Author’s note:

Hello, just want to drop a few lines before diving straight into this novel.

First and foremost: This novel is heavily inspired by the “Death March” web novel. It is one of my favourite “Overpowered MC in RPG-World builds Harem” novels, even though there are some things wrong with it (in my opinion). So I decided to just forfeit pretending to have come up with something myself and just declare this a homage or whatever you want to call it.

The initial setup is similar, but I use my own characters and storyline. I will explain the game functions (which are comparable to the “original”, but differ slightly). So no need for you to read “Death March” to understand this work, although I recommend reading it because it is fun.

The main difference will be main character. No offence, but I seriously can’t relate to the (seemingly) typical Japanese male, who gets flustered about every sexual advance from a female and tries “not to stand out” or “cause trouble” above everything else.

PS: Me starting this novel does not mean that I abandoned my other novel. I just have a serious writer’s block right now regarding some developments.

Chapter 1:

Markus opened his eyes and looked around. The first thing that came into view was a huge, floating blue-ish ball on a black background. Tiny clouds could be seen slowly passing over the surface and a thin layer of gas spread out over the edges. An atmosphere? Was this Earth as seen from space?

After a few seconds his eyes had adjusted to the lighting conditions and Markus could make out stars on the black background. A staggering amount of them. More than he had ever seen, even during the camping trip in the mountains the night sky did not look as impressive as just now.

“What a strange dream…” Markus never had a lucid dream before, but he was strangely aware of the situation right now. He could think clearly, had access to his memories, unlike during any other dream he could remember.

When he tried moving all that happened was his arms and legs making motions, but his torso did not really change its position. When he stopped moving, he had achieved sending his body into a slow rotation though.

After several tens of seconds his body had rotated enough for Markus to take a look behind him. The sun came into view. While it was definitely blindingly bright and unpleasant to look at, it did not hurt his eyes. Thinking about it, he could breathe just fine, he was not freezing and his blood vessels weren’t exploding, even though he was obviously in space. So it had to be a dream. Pinching his arm did not hurt either.

“Ya-Halloooo~…” Suddenly a high-pitched voice could be heard that made Markus involuntarily flinch.

“I see that you are awake, Markus. I am Helena-chan desu. Yoroshikun!” Looking around, Markus spotted a girl above him, at least from his current position. She was wearing a white summer dress and smiling brightly at him. Her hair was falling over her shoulders, as if it was affected by some sort of gravity.

“Welcome to my world. I am sure you will do just fine here. I even put some starter gear into your inventory!” The girl floated to the front of Markus and her face was now in front of his, just upside down. She was still smiling brightly.

“I don’t really understand what is going on. This is a dream, right?” Markus tried to make some sense of this unreasonable situation.

“Ah, I see you are going with the standard question. Well, I’d say find that out for yourself. Don’t be too reckless though.” While talking, she extended her hand towards Markus’ shoulder.

“And don’t worry, you are protected from any harm until you reach the ground. And I suggest you find a village or settlement as soon as possible, otherwise it will be hard for you in the long run. Yosh!” she said so while turning his body around until he faced the planet in front of him again.

“Hmm?” Markus was still confused. This dream was getting weirder by the second. As expected of a dream though.

“Just use the map function… The area of your impact should not be too far away from other people. Although it is a bit of a gamble. You could call that a ‘random spawn location’ I suppose. Fufufu”

With a weird laugh, the girl gave Markus a strong push and he flew towards Earth at an incredibly high speed.

There was no air pressure, so he did not exactly feel the movement, but he could see the planet become visibly larger in front of him. The sight was spectacular and with the surface soon the only sight in front of him, he noticed one detail – this was not the Earth he knew. The landmass did not match any part of the world he knew.

Markus did not have much time to ponder on this for long, after a few short minutes he approached the outer layer of the atmosphere. The ever thickening air started create friction on his body and soon an orange glow spread from his hands. He should be burning up like an asteroid, but he did not feel any heat or pain.

He tried to spread out his arms and legs to control the airflow, but this just brought an unbalance. This proved to be a mistake. His body became unstable in the air and he started to violently spin around. Earth, sky, sun, earth, sky, sun – the scene in front of his eyes changed several times per second. When he finally gained back control over the situation, he was feeling dizzy and about to break through the clouds.

After a brief moment of foggy whiteness, he saw the details of the surface he was rapidly approaching. A mountain range, surrounded by lush forests. Markus could make out a river winding through the forest, then focused on the area where he was about to land – or make his impact, as the Helena girl had put it.

He was rapidly falling towards the central mountain. Through the glowing air that spread out from his body he could make out a plateau near the peak of the mountain with a huge brown rock in the centre of it. While Markus got closer, the rock suddenly raised its head and spread its wings.

“Huaahh!” As soon as he noticed what he was approaching, Markus made a splendid impact right into the upper belly of the dragon. With an ear-drum-shattering mix of “Crack!” and “Sploosh” his whole body became engulfed in hot dragon tissue. Just a split second afterwards a thundering sound that was even louder was heard. Markus had been travelling at several times the speed of sound, so he himself did not hear the terrible noise he was making while falling through the sky until now.

He did feel the impact, but not in any unpleasant way. No pain, no feeling of suffocation and his internal organs seemed to have coped with being decelerated from mach 10 to zero within the glimpse of a moment just fine.

Markus could see nothing at all, but the sounds around him were somewhat startling. He tried turning around. It was hard to get a foothold on something solid. Most of the tissue around him was mushy and did not seem to be attached to anything anymore.

While swimming around in the hot mud, suddenly the gravity around him changed direction, then a loud “thump” could be heard. The dragon seemed to have collapsed. Some time after that, Markus finally dug his way out of the dragon’s body.

“This is definitely the most absurd and awesome dream ever” Markus was mumbling to himself while pulling himself out of the hole in the dragons chest. The beast was massive, at least the size of a small commercial airliner. Markus could tell just from the distance to the ground. It was a good four meters, not a distance he was comfortable to casually jump down.

Well, he did just fall from space though, so this much shouldn’t be a problem. Feeling brave, Markus pulled his legs out of the dragon and pushed himself off the dragon with his feet.

Unfortunately, everything was covered in slippery gore, so he lost his traction and fell down to the ground like an idiot. Making one and a half rotations in the air, he fell flat on his face.

The moment he touched the ground, he felt a weird sensation. The dragon’s blood on his skin suddenly felt much “more real”, for lack of a better word. When before it was just giving off a lingering heat, now it felt sticky and tickling while running down his body. Gross!

Markus heard a rumbling sound coming from the dragon and when he looked back, the chest of the dragon visibly deflated a bit. Then a torrent of blood and gore came out of the hole on its chest.

Sitting directly beneath it, Markus was completely showered in it.

“Uahhh!” he held his hand to his eyes. He got a lot of it into his eyes and they were burning like hell.

“STOPPPPP!!! I cannot take it anymore! Muahahahahah!”

Suddenly a familiar voice came shouting from right next to him. It took him a few seconds to clear his eyes from most of the grime, but when he looked to the direction of the laughter, he found the little girl from before – Helena…-chan – laughing her ass off just a few metres next to him.

“That was the best slapstick I have ever seen, really… Muhahahaha” the girl was literally rolling on the floor laughing, while holding her belly. Markus vision was still blurry, but he could see tears coming from her eyes from the laughter.

“Hey, that was seriously not funny. I really thought I would go blind there…” While starting to realize the grave implications that he could actually feel the pain during his supposed dream, he heard a different sound – coming from right inside his head.

“Pling”

Then a message window plopped up in his vision.

[Legendary enemy “Barroth the Supreme Dragon Lord” has been slain!

For defeating an enemy considerably stronger than you, gained XP has been increased.

3,345,500 XP gained.]

The box came with an [OK] button at the bottom. Markus focused on it while wanting to push the button, a ‘click’ sound was heard and the message window disappeared.

“Pling”

[New title: Dragonslayer]

“Pling”

[New title: Vanquisher of the Dragon Lord

For defeating a legendary beast that held strong power over the fire element, you have acquired a portion of its power. Your control over the fire element has greatly increased. Your control over the other elements has increased.]

“Pling”

[New title: Crimson Pervert

The despicable act of showering naked in the fresh blood of a legendary foe has strengthened your body. Effects of the blood of the Dragon Lord:

Resistance to harmful magic +100

Resistance to physical damage +100]

“Pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pling!”

The sound of an enourmous amount of messages plopping up at once reverberated in Markus’ head.

[You have gained a level!

Status Points +10

Skill Points + 10]

Luckily he only had to close the most recent window.

Markus looked towards the girl, who was still on the ground while chuckling.

“Hey, what the hell just happened? Did you hold some grudge against that dragon?” He understood that he was shot into that guy like some human-orbital-kinetic weapon system.

“Fufufu…. No, don’t misunderstand. You landing here was pure chance. But it was really amazing. Hontoni sugoi!” Helena sat up und wiped the tears out of her eyes.

“So you are trying to tell me that you had no intention to shoot me into that fellow?”

“Yes, exactly. I just pushed you towards this kingdom here. Well, it was possible that you might end up somewhere near these mountains, but there was like a 100 kilometre margin, so I did not expect you to actually get anywhere close. You started tumbling already in the upper stratosphere, remember? There was no way I could calculate that far. Fufufu” She was still smiling brightly and chuckling.

“It was the most amazing landing I have ever witnessed, really. You rotating in the sky was already a bit funny, but actually crashing into the strongest living being was just beyond anything I have ever seen. Not only that, but you actually penetrated his defence and destroyed its heart. But even then…. Fufufufu… you slipped out of him like an idiot and then got showered in blood while looking straight into it like an even greater idiot. This will be the all-time-favourite landing ever possible…. And now you sit there like an oversized used tampon… hahahahaha!!!” The girl was back on the floor and rolling around laughing.

Markus felt the urge to strangle her, just for a little bit. He was also concerned that this dream was feeling so real, despite the fact that everything happening was so absurd. His eyes were still burning and when he pinched his arm again, it hurt, at least a little bit.

Well, those messages were mostly positive at least. Apart from the strange ‘title’ he had gained, [Crimson Pervert], it felt like he had instantly gained some considerable power. Dream or not, this seemed to be a positive development.

“But… you seem to have received a considerable strength by killing that dragon. Let me repeat it, this guy has been the strongest entity living on this planet. It did not do anything apart from terrorizing whatever region it decided to settle in, so it won’t have any major implications, but…. You seem to have absorbed some of its power and levelled up considerably.” For the first time since Markus met her, the girl was making a somewhat troubled face.

“Well, not that I can do anything about it, or even want to.” With that, she smiled at Markus again.

“I might have misunderstood, but aren’t you some kind of god? You said that this is “your world”, right?”

“More like Chairman of the Board of Gods, but that’s basically true. I have sealed my powers on this planet though. I don’t want to interfere. Look” The Helena-girl walked to the corpse of the dragon and slapped her hand against the body. At least that was what it looked like at first, in fact her hand just went through the corpse like she was some kind of ghost.

“My body is not materialized here. Other beings cannot even perceive me, unless I want them to. I was planning to give you some guidance, in case you ended up in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t think that will be necessary. You won’t really be in danger of dying even if I leave you alone now. See ya!”

After saying that, her body became transparent and finally vanished completely, leaving Markus behind.

Alone, Markus thought about the unreal development that just happened. A little girl, claiming to be a god, threw him from space, he accidentally used a legendary dragon as a living air-bag and killed it. Now he was sitting on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere, showered in dragon-blood and naked. On top of that, this world was built like an RPG and the system had already labelled him as a ‘Crimson Pervert’, among other things. No matter how he felt, this had to be a weird dream.

“Ahhh, Onii-chan” suddenly the girl’s voice made him flinch again. And what was up with her pseudo-japanese way of talking? Neither of them were Asian. It made even Markus feel offended and he was European.

“Don’t forget to spend the stat points from your level ups. Otherwise you are about as weak as anyone else.”

Before he could say anything, the girl was gone again.