Level Up

The pain I felt right before that dust cloud overtook me seemed to have knocked me out for about two hours. The dust had probably been a consequence of all those meteorites hitting the earth, I figured.

The menu displayed the time in a simple format in the corner of my vision. How convenient.

I strained to move my body, which was half-buried in dirt.

Huh? I can’t get up…

It felt sort of like when you can’t get out of bed on a winter morning. I could move my hands a little, but it was difficult to do much more than sluggishly wiggle my fingers.

CLANK.

The metallic sound shook me out of my half-conscious state. “No way…,” I muttered, but deep down I was already sure what it must be. The lizardman who had fired the first arrow before.

As if to confirm my suspicions, a single red dot came into view on my radar. The lizardman on my still-open map screen was the only enemy left alive. How could he have survived all three of those ridiculous meteor attacks? I didn’t think that was possible. Maybe he had avoided the bulk of the strikes by being closer to me than the others?

“I guess I lose this round, huh?” I grumbled. I was somewhat frustrated, but for the most part the lethargic state of my body seemed to have dragged my mind down into resignation as well.

CLANK.

But when I saw the enemy appear at the top of the cliff, that apathy of a player who’d just lost a strategy game vanished completely. The lizardman was bleeding from all over his body, staining the remains of his tattered blue armor red. He spat out a spear he’d had clenched in his teeth onto the cliff and hauled himself forward.

At that moment, his gaze fell on me and refused to break away. My arms and legs shook pathetically. I’ve had dreams before where I wanted to run away and couldn’t move, but I’ve never dreamed anything that made me tremble so much.

Using the spear as a cane, the warrior shambled toward me, dragging along his broken leg. The thing’s body was absolutely covered in wounds. If I’d reacted a little sooner, I might have been able to catch him by surprise with a body slam and knock him off the edge of the cliff—but it was too late for that now.

Despite his battered state, the lizardman’s eyes were still burning for a fight. He definitely wanted to kill me. He pulled a sword from the scabbard at his waist—and tossed it at my feet. The sudden movement knocked off a piece of his armor and sent it clattering to the ground.

Now that he’d gotten this close to me, the smell of blood was so strong that I nearly gagged. It would have been far too realistic, if not for the HP gauge floating to the right of the lizardman’s head. Underneath was the label Lizardman: Level 50.

It seemed to be some kind of augmented reality (AR) feature resembling the ones used nowadays in smartphone games and the like. “Is this supposed to be a game?” I grunted, trying to trick my limbs into moving. For some reason, my body felt a little lighter as I did so.

I had no idea what the lizardman was saying to me, but I could guess. “You want me to take this sword and fight?” Barely recovered, I struggled to get my body to move, reaching for the sword. As silly as it might seem, considering I was dreaming, the fear I felt was completely real.

I gripped the weapon as if grasping at a straw. At that moment, for whatever reason, it didn’t occur to me to beg for my life.

My mind raced. I had never taken any kind of fencing or kendo lessons. I hadn’t even lifted a hoe on a farm or used a mallet to make mochi on New Year’s Eve. So my only experience with a blade was what I’d seen in anime and manga and stuff like that, with no actual bearing in reality.

I grasped the sword tight with both shaking hands and desperately planted my feet. The lizardman sneered as he readied his spear. Unlike my fake swordsmanship, my opponent’s posture showed a high level of mastery.

The word he kept repeating is difficult to describe—I might spell it out as mokuugwa or makueuga. Of course, I had no idea what it meant.

As he shouted, he jabbed the glowing red spear into my shoulder. It hurt—a lot. I’ve heard people say you feel heat more than pain with a stab wound, but no, it was pretty much just pain. It was unbearable. My mind was too focused on my shoulder to come up with any sort of action to take.

Pulling the spear out of me, the lizardman then stabbed at my leg as if toying with me. As the spear pierced my thigh, I was struck with a fresh wave of agony and toppled unceremoniously onto my backside.

Considering how pathetic I was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d passed out from the pain at that point, but instead, for some strange reason I stopped feeling it. Maybe it was my imagination, but my fear seemed to be fading, too. Perhaps I was so scared, my emotional limiter had snapped?

My arms and legs stopped shaking, and I was finally able to think straight. The HP gauge I could see by my opponent’s head was nearly zero, but I doubted I could fight him and win. If I tried coming at him with my sword, surely he’d easily counter my attack and put a quick end to things by slashing my throat.

Luckily, it looked like my enemy’s movements were as pained as mine. I had to create some kind of opening while he was tormenting me and make a break for it.

As I stood up, I grabbed a fistful of the dry soil. Throwing dirt in an opponent’s eyes might be cheap, but I didn’t have the luxury of a fair fight right now. I watched the lizardman carefully and struck his spear with my sword just as he drew back. I must have underestimated my remaining strength, because the shove threw him off-balance.

Now’s my chance!

I flung the dirt at his face with all my might. It scattered in midair, but enough of it still reached the creature’s face. Unfortunately, my opponent was a step ahead of me—he defended himself by throwing an arm up in front of his eyes.

Damn it, you’re supposed to be mortally wounded! But at least his arm was blocking his vision. Aiming for his legs, I swung my weapon and let go, flinging it forward. But I had apparently swung too hard—it flew toward the lizardman’s torso instead.

I had planned to run away the moment I released the sword, but the scene unfolding before my eyes stopped me in my tracks.

“Huh?!”

The sword had left my hands with shocking speed and cut right through the lizardman’s middle, dividing him in half. Blood gushed out of his severed body.

Oh god… I’m not good with gory stuff. And I’d never seen anything so gruesome before, not even in movies.

“He’s disappearing…” Just like an enemy in a video game, the lizardman’s corpse was fading away. However, the traces of blood left behind were proof that the battle had been no illusion.

I sat down hard on the ground and looked up at the sky, then finally took a deep breath. Whew! This dream is exhausting… If I have to dream something so realistic, couldn’t I be on a tropical beach or something, making out with hot girls in bikinis?

I took off my polo shirt to try to treat my wounds. It was chilly, but not so much that I’d catch a cold. Putting it into Storage, I used my T-shirt to wipe off the blood.

Strangely enough, I’d stopped bleeding. I would’ve expected a stab wound from a spear to last a lot longer. When I rubbed at the hardened blood with my finger, it fell away in clumps. Underneath it was perfectly clear skin—not even so much as a scar.

The pain had stopped, too, I realized. Maybe this gamelike dream had a system where you healed automatically after clearing a mission? I opened the status screen to confirm; sure enough, my HP had been fully restored. On closer inspection, in fact, my maximum HP had increased. Not only that, but my level had jumped from 1 to 310!

The crazy speed of that sword throw before must have been because of my high level. My strength, as well as all my other stats, had been raised all the way to the max value.

I must have leveled up so much because of all the enemies I defeated with those Meteor Showers. Wanting to see the aftermath of the Meteor Showers, I looked over the edge of the cliff. The scenery below was terrifying. A veil of dust still hung in the air, obscuring the wasteland, but the ground I could make out through it was dotted with craters. The area where the army had stood was thoroughly pockmarked, too.

My assumption had probably been right: The lizardman I’d fought before must have escaped a direct hit from the meteorites because he was some distance away from the rest of the group. Since he had still been on the verge of death, the shock waves alone must have been incredibly powerful.

As for the canyon in the distance, the Valley of Dragons, it seemed like a good deal of the area had caved in. It looked less like the aftermath of a magical in-game attack and more like the battered surface of the moon. Well, that was only to be expected if a small pocket of land was hammered with three attacks of more than a hundred meteorites each, I guess.

The scenery looked like something from a movie, so maybe that was why it didn’t feel real. Ah, right—this is a dream anyway…isn’t it? It was too vivid for a dream, yet far too strange to be real life. If anything, it seemed more likely I was inside a game.

Well, if this is a game, you’d think beating all those enemies would trigger some sort of event.

Trying to gather more information, I looked at the log screen. It started with the message WELCOME TO OUR WORLD. Normally, this would seem like a pretty significant statement, but since FFL starts with that same message, I skimmed past it.

The log showed what icons I had used, the defeats of the lizardmen and other enemies, and the defeat of some dragons that had apparently been the former rulers of the Valley of Dragons. It also included notifications of level-ups and the acquisition of various titles and then, finally, my victory over the last lizardman. After this was a line that said SOURCE: CONQUERED THE VALLEY OF DRAGONS, but I had no idea what that meant and simply ignored it.

Next was a log of all the spoils I’d gained in battle. Even the corpse of that lizardman was listed among the loot, which would explain why it had disappeared. Am I supposed to become a necromancer now, or what?

Remembering my opponent’s graphic death, I made a Graveyard folder in my Storage and stowed all the corpses in there. After a moment’s thought, I gazed at the folder and clasped my hands together in a brief prayer.

As I continued checking my status, I noticed that those emergency skills for beginners that I’d used earlier had been registered in the magic menu. I hadn’t been able to access that menu, but now it seemed I could use the new magic skills on the list if I selected and enabled them.

I wish this dream didn’t have all these annoying systems.

Testing out Search Entire Map wouldn’t necessarily prove its effectiveness, so I decided to try out the Meteor Shower spell. A quick check of the map confirmed that I was alone, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I had to test it out while I had the chance, lest I find myself in a dilemma and try to use it only to get a NOT ENOUGH MP message or something.

I selected Meteor Shower in the magic menu and chose use. Perhaps because there weren’t any enemies on the map, a pop-up appeared that said Please select a target. I guess I have to mark a target area for destructive magic, like in WW. I picked a site about three times as far away as the Valley of Dragons.

Apparently, this was good enough, because my MP meter decreased immediately. I felt like something was being drawn out of my body, much more intensely than when I had used Search Entire Map. This hadn’t happened the first time I used these skills, probably because I wasn’t using my own magic power then. This time, my MP went down by a thousand points or so, about a third of my total.

I looked up at the sky. No meteorites yet. Going by the first time, they should be showing up any moment now. Finally, I saw something burst through the clouds like before, but…

What’s going on? They’re HUGE!

The boulders streaking toward the ground were almost a hundred times the size of the rocks I’d summoned before. No, considering how far away they were, they must have been even bigger. Before I could start wondering why, I instinctively broke into a run. Away from the hail of meteorites, obviously!

Meteorites probably wasn’t the right word for these giant chunks of rock tearing through the atmosphere. A wave of sound bore down on me so hard my skin rippled, and I ran even faster, shrieking at a volume that rivaled the thunderous roar. I have no idea what I actually screamed, if anything. I do remember the incredibly strong air resistance, like I was running through water.

As I fled, I eventually noticed that I was going way too fast, but it was too late to hit the brakes. I braced my legs with all my strength, but I still couldn’t stop. The physical stress shredded my sneakers like scraps of paper. My heel smashed through a rock, and when my hands hit the ground, my fingers carved out ten grooves in the stone.

But even that wasn’t enough to stop my movement, and I went flying off the edge of the cliff into the air. Since I’d managed to kill most of my momentum, I was able to land on a protruding rock formation about fifteen feet down.

Man, that was three times scarier than a free fall.

Periodic tremors in the earth made it impossible to stand. I clung to the protrusion, not wanting to fall all the way down. A tidal wave of dirt, like a muddy river, flooded across the ground. Occasionally, I’d see rocks the size of a car rolling along with the dust, sending a shiver up my spine.

Once the earth had stopped shaking, I attempted to climb back up the escarpment to see the results of the Meteor Shower. The air was still hazy with debris, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my face in lieu of a mask. It smelled of blood a little, but it was better than breathing in dust and having a coughing fit.

When I pressed my fingers into the cliff face, they made little finger-size holes. The rock didn’t seem to be particularly brittle, so I was able to climb up with relative ease.

Upon reaching the top again, I remembered that I was now barefoot, so I searched through my Storage. I found some sandals and tried taking them out, but they were covered in blood, so I hastily put them back.

If I have to use something bloody anyway, it might as well be my own blood. I took the red-stained polo shirt out of Storage, ripped it in two, and wrapped each half around one of my feet. Not exactly stylish, but it would do for now.

When I raised my head and peered into the distance, I saw something that looked like a mushroom cloud. Moving to the edge of the cliff, I could make out a red light on the surface. Was it lava that had burst out from underground, maybe? It might have just been fire, but since I couldn’t tell from here what the situation was, I decided to look at the map.

I switched the map display from 2-D to 3-D. Judging by the fact that my target marker was now floating in midair, the ground must have collapsed considerably. The land around where the meteors had struck was warped and distorted, too.

Gazing at the mushroom cloud, I silently opened the magic menu and switched the Meteor Shower spell from enabled to disabled, rendering it unusable.

This spell is dangerous. If I used it over and over, I’d turn right into a demon lord. They say a wise man stays away from danger, so I was better off keeping it sealed away.

The reason it was so much stronger than the first time was the increase in my level or my intelligence stat, or so I figured. And it looked like my other attributes had powered up, too. That I was able to make holes in the rock with my fingers was probably thanks to a heightened strength stat, and my ability to endure the recoil from that was probably my higher stamina. And that mad dash that was fast enough to create air resistance must have been my agility stat at work.

I picked up a pebble and fiddled with it experimentally, but luckily, it seemed like I was able to control my new strength perfectly. I didn’t feel any stronger than usual as I held it then rolled it around between my fingers. But when I tried for a moment to use enough force to break it, it crumbled in my hand.

At one point, I’d accidentally sneezed while holding the pebble, but I didn’t crush it or anything. That was a relief.

Maybe it was all the dust blowing around, but the weather was starting to look dodgy, so I found a tent in my spoils and set it up to take a break. Munching on a protein bar, I found a Well Bag among my loot, which I used to quench my thirst. Apparently, this was some kind of Magic Item that never ran out of water. Very convenient, but trying to figure out how it worked seemed like it could keep me up at night, so I decided not to think about it too much.

Rain had started falling at some point, and it seemed unlikely to let up anytime soon. Since I had some time to kill, I decided to check out the rest of my spoils.

Most of the items were damaged to some extent, probably squashed by the meteorites. There were all kinds of tools, equipment, and everyday necessities, but with most of them broken, I made a few dedicated folders and set them aside.

There were tons of gold coins, silver coins, and all manner of jewels, too. I guess it’s true that dragons like shiny things. I found all kinds of currency from various places, and I quickly lost interest in sorting through it. The most numerous were the gold coins from someplace called the Flue Kingdom, of which I had more than ten million—a preposterous 303 tons. Maybe the humans there had been forced to make periodic tributes to the dragons?

I don’t know if this is a dream or a game or what, but if I find my way to a human civilization, it looks like I won’t need to worry about money. I hope there’s no bartering system…

Among my Magic Items were all manner of Holy Swords, Divine Blades, and the like, plus something called a Magic Gun. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, my middle school self was going nuts. All the swords had stupid names like Excalibur and Durandal, but since it was my dream, I guess I had my own subconscious to thank for that.

Possibly as some kind of antitheft measure, the Holy Swords unleashed a static-like shock that damaged me when I pulled them out, so I put them away for the time being. I’d been able to use them for only a minute, but the swords emitted a pretty blue light when I did. The light faded after a brief moment, though, so maybe they just glowed in the dark.

Moving on, I took the Magic Gun out of Storage and fired it experimentally at a nearby rock. There was a little bit of lag between when I pulled the trigger and when the gun fired, but it was still pretty powerful.

At any rate, now that I’d played around for a bit, it was time to get back to the work of sorting all my items.

Before I knew it, the rain had stopped.

I think I must have dozed off while sorting. This was much more sleep than I’d gotten in a while, so I woke up feeling refreshed. That I was able to sleep so soundly on a cliff like this shows just how exhausted I’d been.

I poured water into a pail I’d found in Storage and used it to wash my face.

…Huh? Wait, something didn’t look quite right there.

I looked again. Something was definitely off. Pulling out the flip phone from my pocket, I snapped a selfie.

“Yeesh! This is what I looked like as a first-year in high school…” Maybe it was just my imagination, but even my voice sounded younger. Well, I guess it wasn’t that unusual to dream about being a student again.

Having gotten a good night’s rest, I figured it was probably time to move on, since there wasn’t much else to do here. Looking at the map, I found an area called the Soldiers’ Stronghold about sixty miles to the west. It seemed to be devoid of life, and it was on the very edge of my map, so I wasn’t sure what the situation might be beyond it.

But I didn’t see any other significant man-made landmarks, so I figured I might as well start in that direction.

Before heading out, I opened up the skill screen to mess around a little. I had ignored it yesterday, but it looked like a lot of new skills had appeared on the list. I counted eleven in total: “One-Handed Sword,” “Throwing,” “Evasion,” “Parry,” “Practical Magic: Other World,” “Summoning Magic: Other World,” “Fear Resistance,” “Pain Resistance,” “Self-Healing,” “Observation,” and “Ancient Scalefolk Language.”

Maybe I had just learned them by leveling up, but it seemed like there would be more if that was the case. Did I acquire skills through my actions somehow?

Skill levels ranged from 1 to 10, and you could enhance them by allotting skill points to them. It was a simple conversion rate of one point for each level, and I currently had 3,100 points left, so I just leveled them up as I saw fit.

I didn’t want a repeat of that lizardman encounter, so I started by maxing out any skills that had to do with resistance or seemed like they’d be useful in combat. It looked like you could also turn them on and off after allotting points.

I descended from the cliff and ran along the ground.

I was wearing an item I’d found in my Storage called Wing Shoes. The ambiguous flavor text stated that they make small adjustments for walking a difficult path, but at any rate, they were certainly sturdy. I’d changed my clothes as well, into a robe I found in my spoils made of something called Yuriha fiber.

Presumably because of my increased stats, I was moving at almost forty miles per hour, yet I didn’t feel tired or out of breath at all. Worrying about it too much threatened to make me trip on my own feet, though, so I tried to just focus on running.

With the morning sun at my back, I cleared my mind and kept moving forward.

Hmm? What was that?

As I bounded toward the Soldiers’ Stronghold, I felt myself breaking through some kind of membrane. I slowed down to have a look. About a mile away from the Stronghold, there seemed to be a thin force field.

As I gazed at the invisible wall for a moment, an AR display popped up with the label Valley of Dragons: Barrier. A barrier… Just one more fantasy cliché, I guess.

There was a little bit of resistance, but it seemed like I could go in and out pretty easily. It seemed to halt air movement—when I kicked up a cloud of dust, it stopped at the invisible wall. Even the vegetation seemed to be different on either side—the reddish-brown wasteland turned light brown, with a few weeds sprouting here and there.

Well, I guess it was a wasteland either way, but still.

I removed the piece of cloth I’d wrapped around my mouth and took a deep breath at last. Ahh…the air tasted great. It was dry, but that was pretty normal for what seemed to be a winter climate.

Not long after passing through the barrier, I arrived at my current goal, the Soldiers’ Stronghold. It was a compact stone fortress, with a mortar plaza that seemed to be some kind of arena. The outer walls were crumbling; it was even more abandoned than I’d expected. I had known from the map that there was nobody there, but the place seemed like it had been empty for a very long time, as it was overrun with dust and spiderwebs.

I searched around the inside and outside of the stronghold, but aside from some gravestones in the shadow of the arena, I didn’t find much of anything.

Since this seemed to be the edge of the Valley of Dragons, the scope of my radar was reduced to only a few dozen feet. Looking at the map, I saw that the name in the upper-left corner had changed from Valley of Dragons to Shiga Kingdom: Seiryuu County. Hmm. So this is some kind of monarchy, huh?

If this were a legend or myth, I’d probably meet a beautiful princess and fall in love or something—but given my personality, I was way more likely to be a supporting character who cheers on the hero from the sidelines.

I didn’t know how long this dream was going to go on, but it could have at least thrown in a lovable busty maid.

I decided to use the Search Entire Map function to investigate Seiryuu County, but first, I did a few experiments. It seemed like the AR screen had only basic menu functionality, while the spell offered more detailed information.

Still experimenting, I opened the map and inspected the nearest populated area. This worked similarly to the one in WW, and once I’d used Search Entire Map, I could freely refine it to show human or animal life, not just the terrain.

Apparently, the closest civilized area was a place called Seiryuu City, about twelve miles away. There was another city, too, but that one was hidden away in some mountains roughly thirty miles out, so I nixed it. I saw plenty of villages, too, but Seiryuu City was still closest, so it didn’t make sense to traipse all the way out there.

Seiryuu County stretched about forty miles in all directions. Bigger than Tokyo but smaller than Chiba, maybe? This was stuff I’d learned making models in middle school, so I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my estimate.

On the way to Seiryuu City, maybe three miles from here, there was an army of about one hundred people. The average level of the soldiers was 7, with the highest being 31.

That seems surprisingly low…, I thought, as I looked closer at the map. There were less than ten people in the entire area above level 40 and none at all above level 50. It was probably safe to assume 310 was a pretty high level, then.

Still, I don’t like trouble, so I decided to take a roundabout path so as to avoid encountering the army. Maybe I was being a little overly cautious despite being in a dream, but I didn’t want to make any more frightening memories.

As I went on my way to Seiryuu City, a red dot suddenly appeared on my radar, racing straight toward me. I was traveling through a rocky area with lots of ups and downs, so even if I looked in the direction of the dot, I couldn’t see anything.

Examining my map, I discovered it was a level 30 wyvern. I wanted to check it out, so I hopped onto a nearby rock formation.

“Ngh?!”

As I leaped up, I crashed headfirst into the wyvern, and the collision sent me tumbling to the ground.

Ohh, my head…

I’d rolled down along no less than thirty feet of rocky ground before smashing into a rock face. Good thing I had that “Pain Resistance” skill…and a high VIT stat, I guess. Despite all that bumping around, I didn’t have a single wound. I’ve gotten pretty sturdy, haven’t I?

The beast had flown back up into the sky and was circling around, waiting for the right time to attack. Judging by the size of the head I’d smacked into earlier, I’d say its wingspan was about one hundred feet. Its body looked closer to a pteranodon than a dragon, I thought. And the stinger on the end of its long tail was a typical fantasy add-on for this kind of creature.

Trying to make a diversion, I chucked a nearby pebble at the circling predator.

Huh? I’d just wanted to distract it, but the stone pierced right through the wyvern’s wing and disappeared into the sky beyond. If this had been a manga, I got the feeling there would’ve been a twinkle and a little shing! sound effect as the projectile soared away.

It may have pierced the creature’s wing, but the pebble had still been only a small one, so it wasn’t enough to bring it down. Still, it served the purpose of driving it away. The wyvern flew off toward a distant cliff, tracing an unsteady path through the air.

Oh dear. It was heading in the direction of that army.

The knight leading the party was a higher level than the wyvern, so I figured they’d probably be fine, but still… I felt kind of bad for sending it their way in the first place, so I decided to go check things out, just in case.

I scaled the sixty-foot cliff in only three jumps. I probably could have done it in two, but the branches jutting out from the rock face were in the way.

As I ascended, I saw the wyvern circling above new prey. Jumping over a few large rocks at the top, I could see the monster’s target—the army down below. They were probably about eight hundred, maybe a thousand feet away.

I could hear the commander’s voice from here, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Of course, I speak only Japanese and a little bit of broken English, but usually I can at least guess what language I’m hearing. This time, though, it was apparently a language I’d never heard before. And it wasn’t just some gibberish nonsense like you often hear in dreams—it sounded like it had a real structure.

Come to think of it, the lizardmen’s language was like that, too, wasn’t it? It was getting harder and harder to believe this was really a dream, but…the alternative was too frightening, so I tried to press on with the conviction that this was all in my mind.

Once I’d properly escaped from thinking about my situation, I checked in on my skill menu, and sure enough, a new skill called “Shigan Language” had appeared. For now, I decided to allot one point to it.

“Everyone! Line up—quickly!”

Aha! It wasn’t perfect, but I could understand the gist of the commander’s words. I added on a few more points. Before long, I could tell he’d said, “All hands, form a circle! Quickly, now!” I could comfortably understand the language at around five points, it seemed. Just to try it out, I raised the skill points to the max of ten, but after six or so, it didn’t make much of a difference.

Aside from the language, I’d also gained seven more skills somewhere along the way: “Hand-to-Hand Combat,” “Sprinting,” “Spatial Mobility,” “Long-Distance Vision,” “Telescopic Sight,” “Keen Hearing,” and “Lip Reading.” In WW and FFL, gaining skills usually involved clearing fairly difficult quests and missions, but the process seemed a lot easier in this dream.

I’d turned off the log screen display, since it got in the way when I was moving, but I wanted to know how I was acquiring skills, so I set it up so I could see just a few lines at a time in the corner of my vision. For the moment, I divvied out some points to skills that seemed useful for watching the show—er, for keeping an eye on the situation: “Long-Distance Vision,” “Telescopic Sight,” “Keen Hearing,” and “Observation.”

The army had huddled into a circular formation to fend off the wyvern. When I concentrated on them, my new skills kicked in—I could see them as if looking through binoculars. How was it that my field of vision remained the same, yet whatever I focused on became as clear as if I’d zoomed in? I decided to save that investigation for another time and turned my attention to the matter at hand.

A row of heavily armored soldiers with large shields manned the outside of the circle, while inside, there were two rows of more lightly equipped soldiers with long spears. The way the points all shifted to match the movements of the circling wyvern made the formation look like some sort of living creature. After the spearmen, a group of archers knelt in standby position, ready to loose.

“Don’t be afraid, soldiers! Remember your training!”

“Let’s show that thing the spirit of Seiryuu!”

Voices called out from the within the ring, encouraging the frightened soldiers.

Well, yeah… It was only natural to be afraid of a monster like that.

In the very center of the circle stood a robed, staff-wielding figure, presumably a sorcerer. To the figure’s left and right were two female soldiers, lightly armored and holding what looked like conductor’s batons. At first I thought they were guns, but the AR label that popped up informed me they were called short wands. Apparently, the women wielding them were known as magic soldiers. So the two women were magic users, too… Then why weren’t they wearing robes?

A group of soldiers standing near the trio appeared to be the sorcerers’ escorts. And outside the circle, eight or so knights trotted around on horseback. It looked almost like they were moving behind the four ranks of troops, putting the circle between them and the wyvern. These guys were covered from head to toe in shining, silvery full-plate armor, so why were they using the rest of the army as a shield?

“Here it comes! Spearmen, don’t let your spear tips wave around in the air! Plant the end in the ground and drive it in with your feet. If it’s loose, the wyvern’s attack will knock it right out of your hands!”

“Archers, hold—wait until it is frightened by the spears and slows its speed!”

The commander’s meticulous instructions were probably only frightening these poor soldiers even more, not reassuring them. Possibly that was why each time the monster attacked, they only staved it off with their spears without making much of a counterattack.

The archers were pretty skilled, seeing as about 90 percent of the arrows hit their mark. But it seemed like most of them just bounced off the wyvern without causing damage. Was the creature’s skin just that tough, or was it because their level wasn’t high enough? I couldn’t tell.

But, just like a critical hit in a game, one of the girls guarding the sorcerers managed to pierce the wyvern’s hide with an arrow.

Around this point, I noticed there were more soldiers in the forest some distance from the circle. At a glance, they appeared lightly outfitted—perhaps they were noncombat personnel, like military engineers or transportation officers, taking refuge from the battle.

…Which meant the army had most likely challenged the wyvern expecting to win. I’d planned to help out by scaring it away with rocks if necessary, but it seemed like I’d worried for nothing.

I stowed away the rock in Storage and settled in to watch how this army would fight.

The wyvern repeatedly swooped down to attack, but the encircled troops simply repelled it each time with their spear wall and short bolts they shot from their crossbows.

Finally, during the fourth attack, something changed. Just as it started to return to the sky after another failed attack, its balance faltered, as if one of its wings had suddenly lost its lift. The beast crashed into the ground unnaturally, like a giant invisible hammer had struck it.

This must have been some kind of magic at work.

When the wyvern had lost its balance, I’d heard one of the sorcerers in the center chanting a rhythmic, almost synthetic-sounding song, ending with a shouted word: “Turbulence!”

The last part must have been a trigger word or something—I heard it almost in stereo. It was like she’d spoken an ancient word and its modern equivalent at the same time; my brain processed the modern word in Japanese (rankiryuu) and the ancient word in English (“turbulence”). It was pretty fascinating.

Apparently, the spell that had delivered the final blow to bring down the wyvern was called Air Hammer. This was the first time I had heard a magic spell being chanted, but I had to wonder how the incantations in this world were pronounced. I could understand the final trigger words, but the chant itself seemed more like a series of bizarre sounds than actual words. It was almost like if you used music software to generate a series of notes on a PC.

While pointless details once again distracted me, the battle had progressed.

The wyvern was making revolting shrieks as it dragged itself along the ground, but its HP bar indicated it hadn’t actually taken all that much damage.

But the sorcerers seemed to have done their job well.

The creature spread its wings in an attempt to fly, but the mounted knights pierced them with their lances. Still, its HP was down by only about 20 percent.

A particularly high-level knight skillfully pinned one of the wings to the ground, trapping the wyvern on its back. The other knights worked together to immobilize the other wing, but a single flap sent them flying back several feet, horses and all.

They had pinned the monster less than three hundred feet away from the rock I was hiding behind. I might be a little too close…

“… Lightning Bolt Inazuma!”

The sorcerer in the center of the circle brought down a flash of lightning on the wyvern. It wasn’t an all-out thunderbolt, but the roaring sound and white flash still pained my eyes and ears. I guess there were some disadvantages to the “Keen Hearing” and “Long-Distance Vision” skills.

My ears were still ringing, so I didn’t hear any orders, but the soldiers broke into three groups, surrounding the wyvern with spears in hand. The sorcerers from the center scattered into three groups, too, alongside their escorts.

Even pinned to the ground and numbed by the lightning, the wyvern still struggled violently. Thrashing the stinger on its tail and snapping its beak, it seemed to be landing a few hits on the soldiers’ ranks. Even at point-blank range, the spears and crossbows of the soldiers could hardly pierce the thick hide, but little by little it was taking damage.

The wyvern’s defeat seemed imminent, but it had apparently been waiting for its chance. Aiming at a soldier who’d carelessly gotten too close, it swung its long tail and landed a direct hit.

Possibly loosened by the force of that movement, the creature’s wings flapped open, and it charged toward the nearest cliff.

In other words, my hiding place.

“Stop that thing! Zena!”

“Yes, sir!”

The commander shouted what sounded like a ridiculous command at the closest magic soldier. The soldiers in front of her, though visibly alarmed by the attacking monster, resolutely steadied their spears to stop it.

These troops may have been frightened, but they had pretty high morale. If I were in their shoes, I’d be running away at full speed.

“… Air Cushion Kiheki!”

Charging at the speed of an Olympic sprinter, the wyvern crashed into an invisible wall just a few feet from the magic soldier. I couldn’t see the wall, but the cloud of dirt and weeds suggested it was about as big as a few soccer goals stacked on top of one another.

Since the situation had nothing to do with me, I could afford to relax as I assessed it, but for the soldiers involved, it was no laughing matter. Apparently, even magic wasn’t enough to change the laws of physics, because the wyvern and the soldier who’d made the barrier were both affected by the blowback.

The wyvern pitched forward onto the ground, but the small magic soldier was forcefully sent flying. The spell must have worked just like a cushion; she was knocked into the air, but not enough to crush her. It was probably no worse than taking a powerful punch.

Immediately, two spells shot toward the scene of the clash.

“… Lightning Bolt Inazuma!”

“… Resist Fall Rakkasokudo Keigen!”

The former finished off the wyvern with another flash of lightning, while the latter was a spell to slow the fall of the magic soldier whirling through the air. At first, I wasn’t sure what kind of magic it was, but since I could see her downward speed visibly drop, it was easy enough to figure out.

The problem was that her horizontal velocity didn’t slow at all. She was at least sixty-five feet in the air, and at the rate she was going, she’d pass over my head and fly straight over the precipice behind me.

Their battle had felt so real, I didn’t even stop to think that this was only a dream or anything like that. I just turned on my heel and ran, moving along the top of a thick dead branch that jutted out toward the cliff.

It was a little frightening, but even if I fell at this height, I’d be fine. I knew that from personal experience…unfortunately.

I stopped right at the end of the branch and stretched out my hand. But it wasn’t quite enough.

Below me, I saw another, slightly longer branch, so I jumped down to it, reaching out as far as I could. This time I made it! As if it had been waiting for me to grab her cloak, the fall reduction spell wore off, and the magic soldier’s weight returned to normal.

Crap. I reached a little too far.

The girl’s weight was dragging me down with her. I clung to the tree branch and managed to stop both of us from falling. I shifted my posture, hoisting her up with a hand under her chest. If this were a light novel or manga, it would be the perfect time for some accidental raunchiness, but I regret to inform you that all I felt was the cold, hard metal of her breastplate. It was a bit disappointing, sure, but this wasn’t exactly the right situation for that kind of thing, anyway, so I just adjusted my grip and carried her back toward the root of the branch.

The magic soldier was unconscious, apparently having fainted when she collided with the wyvern. Brushing aside her sweat-drenched bangs, I saw that she had a sweet, gentle face. According to the AR display, she was Zena Marienteil, seventeen years old. It seemed that she was from a long line of hereditary knights. Did that make her some sort of aristocrat? I wasn’t sure.

If I had to sum up her appearance, I’d say she was slender, plain, and beautiful: the type who’d probably be oblivious to her own popularity with the guys. Her light-golden hair was woven into a braid, and some kind of armored headpiece protected her small head.

Long lashes adorned her closed eyelids, and the eyebrows that had been hidden by her bangs painted a strong line, though I couldn’t tell if they were drawn on or not. I didn’t see any makeup on her, and she had a good complexion, her lips a soft-looking pink.

The girl didn’t seem to be wearing any perfume, but there was still a faintly sweet, feminine scent mixed in with the smell of sweat. She wore leather armor over her long-sleeve shirt and trousers, along with heavy boots and the durable cloak on her shoulders that had saved her life. She must have dropped her short wand, though, because her hands were empty.

I had been too frantic to notice before, but messages about new skills and titles had appeared in my log.

Apparently, titles were just as easy to acquire as skills.

“Mm…where am I?”

“Oh, you’re awake?” She had just come to, so I issued a quick warning. “I recommend you hold off on looking down.”

“Huh? Aaah!” As a soldier, it seemed like her only reaction to being on a thin branch on the side of a cliff was a short cry of alarm.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m still a little numb all over, but I don’t think I’m injured anywhere…” Maybe she wasn’t used to being near men, but she seemed a bit uncomfortable with my carrying her, so I helped her up onto the base of the sturdier branch above.

“Ah, ow…”

“Are you all right?”

It seemed to hurt her to put weight on her foot, so I quickly moved to support her. She must have hurt her ankle when the wyvern sent her flying. It didn’t look broken, but it was probably sprained.

“Thank you very much. Where are we? Last I remember, I was fighting a wyvern…”

“You fell right out of the sky! I happened to be climbing up the cliff here.”

“I fell from up there?” The girl looked up at the top of the rock wall, dumbfounded. It was about fifteen feet above us, maybe around a three-story climb.

“I think some kind of magic slowed down your fall, which is why I was able to catch you.”

“Really? Then you saved my life,” she said, shyly thanking me. She was slightly taller than me, but maybe because her chin was lowered, she seemed to be looking up at me. She had a pretty powerful smile.

If I were still a high school student, I’m sure it would have been love at first sight.

But I’m not some pervert who falls in love with girls over ten years younger than me, so obviously that didn’t apply.

“No, not at all. My name is Satou. I’m just a humble traveling peddler.” This occupation was the backstory I’d come up with on the way here. Judging by the feudal fantasy setting, there was a chance that normal citizens would have their movement limited, and if I just said I was a traveler, I might be mistaken for a thief. It might have been silly to take all these precautions in a dream, but given how real things had been so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got imprisoned or something.

Trying to lend more authenticity to my story, I looked her in the eyes as I spoke.

“I-I-I’m Zena, a magic soldier and a vassal of Count Seiryuu. I’ve served in his army for two years. I’m seventeen years old, unmarried, and s-single!”

Uh…nobody asked any of that, but okay.

Zena seemed a little frantic, but her expression was sincere as she told me about her family structure and such. I nodded along and gave one-syllable responses where necessary, all the while gauging the best route up the wall.

“Excuse me for a second. I’m going to jump a few times.” Carrying her with both arms, I hopped lightly in place. She seemed surprised but not in pain. “Hang on—I’m going to take us up.”

“Huh? Up this cliff?!”

“Yes—there’s a surprising number of footholds, so it should be easy enough. Let’s go!” Making sure she was holding on tightly, I leaped lightly from foothold to foothold. I tried to use my entire body, not just my knees, like a spring to absorb the shock of each jump so as not to jostle her.

“We’re here.”

“Phew… You’re very agile, aren’t you?”

Zena still clung to me, and I could feel her heart pounding through her armor. Her cheeks seemed flushed as she looked up, and her voice was shaky as she spoke.

What an unusual girl.

She still seemed scared, because she made no effort to get down, so I continued carrying her as we crossed the rocky plateau, taking her back toward her friends.

“Stop right there! Who are you? Let go of her!”

A petite woman stood challenging me from the top of a large rock. One of Zena’s colleagues, presumably. She scowled at me, her crossbow at the ready.

“W-wait, Lilio! He’s fine!”

“Be quiet, Zenacchi!”

Zena tried to intervene on my behalf, but the other party wasn’t having any of it. Well, that was a normal reaction, I suppose. Carefully, I lowered her to the ground in a sitting position.

“Good. Now get back!”

“Lilio! This person saved my life!”

Once I had backed away far enough, a heavily armored female soldier emerged quickly from the shadow of the cliff and rushed over to Zena, lifted her up, and carried her back toward the rock face. In her place, another armored woman emerged, pointing her large broadsword at me. Zena could be heard protesting on the other side, but the woman refused to lower her sword.

…I mean, I did save her life, but okay.

“Name yourself.”

I couldn’t see her face under her headgear, but the soldier’s voice was kind of sultry. Judging by the curves that her armor couldn’t entirely disguise, she was definitely a beauty. Okay, this was just my personal theory, but I’d be pretty pleased if I was right.

“Speak up. What is your name?”

“Nice to meet you, soldier. My name is Satou. I’m a traveling peddler.”

“Rather empty-handed for a peddler, are you not?”

I guess the flat bag slung over my shoulder wasn’t enough for her. It was something I’d found in my spoils—the bottomless bag of holding standard to any tabletop RPG. In this world, it was called a Garage Bag.

I didn’t really need it, since I had Storage, but the small black leather satchel made for a stylish fashion accessory. Was it unusual for a merchant to carry his goods in a bag like this?

“I’m embarrassed to say that my packhorse ran away from me yesterday after being startled by the meteorites.”

“Meteorites? Ah, you mean yesterday’s starfall.”

I figured that the Meteor Showers I’d cast yesterday had probably been visible from a distance, so it made sense to use that as my excuse. The fact that they were already calling it a “starfall” was typical fantasy writing.

Okay, I knew I made that up on the fly just now, but those skill names were a little uncalled for. Although, that being said, they looked kind of useful, so I decided to throw a few points into each anyway.

“There’s a hole in your story. If you were traveling along the highway, your horse would’ve run in the opposite direction.”

It was really too bad that I couldn’t see the woman’s face. I had no doubt she was wearing a decidedly sadistic expression.

I felt strangely calm, considering I was being interrogated at swordpoint, but that was probably because the menu icons and radar in my field of vision were detracting from my sense of reality. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just a game and there was no need for concern.

Maybe because I’d enabled the “Fabrication” skill, all kinds of suitable excuses came to mind. “I beg your pardon, but do you know of a place called the Soldiers’ Stronghold?”

“Yes, of course. It’s where people go who wish to die.”

Was it a popular suicide spot, or what? But I was glad it wasn’t a restricted area.

“I was told the grave of one of my grandfather’s benefactors is there, so I was on my way to visit it when I saw the starfall. When my horse ran off, I panicked and chased after it, but of course I couldn’t catch up…”

“I see. How very unfortunate.”

Oh? Did she believe me? Leave it to my maxed-out “Fabrication” and “Making Excuses” skills, I guess—they were super effective.

“Do you have your identification papers?”

Identification papers? I had my driver’s license in my wallet, but I was pretty sure showing that would only cause more problems.

“Unfortunately, they were hidden in my packhorse’s mantle, so I don’t have them on hand.”

“Well then, you can have them reissued in Seiryuu City.” With that, she slid her large sword back into the scabbard on her back and fastened it in place.

“Hey, Iona, you’re really gonna believe him just like that? What if he’s a thief?”

“He has very prim fingers, not to mention that expensive magic robe. Most likely, he’s a noble from some small country in the north.”

“He might be a spy, then!”

“I doubt they would employ someone who’s clearly not from our kingdom as a spy, don’t you think?” The young woman who’d come down from the rock was whispering urgently to the heavily armored soldier. Thanks to my “Keen Hearing” skill, I could hear everything.

“What’s the matter, Lilio? I thought the younger ones with black hair were your type.”

“…They’re my least favorite now, due to personal reasons.”

“Ahh, he dumped you, huh? Want me to treat you sometime to some food that’ll make your chest bigger?”

“He didn’t dump me because of my chest! But I won’t say no to a free meal. You can listen to my troubles while you’re at it, too.”

Having more or less persuaded them to calm down, Zena left the two to their girl talk and came over to apologize for her colleagues’ rudeness.

Together with the other women, we headed toward the troop headquarters. Their encampment was right next to the highway, so I didn’t have much choice but to follow along. Besides, it probably would have seemed suspicious if I had tried to take my leave there and wander off into the forest or something.

The battlefield smelled so strongly of blood that I felt like I might throw up. Luckily, it didn’t actually happen—thanks to my resistance skills, maybe. There were a few bodies covered by cloth and several more casualties receiving emergency first aid, plus the enormous corpse of the wyvern.

…So people had died in that battle?

Strangely, I didn’t really see any soldiers crying. Maybe they were throwing themselves into their work to stave off any feelings of sadness.

The men I had assumed to be military engineers of some kind were working away with what looked like saws to dismantle the wyvern’s corpse. It was probably difficult to satisfactorily drain all the blood out of a body that large, which explained why the workers were splattered with red.

Spotting Zena, now in the care of some guards, the mounted knight who seemed to be the commander trotted over on horseback. I had never seen a horse up close like this before. Its breath stank as it snorted wildly through its nose.

Stop moving your face toward me with those cutesy eyes. That’s okay only when pretty women do it, got it?

“Zena! You’re all right!”

“Yes, thanks to this person here. This is Satou, a very agile peddler.” Zena’s introduction seemed to include some unnecessary details, but I bit back any sharp remarks.

“Then we’re in your debt. It would be terrible if we’d lost a precious magic soldier.”

That made it sound like losing her wouldn’t have been a big deal if she wasn’t a magic soldier, but judging by the grins of the people around us, it was probably just a joke.

The armored woman who’d interrogated me earlier whispered into the captain’s ear, explaining what I had told her before, and they asked me what I’d seen at the Soldiers’ Stronghold.

Apparently, the group had been sent out from Seiryuu City the day before as a survey team to determine whether the “starfall” had caused anything strange.