Rupegia Ch. 01: First Day

After two minutes, I start to hear the monster walking. it's another quadruped with a very heavy body. Then I hear a small growl, an unmistakable bear growl.

I start sweating cold. Even in my world, a bear is not something you fight with just a sword and a party trick spell.

The bear suddenly stops.

Did it notice me? How? I can't hear it trying to smell the air.

Then I hear it turn in my direction. I wait for a few seconds, my heart in my mouth, then it growls again, and this time, it sounds angry.

Yeah, it noticed me.

I should have walked away. I should have taken [Quiet Steps] so that I can walk away from any dangerous encounter, but I didn't think this would happen, I didn't expect that it could so easily detect my presence. I thought the Hedge-wolf was an exception, but I was naive.

Now, what do I do, flee? I'm getting tired, the bear is in the way of my destination, and I'm not sure if I can outrun a bear. Maybe I should fight and test the waters, then flee if the situation gets worse. The problem is, if I get hit once, then maybe I'm dead, so there's no room for a mistake here.

I need to at least look at what kind of enemy this is. The hedge-wolf was just bizarre, but maybe I can see something that'll help me defeat it.

I get up and peek from behind the bush. The enemy is truly a bear, a frightening bear staring at me like a ravenous beast. It has five claws the size of my hand on each paw, fangs the size of my head protruding from its open, salivating mouth, grey fur covering its body. It's wounded, though; I can see multiple pieces of what seems to be spears stuck to its body, there's blood dripping from its face, one eye is closed, and there are multiple bloodstains on its grey fur. It's heavily wounded, so perhaps it's probably what the previous goblin was fighting. I think that there's a chance of victory, but I can't get hit. If I do, I'm dead, so I have to use everything I can to win.

I draw my sword and start casting [Lighting Bolt], the bear immediately starts charging. I don't want to use [Constricting Vines] because it's too slow, I also have a feeling that simple vines won't stop the charge of something that big.

He's fast, but so is my casting, I manage to cast my bolt twice before he gets into melee range. The spells slow him down enough so that he can't trample me, and the smell of burnt flesh fills the air.

He gets on his hind legs and tries to use his huge paws to swipe at me. They're too slow, so I jump backward and cast again, making him roar in anger.

Now he's angry. With a sudden burst of speed, he waddles a little closer and swipes with a speed that catches me by surprise. All I can do is defend myself with the sword as the claws hit the blade and the massive strength sends me flying.

I hit a tree and air leaves my lungs, then I feel immense pain in my back.

My vision becomes blurry, but I manage to cast again. The spell hits the bear on the snout, then it stops its attack and starts convulsing.

An opportunity! I could run away, but now bloodlust clouds my mind. Anger makes me move forward, and the sweet deal of getting a large amount of experience fills my thoughts with greed. I charge forward.

How long are his convulsions going to last? I don't know, but since this is low-level magic, it's likely to be short, so I start casting again.

A strong headache attacks me, so I think this is the last spell I can cast before getting drained.

The bear stops convulsing, then he looks at me and roars again. I finish my cast at point-blank range.

The bear flinches in pain from the spell, then I thrust with my sword and it goes through his eye, hitting the back of his skull. The bear twitches a little, and his body gives up then falls limp on the ground.

"You are now level five," says the female announcer again.

I look at my stats, my MP is at minus four. A massive headache flares and my vision goes black.

--

I slowly recover my consciousness. My back hurts a lot, I'm shivering, I have difficulty to breathe, and my head hurts so much I don't think I can even stand.

While laying down, I look into my stats and see that my MP is at ten but my HP is at ninety.

Even though I blocked the attack I got damaged. Scary.

My "Magic Power" grew by five and my maximum MP by ten. I now have twelve new skill points, so I put them all on [Mana Efficiency] and cast [Regeneration] on myself.

It takes another ten minutes, and I heal until I only have one MP left. It helps with the back pain, but the headache worsens, and I'm still feeling very tired.

I simply rest on the ground until my MP reaches twenty, then I use [Regeneration] again and the back pain subsides enough to let me stand.

I look around and see that the bear is dead with my sword sticking out of its eye.

I did it, I fucking killed a huge bear, a monstrously large bear. Fucking hell.

I take the sword out and clean it on the bear's own fur, then I grab a paw and store the bear on "Items. Now I need to properly distribute my points.

--

I have thirty-one points total, so I put them like this:

-

['PRESS HERE TO CHOOSE Skill Report']

['Physical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sword Use: 5 | Dodge: 3 | Quiet Steps: 5]

[Sense Presence: 3]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Mana Efficiency: 3 | Mana Recovery: 2 | Electric Magic: 4]

[Nature Magic: 5 | Summoning Magic: 1]

['Miscellaneous']

[Nothing]

-

I should at least be able to use [Lightning Bolt] five times without fainting, perhaps one more and then fainting. I don't know which is more efficient, [Mana Efficiency] or [Reduced Mana Cost] so I'm just gonna bet on efficiency. I don't have time to test them since it's way past noon now, and I need to keep moving. I also prefer to spread out my capabilities instead of focusing on only one thing. I need to be versatile and adaptive here.

With unsteady steps, I start moving again. I'm still hurting, my HP is at ninety-eight and after another rest, my MP is at forty.

The range of [Sense Presence] a bit with two more points and it makes me less tense, which is good since I still have a headache.

I can see my MP gradually going up even while moving, so [Mana Recovery] is a good investment. I heal myself again while walking, then the headache and back pain finally stops, but I'm still feeling very tired.

--

After another hour, I get another hit. This time, I know it's another goblin.

I don't want to fight anymore, I'm too tired, but I need to test [Quiet Steps] and how close I can get before he notices me.

Usually, in games, goblins usually attack in numbers to compensate for their lack of intelligence or equipment, so finding a single goblin is lucky. Maybe not so lucky since I also met what made them scatter, but still, this situation is a lucky find.

I activate [Quiet Steps] and start moving. My footsteps are much quieter now. It seems that the skill isn't straight-up magic, it seems to only give me a very strong intuition on where and how to step so that I don't make a sound.

I notice that the goblin is standing still. I manage to catch a glimpse of him, and he's looking downwards, so I circle around to get behind him and continue approaching.

From an opening in a bush, I notice he's treating himself. He has a nasty cut on his shoulder, and he's wiping it with a seemingly clean cloth.

How smart is he?

Then I notice that he's wearing a small leather jacket and that he has a wooden spear with a shining metal tip next to him. He's not the same as the other goblin, this one is more experienced and seemingly much smarter. He also has better equipment. I need to kill him with one attack.

I carefully approach, inching closer, little by little.

I must have patience.

He's barely within reach of my sword.

"Gah?" He leaks a sound and looks behind, but it's too late.

I lunge forward and my sword stabs his throat.

I pull the sword out and he pressures the wound as he writhes on the ground. All he can do is garble some words and gasp for air while slowly dying from drowning in his own blood.

He stares at me intensely. His beady little eyes don't contain anger but only surprise. Maybe he's surprised he got attacked, or just surprised he's going to die.

I'm feeling nauseous at this scene. He's way too human for me to just watch this.

Perhaps I made a mistake. Perhaps he's conscious and a person who belongs to a community in this world. Perhaps I committed a crime. I never allowed those two goblins to attack first; I surprise attacked them both.

I can't look at this anymore, so I decapitate the goblin.

Shit, I feel even worse now.

He gave more experience than the last goblin, but it's not enough to level up again. I look at my status and see that my "Crimes" section is still saying "NONE." This gives me a little comfort, but only a little.

I put him and his spear in my "Items," then I turn back to keep going towards my objective again and see something frightening.

A human skull, multiple bones, and a skeleton torso are laying at the foot of a huge tree. The bones are small, but they are definitely human, or at least I think they are. Goblin heads are seemingly much larger than this skull.

Then I see something besides the skeleton, a ruined backpack.

I now remember that the goblin's equipment was rather dusty and old looking. The spear was clean, but it was chipped. It seems that the owner of this equipment was the skeleton remains. The goblin had just found it by chance.

When I look inside the backpack, I see a small ruined notebook. I open it, and while it's mushy and the words are blurred, I can still discern some foreign characters every once in a while, so I remove one point from [Sword Use] and start adding it to each of the language skills in my "Miscellaneous" tab.

After a few minutes, I finally find the language this notebook was written in, it's Norvok.

I have to put five points in the language for me to be able to make sense of what's written. Also, it seems that the maximum for language is ten.

This notebook is a diary. A dwarven young man was traveling to the other side of the continent and writing about his travels. There are tellings of what was eaten, killed, who he talked to, and minor random details. I can't absorb anything from the culture just by reading this, but it helps me discover the language used by the locals, it's called Andraste.

There's no identification, so I don't know the name of this dwarf. I feel like I should bury him, but I don't have a shovel and neither the energy nor the time to waste here, so I just put all his bones in a pile and continue on towards my objective.

--

After another hour of walking, and I finally see something glittering beyond the trees. It's grass, grass touched by the sun. I have finally reached the border of the forest.

I start to run. I don't care if I find another monster, I just want to see what's ahead. If it's really a town, then the last stretch of my journey is close, and with that, comes safety.

The view opens up, and the forest finally ends. I'm now in a grassland, and I see a beautiful sight. The tall grass reaches my waist and waves with the wind, the green is painted with the gold of the reflected sunlight. It's a calming picturesque view that makes me wish to just lay down and relax, but the most beautiful sight is beyond the grassland.

I see the stone wall, around twenty meters tall, with towers double its size behind it. Very far away, to the left of where the wall ends I can see something resembling wagons behind a chest-high cobble wall, then I people walking between the wagons.

Finally, civilization.

I remove [Quiet Steps] and [Summoning Magic]; reduce [Sense Presence], [Dodge], and [Electric Magic]; then put ten points in [Andraste Language]. With preparations done, I start running towards the wagons.

--

As I run, I manage to take in the sights, and I see the top of other buildings beyond the wall. They have odd, crooked shapes, they're made of a mix of dark and light wood, and white and dark blue cobblestone.

It's like someone partially demolished a cobble building, then used whatever wood it had to rebuild it. They don't look hastily made, though, as both the stone and wood are full of relief, details, and decorations. Some buildings increase in diameter with every floor, and some have an assortment of statues and other decorations on the supporting pillars. Truly an odd town.

Beyond the chest-high cobblestone wall, I see plantations, so they must be farms.

As I approach the wall, I attract attention from the people ahead, and some men with cloaks wait for me behind the chest-high wall.

With that, my energy runs out. I realize I haven't thought of a story to tell them yet. Even if I can communicate, it's best that I don't tell them I came from another world, or tell a lie, like I lost my memories or something similar. There's a probability that I will be taken advantage of if I do that, so I need to decide on a believable story.

I kneel and try to hide under the waist-high grass, then I take out my backpack from "Items" and fit a few things on it, like the sleeping bag, cooking pot, change of clothes, pieces of food, knives, and some coins. Now, my backpack is full and heavy, so I continue moving forward. I hope nobody noticed I didn't have it on me before.

As I get closer, I notice the men looking at me are wearing a hauberk with a grey tabard, and a mail coif. Swords hang from their waists and they have kite shields strapped to their arms. The tabards are black with a simple white kite in the middle, which has a golden sword and a rose crossed over it. This must be the heraldry of the town's lord.

Is this really Earth? It looks like I'm in a medieval fantasy world.

--

When I get close enough, I count four men and two women soldiers watching me.

"Ooi, are you okay?! Are you an adventurer?!" Shouts one of the men.

Adventurer? No, that sounds dangerous, I'm just a traveler.

Their speech sounds really odd to me. I hear foreign words, but in my mind, I perfectly understand what they mean. This must be the effect of the language skill.

"N-no, I'm just a traveler. I got lost in the woods and got attacked!" I answer.

The soldiers start murmuring with each other. They seem friendly but surprised.

Once I get close enough to properly see their faces, one of them starts talking.

"Wow, you look really young. You're also really lucky, just two days ago a culling was done in the forest, so there are barely any monsters about, but still, you need some skill to survive all by yourself. Anyway, are you going to enter the town?" He casually asks.

"Yes, please. I'm tired, I really need some rest," I answer.

Lucky? Pff. If that's being lucky, then please wake me up from this nightmare.

"Alright, I'll process your entry, come with me. Now everybody, back to your stations!" The man barks as he glares at the other soldiers, and they all disperse immediately. I notice that this man wears a golden armband on both arms, so perhaps he's the leader of the watch.

I could only look at them for a short time, but these men and women are all tall, burly, and have attractive faces. I'm rather surprised they aren't uglier.

I jump over the wall and fall on a raised cobblestone road, then I follow the leader. We pass by two stopped wagons, each has another soldier writing something with a... pen? It looks like a thin metallic cylinder with a very small jewel at the tip.

Both the civilians the guards are talking to have some finely embroidered woolen clothing that makes my clothes look like rags. One even has a beautiful silk cloak. I guess they must be merchants.

We walk through a long, wooden bridge lowered across a moat, then we pass through a huge portcullis, and we finally enter the town.

Ahead of us, there's a short row of boring and bland buildings. After that, the spectacle of crooked, bizarre, and beautiful buildings starts. Perhaps the boring ones are barracks.

The man leads me into a small office stuck on the wall. Inside, I see a few simple wooden chairs around a wooden table with has a few sealed scrolls on top of it.

"Alright, sit." He casually orders and motions to the chair. Once I obey, he continues, "Do you have any identification?"

I sweat a bit. I don't even know what this "identification" is, so I need to lie here.

"No, I lost it when I got attacked. I had another bag, but it got torn," I answer, doing my best to keep a poker face.

He lazily raises an eyebrow. "Right. Well, will just use the Inspection Crystal, then. Is that alright with you?" He asks, and for some reason, that last part was said in a very stern tone.

I have no idea what this "Inspection Crystal" is so I'm just gonna go with the flow.

"It's ok," I calmly answer.

"Then wait here. Let me grab it in the other room," he says and leaves without waiting for an answer.

Perhaps this stone will see my status window. The name is obviously suggestive.

When I open it, I notice I haven't written my name yet, so I hastily try to awkwardly write down my own name on the floating, touchless keyboard.

Wait no, my name sucks, it's time to choose a cool name my parents were too boring to pick for me.

I choose "Wolf Ryder."

--

The man comes back with a simple box where a crystal ball and tablet are cushioned. Looks slightly expensive.

"Alright, put your hand on the ball and keep it there until I say otherwise," he says.

I obey, and when I touch the ball, the transparent crystal tablet changes color to black, and white letters start to appear. I see that the letters are in Andraste.

The man reads the tablet, and from the short time that I could see it, I noticed the first thing written was my new name. I'm glad I took the time to write it.

He knits his eyebrows and says with a worried tone, "Hmm... there's nothing wrong here, but you're awfully low level for someone of your age, and what's up with those skills? No Conjuring, Fire, Space, or even [Light Magic]? Also, no [Farming] or [Housework] or any other life skill here. Pff, haha, what kind of sheltered child are you?" He raises his eyes towards me and smiles bemusedly.

"Well... uh, I'm..." I try to answer and look away.

Well, he's not lying. My life on Earth could seem sheltered in comparison to the people of this world. I could come up with an excuse, but that would just give more rope to the conversation. Even if he looks down on me, I shouldn't speak carelessly.

"I'm a bit sheltered, yes," I respond and blush in embarrassment.

"Hah! it's kind of a miracle you survived the Sea of Trees... Well anyway, go to the monster hunter guild or the dungeoneering guild if you want to survive here. You might have some skill in combat, but it's useless if you die out there alone," he talks down at me like I'm a kid, which he knows I am since he saw my age in my "Status." "Now, let me see what's in your backpack," he continues, and his stern tone returns.

The way he said Sea of Trees makes me think this is the true name of that forest.

I open my backpack and show all the things that I have inside.

"Alright. The ball says you don't have an [Item Box], so the tax is just gonna be one silver coin for entry, and five copper for using the status stone."

[Item Box]? Perhaps it's different from my "Items" ability. There was something called [Space Magic], so perhaps [Item Box] could be found there?

I silently pay him the amount.

He advises me like one advises your little brother, "Go look for a guild and make your identification there. You don't need to pay tax depending on which ID you show." A subtle glint appears in his eyes. "Also, is this your first time here? I can sell you a map for 10 copper coins." He grins showing a set of very white teeth.