It was still noon when I woke up in the middle of a grassland, or rather, on a paved patch of land in the middle of this grassland. There was no road leading up to this point. It seemed as if this piece of land was made specifically for a purpose, and that it was deliberately far away from any main road as possible. There were no landmarks in sight, so it would be rather hard to find this place if you didn’t know the area.
I took a closer look at the ground, and noticed that there was something drawn. It was largely faded, though not because of age. Someone was clearly trying to clean up most of it, and left the rest up to the elements. This was most likely a magic circle, which meant that this was the place where my friends arrived. Since there was no clue where they could have gone, I had no choice but to go on my own path for now.
Before I took off, I took out my sword from the 【Storage Box】. It was a simple sword, though brand new, and there didn’t seem to be any enhancements on it. Not that I would know, as equipping my sword and sheathing it didn’t seem to change my stats. Apparently, even though this status screen seemed to be taken straight from a Japanese RPG, it was just there to confirm my own strengths.
There were several stats, and they were all pretty clear to me. These stats were all at least 20, with my intelligence being the highest, at 36. Only my luck was at a low 11. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if they were good stats, if I would go by the rules of a tabletop RPG, they would be above average, they also could have been below average. There was no use thinking about it though. At that point, I had to find a safe place.
I decided to head in one direction. Eventually I would have to find some landmark, maybe even a road. I already had my sword in hand, in case I would be attacked, and it didn’t take me long before I found a monster, a horned rabbit. It was clear that this creature was ready to attack me, so I readied my sword. When it began to make a move, I tried to parry its attack, but either through sheer luck or my own sheer panic, I managed to lop its head off. Its momentum due to its speed caused its body to fly off a few meters before landing, and if I didn’t make that dodging motion, I might have still been skewered by its severed head.
On the one hand, I thought it was a bit sad. This was the first time I took the life of a mammal. On the other hand, I did get my first experience fighting monsters. Plus, even though I had some money, I wasn’t sure how long I would last. I had to take its corpse and bring it back to a city or village to sell it.
I took a look at my status screen to see if anything changed. As expected, I didn’t level up, but I did notice my list of skills. Apparently skills are separated by different groups. You have offensive skills and support skills. I didn’t have either of those skills, and I also didn’t seem to have any passive skills. What I did have were action skills, skills that didn’t help out a lot in combat, but still had a function. There were 【Item Synthesis Lv. 1】, 【Item Creation Lv. 1】, 【Magic Stone Synthesis, Lv. 1】, 【Magitech Creation Lv. 1】, 【Analysis Lv. 1】, 【Job Change】, 【God Message】 and 【Storage Box】. I noticed some skills had levels, and others didn’t. Naturally, the three skills that didn’t have levels were skills that didn’t really need improving.
I also noticed a triangle next to 【Storage Box】. I decided to touch the triangle, as it was a reflex from my old room, where a triangle would expand something. When I did, 【Unlimited Storage】 appeared underneath it. When skills are related to other skills, they’ll be grouped together with a main skill, making it easier to sort everything out.
The final group is the miscellaneous group. I had 【Sword Lv. 0】 and 【Language】. I assumed sword skills would track my sword skills, though I wasn’t sure why it was at level 0 or now I could level it up. There was no time to dwell on it though, I had to go on.
After a while, maybe about half a day or so, I found the main road. By that time, I leveled up. My stats didn’t grow a lot, though it was still something. There was a slight increase in growth with my strength and endurance compared to the other stats. Apparently walking around and swinging my sword does count as a form of training, and while leveling up, it might have given me a boost.
It took me until sunset before I reached a city. When I arrived at the gate, a guard stopped me.
“State your business,” the guard said.
“I’m just a traveler trying to find a place to stay,” I replied.
“Entering this city will cost you one silver, unless you are a guild member.”
Since I wasn’t a guild member, I paid one silver.
“How would you become a guild member?” I asked.
The guard paused. “I take it you’re not from around here, right?” It seemed like he winked at me, as if he knew I was from another world.
“You could say that.”
“Well, it’s best that you get an identification card first. Some cities will ask a larger toll if you don’t have an identification card, and you won’t be able to join a guild otherwise.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“You’re welcome, just trying to help out someone who’s new to this land.”
I was now sure he knew I didn’t come from this world, he made absolutely sure to make that clear to me.
“By the way, I’ll notify the adventurers guild of your arrival, so just find an inn first. Don’t worry, you don’t have to sign up at the adventurers guild, you only have to get your identification card made there, from there you can sign up to any guild you want. Also, here’s a pamphlet we’ll give out to people like you.”
The guard handed me a pamphlet titled “So you came from another world. What to do now?” This city was crazy prepared. Well, considering there were quite some people abducted from other worlds, it would only be logical to have such an informational pamphlet.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Rivers Neuwelt, but just call me Rivers.”
“Well then, welcome, Rivers, to the beautiful Alphana. If you ever need me, my name’s Gerald.”
Maybe it was the adrenaline of arriving in a new world, or maybe it was just me being in a strange world, but I began to feel ill, almost like I was having a panic attack. I guess the shock of realizing I was really in another world made me feel all dizzy, to the point of almost wanting to throw up. I had to get myself together though. There was no time to panic, first I had to survive and get stronger before I would set out to find my friends.
And one of the things I had to do to survive was to find a place to stay, and the best place to stay at the moment was the inn. I took a deep breath, and entered. There, I was greeted by a lovely lady. Her hair was orange and wavy, and you could notice by her chest size that she was really popular with the men.
“Welcome to The Civilized Jackalope!” she cheerfully said. “My name is Una Paroma.”
“I’m Rivers,” I replied.
“You must not be from around here.”
“How could you tell?”
“Well, there aren’t a lot of tanskins here.”
“Tanskins?”
She took a quick look, and I assume she noticed the pamphlet.
“I see. Well, humans with a tan complexion are called tanskins. Don’t worry, we don’t mean anything bad with it.”
I quickly looked at my status screen, and surely enough, my race did say “Tanskin human”. So apparently it isn’t some racist slur.
“Well, how can I help you? A room is eight silver, and includes dinner and breakfast. Just dinner or breakfast is two silver, just the room is seven silver.”
“I’d have a room with dinner and breakfast, please.” I replied.
Una lead me to my room and gave me the keys. Since I didn’t really have luggage with me thanks to my 【Storage Box】 I only took a quick look. It wasn’t spacious, but there was enough room to walk around in and have some private time.
Now it was time to go to the adventurers guild. I already decided to join the guild as an adventurer, as it would allow me to earn money to sustain myself, though I wasn’t sure I was cut out for it, especially since I had no offensive skills. I was a bit nervous, most of these adventurers guilds in manga have these burly and intimidating men who always seem to pick on the new guy. I was glad that they weren’t like that though, in fact, they were all pretty friendly and calm. I mean, it was already getting dark outside, so the chances of people outside of the employees still being here wasn’t too big.
“Welcome to Alphana’s adventurers guild. I’m Lucille Scribe. Are you perhaps here to get an identification card?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied.
The receptionist was pretty cute. She had dark hair, tied in a knot. Her glasses were round, and her hat made her look like one of those flight attendants.
“Now, before we start, are you able to fill out this form?”
I looked at the form. Even though it had symbols I didn’t see before, I was able to read it quite well. In fact, I didn’t notice before, but I was able to understand and speak with them, despite everybody talking in a different language.
“Yes, I believe I can,” I replied.
“Good, though there’s no shame in not being able to read or write. Illiteracy isn’t common, but there are some who never had an education.”
The form was basic. There were questions about my name, age and birthday. For some things, I had to figure out together with Lucille what the answers were, though thanks to her I was able to find out that most of the information was also on my status screen.
“I’m wondering,” I said. “What would a status screen look like to one who can’t read?”
“A status screen shows your information in the way you can understand,” she replies. “You can’t peek into somebody else’s screen because essentially the status screen is just inside your head.”
“So it doesn’t exist?”
“Well, it does, but it’s never physically there. You can still interact with it though. Let me show you after you’ve finished filling out the form.”
After filling out the form, I received my identification card.
“Now, to complete the process, open up your status screen and place your card against it.”
After I did so, the card disappeared.
“Where did it go?” I asked.
“To put it simply, it’s inside your status screen, or rather, it became part of your status screen. Each card is made of a material that’s fully infused with mana. When you hold it against your status screen, the mana reacts to it, breaking down the material into an energy that can bond to the screen. Therefore, it’s now linked to you, and that way you won’t ever be able to lose it. Now, if you ever need to present your identification card, you can just pull it out of your status screen.”
“Did it ever happen in the past that someone lost it?”
“Yes, before we were able to link the card to the status screen this was a big issue.”
I noticed something about how Lucille looked at me. She was friendly, not too friendly, but like what you’d expect from a receptionist. But there was a sort of seriousness to her eyes. I decided to ask her about it.
“I can’t help but feel that something is wrong.”
“No, not at all,” Lucille replied. “I just want to ask you a few questions, considering you are from a different world.”
“That sounds fair.”
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but generally people who are summoned here are summoned by slavers, with the intent of enslaving the one being summoned.”
So it seemed that this world had legalized slavery as well.
Lucille continued. “I realize that not every world has slavery. I assume slavery in your world has been abolished.”
“That is true,” I said, “in my world, at least in the more advanced civilizations, there is no slavery, or at least not on the surface. But I guess I kind of get what you want to say. Is it so that in this world, there is legal slavery?”
“Yes, but I do need to nuance this. While there is slavery, and while slavery is legal, there are still rules bound to it. First and foremost, each country has their own laws regarding slavery, but at least in this country, you can’t just take everyone as a slave. For example, it is allowed to be sold into slavery, though the implication is that you only do that to yourself. While it’s legal to sell others, its morality is questionable. By the way, the homeless often also sell themselves into slavery, as they’d always get a better living condition than living on the streets.
“Then you have those who are imprisoned, either because of crimes or because of being prisoners of war. In the case of criminals, some say it’s only natural for them to become slaves, as they’d give something back to the world they’ve taken from. With prisoners of war, while it’s acceptable to keep them as slaves even after the war has ended, some feel like the right thing to do is to release them when the relations with the other nations improves.
“Most other ways are considered illegal, though, especially if you gained slaves through kidnapping.”
“What’s your stance on it? On slavery that is.”
“I can’t say I’m completely against it, but there are some aspects I’m not entirely for. You’re basically giving someone ownership of a human being.”
“I get what you’re saying.”
“I’m not saying that slaves can’t be happy, there are quite some slaves that live happy lives. But I digress.”
“I assume you want to know the nature of my summoning?”
“Indeed, though I can already guess the reason why you have been summoned here.”
I wasn’t sure if I should share everything I know, so I only told her the things I thought she needed to know.
“Well, as for why I was summoned, I don’t know. When I arrived, there was nothing but a faded summoning circle.”
“Hmmm…” Lucille closed her eyes, and she seemed to be in deep thoughts. “Yes, well, a faded circle doesn’t mean a lot, it could mean it was a temporary circle, or that somebody has tried to erase their tracks. Unfortunately this alone doesn’t tell you how long ago it was activated.”
“Well, after I was summoned it took me more than half a day to arrive here. I seemed to have arrived around noon, and it was already sunset when I arrived in Alphana.”
“That tells us a lot more. Most of the time, someone gets summoned before sunrise, preferably in the middle of the night when most adventurers and travelers have already set up camp. That way, they can set up a proper spot far away.”
Lucille sighed. “Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll contact the guild master later about this matter. Is there anything else you’d like?”
“Well, I’d like to sign up as an adventurer.”
“We can arrange that right now. All I need is your identification card, and your registration is complete. Registration costs one gold, or ten silver, though you can pay it back whenever you want.”
“That’s quick. I thought I’d get checked with some orb that could sense my magical powers or something. In fact, at the gate, I expected someone to hold an orb or another artifact to see if I had criminal intentions or something.”
“If such an artifact existed, guarding this city would have been a lot simpler. No, we’ll just read the stats through your identification card, and generate a guild card from it, no need to do any other checks.”
I paid the fee, and after a short while, the guild card was created, and she handed it to me.
“Technopath, right? That’s not a job I’ve heard of before.”
“Yeah, honestly I have no idea if it’s a job that’s useful for an adventurer.”
“It could be that this job is a new kind of job, and it’s possible that in the future there might be more. For now, it doesn’t matter whether it is or isn’t a job fit for adventuring, and if things get troublesome, you could always get your job changed at the guild for a small fee. But what matters are your stats, as long as they’re good enough it doesn’t even matter if your job is an adventurer job or an artisan job, or even a merchant job. Considering you’re a traveler from another world, your stats are as expected.”
“So, average?”
“Only compared to those from another world.”
“So what is average for a normal person here actually?”
“When it comes to base stats, the average is 10, with 20 being well above average.”
So it seemed that base stats were modeled after tabletop RPGs.
“Now that the registrations are done,” Lucille said, “is there anything else you wanted to do?”
“Yeah, I wanted to sell some monster material. Can I do that here?”
“Sure. It might even fulfill some quests and help you rank up.”
“What rank am I currently?”
“You are at rank H right now.”
“So that means I can only do G-rank quests or lower?”
“Well, for the bottom three ranks, you can do requests up to E-rank, actually. On the higher ranks you can at most do requests that are one rank higher than your own. Once you reach S-rank, things are a bit different, but we’ll discuss it when you’re at that point.”
“Why this special rule for the bottom three ranks?”
“These ranks are there to determine your general skills and capabilities as an adventurer, and to ease new adventurers into the job. Ranking up to F is easy on the bottom three, and most adventurers, even those native to this world, reach it within a few days, some even reach E-rank. We have this system to prevent weak adventurers from putting their life in danger, though I assume you already knew that. Anyway, you’re here to sell monster material. Did you bring the monster in its entirety or did you dismantle them beforehand?”
“I can dismantle them myself?”
“Yes, with some training. Dismantling yourself will save you on the fees you’d have to pay otherwise. If you’re interested I can refer you to someone who can teach you.”
“I’d love to, but for now, I just want to sell these. Oh, but if these monsters have magic stones, I’d like to keep some of them.”
“That’s fine, but in that case you’ll have to come back tomorrow for the money, since it’ll take us some time to do the dismantling. If you’d like, we can do a downpayment, or you can get the full amount tomorrow.”
“I’ll just wait for the payment until tomorrow then.”
“Then if you’re fine with it, could you leave the monster materials here?”
“Sure, if it means they’ll be dismantled sooner, I’d leave these in your care.”
I left the monsters at the guild and went back to the inn.
The next day I arrived at the adventurers guild, where Lucille greeted me.
“Welcome back, Rivers. I want to notify you that due to the amount of horned rabbits hunted, you have now risen to rank G. Keep up the work. Anyway, for hunting horned rabbits, you get an additional 2 copper per monster, as per the request.”
“Is it a permanent request?” I asked.
“It’s a periodic request. Right now is the high season for horned rabbits, and while they are low rank monsters, they can still pose a danger to passing merchants, since horned rabbits are especially aggressive during the mating season.”
“I see, so, after the mating season is over, the request will disappear?”
“Correct, until the next mating season. Now, there are permanent requests, like gathering certain herbs or ores, but most of the time they only help you rank up and might not net you extra money, just the money you get from selling them. Make sure you do take note of that.”
We moved over to a different table.
“Now, this is what we could get from the monsters,” Lucille said. “If there is anything you want to keep, just tell me.”
There were a lot of magic stones present. “I want to keep around ten magic stones.”
“And I assume you want to sell the rest?”
“Yes.”
“Then let me prepare the money for you.”
After a while, Lucille came back.
“Including the request reward, the total you’ll receive comes to one gold, two silver and five copper.”
“Then it’s a deal.” I replied.