“This sure is fantasy, all right...” I mused. “Wait, what? The age listed is so young! Is that on the house?” For now, I needed information above anything else. “At least I can keep thinking forward. I learned that much from being a businessman.”
I pulled myself together, determined to push through this wild situation.
“Your time limit is one hour. Your race and age have been set. The rest is for you to decide. You will have no family name, only a first name,” echoed the voice. “Soon, I will provide foundational knowledge of the world of Galdardia to you. In one hour’s time, you will be reincarnated. Oh, unfortunate soul, I pray your next life is one of better fortune.”
A ping went off inside my head, followed by a new, mechanical announcement.
Obtained Protection of the God of Fate (increased SP)
“Oh, thank yooooAAAAAAGGGHHH!”
The instant I attempted to offer my thanks, a flood of information beyond the limits of what my mind could handle surged through every synapse of my brain. Unimaginable pain gouged my head, like a club had been brought down on it. According to the clock on the status screen, this sensation lasted for less than a minute, contrary to how my senses interpreted it. Fifty-nine minutes and seven seconds remained.
I gasped for air and grabbed my head. “Ugh, that was some serious agony just now...”
After the dull ache subsided, a kind of stinging feeling came, as if my brain were being forcefully poked and dug around in.
“And now I have that ‘foundational knowledge,’ do I? It still hurts, but I don’t have much time, so let’s make some progress here,” I remarked to no one in particular.
The knowledge I had obtained included the countries of Galdardia, its races, the common language, alphabet, and currency.
I took a deep breath, calmed my nerves, and looked at the holographic window to find it was now in the form of a character creation screen.
“This is definitely inspired by games and anime,” I muttered as I proceeded with the creation process. And wouldn’t you know it, just like a game, you could alter your physical appearance. My current avatar looked European, with chiseled features, brown hair, and green eyes.
“Now for my name...which I can’t remember? Why is that?”
The answer to my question wouldn’t appear out of thin air, so I ultimately went with a name I had frequently used for video games in the past: Luciel. It didn’t seem like it would sound too out of place there, either. Then I tacked on an extra ten centimeters to my height, bringing me up to one hundred eighty centimeters, and changed my hair to silver, and my eyes to a pale purple. If my new knowledge was to be trusted, these weren’t particularly rare colors in Galdardia. Maybe a little edgy, I thought, but they looked good together, so I didn’t mind.
Fifty-three minutes remained.
I would have liked to know more about commodity values or local products, but I had to at least be grateful that I could speak, read, and write the local language. Life would likely be hard starting out, but fifteen was the age of maturity, so I would probably be able to quickly find work and, eventually, a peaceful living. Assuming this wasn’t all a dream, that is.
“Ouch, looks like the place I’m sent to is random. A field, a forest, a labyrinth, or somewhere near a town. Comes down to luck, huh?” I sat down and contemplated the skills I’d need to get by in such a place. “So, some skills have levels and some don’t. The ones that do have levels also have a cap. You get them either with skill points or through hard work.”
The skill list was massive and some of the more unpredictable ones relied heavily on luck. The categories were Attack, Defense, Magic, Support, Production, Lifestyle, Research, and Taming. Unfortunately, my perusing found no search bar of any kind. I would have to look things up the old fashioned way.
Luck came to mind first, and not just for gambling. If you wanted to snag clients at work, you needed luck, not just smooth-talking. Without it, you could even end up getting shot and having your life cut short like mine was. With that in mind, I began to calculate the SP costs of the more useful-sounding skills. From the Support category, I selected Attributes, and from there, Luck, which then displayed the following skills: Good Luck, Strong Luck, Super Luck, Monster Luck, Fiendish Luck, Supreme Luck, and Divine Luck. Both Supreme Luck and Divine Luck were out of the question at one hundred and five hundred SP, respectively. For the time being, I went with Strong Luck for ten SP.
Next, magic. A life in another world without being able to use magic meant a life of backbreaking work somewhere without labor laws. Only a fictional protagonist or combat expert of some kind could make headway living like that.
I chose Affinities from the Magic section and found nine options: Light, Holy, Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Thunder, Darkness, and Spacetime. Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth cost ten SP a piece, Holy was twenty, Thunder thirty, Light and Darkness fifty, and Spacetime one hundred. On top of that, there seemed to be other skills that were necessary to properly utilize the magic. Another subcategory called Casting listed Short Cast, Null Cast, Free Casting, and Magic Circle Casting. To my consternation, however, the SP I’d been afforded wasn’t enough to acquire them all.
I decided on the Holy Affinity, given its propensity to be connected to healing and support magic. With enough practice and experience, my abilities just might be of enough use to someone to land me a safe position. So that was twenty more of my SP spent. Null Cast at twenty SP and both Free Casting and Magic Circle Casting at thirty would eat up a hundred points all together.
As far as other skills went, Lifestyle included things like Cooking, while Production offered Blacksmithing and other such conventional abilities. Attack skills similarly lacked anything particularly eye-catching. There was one major pitfall, though—there was no guarantee you would start out with a weapon, even if you chose the appropriate skill. Wherever you began, the Swordsmanship skill would mean nothing without the all-important sword itself. Therefore, I chose the safest option, Martial Arts, for five SP.
Whoever was dumb enough to sit in this white room picking up nothing but combat skills to boost their abilities... Well, I couldn’t see them lasting very long. I searched for cheat skills like skill thieving or copying, but none popped out to me.
And so, after much deliberation and agonizing, I had my starting skills: Assess Mastery for twenty SP, Martial Arts for five SP, Monster Luck for fifty SP, Magic Affinity: Holy for twenty SP, and Magic Control for five SP.
Assess Mastery would allow me to find efficient methods of training, Martial Arts would let me defend myself without having to rely on a weapon, and I had bumped Strong Luck up to Monster Luck after concluding that I could use a bit more of it, given the circumstances. I selected Magic Affinity: Holy and Magic Control based on their descriptions.
Eighteen minutes now remained.
While I scanned everything once again just in case, a job selector button drew my gaze. When I pressed it, a whole new screen appeared.
“Please select a job,” it read, followed by all kinds of options.
“Oh, you’ve got to choose this stuff yourself, too! Talk about a trap... Good thing I looked it over one more time.”
I took a deep breath and examined the available jobs. From swordsman, mage, healer, thief, merchant, and many others, I chose healer. Swordsman or mage may have been a better choice, but healer seemed like the safer bet to me, in case mages couldn’t learn recovery magic, or there was no magic in general for swordsmen.
Nine minutes and forty-two seconds remained.
Before finishing up, I examined all of my skills once more and memorized a few others that I might be able to work towards later, for future reference. With over three minutes to spare, I hit “Finish,” and a split-second later I stood in a grass field with three silver pieces in my hand.
“Time is money, even for the dead, huh?” I sighed at the sky, reflecting on my skills and how my remaining time must have correlated to the money in my hand.
Grassy plains blanketed everything as far as the eye could see. I surveyed the area and spotted what looked to be the walls of a city in the distance. The size of it must have been quite impressive, given how big it looked from this far away. After a deep breath to slow my churning thoughts, and with relief in my heart at the sight of civilization, I warily took my first step forward.
＊
“That makes ten souls. My end of the promise is kept.”
“It would certainly be interesting if this shakes things up down there, even if only slightly.”
“All were banal to the last. Those without an exceptional aptitude to adapt will meet only hardship.”
“Well, neither of us can meddle, so I’ll simply be watching from the sidelines. If they die, how about another bet? Let’s barter, shall we?”
“If the humor takes me. Farewell.”
One light faded.
“Ahhh, I hope something comes of it this time.”
So, too, did the other.
The God of Fate, upon losing a bet, had offered up ten middling souls, all strangers to peril, to the ruling deity of another realm, including the man who had just been reborn. And upon this one soul alone, the first of the ten, did that god bestow his protection.
The man who became Luciel had been destined to die, yet his unwavering strength of will to defy such an end had stayed the reaper’s hand as he clung to his world for a single minute longer. Thus, fortune had determined his place among the ten and driven the God of Fate to confer his personal protection on him. Assured that he would be the one to preside over Luciel’s destiny, the souls were granted. What this would bring about, neither god could say.
And with that, Luciel of Earth and the nine other souls were reborn into the world of Galdardia.
Name: Luciel
Job: Healer
Age: 15
Level: 1
HP: 200 — MP: 50
STR: 20 — VIT: 20
DEX: 20 — AGI: 20
INT: 20 — MGI: 20
RMG: 20 — SP: 0
Magic Affinity: Holy
SKILLS
Assess Mastery I — Monster Luck I
Martial Arts I — Magic Control I
TITLES
Shaper of Destiny (all stats +10)
Protection of the God of Fate (increased SP)