“Magic: 10~30P.” Jackpot! The Four Elements, Lightning, Healing. These are perfect, but they must all be taken, right? Seeing those skills made a warm swell of emotions flow through my chest. I’m not crying, you’re crying! I noticed that the old guy had averted his eyes from me.
Only four types of magic remained. “Heat: Magic that raises the temperature 30P.” That would be pretty handy if I were reborn as an otherworldly vending machine. Yes, I’ll take another coffee, thank you! At least people would pay me for that.
“Packing (Magic that can pack boxes): 30P.” Oh, so I can go work in an Amazon warehouse?
“Weight (Increase or decrease the weight of objects): 30P.” What, to lower the postage on my shipments?
“Movement (Assistance when moving): 30P.” Huh? How wasn’t this the same as that walking ability? These abilities were all awesome if I wanted to work at the goddamned post office!
The fifth category was “Special Abilities.” Things like sword mastery, magic mastery, lowering the amount of experience required for certain tasks. If you grabbed one of those skills alongside the “Hunting Experience Boost,” you’d basically have a cheat code for leveling up. Surprising no one, both were taken. There was seriously nothing left…
“Corporate Initiative (Skill at reporting, contacting, and consulting others).” Others being who?! Your fantasy regional manager? Were we in a businessman universe? If you leveled up enough, you’d become the CEO of a multinational corporation? Were the dungeons furnished like office buildings?
“Master of None (Slower level-up rate).” Now that was a straight up penalty! Who in the world would take that? Was it a trap for anyone who somehow misclicked?
“Blockhead (Get worse as you level up).” Another trap option! Why would anyone purposefully choose abilities that made them worse as they spent more time in the world?
Maybe “Master of None” meant that you leveled up more slowly, but you had an easier time acquiring skills. But that still didn’t explain “Blockhead.” Was it for idiots? Or people who just wanted to cheer on another player? Truly a fate worse than death.
The final category was “Titles.” They were all cheap, about 10 points, but none of them seemed like they had any obvious use. They probably just helped determine your job.
But even if a title didn’t give me an immediate buff, it might be the most effective option in the long run. Looking through, I saw options like “Master Swordsman,” “Guardian,” “Grand Magus”—goddamn it! What the hell! Even these options were sold out! These were the kinds of titles that spoke to the heart of a dweeby twelve year old. Yet they were all taken by my classmates, who were ostensibly mature high school sophomores! I guess being called a “Master Swordsman” in a fantasy world isn’t as unspeakably lame as it was when I went through that phase in junior high. Still, even in a fantasy world, I couldn’t go around giving myself an over-the-top title. Good luck trying to live up to the expectations of the titles you picked.
But at least those titles were kind of cool. The only two titles left were the absolute worst!
One was “Shut-In (Doesn’t leave their home, protected by their dwelling).” So a recluse who lives with their parents. Uh, but weren’t we summoned to another world? There is no home here to refuse to leave! It would be impossible to be a proper shut-in even if you tried. Maybe if there was book delivery. But there’s not!
The final title: “NEET (Unemployed).” Shouldn’t we all be more concerned about getting killed by monsters than whether we have day jobs?
Those were all the ways I could spend my stat points. The list was over. My life was over. This old man must’ve gone completely senile. Just what in the world did he expect me to do?
“Hey, Gramps,” I called to him, “look at me, won’t you? Don’t you have anything to say to me? Why don’t you stop pretending I’m not here and look me in the eye?”
No matter how much I tried to get his attention, he kept his gaze turned away from me. From the moment the blackboard popped up, he acted like I had become someone else’s problem.
Some time passed. The old dude was sitting down a few feet in front of me, just asking me over and over again what I wanted to do.
He had taken us high school students out of our normal lives and brought us here for some mysterious reason. It was the will of a god, divine providence, whatever you wanted to call it. You’d think that there would be a good reason for that happening, but hey, maybe it was just some unavoidable coincidence. Since you couldn’t just throw kids into a fantasy world arbitrarily, you sweetened the deal by giving them a bunch of special skills. Sure, that made sense.
If it was all a big mistake, then the least this god could do was give us all skills to help us survive in the world. That was the role of a god, after all. And if there was no mistake, if there really was some reason why we all got summoned here, then the skills would be necessary to help us survive and accomplish our hypothetical quest.
Either way, that was the point of the skill list that the old guy kept asking me to choose from. But none of the remaining skills would help me survive here. None of them would help me fulfill any particular mission. You aren’t doing your job as a god! So what’s even the point?
He tried to stammer out an excuse, and I glared at him. He sat down cross-legged and I glowered at him. I put all the anger I could into my stare.
The old man’s eyes grew shiny with tears. As they dripped down his face into a puddle, he explained himself.