Chapter 2

“Haha, yes, that is really nice!” Paul was smiling brightly. If he did not need to worry about dying, then this new life will be amazing.

“To be honest. It was a hot topic for debate. As I was the one who instigated the whole idea of this plane, I could convince the others in the end. There are some penalties though. First, it will take 12 hours for you to be able to respawn. Secondly, your original body including everything you were wearing will stay behind. And last but not least, it will arouse a lot of suspicion. The inhabitants of this plane are superstitious, and they have good reason to be so, with all the gods, demons and evil necromancers.

While the revival of a freshly deceased is possible with powerful holy magic or the miracle of a god, it is highly unusual and normally comes with penalties. That said, we won’t interfere if you cause a ruckus, but expect your popularity to drop if you spawn naked in a village with your dead clone a couple hundred metres down the road.”

“I will manage somehow. Can’t I just claim to have a special blessing by one of the gods?”

“The gods are not necessarily friendly towards you. The only god who would do this kind of revival would be Seirim, and he is usually associated with demons and the undead. But magic would probably be a good excuse, I expect you to manage somehow.” Helena said with a sheepish grin.

“Well then, any more advise? And how will I be reborn? As a baby? Or as I am now?”

“Neither. As a special present, I will give you the opportunity to alter you appearance. You can do so before you arrive at your new “home”. You will start as a human male in his early twenties, otherwise you are free to alter your appearance.

And I will get in touch with you again along your journey, so you will get the opportunity to talk to me again. I feel like I have already given you enough information for you to go around, so don’t worry about the small details. It will be fun to watch you figuring things out for yourself.”

“Ugh, if you say so, I will believe you. To be honest, I am excited to visit the world that you created with so much effort” Paul was convinced that a little flattery towards the god who had obviously near absolute power could only help him in the future.

“I am looking forward to your adventure. Please have fun and experience a lot.”

“I will try to make worth watching me. And one last thing” Paul hesitated for a moment “Thank you, Helena.”

Helena blushed a little and smiled brightly “You are welcome, Paul”.

Shortly afterwards the light in the space Paul was in became brighter and when he closed his eyes and opened them again quickly afterwards, Helena had disappeared.

“Ok, then what now, I’m still in this strange room…” Paul was muttering to himself, when suddenly he lost all sensation in his body. Then his vision floated backwards, like switching between first person and third person view in a game and he was staring at his own back from roughly two metres distance.

“Oh, nice. You can never that part of yourself in the mirror.” When he started wondering how he could move in this “spiritform” his position shifted slightly to the side, in the direction he tried to move.

“So, it just works by thought.” It was slightly awkward to concentrate moving around, but Paul quickly got the hang of it. After a minute of floating around in various directions, it became natural for him. There were no muscles involved and therefore the movements were not tiresome or anything.

He positioned himself in front of his body.

“I am slightly satisfied with my looks though, I guess there is nothing I want to change too badly.” When he concentrated on a birthmark in his face and imagined it disappearing, it actually vanished.

“Nice. So, I will just do a few minor adjustments.” He imagined his skin smoother, his hair growing a bit more orderly and his haircolor a bit brighter. He was originally very dark blonde, so he just adjusted is to bit slightly fairer.

“Hmm, if I go around fighting, I might want some broader shoulders as well to make me more intimidating…” In the end he adjusted everything apart from his general facial appearance. When he imagined his clothes gone, they disappeared and he continued removing birthmarks, broadening his chest and enlarging his male parts to an impressive size.

“Hehe, perhaps I can use my thing in a fight, so no need to be considerate.” Paul was satisfied after about an hour of adjustments to his body.

“OK, so how do I leave now…” While thinking, his vision suddenly floated back into his body and he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he was in a forest near a clearing. The trees looked healthy and the grass and weeds on the clearing were thick and green. He could hear birds chirping and it was an overall idyllic place. There was just one problem.

“Why the hell am I naked?” Paul stood up and brushed the dirt from his buttcheeks.

“I should have thought about putting my clothes back on my body after doing the adjustments…” Paul hung his head down. Then he took a closer look around. He could not see very far into the forest and there was no sign of civilization around.

“I might as well check out the menu first. Open menu!” Paul exclaimed and waited. Nothing happened. He remembered when he floated around earlier and modified his body. He imagined a generic menu floating in front of him. Nothing happened.

“It has to work like this somehow. Open HUD! Inventory! Character Screen!” After trying several “commands”, with no apparent effect, he went back to using thoughts. This time he imagined text showing up directly on his vision. He intensified his thoughts and exclaimed “Menu” in his thoughts, without showing anything.

Suddenly white letters and numbers showed up in his vision, on a transparent, dark blue background.

There were several different menu points, and he was currently on the “Character” tab. The others were “Skills”, “Spells”, “Log”, “Notes” and “Interface”.

The character screen showed a lot of information.

Name: Paul

Adult Human Male

Level: 1

Experience: 0 / 0%

Strength: 10

Endurance: 10

Agility: 10

Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 10

Luck: 0

Health: 50

Mana: 50

Stamina: 50

The other screens on tabs were mostly empty, although he could add notes by thought control. He added and deleted a “Test” note, then opened the interface tab.

He could add and adjust several panels onto his vision. He added a minimap and turned on the markers for enemies of all levels. Nothing showed up. Then he included creatures of all levels. A few yellow dots showed up on the right side of the radar.

He closed the menu again with his thoughts after also toggling the health, mana and stamina bars on the HUD and moving them to the far left of his vision.

He turned his head to the right and the yellow dots moved to the upper part of the minimap.

“So it depends the direction I’m looking at…” Paul was a bit disappointed. If it was fixed he could have used the map for navigation.

“Have to check out the menu again later” Perhaps he just missed the option, navigating the menu with his thoughts was still a bit awkward for him. “For now, lets check out those critters.”

He approached the dots on minimap. Estimating from the speed he was moving, it looked like the map showed about 100 meters of his surroundings. The creatures seemed to be on the far end of the clearing. When he was 20 meters in front of them, Paul stopped and took a closer look at the spot where he expected them to be. After a minute on of the dots moved and Paul spotted a cute brown bunny in the tall grass.

“Seems like those bunnies will be my first prey then” He slowly approached the bunny and when he was about 10 meters in front of them, he stepped on a sharp stone.

“Ow, damn!” Paul couldn’t help but cry out. The bunnies ran away from him and only stopped after gaining a considerable distance.

“This will be harder than I thought…” Paul wondered checked the log and the stone actually dealt 1 point of damage to him.

“Great” he sighed and looked around if he could use something to cover his soles with. He did not. Not like someone conveniently left some shoes behind for him to use. Even if he found something like bark, he had neither tools nor the skill to manufacture anything usable.

The only thing he did find was a sturdy stick about 1 meter in length. At least he didn’t have to strangle the bunnies with his bare hands now.

He picked up the stick, swung it around and examined it. It was not very heavy, but looked sturdy enough. Paul wondered if he could deal some damage with it. Suddenly a text showed up.

[Long Stick

Damage: 1

Durability: 4/6

Blunt weapon

A dry, long stick. Looks like it breaks when used a few times.

Cannot be repaired.]

“This has to be the worst starter gear ever, I wonder if I can even kill anything with this” Paul felt down, because his starting conditions were as bad as this.

“I was secretly hoping that I could accidentally kill a bunch of dragons with a secret spell during the first 5 minutes and level up 300 times while gaining treasures, but the respawn skill should have been a hint that I would most likely be killed again and again by some wild rabbits before I level up once.” Paul was sulking, but he picked himself up again quickly.

“No point in crying about a minor thing like this, time to earn experience points and loot” he took a few steps towards where the bunnies fled, stepped into a small hole hidden in the grass and fell flat. He hurt his foot and landed on another sharp rock with his chest.

After wincing and cursing for a while he stood up again and brushed the dirt off his body. He got some scratches from sharp grass on his thighs and overly large genitalia, and the rock he landed on even drew some blood on his chest.

He checked the log and discovered that he lost 5 health from this stunt. He had lost 12% of his health by now, while walking less than 100 meters. Being killed by rabbits actually looked like an honourable death compared to being killed by just walking.

Paul decided to not chase after the bunnies and just tried to get out of the forest. He grabbed the stick and used it as a cane to somewhat support the foot he had injured was hurting with every step he took. He was careful not to step on anything else. Luckily, once he was out of the grass, it was actually easy to avoid any further injuries and started walking while trying to maintain a steady direction.

He wanted to check out the menu again, but he was sure that he would step in or on something as soon as he didn’t take care where he was walking, so he would do so while taking a break later.

After about an hour of careful walking, Paul arrived at a small creek. He put his hands into the water and splashed some of it onto the small wound on his chest that the sharp rock left during his mishap in the clearing earlier.

“Ahh… cold… and stings…” Paul was not very pleased with the current development. Judging from his experiences in games, he had expected to hunt rats and mice in a basement while wearing rags and wielding a rusty dagger. But stumbling through a forest, buck naked, wielding a splintering stick and possibly meeting “death by walking clumsily” before even meeting his first enemy… he was seriously considering shouting to the heavens for Helena’s aid. Not that she would likely help.

After cleaning himself and drinking, Paul sat down on the soft forest floor and opened the menu again.

He opened the “interface” tab and took a closer look.

“Seems like there actually are some options I overlooked earlier…” The interface screen was filled with checkboxes and information, so there were numerous options he saw only after scrolling down on the screen.

He disabled the option to rotate the minimap, so that the top was pointing north all the time. In the center of the map a small arrow indicated the direction he was facing currently. Seemed like he was walking towards the east. He also zoomed out the map as far as possible, which seemed to only extend to 200 meters and toggled the option to show the terrain as well. After adjusting the transparency and size, he was finally satisfied with the result.

“It would have been great to have an actual map, but this way I will at least not walk in circles.”

After getting ready to continue his journey, Paul noticed a small red dot further downstream. It only showed up after zooming out and seemed to be around 150 meters ahead. He carefully approached the enemy, while checking the minimap.

After about 100 meters he spotted a small fox near the creek. It was feasting on the carcass of another small animal and seemingly had not noticed Paul yet.

As he had a little experience with controlling the menu and opening the item information, Paul concentrated on watching the fox while thinking “Enemy Info”. A small window popped up in the top of his vision.

[Fox

Level 1]

There was also a full, red health bar underneath the indicator.

“Seems like a better enemy that the bunnies, and if it is hostile, it should not run away either” Paul thought. He could not really give chase barefoot anyway, and he was not really afraid of dying either. He hoped to avoid injury and pain, but after half limping through the forest for quite some time now, the prospect of respawning with two healthy feet did not seem dreadful at all.

He had actually recovered two of the lost six healthpoints after his rest earlier, but his foot was still not healed.

Carefully approaching the fox he stayed behind trees to avoid its line of sight. The fox was currently facing away from him and he could see its position at the minimap, but Paul wanted to get as much as an advantage as possible.

He readied his “weapon” and was closing in on the small animal, trying to avoid making noise. When he was only 10 meters away from it, he took cover behind the last tree that was large enough to conceal his body. Paul took a glimpse at the fox, it was still eating the corpse of what seemed to be a bunny.

When he took a step outside his cover, the fox suddently turned his head towards him. Both Paul and the fox froze.

The animal had blood on its face and seemed to decide whether or not to fight or flee.

Paul then took a step towards it and the fox seemed to have decided to fight for now. It ran towards Paul, closing the distance in no time. Paul, anticipating the attack, swung the stick towards the fox before it could lunge at him. The move was nowhere near perfect and only grazed it, but he could see a small portion of its life vanishing.

The fox jumped first to the left and then at Paul, biting him in the calf.

“Oww… damn bastard, die!” Paul was in agony and he saw his health plummeting by another 10%.

He grabbed the stick with both hands and tried stabbing the fox, that was on the ground and still biting into his leg, seemingly trying to rip a good chunk out of it.

He didn’t land a good hit, but it was enough to bring to fox’s health down to about two thirds.

The fox seemed to just get angrier and tightened his grip on Paul’s leg. Paul swung the stick against the fox like a golf club, hitting it full force in the ribs. The fox lost its grip on Paul, who was pretty pissed off by now.

“Stupid fox, go die already!” He swung the stick again and landed another good hit that flung the fox against a nearby tree.

A [confused] message popped up underneath the fox’s infobar on Paul’s screen and it had lost about 80% of its health.

Paul didn’t hesitate and swung the stick over his head, landing another blow to the fox. It was enough do completely drain it health, and it collapsed on the spot. The small red dot on the minimap vanished.

Looking at his leg, Paul found the wound the fox left to be bleeding, with small chunks of his skin protruding from his leg. If the fox had had more time, he surely would have taken a good bite out of him.

“I will sooo get rabies from this” Paul said, limping towards the creek. He cleaned his hands and the wound, then pressed both his hands against the wound to put pressure on it. He was not really skilled in first aid, but he was sure that the pressure should be enough to stop the bleeding after some time. If he really died, he would surely be able to recover from any wounds and illnesses, so right now he was more curious about the mechanics in this world. Although the pain was somewhat clouding his thoughts.

He opened the menu and checked his character stats

Experience: 5, 5%

He took a look at the combat log.

You dealt 2 damage to fox.

Fox bit you for 5 damage.

You dealt 2 damage to fox.

Fox dealt 3 damage to you.

You are now [bleeding].

You dealt 4 damage to fox.

Fox dealt 3 damage to you.

You are bleeding for 1 damage.

You dealt 4 damage to fox.

Fox took 1 damage from environment.

Fox is [confused].

You are bleeding for 1 damage.

You dealt 6 damage to fox. *crit*

Fox died.

You gain 5 experience.

You are bleeding for 1 damage.

You are no longer [bleeding].

Skimming through the log, it looked like bleeding had stopped. He lessened his grip on his leg and observed the rather gruesome looking wound. A bit of blood was still trickling down, but it looked to be ok for now.

Paul was rather pleased with his combat capabilities, but after the fight he was left with only about 60% of his health. Looking at the dead fox, it was only about the size of a large cat. Considering the damage he took earlier, the fox had taken more than 30% of his health. Paul was sure that he would succumb rather sooner than later to some critter.

He then stood up and picked up the dead fox by its tail. Some blood was trickling out of its mouth, but otherwise the carcass looked fine.

“Store” Paul imagined the dead fox vanishing into some sort of imaginary inventory. Nothing happened. After about a minute trying to somehow put the dead fox away into his inventory, Paul gave up. The menu didn’t show an inventory tab, so he had already expected as much.

It was still inconvenient. Not wanting to give up his spoils, he carried the fox in his left hand while holding the stick, which had lost 2 of its remaining 4 durability, in his right hand. Paul wandered downstream, ignoring the pain his feet and legs caused him.

After about half an hour of walking, the forest cleared up and he was overlooking a hilly grassland with the stream winding through it.

“Great, I hope I wont step on too many things that are hiding in the grass.” Paul took another quick break, cleaning his wounds and drinking from the clear stream.

Observing the minimap, he saw a few yellow dots and a single red dot not too far from him.

He had recovered some of his health, but it was still at 40/50.

The enemy this time was a small snake at level 1, sunbathing near the stream. Paul approached it carefully and landed a blow on its neck, immediately sending the snake into a [confused] state. Another carefully aimed blow later, the snake had already lost most of its health. The next blow broke his stick, and Paul killed the [unconscious] snake by kicking its head.

Paul earned another 5 XP, and only lost 1 health point this time due to the kick with his injured foot.

He picked up a fist sized rock from the stream and the snake carcass. He then went on the find more animals. He took care where he stepped and hunted some bunnies. The bunnies did not fight back, but ran away as soon as they noticed him. An hour of hunting and three dead bunnies later, Paul decided to go further downstream.

Carrying around a bunch of dead animals was definitely not a nice experience. And the wounds on his body hurt. The bunnies only yielded 3 XP each, so he was still at 22%.

He killed two more snakes along the way and finally arrived at a small river in which the creek ended. What excited him, was the fact that there was a small path next to the river, and some small boulders had been dumped into the creek as a makeshift bridge, so it was definitely used as by humans, or at least somewhat civilized demi-humans.

He did not know how large the world was, but assuming it was “earth-like” and not densely populated, he wondered if there was anyone near him. The sight of the path, which indicated a nearby settlement, excited him.

“Finally a chance to get shoes” Paul hoped that he would meet someone, preferably an adult and a male, who could provide him with some sort of pants before he was confronted by a large group of people.

Paul decided to follow the path downstream, carrying the bundle of dead animals in front of him. After walking for about an hour he rested near the river.

Skimming through the combat log, he wondered how he should proceed. He had no currency, no clothes and no information regarding the people living here. He did not even know if they spoke the same language as him. If this had been a “normal” situation, Paul would have despaired. But after meeting the goddess Helena, and waking up in this world with the weird menu and combat log, he was sure that the respawn system was really in place for him. There was no reason to not believe Helena. In fact, he was even a bit curious about dying, and considered doing so on purpose several times. But he had no good means for committing suicide apart from drowning himself in the river or being bitten by a snake, and both options were not really tempting.

“Oyy, who are you, boy?”

Paul turned around. There was a man around 30 standing in front of him. He was wearing brown clothes made of leather and cloth, and carrying bow and quiver with a handful of arrows over his shoulders.

On his belt were a large knife and a medium-sized sack that did not look particularly heavy. Paul assumed he was some kind of hunter.

“Hello good man. My name is Paul. I was robbed by a group of highwaymen who kidnapped me afterwards. I was able to flee, but have been wandering through the forest for several days now. Please, I am in dire need of help.” Paul tried to sound desperate and helpless, which was not too hard because those feelings were true for the most part.

“Hmm, bloody bandits. Has been a while that there were any of those fellas near the village. You look better than I would expect from someone lost in the forest for a few days though. You must be somewhat capable. Where are you from?”

“To be honest, I am not sure. Before the bandits showed up, I awoke in near the road. I was carrying a small purse and some simple clothes, but I honestly cannot remember how I got there. I barely remembered my name, but all other memories are very hazy at best. Would you be able to help me out? I am willing to compensate you by working for you or the village you come from.” Paul already came up with this story while wandering around earlier. He had no idea of the surrounding settlements, let alone territories. Everything he could have said would arouse as much suspicion as just claiming to not remember anything. And in a world with magic and gods, it seems like as good as an excuse as anything else, and limiting the amount of lies he had to tell to a bare minimum seemed less bothersome.

The hunter looked a bit troubled, but not angry or aggressive. “Seems like you had it rough. I come from a small village nearby, we are barely scraping by with the hunting, foraging and small amount of farming we can do. We could need any help we can get to be honest. You look capable enough.” He had obviously noticed the pile of dead animals next to Paul. “In exchange for handing over the small game you hunted, I will bring you towards the village. We should be able to help you somewhat.”

“Thank you, your words have given me some hope again. May I ask your name?”

“My name is Marcus. Let me just tell you that there is not much to be gained in the village. It is mostly a gathering of simple shacks. We are proud of what he have built up for ourselves, but robbers won’t be able to find anything of value.”

“I swear I am not a robber of any kind. I am just glad to be around some decent people. I managed to hunt some small animals by chance, but I honestly had no idea what to do with them. I do not even have a tool of any sort with me. I gladly will part with them in exchange for your support.”

“Hmm, ok. Just follow me then. I was on my way to the forest to hunt a bit, but it seems there is no immediate need now.”

Paul stood up to gather the carcasses and Marcus must have noticed the huge member swinging freely between Paul’s legs. He looked slightly shocked and a bit embarrassed, then looked away and fumbled around his belt and took out a large piece of cloth and a string from the bag.

“Here, take this cloth and string to cover yourself up a bit. I’m sure that you don’t want to scare the children and maidens in the village.” That he specifically mentioned the “maidens” made Paul wonder if Marcus’ concern was solely out of common decency, but he was glad anyway. The cloth was large enough to cover his chest down to his knees, so he didn’t look like a complete savage.

“…although it looks like I’m wearing a dress…” Paul muttered to himself. He planned to get some decent clothes as soon as possible.

Paul and Marcus gathered the dead animals and then headed off towards the village.