SING CRIER CH.5 - Where the Heart Is Alright... what's next fate? What horrors does Sal'venakai hold? Scorched terrain? Hobbling monstrosities? A kingdom of cruelty? Hell? Nothing? Ah, don't worry about disappointing us, because the bar is already through the figurative floor. You may as well just tell us, you know? ...Sigh. Fine. Taking in our new surroundings, we discover ourselves lying in a small, dry, and rocky cave. The cave is a straight tunnel, no longer than fifty meters, with us placed opposite to the exit. Although it's dark, the exit gives off just enough light for us to make out the cave interior. It's also just bright enough for us to spot a curiosity sitting in the middle of the cave. Sitting between us and the exit... the silhouette of a suspicious pouch. Or should we say, an Obviously-Intended-for-Us pouch. Though... even if we wanted to open such a pouch... It's impossible, see? We're tied up, face to face, and very tightly we might add. Tied up with the same leashes Jing'ra had used on us earlier. In fact, tied up so tightly, simply breathing is taking effort. Ah, how annoying... How did we get here anyway? Did we beat the level or something? Is this level two? 『『 «Identify» 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.1 ▬ Sing '' Streya

ᵈᵢBlack-Lamb Pure-Demon

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HP ▐ 4/10

MP ▐ 0

SP ▐ 11/11

P.ATK ▐ 1

P.DEF ▐ 0

M.ATK ▐ 0

M.DEF ▐ 0

Effects ▐ ◈ ᵈᵢⓈ∞

▐ ◈ Ancient Shadow King Miasma

▐ ◈ Pure Demonic Blood

▐ ◈ Ruptured Mana Pool

▐ Eldritch Fear[LV.1]

Titles ▐ 「 Prophet of Death 」「 Feral 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ «Identify» still works. ... 『『 Oww! 』』 We're covered in rope burns! Ah... these actually... kind of hurt. Questions... questions... Even in the after-life, there are lots of questions to ask huh? Let's see here... Crier's info is more or less the same... Hmm? Eldritch Fear is surprisingly low level despite our critical HP. We aren't feeling the accompanying pain of our spines being twisted, gripped, and chilled either... It's almost... euphoric, really. It's not like our rope burns don't hurt, they do. It's just that, compared to Eldritch Fear... They're like a seven on the pain scale, versus one-millionth of infinity. We don't feel like panicking at all. Is that fine? It's probably fine, right? Then it's settled, we won't panic unless we get the twisty chillys. It's proven itself accurate detecting danger so far, it shouldn't be too bad to rely on it a bit. Then next is... Our stamina points, they went up from ten... to eleven. Y...Yay? Well, if we're coming up with explanations, then... Stat gains probably work like they do in Myriad Worlds: You gain stats from levelling, but you also gain stats by training and developing positive physical/magical attributes. Learn a new martial art? Your P.ATK, P.DEF, and SP might rise. Grow some lizard scales? Your HP and P.DEF might go up. Absorb the soul of a warlock? Your M.ATK, M.DEF, and MP might go up. Levelling up also increases your stats based on your race. So... our SP probably rose from... cardio? Something like that? Actually, now that we think about it... Our starting SP in this world feels a bit similar to our "SP" as Streya, doesn't it? It's certainly not based on Myriad Worlds's values, this start is way too abysmal... Hm... If our starting SP here was based on our supposed stamina levels as Streya, it supports the theory that we retained our hairclips by wearing them as Streya when we died. Then, maybe our HP and MP as well...? Hmm. This is progress, we think. Yosh, morale up. ...A bit. It's a little disappointing not to get any experience points from killing Jing'ra. ... Mm? Why did we get no exp? ... No experience points... Unexplained rope burns... And that forest didn't give us a "Location Discovered" message... ...«Spirit...Break»...? Did Jing'ra use «Spirit Break» on us? Hm... what else would explain those phenomena? I mean, there's... no, it can't be... it has to be this, doesn't it? Spirit Break - The caster enters the mind of an unconscious target, becoming Suppressed for the duration. After the duration, if the target is a lower level than the caster, the target's mind is separated from their body and Death is applied regardless of health. If the target dies prematurely while under the effects of Spirit Break, the skill fails, and the target will wake up with the Revenge effect. This effect can also randomly fail scaling inversely with the gap between levels. See, normally, in Myriad Worlds, when you have "enter the mind" kind of effects... you don't literally enter people's minds! It's just flavour text! What do you mean the inside of my head is a death forest?! ...Actually, that sounds about right. The "separating" theme of this skill is in tune with Jing'ra pulling us away from the forest clearing and into the dark; us being the "mind," the clearing's light being the "body." ...And there's more.

The reason he was also trying so hard to keep us alive is... it would have otherwise probably counted as "premature death" and we would have woken up with the Revenge effect. Although... he himself "died," most likely expressing the chance of failure and also waking us up with the Revenge effect, which is basically a berserk state where ...you can't die. And so, berserk state + rope. Hence, rope burn. As well, not receiving a location discovery message can be explained by that forest either not being a real grounded place, or if it is, then we wouldn't be new to or discovering it by virtue of it being a manifestation of ourselves. A stretch? Perhaps any one of these things individually, but altogether it explains things too nicely to be without merit. Even just being speculation, it's pretty convincing, right? Right? Ah, don't worry, it's okay to be impressed, we're used to it. Hm? Why cast such a roundabout skill? The purpose of this skill is to kill a target without damaging it physically. It's important for delicate creatures that may have skins or features that would otherwise be impossible to harvest without damage. ... We shudder. Ah, let's... not think about that anymore. We're clearly alive now so there must be more to it. Um... right, where were we... The Feral title. Immunity to the Pathetic effect! Morale up again! Actually, the effect of this title goes far beyond that. It grants immunity to all mind dominating effects in the realm of mind control, including pet capture, mental isolation, undead-summoning, etcetera. While some boss level monsters innately have this title to prevent cheap tactics, pets that kill their owners (and thus escape) sometimes end up with this title too. Naturally, since players can't be pets, players can't acquire Feral. But... Well... You know... That happened. ...A-Anyway, although EXP can't be earned in «Spirit Break», its clear titles are exempt from that limitation. So... Survey complete! Great effort genius team! Now to actually get out of these leashes. Let's wait a bit for the rope burns to heal first... Hah... It's nice to finally take a breather... We mean... After experiencing haemorrhaging, cuts and bruises, asphyxiation, death, post-trauma, broken bones, kidnapping, asphyxiation again, Eldritch Fear, mental break, drowning, a knife fight in the dark, murderous intent, and now rope burns from being tied up... Isn't it nice? Breathing? Haha...ha... Okay... full HP, that's enough of that. Let's get out of these leashes. We're not narcissistic enough to enjoy staring at our own faces yet. ...Hmm? ... None of these cave rocks are sharp enough. ... None of them are long enough either. ... Ah... Do we really have to do that...? ... Sigh. Bleck... We pick up small rocks off the floor with our teeth and carefully chuck them at the leashes. Carefully, because if we miss, we'll end up taking a tenth of our HP in damage... Haaa... Inevitably, this takes a while, and we end up covered in dirt and dust from rolling around, but damage is slowly built up on the leashes because of our true damage effect. Materials too, have HP and P.DEF values, however, they're woven together in something more complex called The Damage Matrix. You can see it with the «World-Sense» skill, but of course, we don't have that. Well, we've played Myriad Worlds long enough to visualize it. At low-level play in Myriad Worlds, it's irrelevant, things just happen as they would in real life. At high-level play, however, when you run into endgame gear, it's what determines how much damage your items take to special effects. For us who completely ignore defensive stats only if it's incoming or outgoing damage, the way materials interact can get a bit complicated... Well, in short, the speed and angles are the most important factors. If we jump on a rock, the rock will probably break. If a rock is dropped on us, we will probably break. The attacking material always has the advantage. Snap. Rock is attacking leash, therefore, rock wins. Ah!~ Sweet freedom! Lungs full of air! Collarless necks! Let's stretch! 1... 2! 1... 2! Hoi! Ready! Time to open a pouch. We stroll along the cave walls with our hands brushing against them. As we grow closer to the cave entrance, we notice a distant howling wind. The sound was always there, it had just been muted by our musings. What could be outside, we wonder? ...Stop, cut. Hey, it's too bright, who designed this cave? We can't see outside at all and we're already halfway to the entrance you know? Ah... forget it, we'll give it a closer look after our eyes adjust. We turn our attention to the pouch. It's brown, leather, and about the size of one of our heads. The top is tied with a simple rope knot, sealing the contents. Mystery pouch! Reveal your secrets! We undo the knot easily, unveiling... 『『 ...«Identify» 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.4 ▬ Miguri Bo

Wild Berry

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Effects ▐ ◈ Restoration[LV.4]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 『『 Itadakimasu. 』』※¹ Many berries. Very hunger! They're bitter, but this is the upper echelon of food. We would have eaten them even if they were dead insects. Gross? Don't be silly; are you seriously thinking, "those two are of sound mind"? Of course we have these kinds of tolerances, consider the situation! We gobble up the berries without a care for its HP healing effect. We're in one-shot kill range from almost anything so it doesn't matter. We eat and eat and... ...stop, because we're full? Huh? We just started eating seconds ago, how are we full already?! There's hardly a dent in the pile! Ah... should we feel upset because of our low stomach capacity, or happy because of our practical immunity to weight gain? Upset; who cares about weight gain! We're light enough to get lifted by a «Fey Breath»! If this causes us to feel hungry every hour or so... Huff... we're annoyed just imagining it... We sigh, and wrap up the pouch again, but not before noticing an unusual shape. A small black triangle, sticking out from underneath the pile of berries. Sing reaches for the small spec and manages to grab onto it. It's hard, like steel, and... shockingly difficult to pull out? Crier starts excavating berries to help free the object, but even so, the object itself has some weight to it. Only after it's been about halfway excavated can Sing manage to lift it out. ...A black blade, a long dagger, questionably a sword; a dirk? We can tell by the shape, and the inscription on the handle, that this is one of Jing'ra's blades. ...Should we feel upset because there's only one, or happy because there's one at all? Upset; why is he so stingy?! He has at least twenty-four of these things! The discontent passes, and we look at it seriously. If Jing'ra wanted to kill us, he could have here, no questions asked. If Jing'ra wanted to abandon us here, he could have, no questions asked. Instead, he left us one of his black blades, a pile of berries, and a pouch... ...Is it really because of love? Has something about our Demonic Miasma changed? More questions to ponder about during idle time, we suppose... We look towards the cave entrance now that our eyes have had time to adjust. Snow, blizzard, howling wind, evergreen forest, white out. Of course, that means we're trapped here until it passes, but we have berries. This is probably why Eldritch Fear hasn't risen at all. How far does Eldritch Fear see? Does it only rise when we're on a death route? Will there be a time it comes when we're not actually in danger? Ah...! More questions! Let's just... slow down, and take another breather. We know now that we're not going anywhere so... Just... nice, calm breaths. Everything is fine, there's no need to rush... We have food, we have protection, we're alive. Ha... deep breaths... 『 ...We're alive. 』 『 ...This is real. 』 『 We're actually... 』 『 ...in another world. 』 ...Hah. ...We smile. What should we do now? The end goal is to live... but how? Who are we going to become? Is a quiet life the answer? Or do we conquer everything? Kill everyone? Does this world have a Demon King? Given our especially unusual starting situation, how likely are we to become the next Demon King? More importantly, how would we avoid that? Who is Jing'ra? What does he plan on doing? We sit next to each other and lean back against the rock walls. There are so many things to think about... and worry about... It's... a bit stressful... 『『 Haaa... 』』 Should we... approach people as twins? Become two different people entirely...? Thinking... thinking... Lots of thinking... ...Heh. We can use our hair... like cushions... You know... this cave is surprisingly warm... despite the storm outside... Still, we can't sleep since we'd just woken up... So... maybe... ...we should daydream to pass the time? My name is Streya. I'm 14 years old.

I'm a first-year high school girl.

I'm a savant and dead. Sometime in the next month, I'm scheduled to die,

but tomorrow I'm going to die. Don't forget. Tomorrow, death. Okay? ...Ah. You know, on second thought, let's not daydream. [END]