I fought to prevent the hunters from reaching the elven village, and now the villagers were pointing their arrows at me. They likely found out about the battle from all the fire magic and the shouting. And it seemed like they realized the men were slave hunters, judging from the arrow through the goon’s chest.

Three men. Likely, they were all the fighting force the settlement could muster.

[Adult Elf x3] [Race: Elf♂] [Hunter]
[Magic Points (MP): 50/50] [Hit Points (HP): 60/60]
[Total Combat Power: 63]

The women had to stay back for their kids. Against 9 slavers, the settlement would’ve had no hope..

And now they had to contend with a single monster who wiped the floor with those slavers.

Yes, hello, it’s me. No wonder they were on guard. The bow-wielding elves weren’t so much wary as they were terrified. Likely, it was the reason why they didn’t shoot me directly – instead of risking my anger with a hit, they were warning me that they had their eyes on me, that I’d better go somewhere else. No, not a warning. A plea.

Okay, fine…

I drifted off, as non-confrontational as possible. The elves still had their bows trained on me, but relief was clear on their faces. I continued moving deeper into the forest. Once they disappeared from my sight, I hurried upwards to the canopy of a nearby tree and let loose a sigh of relief of my own.

God, I thought I almost had a heart attack… Well, my body was in cold sleep, but still.

I barely had any magic left. If their bows were magically enchanted, a volley could have killed me.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 24/238]
[Total Combat Power: 47/262]
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification] [Humanoid Form (Terrible)]

[Rank-up Available]

I practically had one foot in the grave already.

Now, this Rank-up thing. I understood that it was different from an evolution. Did it mean becoming a stronger kind of Ghast, then? I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the result would be.

Well, let’s try some [Identification].

[Rank-up Available]
・Transform into a higher-ranking race.

Exactly what it said on the tin, then.

I supposed ranking up would make me immobile again? This probably wasn’t going to be as large a change as evolving, so I might as well try…

Just as well that my magic was near empty, then. If ranking up put my magic back to 1 again, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. And I should be getting as strong as I can, in preparations for any more unforeseen battles.

I started the process.

………

……

…

Morning of the next day. My magic was back to full. He should be out helping his family around this time, so I headed towards where we promised to meet.

The rank-up worked, nothing particularly noteworthy happened. Didn’t have to recover my magic back from 1, and my body didn’t change much, either. At most, the gas just looked a little thicker. I moved somewhat better in [Humanoid Form] now, so that was good.

After last night, perhaps the elven boy wouldn’t even show up.

On the way, I detoured to where the fight happened to recover my cloak. It was still there, for some reason, but the corpses were gone. Perhaps the elves buried them, perhaps just throwing the corpses somewhere far away, or perhaps like most other games, corpses disappeared after a certain amount of time. At any rate, it had been a whole night. The elves should have gone back home.

I arrived, peeking into the meeting spot from behind a tree. The boy was standing there, alone, a few fruits stuffed in his pockets.

Hey now, that’s very dangerous. A little kid all alone in the forest. What if there were monsters?

I turned humanoid, wore the cloak, and moved towards him. He flashed a smile the moment he saw me.

“Hey. You’re here.”

Yes, I am.

I ceased my sluggish steps and waved. He didn’t get any closer. Good, seemed like he remembered our talk yesterday, as one-sided as it was. He looked relieved, but at the same time, grimaced slightly.

Hmm, what’s this? He looked… somewhat different? Ah, right, no basket on his back today. Why?

“Umm… So, uh… We’ll be leaving this place soon…” The boy said, forcing the words.

What? I asked him with a head-tilt.

“Some scary humans came yesterday. They were slave hunters. The grown-ups said we’d ran away from them once, when I was younger, but they found us again.”

Yeah, but I dealt with them, though?

“And then this ‘white monster’ killed them all. It’s dangerous to live here now, so we’re leaving.”

…right.

I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. No slavers could be as scary as a monster.

“H-Hey,” the boy interrupted my thoughts, his voice resolute, “You killed those bad people, right? You must be this forest’s elemental spirit, I knew you were!”

…what?

“I told the grown-ups so, but they didn’t believe me. They said you were a scary monster. But I know that’s not true, I know you’re a good elemental!”

No no no, I was worse than monsters. I was a demon.

“Sorry, I have to go soon… Ah, can you tell me your name?”

I thought you knew I couldn’t speak?

I tried to pantomime my muteness, pointing fingers towards my mouth and shaking my head with jerky movements, like a puppet on strings. Realization dawned on the boy’s face.

“I see! You don’t have a name yet! Alright, I’ll name you then!”

…no, seriously, what?

“Let’s see… Right, there was this elven legend about elementals living on cold mountains called shedim¹. And you’re like the white snow, too! So I’ll call you Shedy! It’s perfect!”

Hey, no, wait, what about my opinion…

The naming seemed to have satisfied him. He gave a few vigorous wipes of his face with the shirt’s sleeves, hiding tearful eyes, and before I could do anything, ran off towards the hamlet.

“I’ll see you again, Shedy! I’ll come find you once I get older! I promise!” he turned around and spoke to me for the last time.

I gave a wordless cry.

The elven boy, born and raised in the forest, disappeared in scant moments. He hadn’t even told me his name.

I wasn’t an actual elemental, nor was I living in this forest. I could follow him, but after that farewell full of emotions, it’d be awkward as all hell if I just show up in front of him again so soon.

He was an elf in the first place. How many years would it take for him to grow up? Time passed at the same rate both within and without the game, right?

Such a pity. I finally found a spot of solace in the kid, and now he’s leaving.

Well, whatever… I got more information, and the rank-up strengthened me. That was good enough.

[Shedy] [Race: White Ghast] [Low Demon (High-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. An intelligent spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 300/300] 62↑
[Total Combat Power: 330/330] 68↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Racial Skill: Fear]
[Simple Identification] [Humanoid Form (Crude)]

…I suddenly had a craving for canned white asparagus. So weird. And I had a name, now…

Managed to dropped one of the ‘low’ in my rank, plus the ‘fragile’ in my description… was this the actual starting point for monsters?

New racial skill, more magic, more strength, and I think I could move faster now. The ‘Terrible’ in my shapeshifting skill turned into ‘Crude’. That’s… better, right? So I guessed it really wasn’t the rank of the skill, but an evaluation of my own design skill.

I tested it out. Driving my humanoid body used to feel like moving iron sand with magnets; now it felt like pulling puppet strings instead. I still only looked like a human if you squint really hard, though.

Before, I could only barely hold my form into a melting wax statue. Now, the melting had stopped, and I felt like I had actual joints. Still wasn’t good enough to appear in front of other people without my cloak.

But I had a more important problem – that wasn’t to say that my waxy look wasn’t a problem, mind you.

For some reason, my bipedal form now had long, droopy ears.

I had had bullies picking on me since a long time ago, and one of their nicknames for me had been ‘Rabbit’, for my white hair and red eyes. Yes, okay, sure, but that was not a good reason for me to be growing rabbit ears.

1. In Jewish mythology, shedim was a kind of spirit or demon. Several sources gave conflicting descriptions, but this particular one stood out for the similarities to this novel:

“…In Nahmanides’ opinion the demons (shedim) are to be found in waste (shedudim), ruined, and cold places such as in the North. They were not created out of the four elements but only out of fire and air. They have subtle bodies, imperceptible by the human senses, and these subtle bodies allow them to fly through fire and air. Because they are composed of different elements, they come under the laws of creation and decay and they die like human beings. Their sustenance is derived from water and fire, from odors and saps; hence necromancers burned incense to demons. Despite the element of subtle fire which they contain, they are surrounded by a coldness that frightens off the exorcisers (this detail is singled out only in later sources)…”

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

I detected a few magical signals approaching the small elven settlement, most likely humans. Combined with the word ‘slave hunters’ I heard, I had a bad feeling about this.

I headed towards them. An hour later at normal walking speed, I saw nine humans.

They… probably weren’t beta players.

Dirty, unkempt looks, ratty leather coats. Unlike the players I met before, they weren’t paying much attention to their appearance. Of course, they might be players roleplaying as bandits, but I doubted that. It had only been 10 days since the game started. I didn’t think those kind of roleplayers would show up so soon.

I got as close as I dare, to take a closer look on their equipment.

They had more handaxes and bows than swords, plus plenty of ropes on their belts. Only one looked like a magician. That one was fiddling with a choker.

…that was way more evidence than I ever asked for.

Let’s assume they were truly slave hunters.

If this game event happened due to the kid’s talk about slave hunters, then their target must be the elven settlement.

Maybe they were a group of simple animal hunters making a living. The ropes were to capture large animals like deers, the magician was fiddling with that choker because he was bored… yeah, I know, that was a stretch even by my standard.

So then, what do I do?

My original goal was to gain strength and survive until the end of the alpha test, for ten years of life and a new identity.

The experiment’s goal was to investigate the mental stress of the ‘disconnect’ born from using a monster avatar extremely different from the human body. There was no need for me to clear the game.

Being slaves did not necessarily mean being mistreated. The elven villagers were just NPCs, there was no need for me to care…

Sorry, I lied. I cared a ton.

I might have become a lot more apathetic to sapient life ever since my mental health started plummeting, but I had met this boy. I’d talked to him. I couldn’t let anything bad happen to him.

There were two choices here.

One, I warn the village of the danger… if only I could speak. I could try to threaten them, but what if their programming didn’t allow them to run? Then I’d be their enemy.

Two, I deal with these people before they could find the settlement… well, they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t know where it was already. Before they could approach the settlement, then.

I couldn’t just chase them away. I needed to make sure they never come back.

I didn’t know if I could even win here, though.

[Magician x1] [Race: Human♂] [Slave Hunter]
[Magic Points (MP): 65/65] [Hit Points (HP): 48/48]
[Total Combat Power: 86]

[Hunter x3] [Race: Human♂] [Slave Hunter]
[Magic Points (MP): 40/40] [Hit Points (HP): 70/70]
[Total Combat Power: 70]

[Goon x5] [Race: Human♂] [Slave Hunter]
[Magic Points (MP): 30/30] [Hit Points (HP): 60/60]
[Total Combat Power: 57]

Unsurprisingly, they were weaker than beta players. But they still had around the same power as a black caterpillar, plus human intelligence and magic. They weren’t exactly easy opponents. Intelligence was what allows one to defeat more powerful enemies, and was the reason why humans were so scary. Yet that was still no reason for me to retreat here.

…but what if they weren’t actually slave hunters? As soft as I was, I couldn’t act until I was 100% sure. I made plans to confirm.

First off, I used [Humanoid Form (Terrible)] – a skill in name only, as what should have been processed by the system was all offloaded to my brain – to turn humanoid, then wore the cloak.

I approached, then stopped hiding myself when I was close enough and started walking towards them, taking several seconds for a single step.

The day was nearly over. I supposed the (probable) slave hunters were planning on making camp until morning.

“Hey! There’s something over there!”

As I moved closer, the one keeping a lookout shouted to his fellows.

Yes, there’s something here all right. Look, I’m a defenseless kid wandering around in the dark…

The magician tilted his head, looked at me, then smirked.

“My, a kid found us. That won’t do, that won’t do at all. Hey, folks, don’t let him escape. The more elven kids we get, the better. They fetch a high price among our more… degenerate buyers.”

“Yeah!” “Got it.”

Two of the goons cracked their knuckles and loosened their shoulders. They approached, looking like this was just another chore to be done, but their leering smiles betrayed their excitement.

…guilty as charged.

The forest was darkening, and the goons weren’t expecting trouble. I shot my body out from the coat’s sleeves and covered their faces.

“Wha?!” “Smoke?!”

They panicked. I absorbed their life force as fast as I could. Their comrades still hadn’t realized anything was wrong, with me hidden behind the goons in the gloomy forest.

Seeing the two men desperately waving hands in front of their faces, the rest of them stood, finally alarmed. “What happened?”

The two goons gurgled and dropped to the ground. The magician started, eyes wide open.

“Get away from that kid! That’s a monster!”

Whoops. But I got two of them!

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 168/176] 16↑
[Total Combat Power: 185/194] 18↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification] [Humanoid Form (Terrible)]

Plenty of new magic for me. A moment later, an arrow pierced through me.

“Did that kill it?!” A hunter shouted

You killed some air. It tingled a bit, at most. I abandoned my cloak and flew at him.

“Aaaargh!!!”

“Get away from it! That must be a Wraith! Load up your magitools with magic stones, now!”

“No, no, no! Save me!”

The magician merciless set fire on both the enveloped hunter and me. Damn if it wasn’t hot! But I held on, sucking out his last wisps of life. He shriveled up, sowing even more confusion among the men.

They just finished putting some sort of black stones into their bows. I assumed those were the ‘magic stones’ and ‘magitools’. Some sort of enchanted weapons. Those would probably be able to inflict damage on my barely-tangible body, but I had already moved before the men could do anything.

Towards the goons unequipped with anything effective.

“It’s coming here!” “Stay away! Stay away!”

Humans had more magic than wild animals, so they could still barely hurt me. However, I had more around triple their combat power. I had nothing to worry from them.

“C-Come on, fiend! S-See how you like this!”

In his fear and confusion, one of the more tough-looking goons drew his dirty short sword.

“Watch out! One of the Wraith’s ability is to cause fear!” The magician’s voice rang out.

Well. I wasn’t a wraith, but close enough, I supposed.

The sword-wielding goon swung his sword in wild abandon – apparently just seeing me was enough to terrorize him. I absorbed all his life force in one go.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
[Magic Points: 158/191] 15↑
[Total Combat Power: 177/210] 18↑

My maximum magic went up from killing the hunter and the goons, but my combat power went down from all the damage.

Ow-shit! The hunters used their bows!

The goons tried to run from me. I caught up, then used them as meat shields.

But the hunters no longer cared about friendly fire. One of the arrows pierced clean through a goon’s neck. He gurgled and went down.

If they weren’t worrying about their own comrades, then neither need I. I snatched up the last of his dwindling life.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
[Magic Points: 149/193] 2↑
[Total Combat Power: 168/212] 2↑

Eh? I got almost nothing. Might be because he was nearly dead, might be because someone else killed him.

There were more important things to worry about. Mainly, that there was still half of them left, while my combat power had dropped too much. One magician, two hunters, one goon… All the strong ones were left. Damn.

“Fucking useless dumbasses! What the fuck am I paying you for?! Kill that thing!”

“But Boss, it’s strong!” “We lost too many of us. Let’s retreat!”

“Shut the fuck up! The nobles wanted us to bring back young girls and elven kids! We can’t go back like this!”

Oh, I see… They wanted elven children slaves. A part of me understood that this was just a game event, that they were just NPCs, but the rest of me was too busy being incensed.

The group kept shooting and the magician kept throwing fire even as they argued. I ignored the hits and attacked the weakest one first.

“Noooo, stay away, stay awaaaaaay!!!”

“Stay, you maggot! Stay and keep it still! The rest, keep shooting!”

“Don’t hate us, alright? You were just unlucky,” one of the hunters clicked his tongue.

Yeah, sure, don’t hold a grudge for being sacrificed. But considering it was me they were sacrificing to, it wasn’t really my place to say anything.

The goon hysterically ran about, and I chased after my future meat shield. Then one of the hunters shot through his leg. The goon screamed.

“Good job! [Fire Bolt]!”

There weren’t anywhere for me to hide, now. The magician shot a bullet of flame at me.

[Reroll]

The mass of flame exploded in front of me. Freaking hot! At least it wasn’t a direct hit. I could bear with this.

“What?!”

I used the flame as a smokescreen and attacked the bow-wielding hunter closest to me.

It wasn’t really anything amazing. I just stretched out a part of me and tried to ‘parry’ the bullet of fire away, for a lack of a better term. I couldn’t afford to fail there, so I used [Reroll] to raise my chances of success. It worked, the spell’s damage was reduced by half, and I could get moving right away after the parry.

The hunters were fast, but not the one carelessly believing I was down from the fire. I landed a clean grab on him. He rolled and writhed around, desperately trying to dislodge me.

“Stay right there! This is our chance!”

“Boss, stop!”

The magician was about to burn the both of us like he did with the goon, and this time the other hunter took offense to that. I took the chance to absorb the life of the downed hunter post-haste.

“I am your employer! Shut up and follow my fucking orders!”

“We accepted because we were promised a few elves of our own, not to get fucking killed by a fucking dumbass!”

The magician screamed in incoherent rage. He readied a particularly powerful fire spell, to be cast at the hunter.

Here’s my chance!

[Reroll]

I forced the spell to fail, and it exploded right on their heads. They howled in pain and stumbled, faces held in hands.

The magician losing his calm probably contributed to my own success with the skill. Also, I confirmed that using the skill on someone else drove up the cost immensely. I felt like I just lost almost half my magic in one go.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
[Magic Points: 63/193] 
[Total Combat Power: 82/212]

I absorbed the last dregs of life from the nearly-mummified hunter, then went on to envelop both the magician and the final hunter all at once. My combat power was low, my movement was sluggish, and I was getting quite irritated.

“W-Wha-”

“Damn wraith! Stop!”

Screw you, I wasn’t a wraith.

“Guurgh…”

“Fuck! [Fire]!”

The hunter went limp nearly immediately, but the magician’s high magic power took time to completely absorb. He burned me as I clinged on his face, scorching my life. I held on.

The spells he used only helped me empty his magic faster. A few seconds later, he finally slumped on the ground. The battle was over.

With victory, relief washed over me. I only barely won. I’d been on tenterhooks the whole fight, and it ended with me having only a sliver of health left. Too dangerous.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 27/238] 45↑
[Total Combat Power: 50/262] 69↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification] [Humanoid Form (Terrible)]

[Rank-up Available]

My maximum power grew a bunch, but I was as weak as the day I began the game. I still couldn’t believe I won… wait a minute… rank-up?!

…more weird stuff.

This… wasn’t evolution? Well, whatever, that was for future me to think about. Current me was feeling too drained, my mind heavily abused from the exertion of the fight and the lack of magic.

So, the village. Should be pretty safe now… oh, right. That one goon with his leg shot was still alive.

I honestly wasn’t all that keen on killing someone defenseless, but if he report back, there’d be more slave hunters coming. So I made up my mind. I slowly rose. The goon quivered, watching me with fear evident in his eyes.

Then an arrow went through his chest, and another into the ground beneath me.

What?! I expanded my consciousness to scout for threats. Several adult elves emerged from the forest depths, bows pointing towards me warily.

…oh boy. What do I do?

Author’s Note: The fights still seem low-key, but that’s only for the moment. We’ll be getting to the big booms sooner or later.

A bit of exposition for [Reroll]:

Actions have a fixed 3% chance of being a critical failure.

Chances of success for physical attacks are lowered by the opponent’s dodge rate. Magic-like effects can vary in power, is modified by the opponent’s resistance plus other factors, but they only rarely fail completely.

However, one trait is shared among all demon-types: the ability to cause fear to living beings. When a demon is feared by a weaker opponent, for each rank the demon possesses, the opponent’s success rate drops by 10%.

The Reroll skill also has ranks. At its current rank, the protagonist can use it twice in a row. The skill consumes 10 magic each time it fails. If it succeeds, and if the skill was used on a target that wasn’t the skill user, it consumes an amount of magic according to the power difference between the target and the user. And of course, rerolling can fail every single time.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

I found a small settlement hidden deep behind the leaves.

At first glance, the dwellings weren’t much better than large tents draped with leaves for camouflage. There were three such tents. Three families, about ten people.

Certain spaces, such as the kitchen, the wood chopping block, or the butcher table, were communal. All were outside.

I caught a few glimpses of the villagers. All was wearing simple flax tunics and leather boots. They lived a simple life, at one with nature.

I couldn’t try to make contact. I had the common language jammed into my brain, but I couldn’t actually speak. And just look at me now – normal animals and humanoid NPCs would just run away from me. I had better chances with players. Well, I was a type of demon, really, that shouldn’t be surprising.

Still, I wanted to continue watching them. Just a bit more.

I couldn’t approach the hamlet, but my guess was that they didn’t have the barrier thing.

I wanted to relax. Somehow, someway. My spirit was being beaten black and blue by the constant unease, like pins and needles in my brain; by the feeling of extreme disconnect to reality; and by so many other things. I was getting used to the feeling itself bit by bit, but I feared that after I’d completely adapted myself to it, going back to reality would drive me insane.

Actually, why did these people decided to live all the way over here?

The world was so real I forgot it was a game sometimes, but they were NPCs. Did they have a particular reason to live here? Did the developers expect the players to go in this deep?

I thought, this could be an event, and approached as close as I dared, then I understood why they were living here. They were elves.

That reminded me of the guide’s words. It said there were ninety-nine human countries around the ninety-nine saplings. Did that mean anyone not human were living in places so remote? I heard human civilization here were rather developed, with trains and everything. So there was quite the economic inequality here.

If this world was as big as Earth, then the developers wouldn’t bother manually placing every villages and settlements. This hamlet was probably randomly generated.

Oh hey, there was a kid. A boy, about 5 years old. The only other kids in this settlement were babies, so the boy was playing alone, looking rather forlorn.

…oh god I want to meet him. I want to meet him so bad!

I never had the best impression of adults and people my age. The only exceptions were little kids.

Was there a way to make him not wary of me…? I couldn’t think of any. Oh, wait. There was those items that player dropped. Maybe I could use them.

One old, un-dyed cloak.

Three small coins, and a few coins of another type. They looked like they were made from silver and copper, respectively.

A wooden stick that looked like a meat skewer.

And the Identification Crystal 5/99 I had since the beginning, plus one dark-red caterpillar fang.

…I could become the most suspicious-looking person ever.

Anyway, first time for everything. Let’s try wearing the cloak. Come… on… god, this is hard. Using my dry-ice smoke as hands was really difficult.

It took me a few more minutes to realize that without fingers, I couldn’t do any fine manipulation. I used nearly an hour just to put the cloak on my body.

…aaand the cloak just slipped through my Ghast body… why?

I could use my body to ‘pick up’ things. It was actually more like enveloping them, but it worked. I could hold small items like the crystal or coins within me, and they didn’t drop. It just felt like holding onto a purse (which meant that if I was surprised, I’d drop the stuff).

The cloak was big, but I could pick it up as long as I enveloped around half of it. It felt like balancing a tray with a dish of soup on top – difficult, but still possible. And of course I’d still drop it if anything happened.

So I could pick it up. I thought that meant I could wear it too, yet it didn’t work. That was one hour stressing my little brain out. Give me back my time. Really…

Normally, monster avatars like mine were only capable of basic, preset actions, like how a normal game character could only do the actions bound on your keyboard. I’d had the chance to use VR a few times before. I’d seen swimming people who sank like rocks in real life, and martial arts masters without a single day of training. Those were all preset actions.

It could be that this game’s developers were also having us alpha testers evaluate what actions were possible for monster avatars, in addition to their stated purpose.

…I should calm down. I felt like I just spent a frustrating hour crocheting with two left feet. I rested, enjoying the debilitating dizziness from seeing beautiful nature with 360 degrees fullscreen vision. After a few hours of incapacitation, I finally found the strength to face reality again.

Oh yes, Ghasts could shapeshift, right? Could I do humanoid shapeshifting?

I thought my current body was a lot nimbler than my previous, doughy one. I had more volume now, I should be able to look like a small kid, at least.

Alright, let’s try.

…

………

……………

…………………

Greetings, everyone. It’s a beautiful new day today.

True, I could work this body similarly to my previous one. I could stretch and shrink, spread and cover, and more. But that didn’t translate to having complete freedom over my shape.

When I focused on a part to shapeshift, the parts of me I no longer focus on started to warp and pop. Shifting one part a centimeter caused it to somehow stretch by a whole meter. And I had to fight against my own gaseous body constantly drifting and changing by itself.

All those problems took up a huge amount of my time. My mind was being tortured by the feeling of becoming a mass of sticky mud, but I persevered through. Had I manage to ignore the distress in my moment of extreme focus?

Anyway, at about sunrise, I finally managed to assume a humanoid shape, just about as big as that elven boy, alabaster in color and waxy in texture. One problem: my ‘skin’ was constantly melting and dripping.

…what the hell was I? A new type of monster? I couldn’t even fathom how to make contact with people, looking like this.

Let’s think about that later. I should try to move. This should be simple: just move the way I moved my real body. Easy!

Oh, sweet naiveté, past me of a few minutes ago. How you underestimated this game.

Imagine this: you had a human statue, carefully built with iron sand, on a table. And you were only allowed to move it with 10 magnets, all held by different arms behind the statue, without letting it collapse.

Impossible. Nope.

And my brain was wailing at me, too. It was screaming from the feeling of extreme disconnect, born from moving a humanoid body with inhuman means. My vision twisted and turned.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 160/160] 10↑
[Total Combat Power: 176/176] 11↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification] [Humanoid Form (Terrible)]

…and before I knew it, I had a new weird skill. What was this…

[Humanoid Form (Terrible)]
・Transformation of a non-human thing into something humanoid.

[Identification] gave me pretty much what I expected.

Also, I was really bothered by this one thing. By ‘Terrible’, did it mean the skill was at the lowest level, or was it insulting my sculpting skill?

Anyway, so that’s another thing to practice daily – holding humanoid form. I should learn how to walk first. Currently, I was taking more than a minute just to move forward a step.

I practiced until the sun set that day, all the while fighting against the nausea. My sculpting still hadn’t gotten any better, so in the end I switched over to intensive training on wearing the cloak, all the way until morning. Again.

…what am I even doing with my life.

*

We met when the elven boy was picking fruits and dried branches right near his village.

“…who are you?” He asked timidly, but he hadn’t bolt immediately. That’s good. If he had, I was ready to turn back into gas and ran right away. Also, three cheers for the common language.

Alright, first step cleared. Judging from the way he looked, he wasn’t afraid of me.

I looked about as tall as him at the moment, wearing an oversized coat, the hood hiding my face. Even I had to admit I looked suspicious as all hell. I’d have run away if I saw me.

Coming here, it took me ten seconds just to walk a single step, so really, I was super grateful for the kid’s courage… or maybe NPCs were just that way.

“…do you need me for something?” He asked.

I didn’t. Despite all the effort I put into making contact with him, I actually didn’t.

At any rate, I tried to tilt my head… okay, this was difficult. Couldn’t afford to traumatize him by messing up and looking like an eldritch abomination, though. I tried, somehow managing the gesture.

“You can’t speak?” He looked concerned.

I nodded a fraction. He stepped forward. I frantically shook my head, and he stopped.

“I shouldn’t get close?”

I nodded, affirming. Once again, he looked concerned. I know, right? I wouldn’t know what to do with a kid who didn’t speak, didn’t allow anyone to get close, and didn’t show their face, either.

I just wanted to look at the boy close-up. I never had any plans beyond that.

He went silent, deep in thought. After a while, he nodded, seeming to have come to a conclusion.

“…so, I was helping mom out,” he suddenly started talking about himself, “Dad hunts, and he sometimes brings back monsters too. They look like black caterpillars, but really tasty.”

Oh? Those were edible?

He continued picking dried branches, talking while keeping a 10 meters distance with me. The work was done a while after. He fidgeted, adjusting his basket full of branches and fruits on his back, and looked at me.

“…hey, umm, I’m going back home. Can we meet again tomorrow?” he suggested a most wonderful idea.

I nodded.

“Alright, tomorrow then! I have to go home now, or mom would scold me. We were running from the slave hunters, so I’m not allowed to get back late.” he replied with a beaming smile.

I tried to wave as best as I could. He cheerfully returned with a wave of his own and ran towards to village. AIs these days were really amazing. It felt just like talking with a real human.

So, slave hunters… Those collared elves and beastmen I saw back then were actual slaves, then.

I reached my limits just as the boy disappeared from my sight. I poofed back into gas, then hurried into the forest depths.

Weren’t skills supposed to be handled by the system, normally? My brain been doing all the work ever since the beginning here.

I allowed myself to relax. This was interesting, but really stressful. At least I knew a lot more now.

Even NPCs – adult elves, in this case – could hunt the black caterpillars, despite their strength not seemingly that high.

[Adult Elf] [Race: Elf ♂] [Villager?]
[Magic Points (MP): 50/50] [Hit Points (HP): 60/60]
[Total Combat Power: 63]

About the same as the black bug, and the same as me just before my evolution. I supposed that was why they could survive here, in this forest.

I’d been practicing my humanoid form for two days straight already. I should get back to hunting, but after knowing their food situation, I was much more reluctant to continue staying here. Was there something for me to hunt further away?

Recent events had shown me the need to be much more cautious, which was why I’d been heavily scouting. And a few organized magical signals was pinging on my radar.

They were… humans? Wait a minute, don’t tell me that kid’s talk about slave hunters just caused a game event to start?

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Five days since the start of World of Yggdrasia’s beta test. New information continued to be posted and constantly updated on the VR chat forum. Efficient skill leveling, types of monsters, information on the game world’s countries, etc.

[Chat Board 7 - *Please use the in-game common language]

“So yeah, instead of killing mobs willy-nilly, it’s better to grind your skill with a decently strong monster.”

“But you’ll just get bogged down if you have low magic. Efficiency would go to shit.”

“System’s too annoying in the first place. Why do you have to use MP to actually use your combat skills?”

“Go use items. Don’t you know about magic recovery potions, idiot?”

“That’s fucking expensive. Those are one silver a pot, how the fuck do I afford that sort of drinking?!”

“It’s around 6 small silvers a bottle here, in Quarancinq.”

“That’s dirt cheap! Where’s that?”

“Lessee… Around the middle-left part of the world map, I guess? Architecture looks Eastern European-ish.”

“That’s way far… I’m in Katrosvingt. Looks like an Eastern country. Other side of the map from you.”

“Hey, the world’s round! You’re just right next door!”

“Has anyone tried crossing continents?”

“Don’t think so. Even the fastest and most expensive express ship takes at least a few weeks.”

“So do you just twiddle your thumbs while on the ship?”

“Apparently if you log out from the ship you’ll log back in there. Or if you logged out for too long, you’ll show up at the nearest Temple. Monsters attack the ship anyway, so you can level your weapon skill.”

“So pretty much only people with free time are going to travel. Also, can we fish?”

“I saw fishing gear on the market. Right, so the central continent’s medieval European style, how about the other countries? I’m at the Holy City Ayune, smack dab in the middle of the central cont. Closest country to the world tree. Good weather’s coming soon.”

“Damn, that’s nice… If only my time zone fit with yours. I’m in Soixansept Kingdom, btw. Bottom left of world map. Kinda like a tropical island.”

“Most convenient medieval world ever. They have flush toilets.”

“Food looks great too, but not edible. At least alcohol works fine.”

“Still no food with buffs yet, right? Can’t wait for the next update.”

“So fed up with the damn bar. It’s just sweet, nothing else.”

“Stop complaining and go eat real food. VR can’t fill your stomach.”

“Hey, anyone knows about that rumor of weird monsters recently?”

“What do you mean? How weird?”

“Lots of different types. They have different colors or special skills, kinda like sub-species of the main one. People in other countries have been talking about that in the other chatrooms.”

“Oh yeah, I know about that. Haven’t seen them myself, but apparently they show up here and there. The adventurer’s guild has information on them now. There’s a compilation of eyewitness reports on some other website, too.”

“Like an event monster or something? Checking out that site now.”

“Ooooh, right, that might be the one that attacked my friend.”

“Hostile, then.”

“Yeah. Charged in right when it saw the party. It looked like a hobgoblin but with red skin. Friend’s party was 4 people, killed it, but lost one of their own. They told me, ‘It’s just a game, but I could actually feel the madness. I damn near pissed my pants’. So weird...”

“Just checked out the website. So right now, we have info on around 10 of them. Maybe it’s actually a new event?”

“How strong are they generally? Anything new?”

“Apparently you can win with combat skill 2 or 3. Also I heard there’s this new one in the western forest of Seize Kingdom. Looks like a white mist or a ghost or something.”

***

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 132/150] 20↑
[Total Combat Power: 145/165] 22↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification]

Two days since I fought that beta tester.

That reminded me, the beta players could only picked the Human race. Unless they had some really good intuition, I don’t think they’d realize that monsters could be players. And I hadn’t realized how desperate I’d become – I actually looked for help from just a normal player.

I did a few more tests and experiments during the two days. Didn’t grow my strength much, though. The forest didn’t have any other monsters aside from me and the caterpillar-type, so I wandered around and hunted some normal animals too.

Speaking of which… the human mind really is good at adapting.

It wasn’t that I adapted to this body and no longer felt the sense of disconnect, no. It was still there. I only adapted to that feeling of disconnect itself. Like getting used to living with permanent nausea.

So I started widening my area of activity a little bit, but I only found less and less caterpillars, with normal wild animals taking their place. Rabbits, foxes, wolves, boars, birds. The foxes and birds ran away as soon as I approached. The wolves and boars I fought, and here was where I discovered that no normal beasts could harm me.

I assumed that in a straight fight, the wolves could win against red caterpillars, and the boars had a chance against the black caterpillars too, if they were allowed to charge into and crush the bugs. But unlike monsters, wild animals had little magic. They had around the same amount as the snakes I saw.

What did this mean? Monsters used magic to fight, but the wild animals’ meager amount of magic only allowed them to fight purely physically.

I still received 1 and 2 damage from the black caterpillar and that player’s physical attacks, but that was because they strengthened themselves with magic. I was a spiritual life-form, a Ghast with resistance to physical damage. The wild animals’ unenhanced strikes couldn’t harm me.

Which meant the snakes might actually have been a kind of newborn monsters, not wild animals, since they did use magic.

In the end, I was barely getting any stronger, despite my wholesale murder of the fauna.

Back to the present. What was I doing? Well, I was busy getting chased by armed people.

“That way!”
“Over there!”
“My turn! [Stone Bolt]!”

Holy crap was that close! I only just managed to hide myself behind a tree trunk scant moments before the rock bullet bounced off the bark. The projectile looked like a normal rock, but it was magic, which meant it could hurt me just fine. I had actual proof.

Three humans wielding swords and staves were my opponents.

They could have been normal NPC adventurers, but players were much more likely to be the kind of people who would charge this deep into the forest so thoughtlessly.

[Young Man in Swordsman Equipment] [Race: Human ♂] [Adventurer]
[Magic Points (MP): 55/65] [Hit Points (HP): 118/120]
[Total Combat Power: 145]

[Young Woman(?) in Magician Equipment] [Race: Human ♀] [Adventurer]
[Magic Points (MP): 57/75] [Hit Points (HP): 58/80]
[Total Combat Power: 144]

[Young Man(?) in Warrior Equipment] [Race: Human ♂] [Adventurer]
[Magic Points (MP): 63/70] [Hit Points (HP): 94/110]
[Total Combat Power: 148]

The swordsman’s appearance looked truthful enough, but I had a feeling the magician lady was fudging her age. And the warrior’s movements looked somehow disjointed. My hunch told me he was actually fat in real life.

We’d been playing tag in the forest, and obviously, I wasn’t any closer to victory. All of them had around the same power as me, with at least one confirmed magician. I didn’t know if the others also had spells.

The unfamiliar forest hampered their steps quite a bit, but then again, my best speed was only about a power walker’s. I couldn’t lose them, and they couldn’t catch me.

…really, would you people please stop? Moving at this speed was dizzying the crap out of me.

So you must be wondering how I got into this mess. Well, after that fight with the meathead player, I wandered here and there, partially to watch for other beta players, partially to look for more black caterpillars. It was then that I found a small farming village.

My curiosity spurred me to get closer…no no no, I wasn’t going to attack the people. Really. Just the large cattles, like a cow or a horse. Maybe they’ll give me some good experience. I just wanted to test it out.

I thought it’d be an old, poor village. Instead, the farming community actually seemed quite well-off. However, the farmhands weren’t human, but… elves, I supposed? Elves and beastmen with dog ears and cat ears. They showed no liveliness, no vigor in their work, their necks bound by some strange-looking collars.

Who were these people? Slaves? Some human came along once in a while, at times to give orders, at times to give the slaves some steamed potato and soup. So it actually wasn’t as bad as it could be, but in the end, the only ones not working were the humans.

I was curious about them, or to be more precise, about their animal ears and tails. I approached to try to get a closer look, but just as I neared the fields, I hit something invisible. It gave me a jolt and pushed me away.

What was that? It even damaged me a little bit. I stayed rooted on the spot, confused. A few moments later, some armed farmers began to show up from the building, so I panicked and ran away.

They were just normal villagers. I was sure I could take them, but it would get much too troublesome if they sent soldiers to hunt me down.

The farmers stopped chasing me once I entered the forest. Relieved, I decided to continue hunting some animals in the nearby woods and wait until the heat dies down. It was then that I met the group of three. They suddenly attacked the moment they found me.

And so here I was, running off deeper and deeper into the forest. Yet the group didn’t even think twice before giving chase. They didn’t seem to care about how they’d get back out again.

Damn, that rock again! Why the hell wasn’t the magician running out of magic? Was she taking drugs? And another one-oh crap, she’s readying some fire this time!

Right. That. Is. Enough!

[Reroll]

The flame blazing at the end of her staff exploded. The woman wailed, in surprise and pain.

Wait, what? Did I just Reroll the magician’s spell? I can actually use the skill on someone else?

…Oh, wait, crap.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]
・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 65/150]
[Total Combat Power: 72/165]
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification]

My magic just plummeted from the improper use of my unique skill.

Damn it, I couldn’t engage them any longer. All three of them were too surprised to continue giving chase, so I took the chance to run off.

Right, looked like I lost them. Still, I kept on gaining distance, cutting through the forest without rest. Not like I could ever get tired.

I killed whatever caterpillars and animals I encountered along the way. After a whole three days of constant travel without stopping, I found a simple, primitive hamlet, hidden deep inside the forest.

AN:

World map of Yggdrasia. Red numbers are large countries, black numbers are small ones.

TN: Obvious author typo in map, just ignore it. Here’s the direct link in case the image was too small.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“Fuck yes! A grinding place just for me!”

Compared to most other mobs early game, the Black Caterpillars were particularly dangerous due to their fire-spitting. On the other hand, their soft shells made them relatively easy to kill. A young man guffawed in a forest, his sword cutting swathes through his enemies.

His name was John Yamada. It sounded like a nickname you’d use in an MMO, but sadly, that was his real name. A Japanese-American university student, he was one of the chosen beta testers. Unluckily, his professors called him to resubmit a paper, and so his first login was one whole day after the beta started.

In his panic, he created a character using his real name and face. Yamada didn’t actually mind it that much, since a lot of popular streamers were doing the same thing for their channels. To make up for the lost time, he searched for good mobs to kill, which led him to the information about the Black Caterpillars on the game forum.

In World of Yggdrasia, time passed at about the same rate as real life.

At first glance, the problem wherein some players could only login at night due to their life situation seemed unavoidable, but thankfully Yggdrasia was as large as Earth, which meant timezones. Players could choose to start in the area with the timezone they wanted.

Yamada chose the country with the same timezone as his real-life residence. A large country situated to the west of the central continent, the Seize Kingdom.

When he began the game, what surprised him first and foremost was how detailed the game was. It reminded him of the first time he used the Avatar System to sight-see another country, and the immersion he felt back then. The game was so real, he couldn’t help but think this world might actually exist.

First was the town. Yamada logged in at the Temple in Seize’s capital city, then following the tutorial, went to register himself at the adventurer’s guild. The amount of people he saw on the way was astonishing.

In normal open-world games, even so-called metropolises only had at most a few hundred citizens to save on computing power. Yet here, just the main street he was standing in already had more people than that walking around.

At first Yamada thought the game simply had a few thousands players logging into the same city, like some other famous MMORPGs, but then he found out they were all NPCs. This living, breathing city was populated with AI-driven non-playable characters.

He should have guessed, really. All ten thousand beta testers from throughout the whole real world couldn’t have been dropped into a single country in-game. To determine how sophisticated the AI-driven NPCs were, he watched a street stall for a long while. And the owner actually began to scowl at him.

The wind on his skin, the pavement under his feet, the mouth-watering smell from a stall selling skewers of grilled meat. All these were indistinguishable from reality.

The sense of smell was replicated, but the sense of taste only worked for drinks. Avatars had no need for food. The human controller would still need to logout and eat normally.

As a player, Yamada was provided a lump of some sort of sweet food by the Temple. It resembled nutritional energy bars and granted a buff when eaten. But those didn’t dampen his dream to try out the street food here, even if just once, and even when he knew the sense of taste wouldn’t work. To that end, he headed to the adventurer’s guild for his first job.

But the food wasn’t the only reason Yamada was trying to earn money.

This game was realism-oriented. Unlike most other MMORPGs, you didn’t have an inventory box. You had to carry all your items by yourself. From what he’d heard, only some quest items could be stored inside your character. All other items took up actual space. If you had too many, you either used the Temple’s storage service, or made a base somewhere.

However, what Yamada was most interested were the slaves.

He was disappointed at first to see that only Humans were playable as a race. Turned out that apparently in World of Yggdrasia, all Demihumans were slaves. If you had a somewhere to live and enough money, you could buy slaves in cities or go capture the demihumans living in the forest. They could do housework, fight, carry your burden, or serve in other ways.

Slavery unnerved him a little bit at first, but all the townspeople were working the demihumans without batting an eye. The slaves were dressed cleanly enough, too, perhaps since they had to work in a city. Yamada decided to stop worrying about the matter.

Then he saw the back streets. He saw actual elves and beastmen slaves doing menial work. He saw the cute but somber girls, no one cracking a smile, and he decided his dream right there and then. He would earn enough to have a huge mansion, then he would swoop in to save the demihuman girls from their poor fates, and they would live together happily ever after.

Thus he vowed, to his own wretched heart.

This game’s growth system was weird.

There were no Levels like normal RPGs. No Classes or Jobs, either – everyone were Adventurers. Players decided on their playstyle by acquiring and leveling Skills the way they wanted, with 10 being the maximum level.

[John Yamada] [Race: Human ♂] [Adventurer]
[Magic Points (MP): 40/40] [Hit Points (HP): 60/60]
[Strength: 10] [Vitality: 10] [Agility: 10] [Dexterity: 10]
[Swordsmanship 1] [Defense 1] [Offensive Magic 1] [Healing Magic 1] [Self-Reinforcement]
[Total Combat Power: 40]
[Magic]: Flame - Healing

All he had were his starting skills, magic, and basic equipment: an Iron One-Handed Sword, a set of Soft Leather Armor, a set of Traveler’s Clothes, and an Adventurer’s Backpack.

If he died, he’d lose half of his Magic Points, suffer a 10% reduction of stats, and drop all his luggage on the ground as the death penalty. However, he had heard that his starting equipment and some quest reward items wouldn’t drop, so Yamada went outside town without a worry.

The way combat and gaining experience worked were also somewhat strange.

To prevent any mishaps in normal life, adventurers’ bodies were no different from normal people. This only changed when they entered combat. Physical Combat Skills and Self-Reinforcement were activated by the use of magic. One MP was spent every minute for each level of combat skill.

That meant Yamada could only fight for 40 minutes maximum. However, magic recovered by 10% each hour, and each monster killed granted you increased maximum Magic Points and Hit Points as a form of experience. You also absorbed a part of the dead monster’s magic to recover your own.

Yamada, despite having only his starting stats, didn’t actually have that much trouble hunting outside town. The nimble wolves were a bit difficult at first, but as long as he had a weapon, wild animals were easy enough to kill – as long as they came from the forest near the road leading out of town. But the beginning mobs didn’t offer much rewards in terms of both experience and money.

The first wolf he killed was grotesquely real, too. He would’ve retched if the game didn’t automatically censor the gory mess.

He brought a few rabbits he hunted to the adventurer’s guild to sell. They complained – damaged hides, no bloodletting after the kill – and haggled the price all the way down to just 5 bronze coins (about $5) for each rabbit. He tried out a skewer of meat from a stall and vomited from the taste of paper clay, all the while cursing the developers for their overcommitment to realism.

Yamada logged out. He searched for information on the VR message board, then went back in-game and headed to the wilds, away from the capital city.

This was an Earth-sized open-world game. Even his chosen starting country, Seize Kingdom, was as large as one of the bigger European countries. It’d take days traveling on foot.

With what little money he had left, Yamada bought a ticket for a magitech train, one of the methods of transportation available, and also one of the game’s selling points. No coal or water powered this train, only plenty of magic.

To help alleviate the boredom during the ride, the game allowed players who bought a private room to either log out, or browse a version of the game forum dedicated to people wanting access from in-game.

In case you were still logged-out when the train arrived at your station, the game would send you a notification on your phone. If you were still unavailable, your next login would put you in the nearest Temple.

The ride went quickly. It was a few hours later when Yamada arrived at a rural village, somewhere in the wilds of Seize Kingdom.

Sipping on some fruit juice, the first decent thing to entered his mouth ever since he started the game, he asked a few villagers for the whereabouts of monsters. According to them, there were only wolves, rabbits, and other such wild animals near the village, but he could find some Black Caterpillars about an hour’s walk into the forest. This was the mob the game forum told him about.

Incidentally, he did try to talk to a cat-eared demihuman slave along the way. She was terrified. That took the wind out of his sails.

Yamada bought a cheap cloak at the village’s secondhand store, for appearance’s sake. He headed to the depths of the forest without a single worry, his body never tiring due to being a VR avatar.

Yamada was the quintessential ‘dumb’ gamer – he only learned by dying. No plans, no thought. No steps taken to ensure the way back, he let his enthusiasm led him deep into the forest. And there, he found the Black Caterpillar he’d been searching for. He happily began the hunt.

[John Yamada] [Race: Human ♂] [Adventurer]
[Magic Points (MP): 33/52] [Hit Points (HP): 74/84]
[Strength: 13] [Vitality: 10] [Agility: 11] [Dexterity: 10]
[Swordsmanship 2] [Defense 1] [Offensive Magic 1] [Healing Magic 1] [Self-Reinforcement]
[Total Combat Power: 93] 53↑
[Magic]: Flame - Healing

The fire-breathing bugs were quite dangerous. He came close to death two or three times, but the experience was proportionate, too. Yamada’s combat power jumped in just two hours of hunting. The best part was the skill [Swordsmanship] leveling to rank 2. Just the upgrade nearly doubled his total combat power.

According to the forum, getting from 1 to 2 wasn’t that difficult, but going to 2 to 3 would take a lot of work. Ever since his power doubled, he could kill the caterpillars before they spit fire with ease. If grinding the skill was that difficult, then he could simply go in deeper to search for stronger monsters, Yamada thought. He healed himself to a decent amount and moved on.

As mentioned on the game forum, the beginner bonus item, Identification Crystal, would show information if there was a monster in his line of sight. It made looking for prey a lot easier. Yamada abused the item relentlessly, and he used up all 99 uses in just two hours of hunting.

True, there were Identification Crystals used and sold by the town residents. But they weren’t the perfectly-processed spheres the bonus items were. Just rough pieces of rocks. And despite having only 10 uses, they were priced at 3 silver coins (approx. $300 in value) each.

The actual requirements for learning [Simple Identification] was to use the Identification Crystal 80 times on targets having at minimum a certain amount of magic power. Due to the rampant misinformation on the forums, many players failed to learn the skill while they still had the bonus item. They could still check their own status at the Temple, but the inconvenience would stay with them until they unlocked the skill.

Yamada was using his eyes, instead of his crystal, to search for mobs, when he saw a strange white mist approaching from the forest’s depths.

“Oh?”

It looked like steam at first glance. He only realized it was a monster from the glint of light coming from inside it, which turned out to be an Identification Crystal. Yamada sneered.

‘Fucking hell! Damn thing must have plundered the crystal from another player!’

The white mist didn’t seem to be a hostile mob, but as it drifted closer, Yamada pulled out his sword and slashed.

“Yeaahahahh!! Drop that Crystal! You’re my XP now!”

The sword went through the white monster without resistance.

“Shit!”

Normally, you’d change to magic once you found out your physical attacks didn’t work. Yet Yamada applied his gamer brain in the most idiotic way: he thought the monster simply had a high dodge skill. He just kept on chopping.

Strangely, the white mist stopped moving, looking as if dumbfounded. Then it moved, angered, to envelop Yamada. He kept screaming and swinging wildly for several minutes, until all his life and magic were drained.

Yamada’s body scattered into particles of light. He reappeared a few seconds later in the Temple of Seize Kingdom’s capital city, having not set a respawn point.

“Aww shucks, I died.”

His first defeat, yet the fool still laughed. Once again, he headed out to battle to regain his lost stats and magic points.

***

Fucking what.

That was an actual beta tester. I showed him my Identification Crystal and approached, thinking he might realize I was a player. Never in my wildest dream would I expect him to rob me.

He had my level of power, but a black caterpillar’s level of intelligence. Lucky me. Never before had I felt the word ‘meathead’ to be such an apt description of someone.

I knew that when players died, their bodies disappeared and they left behind equipment. This guy just had a worn-out cloak, a few coins, and some sort of stick that looked like it was used to skewer meat.

…why skewers?

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]

・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 123/130] 22↑
[Total Combat Power: 135/143] 24↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll] [Simple Identification]

Oh, yes, right. I didn’t notice when, but I learned [Identification].

I was finally free from the anxiety at seeing the crystal’s uses dwindle, but the skill had its own problems. I could identify myself for free, but identifying anything else used up 1 point of magic. And the skill wasn’t even any better than the crystal. It only ever showed the Magic Points, Total Combat Power, and the name chosen from my perception.

…really, so troublesome.

That aside, I got a lot of points from just a player character. Could it be… that killing humans was the easiest way to grow as a monster?

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

I decided on the Ghast.

The immaterial, malleable demon of dust and gases. It wouldn’t be much different from the body of wet dough I’d been using. Imps and Gremlins, with their hands and legs, would have been much better for my mind. I was sure of that.

But no. I didn’t want all my experience to count for nothing.

…well. I just wanted to say something cool there. My life was going to be shitty no matter the choice anyway, so I didn’t put all that much thought to it.

Following my wish, my snow-white slime body began to break do- hey, no, wait, shit. This is bad.

I could feel myself being arranged into something different, and apparently my brain didn’t like that very much. My vision whited out, I felt myself thrown into a raging whirlpool, twisting and turning in incomprehensible directions. Nausea and dizziness began to lay siege, without mercy. Head-splitting pain. An infinite number of ants swarming-

-no, no. This wasn’t real! I didn’t have a physical body at the moment. This was nothing more than a delusion cooked up by my mind! I knew that, but fucking idiot brain!

Come on, stay a… wake…

…
……
………

Oh boy.

It took a whole day for my evolution to finish.

I seriously thought my non-existent head was going to explode.

Well, to be more precise, the Evolution itself probably only took a few minutes, but after it was done I couldn’t move for all of a day.

I only just managed to start thinking human thoughts again an hour ago. Until then, my world was made of headaches, flashing colors in my eyes, and so much nausea that I couldn’t move a millimeter.

I still couldn’t, even now. My new body’s senses were all out of whack.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)] 33/99

・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 90/90] 35↑
[Total Combat Power: 100/100] 40↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll]

Ghast. A low demon of dust and gases. See this “dust and gases” part? That was the problem. My senses extended to every single particles that made up my body.

What this meant was that every time the wind blew, armies of ants would start having a party on the parts of my body moved by the breeze.

Such a pain…

I’d been trying my best to ignore the whole thing, but on second thought, that might not have been the best idea. If I tried to get used to this body by ignoring the problem, that would mean discarding the advantage of using a monster avatar in the first place. Instead, I should turn the problem into a solution: make my hypersensitivity work for me rather than against me.

That was the strength of monsters, and also what separated them from humans.

…at the same time, I had the strangest feeling, as if I was slowly losing bits and pieces of my own human vulnerabilities from all the abuse my mind had suffered since I started using this monster avatar…

Was weakness not what make humans so beautiful, in the end?

Alright, that was enough monologuing. I got so much more powerful now; I should try to get moving as soon as possible.

That reminded me, my status showed [Low Demon (Low-Rank)]. That’s two ‘low’ in a row. How weak was the pre-evolution ball of dough, then?

I was lucky that no caterpillars or snakes came by when I was still immobile. There was a squirrel, but it ran the moment it found out I was here.

My first priority would be to learn how to use my senses. For the first time, I opened my eyes and truly looked at what was happening with my body. Immediately, a torrent of information slammed into me.

…head hurt. Too much useless information. I didn’t need to know how many blades of grass or grains of sand I was touching, or how much dust was blowing in the wind. Huh, I just realized how reliant on sight and hearing humans were, despite having five senses.

Anyway. I should try to selectively process only the relevant information. Hopefully my subconscious could handle the task for me if I practice enough. If not, well, I’d probably go insane, so I couldn’t slack off here.

Which meant I’d need to train my brain to get used to this amount of information as its new default state. Oh boy…  I wasn’t looking forward to returning to reality after this. It’s going to be a hell of a time getting used to the lack of information again.

Let’s do this bit by bit, then. This sort of training was never meant to be completed in a day or two. Meanwhile, I should try to move.

I supposed this body should handle the same way as the doughy one. It was the reason why I picked the Ghast, after all. I was going to facepalm so hard otherwise.

…oh? Oooh! I just floated!

I see, I see, so Ghasts could float. Well, not surprising, actually. They were made of gases. On one hand, this afforded me so many new possibilities. On the other, stomach-churning nausea, again… Blergh.

My vision hadn’t stopped turning since a while now, most likely due to my body constantly being moved by the air currents, and it’d continue to do so as long as I wasn’t being aware. So I focused my consciousness and forced my body to stay still. Finally, I could see myself.

I looked like… a 1-meter sphere of incredibly thick smoke? Not exactly outside my expectations, but why was I white again? The game reproduced my albinism in the weirdest ways. Please stop it already.

Ah, right. You know what happens when you pour water on dry ice? That.

I drifted forward. Hey, this worked. Felt like I was bungee jumping every time I moved, which was scary, but I could move the same way I did when I was still a slime.

I couldn’t rise too much, though – there was some kind of force pulling me down, and its strength was proportional to my distance from the ground. It was difficult to get any higher than the height of the windows of a two-story building.

So that was my vertical limits. Horizontally, I could move as fast as a person walking, or race-walking if I pushed myself. Faster than dough-me, obviously. You’d think I would go ‘Weeeee! I can fly!’, but no, my perception was much too sensitive for that. Bugs were crawling on my skin every time the winds touched me. Nothing was fun about this.

…really, could I ever get used to this?

For the time being, I elected to process enough information for my senses to be slightly better than a normal person’s. Particularly my sense of smell and presence detection – for those, I tried to be as aware of the unconscious goings-on as possible.

Oh, found a red caterpillar. It looked small, so probably a male. I silently drove my body of gas closer and prepared to attack… I could just attack the same way I’d been doing, right?

I thrusted a part of me forward. There was no impact. The tentacle of air simply covered the caterpillar and sucked it dry in a few seconds.

…holy crap.

I couldn’t believe this was the same caterpillar I used to have so much trouble with. I just won in a flash. Gruesomely, too.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)] 30/99

・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 91/91] 1↑
[Total Combat Power: 101/101] 1↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll]

Apparently I also drained its lifeforce with that attack. Well, that was good and all, but it didn’t give me much. Could be because of my evolution. Setting the dark-reds aside for a moment, but the red ones used to give me around 7 points.

That’s it, then. I might be outgrowing this area. It’d been my plan to leave the forest once I got stronger, anyway.

…still, if I saw any, I’d hunt. Points were important, even if just one.

Another 10 more reds hunted after a day of journey. I’d gotten a lot more used to moving myself. Filtering information was still difficult.

This forest was huge. I’d never seen anything other than trees the whole time. I’m not actually going deeper, am I? That wasn’t to say coming across a human village wouldn’t be a problem, however.

Oh, I detected something. A stronger presence than most.

What was it? Where was it? I stayed on guard for a while, but saw nothing, so I decided to hover forward. There it was, behind a large tree.

Maybe I just imagined it, but I thought our eyes met. As much as I could have eyes.

It was a black caterpillar, around 60 centimeters, and twice as large as a red one.

Whoa! It just screeched and spat out fire without warning. From all the way over there, too!

[Black Caterpillar] 29/99
[Magic Points: 39/45]  [Hit Points: 60/60]
[Total Combat Power: 75]

Quite a bit more powerful than reddies. Was this the next evolution step of the dark-red? Why caterpillars? Get to butterflies already.

Wait, what are you doing spitting fire in a forest?! Damn it, I couldn’t afford to stay defensive fighting a high-power monster. All-out offense!

I circled around the big tree to strike from its back. It spat flame at me once, but I still continued. A part of me stretched out and enveloped the bug.

By the way, I did a [Reroll] to dodge the flame, but it failed. Like always.

Just as I thought, that wasn’t enough volume to do any meaningful damage. I went for broke and rushed at the black caterpillar, using my whole body to cover it. It resisted violently, trying to bite me.

…hmm? Didn’t hurt much. Just felt like a mosquito bite. Right, my gaseous Ghast body! Fire worked, but maybe I was nearly invincible to physical attacks!

I worked to absorb as much of its life as possible before the bug could hurl flame again. In the end, it was just a caterpillar. It never attempted anything other than biting. Finally, it wailed, breathing its last.

So I won because I was smarter than a caterpillar. Amazing.

[NO NAME] [Race: Ghast] [Low Demon (Low-Rank)] 28/99

・A low demon made of dust and gases. A fragile spiritual lifeform.

[Magic Points: 94/108] 17↑
[Total Combat Power: 103/119] 18↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll]

That was a lot of points. I got 10 points from the reds on my way here, so one black caterpillar was 7 points.

I could make use of these bugs. The best thing was that they didn’t have any way to hurt me besides the flame. So, blacks were relatively safe to kill and gave me a good amount of points, which meant I could settle down here for a while…

…that was before I found out that there were way too few blacks, compared to the number of reds. In hindsight, it should have been obvious. Monsters had more magic and lifeforce than normal animals. To grow stronger efficiently, monsters would have to fight one another. So the higher on the pyramid, the less of them existed.

…oh well, I’d just have to be patient and search. I also got used to handling myself a bit better now, so it was time to try to see how far away I could detect presences.

I rose almost to my height limit, despite the warning signals telling me to get back down now now now, spreading myself as wide as I could to let my detection sense do its work.

Normally, my range was around a basketball court. This time, I expanded my perception, only checking for magic and the general sizes of the presences themselves. The details were ignored. The more useless information I took in, the worse the stress on my brain, setting me on edge and lowering my accuracy.

Alright, focus… range at baseball field size, now… yeah, still nothing… maybe a bit further… hmm? I sensed… oh crap, this is bad, my consciousness…

I forced my body and mind back together the moment they were about to scatter and evaporate. Too close! What were the developers thinking? They didn’t even implement any sort of limits or safety checks for avatars! I’m pretty sure I was just about to become a vegetable right there if I didn’t stop in time!

…that scared the crap out of me. Let’s be more careful from now on.

At the same time, if I hadn’t forced myself so, I wouldn’t have found that strange presence. They were a long way away from me. The presence only had about half my magic, yet felt strangely powerful. And bizarre. They were killing what I suspected to be black caterpillars, one after another.

Might the presence be a human? If they were killing monsters, then perhaps… a beta tester?

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“Secret alpha tester No. 78. Time elapsed: 71 hours. Delirium, leading to mental collapse. As per procedure, subject will be forced to log out and moved to the collection room.”

Here, at the 7th research center of a certain conglomerate, 100 so-called “secret alpha tester” human subjects were undergoing an experiment within the MMORPG, “World of Yggdrasia”. Over 50 staff members were monitoring them 24/7, with ten persons each shift.

After the staff member’s announcement, the collecting process began in another facility. Subject No. 78 was thawed and released from the VR capsule. The medical staff carried the kid away in indifference.

Brian, the deputy director of this particular research center, watched the process through a monitor. He sighed and clicked a few buttons.

“So how many does this make?”

“Including No. 78, we have had 8 people logging out due to mental collapse. Another 2 died from their minds weakening.” His secretary, a gorgeous woman nearing her thirties, answered stoically.

The mental strain of using a different VR avatar from one’s real body first became a problem several years ago, and it had only gotten worse with the advance in VR technology. Increasing realism went hand-in-hand with an increasing number of reported mental instability.

As present, there were only three solutions.

First, was to simply lower the sensitivity of the VR system. This was not practical due to how indispensable VR had made itself in so many aspects of society, not to speak of the users’ ever-increasing demand for realism.

Second, to get used to the experience with the help of drugs and medical supervision. However, the user still needed to train for a long period of time, and success was not guaranteed. This solution also caused several other problems such as possible drug addiction and difficulty in returning to society, and thus was also impractical to implement.

Third, to minimize the differences between the user and their avatar. This was the simplest, problem-free solution, and so became the standard choice.

The 7th center’s focus was on exploring the effect of non-human avatar use on the human mind. For this purpose, the center had acquired orphans within the age of 10 to 15 for their still-flexible minds, and the fact that they had no relatives. These kids had had their records ‘legally’ deleted from the system. Upon the conclusion of this experiment, they would have their livelihood guaranteed for ten years and new identities made.

Monster avatars, with their unnatural powers and movement, took quite some time to make, which delayed the project. In the end, the secret alpha testers began their experiment at the same time the official beta testers joined the game. Depending on the results, this experiment could be a large step forward for the medical field.

“So, ten percent dropped out after just 70 hours.”

“Sir, I believe the cause might be the lack of sleep. At maximum, VR sensitivity even surpassed real life, which put so much stress on their minds that they couldn’t rest. Should we lower it?”

“That’d be putting the cart before the horse. If sensitivity is low, we might as well be using remote-controlled drones or AI tanks. As weapons, they’d be useless.”

Brian snorted. He looked at the large monitor showing the mental states of the 100 test subjects, updated in real-time.

Dead – 2 subjects.
Logged out due to mental collapse – 8 subjects.
Delirious – 12 subjects.
Gone berserk due to loss of rationality – 11 subjects.
Mentally unstable – 37 subjects.
Light mental instability – 30 subjects.

“Sir, I’ve just received a report. A berserk alpha tester had made contact with a few beta testers, then defeated after a fight broke out.”

“Which one?”

“Excuse me. It was the alpha tester who started as a goblin and advanced into a hobgoblin. The beta testers who defeated them was a party of four, but they also suffered one casualty.”

“I see. As foreseen, the closer to human the avatar, the faster their evolution. So how many subjects have reached evolution?”

“Twenty-seven. Among them, one had died and four more have had a mental collapse, so currently twenty-two are still logged-in. However, over half of them are extremely unstable. Some of them are delirious, or have gone berserk.”

“Yes, increased stress due to a sudden change of form. Worst case scenario, we may need to look into injecting a few of them…”

“Six subjects have achieved evolution with only light mental instability. Furthermore, subject No. 13 have unlocked evolution while relatively stable.”

“No. 13, huh…” Brian muttered.

Answering him, the screen showed the sight of a snow-white girl, her red pupils shooting daggers at the camera. Brian remembered her. Understanding dawned on his face, and he nodded.

“Ahh, right. The ‘Demon Child’…”

* * *

[NO NAME] [Infant Demon] 47/99

・A nameless infant demon. A spiritual life-form. Extremely fragile.

[Magic Points: 17/55] 15↑
[Total Combat Power: 25/60] 15↑
[Unique Skill: Reroll]
[Evolution Available]

…evolution available? Right, the explanation did include this.

Once a monster player raised their levels enough, they can evolve into another type of monster within the same evolution tree.

Anyway, I needed more details. I focused my thoughts on the Evolution Available part, and more text appeared.

Available Evolutions from [Infant Demon] 46/99
Displaying current choices.
[Imp]
[Shadow]
[Gremlin]
[Ghast]

There were quite a few choices… I’d have to check them out one by one. My Crystal only had half its uses left, yet I still hadn’t learned the skill. Worrying was just futile, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.

[Imp] 45/99
・A tiny, hideous demon. Lives in people’s houses, and loves to play pranks.

That explanation was much too short! It didn’t even say anything about the next evolutions. So useless.

…whatever. Might as well finish off the rest.

[Shadow] 44/99
・A demon of shadows. Takes over the place of a living being’s shadow. Disturbs the mind of the possessed.

[Gremlin] 43/99
・A type of evil fairy. Possesses inventions of man, and interferes with operation.

[Ghast] 42/99
・A gaseous demon. Formed from a collection of black dust and soot. Can transform into many different shapes.

Hmmm… I guess if I wanted a typical demon, I should go the Imp path? But it’s ugly… I didn’t know how powerful they could get, but the size didn’t assure me.

I was slightly partial to the Shadow. If they could possess human shadows, then they might be able to enter human villages. Ah, but what if I turned white again after my evolution?

Gremlins also seemed to be a straightforward choice, but what exactly are ‘inventions’? Could I possess an airship and drop it? This had the potential for mass murder, but would I have to attack humans?

Ghasts were the most mysterious one. What do I do with the ability to change shapes?

All of them had their pros and cons. None of them seemed to be useful in a straight fight. What should I do?

Anyway, it looked like I couldn’t evolve if my magic wasn’t full so for the time being, it was time to rest. I decided to laze about in the clearing to calm myself down – all this time, this sense of disconnect had been putting my mind off-balance. Maybe I could watch the flowers.

You could say I was just escaping from reality, but, well, I’m a very experienced escapist. Really, I wish those corporation people would just lower the sensitivity already…

My mind wandered, until it landed on the caterpillar corpses. They were seriously cramping my style, here. Could I use them for something?

They did have those fangs that no bugs should ever have. Maybe I could rip them out and sell them in a town, somewhere? A monster selling monster materials. I’d be turning a lot of heads. Well, I had some free time, might as well try.

I approached the dark-red. Up close, the huge corpse looked a lot more grotesque than I thought.

I wasn’t really in the mood to carefully dismantle it, so I just stretched out a gooey tentacle to start pounding. It wasn’t so much dismantling as pulverizing. Which still worked – I got one out of the pair of fangs. It looked quite sturdy. Also, the other fang broke.

I didn’t want to look at this aftermath of a splatter movie, but I couldn’t close my eyes. Which might have been for the better, since otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed the twinkling object inside the corpse.

What was this thing? A gem? It was the size of a bean and colored black, which made it look more like a really nice piece of coal rather than a gem. I tried poking it, and suddenly it disappeared inside my body. Eh? What happened? Where did it go?

I searched everywhere in my body but found nothing. Instead, I noticed my depleted magic power recovering at a far faster rate.

What was that? A magic-emitting rock? Well, if it could recover my magic, then all the more convenient. I looked for stones inside the other three red caterpillar corpses too, but smashing them open revealed nothing.

Questions after questions. Did these stones only form inside strong monsters? Perhaps that was the ‘magic stone’ I was told about. Well, no matter. Thanks to the stone, I only took an hour to recover all my magic power.

Hey, dark-red. I’m not going to say I was grateful for the fight, but… it wasn’t meaningless.

[NO NAME] [Infant Demon] 41/99

・A nameless infant demon. A spiritual life-form. Extremely fragile.

[Magic Points: 55/55]
[Total Combat Power: 60/60]
[Unique Skill: Reroll]
[Evolution Available]

Indeed. It wasn’t meaningless at all. Thus, I made my decision.

Likely as not, there’d be more difficulties ahead of me no matter which path I choose. My worn-out soul might just be in tatters by the end, yet still, I didn’t want everything I had done to be meaningless.

And so, I gave form to my desire in my mind and made a wish with all my heart.

Author’s Note: Adults are scary.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter