Floating.

That was what Li felt as his consciousness drifted through what felt like nothingness. Around him was darkness. A murky darkness that seemed to have substance, shimmering almost like waves of black water. But he had no arms to move with, no body even to feel and touch. It was just his mind's eye that seemed to drift and see.

Li felt an incredible sense of disorientation. It was like he was in a fever dream, the world around him shaky and straddling the line between reality and imagination. Here, a voice resonated through his head, etching into the very essence of his thoughts.

"Oh Great Outworlder, I hope you may forgive us for pulling you from your world, but our need is dire."

Li couldn't tell whether the voice was male or female or whether it even belonged to one person or not. It was a little distorted, filled with static.

"We grant you flesh and blood to walk among us. We grant you knowledge so that you may understand us and this world. We call upon you to deliver us from our woes. Our world lies at the brink of destruction. Civilization hangs in the balance. The cries of thousands echo out for you. We-"

The voice crackled before cutting off. As soon as the voice stopped, the world returned.

A flash of colors invaded Li in an instant as the darkness disappeared. It was incredibly disorienting gaining all five senses and a body in a single instant and he wondered it was a miracle that he did not immediately vomit his guts out.

Li thought to blink but realized that he physically could not. He touched his face instinctively. His hands felt cold bone. He looked at his hands again.

Branches. The hands of a Leshen. He looked around, startled. He processed things in chunks. First, he was outside. Second, it was nighttime. Third, he was in the middle of a great forest, but this was far different from anything in a game. None of his senses were dampened.

In fact, they were sharpened. He could so very clearly hear the wind rustling between the branches of the trees, singing out a ghostly symphony of whistles. The trees around him, their scraggly bark and their leaves, were so vividly clear, so incredibly green and black and detailed beyond anything computer graphics could provide. He could feel the soil soft and moist under his bare feet. He could smell the earthiness of the dirt.

As absolutely unbelievable as it was, he knew this wasn't the game.

And not just because of his senses. Whatever crazy fever dream he had hadn't just talked to his head, it had given him knowledge. He knew that he had been summoned into an entirely new world and part of the summoning ritual involved limiting any panic of confusion in being brought to a foreign world.

He got the feeling that he was supposed to know more like where he was and what he was actually supposed to do, but something had gone wrong, leaving him free to do as he pleased.

Li's first reaction was to walk up to a tree and place his palm on its trunk. He realized then how distinctly inhuman he was. He was almost three meters tall with a body comprised of wood, leaves, and bones.

Leshen were not friendly creatures. Nor were they particularly pleasant to look at. They were ghostly and sinister. If nature was embodied through the cycle of life and death, then the Leshen was death incarnate.

Li's head was a bare deer's skull lined with spiked antlers made of twisted wood. Various small branches sprouted from his body but instead of blossoming flowers, they held onto skulls of creatures both bestial and humanoid.

But Li didn't mind his body much. It felt as natural as if it were his own. There were still a few habits he had such as wanting to blink but being unable to considering he had a skull for a head, but these he felt would fade in time. What took up most of his attention was the world around him.

It was stunning. Li had never, ever seen a forest in real life. He had always seen them in virtual reality and historical videos and documents, but he had never dreamed he would ever be able to stand by a real tree and touch it. It was almost mythical to see something that had been lost in his world.

Nature was every bit as wondrous and beautiful as Li had hoped it was. Even more so than he had hoped. Warm emotions of wonder and happiness swelled within him, and he resisted an urge to cry tears of joy even knowing that his skull-head could never produce tears.

If the only thing Li could do was be in this forest and admire it for eternity, he would still be content.

Li tensed up.

He could sense something. He instinctively attempted to look at the upper corner of his vision where a minimap would be, but of course it wasn't there. He had an idea that he had all the abilities of his game character, but he wasn't entirely sure what it felt like to use them.

Right now, something was triggering his passive [Forestborn Sense] that allowed him to detect hostile presences in a wide radius around him provided he was in a forest.

In the game, Li's [Forestborn Sense] would manifest as a red dot marked on his minimap, but now it was more like an instinctive tug. When he followed his instincts towards the presence, the instinctive tug grew stronger, telling him he was closer.

Li sauntered through the forest silently and swiftly. In-game, Leshen could ignore all unit-collision in a forest due to their spectral nature, letting them move through trees and individuals. He could do just the same, his body phasing through the woods. It felt a little odd to see solid objects simply pass through him, but he got used to it.

After a minute, Li found himself on the edge of the forest. Beyond it lay a wide dirt road. He was cautious. Though he knew that he had all the powers of his level 100 game character and the voice that had summoned him called him great, he didn't know for certain how strong anything else was in this world.

Li hid between trees and peered into the road. Leshen also had natural stealth in forests, so he wasn't too worried of being spotted. If he was, he could also immediately escape and defend himself using an arsenal of other abilities.

He saw an upturned wooden wagon, its wheels creaking uselessly in the air. Various kinds of vegetables lay scattered everywhere. Li could recognize some of them from his own world – carrots, cabbage, tomatoes – and others, he could recognize as belonging to Elden World.

It was impressive just how clearly he could see them, making out their details and colors, and he guessed that it was due to his species' natural night vision.

Surrounding the wagon were several men. Their clothing was medieval in nature and Li recognized they wore items from Elden World. Common Tunic, Common Cloak, Common Trousers, and so on. All of these were starter items, worth absolutely nothing past the first few levels.

The men routinely shifted their weight from one foot to the other. Some of them pulled at their hoods often to make sure the cloth was over their faces. All of them no doubt were ready to run, scared at being caught doing something wrong.

One of the men knelt down and started shouting, a common dagger bared in his hand. "Pay up, grandpa. You knows the law down here now. Drosso needs his tax."

Li spotted who the man was talking to. It was an old man crumpled on the ground, his hands clutched around his stomach. It was obvious he had been keeled over by a blow to his belly. He too was dressed in common items. Wrinkles wreathed his hands and his face.

His bald head was marked with spots and scars. He was aging but still relatively stout, having a wide build used to manual labor. Even so, he couldn't fight multiple properly armed men.

"Curse you," spat the old man through labored breaths. "I only answer to the Duchess's good law, not to some deserter styling himself a bandit king."

The bandit bared his dagger in one hand and reached out an expectant hand in the other. "Choose your words wisely. Duchess's perfumed knights won't be saving you anytime soon. Now give us coin. 10 silvers should let you hold onto your miserable life."

The old man chuckled, baring a smile that had precious few teeth left.

"Something funny?" the bandit said, the dagger nearing closer to the old man's throat.

"You think an old farmer like me has 10 silvers?" The old man weakly sat himself up. "You're all delusional." He scrunched his nose. "And you all smell like pigs. Clean yourselves up and get real jobs."

"Dale, just kill him and take his things," said another bandit. He licked his dirt-caked lips. "We can sell them at the market later. Maybe cook ourselves a good stew first."

Li didn't need to hear more. He could see his father in this old man. They were both men of the earth, farmers, strong and hardy like the dirt. He would not let low-lives that lived only off the work of others kill such a man.

As anger and killing intent coursed through Li, it became apparent how to use his spells and skills. All he had to do was think of the spell he wanted and it would manifest.

First, he casted [Power Sense], gauging the levels and stats of these bandits.

Their abilities manifested in his head as character profiles.

_______________

Name: Bandit

Level: 8

Race: Human

Class: None

Specialties: None

Stats:

STR- 20

AGI- 15

INT- 5

Resistances:

Armor- 5

Magic - 0

Spirit- 0

Items:

Common Tunic (Chest)

Common Trousers (Legs)

Common Cloak (Accessory)

Weapons:

Dagger [Common] (One-Handed)

____________________

The mismatch between these bandits and Li was like the size difference between an ant and a mountain.

These bandits did not even have a class - that was unlocked at level 10 - and specializations, or subclasses as they were commonly known, were unlocked at level 20.

In contrast, Li was a level 100 Mage and Warrior hybrid with specializations as a Druid, Summoner, and Shapeshifter. His stats were absolutely maxed out. He had not come with all his items, just his coin and what was merely on his person at the time of his summoning, but that was more than enough to deal with anything of this caliber.

His usually worn gear, though not equipped right now, was Celestial in rank, the rarest and strongest in all of Elden World, attainable only through hundreds of hours of grinding.

With his strength stat, Li could kill each of these bandits with single swipes of his claws. He could let them beat on him for a thousand years and they would never even damage him. With his agility stat, the bandits would never even be able to hit him in the first place nor would they ever be able to evade his attacks. With his insight stat, every single one of his offensive spells would turn these men into bloody smears on the ground or break their minds irreparably.

With a flourish of his hand, Li casted [Blood Root]. He could feel some of his mana expending. In Elden World's lore, mana was one's willpower, and the more one spent of it, the more mentally tired one became. Of course, in the game, mana use was just depicted through a blue bar in the HUD, but in this new world, it felt as it would in lore. He could feel just a little tired, as if he had spent minor brainpower looking at a document for 10 minutes.

Li stepped out of the forest just as [Blood Root] activated. A wooden root burst up from the earth beneath the bandit threatening the old man. The root, shaped like a stake, drove straight through the bandit and reached high, skewering the bandit's body and leaving it hanging limp in the air at the tip of the root like a macabre flower.

The root absorbed the bandit's blood, draining the corpse until it was nothing more than a withered husk. The blood flowed down the root and the leafy tendril pulsed grotesquely like a vein, glowing shades of crimson as it suckled hungrily.

The next [Blood Root] would now be even stronger. The more units it killed, the deadlier it became. Li felt no remorse killing these men. He had fought in the front-lines of war and knew what it meant to take life. One of the lessons he took to heart from war was that some lives were simply just worthless.

The bandits cried out in shock as they backed away from their impaled friend. Focused on the gruesome scene in front of them, the bandits did not register Li's presence, and one of them stepped back into him.

The bandit froze before he slowly looked up to see an antlered skull peering down at him, the empty eye sockets black like voids that seemed to suck the very soul out of his being. Before he could scream, Li grabbed his head. The bandit felt so tiny and weak in Li's grip.

Li crushed the bandit's head to a pulp and tossed his corpse away. It sailed several dozen meters before bursting apart on a tree trunk.

"Run!" screamed one of the bandits.

Li raised a finger, and another [Blood Root] emerged, tearing through the bandit's navel and bursting through his mouth, effectively silencing him.

But the call had been made, and the bandits scrambled away, their eyes wide with panic and their mouths open in terror.

Li was confident now that he had a hang of how to cast his abilities. He waved his hand and cast [Murder]. He watched as the bandits disappeared into the forest. He could give chase, but there was no use. They were all soon to be dead anyway. He instead knelt by the old man.

In the distance, a murder of demonic crows formed, raging through the forests and tracking down each and every bandit, tearing them limb from limb and wearing them down to the bone like a flying meat grinder.

"Are you okay?" said Li as he gently provided support for the old man's back and helped him stand.

"Aye, I am, young'un," said the old man as he thankfully patted Li's tree trunk of an arm. "My, you're a big lad. And is this armor? Never felt the kind before."

The old man's forehead wrinkled in confusion as his fingers moved up and down Li's arm. His stare was blank, looking only straight forwards.

Li realized then that the man was blind. And thankfully too as he figured that the old man would also have been terrified if he could see Li.

"Oh, just give me a second," said Li as he gently pushed the old man aside. Li didn't want to shock the old man any further so he used his Shapeshifter abilities to morph into a human shape. In-game, this meant that he turned into a character model that he had created which had been modeled after his own features.

The problem was, the model looked definitely East Asian, and from what Li could see, the people here were Western European. He didn't have any other human forms he could shift to since in-game, it was useless outside of cosmetics to have more than one. But this was a problem to ponder later.

Right now, Li's priority was to help this old man.

"I figured my armor was hurting you, so I took it off," said Li as he held the old man's arm to give him support. "Feeling better?"

"Armor? Explains why your arm felt strange. You must be a knight then, thank the royal highness for your lot." The old man laughed. "And no doubt you're a kind young lad too. It's fine if you kept your armor on, though – knight's pride and all. Old and blind I may be, I'm no cripple yet. But I could still use some help. If it's no burden to you, mind helping me load my wagon again?"

They loaded the wagon quickly. The old man, despite having a bruise swelling in his stomach, worked quickly and efficiently, obviously afraid the bandits might come back. Li was surprised at how nimbly the old man navigated his surroundings.

He would cock his head every now and then as he tracked his broad hands across the dirt, using hearing and touch to locate each and every herb and vegetable he needed. Li realized then that the humans of this world were considerably more capable than those in his, stronger with sharper senses that allowed them to navigate themselves even while blind.

When the wagon finished loading, the old man sighed as he held the handles. It was a manually pushed wagon, and Li tapped the old man's shoulder.

"I can do that for you," Li said

"I'm no cripple, son," said the old man.

"Then the least I can do is escort you back to your home," said Li as his artificially human face smiled.

"I'm no cripple, but I am old, I admit. I'll take that offer, aye. Lost my fighting prowess years ago, but by the gods, you should have seen me when I was young and spry," said the old man.

The old man had a certain dignity to him that Li respected. It so very much reminded him of his father in his old age, when he coughed like mad and his arms shook so much but still insisted on loading up his delivery bike day after day. The dignity of a man who took pride in his work and himself no matter how humble it was.