“. . . Okay. So, this is me.” He hadn’t had his own strengths, skills, and experiences written out like this since his last school report card.
He looked over his status, appraising his situation. His Job and Job History both showed “None,” painting him as a bit of a freeloader, but he liked that the Alias space was also blank. Regarding his stats, he didn’t really have context for them. His Magical Power looked pretty good, but he had no idea about anything else. Things like Strength and Agility had never been turned into numbers on Origin. It had been the same as on Earth; strength was measured by how fast you could run 100 meters, how many pushups you could do, and the weight of the dumbbells you could lift. His MP was the same as when he had got that tested on Origin, though, so he presumed the other numbers were in the same ballpark as his previous body.
In terms of skills, the Resist Poison and Resist Death Attribute were clearly the things he had specifically asked for. But he wasn’t sure about the “Active Skills.”
“The magical ones, I think I get it. But Bow Proficiency? Horse Riding? I’ve never used a bow or ridden a horse! The Dagger Proficiency and Brawling Proficiency must come from all my knife work and military combat training. No idea what Discretionary Active Skills could be, though.”
Another message from Rodocolte sounded. “Your proficiency with things that don’t exist on Ramda, such as guns and motorized vehicles, have been turned into equivalent skills: Bow Proficiency and Horse Riding. The remainder fit into Discretionary Active Skills. You can assign them as and when you need them.”
“Suppose that’s better than a bunch of useless skills,” Kanata mused. But he had trained a lot to gain his skills with guns, vehicles, helicopters, and boats. He wasn’t all that pleased about those abilities getting swapped out. “I need to kill Vandal ASAP and get back to a comfortable world like Earth.”
He only needed this junk until he finished what he came here to do. He had his unique skills, Gungnir and Target Radar. Surely the task wouldn’t take long if he used them. He wasn’t sure if it would do him any good, but he had the Blessing of the Reincarnation God as well.
“Okay, let’s get this radar party started! Concentrate on what I want to use, right?”
It worked at once. Kanata saw inside his head both which direction Vandal was in relation to him and the distance to get there. It wasn’t even that far away. If he had a helicopter, maybe a day. Same with a car if he went fast—
“. . . No helicopters or cars here, huh. I don’t fancy that on foot. Maybe I can steal a horse? I know, I said I wanted to be careful, but you didn’t have to drop me in quite so far away, did you?”
Kanata frowned as he faced his limited prospects for getting around. Wind magic might allow him to fly, but his MP wouldn’t allow him to cover that much distance. If he encountered any hostiles while flying around, he would also have limited means of attack. He was missing his firearms already.
“Although you have skills,” Rodocolte’s voice continued, “your combat abilities will not be all that high compared to those on Ramda who make a living from battle. You should start by going to a town, registering at an adventurers’ guild, getting a Job, gathering equipment, and learning about battle techs.”
“Like I said,” Kanata replied pointlessly, shaking his head in annoyance, “I didn’t come here to play a video game.” There was one part of the message he agreed with, though—gathering equipment. This job was clearly going to take more than just a few days, so he needed food and supplies.
“If you walk directly east from the location of your resurrection, you will find a road. That will lead you to anything else you need.”
“Now that’s a direction I’ll happily follow.”
He wasn’t planning on eating grass while hunting for game out here, either. Kanata did as he was told—for once—and started east.
Before long, he heard screams on the air.
He dashed forward to find the road. He saw a bunch of ruffians attacking a carriage.
“Hanna! Hanna!”
“Father, run!”
“You there! If you value the life of your master’s daughter, throw down all your weapons!”
It looked like the bandits had taken a merchant’s daughter hostage and were trying to get his guards to drop their weapons.
“Isn’t this all delightfully clichéd.”
Kanata could tell that Rodocolte was spoon-feeding him directions to the town, a means to travel there, and some food to eat along the way. Reading the situation in an instant, he started to chant some magic.
“The girl and everything the humans are wearing. Great Conflagration!”
Raging flames erupted from a five-pointed star in front of Kanata, swallowing up the bandits and their hostage.
“Gyaaaaaaaah!”
“Eeeeeep!”
“H-Hanna!”
There were the screams of the burning bandits, and then the girl and the merchant.
“Huh? It isn’t hot?”
Even though she was surrounded by flames, the girl wasn’t taking any damage. Neither her clothes nor the clothes of the bandits were even singed. The only things burning were the bandits’ bodies.
“Using Gungnir, feels just as good as it did on Origin,” Kanata said brightly. This was the cheat ability that Rodocolte had given him: the ability to make anything selectively transparent. For anything he selected, physical matter, magic, and all forms of energy would pass right through. Using it was simple. He just had to speak the names of whatever it was he wanted to affect.
On Origin, before he died, he had used it to pass his shots through the walls to snipe terrorists and let enemy bullets and weapons pass through his body, making him close to invincible. In this instance, he had selected the girl and the clothes everyone was wearing, leaving them unaffected by the flames of Great Conflagration, while the bandits’ bodies swiftly burned away.
The wider the range he used Gungnir across, the more MP it cost him. With his 42 thousand MP, he could still use it effectively so long as he didn’t go completely off the chain.
It had its weak points, too. Gungnir allowed him to attack while ignoring enemy defenses and avoid enemy attacks. However, by watching what Kanata did, it was possible to work out how to attack him. If he set bullets or knives to transparent, then he couldn’t use guns or knives himself. If he set light, he could become invisible, but that also meant his eyes couldn’t see light, blinding him. If he set heat, his body would rapidly cool. And if he set human bodies, then he wouldn’t be able to touch those bodies.
As a result, in moments like the one when he saved the “captured” president’s daughter, it would always be possible to attack and hit him hand-to-hand. That’s what Metamor used to attack me, after all. Her own hand.
She had exploited his weakness. He would have to be more careful when he stepped into close combat in the future.
“Ah! It’s like a miracle! Hanna, Hanna!”
“Father!”
“Thank you so much for saving my daughter!”
The happy calls from the merchant snapped Kanata back from unpleasant memories of his former life.
“Can you tell me,” Kanata asked casually. “Which way to the nearest town?”
He also realized they were speaking Japanese. The merchant seemed a little puzzled by his attitude and perhaps by his not sharing his name, but he still answered.
“A town? The closest is Tearcity, in that direction down this road.”
“That way? Just keep going? No turns or anything?”
“A few small ones, along the way, but just keep to the main road. I’m sorry, are you lost?”
“Nope. Not anymore. I’ve got transport, funds, food, and equipment now.”
“What do you mean—”
“I guess we start here. Man.” A dull impact hit the merchant.
“Urk . . . nggh!”
Before either of them understood what was happening, his beloved daughter opened her eyes wide, blood exploding from her mouth.
“Ha . . . Hanna!” His daughter, whom he had been holding in his arms, suddenly had a rusty knife buried deep in her chest.
“Wow, that just slid right in there. Thanks to these so-called skills, I take it?” Kanata just watched nonchalantly as the girl twitched, eyes wide in disbelief, while her father cried out in agony.
“Hannaaaa!”
“What are you doing?!”
This shout came from two adventurers who were farther down the road. They pointed their weapons in his direction, shocked at the turn of events.
“What am I . . .?” Kanata sighed. “Well, I guess it’s because her name is Hanna. Hah. The same name as the president’s daughter Mari disguised herself as. Not a name I like anymore. I guess that dumb god set this up, too? A way for me to blow off some steam. Wrong place, wrong time! Hahaha, sorry!” His voice was almost sing-song.
“What are you talking about?!” One of the adventurers seemed terrified by this string of babble from Kanata.
The other seemed to have decided to simply treat him as a hostile. “Die, you crazy bastard!”
The adventurer thrust forward with his spear, but Kanata dodged it as economically as possible and easily zipped in close to his target.
“Do I even need to bother? But just in case, weapons and armor.”
“Wha—gaaah?!”
The biggest piece of bad luck faced by these two poor adventurers was that Kanata’s military-trained Brawling Proficiency skill level was about the same as a Grade C adventurer. These two were Grade D and Grade E, meaning they couldn’t overcome such a gap.
To add insult to injury, Kanata was still making full use of Gungnir even in this one-sided encounter. This allowed him to slip through the weapons the adventurers attempted to attack him with. Meanwhile, his own attacks went straight through their armor and directly into their bodies once his fists and feet got within range. They didn’t stand a chance.
Mere moments later, both adventurers were on the ground, eyes rolled back in their heads.
“Even if her name hadn’t been Hanna, the only difference is I would have raped her before killing her,” Kanata said to the merchant. “Don’t blame yourself, thinking you caused all this by choosing that name.”
The man was completely out of it, clutching his dead daughter with the knife still lodged in her lungs. Of course, the merchant wasn’t thinking anything of the sort.