidnap someone and then treat them like this. While trying to curse with all my might, I quickly realized speech was beyond me thanks to my underdeveloped vocal cords. But cursing in my head worked wonders.


    After I calmed down a bit, I tried to think if there was anything I could do in this situation. Well, other than lie here until something came to help me or eat me. That was when I remembered that the white place I met the goddesses looked a lot like what I remembered from all the various stories I liked to read about reincarnated heroes. In those novels, the heroes always have a way to display their current skills and abilities, just like in a video game or something. Maybe there is something there that will let me move about.


    I tried to call up a list of my abilities with everything I had. I spent a few busy minutes loudly thinking things like *Status*, *Character Sheet*, and whatever else I could come up with. I even tried to say them but of course all that came out was a very quiet, very hoarse "guah". Newborn vocal cords are not really up to this kind of thing.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    After that completely failed to work, I tried to calm myself down and think of what I knew about my current situation. It looked like I was in some kind of jungle. It was hot and humid. I was a newborn. I hated those two goddesses. If I saw them again I would... No that was not helping.


    The biggest problem facing me then was that I was bored. What exactly was there to do? If this were some kind of story, I would start working out to improve my physical fitness and become the world''s strongest baby. Or maybe I would start training my magic or martial arts.


    In my previous life, I was an otaku. I played video games and read manga. All of a sudden expecting me to become a muscle head or a martial arts master was ridiculous. I tried moving my limbs for a bit but I got tired quickly. While I was doing that I noticed that the little brown bugs I saw earlier seemed to like my movement and started playing tag with one another while flying around my arms. I couldn''t help but smile and let out a giggle. They are cute. With nothing better to do, I decided to watch them play.


    After a while, I naturally fell into a thoughtless state just as I had been doing while I was still in pain.


    If you are wondering how I survived for so long without food or water at the start of my life, the answer seems to be a combination of things to do with being an elf. I only found this out many years later but elves have a few amazing racial abilities. The important one here was that we are able to subconsciously take in mana from the world around us to sustain and heal ourselves. We never grow old as we heal the damage time does to our bodies and somehow manage to keep ourselves young. We do not even need to eat or drink as we instead automatically draw in energy from our environment as nourishment. There is no waste if we don''t eat anything. So even though I was laying there for so long, I was slightly less stinky than you would think.


    We also do not need to sleep. Instead, we have to meditate to rest our minds. Luckily for me, having one''s world so filled with pain that it is impossible to think of anything else seemed to have counted for the purposes of meditation so I wasn''t short on that during this initial period.


    In this way, the first period of my life passed. Waking up, playing with the bugs, and falling back into a trance. I was never hungry or thirsty which I did my best to not be freaked out about at the time.


    At first times were really rough as I did not have enough strength to turn over. So I was stuck in the same position for what I could only assume was months. I was sick a lot and when I was finally able to turn over I had some incredible bed sores. Somehow I survived all that and came out of it mostly okay. Mostly.


    Even though I survived, it was not like there were no consequences. I had scars all over the left side of my body from the bed sores and I was a bit asymmetrical because I spent so much time like that when I was so young. My left shoulder is higher than my right and my left leg is shorter than my right leg. I was sure I would grow out of it eventually. It definitely wasn''t going to be the case that I was permanently disfigured. No one liked the hunchback of Notre-Dame. I was reincarnated into this world so I would definitely be attractive. Besides everyone knows elves are hot. Yep.


    I found out later when I looked into a pool of water that my eyes were also mismatched and my face looked a bit like two face from that famous superhero movie about a man who fears bats. The hunchback of Notre Dame was able to get a beautiful wife so why can''t I? I never watched the movie or read the book but I am sure that is how that story went. It totally must have been. Definitely. I won''t give up hope.


    If asked about that time in more detail, there isn''t much detail to give. I was not able to crawl, just turn myself over. I never went out from beneath the big tree I woke up under. The fruit never fell to the ground near me so I had no idea if they were tasty.


    When it rained, I just got wet. It rained a lot. More than three times a day. Luckily the tree seemed to be on a slight hill so I didn''t drown or anything. Also, the weather was very tropical so it never got very cold. There were a few nights where I was a bit cold and the thunderstorms did not help at all. But I survived and so all is well that ends well. Right? Those goddesses have a LOT to answer for.


    Really, the only thing that saved me from going stark raving mad from boredom and despair were the bugs. I decided at some point that they looked like termites. They came to play with me every time I woke up. I mean I could not join in or anything but watching them play tag was great fun. I ended up giving them all names and inventing life stories for them, of course only in my head as I couldn''t speak very well yet.


    After about a year, the big day finally came. I had been trying to speak properly for ages. But I could feel it. Today was going to be the day. I was finally going to be able to start talking.


    There was one thing I had been wanting to say since I arrived here. Finally that day I would be able to do it. It wasn''t like the day before or any of the other days before that. Today, I would succeed.


    "Stutus"


    Almost. I could do this!


    "Status"


    Yes! It was at this point that a transparent board showed up in front of me.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Basics:


    Name: The worst name in the history of names.


    Gender: Possibly male but it would take a microscope to find out.


    Age: Oldest baby in the world, grow up already.


    Race: Weirdo.


    Job: We would say you were a vagrant but that is an insult to vagrants.


    Level: We honestly were not aware it could go this low.


    Experience: Well you are young so you can always try to get some later. Not that you will succeed but you can try.


    Stats:


    HP: Hahahaha. I....I....just can''t...it...hahaha


    MP: Oh. Hahaha. Again. Hahaha. Who knew this would be so funny?


    Strength: Might be able to lift a blade of grass.


    Agility: Makes snails look like they are gifted.


    Health: I hope you have written a will. Oh wait, you can''t write! Hahaha.


    Magic Power: Literally anything on this planet has more magic than you.


    Resistance: You don''t have any. Going to cry now, you cry baby?


    Charm: In the running for most hideous thing on the planet.


    <u>Skills: </u>


    Pain Resistance: Ah. And you even seemed to enjoy the pain so much.


    Poison Resistance: Good for when your friends try to poison you for being so ugly.


    Disease Resistance: Would be handy if it were given to someone less useless.


    <u>Achievements:</u>


    Nudist: No one wants to see that.


    Masochist: Stop hurting yourself already it was sad long ago.


    Ascetic: You might want to get closer to us but we do not want to get closer to you.


    Homeless: Are you trying to move up to being a vagrant?


    Penniless: This is what happens when people refuse to work.


    Hermit: Well more like you have no friends.


    Abandoned: You are unloved as well.


    Plague Carrier: People should definitely avoid you because of this. But they were going to anyway.


    Pious: Stop praying to us, no one wants to hear that horrible voice.


    <u>Titles: </u>


    Other world traveller: Traveller is too nice a word for someone who snuck in and is now lazing about doing nothing.


    Hero: You are the worst hero in the history of this world. Seriously we checked.


    Hated by the Gods: Just in case you were wondering how we feel about you.


    <u>Blessings and Curses:</u>


    Blessing of the Two Goddesses: Best blessing ever.


    Curse of Poverty: To have money you would need a job! Since you refuse to get a job, you do not deserve to have nice things.


    Curse of Obscurity: Not that you will have any deeds in need of acknowledgement anyway.


    Curse of Babel: We just couldn''t stand the idea of inflicting your whining on the people of our world.


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    After reading that ... lovely status board, I may have been a tinge unhappy for a while. I think screaming at the goddesses who write such things is only fair. They kidnap me into another world and then heap abuse on me. Seriously, what was wrong with them? I eventually decided to never look at that stupid thing again.


    My only friends, the bugs, flew away when I started cursing and yelling. Well, they probably couldn''t understand me very well as I could not really enunciate my words very well. But they seemed to know I was angry. It was only when I calmed down that I began to think this was odd.

 Chapter 3: My new life is not so bad

    The next day, I woke up from a deep trance with a revelation.  When I giggle or joyfully shout at my only companions, the bugs, they seem to ignore me or perhaps come over to play with me.  But yesterday when I was angry and cursing the gods, they flew off and stayed away from me.  Could they understand what I was saying?


    They were only bugs.  Surely this was not possible.  I mean really who ever heard of intelligent bugs outside of some cartoon movie.


    On the other hand, this was a different world from Earth.  Apparently, magic existed.  Even if I did not have any thanks to those lousy goddesses.  No that was getting distracted.  Anger was not going to help here.  I was thinking about the bugs.  Right.  This was a whole new world.  Anything could be possible.


    I started with a simple experiment.


    "If you can understand me, move up and down a bit!"


    Well the first attempt was a complete failure.  One of them might have moved up and down a bit but it looked like this happened more by accident than anything else.  That was somewhat expected but still disappointing.  There was no sense in giving up at that early stage though.  I had nothing else to do anyway.


    I decided to see what happened when I spoke with different emotions.  If I laughed or had fun they came closer and flew around me as if playing.  When I spoke with a normal tone or was serious nothing much changed.  Lastly, I tried to speak as if I was angry and they all flew off.  They only came back after about an hour.


    They seemed to understand my emotions when I spoke even if they did not understand the words.  I wonder if they couldn''t understand the words because I haven''t taught them the language.  It would be strange if they understood a language from a completely different world without being taught at all.  It was either that or the bugs were just sensitive to emotions the same way that house pets often seem to know when their owner is sad, sick, and so on.  I knew the second explanation was way more likely than the first.


    I decided to try teaching them my language.  Everyday I would point at things or make a certain motion and give it a name.  I kept repeating this over and over for years.


    While I was at it, I told them stories.  I did not want to forget my old life and who I was.  I did not want to forget my parents or my older brother and sister.  I did not want to forget the joys of ice cream or the pleasure of air conditioning on a hot day.  So I told stories everyday about life on Earth.  The stories started with me simply talking about my life and world.  As time went on, however, I started to use my finger to draw words or pictures on the dirt and started acting out some of the more interesting parts.


    The bugs were mostly a good audience.  They stayed and listened throughout.  Unless it was a particularly bad performance.  I could always tell if they were bored as they would just leave part way through the story if I did not keep them interested.  At least, they were honest about it.  The additions of drawings and acting was totally not because they kept getting bored of my stories.  I just liked them.  Yep.


    I would like to say that my days passed peacefully while I played with the bugs and told them stories.  Unfortunately, that was not what happened.  It all started innocently enough.  As one would expect, I became curious about the world.  I could see what amounted to a wall of green surrounding the tree I was born under.  Under the tree was just bare dirt but as soon as the branches stopped there were grasses as tall as me, vines hanging off trees a hundred meters tall, and bushes everywhere.  All the leaves were different shades of green and together formed a beautiful scene like one would expect to find in a picture of some untamed tropical jungle.


    Soon after the disastrous affair with my status window, I decided to do a bit of exploring.  I could toddle around a bit or just crawl at a fair clip so it was easy enough to get to that beautiful wall of green.  There was a whole new world out there with magic and amazing races I had only seen in 2D.  I really wanted to meet a dwarf or a beastman.  I thought that this was a fantasy world so they will definitely exist here.  I mean where I was seemed pretty remote given there was nothing but bugs and plants but it was important to get an idea of the local area before I set off on longer range explorations.


    As I crawled toward the edge of the circle of bare dirt around my tree, I was staring at the plants in front of me trying to see if I could identify any of them.  If they were the same as plants on Earth then I could eat tasty food for the first time in a long time and not poison myself.  Of course, I knew next to nothing about plants so my efforts were essentially hopeless from the start.  I''m pretty sure I couldn''t identify a potato if you plopped one down in front of me.  One never knows unless you try though so I gave it a go.


    It was as I was curiously staring at the plants from a few meters away that some of the grass was brushed aside by a creature sticking its head out to look at me.  It immediately made me think of a dinosaur.  The head was a good two meters above the ground and the mouth was full of sharp teeth.  It stared right at me and made hissing noises with a few clicks thrown in for good measure.  The head reminded me a lot of a Velociraptor or similar predators in the Jurassic Park movies.


    Needless to say, I stopped right where I was and even tried to back up.  Of course that mostly amounted to falling on my back.  There may or may not have been a puddle of liquid under me afterward.  That is a secret I will take to my grave. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    While I was lying on my back, a second and third dinosaur I had not seen leaped at me from my left and right.  Of course, the one in front of me also jumped forward towards me.  We are talking an easy three meter jump on their parts.  It was an incredible act of athleticism.  They were so fast it was more akin to teleportation than movement but there were a few afterimages in the air that hinted at what had happened.  I wondered if they had to practice jumping like this lots of times or if it just comes naturally.  It was pretty clear that I was going to be eaten by these things and yet the things that came to mind were utterly ridiculous in hindsight.


    Fortunately for me, it seemed like as soon as these creatures landed they suddenly stopped and stood very still for a moment.  Immediately afterward, they let loose some truly blood curdling screams and fell over writhing on the ground.  They seemed to be in a lot of pain.


    Needless to say I was a little surprised.  Okay, shocked and I stared at them for a solid five minutes before I was able to move.  After the shock wore off a bit, I scrambled away from them crawling for dear life back to the base of my beautiful, safe tree.  I nearly kissed the bark when I got to it.  I did not know why those creatures had fallen over like that but it was clearly the doing of the tree and I was immensely thankful for it.


    The dinosaur like creatures did not die or run away.  They just lay there screaming and twitching.  It looked really horrible.  I began to feel bad for them.  The screaming was grating as well.  I tried to think how I could help them or at least get them to go away but the noise was a huge distraction.


    I could not just pull them away from the tree as they were way to big for me to move.  A toddler can not move a dinosaur.  I tried.  I had nothing else in terms of plans so I gathered up my courage and eventually managed to force myself to touch the tail of one of them.  When it did not react, I tried to pull on it to see if I could move it.  However, I had no such luck.


    I thought maybe I could just meditate to make time pass but the screams were way too distracting.  I was getting really worn out from the excitement of the day and needed rest.  Every time I tried to get that rest though the dinosaurs would make noise and I would be completely distracted.  This went on not just for that day but that night as well.


    By the next morning, I had had enough.  Normally, I am the live and let live kind of person but this was just too much.  They had tried to eat me and now they would not let me get any rest.  I was going to put an end to this.  In the middle of the night while I was desperately trying to block out their noises, I had an idea.  I could cover their noses and mouths with dirt and then they would not be able to breathe.  If they could not breathe, then they would not be able to scream.  It would kill them but at this point it was more a matter of putting them out of their misery.  They were clearly in enormous pain so I was just doing them a favour.  Killing them was the right thing to do.  It was not at all because I really wanted them to be quiet.


    Getting up the courage to approach their heads was not easy.  There were a lot of teeth and one bite would be enough to finish me off with ease.  That is not even counting the claws on their limbs.  There were quite a few false starts before I was able to throw some dirt at its face.  The first handful went right in the creature''s eye.  Not at all where I was aiming.  On the other hand, it did not seem to even notice.


    Eventually, I piled up enough dirt to clog its nostrils and mouth around midday.  It was both harrowing and exhausting.  It was not like I had a shovel or anything.  So I had to get the dirt with my bare hands.  Toddler hands are not really large enough or strong enough to do this so it was a real struggle.  Likewise, it felt like the dirt did not want to be carried by me.  Every time I picked up a handful of dirt it would somehow manage to fall to the ground in a very short period of time.  I ended up having to push it forward with my hands.


    I only noticed that I had succeeded when I heard an incomprehensible voice emotionlessly recount something for a while.  I really wanted to learn the local language.  It would be enormously helpful to at least know what in the world that voice was saying.  When I looked back at the dinosaur I had been piling up dirt on, it was no longer breathing.  There was still a sizable space I had not managed to fill in yet.  I guessed that it was unable to get enough air through that hole and had suffocated.


    I decided to move the dirt from the first creature to the next one rather than digging up a whole bunch more dirt.  However, as I moved over to the corpse, I noticed that my whole body felt a lot lighter.  I tried standing up and walking rather than crawling.  It was easy!  I tried jumping and I fell over.  Might have gotten a little too excited there.  Still, this was crazy.


    Then I had an epiphany.  I had a status board like in a game.  I had just killed a scary monster.  Maybe I levelled up.  If so it would not be strange for my abilities to go up.  I could not contain my curiosity and opened my status window again.  Unfortunately nothing had changed.  No wait, I had a new skill, a new achievement and a new title.  The skill was Acting, the achievement was Leech, and the title was Cheater.  I will not be repeating what those toxic goddesses said to describe both of these.  Acting was probably from all of the time spent telling stories to the bugs.  While Cheater did not look like a great title to have, Leech might be a good achievement.  Maybe I became stronger because of that.


    I had a scary thought while I was looking at my status board.  I knew the goddesses had not given me a job when I was summoned here.  But under the description for experience it said "Well you are young so you can always try to get some later.  Not that you will succeed but you can try."  Did this mean I could never gain experience because I had no class.  If I could never gain experience, I could not level up and become stronger.


    I immediately closed the status window and sat down.  It was not as bad as I was thinking.  I mean they would not just ... okay if it was those goddesses they would leave me in the middle of a deadly forest filled with dinosaurs with no way to get strong enough to survive.  No, I was thinking about this wrong.  I had just gotten stronger.  Even if I could not gain experience, I could gain titles and achievements.  Rather than trying to level up, I just had to gain those things instead.


    A scream from one of the two dinosaurs that were still alive woke me up from my contemplations.  With the extra stats, I was able to quickly pile up the already excavated dirt in front of the other two dinosaurs and put an end to their misery.  Unfortunately, no new messages came from the mysterious voice.


    I went back to the tree and did my best to meditate in peace though it took a while for me to stop thinking about all that had happened that day.

 Chapter 4: Training

    The next day when I awoke, I realized several things.  The first was that dead dinosaur smells really bad.  The second was that the smell was likely to draw scavengers.  I had these realizations at almost the exact same time.  The smell pulled me out of my meditation and the sight that met my eyes when I opened them was two huge heads poking out of the greenery surrounding my tree.  They seemed to be a furred creature of some variety.  I had never seen a skunk before but I imagined this was what one would look like if it was over a meter tall at the shoulder.  The two skunks were staring at the three dinosaur corpses and drooling.  They seemed to badly want to eat a meal but were hesitating for some reason.


    As soon as I moved my legs which had become numb from staying still for so long, they turned their gazes towards me.  There was a glint of joy in their eyes as they saw me moving under the tree.  They ran forward in the blink of an eye but as the giant skunks got close to the bodies of the dinosaurs they froze and fell to the ground screaming.


    I was at a loss as to what to do.  I had just gotten the previous three intruders to be quiet and now there were two more raising a racket.  After thinking for a while, I realized that there was really no other option than to keep pushing my dirt around.  So I again got to work moving dirt.  After the second giant skunk stopped breathing, the unintelligible voice sounded out once more.  My body once again felt lighter and moving was much easier than before.


    I checked my status window but nothing seemed to have changed.  Come on goddesses if you are going to give me this horrible blessing at least change your descriptions of my stats as they go up.  This was just lazy.  Obviously my strength and agility had gone up but I was not sure about my other stats.  Also it was basically impossible to tell how much they had gone up by.


    I spent some time lamenting the fact that life was unfair and then decided to see if I was strong enough now to move the corpses.  If I could just take them away from the tree I would let the scavengers come to get rid of the smell and use the tree''s pain field to stay safe.  Unfortunately, I was still nowhere near strong enough still.  I could just about pick up the tail of one of these creatures.


    I decided to sit down on the other side of the tree from the corpses and try to ignore their existence.  I told stories to the bugs and generally did all I could to distract myself.  Of course, that only worked for a while.  About an hour after I started telling stories, another scavenger showed up.  This time it was much bigger than the previous creatures.  It looked a bit like a T-Rex.


    This was the beginning of a seemingly endless stream of creatures making their way toward the smell.  I was kept very busy just trying to deal with them one after the other.  I heard the voice speak quite a few times as the day wore on.


    By looking at the status window and counting the corpses, I was able to make a few deductions about how my achievements were working.  Leech improved my stats when I killed one, five, twenty-five, and a hundred monsters.  There were other achievements that related to a particular type of creature which appeared after I killed ten of one kind of monster.  For example, after ten of the giant skunks died, I received an achievement called Badger Hunter.  Okay so I was really not an outdoors person.  They were black and white so it was close right?  You probably can''t tell the difference either.


    The variety of creatures was not limited to just dinosaurs and badgers.  There were vultures that came down from the skies and even a mole type creature that burrowed up from the ground.  The sheer variety of wild life was bewildering really.  The only things they seemed to have in common was that they were much bigger than any animal I remembered from Earth and they all moved at a speed I had no chance of following let alone keeping up with.  After a while, I stopped paying attention to them all mostly because I was too tired to care anymore.


    When I managed to kill a hundred of these things, there was a mountain of corpses in the area around the tree.  They barely fit in the space.  Luckily at this point I tried to move one of the corpses and noticed that I was able to pull it with not a lot of difficulty.  Of course, with one problem solved, another cropped up.  As I tried to pull the corpses, whatever part I was pulling on would almost immediately fall apart and leave me holding nothing at all.  It was seriously creepy.


    After a while I had to sit down and reconsider my plan of disposing of the bodies.  I mean I couldn''t really even move them as they fell apart too fast.  The odd thing was that they seemed to be perfectly intact, minus the rotting, before I tried to move them.  It was only when I remembered something from my status sheet that things began to make sense.  I apparently was cursed in various ways.  How I got cursed is still a bit of a mystery but it wasn''t hard to guess that those terrible goddesses were at fault.  I mean not only did they leave me here alone as a baby in the middle of a forest of death but they feel the need to give me a useless blessing and curse me a few times for good measure.  How was this in any way okay?


    At any rate, one of the curses was a curse of poverty.  Given that I had such a curse and I seemed to be unable to carry these corpses for any period of time, it seemed like I was unable to carry anything with me.  I tried holding some dirt in my hand but just like with the corpses it found various ways to fall back to the ground.  I tried rolling around in the dirt to see if I could carry some that way.  I was clean again within a few seconds. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Well at least I didn''t have to worry about bathing.  There was no water anyway so bathing was a bit of a dream anyway.  I did try to take dirt baths regularly as I thought it was something elephants and the like did to keep clean so I thought it might work for me as well.  I am not sure it worked very well but it did keep down the smell so I decided that was good enough.


    While thinking about all of this I realized I was in no better position to get rid of the mountain of bodies that surrounded me.  The only plus side was that they seemed to rot very quickly and after about a week there was nothing but bones left.  It was a very long few days while I waited for that to happen though.  Thankfully no one was around to see that horrible mountain except for my bug friends.  Well, they were flitting about like always so I did not think they minded.


    At one point, I took a look down at my naked self and realized that this was going to be a real problem if I met people.  Even if I was given clothes, it wasn''t like I could wear them.  Well my hair was fairly long as I did not have scissors or anything else to cut it with.  I supposed I could just use it as a full body veil.  I might look like Cousin It but at least my bits will be hidden.


    Even I was disgusted by the left side of my body.  Those scars from bed sores and the like were terrifyingly ugly.  It might look crazy to cover myself with my own hair this way but it was way better than letting anyone else see that kind of horror.  Looks like I was going to be single in this world as well.  With this revelation I spent some time working on how I wanted my hair to fall.  It was a bit difficult without a mirror but I am going to claim that I managed it fairly well.  There was no one to tell me otherwise anyway.


    After I had recovered from the previous ordeal, I once again decided to go exploring.  As I approached the border of bare earth, a monster leaped out to eat me.  That time it was a giant cat which looked something like a lion but much bigger.  The next time it was a huge brilliantly coloured snake.  After about the fifth time, I realized something strange was going on.  It was unlikely that animals were just sitting at the edge of the area around the tree just waiting for me to come close.  But it was also the case that every time I came close there was a predator waiting to eat me.


    I should add here that being attacked over and over again by these predators was not good for my nerves.  I started to break out into cold sweats just at the idea of going near the edge of my area.  These things were no joke.  They would have killed me before I even knew what happened if it were not for this strange pain barrier around the tree.


    I spent a long time trying to understand how the monsters knew I was coming and why they were attracted to the area to eat me.  It was not at all that I was procrastinating due to fear.  I was just being thorough and detailed.  Missing something would mean my life.  That was absolutely it.  I was definitely being rational and reasonable.


    Around the time I would have turned two, I decided to begin training.  Staying under this tree for the rest of my life was not going to happen.  Instead, I needed to get out and find people.  If that was the case, I needed to first get to the greenery around my tree without being attacked.


    I came to the rather obvious conclusion that the creatures in this area must have very keen senses and they were able to easily notice my movements when I tried to approach the area outside of the tree''s influence.  So I needed to be quieter.  I needed to be like a shadow that was unseen and unheard by anyone.  Well that was the plan anyway.


    The first attempt was a horrible failure.  So was the second.  I refused to give up and did my best to train to perfection before once more attempting to approach the edge of the trees influence.  This continued for year after year.


    I used my status window to check my improvement.  There were no numbers and the description of everything remained unchanging but once I figured out how to do something I would be given a new skill.  After a month of effort, I learned:


    Stealth: A hibernating bear might not notice you if you are lucky.


    I will not dignify the goddesses description with a response.  However, periodically afterward I would hear that strange voice while practicing sneaking.  This was the only real sign I had of progress but it was enough to keep me going.


    Thanks to the endless supply of things trying to eat me while I was training how to sneak, my achievements continued to improve.  This in turn meant my stats rose on nearly a daily basis.  I would like to say that this was the start of my overpowered and free existence.  I would like to claim that I had gotten used to the oddity of me lifting massive weights with my tiny body while I ran to far off places at impossible speeds like some anime character.  However, that would be a lie.  Obviously, lifting things wouldn''t work with the curse of poverty and it wasn''t like I could exactly run far without leaving the safety of the tree.  It was seriously disheartening when I thought about it.  This wasn''t at all what was promised when reincarnating to another world.


    I eventually resorted to other ways of checking my improvement, like how high I could jump, how fast I could run in circles around the tree, and so on.  Coming up with ways to accurately measure this without equipment was difficult but ultimately doable.  For example, I created a simple sundial by putting two marks in the dirt around a rock.  Then I would count how many laps I could run while the shadow moved from one mark to the other.  To test how high I could jump, I checked my height each time against the branches of the tree.


    The biggest complication to the accurate measurement of my achievements was that thanks to my constant testing I ended up getting the skills:


    Athletics: Who would have guessed that a coward like you would know how to run?


    Acrobatics: Might be able to touch your toes one day.  Keep trying.


    It was difficult to tell whether increases in my skills or my stats were what was leading to my improvements.  Well I was running faster, jumping higher, and all sorts of things so that had to be good.  I still couldn''t even see when the monsters attacking me daily moved but I was confident that someday that would change.

 Chapter 5: My first friend in the new world

    Before I knew it, years had gone by and I looked around twelve years old. I tried counting the passing days, months, and years but it was harder than I thought. There were no seasons so I had to try to just count the days. However, I could only try to keep track of the passing days in my head or through marks in the dirt under the tree. The marks in the dirt were constantly washed away by the consistent rains and I kept forgetting which day it was after a certain point. Originally, I was able to keep track of roughly how much time had passed but after my count passed fifty years and I still hadn''t hit puberty I stopped even trying. Either, I was really bad at counting or elves take a really long time to grow up.


    I passed my days training to be stealthy, telling stories to the termites, and doing everything I could think of to avoid boredom. I tried the red fruit growing on my tree but it was both foul tasting and apparently rather poisonous as I spent a few days sick as a dog after eating it. On the plus side, I heard the level up voice afterwards and I was fairly sure that my poison resistance had increased. I climbed all over my tree and found that the bugs seemed to live inside little holes in the tree. I decided they were termites. Termites live in wood so the bugs were termites. Look it made perfect sense at the time. The tree itself wasn''t tall enough for me to get a good view of the area. All I could see from the top were the trees surrounding mine.


    Despite not eating or drinking much since I was born, I was growing up into a very big boy. My height was not anything spectacular yet but puberty had yet to hit. Instead, no matter how I looked at it, I was fat. Really fat. In fact, I could probably become a sumo wrestler just with my weight if such a thing existed here. The monsters also started salivating at the sight of me before they collapsed when they came too close to the tree. I would have gone on a diet if I knew how but it wasn''t like I could really eat less than I already was.


    I told myself my ever growing weight was why my stealth skills were progressing so slowly. It was not that I was lacking in talent it was just that I was hindered by my large size. Having limbs of different lengths did not help either. It was a bit hard to learn to walk both quietly and with a limp.


    My hair grew out nicely and I now kept my whole body covered with a layer of hair. I am sure it looked strange but at least it hid things like how fat I was, my deformed limbs, and my horribly scarred left side. I ended up parting my hair around my eyebrows so all one would see on looking at me was a pair of misshapen eyes. I have a uni brow with quite large eyebrows which made keeping the hair out of my eyes easy. I also started growing facial hair which became another layer of ''clothing'' in the future.


    I tried to teach the bugs games like tag but with limited success. They seemed to understand tag and started playing with one another but I was too slow to touch any of them or avoid them touching me so I was quickly left out. Or at least I think that is what happened. It was a lot better to think that was what happened rather than I was just going a bit crazy from the loneliness and boredom of sitting under a tree every day for decades.


    As the years went by, I was able to start to differentiate between the individual termites that came to play with me. I could identify them as individuals. Fred had a slightly longer set of wings and his back left leg was a bit shorter than his other legs. Susan had a pretty discoloration on her side. All in all the colony had thousands of bugs in it so I wasn''t able to get to know more than a tiny fraction of them. I had no idea if I got their genders right but I tried.


    As time went on the original set of bugs stopped playing with me. I guess they were all grown up and had no more time to play. Sometimes they came out to play but it was very rare. The oldest of them stopped coming all together but I was never sure why. I like to think it was just that they were too mature for it. No more childish games for them. I very decidedly did not notice that they all seemed to have slowed down considerably and looked unsteady when moving before they stopped coming.


    There were always new young ones that came out to play so it wasn''t like I ever lacked playmates. I never stopped trying to talk to them but I knew deep down that there was virtually no chance they understood what I was saying.


    Time seemed to start again in my dreary life on the fateful day I made my first real friend in this new world. As I was once again trying to teach the termites some of my words, I noticed a new termite sitting very still watching me make a fool of myself. I had not seen this one before. It did not look very healthy. Not only was it sitting still and not flying about like all the others but it also was a strange greenish brown colour and its wings looked malformed. Its legs looked fairly normal but any way I looked at it, it seemed rather sickly.


    I immediately felt a sense of connection with it. Lets face it, I am hardly going to win any beauty contests. It wasn''t like I was exactly a great example of physical fitness either given that I was both opposed to exercising more than I had to and was stuck living under this tree. I felt like I might have just met a kindred spirit.


    When I went back to trying to teach vocabulary, I kept my eyes on this new termite. I noticed that when I went over a vocabulary word it would shake from side to side at first but after I repeated myself a few times it would instead start doing back flips. Unlike the other bugs, this one seemed to pay attention to me consistently as well. The others often seemed to get bored and would fly off during my lessons.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    Given that I seemed to have a good student for the first time, I made the lesson more tailored to it. I decided that back flips meant that it had got it or it was bored with that word. Either way, when it started to do back flips, I would move on to the next vocabulary word.


    All too soon it became dark and all the bugs went back into the tree. I decided my new student would be called Gregory.


    The next day Gregory came out around midday. I noticed him after another spectacular failure to sneak away from the tree. You would think that I would eventually get used to having giant monsters jump out of nowhere and try to eat me. After the third time it happened, I decided I had enough stealth practice for the day. My insanely high heart rate was due to excitement about teaching George again. Definitely not to do with that enormous tentacle monster which almost ate me.


    I started my vocabulary lessons again straight away. Having an attentive student was really invigorating. I finally felt like I might make some progress. I of course took time out to tell stories complete with different voices, pictures drawn in the dirt and lots of acting. Gregory seemed to like these a lot. He did back flips when things got exciting or funny and there were a few voices which had him swaying side to side.


    I started to think his movements were a bit too regular. I knew I was probably going crazy as I had spent years with no company except for termites. The others flitted about playing and responded to my voice in various ways but it never felt like they were trying to learn to understand me or communicate with me. They didn''t seem particularly intelligent no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise. Gregory seemed to be responding to what I said more than the other termites. His responses seemed to actually have a logic to them and to be trying to say something. Gregory seemed to pay attention to what I was doing and tried to understand it.


    After my story was done, there was a brief pause before I tried asking him what had been on my mind for a while.


    "Do you understand me?"


    Gregory appeared to think about this for a while and then shook from side to side. I had unconsciously been taking this to mean no since yesterday. Still, he seemed to be responding to what I asked. This was a great sign.


    Over the course of the following weeks and months, Gregory seemed to understand more and more of what I said. Likewise, I got a better grasp on what he tried to tell me. On most occasions, it was easiest to ask yes or no questions that he could respond to with a shake for no or a flip for yes. If there was something complicated to be conveyed, it generally did not work.


    I tried to come up with a complicated signalling system based on Morse code but honestly I couldn''t keep track of my own code. Gregory was willing to try for a while but in the end seemed to get frustrated with the whole thing and refused to try it anymore. This was probably for the best as I could not see his legs very well in the first place. Keep in mind, all of my bug companions were about the size of a grain of rice. Their legs were obviously much smaller. Add in the fact that Gregory moved at a speed that was basically impossible for my eyes to follow and it was a recipe for disaster.


    On the plus side, I now had an audience I knew was listening. Gregory loved stories about Earth and gave me a lot of good criticism on my acting skills. He took to joining me in my attempts to sneak away from the tree. He would sit on the bangs I used to cover my face and when I made too much noise or made some other mistake would start shaking. He was a huge help. I felt like my skills progressed by leaps and bounds thanks to his assistance.


    While we did all of this, there were a few things I noticed. The first was that the other termites seemed to avoid Gregory. It was nothing terribly obvious but I never saw him playing with any of the other bugs. Instead, he spent all of his time with me. This only made me empathize with him even more. Us loners have to stay together my friend. If the rest of the world does not want us, we can always have each other.


    A very important oddity about Gregory was that he never seemed to grow up. All the other termites stopped playing with me after roughly six months or so. Gregory had been with me for much longer than this and yet a day never passed without him coming to play with me. Maybe because he was deformed, he was unable to get a job. I am sorry Gregory. We can be unemployed together. This is why I liked Gregory. We had a lot in common.


    I also found out something very surprising one day when I was trying to sneak away. That day I got much closer to the edge of the area under my tree than I usually would before Gregory started shaking. When he did so I stopped but right next to me appeared a giant snake head sticking out of the grass. In a flash, I saw Gregory appear on the snakes head. Immediately, the snake started writhing on the ground in pain.


    The shocking thing was that the snake had never come under the tree. All this time I had thought it was some effect made by the tree that was causing the animals coming for me to be in such pain. It was only now that I realized it wasn''t some field released by the tree but my friends the termites. They must have been causing all the monsters that attacked me to fall down all this time. If they had not been protecting me, I do not know how many times over I would have died by now. Of course, they were probably also responsible for that horrible pain I felt when I first came to this world. Still I am alive now and either my pain or poison resistance seems to be high enough that I am not effected anymore.


    Sweating a bit at realizing how much trouble I had been for them, I went back to the tree and repeatedly thanked Gregory. I tried to get him to thank the others as well but I was not sure how well I got that across. Gregory seemed not to understand me very well. I am sure his comprehension skills were at fault. It absolutely was not my fault. He likes to tell people it was because I was blubbering through my tears so badly that I would have made no sense to anyone but you know how he likes to make up stories. Seriously what kind of grown man would do that kind of thing. Ahem.

 Chapter 6: Growing up

    Time seemed to pass lazily.  I always felt time moved slowly but looking back at it, I have no idea how it went so fast.  As I grew up, I got even fatter.  I started to think that my deadliest attack might just be sitting on my opponents.  I must have weighed in at two hundred kilos or more.  At least, as I got older I grew to a good height.  I had no idea how tall I really was exactly but I thought it might be around two meters.


    Gregory never changed a bit over all the years.  He never seemed to age and he never seemed able to get a job.  Instead we were close as ever and did almost everything together.  He still slept in the tree at night but otherwise he was with me from morning to night.


    As the years passed, I taught Gregory everything I could.  I had gone through most of high school so it was easy enough to make sure he had basics like arithmetic and reading.  Writing was a bit of a problem for him as he was too small to make letters big enough for me to read.


    Gregory seemed to really enjoy my stories about science and history.  Of course, the history I knew was of another world and I was not sure if science even worked in this world given that it had things like magic in it.  Still I thought it was important for Gregory to learn about these things just in case and it helped me keep the knowledge fresh in my head.


    After all of this teaching, Gregory and I got a lot better at understanding one another.  It was practically telepathy.  Well I was told later that was what it looked like but in fact our communication is just a result of us spending so much time together.  As a result of this, I was able to learn many important things from him too.


    For example, one day I had an idea and asked Gregory if he could see my stats.  My status screen had no numbers attached to it.  I was curious if this was an ''oversight'' on the part of the goddesses or if everyone in this world only knew general descriptions of their stats.  There were bound to be more than termites and giant monsters in this world right?  There had to be others, I just hadn''t met them yet.


    When I asked about my idea of seeing stats more precisely, Gregory did one of his patented flips.  This got me really excited and then a sign filled with squiggles appeared in front of me.  I swear they were moving.  The sign looked like some kind of notification window you would see in a video game but it was hovering in front of me.  In real life.  I may have gotten a little excited.  After all what could be more exciting than finding out that there were more game like elements in this world.  Soon I would find out how this world worked and then make myself into the brokenly over-powered hero I was meant to be.  Any day now.


    I tried reading the squiggles multiple times but was getting nowhere no matter how I tried.  I even tried reading them upside down.  It was not funny Gregory.  I had to sit on him to get him to stop rolling around on the ground like that.  I didn''t want him to get dirty with all that rolling about in dirt that is all.  My sitting on him had nothing to do with him laughing at me non stop like that.  Besides laughing for that long can''t be good for someone right?


    Once I had settled George down, I had to figure out what in the world this thing trying to tell me.  I spent ten minutes trying to touch various bits of the window to make it go away before I finally succeeded.  Of course, as soon as I managed this Gregory just shook at me and made the window pop up again.  It was another minute before I found what was apparently the right bit and it closed down again.  This time though there was a little window with Gregory''s name and his current HP and MP below it.  I thought it was just like a video game.  I decided to just stay in a party from then on.


    After half an hour of talking and a not so fun game of guessing how low numbers can go, I learned that Gregory could see my HP and MP.  HP is a representation of how much damage one can take before they die.  MP is used to fuel magical abilities and spells.  My HP and MP were both zero.  Yes, I had zero HP.  No wonder the goddesses were laughing so hard at my status screen.  After I talked to Gregory a bit more, I learned that zero HP is merely on the verge of dying while anything less than that is actually dead.   So I could take exactly one damage before I died.


    Luckily all these years the termites had been kind enough to keep up a weak magical shield of some kind on me.  It wasn''t very strong.  At most it could mitigate the damage I would take from hitting my head on a tree branch but it was enough apparently to prevent me from having died all the times I tripped or stubbed my toe on a root.  Once I figured out what was going on I may have broken out in a cold sweat.  I definitely did not huddle under my tree for a day or so in terror of how close I was to death.  Gregory exaggerates that story all the time.  One should take what he says with a grain of salt at all times.  He is always making things up.


    Gregory had an ingenious solution to the problem of my low health.  Specifically, he was a termite who could use powerful earth magic.  Gregory was able to use his earth magic to make a protective earthen armour that would keep me safe from damage up to a certain limit which was much higher than the shield that I had up to now.  Basically, as long as the damage was not too high, I would take no damage at all.  It turned my pale skin into a tanned brown while it was on but otherwise there was no sign he had cast it on me.  As for how much damage it could take, I had no real way of finding out and we both decided it was better to not experiment.  Apparently, it was definitely not up to the task of stopping a monster from munching on me so either way I was still in constant danger of being one hit K.O.ed if I wasn''t careful.  This new armour was a huge plus for me though as it meant I essentially did not have to worry about dying from hitting my head on a low hanging branch anymore.  Gregory was the best.  I was certain that we would be friends forever.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Around this time I also learned that Gregory had two other abilities.  He could create a small amount of what I thought was acid.  It was a very powerful acid from what I could tell but he could only make a tiny amount of it.  He is tiny after all.  It was a bit of a miracle he could protect me with earth magic given the size difference.


    His other ability was to use earth magic to improve his strength.  Apparently the acid was used to weaken the wood of my tree and the strength was needed to actually eat the weakened wood.  Given Gregory was strong enough to pick up the giant T-Rex like monsters, I really did not want to think about how strong the wood of my tree was to need that much strength to eat it after it had been weakened.


    Gregory was clearly my over powered companion.  I just needed to become the even more overpowered hero.  Just for those keeping track, Gregory had at least four super cool abilities: his earth armour, his poison, his increased strength, and his acid.  Compared to my zero HP, Gregory had around a hundred thousand HP.  His MP was similar.  I will work hard in the future Gregory, I promise!


    However, Gregory''s stats presented another terrifying problem.  If a termite had that many HP, I really did not want to know how many HP the various monsters living nearby had.  If their HP was that high, how high were their stats?  They seemed to love the idea of eating me and I was clearly not in any shape to stop them.  My previous goal of becoming stealthy seemed more and more like the best idea I had ever had.  I was seriously never going to try fighting those things.  This life might be boring and filled with curses but it was the only one I had.


    I had no idea what my other stats were but I could assume they were low.  I originally found it impossible to even see the movement of the monsters jumping out to eat me. Even though it got better as that emotionless voice kept saying incomprehensible things and I gained new skills or achievements on my stats window, by the time I looked in my late teens they still seemed very quick in comparison to myself.  To put it more precisely, before it seemed like they were teleporting while after years of effort it now only appeared like they were moving very fast.  This meant the monsters had much higher agility than I did and if that stat was much higher than mine, I assumed all of the other stats would be higher as well.


    I spent a while cursing at the goddesses once I realized all over again just how deadly my surroundings were and how pathetic this form was in comparison.


    With a lot of guessing and some fairly creative charades, Gregory showed me what the other stats on my status window meant.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Job:                  This determines what bonus stats you get on levelling up and provides a bonus to learning certain skills.


    Level:              Just like in a video game this is a measure of your overall power.


    Experience:     Gained by killing things.  Needed in order to level up.


    HP:                  This is a measure of how damaged one is.  HP is equal to Health times your level.


    MP:                 This is used to cast spells.  MP was equal to the Magic stat times your level.


    Strength:         Overall muscle strength and hand eye coordination.


    Agility:            Reflexes and speed of movement.


    Health:                        Ability to resist disease, poison, and determines HP.


    Magic:             Determines MP and has a small effect on your spells.


    Resistance:      Ability to resist damage, abnormal status effects, and magic.


    Charm:                        Determines people''s first impression of you.


    <u>Skills: </u>


    These are a measure of how good you are at some activity.  Attaining higher levels of skill do not provide any bonuses.  Skills never deteriorate over time.


    <u>Achievements:</u>


    Achievements improve or degrade base stats.  Which stats are changed and by how much varies depending on the achievement.


    <u>Titles: </u>


    Generally useless but they can be a cause for fame or infamy.


    <u>Blessings and Curses:</u>


    They are given by the Gods.  They are generally permanent.


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    It took me a while to figure it out with the help of Gregory but apparently the Curse of Babel was a curse that means I am unable to speak in anything other than my native language.  This was probably why I failed at coming up with a sign language to use with Gregory.  Absolutely not because I was already terrible with languages.  I had not been looking forward to learning the language(s) of this world once I got out of this forest and found people to talk to but it was somehow worse knowing that I would never be able to learn their language and instead I would need to convince them to learn mine.


    The Curse of Obscurity did not mean that people would forget about me or find it hard to remember what I had done.  Instead, I would always remain unpopular and unknown.  No matter how heroic my deeds in the coming years might be, no one except those who were there would attribute them to me.  Even those who saw me doing something amazing might well claim it was someone or something else.  Likewise, they might decide to hog the glory for themselves or the story would not be believed by those hearing it.  If I was honest, this was the curse that I minded least at the time and has been the most annoying to deal with later in my life.

 Chapter 7: Our first time away from home

    In addition to teaching and learning from Gregory, I worked hard to master moving quietly well enough to be able to leave my tree. I did not allow myself to leave until I could wander freely around the tree without ever attracting attention from nearby monsters. When my life changed, I just wanted to make a few more tests to see if my stealth was good enough before we headed out.


    I was able to approach the greenery outside the area around my tree without any monsters trying to kill me years before. However, I was smart and kept improving my stealth skills for a few more years until I was able to succeed every time, not just sometimes. It was absolutely a decision I made based on logic and reasonable caution. It was not at all that I was terrified of all the monsters that seemed to be everywhere in this horrible forest. Yep.


    I should mention that because of all my failures there were a LOT of monsters that attacked me. I suffocated them all after the termites immobilized them with their painful poison. Of course, I couldn''t move them off into the forest so I ended up having to leave them where they fell in the bare area under my tree. This made a rather gruesome prospect over the years as the meat all rotted away but there were so many bones that it looked like some ancient battlefield. The wall of green around my tree ended up with a white ground under it made of bones. It was not creepy in the slightest. Or so I told myself every time I saw it and shuddered. It was home sweet home.


    Much as I wanted to leave this horrible place behind as quickly as possible it was Gregory who was the most reckless. He wanted to go exploring and was always pushing me to leave. Just because I could go undetected for a day did not mean I could do it every day. I needed more practice to go for a week or even a month completely undetected. It got to the point where when we played hide and seek with the other bugs they couldn''t find us.


    Then one day, I finally left my tree.


    It wasn''t entirely a voluntary decision.


    On one fateful day, Gregory and I were conducting one of our long term tests of my stealth by going around the perimeter of the area under my tree. We had been doing this particular test for over a week. Like I said before, I had to be sure I was up to snuff. Gregory seemed bored and was dozing off on my shoulder. I was in a state of constant awareness of my surroundings, not because I was terrified of being so close to being out from under the protection of my tree but because I was well trained. Really.


    Around mid morning, a rather large hole appeared in the vegetation around my tree. One moment there was an unbroken wall of green surrounding my tree, the next there was a growing hole of nothing except a black fog. When I noticed the hole it was a meter wide. Within moments, there was no vegetation on that whole side of my tree.


    I stood there completely shocked by this sudden change and Gregory seemed to be stunned too as he stood there shaking. Then a moment later, he had rushed off my shoulder and moved toward the black fog. His fellow termites had rushed out of the tree as well and were confronting the black fog. Because the termites were so small, from where I stood it looked like a brown fog was pushing back against the black fog. Lights flashed as they confronted one another. I guessed they were magical abilities but they were so small that all I could see was the flashes. It was beautiful. It was terrifying but still incredibly beautiful.


    As the conflict approached me, I realized that the black fog was made up of winged ants. Countless numbers of them were fighting my friends the termites. To my horror, I was only able to watch as the brown mass of termites was pushed back. In many ways, I was glad I was so far away that I could not pick out which termites were falling to the ground even as they fell back. It was obvious that we were losing this fight.


    I desperately wanted to run in to help but I knew I would just die for no reason. One bite would be enough to kill me since I had zero hit points. I was also a huge target which the ants would no doubt find tasty.


    While I was trying to figure out what to do, a termite I recognized as Gregory''s mother flew up to me. She seemed to be a big deal in the community but I had only seen her a few times. In her grasp was Gregory. He was missing a wing and looked to be in terrible shape. His mother wasn''t much better. She was missing a leg and had a gash along her abdomen. If you are wondering how I can see all of this on bugs the size of a grain of rice, all I can say is that my vision improved thanks to a skill called microscopic vision I seem to have gained after spending so much time around my termite friends. Gregory''s mother placed Gregory in his favourite spot on my hair and then started pulling. She was pulling me away from the battle. I thought about resisting but knew protecting Gregory was all I could hope to accomplish.


    As soon as I started moving in the right direction, Gregory''s mother left us and went back into the battle. She clearly planned to continue the fight. Even I could see her flight was much slower than normal and she was flying rather erratically. I have never felt so worthless or powerless.


    As I started to run, I unknowingly passed into the green wall of vegetation that had been my greatest fear for over a decade. All I could think of was getting Gregory and I away from the fight. We would come back when it was safe. Our termites, our people, would win and be safe. They had to be.


    I was quickly surrounded by plants of all sizes. I could not see more than a meter in front of me at most. Grass, ferns, bushes, and enormous trees were everywhere. I wished I knew more about the natural world as this enormous variety of plants seemed really strange. That said it wasn''t like I could identify them so I just tried to avoid touching anything that looked dangerous. Avoiding the dangerous plants and monsters in this horrible jungle was made significantly more difficult by the fact that my vision was blurry. It wasn''t that I was crying or anything. I just had something in my eyes. Both of them. For a few hours.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    As time passed, my feet seemed to move on their own. I was increasingly unable to think about anything except for those last moments before I fled. I completely lost track of time and just moved mechanically. What saved me was that I had been unconsciously using the stealth I practiced all day every day for years. Luckily, nothing had noticed me as I performed a heroic rescue of the injured Gregory. I only stopped running, I mean rescuing, when I thought to give Gregory some first aid.


    I found a spot that was relatively clear of vegetation and tried to take a close look at my best friend. One of his wings was gone and the other was only hanging on by a thread. I thought I might be able to staunch some blood loss by bandaging him up with a leaf. I grabbed some blades of grass and a few leaves to use as bandages but of course as soon as I picked something up my curse activated and it would fall away. I may have fallen into a small panic about my inability to save Gregory all the while once more cursing the goddesses and their parentage which clearly must have involved sludge, poison, and only the worst kind of low life scum.


    After trying to think of something, anything, I could do help Gregory, I did something I swore never to do. I prayed to the gods for help. Of course, a long time later there was still no response to my efforts. I even had the title "Hated by the gods". There was no way they would save my best friend just because I asked. After my prayers went unanswered for half an hour or so, I went back to staring at his still form and trying to think of a way to help. It was bad enough that I was not able to do anything to help when the ants came but I was entrusted with Gregory and I had to save him. He was my best friend. He had to pull through.


    After an unknown amount of time, I was able to calm down a bit and think. I realized that while my curse prevented me from bandaging Gregory with leaves or grasses, the answer to my problem was right in front of my face. I wrapped him in some of my hair, put him on the ground and then pulled the hair out of my head which I had wrapped him in. This way I was never holding anything that wasn''t a part of myself.


    After that, I could do nothing except watch over him. It was not like I had any medicine or healing abilities. It was also impossible for me to go back to the tree for help. I was not paying attention when I ran so I wasn''t really sure of the way back to our tree. Even if I knew the way, I did not want to leave Gregory alone while he was so badly injured.


    As I sat down with my back to a tree trunk to watch over Gregory, I noticed something rather important that I had missed. A half dozen meters in front of me was a small creek. On the far bank was a cave. In that cave, I could just make out the nose of a snake. It was bright red and as with everything in this horrendous forest, seemed incredibly deadly. After sitting stock still for a few moments, I realized it had not seen me. I breathed out a sigh in relief.


    I did not want to move Gregory any more as I was not sure if my curse would effect his bandage if I picked him up. Also, the jolting of moving could not be good for him. That said, I had very little desire to test my stealth skills against that snake in front of me. I would likely have to stay here for days. Even if I could go undetected for a while, I was not at all confident about staying undiscovered for as long as Gregory would need to recover. For that matter, I wasn''t sure what the snake would do if it found the badly injured Gregory.


    I decided. I had to kill the snake. I could not move because of Gregory and if it noticed me there was very little chance of it letting me live. Therefore, it had to die. It was kill or be killed. I may have come up with a lot of motivational phrases while staying stock still doing my best to not realize I hadn''t killed anything on my own since I came to this world all that time ago. I did not have any good ideas on how to kill it. Up until this point, I had only ever killed monsters that were paralysed by the pain of the termites poison. I realized once again just how helpless I was in this place without my termite friends.


    As I thought more about how to kill the snake a desperate plan formed in my head. I would wait for the snake above its burrow and when it put its head out I would jump down on top of it. I would grab it by the neck and strangle it. All those achievements had boosted my stats over the years so I thought I might be able to manage it so long as I caught the snake by surprise.


    Okay so I was clearly out of my mind at that point but it was the only thing I could think of. I was already feeling worthless after everything that had happened today. I did not want to be eaten by a monster without at least trying to put up a fight. I snuck over to the top of the snakes burrow and was trying to find a comfortable place to stand so I could pounce on the snake with a moments notice before the ground gave way beneath me. The whole creek bank collapsed at once. I knew I was slightly larger than normal but I didn''t expect this at all. So much for me being stealthy.


    I lay where I fell for a moment waiting for the snake to burrow out of the ground and eat me. Then I came to my senses and quickly moved a distance away to hide. Several scary monsters showed up after that but luckily none of them spotted me. I kept waiting for the snake to come out of its collapsed burrow for over a minute. Then I once more heard that incomprehensible voice saying something emotionlessly. I could tell my stats had risen once again as I felt lighter and stronger than ever before. I hurriedly opened my stat window and looked for new achievements. I had new achievements called Master Hunter, AOE Master, and Assassin.


    I realized that the snake was unable to burrow through the ground. I vaguely recalled hearing that snakes generally are not able to dig but I never thought things would work out this way. Hahaha. I successfully hunted one of the monsters of this awful jungle. The feelings of helplessness and weakness I had felt earlier were swept away.


    I was still terrified of facing one of the monsters of this place in a head on confrontation. But I was now confident that I could kill one from ambush if I grasped their weaknesses. With this, I was no longer at the bottom of the food chain. I was no longer helpless. Okay so once again I may have over reacted. After being pushed down for so long I may have become a bit overconfident after just one victory.


    I returned to Gregory in a much better mood only to get worried all over again as he was still not moving. I had no idea if he was even still alive. It was not like I could see him breathing normally anyway. I did not have a mirror to hold in front of his face to see if he fogged it up. That might not even work given how small he is. He is definitely not dead. His mother would not have brought him to me if he wasn''t going to make it. He just needed some more time before he would wake up.


    As I stood there once again worrying endlessly about Gregory, he did what I had been desperately hoping for and he moved. Gregory was alive. As long as we had each other, I knew we would somehow manage.

 Chapter 8: Forced Exploration

    I waited three days next to that creek so Gregory could recover enough to be moved. I was worried about the others who had defended the tree but I was also concerned about Gregory''s health. I was definitely willing to go back immediately. I was in no way terrified of going back to our tree which might have a horde of ants waiting in ambush for us. I was also sleeping soundly with no fear at all of being eaten while I slept. Because I am a courageous and experienced hero who doesn''t sweat the small stuff like that.


    I woke up on the third day to Gregory pulling on my hair. I soon figured out that he wanted to go back home. I headed off in the general direction I thought our tree was in. After a few hours of walking we came across a wasteland. It stretched for a solid half kilometre. There was no vegetation left at all. In many cases the dead trunks of trees still stuck up towards the sky but the usual clutter of greenery was gone. The trees were without leaves and the smaller grasses, bushes, and such were completely gone. It was surreal.


    Gregory ended up startling me out of the trance I fell into from this scene by pulling on my hair. When I looked down at him, he looked a bit down but was nonetheless pulling my hair wanting me to go to the right.


    Perhaps ten minutes later, we came across our home. The tree we had lived under for so many years was like the rest of vegetation. There were no leaves and nothing but trunk remained. I put Gregory down on the trunk of our tree near one of the termite holes. He crawled inside and did not come back out for a long time.


    "Did you find anyone?" (Me)


    *Shake* (Gregory)


    "No one at all? Not even their bodies?"


    *Shake*


    "That is ... horrendous."


    *...*


    "Is there a funeral you would normally give when one of you passes away?"


    *Flip*


    "Well we can at least do that for them can''t we?"


    *Shake*


    "What? Why not?"


    *Shake*


    "Do you need a special priest?"


    *Shake*


    "Do you need special materials that we don''t have?"


    *Flip*


    "Well can we get them somewhere?"


    *Shake*


    "What why not? Do you not know where to get them?"


    *Shake*


    "Well, do you not know how to make them?"


    *Shake*


    "Umm. We can''t get the materials we need to do the ceremony but it is not because you don''t know where they are or how to make them. Oh no. Do you need a body in order to have a funeral?"


    *Flip*


    "Well do you mind if I were to do a funeral the way my people did it instead? They should have some kind of send off even if it isn''t quite what they are used to."


    *Flip*


    I did my best to remember what was said at a funeral. To be honest, I was going off really hazy memories from my grandmother''s funeral when I was young on Earth and what I could remember from a few movies I saw almost two decades before. It may not have been anything close to what a real ceremony would be like but I like to think it was not so bad. Gregory seemed to like it anyway. He seemed a bit less depressed afterwards though he was still pretty out of it.


    While I wished for them to rest in peace, I also carefully avoided any reference to the gods as I was pretty sure only bad things would come of it. So far I was hated and cursed by them. I really did not want to think what would happen if I drew attention to my friends.


    We left after my brief ceremony. Neither of us could stand staying there with the memories of our past haunting us. Wandering through the unknown dangers of the jungle was way better than dealing with ghosts of the past.


    Well, we were planning to explore the surroundings anyway. So I tried to look at this as a good thing. Yea this just pushed us into taking a trip. I could finally get to see more of this world. I was going to meet people after so long. I was going to be able to have a conversation with someone who can talk back and maybe eat some delicious food. Yes, this trip was definitely going to be a good thing. We should stop looking back and instead look forward to our bright future.


    I tried to convince Gregory of this but two problems arose. First, Gregory seemed to be rather depressed and unwilling to hear my pep talk. He just kept shaking back and forth. I tried to talking louder to break through his state of denial. However, it was at this point that the other problem presented itself. As we approached the edge of the barren land eaten clean by the ants, a large dinosaur, one of the ones that looked like a T-Rex, came out of the lush jungle while looking in our direction.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Whoops. I had avoided the monsters infesting the jungle up until then by being stealthy. But I was so caught up in trying to cheer up Gregory that I forgot my surroundings. No matter how good I was at sneaking, talking loudly would give myself away.


    Well that situation was without a doubt a concern. However, rather than trying to run, I valiantly stood my ground. Gregory would later claim that I was too petrified to move but that is just nonsense. I am a brave hero. I even have a title in my status window to prove it. Just ignore all of the other titles as they are generally lies. Where was I? Oh yes, I was being brave and standing my ground without fear of the incredibly large, dangerous, and overwhelming deadly creature with massive teeth that stood before me. My knees were completely solid and not shaking at all. Again, do not pay any mind to Gregory and his crazy stories. I will say as a completely unrelated aside that because I had not had a drink since I was born it was impossible for me to piss myself even when terrified. Not that I have ever been that scared of course.


    It was just as I was about to charge the monster that Gregory just had to step in and steal my spotlight. As I was getting ready to start the fight of my life in order to protect him in his time of need, Gregory hopped off of me, ran over to the monster and made it fall over screaming. What an anticlimactic end to what should have been an amazing fight. I thought about reprimanding him but decided to say my thanks instead.


    Seriously, that poison is overpowered. A single termite just took on a T-Rex and won. I did not even see him bite the T-Rex or anything. He just touched the thing and it fell over. How do you even protect yourself against an opponent you can''t see because it is only the size of a grain of rice? It is not that I am jealous or anything, I just think that his race''s abilities are completely unbalanced.


    I briefly entertained the idea that since I was a hero (says so right on my status sheet!) maybe Gregory''s abilities are just part of my plot armour which prevents bad things from happening to me. Then I thought about that for a second in light of how horrible my life had been up to this point and decided that my idea was clearly a bad one. If this was a story it was clearly not one I wanted to be in.


    It is definitely not the case that Gregory is the overpowered protagonist of this story though. Who ever heard of a termite being a protagonist? That is just ridiculous.


    Why was I thinking these silly thoughts? Because I was desperately trying to distract myself from the fact that I was hiding behind a boulder quietly watching the T-Rex be eaten by two enormous vultures. They seemed to have been attracted by the screams of the T-Rex.


    I had killed monsters before but I had never seen a monster being eaten before. The gore was rather confronting so I was trying to think of something else while still maintaining a watch to make sure the vultures did not decide to make a meal of me. As time went on the vultures were chased away by an enormous mole which in turn moved off when a pack of what I think were hyenas showed up.


    Again, I feel like I should stress that the whole not eating or drinking thing was handy. I mean no matter how sick I feel I only at most dry heave. Not that I would have dry heaved from watching that horribly gruesome scene. I was just mentioning this because I happened to think of it is all.


    Anyway, once everything had left, I decided it was time for Gregory and I to move on. This time while we moved into the jungle, I decided it might be best to stay quiet and not try to convince Gregory to be more positive. At least I would stay quiet until we found somewhere a bit less crowded with deadly monsters.


    I did not have any direction in particular in mind. So I decided to follow the setting sun. It was a way to keep myself from getting lost in that jungle where seeing much of anything is incredibly difficult. Not that I could see the sun all that often either but I had to pick something.


    It was only now as we walked away from the tree I had called home that I really felt like I was going on a journey. Before I had been so filled with worry that I did not pay much attention to my surroundings except as I needed to in order to stay sneaky. However, this time I started to notice just how new, beautiful, and fantastical the jungle around me really was.


    There was a plant that was just floating in midair with pink and white flowers the size of my head. There was a waterfall which fell from the top of one of the giant trees and landed in a pool made of a single leaf of some strange bush. Not only were these plants things I had never even heard of on Earth, the sights were incredible. I regularly stopped to do nothing more than drink it all in. After a little while Gregory seemed to perk up as well as he saw all of these beautiful sights.


    When it started to get dark, we found a bush with a bit of space under it and a lot of grass obscuring the area. This was the closest to shelter we were going to get. Gregory seemed perfectly comfy using me as a shelter. After all these years I was used to sleeping rough like this but I still had a few thoughts of sleeping in a real bed for once before I fell into a trance to get my rest for the night. After such a long day, both Gregory and I were totally spent and unable to stay up any longer even if keeping a watch would have been safer.


    Luckily, we passed the night safely.


    While I was lying under the bush still coming to my senses after meditating, I became worried about biting insects like mosquitoes going for me in my sleep. At first, I thought maybe Gregory''s presence had scared them off the night before. After all, if I was a bug I would go nowhere near a termite with OP poison. Likewise, I had never encountered such bugs under our tree.


    Then I remembered that I had nearly been pulled out of my trance quite a few times the night before. I normally stay in one place while in a trance but last night I was tossing and turning all night. It felt like I was covered in itches and I thought I heard a voice a few times as well. I called up my status and had several new achievements like Mosquito Hunter. I looked at the dirt under me and saw the squashed corpses of quite a few bugs. I must have rolled over on them. I know I am fat but to think it really was that dangerous to be sat on by me. I decided then and there to go on a weight loss plan. I would cut down on what I was eating by 50%. Just as soon as I figured out what I was eating that is.


    By the way, I found out through trial and error later that I was not actually squashing the bugs to kill them. They have way too many HP for that. Instead I was suffocating them. They were unable to lift up my fat folds and so once I was on top of them they could not escape. Gregory was safe since he had enormous strength when using his earth magic. Apparently, the bugs I killed were of other elemental affinities.


    Seeing this, I asked Gregory if he knew why I never took any damage from being bitten by all these bugs. After a few minutes of guessing, I discovered that he kept his earth shield up on me even while we were asleep. The bugs were unable to do enough damage to break the shield so I only felt them crawling on me and was unaffected by their bites.


    I was happy not to have died to insects in the night but wasn''t Gregory a bit too ridiculous. I really wanted to have magic too. I was sure it would come in time. I didn''t have a teacher so that must be why I can''t do it. I could absolutely train up my MP without raising my level just as soon as I found someone to teach me how. And from there, I would be able to be a great arch mage casting spells left and right. I had no need to be jealous of my best friend, the termite. He just is an early bloomer while I am a late bloomer. Yup.


    Goodbye my family. The schemes of Arachne are truly unpredictable. Who would have predicted that the last survivors of our great people would be a useless cripple and an orphan of another race that we took in as bait.

 Chapter 9: Gregory and I are intrepid explorers

    From that morning on, Gregory and I tried to head West toward the setting sun to see what was there to be found. At first, I was still extremely concerned about being eaten if I drew the attention of one of the surrounding monsters. It would only take a single misstep to break a twig and that would be me done. Gregory may have spent a while pulling on my hair and getting me moving again after a few close calls. I was just tired from all the travelling after having lived under a tree for so long. Gregory is a great friend though for not judging me for getting tired so often.


    Even though I was concerned, I still snuck by many different beasts. Some were common but many were seemingly unique and each was fantastical. In many cases, they were gorgeous though I knew if they survived in this jungle they must be incredibly deadly.


    For example, we saw what I swear was an Eastern dragon and a beautiful, gloriously colourful bird fighting tooth and claw. The bird was perhaps ten centimetres tall with a beak that looked more suited to eating fruit or berries than fighting. Amazingly, the seemingly weak bird eventually won the fight and flew off after eating the dragon''s brain. Needless to say, I stayed stock still in our hiding place hoping against hope we wouldn''t be noticed.


    It was only as time passed that I calmed down and became a bit inured to the dangers which surrounded us at all times. This happened for two reasons. The first was that I realized my stats must have been raised significantly by the achievements I had attained since leaving our home tree. I could finally move at a speed that was almost comparable to the slowest monsters. I would undoubtedly lose in a fight but I could at least run away with some chance of success now if Gregory distracted the monster for an extended period of time.


    The second reason for my increased confidence was of course Gregory. Every time there was a problem or a monster noticed us, he dealt with it. Our biggest worry was always getting away from the creaming monster as fast as possible before we were surrounded by predators coming to see what all the fuss was about. His poison was incredible. His speed was top notch. His size meant nothing noticed him before it was too late. Seriously, I don''t know what he needed me for. Well maybe as bait and a way to distract everything from his approach. That seemed like too harsh of an assessment of my worth though. I was totally good for more than being bait. I just hadn''t figured out what yet. Yep.


    As time passed, Gregory seemed to get over his depression and start appreciating the beauty of the places we travelled through. While it was all tropical jungle, every day it seemed to be a completely different kind of jungle. One day we might be surrounded by awe inspiring bird songs the whole day without seeing a single bird. The next we were in an absolutely silent forest with flying frogs the colour of the sky covering the trunks of many of the trees. There was always something new and that very freshness made us both look forward to each new day.


    I think this is where we got our love for travel. Before this journey we both yearned to get away from our tree and see the wider world. However, it was a dream without substance as we had no real idea as to what was out there. As we travelled through this jungle we realized just how beautiful and wonderful this world really was. We knew that what we were seeing was only a small part of what existed. Seeing it all would undoubtedly take many lifetimes but they would be lifetimes we were happy to spend.


    I couldn''t speak with Gregory much because the noise would alert the nearby monsters. Instead, I spent a fair bit of time thinking about what I wanted to do in the future. The wonder I felt everyday made me certain that I wanted to spend the rest of my life like this wandering the world. But there are not many professions which allow people to do that. What we should do with our lives? It was no good being useless wanderers. We should try to provide some help or value to those we meet.


    I thought about being a wandering merchant or a peddler but I realized pretty much immediately that there was a problem. I could not pick up or handle things without dropping them or destroying them thanks to my curse. I could not exactly be a merchant if I couldn''t touch goods or coins.


    I then thought that maybe I should follow in the footsteps of all the heroes in the books I read back on Earth and become an adventurer. Immediately after I thought of this option, I pretty much rejected it. It had the same problem as being a travelling merchant, namely my curse of poverty made it virtually impossible. If I can''t pick things up, I can''t turn in anything as a proof of subjugation nor can I do quests to gather herbs or other materials. The other problem is that being an adventurer is dangerous. Being a traveller is dangerous too but I thought it would safe enough if I just snuck around. Being an adventurer requires someone willing to enter into life or death battles on a daily basis. Everyone can make a mistake and once they do, they will die. I would really rather choose a safer profession if possible.


    Eventually, I realized that there was a perfect profession for me. I could travel around telling stories, singing songs, and generally entertaining people with knowledge of the outside world. This would spread knowledge and brighten the days of the people around me. It was perfect.


    In games, bards are supposed to have a high charm stat. Mine is terrible. I mean I only had to look down at my misshapen body to know that I was never going to win any beauty awards. That said, if my stories are interesting enough, what I look like should not matter. A stat is not everything. I could overcome a low charm with enough experience and creativity. I just had to put in the effort. That is definitely how it is going to work.


    After I found my calling to be a wandering bard, I decided I needed to have some songs to sing. I already had plenty of stories from my time telling stories to the termites back at the home tree. So all I needed were some songs which were similarly informative but entertaining.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I tried to remember some of the songs from my life on Earth but I was never all that great with music and it had been years since I last heard them. I still remembered a few choruses but it was not enough to really cover the whole song. I decided to make up my own songs based on what I could remember of the songs I had heard back then and my own creative additions.


    Gregory was not impressed when my humming drew in a few monsters. I am sure that was the reason he pulled my hair to shut me up every time I started to hum. As my best friend, he wouldn''t hate my singing right? Definitely not.


    As we travelled, I noticed something rather important. The growth rate of the plants in this jungle was extremely quick. I pulled out a blade of grass at one point and it had regrown within an hour or so. If I started to meditate next to a sapling it might well be half a dozen meters taller by the time I woke up.


    This might help explain why there were so many creatures in the jungle. It felt like there was a large monster every two meters. This is not counting the extremely numerous bugs, leeches, birds, and other assorted creatures. There were definitely more creatures here than there would be in a jungle back on Earth. It made sneaking all the more difficult. I liked to think it was good training but there were innumerable occasions where I felt I might be more optimistic than truthful.


    One day as we travelled through the jungle, we came across a tree much like the one Gregory and I once called home. There was bare ground surrounding a tree that looked to be home to a colony of termites. At the sight of this nostalgic scene, I was overjoyed. I was sure we would be welcomed and we could use this place as a base to explore the surrounding area as I had originally intended to do with our home tree.


    Things did not work out quite as I thought they would.


    As soon as I stepped out of the vegetation surrounding the tree, a swarm of termites approached us. I could see quite a few of them glowing as they prepared to cast spells.


    Seriously, what did we do wrong? We just wanted to visit. Apparently that was not a done thing. I raised my hands in what I hoped was a universal sign of surrendering and took a step back into the vegetation. Once I took that step back the termites who were glowing stopped. Gregory stood on a leaf near me and seemed to be communicating with the other termites. I have no idea what was said but it was clear from Gregory''s movements that he was giving it his all.


    As the conversation went on Gregory looked more and more desperate. One by one, the termites of this new colony turned around and left. After about an hour, there were none left. We could see some termites flying around near the tree trunk but none came near us.


    Gregory seemed really down. I made a funny face at him to cheer him up. I am sure I was imagining it when I thought I saw a few of the distant termites fall to the ground when looking in our direction. I am not ugly enough to kill with my face. That is a complete lie. They were probably so impressed with my funny face that they were rolling on the ground laughing. Yep. That is definitely it.


    I made to once again approach the tree to see if I could talk some sense into the termites of this new colony but as I was about to take a step forward Gregory pulled me back by the hair and shook telling me not to. I looked back at the tree and saw a few termites were right at the edge of the bare ground, glowing, looking ready to fight at a moment''s notice.


    Shoulders slumped, we had no choice but to walk off.


    I found a quiet place later.


    "Is there anything we can do about our cold welcome?"


    *Shake*


    Gregory seemed even more depressed.


    We came across a few other termite colonies on our travels through the jungle but the results were always the same. Gregory and I were not welcome.


    I never knew for sure why but I thought it might have something to do with either the fact that we were foreigners or our appearance. Gregory ended up losing his other wing so he was now wingless. In addition, he had a few scars from his injuries. I could not imagine that he was a particularly attractive termite. In fact, he looked to me more like he would be a disabled one. So maybe he was turned away because they thought he would be a burden? When I asked Gregory about it, I just got a maybe in response so who knows.


    By the way, I found a still pond while we were travelling so I was finally able to see what I looked like. My face was ... well I would say only a mother could love it but I am pretty sure my mother either abandoned me upon seeing it or I did not have one. I had a serious under bite, my nose was huge, there were acne scars everywhere, and in general it looked like I had been beaten with an ugly stick daily. Combined with the scars from the bedsores covering half of my face making me look like some kind of cartoon villain, I was pretty sure I beat Gregory hands down in the ugly department.


    I thought it was horrible of the termites to not accept Gregory just because he had lost his wings. I wanted to find another reason. I mean if the termites would not accept Gregory because he was not pretty, I was worried about my own ability to be accepted in a human city given how ugly the gods had made me. So I tried to see if there was another explanation.


    The other termites at our home colony never seemed interested in exploring their surroundings. They always stayed close to their tree and never ventured out. They were happy to play with me but showed no interest in learning my language to understand what I was trying to tell them. I guessed that termites in general were incredibly insular and was left wondering how they managed to colonize new trees if they were so against travel. I was also curious why I was accepted by them at Gregory''s colony. I mean sure I was a baby at the time but I wasn''t sure why they hadn''t tried to drive me off and instead became my playmates.


    When I asked Gregory about it, it turned out that they had tried to drive me out originally. When I appeared one day, they stung me with their poison and kept doing it regularly. This is why I was in such horrible pain for my first few months in this world. Since their bite and poison do no damage, it didn''t matter that my HP were zero. They thought I would die of the pain or thirst just like all the other creatures that dared to enter their domain. However, I not only continued to survive but I even seemed to develop an immunity to their poison. Curious as to how I managed to survive, it was decided to watch me. After I started playing with young termites, their wariness towards me dropped and as the years passed I slowly became accepted as a part of the colony.


    Getting this story out of Gregory was tortuous. He could really only convey yes or no. This meant I had to guess what I thought might have happened and then change my guesses nearly endlessly until he let me know I had gotten it right.


    On a day much like the one before it, we stepped out of the forest. We stood atop a cliff overlooking an endless sea. Blue stretched in all directions while a fresh breeze blew in our faces. It was yet another sight to treasure for the rest of our lives.


    The families all reject me. They say I am not worthy to start a family. Fine. I will show them. Together we shall explore this world just like in his stories. Together we shall see what wonders this world is hiding. Together we will show those despicable goddesses that they messed with the wrong people. Who needs a family when we have each other.

 Chapter 10: Along the seashore

    As we were standing atop a cliff overlooking the sea, we saw something that arguably left an even bigger impression on us than the sea itself.  Out of the water jumped a shark that was about ten meters long.  Immediately following it were seemingly countless tentacles.  Their length was impossible to determine but a rough guess said the creature which they were attached to was enormous.  The shark was quickly caught and dragged back into the sea.  The water in is surroundings was a muddy brown for a short while before it calmed down again.  Just as it did, a giant bird flew by.  It was easily three times the size of the shark.  It looked like an eagle or hawk of some sort.  With that beak and those talons, it definitely did not live on fruit.


    Gregory and I looked at one another after the giant bird had flown by and then I stepped back into the vegetation.  I immediately decided we wouldn''t be taking a nice refreshing swim in the lovely ocean.  That looked even worse than the jungle.  Avoiding going into the water became a very high priority all of a sudden.  I took a look over at Gregory and with a single glance I could tell we were in agreement on that without even saying a word.


    It took a while for Gregory to calm down a bit after that.  I of course was completely fine and definitely was not shaking while hiding in a small tree bole.  Once everything was back under control, I had a chat with Gregory.  We decided to follow the coast to the north and see where it would take us.  The sea seemed even more vicious than the forest but it wasn''t like we had any better things to try.  Wander for long enough and we were bound to run into people.  The goddesses had said there were humanoids on this planet so people must be around here somewhere.  We just have to keep looking.


    Before we started though, I had Gregory pile up a bunch of stones as an obvious artificial monument.  I wanted to make sure that if this place was a huge island we did not endless circle it thinking we were making progress.  He seemed to misunderstand and spent two whole days piling stones in incomprehensible shapes.  I was able to figure out some of it.  There were arrows to show where the sun sets as well as where we had come from.  I have no idea what the swirls in the middle were supposed to be or why it was important for us to go down and gather some seashells from a nearby beach and stack them in piles.


    Just as an aside, beaches are also scary.  It is not just the forest or the sea.  I made it most of the way to the ocean and was watching Gregory pick through a pile of shells when a crab burst out of the sand and tried to eat me.  Luckily, I managed to dodge and Gregory was able to poison the crab before it got to me.


    However, as I tried to suffocate the crab with my now standard tactic of covering its mouth with sand, what looked like a seagull that was over three meters tall tried to eat me.  Gregory successfully took the seagull down by jumping on it while it was still swooping at me and paralysing it with the pain of his poison.  I had to do a very quick dive to not be hit by the now plummeting seagull but at least I didn''t have to worry about it trying to dive at me repeatedly.  Just as I was about to relax thinking we were out of trouble, the situation became worse.  The first seagull seemed to have been a scout as a whole flock of seagulls arrived.


    It was hairy there for a while as Gregory hopped from one seagull to the next trying to poison them all before they swarmed me.  He was jumping off one poisoned seagull onto a new seagull while both were in the air.  Apparently he could jump at least five meters in one go.  I swear he must have made it forty meters up in the air just by jumping from the back of one seagull to the next.


    I knew Gregory was a scary little termite but I vowed once again that day to never make him angry.  By the time he was done there were around fifty seagulls lying on the beach shrieking in pain.  The noise was incredible.  Even though they had come to kill me, I still ended up feeling guilty.  No matter what actually happened, after the fact it totally looked like Gregory and I were mass murders.


    I spent the entire fight playing bait and trying to avoid being hit by falling seagulls.  Not to make too much of this but those seagulls had a wing span of roughly fifteen meters and were moving at speeds that made me wonder if I heard a sonic boom once or twice.  There could be up to ten of them falling at any given time.  Mid fight, I heard that emotionless voice once again announce something incomprehensible.  When I had to check my status screen after the fight I appeared to have gained the skills Bait and Dodge.  Yep, I was definitely helpful.  As time goes on, I feel like Gregory is losing respect for me.  Sometimes these days I wonder if he is just using me as a mount and bait combined in one.  I really need to talk to him about this.  Well, he will probably just deny it all with a shake like he always does.


    Of course, I was the one left to do all of the digging required after the fight.  I had to fill the seagull beaks with sand so they would suffocate.  Having a shovel or even being able to carry sand any reasonable distance would have really sped things up and made it easier.  Gregory just sat on me and watched.  On the one hand, I couldn''t really complain as he did just save my life repeatedly.  On the other hand, that was a LOT of digging and having an extra set of ... well not hands but whatever is at the end of his legs would have been really helpful.  I spent hours dealing with those seagulls.  I did gain a Seagull Hunter achievement but somehow I could not feel terribly proud about it.


    Apparently, my stealth skills still needed refining in foreign environments, like a completely flat and barren sandy beach around midday.  I later found out the crabs were very sensitive to vibrations in the ground and the seagulls would come feed on the crabs as soon as they saw one.  Not knowing this, I was sure that my stealth skills were not good enough and resolved to spend some of the time we spent following the coast practicing being sneaky on beaches and anywhere else I could think of.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Eventually we managed to complete Gregory''s masterpiece of a marker and were able to move along the coast.  The trip along the coast was just as spectacular as our trip though the jungle.  We saw innumerable birds, bats, and other flying creatures.  The cliffs, bays, and beaches could have populated countless postcards.  The monsters were huge, deadly, and really wanted to eat my nearly round body.


    The monsters that populated the coast were very different from those in the jungle so I gained quite a few achievements.  Overall though I did not notice much of a change to my stats.  I mean it was hard to tell because I had no hard numbers and the descriptions in my stat window never changed but I was pretty sure they did not change that much.


    A few days into our journey we came across a cooled lava flow.  I have no idea how old it was but it did not seem hot anymore and there was no vegetation to be seen anywhere in front of us.  Just as I was about to start walking on the blackened ground, Gregory pulled me back by my hair.  That really hurts you know!


    Gregory wouldn''t let me set a foot forward until we went inland a bit.  Eventually, he led me to a fallen tree.  It looked like it had been knocked over recently by a storm or knowing this forest some strange monster.  He nonchalantly jumped off of me and tried to pick up the whole thing.  Of course he didn''t get far with it as there were still all the branches and what not still attached.  He then started jumping between myself and the tree.  I tried to tell him there was no way I was going to be able to carry that.  Not only was I pretty sure I was not that strong, the branches were going to be an issue for me too and my curse was going to break it as soon as I picked it up.  As soon as I thought that far I realized what Gregory wanted and went to pick up as much of the tree as I could.  Of course, after I picked it up the section I was holding broken into pieces thanks to my curse.  With that Gregory was able to carry off a more manageable section of tree that was about a meter tall and two meters long.


    I tried to explain to him that it was ridiculous for a termite, one the size of a grain of rice, to be able to pick up something that size.  Gregory ignored me and just started heading back toward the old lava flow with his new prize.  I tried picking up another part of the tree just to check the weight.  It was definitely heavy.  I was not sure if there was something incredible about this world or about Gregory but either way I realized once again that my common sense was completely useless here.


    The trip across the lava flow took a few days.  Gregory carried his log with him the entire time.  When we were attacked by the fire creatures that lived in the area he fought them and immediately went back to carrying his log.  I asked him about it quite a few times but the only guess I got right was that he wanted to have food on the trip across this barren wasteland.


    At first, I thought it was just that but he kept carrying it even after we were back in the jungle.  I will say that if my appearance was not strange enough before it became even more surreal now that I was being followed by a log.  Because Gregory was so small it was impossible to see him under the log.  So it just looked like the log was a pet following its master.


    For a while there, Gregory was really clumsy when carrying his log so we were almost constantly under attack from all the monsters around us.  I ended up having to give him stealth lessons in a desperate attempt to make the insanity end.  My life seemed to be getting stranger all the time in this world.  The less crazy option for me at this point was to give lessons in stealth to a termite so that a log could be sneaky.  If there was a psychologist around I would have gone straight away.


    I kept trying to guess the reason he was doing this until one day after we woke up in the morning he seemed to make a noise on purpose.  This drew the attention of a seven foot tall walking vine monster complete with zebra head.  They were pretty normal in this part of the forest really.  After we dealt with it, he started jumping from the things head to me and back again.  I had no idea why he wanted me to pick up the things head but I did it anyway.  After the head fell to pieces, which was horrible grotesque by the way, Gregory went into the pieces and pulled out a bright green glowing gem.  That should not be normal.  Right?  Things shouldn''t have gems imbedded in their brains.  That makes no sense.  I had to wonder if I had one of those in my brain.  The whole thing freaked me out a bit so I decided to focus on what in the world this stone was.


    Maybe it was the legendary magic stone mentioned in various light novels?  The ones that are used to power magic items, create alchemical potions, and store enormous energy which can allow beasts or heroes to level up.  While I was trying to make sense of this new found aspect of monster anatomy, Gregory carried the gem over to his log.  There he lifted up a piece of bark and stored the gem inside a cavity I didn''t even know existed.


    Apparently, for the last few nights he was hollowing out parts of his log for storage.  The only problem I had was that the size of the cavities he was making were bigger than the log itself.  Gregory was making a magic space log and acting like this was all normal.  I started calling him Doctor Gregory for a while after that but since I was the only one to understand the joke eventually I stopped.  He used bark to cover the cavities in a very clever way so even I wasn''t sure how many of them he eventually made.  I didn''t even want to ask when else he made in there as he seemed to spent a great deal of time working on the log every night.


    From that first day on whenever I killed a monster Gregory would insist on getting the magic stone from the monster.  At first I was excited because I thought they might be super rare but no they seemed to be inside every monster we killed.  Then I thought maybe I could start gaining levels by eating them but Gregory was adamant that me eating them was a really bad idea.  When I questioned Gregory he claimed he was collecting them for the log.  I tried to follow that up but failed horribly.  I had absolutely no idea why a log needed magic stones.  Ultimately, we just accumulated piles and piles of magic stones inside Gregory''s log.  He stored different colours in different cavities and even seemed to sort them by size and brightness.  It was at this point that I learned that Gregory was a bit of a neat freak.  Maybe we could trade the stones with people when we finally met them one of these days?  That had to be worth something right?


    After roughly a year of wandering the coastline, we came across a very familiar collection of rocks and seashells.  Apparently, Gregory and I had been born on an island.  Everywhere we went there were sea monsters and flying bringers of death.  It appeared we would not be getting off this island easily.

 Chapter 11: The greatest escape

    After spending over a year travelling around this island, Gregory and I were in need of a break.  In order to relax, we decided to stay for a few days next to Gregory''s big collection of stones and shells.  I would like to call it something more specific but I still could not make heads or tails out of it after a year.


    A few days after we started relaxing there, I was sitting on the cliff overlooking the ocean when I heard an enormous sound.  It sounded like a roar but at a distance and volume that made the thought ridiculous.  I thought it might have been the sound of a volcano erupting or a bomb going off in the distance.  That is until I looked in the direction of the sound and saw flames.  You might think I am not being very descriptive here.  That is not it.  There was literally nothing but flames in the sky.  The tops of the taller trees were on fire and it was suddenly stiflingly hot.


    There had been a small mountain in the distance.  When the flames cleared, I could see it now had a giant lizard head and was moving in our direction.  I know I have been harping on about how big all of the monsters are on the island of death but this thing was hundreds of meters tall.  It unleashed another bout of flames from its mouth.  This time I could see that the flames stretched for kilometres.  This was insane.  Since when did anything grow that big.  Surely, Godzilla wasn''t going to come out of the water next?  Most importantly, why was the behemoth coming our way?


    At this point I noticed something that made me extremely excited and seriously worried at the same time.  At the edge of my vision, I saw a boat sailing out of a cove and towards the open ocean.  It looked a bit like a Viking long boat levitating a meter or so above the ocean.  The boat was a welcome sight as it appeared to be manned by humanoids and I was ecstatic about finally seeing people after so many years.


    The problem was this boat was obviously carrying a huge egg in the middle of the open boat.  Angry lizard thing, giant egg, oh seriously!  So there were humanoids in this place.  Apparently they were crazy if they were going to steal an egg from that mountain but they still existed.  Would have been nice to know before now.  However, it also made it pretty clear the rampage over there was not going to end before reaching where Gregory and I were.


    As I was contemplating the boat in the distance, countless monsters started streaming out of the forest in a veritable stampede and jumping into the sea.  I saw them doing this for kilometres in every direction.  It seemed that moving mountain was something nothing wanted to mess with.  I could definitely understand that but I was not sure they had the right idea so I turned to Gregory.


    "Will your poison work on that mountain?"


    *Shake*


    "Think we can hide from it?"


    *Shake*


    "So we are running then?"


    *Flip*


    I looked into the sea filled with agitated sea monsters greedily chowing down on all the land based monsters who were escaping the calamity overcoming this part of the forest by swimming away.


    "Can we just run along the seashore you think?"


    *Shake*


    "I don''t suppose you have any bright ideas on how we are going to survive in that ocean?"


    *Shake*


    "But you still thinking our chances are better in there?"


    *Flip*


    "I get to go to all the best places..."


    And with that we both too off running and jumped into the ocean.  Gregory took his log with him.  He seemed really attached to it.  We were fleeing for our lives and he still remembered to grab it.  Priorities my friend, priorities!  We can find logs anywhere.  Well, we could so long as we were on a land with trees.  Which seemed like it shouldn''t be that difficult to find.  Sure we were falling into the ocean right now and swimming away from the only land we have ever known but I am sure we won''t need a log.  Just because it was both food and a floatation device for him, does not mean he should have stopped to grab it.


    I wanted to complain at him but I was a bit preoccupied with yelling.  I did just jump off of a thirty meter cliff.  It was one of the braver things I had ever done.  Expecting me not to react at all is just silly.  I was not screaming like a little girl.  I was yelling from excitement.  I definitely was not terrified by a little thing like a thirty meter fall.  I had lived in this jungle for years.  Nothing so miniscule would effect me.  I was definitely not afraid of heights.  I had never climbed the trees in this jungle because Gregory always volunteered.  It wasn''t because I was afraid or anything.


    Hitting the water stung but was a relief as it stopped my life from continuing to flash before my eyes.  Because of the giant lizard chasing us, not from the fall.  As we started to swim, I noticed a few things.


    I apparently still remembered how to swim after all of these years.  I was part of the swim club back on Earth and could do all of the basic strokes.  However, I hadn''t swam since coming to this world.  Apparently, it is like riding a bicycle.  You never forget.  That is good.  I honestly had not even thought of it until I was already swimming so I was very glad that worked out.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Gregory was busy pushing his log from behind while doing his own swimming.  If I tried to help I knew my curse would act up but I did feel a bit odd when I looked at him pushing that big log through the water while I only had to keep myself going.  The worst part was that I had to work hard just to keep up.  Gregory was moving at a positively crazy clip.


    Gregory started moving away from the cliff in a straight line but I called out to him to go off on a slight tangent so that we were swimming in the same direction the boat sailed off to.  I had no idea what was out here but presumably those sailors did.  We would head in the same general direction and hopefully find land.  Well land was definitely going to be needed but I was also really looking forward to finding people.  People was really what I wanted to find all this time.  Finally I saw them and they up and left without even noticing I existed.


    I thought we were going to have to fight off waves of sea monsters as soon as we entered the water but it turned out not to be the case.  There was a plethora of bigger and tastier looking food all around us.  The monsters streaming out of the forest were seeming endless.  The sea monsters were not going to waste their time on a log and a small, if very fatty, morsel.


    It also helped that all of us land lubbers seemed to decide there was safety in numbers as the various monsters that were deadly enemies on land were surprisingly peaceful while swimming and sometimes turned the tables on the sea monsters by cooperatively attacking back.  Of course, there was a limit to how successful these activities were ever going to be.  We were designed to be on land while the sea monsters were predators of the sea.  Now that we had entered their domain very few of us were going to be able to leave.  Gregory and I tried to ignore the chaos around us and just kept swimming.  No good would come of paying attention to what was happening around us.


    I definitely envied the countless birds who could just fly away.  They had their own troubles initially as the flames released by that humongous lizard would roast them out of the air if they flew too high.  That said after they made it a ways out into the open ocean, they were basically safe.  I saw Gregory looking at them with longing and glaring at his wing stumps in annoyance.


    While it was anything but relaxing, time passed.  Hours went by before I knew it and the sun started to set.  I looked around and realized that there were only a few monsters still swimming with Gregory and I.  Most of them seemed to have fallen behind or been eaten.


    It was at this point that I realized as well that there had not been an attack in a while.  As we got away from the island, the sea monsters seemed to get fewer, smaller and weaker with every passing hour.  Eventually, there were none attacking us.  Once I noticed this, I started hoping that maybe our island was special and we would not have to swim through another gamut of sea monsters before we could get to another land.  There were not enough monsters left to distract very many sea monsters.  Gregory was amazing but I didn''t think even he could protect me from hordes of sea monsters.


    Instead there seemed to be another problem, the various monsters were not used to swimming and were starting to get tired.  Our fellow swimmers were sinking below the waves one at a time and not coming back up.  Some had tried to use Gregory''s log as a floatation device but he was having none of that and stung all those who came near.


    However, Gregory and I were also getting tired.  Eventually, I just lay there using my fat body to float while Gregory lay on my chest.  The waves kept us moving up and down in a soothing manner and I honestly wanted to stay this way forever.  The only problem was that I knew if I fell asleep, I would not be able to keep floating.  I had never been so glad to be so seriously overweight before.  Floating is really, truly amazing.  I wish I had been able to do this before.  I was definitely going to have to try to do this more often.  Especially when it is night and there is a sea of stars above me to stare at in awe.  The gods of this world got at least one thing right.  The stars here are just as beautiful as those on Earth.


    By the time we finished resting, we were alone in the sea.  I am not sure what happened to the other monsters.  I like to think they kept swimming but I was a bit too distracted to notice really.  The log drifted a ways away while we were floating there but it was still in sight and the rest we were able to get from floating for a while was essential.


    Gregory and I swam again until we had to rest and then we floated until our stamina recovered enough to keep going.  We repeated this all night and for most of the next day.


    Gregory seemed worried about me but I kept telling him that we would find land soon.  I was on my last legs so I may have been repeating myself a bit.  I was not delirious, just intent on relieving Gregory''s worries.  Though it would be best to just forget about my attempted explanation of what happens to people who are lost at sea without water.  Somehow it included coconuts, the co-efficient of friction, and how thirsty I was.  Pretty sure Gregory just didn''t understand it.  I''ll dumb it down for you next time Gregory!


    The people on the boat had come from the direction we were swimming in.  In order to even find that mountainous lizard they must have spent a while searching.  No one would go a great distance just to raid an egg.  So we just had to swim a bit more before we would get to land.  I calmly ignored the small voice in my head that was insisting on reminding me about how far the Vikings sailed for their raids.  Things like currents pulling us off course or winds pushing them in a slightly different direction were also thoroughly ignored as fake thoughts.


    As the day wore on, the time I spent floating increased and the time spent swimming was getting less and less.  I woke up several times to a mouthful of seawater as I accidentally fell into the trance I needed instead of sleep.  Gregory tried to help by pinching me awake but it felt more like a tickle so he was not able to accomplish much.


    In addition to being exhausted, I was starting to suffer from the elements.  The water was cold.  At first I was fine but as time wore on the cold started to seep into my bones.  I was pretty sure hypothermia wasn''t far off.  Paradoxically, the sun was also getting to me.  The glare and the light left me badly sunburned.  Luckily, my hair provided some shade but I was still in bad shape.


    At one point as the sun was moving toward the horizon, Gregory starting jumping about on top of my chest.  When I asked him what was going on, he started pulling my hair in the direction we had been swimming all this time.  At first I saw nothing but more waves.  Then I got up the energy to push myself up above the waves if only by a little.  With the extra height, I could see land!  We were saved!


    With a burst of enthusiasm I started swimming for all I was worth.  Of course, the problem was that while we could see land it was still quite a ways away.  Luckily, the tide was coming in so by the time my energy was completely used up the current slowly pulled me onto the beach.


    Stepping, well crawling really, onto land after so long at sea was one of the most moving experiences I had ever had.  The exhilaration only lasted for a few seconds but it was intense.  Immediately after I was deep in a trance and there was going to be no waking me for a while.

 Chapter 12: A new land, a new life

    When I finally woke up, I found myself on a lonesome beach.  To either side of the beach, grey cliffs with the occasional greenery rose a few dozen meters above the sea.  Looking inland, the pebbly beach gave way to a forest about a hundred meters from the shore.  In contrast to the jungle on my island, the trees here seemed much smaller and the vegetation beneath them was practically nonexistent.  A normal forest then instead of the jungle I had been in up until now.  Still, not another forest I thought to myself.  I was heartily sick of them already.  What about some plains or a nice desert?  I was definitely ready to get away from endless trees for a while.


    It was at this point that I had a sudden realization.  I saw no sign of Gregory or his log.  He would be around somewhere I was sure.  We washed up on the beach together so he was probably just off scouting.  Yea that was it.  He definitely hadn''t been eaten or anything.  I mean we were best friends through thick and thin.  I would have heard something if anything came for him.  Besides this is Gregory we are talking about.  All he had to do was touch a monster to make them surrender.  He was definitely fine.


    To distract myself from my thoughts, I tried moving about a bit and found myself sore but otherwise fine.  Swimming definitely uses muscles I didn''t even know I had.  Based on how stiff I was, I thought I should be hurting a lot more than I was.  Then I realized I had a pain resistance skill.  I thought it would be pretty much useless given I had 0 hit points so anything that actually managed to damage me would kill me.  That said, my pain resistance skill apparently came in handy in the strangest of places.


    As I was thinking about this and that, Gregory finally showed up.  I first noticed some movement coming out of the trees and did a cautious dive to the ground to hide myself.  It was only after looking at the movement a bit more closely that I realized it was Gregory''s log.  Sighing with relief I got up and trotted over to see what he had found.


    "How is it in there?" (Me)


    *Flip*


    "Any sign of people?"


    *Shake*


    "I have no idea how you have so much energy after swimming for a full day with that log."


    *Flip*


    "I don''t suppose you could help me have the same ridiculous stamina?"


    *Shake*


    "Well I guess we should pick a direction.  Not like we are going to go back to that island from hell.  I guess we will follow the coast to the right.  The boat started on that side of us so maybe their home is in that direction."


    *Flip*


    Look, I would be more polite about our birthplace but that island was terrible.  Even Gregory agreed that we were better off finding a different place to live.  Well, to be honest it wasn''t like either of us wanted to settle down or anything.  We just wanted to travel in more safety than was available on that island.  There had to be less dangerous places on this world.  Please let there be less dangerous places.


    We walked along the shore, climbing cliffs as needed, for about an hour without seeing a single monster.  There were seabirds and a few insects but I was by far the largest living creature we had encountered on this land.  In contrast to the extremely high population density of our island, the desolation of this place was making both Gregory and I nervous.  This would have been normal if we were on Earth but after so many years on this planet, the absence of monsters led both of us to start feeling like we were missing something.  Maybe there was a predator that had hunted out all the other monsters.  If so, we were likely smack dab in the middle of its territory by now.  I really hoped that wasn''t the case but it seemed like the only way to make sense of what we were seeing.


    As I thought this, I saw a few small green men come over the top of the hill Gregory and I were climbing.  If this world was a video game, I would know they were goblins without a doubt.  Those ugly faces were readily recognizable from countless games.  Yes, I know my face looks even worse but they were still ugly.  I can recognize fellows who suffer under the same disability okay?


    I snuck closer to them and could hear them speaking with one another.  No idea what they were saying of course but I could at least tell they were speaking a language.  Finally!  Someone to talk to that could talk back to me!


    I stood up in excitement and started waving to the goblins while calling out to them.


    "Hello fellows!" (Me)


    "Glark! Glark mark meetho!" (Biggest goblin)


    "My friend and I are lost.  I don''t suppose we could request assistance from you?" (Me)


    At this point, I couldn''t help adding a smile to my wave.  It was also about this time that the goblins lifted up the clubs I just noticed they were holding and started walking towards me.  It looked like they were running to be honest but the pace at which they moved was more of a slow amble.  I compromised and called it a walk.


    Thinking they were coming over to help, I was going to keep talking to them when Gregory shot out and paralysed them all with his painful poison.


    "Hey! What did you do that for?  I was talking to them.  They were just walking over here to help us.  Are you going to do this to everyone we meet?  How are we going to meet new people if you keep poisoning them all?"


    *Shake*


    "Don''t you shake at me.  What am I supposed to do with them now?  How are we supposed to make friends with them after you did that?"


    *Shake*


    "Then what do you propose we do?  We could have asked them for directions to the nearest city if it wasn''t for you doing this."


    Gregory walked over the goblins shaking all the while.  He seemed annoyed with me.  I was annoyed with him too so I guess that made us even.


    Gregory started to mime moving earth in front of the mouths of the goblins.


    "You want me to kill them?  But we just met them.  They can talk.  Can''t we keep them?" (Me)


    *Shake*


    "This is racist. Just because they look like goblins does not mean they are evil."


    *Shake*If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Okay how do you know they are evil then mister smart guy?"


    *Flip*


    "Could you understand what they are saying?"


    *Flip*


    "Seriously?  You are a termite.  How are you so amazing?"


    *Shake*


    "What are you trying to say?  It better not be that you aren''t amazing, I am just too terrible.  Is that what you are trying to say?"


    *Flip*


    After I chased Gregory for a while, unsuccessfully as he was of course faster than me, I returned to the goblins and suffocated them like Gregory asked.  I don''t think my best friend is a psychopath who kills everything but myself so he must have heard them saying something terrible.


    After they stopped breathing, I tried picking up one of their clubs but like always it just broke into pieces quickly leaving me holding nothing.  I had hoped that the curse wouldn''t work on this new land.  Well, it was worth a try anyway right?


    Looking at the bodies made me feel a bit sick so we moved on quickly.  I had just killed the first humanoids I met in this world.  It left a bad taste in my mouth.  Goblins are normally monsters in games that try to kill the player automatically and from Gregory''s reaction I guessed these were much the same.  Still this was the first time I killed something I knew to be intelligent and to make it worse they were human enough to make it feel like a homicide.  I thought I had gotten used to murder in this new world but I still had a ways to go.  Once again, I was made thankful that I didn''t eat as dry heaving was unpleasant enough.


    As we walked along the coast, we came across another dearth of monsters.  Those goblins seemed incredibly weak.  They couldn''t be the only monsters in the area.  As we continued not finding any other monsters, my speed kept slowing as I started moving with more and more care.  Gregory and his log were a lot more conspicuous but he could generally take care of himself.  Besides, if he stopped moving it just looked like there was a log lying there.


    About an hour after we left the goblins, we finally saw what we assumed was causing the problem.  On a beach that was otherwise unremarkable were half a dozen finely detailed stone statues of sea birds.  There were a variety of monsters that could turn things to stone.  Generally they needed to see you in order to do it.  Gregory and I gave one another a look and moved away from the seashore and into the forest that was still not far off.  The trees were too small and the vegetation was too sparse to provide complete cover but it was much better than being on an open beach.


    After continuing to travel the coast along the edge of the forest we shortly came across more statues of various small animals.  All of them were just as exquisitely detailed as the first few we saw.


    I stopped in my tracks when I saw a set of statues of humanoids in front of a cave in the side of one of the cliffs.  The humanoids looked like a group of five adventurers from some video game.  There were two in some kind of heavy armour with shields, two in much lighter armour with bows standing at the back and one with a set of robes with a staff.


    It was so exciting to see people again.  There could be no doubt now that there were people somewhere around here.  All I had to do was find them.  Hopefully, they would be friendly.  I could talk to them, see what kind of culture this world had, learn all about the world, and maybe even talk to them.


    Calm down me, calm down.  They were probably trying to hunt this monster when they were caught by surprise.  The cave faces open beach so there weren''t any places to hide from its gaze.  It might well live in that cave.  Gregory and I could hunt down this monster as a sign of our good will and show the people of the nearby settlement what we had done to earn their trust.  There had to be a nearby settlement.  They definitely wouldn''t have travelled a huge distance just to die here right?  Nope.  Definitely there is one close.  Probably just over the next bend of the coast or something.  Getting myself all psyched up to do this, I looked over at Gregory.  He was looking at me shaking.


    "No need to get all judgmental on me."


    *Flip*


    "Oh come on.  I didn''t look that weird did I?"


    *Flip*


    "Whatever.  You would be excited too if you were in my shoes.  Lets just kill that thing so we can earn the trust of whoever is around here.  Think you can handle it if I distract it?"


    *Flip*


    Gregory left his log where it was and started to make his way along the cliff so that he was above the cave entrance.  We had done this quite a few times back on the island.  I would find a place out of sight to hide and make some noise to draw out the monster.  While its attention, and most importantly its sight, was in my direction, Gregory would jump on it from the other side.  Once it was paralysed, I would go over to it while carefully avoiding its vision and suffocate it.


    There was just a small problem this time in that there was a LOT less cover than there normally would be.  I could hide behind a tree just fine but the forest ended a good fifty meters from the cave.  If I just hid behind a tree, when it fell looking in my direction I would be turned to stone as soon as I stepped out from behind the tree.


    Well I would just have to make it work.  Gregory was counting on me.  The people who were going to be my new friends were counting on me.  I could do this.  Motivation was high.  Now I just needed an idea.  Really any idea that had a chance of working would be okay.  You would think I could just throw a rock but that requires the rock to stay in one piece long enough for me throw it.  Chances of that were bad.  Hiding behind a tree was bad for the reasons I just outlined.  I could try hiding behind the statues but that had the same problem as the tree in that once I moved again I was screwed.


    I needed to be somewhere I could both hide in and get out of.  I looked at the ocean with trepidation.  That would work but I was rather worried about it.  I could just climb the cliff above the cave, then go down into the water.  Make a noise in the sea and then swim out of sight underwater.  It would work assuming there were no sea monsters waiting to eat delicious morsels like myself.  I hadn''t seen any coming to this new land but that year of wandering the coast of our island left a deep impression.  Oceans being deadly was deeply engraved in my psyche.  Yes I managed to jump into the water in the face of a rampaging mountain of a fire breathing lizard of death but if anything the mayhem the sea monsters wrecked on the other monsters swimming next to me left an even deeper scar.


    I started walking toward the sea while telling myself there was nothing to worry about.  I looked at it for a while just to see if any sea monsters would surface.  After a while, I felt like I could hear Gregory telling me to hurry up.  I psyched myself up and well watched for a little longer.  It never hurts to be cautious.  On the second try, I made it into the water.  Once I was in, I made my way around to the part of the cliff that was around the corner from the cave.  Once I was there, I shouted like a crazy person and immediately ducked under the water swimming further down the coast with all of my strength.


    As soon as I ran out of breath, I surfaced and started swimming toward the shore.  If Gregory had messed up, I would already be stone.  So now I just had to get out of this scary water and go deal with what Gregory had caught.


    By the time I made it back to the cave, I knew what had been causing all this trouble.  It was a monster we were familiar with from the island.  I could hear its cries of pain and immediately recognized it.  Basilisk.  A lizard about two meters tall and ten long that sucked all the life and nutrients out of anything it saw, turning them to stone.


    Once I had suffocated it, Gregory did something I was totally not expecting.  He had gone back to get his log and when the basilisk breathed its last he started crawling into its eyeball.  Yea that was gross.  I tried to convince him to stop but it was to no avail.


    I ended up looking away and waiting for him to finish whatever it was he was going to do.  Seriously, this whole not needing to eat thing is amazing.  I might be nauseous but all I can do is dry heave.  Likewise, it is no big deal if I am put off food for a while.  When I finally thought it was safe to look, I saw Gregory carrying one of the intact eyeballs over to his log.  Curious I went over to look.  Inside one of the cavities in Gregory''s log were the two eyes of the basilisk.  Another cavity was opened with hundreds of glowing brown stones inside.


    "I have been meaning to ask for ages.  What are the stones for?  Do you just collect them because they are pretty?" (Me)


    Gregory did a flip above the five mostly empty cavities which only had a few stones in them and a shake above the two full cavities.


    "So those two are for something other than just being pretty?" (Me)


    *Flip*


    "What on earth could you possibly need them for? No don''t tell me.  Do you eat those?"


    *Flip*


    "I thought you ate wood?"


    *Flip*


    "So you eat stones too.  You are one strange termite you know that?"


    *Shake*


    "Yes you are.  No need to shake at me.  I have lived with you for your whole life and I know you are weird."


    *Shake*


    "Ah it is okay.  I guess we will just have to be weird together.  Oh, I got completely side tracked by all of this.  Why did you take the eyeballs of that basilisk? It isn''t to eat is it?"


    *Shake*


    "Please tell me you aren''t collecting pretty eyeballs now?"


    *Shake*


    "Oh thank goodness.  That would have been a whole other level of creepy.  But if you don''t want to eat it and you don''t think they are pretty, why in the world did you go get them?"


    *Jumps from the log to me and back a few times*


    "For me?  Why?"


    ...


    "Is it so I have proof that we subjugated the monster?"


    *Flip*


    "This way the people around here will be friendly with us!  Brilliant Gregory.  You are the best."


    *Flip*

 Chapter 13: My first time in the city

    We continued along the coast past the lair of the basilisk and within half an hour we came upon a town. I stood stock still once again and just enjoyed the sight of it. People were everywhere. I had finally made it to civilization. No more sleeping under the stars. There were plenty of people to talk to down there. Some of them even looked to be women. Oh this was going to be amazing. My vision may have gotten rather blurry at this point as something got in my eye.


    The town we came upon sat inside a good sized natural harbour with numerous docks sticking out into the water with a great many boats sailing about in the water. Stretching from the docks to the stone walls of the town were wooden shacks and lean-tos. Here and there were larger buildings that looked like warehouses, inns, and the like. There appeared to be a proper road leading through the slums on the far side of town.


    In the middle of town was a large area surrounded by a stone wall. The stone wall looked to be at least ten meters high. It was an impressive sight though I had to wonder how effective it would be against the monsters which flew or burrowed through the ground. Maybe they use magic to ward off those kinds of creatures? I could just see the tops of trees and a few elegantly carved towers on the other side of the wall. From what I could tell, it looked much nicer inside the walls than it did outside.


    As we approached the town I started paying less and less attention to the buildings and became more and more obsessed with the important part of all this, the people. Curious about the kinds of humanoids that inhabited this world, I tried to see if there were humans, elves, or any of the other races I was familiar with. Shortly, I realized they were all there. Everything from dwarves to people with all different kinds of animal ears. The regular humans were comforting to see. At least I could blend in by pretending to be human. I looked at myself and reconsidered the whole blending in thing. I didn''t see anyone who looked remotely like me down there.


    The people were dressed in a variety of styles. There were Roman style togas, robes, tunics with pants, saris, and even a kimono. None of the colours were particularly bright, they were all muted shades of brown, grey, or the like with the occasional bits of white. The cloth looked as rough and uncomfortable as one would expect from a medieval setting. There was also some leather and furs here and there. Everything looked pretty ratty and worn. I guessed that I wasn''t going to be seeing high fashion in the slums but this was worse than I thought it would be.


    Still, they all at least had clothes. None of them were wearing their hair to hide their important bits like I had to. This was going to be interesting. Well I would just say I was a traveller from a far off land. That would explain it. Definitely.


    "Hey Gregory, do you think they will mind my appearance?"


    *Flip*


    "Now that is just mean. You are supposed to be supportive here."


    *Shake*


    "What do you mean no? There are times when I wonder why we are friends!"


    *Shake*


    "Okay, I know you are good to me most of the time. Still, you need to learn to be supportive!"


    *Shake*


    "You aren''t going to be supportive? Or that isn''t the reason we are friends?"


    *Shake* *Flip*


    "Wait are you trying to say that the reason we are friends is that I have no one else to be friends with?"


    *Flip*


    "That does it. You are going to be sat on. It is only deserved. Hey stay still. Stop running around so much!"


    A little while later, we calmed down a bit and headed into town. Somehow the nervousness that was overwhelming me earlier had subsided greatly. Thanks Gregory.


    There was no proper entrance to the town. The shacks seemed to have sprung up wherever the owner felt like it. There were gaps between some of them that formed alleys. Within these alleys, many people were wandering about. Some seemed busy with a focused look that was hard to miss. However, most of the people here seemed to have fairly listless expressions and were just sitting in their homes.


    As I walked through the slums surrounding the city, I was busy looking every which way. I couldn''t help it. I had never seen any of these races before. I hadn''t seen people in years. I hadn''t seen a woman since I was born in this world. Sorry for staring. I didn''t mean it. Just a bit too tempting to avoid looking once and after that it was just too hard to look away.


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    "Gregory, look at her. Isn''t she beautiful? She even has dog ears. I think I am in love. Do you think I should go talk to her? What should I say to ... ?"


    While I was still mid sentence, Gregory had hit my jaw forcing my mouth closed.


    "Hey! Why are you doing that?


    Gregory hit my chin again.


    "Are you trying to tell me to be quiet?"


    *Flip*


    "First you insult me and now you want me to shut up. What is it with you today? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the log?"


    *Shake* Then Gregory pulled on my beard to force my head to face forward.


    It was only then that it registered that I was getting a lot of strange looks. I guess staring at a matronly, middle aged, and rather overweight woman was a bit strange. Her teeth were missing and she clearly didn''t take care of herself. There wasn''t even a hint of makeup anywhere. My standards had slipped a little okay.


    I was sure the odd looks from the people all around us were because of my reprehensible behaviour of staring. It definitely wasn''t because I was walking toward the town so covered in hair that no one could see what was underneath. Of course, the log Gregory was carrying seemed to be moving on its own too. I am sure the people of this town saw this kind of thing all the time. I hadn''t seen anyone else looking like us but I was sure there were some about. We weren''t that strange surely. If it was just my staring at people, I could stop staring and everything would be okay. I had no idea how I was going to fix my current appearance. Walking around naked with all my pox scars and scary looking face was not going to be an improvement. I know I could find someone to heal me up with magic and at the same time remove my horrible curses. They were given by goddesses though so maybe there isn''t anyone powerful enough to do that. No way to know unless I ask right?


    That said, the current attention can''t be good. Not only was everyone staring at us but the looks were distinctly unfriendly. If I wasn''t careful, I might get lynched. Right, staying below the radar would be a good thing until I was all healed up. I immediately moved behind one of the outlying shacks and did my best to sneak away. I heard a bit of a commotion behind me but no one followed me so it all worked out in the end. I hadn''t been near people in years so it was only natural that my people skills would have deteriorated a little. I just needed to get a bit of practice in and this sort of thing wouldn''t happen anymore.


    Once we were out of sight of the commotion behind us, we came down from the rooves we had been quietly walking on and started walking the alleys of the slums. I would call them streets but they were way too narrow and winding for that. Maybe I am too used to seeing roads from Earth. These things were barely wide enough for me slip through in some places.


    People were talking to one another, calling out I assumed to sell their wares in slightly larger areas of the alley, and in general making noise. It was a bit overwhelming after living with the quiet of nature for so long. It didn''t help that I couldn''t understand a word of what was being said. At least, it all sounded like the same language. I decided to call the language of this world Gibberish.


    The things for sale looked pretty basic. We saw few actual stores, most merchants had their goods on threadbare blankets. The goods themselves were generally food though there were a few simple metal tools and furs. I knew nothing about the different kinds of metal but because the tools were grey I decided to assume they were iron. The furs seemed to be from relatively small animals, like something one would get from a rabbit or the like.


    People tended to get quiet and stare at Gregory and I as we went past. Well, they stared at Gregory''s log and I anyway. Gregory was being shy and hiding under his log out of sight. Seriously, I just have long hair. You have dog ears and you over there are super short. Why are you all picking on me? I just wanted to walk down the street looking around in peace. There is no need to stare like this right? If you are wondering why I wasn''t just sneaking down the street so they couldn''t see me, then you are a wierdo. Who in the world sneaks down a street in broad daylight unless they are planning a crime? I was just planning to look around and maybe meet some people. Hard to meet anyone if they don''t even know you are there.


    As we walked I started to notice a few commonalities between the various people we saw. The one that stood out the most was that everyone here seemed to move really slow. I am a patient person but waiting behind them while they walked was agony. I ended up moving around them as best I could rather than waiting for them to finally decide to take another step. There were occasional shouts from behind me but lets ignore those. What did they expect was going to happen when they walked that slow?


    I was also surprised there wasn''t more of a smell given that we were in the middle of what looked like a medieval slum. I never saw soap for sale at any of the roadside merchants either. Everyone looked relatively clean and disease free but it was clear that there was not enough food to go around in this area. Most of the people here were really thin and looked around with apathetic eyes. Looked REALLY slowly. Just in case I wasn''t clear enough before.


    As an experiment, I wanted to find someone who was walking alone down an abandoned alley. I eventually found an old woman who had a world weary look on her face walking down such an alley. I immediately walked toward her. When we got close to one another, I moved aside my hair to let the person see my face. I was ready to run and hide immediately if they reacted the slightest bit strange. What I did not quite expect was for the old woman to have a look of surprise, followed by revulsion, followed by nausea. I had never seen someone''s face literally turn green before. I left her heaving against a wall and resolved to not show my face again. Next time I might kill someone. Actually, lets leave that for my final ultimate attack. If all else fails, I will just show them my face and use that to kill them...or at least create an opening so I can run away. I was very glad I had a full head of hair. I suppose it would have been weird for me to go bald in my teens but, given what those goddesses did to my body, going bald so young would not have surprised me. If I was bald and had no hair to hide how I looked this whole meeting people thing would be many times more difficult.


    After wandering around for a while longer, Gregory and I decided to take a rest in an out of the way spot. It wasn''t that we were lost. The alleys may have twisted about like a snake with diarrhoea but Gregory and I were used to navigating the jungles of our island. Something this simple couldn''t confuse us no matter how bad the street planning was. We just weren''t exactly sure where we were or how to get back to where we had been. Definitely not lost. I did think that the city planners needed to up their game a bit though.

 Chapter 14: Adventurer Guild

    While we were sitting in this relatively isolated spot, I could finally think a bit more clearly. The sights and sounds of all these people had overwhelmed me but once there was some quiet I needed to think about how we were going to live in this place. It was not like the wilderness we had been in up to now. We needed to find a way to earn some money and a place to stay.


    I was way stronger than I was in my past life. Surely I could get some work lifting things. Wait never mind definitely not doing that. Damn curse of poverty. I could be a travelling bard but to do that I needed instruments or at least I needed to finish my repertoire of songs. I spent a while trying to think of what work I could do but ended up drawing a blank as just about every job I could think of required me to be able to pick something up or at least understand the local language. Well something would work out. For now, we can just turn in those eyeballs Gregory had in his log and get some money that way. Surely, they would pay us for exterminating such a dangerous monster.


    Obviously we needed to get to the adventurers guild. That said, I had no idea where such a thing was or even how to go about finding it. I couldn''t understand the language or read the signs. I decided to think about it logically. Adventurers are generally uncouth and rough characters in books so presumably the well off townsfolk that live inside the walls of the town wouldn''t want adventurers in their fancy part of town. There was likely a guild branch out here. I still wasn''t sure there even existed an adventurer guild in this world but it was in all the various games and fantasy books I read. Surely it must exist. I just had to find it.


    "Hey Gregory you have any idea where the adventurer guild is?"


    *Shake*


    "Any ideas on how to find it?"


    *Flip*


    "Oh really. That is great! What is ... ?"


    Just as I was about to finish my sentence, Gregory leapt up and knocked my jaw closed. Every time I tried to speak he would do the same thing. Got it he wants me to be silent. *sigh* Just when it was finally safe for me to talk again, I apparently wasn''t allowed to speak. Out in the wilderness, I never knew when a monster might hear me talking so I had to stay quiet as much as possible. I thought here in town I might finally be able to talk a little more. Gregory better have a really good explanation for this.


    It isn''t that I like to talk a lot. It is just that I have a lot to say sometimes. There was no need for Gregory to try to shut me up like that was there? If I can''t even talk to him, I am going to be in dire straits. I need some kind of social interaction or I am going to go crazy. Maybe he will let me talk to other people in the city.


    Once I stopped trying to talk, Gregory picked up his log and walked off. I had no choice but to follow. We walked for about five minutes before Gregory walked into a huge wooden building with a rickety sign out front. The place looked vaguely familiar like we had walked past it before but it was hard to tell. The sign had a picture of a crossed sword and cane with some words written underneath it. I had no idea what the words meant but this looked like it just might be the place.


    The building looked like it was part of a complex which stretched the whole block. There was a fence which surrounded the whole thing keeping anyone from seeing much inside. Still the fence wasn''t terribly high and I couldn''t imagine it would keep out even remotely determined thieves. Three meters is nothing in this world. I could jump it easily. Oh well, I am sure they know what they are doing. It is probably just a way to demarcate what is theirs and they had tons of magical wards and human guards wandering around the place. Nothing to worry about I am sure.


    I was definitely not standing outside of the entrance with an unsure expression. I was contemplating important matters that need to be considered. If their security is bad how am I to trust them to do other things well. It was around this point that Gregory once again started pulling my hair and I was forced to enter the building against my will.


    When I entered there was a front area which seemed to take up half the available space. There were a three desks behind which were what looked like office workers. In lines in front of the desks were rough looking characters with various fantasy armours and weapons. I saw a lot of swords, axes, bows, and canes but not a single gun or modern weapon. Definitely, a typical swords and sorcery setting so far.


    Of the three lines one was definitely longer than the other two. At first, I couldn''t figure out why. Then I looked at the people behind the desks. Two of the receptionists were fairly ordinary looking middle aged men who could be siblings. The receptionist behind the last desk was a stunningly beautiful young woman. How I took that long to notice I have no idea. I blame living in a jungle from hell for so many years.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Her hair was a deep green. Her eyes were a light blue I could see from here. Her skin was so pale and clear that it looked like it would shine in the sun. I could not see much of her body but she definitely had all the right curves up top if you know what I mean. Oh new world I am so glad you did not let me down.


    I immediately lined up at the end of the longest line. There was no way I was going to miss the chance to interact with a woman like this. The line moved really slowly. I mean seriously, I understand moving slowly in a slum but this is the adventurer guild. You are all big burly types. You clearly are well fed. Where is the need for you to move so slow. I wish I had some cards or something to pass the time. Seriously, I was really bored and Gregory would hit me every time I tried to talk to him. It was a small forever before I was in front of the young lady. I ended up spending most of the time trying to think up witty lines to wow her with.


    Unfortunately, as soon as it was my turn and I actually stood in front of her I was struck speechless by her beauty. I had never been great around women in the first place. Talking to someone this good looking after not talking to anyone for over a decade was just setting the bar way too high. I should have started with one of the other receptionists and worked my way up to this one. In a few weeks. No, make that months.


    As I was lost in my thoughts, Gregory saved me once again. He is so reliable. I have never understood why he wasn''t more of a chick magnet. He pulled my hair so that my head was forced to look over at his log only to see two of the cavities in his log had been opened. In one was the eyes of the basilisk we killed earlier in the day and in the other was one of his fire stones.


    This whole time the receptionist had been talking to me, though of course I didn''t understand what she was saying. She did have a slightly disgusted look on her face but that was probably just a cultural thing. I am sure that is this country''s version of a professional smile. Anyway, when she followed my gaze towards Gregory''s log, her eyes widened. She immediately picked up the fire stone and held it up to her face. Afterwards, she grabbed the eyes with a disgusted expression and said something to me. Gregory did a flip and pulled my hair so I nodded. This appeared to satisfy her as she immediately disappeared into the back area of the building.


    It was only a few minutes later at most that she returned with a broad smile on her face. It was stunning. Honestly, I had been berating myself for not saying anything to her and psyching myself up to do it this time. However, as soon as I saw that smile all the thoughts immediately flew right out of my head. All that was left was the image of that beautiful smiling face.


    There was an older man who had a bit of a paunch who came with her. Maybe it was her father or something? I was aware that he seemed to be saying things and Gregory was nodding or shaking my head for me by pulling my hair but honestly I don''t remember any of it. Eventually, Gregory pulled me away by the hair and I only came to my senses when I could no longer see her.


    After we were a few blocks down the street, I regained enough of a presence of mind to ask how much we got for our loot. Gregory lifted up one of the cavity covers in response and showed me five silvery coins. Five silver seemed a bit low for killing the basilisk that had already killed five other adventurers. Then I realized it might be platinum. I had never seen platinum but it was supposed to be silvery. Having no idea what the value of currency was around here, five platinum might be an unexpectedly lot of money.


    I had Gregory cover the money back up quickly so we didn''t get mugged. This was the slums after all. We would need to be careful with our new earnings. I hurried Gregory off so we wouldn''t be targeted by thieves who had seen our new found wealth.


    Once we were in a quiet place:


    "Do you know if there are any banks in this world?"


    *Shake*


    "Do you even know what a bank is?"


    *Shake*


    "A place that keeps money safe for you. Sometimes you have to pay a fee to store it."


    *Flip*


    "Oh so you have heard of something like that before?"


    *Shake*


    "Well do you have any ideas on how in the world we are going to prevent people from stealing our money?"


    *Shake*


    "Hey money is precious you know! It is not just yours but mine as well. You need to be more careful with it."


    *Shake*


    "What do you mean no? You won''t be more careful about it?"


    *Shake*


    "Wait. You aren''t going to tell me it is all yours and not mine?"


    *Flip*


    "That is cold. I hunted it with you!"


    *Flip*


    "So we hunted it together but you get all the profits."


    *Flip*


    "That is the most selfish thing you have ever said you know that."


    *Shake*


    "How is that not selfish? What could possibly justify not sharing with your partner and best friend?"


    At this point Gregory picked up a small stone on the ground and put it in my hand. Of course it shortly fell back to the ground. Stupid curse of poverty. Oh. Right.


    "Good point Gregory. I leave the material goods to you for now."


    *Flip*


    It was at this point that Gregory picked up his log and started walking off. He seemed to know where he was going so I just followed behind. I wanted to continue this conversation but I knew Gregory would just hit me if I tried.


    I started to get annoyed about his behaviour recently but then I remembered all the years that I was in his care on that horrible island. He had always taken care of me up until now. I doubted his personality had a complete reversal just because we found a town. Thinking back on his actions, I could kind of see how he was trying to take care of me. My speech seemed to draw a bad kind of attention which was why he was always trying to get me to be quiet. He kept the money so that it wouldn''t just disappear due to my curse. He even seemed to understand what other people were saying in the Adventurer Guild. I am sorry Gregory it must have been hard. Please take care of me in the future.


    Still, even if he wasn''t going to split the profits, at the very least I should get some kind of wages shouldn''t I? How could I be paid if not in money? This was something I needed to think about.