The next thing I noticed, I was in a white space. This was the second time it happened, so I was kinda getting used to it now. Turning around, I found myself face-to-face with a cute girl with blonde hair and blue eyes who looked around fifteen to sixteen years old. She froze on the spot, a look of surprise on her face.
...Jackpot.
Wait, what did I even think I won in the first place?!
“Are you the goddess in charge of this world?”
After asking, the girl who looked like a goddess finally broke free from her stupor, answering gleefully.
“Yes, that’s right! I’m Celestine, this world’s supervisor. Welcome to Verny! We’re happy to have you!”
Well she seems pretty excited about all this... I thought it would have been more trouble to have a burden like me pushed onto her...
“Um, I think you’ve probably already heard from the God in charge of Earth, but I’ll be in your debt as of now...”
My future was riding on this, so I had to be humble... Wait, she was a goddess, so of course I would be humble in front of her! Jeez!
“Yes, yes, yes, I’ve heard! I’m truly grateful to you!”
...Wait, why was she grateful? Shouldn’t this be more of a pain in the butt for her? I couldn’t see what she was getting at, so I tried asking her directly.
“Um, why would you say that? Shouldn’t I be a bit of a nuisance for you?”
“N-No, not at all! I really am grateful!”
After taking the time to listen to the details, I got a rough idea as to why. It seemed like Little Miss Goddess here really put the God in charge of Earth on a pedestal. He seemed to be a pretty famous person... Well, he was a famous “God,” even among the other supervisors, and was popular with the other young goddesses.
Wait, so that guy’s a friggin’ normie!
Well, anyway, though she was ecstatic to be in charge of a world similar to his, whenever they had their “analogous world supervisor get-togethers” (They actually have those?!), she was always left behind by her senior goddesses and didn’t have a chance to talk to him directly. She could only stare at him longingly from a distance.
And that’s where I came in. Not only did the person—er, God—who she had admired so much come to see her directly, oh no, not only that! He bowed his head and asked for a favor, for her to let him know how I was doing from time to time! To apologize for the trouble, he said to ask him anytime if there was something he could do for her! Oh, what good fortune! Oh, what bliss!!! She was ready to throw in a little extra service for me, it seemed. Well, as long as she was helping me out, I guess that was a good thing...
And so, the two of us got into the nitty-gritty. My life was depending on this, so I was dead serious.
“In any case, the things that God promised me went like this: One cheat power, the ability to communicate, read, and write in any language here, and to bring me back to life in a younger version of my current body. Oh, and is there anything that’d be inconvenient about my old body? Anything that makes me stand out too much, or get me discriminated against, or that I couldn’t have children... Anything like that?”
“Oh, no. Black hair and black eyes are a bit unusual, but it’s not like there aren’t any people with those traits, and discrimination is practically nonexistent. There are no differences between your body and the bodies of the other people here, so there won’t be any problems concerning you having offspring.”
All right, that’s one load off my shoulders.
“Then let’s get to deciding that cheat. A question before that though: Does magic exist in this world? Like, are there monsters here, and people who hunt said monsters as a job?”
This was an extremely vital question. Depending on the answer, it could change what type of cheat I would pick and what sort of life I would try living here.
“I’m not too sure what this ‘cheat’ is supposed to be, but the other God requested I give you one superior skill that would help you live in this world. Also, everything you just asked about does indeed exist here: magic, monsters, hunters, and the like.”
Aw yeah, all according to plan!
“Understood. Then, as for my cheat, I’d like to request the power to create medicine that has any effect I want it to have.”
“...Huh?”
Ever since the God back on Earth promised me that I could have a cheat power, I’d been wondering what I should choose. If I could only have one, what should I use it for? For fights? Yeah, right. I was a girl with sticks for arms, so I wouldn’t be able to do much with that. Even if I made myself the strongest there was, if I were to get famous because of it, then that’d be the end of me. Game over. Surprise attacks, huge groups of people coming to fight with me, getting poisoned, traps being laid for me, being taken hostage... You name it and it could happen to me.
It would be a similar story if I went for magic. To make matters worse, there could also be people who would want my powers to run through their family’s veins. It might be all right if I was married off in some sort of political marriage, but there was the possibility they would just treat me like livestock or something... Brrr, scary!
In the end, both those abilities would probably just be used for fighting. I’d like to avoid putting my life on the line every day fighting monsters, and I didn’t want to kill people while fighting in foreign wars, so I’d take a hard pass on those skills, thank you very much!
Anyway, I didn’t want any special powers that had a chance of being passed down genetically. I was going to do my best to keep my abilities a secret, and even if people did find out about them, I wanted my power to be something that was limited to me and only me. It had to be something that couldn’t be used for evil or to hurt anyone, so as to make people think it wasn’t worth threatening me or holding me hostage. Above all else, there was no point if it didn’t meet my original goal of “an ability that lets me live a safe and happy life.”
Question: What was the most dangerous thing in a less civilized world? Monsters? Bandits? Wrong. While they were dangerous in their own ways, they could be avoided as long as you had the cash to do so. You could move to one of the safer areas of a big town, for example, and hire a bunch of guards to protect you.
I wasn’t talking about that sort of danger, but one that couldn’t be avoided:
I was talking about injury and disease. In modern Japan, illnesses that could easily be solved with a single shot or a surgery would be fatal in this world. The same went for injuries. You could make a complete recovery back in Japan, but living the rest of your life with the after-effects of an injury, especially if the wound got infected, was a no-go here. Being prepared for those things was probably the most crucial for me to do.