Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“BE THE HERO of your own adventure!”
When I was a student, those words captured my imagination. I must have spent hours and hours playing tabletop role-playing games. Honestly, there were plenty of times when I wished more than anything for a chance to become one of the heroes laid out on my character sheets—the personas that I spent so much time role-playing.
But I never seriously thought that wish could ever come true.
Least of all at an age when both heroes and adventures had long since lost their appeal.
***
I would describe myself as a forty-two-year-old bachelor, gainfully employed at a decent-sized company, a resident of a moderately sized city in one of Japan’s more rural prefectures.
There’s nothing particularly unique about my looks or abilities, though I think I’m at least average by most measures. Despite that, unfortunately, there was never a time when I thought marriage was anywhere on the horizon. If asked about my hobbies, I could only say I enjoyed playing TTRPGs. When I was younger, I even helped organize conventions. However, I almost never found time to play once I joined the workforce.
But that average life of mine came to an abrupt end.
The last thing I remember was finishing up some unpaid overtime, returning to my apartment, and opening the door.
After that, I found myself in an empty void. I was unable to perceive anything above or below me—not even my own body. The only thing I was aware of was my consciousness, floating in empty space.
I thought I had at least another twenty years before my time was up…
Though I can’t explain how, I realized that I was dead.
I thought of my work colleagues and friends, my relatives and neighbors, my unfinished work, my unread novels and tabletop sourcebooks, as well as my backlog of video games, and I felt the loss of all of those things envelop me in the void.
Well, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it now.
Looking back on my life, there wasn’t really much I could boast about, but there was nothing I was particularly ashamed of, either. All in all, it wasn’t so bad, I thought. It’s unfortunate it had to end so soon, but what’s done is done. Gradually, I accepted my condition and made peace with my passing.
After I’d already lost my sense of the passage of time, something spoke to me.
“I am one of the Watchers.”
I could not see the source of that voice, nor hear it, but its words and intent were conveyed to my consciousness all the same.
“Henceforth, you will be transported to a space that exists beyond the limits of your plane of origin—what you might call a parallel world.”
“I’ll be…transported to another world?” I asked.
Hearing that phrase out loud felt strange, but oddly nostalgic.
“According to a search I ran on this dimension’s information substrate, ‘transported to another world’ is indeed the most adequate phrase to describe the phenomenon.”
“Well… Huh.”
Confused, I wasn’t able to give more than a half-hearted response, but some part of me had already accepted whatever was in store. There was no reason to be frightened. After all, I was already dead.
Not to mention, I was a big fan of otherworldly stories like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the John Carter series, to name a couple of the classics. I remembered hearing the genre was experiencing a sort of revival recently, too.
But those were just stories, fiction—or at least, I thought that was the case. Now the same thing seems to be happening to me.
“Um… Once I’m transported to this other world, what exactly is going to happen to me?”
“I will provide you with a body suitable for your new life there, so, if you would, please provide me with the information required for its creation. Your destination can be described—using the terms familiar to you—as a fantasy world of the so-called ‘sword and sorcery’ subgenre, so it would be best if the information you provide is well-adapted to that premise.”
“A new body…in a fantasy world?”
The first thing that came to mind was a character I’d made for a western tabletop RPG called Dungeons & Braves. I’d played that one passionately during my student days. Over seven years and across several campaign scenarios, I’d raised this character to the maximum level allowed in the game. He was the character I felt the most attached to: the great magic user, Geo Margilus.
“I have completed a search on your character. Using the information contained in the rulebooks, sourcebooks, scenario notebooks, and character sheets found in your room, I will reproduce the physical and mental abilities of ‘Geo Margilus,’ as well as his possessions. However, in order to prevent any dissociation, which might negatively affect your state of mind, no changes will be made to your physical appearance.”
In other words, not only did this self-proclaimed Watcher read my mind, it also looked through all my notebooks filled with the delusions and fantasies of my youth.
This is incredibly embarrassing…
“The creation of Geo Margilus has been successfully completed,” the watcher proclaimed.
While my disembodied self was writhing in shame, the Watcher finished its work. I began to regain the sense of having a physical body.
I was dressed in a black robe, a knapsack over my shoulder and a staff in one hand.
My physical appearance was the same as before. I still had the black hair, dark eyes, and plain face of an average Japanese man, so it felt like I’d simply put on a costume. However, I could sense more had changed than met the eye. This is the physical strength and lightness of body of someone in their twenties, I thought, but I should clarify: I felt more energy than I’d had in my twenties, as I hated sports and was an indoor-dwelling otaku.
“Are there any issues with your consciousness or memories?” the Watcher asked.
As I searched the corners of my mind, I discovered an intuitive understanding of my character Geo Margilus’s magic abilities, as well as an inventory of his magic items and a grasp of how to use them. Everything I had worked out together with the game master and written down in my notebooks as background information was now ingrained in my mind as knowledge. Despite all the new information, I could still access the memories of the forty-two years of my previous life without any problems.
“Everything seems to be fine,” I replied. “But you weren’t kidding. I really am a character out of a TTRPG…”
My character, Geo Margilus, was a Level 36 magic user. By Dungeons & Braves’s Master rules, Level 36 is the highest level any character can reach. When I remembered that fact, after becoming him, I was assaulted by a mix of anxiety and excitement.
Wait, is this really okay? What have I gotten myself into?
Even among fans of the genre, D&B has a reputation for being a bygone relic. What most people associate with D&B are parties of weak characters, only 3 to 5 hit points apiece, struggling—and failing—to survive, as they explore unexciting dungeons infested with rats, bats, goblins, and hardly anything else. This may be hard for those used to contemporary TTRPGs to believe, as more emphasis is now put on colorful characters and intricate plots, but that is a fairly accurate description of gameplay in D&B.
However, that description only applies to the Basic ruleset. As in-game characters mature, the nature of their adventures changes dramatically.
D&B has four core sets of rules: Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master, with each set corresponding to a range of ascending character levels. Once D&B’s Master ruleset is in use, you can expect each character to be the head of a guild or the leader of a country, for adventures to lead into space or to alternate dimensions, and for fights to be historic battles with demons or gods. Depending on the circumstances, characters may go on an adventure to become a god.
In order to reach the level required for D&B’s Master rules, one must play a character through a minimum of one hundred campaign scenarios. I spent seven years raising Geo to his final state, and his abilities—powerful enough to hold sway over the fate of the world—reflected that.
“Having done all this for me, what is it you want me to do?” I asked.
“Once you are transported, we will not direct you, nor interfere with your actions.”
You’re telling me that after you go out of your way to transport me to another world, I’m supposed to do whatever I want? There must be some ulterior motive at play, I thought, trying to read between the lines of what this self-proclaimed Watcher told me.
“This isn’t something, where—for instance—it’s all well and good that I’ve become a wizard, but Geo’s magic doesn’t work in the other world, right?”
In that case, this wouldn’t be a portal fantasy, but a dark sci-fi comedy.
“The magic in your character’s game is fundamentally at odds with the principles of the other world, but an implementation of it is still possible within the confines of that world’s natural laws. The same applies to the details of your physical strength and abilities, as well as your game-derived knowledge.”
“Are you sure about this? I might throw the whole world into disarray.”
“If that is your wish, we would have no objection.”
Well, I would!
There once was a time I’d wished I could be Geo, but the idea that I, a man in his forties, should have the energy and drive to take some grand action to save or destroy the world with Geo’s powers was just asking too much of me. Of course, if this had happened to me twenty years earlier, that would be a different story.
“Don’t you think Geo is a little too strong? I have a feeling a Level 6 Cleric would be much more reasonable… But then again, Geo is the character I’m most used to,” I muttered, weighing alternatives and backpedaling.
On the other hand, I couldn’t deny the rush of excitement I felt inside me over this strange turn of events. Here was a chance to be the hero of the many adventures I’d played with my friends around the table in my youth.
Normally, I wouldn’t have had the time to abandon my work and go play around—let alone visit another world—but at the end of the day, I only had this chance because I was dead.
I guess I could think of it as an early retirement? Regardless of whether I spent however many years I had left in Japan or another world, it wasn’t a bad deal, as long as I didn’t have trouble feeding myself. Though, if I got the chance, it would be nice if I could eat good food every now and then, maybe go to some hot springs, read some interesting books… If I could fit in some roleplaying, that would just be icing on the cake…
Let’s be honest. By the end of my conversation with the Watcher, I’d forgotten all the lessons I’d learned from life. I was over the moon, painting fantastic futures in my mind.
“Well then, I shall now send you to the other world. For your reference, your destination is the continent of Sedia, as it is called in the language of its people,” said the Watcher, and that was the last I heard before my consciousness was cut short.
***
“I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t this…”
When I came to, I found myself in a square prison cell.
I sat there staring at the rust-ridden bars of an iron cell door. The other three walls were made of stone. The ceiling was high, and there was a hole about three meters from the ground to let in light. In the cell was a rag that could maybe pass for a blanket, and a hole in the ground in place of a toilet. That was the extent of my newfound world. To top it all off, my wrists were locked in wooden stocks. Beyond the bars, my cell faced a similar one, but it was empty.
“Talk about a hot start…”
“Hot start” is a term used in Japanese TTRPG scenario-writing for campaign hooks that force the players into some kind of incident to start them off in media res. There was no better phrase to describe the predicament I was in.
“If there’s a game master behind all this, they sure are mean-spirited,” I said, taking in my surroundings and putting what information I had together.
The best candidate for game master is probably that so-called Watcher, I thought, my elation from before gone without a trace.
The Watcher told me I was free to do as I wished, but I couldn’t bring myself to take those words at face value. No one would go out of their way to do something so elaborate for no reason.
“It’s around noon, I suspect…” I looked at the light streaming in from the opening in the wall above.
I used the light to inspect my person. I was wearing pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I was barefoot. My specially crafted robe, with its extraordinarily large +5 Defense bonus, was nowhere to be found, nor was my staff, nor my Infinity Bag, which contained my spellbook. All the equipment I’d obtained by the end of Geo’s long adventures was gone.
“What did I do to get thrown off this metaphorical cliff? First I die, then I’m thrown into another dimension and turned into an RPG character…”
I felt exhausted. So much for feeling twenty again.
I slumped against a wall, holding my head in my hands (as well as I could). Has anyone found my body yet? Preparations for next week’s meeting had been left unfinished. I preoccupied myself with thoughts of my previous life. Rather self-serving, if I do say so myself.
I let out a long sigh.
“I really was transported to another world, wasn’t I?”
After I spent a few minutes staring off into space, the wheels in my head finally started to turn.
I took some deep breaths to calm myself. Each time I exhaled, I felt a bit of optimism return to me. Yes, I’d died, but there was nothing I could do about it now, nor was there any way I could return to Japan. I needed to accept that and focus on what lay ahead.
Fortunately, I’d come to this world as a Level 36 magic user. It would be quicker to count the few things I couldn’t do, compared to all I could do.
“If I just use a spell or two, I… Wait! That’s right! I don’t have my spellbook, do I?!”
Remembering the absence of my equipment, I felt the blood drain from my face. If I didn’t have my Infinity Bag, where I kept my various magic items and other treasures, that meant I didn’t have my spellbook, either.
“If I don’t have my spellbook… Yeah, I’m in trouble.”
Let me explain. Nothing is more important to a wizard than his spellbook.
In many games, new and old, magic users have magic points, or MP, and use those points to cast magic. However, that’s not the way magic works in D&B. In D&B, a magic user must read their spellbook every morning, and hold any spells they plan to use that day in their mind. This is called “charging” the spell. But once a charged spell is used, it is gone. It vanishes from the magic user’s consciousness and cannot be used again. That is, not until it’s charged anew during another morning’s spellbook reading session.
If I don’t have any spells charged right now, and all of my magic items are gone, then I’m nothing more than another ordinary person.
Despite having spent forty-two years as an ordinary person, I felt myself panic.
“Come on. Do I have any spells charged?”
While I had no experience actually casting spells, I tried going through the motions of remembering something like a math formula, and after some poking around my brain…
“That’s it!”
It felt as if I had come across some isolated energy source in my mind. Instinctively, I understood the energy was a charged spell. The incantation method, the steps I needed to take to cast the spell—it all became clear to me. As the Watcher had suggested, the knowledge of Geo Margilus was indeed ingrained within my mind.
“What I need to do is get out of here, and, at the very least, recover my spellbook. But who put me in here in the first place?”
While escaping was important, before I made a move, I needed to get a grasp on my surroundings. There had to be someone—or something—that had stolen my equipment and imprisoned me. Odds were, they were still nearby.
“Should I at least cast a spell to break out of this cell?”
In D&B, the biggest headache for magic users is selecting which spells to charge each day and deciding how to use each of those limited charges. Geo was a max-level magic user (and, by extension, so was I), which meant he could charge up to eighty-one spells a day—nine for each of the nine ranks of spells. Of the spells I considered casting, the obvious choice was Wizard Key, which would allow me to open the lock on the cell door or free my hands from the stocks, but there were several other spells that would also be useful if I planned to escape.
“On second thought…I should prioritize my safety.”
It took me a while, but I finally decided on the first spell I would cast: Invincibility. Invincibility was a Rank 9 spell, making it one of the most difficult to cast in-game. It completely nullified all weapon-based physical attacks and any magic-based attack of Rank 3 or below, for up to six hours. If things took a turn for the worse, its effect would be indispensable.
“This is going to work, right?”
Everything I needed to do to cast the spell was already clear in my mind. The method was something I’d come up with together with the game master, based on D&B rules, over twenty years ago. It was needlessly complex. I have to hand it to the Watcher, I thought. I’m surprised they were able to pick up on and understand the mess of scribbles in those old notebooks.
“Here goes nothing…”
For the first time in my life, I began to do the thing I had role-played hundreds of times before.
I began to cast a spell.