“ƒ FireBolt « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 25β « Name FireBoltBat « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace FireBoltCore « SetManaOutputAmount 2β « SetLifespan 1«… SetElement ElementFire « Name FireBoltCore « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 45µ « SetLifespan 5 «”

“ƒ ThunderBolt « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 25β « Name ThunderBoltBat « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace ThunderBoltCore « SetManaOutputAmount 2β « SetLifespan 1«… SetElement ElementFire « Name ThunderBoltCore « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 50µ « SetLifespan 1 «”

“ƒ AirBullet « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 25β « Name AirSpellBat « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace AirSpellCore « SetManaOutputAmount 2β « SetLifespan 1«… SetElement ElementAir « Name AirSpellCore « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 50µ « SetLifespan 3 «”

Otto felt almost guilty writing these spells, they weren’t tools to defend yourself, they weren’t fun items, they were very effective murder weapons.

How much longer until he could kill a human and loot them moments later like Nameless child.

Otto sat in the woods far away from the town, basically at the mid-point of where the town and the distant caves met.

“They’re just monsters…” Otto thought.

“Exactly!” the book agreed.

“Though I bet if you read further into the book you could learn more useful tricks!”

Otto ignored the voice behind him.

He held his hand out.

“A-”

“Air…”

He struggled to say the spell.

“What if they find out where I am again?”

He gritted his teeth.

“AirBullet!”

From his palm appeared a ball of air, it zipped over to a nearby tree, splintering it before disappearing a few seconds later.

Otto shivered as the idea of getting hit with one of those came over his mind.

“You’ve hit a new low, me…” murky Otto remarked from the puddles of sap left over from the tree.

Otto breathed a sigh.

“You think these spells are overkill, too?” he asked.

“I mean the girl…”

“If you want to redeem yourself then just throw the book out!” murky Otto explained.

“Nobody’s really expecting you to kill those things… They’ll probably think you’re smart for not charging in there so brazenly…”

The book remained quiet for a second.

“You know what you need to do, Otto…” the book reminded him.

“Guys! Shut up! Can you talk about anything other than the stupid book?!”

“I’m not doing this for myself! I’m just… avenging the others…”

“Is that so…” both Ottos said sounding equally displeased with Otto’s words.

They both went silent as Otto made his way towards the bear caves, it was a big cliff-face with big holes in its ides, a system of root-like caves allowed the creatures to settle inside the rock.

Otto took careful aim at the cliff.

He saw that monsters were inside of the actual cliff, there was only one entrance leading inside, at least only one entrance Otto could see.

“FireBolt!” he exclaimed; a ball of fire flew directly into the mouth of the cave entrance leading into the network of caves.

He followed his attack up with “AirBullet!”.

As the air fed into the flames, the Bear’s only exit was blocked.

After only a few minutes, Otto saw smoke rising from the holes in the cliff as several bears tried to jump to safety only to die from the fall while most presumably burned or suffocated in the cave.

Though just to be sure, Otto spent a full thirty minutes feeding the flame and taking out any bears that looked like they might have survived the fall with the “ThunderBolt” spell.

“TAKE THAT YOGI!” Otto exclaimed as he rained more fire down onto the caves, he never even realised he was smiling the entire time.

“They look pretty dead to me…” a familiar voice said from behind.

Otto spun around and saw Nameless child standing there with folded arms.

“It’s you…” he said sounding dumbfounded at the continued existence of this person.

“Yo…” he nodded.

“B-”

Nameless child cut Otto off before he could say anything.

“Before you ask, I found you because you set a fucking mountain on fire, it’s hard not to notice…”

Otto looked back to the hill and saw that it was in fact on fire.

“Huh…”

Nameless child placed his arms behind his head.

“I heard some unofficial village got burned so I went over to if I could find anything interesting…” Nameless child explained.

“Then I saw a burning mountain…”

“Then you burning said mounting,”

Otto looked at Nameless child for a solid ten seconds in stunned silence before replying.

“I-I didn’t do it!” he exclaimed.

“I never said you did…” Nameless child replied.

“The village got attacked by some guys in fancy glowing armour…” he clenched his fist.

“When I see that golden-armoured guy I’m going to-”

“Hey…” Otto was once again cut off by Nameless child.

“You don’t look so good,”

Otto looked down confirming he wasn’t hurt.

“What… do you mean?” he asked.

Nameless child sighed.

“It’s nothing I can really help you with,”

“But it looks to me like you’ve had your first taste of ‘isekai isn’t as fun as I thought’ right?”

Otto nodded.

“Then let me give you some advice… one protagonist to another…” Nameless child replied.

“If I became an edgelord every time someone I care about dies, I’d probably be the bad guy in some generic isekai story…” Nameless child continued.

He sat down on the grass with folded arms.

“I was in too many worlds to count…” he began.

“I spend hundreds doing nothing but killing myself hoping not to respawn,”

“I spend thousands doing nothing, passively floating like a plastic bag in the wind…”

“Thousands?!” Otto demanded.

Nameless child nodded.

“All I ever wanted was an end, if heaven existed it’d be nothingness because anything else would automatically be hell,”

“Until I reached an interesting world, or rather some interesting people…”

“My discovery from that world is as follows…”

“As a protagonist of an isekai we don’t have a single obligation, no promise of wealth, fame, love, joy, emotion or anything else can transcend the rest of reality… but what we do have is the ability to fix things,”

Otto raised an eyebrow.

“Fix things?” he asked holding back a tearful laugh.

“So far I’ve only managed to fuck things up even worse…” he replied.

“We’re not gods… or angels, we’re people…”

“We’re not above stupidity because of some sense of morality…”

“And no set of morals will exist to guide you in every world…”

“One world can only be saved by winning a war, the other one can’t take another fist-fight without degrading to an uncivilized wasteland…”

Otto looked down to his feet uncertainly.

“What… happened to that one world you said was interesting?” he asked.

Nameless child shook his head.

“I’m hoping to find out one day…” he replied.

“I can’t tell you how many worlds I’ve been to since that one…”

“But when I’m finally back, it’ll be as someone ready to save that mess of a world!” Nameless child replied with an optimistic thumbs-up.

Otto smiled sombrely.

“I see…”

Nameless child leaned back in the grass.

“Your turn… present me with your sob story…”

And so, Otto explained his side of the story.

He took a deep breath.

“I think I feel a bit better…” Otto replied.

“Yeah, man… it’s totally your fault the village got whooped…” Nameless child replied.

“…I know…” Otto admitted.

“But you couldn’t have known mages can detect the flow of mana…”

“I guess…”

“In any case, you should probably head back to town and let the doctors know you took care of the bears…” Nameless child reminded him.

“S-shit! You’re right!” Otto jumped to his feet.

“What about you?” he asked.

Nameless child shrugged.

“I dunno… might go look for more edgelords to talk out of burning natural landmarks…” he replied.

And like that, Otto and Nameless child parted ways again.