I stared silently with incredulity at my surroundings. Numerous trees were lining up around me from east to west, silence filling the void of my disbelief.

What is this place?

I stood in a small clearing surrounded by a never-ending forest. Up above was a blue sky with countless clouds as far as I could see, so close I could almost reach out and grasp them

A kaleidoscope of sounds inundated my ears: the buzzing of insects, the chirping of birds, and ominously from beyond the gurgle of the creek and within the dark of the forest, the howling of wild animals.

“Where the HECK am I?!” Wholly realizing what was going on, I held my head as the wind blew through my short hair. The smell of wilderness prickled my nose.

Feeling cold, I pulled up my hoodie which was held back by my heavy backpack that carried a laptop inside. It seemed that all of my things were still here with me. Uh, what did I do a few minutes back?

The last thing I remembered… I just finished having a successful paper presentation about producing an intricate IoT-based home security system with my college team… and then… What else? …Cold glass door… I figured that was the last thing I touched, so I looked back.

An abandoned wooden house had replaced whatever I’d passed through. There was no way that I came from inside there. No way. I got a cold shiver and foreboding feeling just from thinking of approaching the house. So yeah, no.

“Right. Ha-ha… Ahaha! This is all a dream — a lucid dream.” I pinched my cheek and even slapped it. Ouch!

The hot throbbing on my cheek… It hurt!

Unless I was hallucinating after being force-fed with drugs, then I had to face reality: “This isn’t a dream. It’s real.”

The chilly winds that washed over my whole body upon the realization made my hair stand on end. How did I end up here?

In haste, I reached for my smartphone and found that there was no signal. Wherever I was, it was highly probable that I wasn’t in my country or at least far from the nearest signal tower…

“Crap! Crap! Where the fuck…” My breathing became chaotic, I ran into the forest. The sense of dread fueled my adrenaline and vertigo into full swing.

I didn’t know how far I ran, but it certainly wasn’t far, as almost immediately, I tripped over a low bough. “Ugh.”

I needed to calm down…

Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm my racing heart. Now was not the time to panic… Luckily, being a programmer student that liked to play a lot of RPG games and read all sorts of novels, I managed to soothe my anxious heart by thinking that this might be my chance.

Before I could even think of anything else, someone shouted behind the trees in the distance, “A-Anyone, please help! Help!”

Curiosity got the better of me, and I got back on my feet and rushed in that direction. Maybe it was another person in my situation — suddenly transported to this forest and encountering some difficulty.

I mean, I couldn’t just stay still and do nothing, could I?

Tracing the origin of the voice, I walked for about two minutes before I came upon a group of people who appeared from behind a grove nearby. I was agape, stopped myself in my tracks, and almost fell over.

That group of people dressed like adventurers in movies and novels I knew. A long iron ax, a dagger, a bow, leather armor and helmet, and even a shield, they were all dressed like some medieval soldier. In total, there were five people.

Were they shooting a medieval action movie? But I quickly denied such a thing. No sign of any filming team in the vicinity… Thinking logically, there could only be two possible answers to this: Either they were playing a game — like LARPers or that sort of thing — or this was real…

I had never been a brave kid, so I hid behind the bushes, near a tree trunk, laying myself low in a prone position to acquire more da— I mean, information. Knowing more about what I was facing would be better than acting upfront, not knowing what danger lay ahead.

“No use yelling. No one will come,” a tall man scoffed. He looked like a ranger as he had a bow on his back and was dressed in green and brown leather,

“True, true.” A short, hooded man snickered in disdain. “We have let loose a group of hybrids into the wild, force-fed with the ‘experimental red pills’ we got from the boss. No loose ends here. Ya get what I’m sayin’?”

Who were they? I raised my eyebrows, perking my body up to see their appearances clearly. There was a tingle at the back of my neck upon seeing them. They were all weird. Especially the person standing in the center, the one most likely to have voiced the help, as he was being surrounded by the rest.

Everything about him felt out of place — with better equipment than the rest and all. Were they perhaps robbing him? That green shining claymore-like longsword on his hand looked expensive…

Out of the blue, as though to answer my curiosity, a blue screen popped out of thin air right in front of me. “Huh?! A holo— No, a status screen?”

Name: Leon arc Jimera

Species: Human

Sex: Male

Age: 23 years old

Height: 181 cm

Occupation: Adventurer, noble

Vocation: [Great Berserker]

Stats:

STR: C- (68) AGI: D- (45) VIT: D (54) MAG: E+ (37) SPR: D (47)

Accumulation Points: 63 [D+]

“Vocation?” I muttered under my breath, “What’s that?” I tapped the “[Great Berserker]” on the status screen, and another set of information appeared.

[Great Berserker]

An ability that allows the user to be in a state of great bloodlust and exert immense might in a short period of time. The more blood is spilt, the longer the rate of the [Great Berserker] Vocation can be maintained.

Vocation seemed to be a kind of special ability. Sweet. I wondered whether I had one myself. Since this was a status screen…

“Status, menu, options…”

I was hoping that something would come out but was instead met with silence. I facepalmed myself, feeling hot over my cheeks.

Be pragmatic, me… Just do what I did before. Eyes closed, I made myself curious about myself by invoking the same curiosity as before. And lo and behold, another blue screen emerged just like before when I opened my eyes. How bizarre! The information shown on my status screen wasn’t different from his. However—

Name: Vincent Anderson

Species: Human (otherworlder)

Sex: Male

Age: 20 years old

Height: 175 cm

Occupation: Programmer student

Vocation: [Programming] [Developer Interface]

Stats:

STR: F (6) AGI: F (7) VIT: F- (4) MAG: F- (0) SPR: F- (5)

Accumulation Points: 5 [F]

The heck?! I’d been hitting the gym for the past month, and… this was how my stats were? Ridiculous! I wanted to curse out loud but swallowed the intention down at the last moment. At least the stats were pretty self-explanatory.

Anyway, what was the most concerning part was my species, an otherworlder?

“Am I in another world? How’s that—”

“Why? Why Angelico?” The voice of the man in the center, Leon, broke my train of thought. “Why did you sell me out? I-I thought we were friends—”

“Shut it, Leon!” snarled the man wearing a full set of leather from top to bottom, likely to be Angelico. “If it was not because of my aim to make you let your guard down, I wouldn’t even start this whole charade.”

“But… why?”

“Do you really need an explanation? Your father, Count Jimera, no… the entire Jimera House is rotten to the core!”

“Angelico…! You’ve been fooled!”

“Cut the crap! My sister… my family, and all the villagers in my village needed to sell their children into slavery just to pay the heavy taxes!” Angelico shouted, his eyes bulging out almost like they were about to pop out from their sockets.

I pretty much understood the gist of this farce. All things considered, I was more interested in checking my special abilities — Vocations — rather than meddling in some matter unrelated to me that might kill me.

[Programming]

An ability that allows the user to program all things. No matter the thing — as long as it is counted as an “inanimate” object — can be programmed at the user’s will.

[Developer Interface]

An ability to have the mighty power of a software developer. An interface that transcends all kinds of interfaces and offers a good experience. What can be achieved with this Vocation? Let’s ask the developers!

Heh! No matter the world, I’ll always be a programmer. But that last pun… Shaking my head, I brought myself to back reality. First things first, what should I do? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help, but I was just some weak ant with an F- evaluation… and not a hero, much less a saint.

I continued to lay low, making sure that not a single noise was made while observing their every movement. They were still bantering with each other… Why wouldn’t the other four strike? I didn’t know.

Regardless, the status screen must have appeared because of [Developer Interface]. Thus, I willed it and chanted “[Developer Interface]” inside my heart to the rest of them. As a result, more of these status screens popped up. Knowledge was power, after all. It also appeared that not all people had a Vocation. Wait, this…

“Enough, stop dawdling!" The bearded guy with an ax and shield — likely the assassination leader — ordered, "Kill him! We don’t have all the time in the world, and the poison should’ve taken effect by now! Besides, he won’t be able to use magic this close.”

Magic? I wasn’t that surprised to hear that word considering the status screen appearance and there being “MAG” written as well.

“Cough! Ngh!” At the same time that Leon coughed, the rest of the group started the act.

The hooded man and Angelico instigated the attack; meanwhile, the ranger readied his bow. A dark mist diffused from the dagger of the hooded man, and he was the first one to reach Leon. Hm, that hooded man… has a [Dark Mist] Vocation?

But no matter the combined attacks, Leon handled them with ease. The dagger strike was deflected by his longsword, and he kicked Angelico to prevent his approach, all the while dodging the arrows shot by the ranger in succession — thus thwarting all their attacks. If I were in his place instead, the first attack would have killed me.

Whatever, I couldn’t just stay here and watch, but I was too close. I would be found if I moved. For that reason, I got to explore my other Vocation: [Programming]. I should be able to program all things… But what did it mean by that?

“Hah! Is this all you got? Then count me disappointed.” Leon smirked, not minding the blood that flowed out from his mouth.

“Playing tough, ain’t ya? Have you ever wondered where your fiancée is?” The leader grinned.

“You!” A hair-raising atmosphere burst out from Leon as he threatened while pointing at him, “Touch a single hair of hers, and you’re dead!”

“Hmph, do ya really wanna know? Only if you can force me, that is.”

Leon’s eyes turned crimson red, his body underwent a transformation and muscled up, and he shot at them like a mad bull. “Aaaah!”

“Stay away from him! He’s using his Vocation — [Great Berserker]!”

In spite of the warning, the hooded man was caught off guard, and his body was split in half by Leon’s longsword; he died instantly.

Seeing someone that just got himself bisected, it felt like cold water had rinsed my head. It was far from where I was at and blocked by the thick bushes, but it gave me enough of a push to urgently focus all of my attention on my other Vocation — [Programming]; I had to do something in case they found me!

Just like how I’d used [Developer Interface], I tried uttering it inside my mind. Nothing… Maybe the condition wasn’t right. For starters, I needed an object, so I began looking around.

There were small pebbles under the bushes, and I held one in my hand, and began calling on [Programming]. Unlike the previous time, the pebble, for some reason, was now alterable. Strange… I felt that now I was able to set a code, a command just like how I coded a program.

Neat. There was more to this ability than met the eye. Now, now, just what can I do with this...?

The thing was, I needed something to protect me, maybe a weapon. With the pebbles, I could try to set a “conditional if” by increasing its acceleration by ten times upon leaving my hand at high velocity. Force equals mass times acceleration, after all.

I obviously tried to increase its acceleration to more than ten times, like twenty times and beyond but the pebbles crumbled to pieces. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tweak the thing to find the sweet spot. As it was better not to put all my eggs in one basket, I tested several more approaches on the pebbles.

“N-No…! Leon, don’t kill me!” That shout perked up my interest a bit.

Unperturbed, I saw Leon chopping through a neck with the big longsword in his hand like cutting paper. Blood spurted out like a fountain as Angelico’s head rolled into the air with a face of disbelief. Yet Leon’s countenance didn’t change, rather it felt more bloodthirsty than ever.

Scary… he had killed another earlier, but this time the scene was more prevalent to me as the head was thrown in my direction. Upon seeing the cut head of a person, my stomach acted up, and something sour reached my tongue, but I held my mouth closed with both of my hands.

Just what the heck is with this world?!