Ch 1-4

"Takeshi, you didn't feel fine? Go home now."

I worked in my uncle's company. Although we're relatives, he treated me the same as other employees. Even if the work were sometimes tedious, there's a lot of room for a breather. The employees were well-cared for and they generally care about the company.

Especially since uncle often had those after-work parties pretty often, like every Saturday, since tomorrow's a day off. The alcohol was pretty good; people sang together in Karaoke and talking about actually fun things like movies and books instead of petty politics. Although I seldom come due to my aversion to people in general.

At first, I felt I got the special treatment since I didn't go through the employee examination and interview, but so did the ones who got a personal recommendation. My uncle said, one's personal background was more important rather than their current capabilities—not saying their capabilities weren't important.

If you didn't know who exactly you're working with, how would you place your trust in them? Although talents and expertise could be trained, if you didn't know your subordinates well, you'd never be able to bring out their full potential.

Although life and work were pretty boring and sometimes I felt I didn't belong here, being at my uncle's company made it bearable.

Even if, for now, I had to say goodbye to my old world, it's not like I actually missed it. This might be contradictory, seeing myself reminiscing about my past life, but it's just about the good things.

I didn't feel like talking about the bad ones, but basically, I was okay even if I were to stay in this world forever. Let good things be a memory, but I would sometimes remember the unpleasant ones so I wouldn't think about getting back.

It may be a good thing, that I didn't remember the bad memories. Even if I got the chance to, I don't want to reminisce about it.

So, seeing as I didn't want to go back, what would my aim be? I guess, it's about enjoying my life to the fullest and getting stronger, based upon the talents I had. To the point, I could relax without any worries to my own safety.

First things first, I wrote down my capabilities that weren't listed with skills.

Inventory: Infinite inventory spaces that didn't weigh at all, neatly sorted according to categories.

Status: displaying status, health, and mana of myself and allies.

Battle mode: able to freely control myself on the battlefield. Since I was really weak, it's useless unless I had a strong party member to carry me. The useful thing was, that it made the enemy and my party attack turn by turn so I could offset my lack of reflex. Making it more of a planned battle.

Skip(?): Ability to shorten long-distance travels so I wouldn't get tired even during them. Trigger still unknown.

Item Drop: turning monsters into gold when defeated, also making their corpses disappear and procuring drops without having to dismantle them.

If it's not mentioned, you'll never know what's amiss (?): Self-explanatory.

Ask (?): Able to query whatever I want to the people. I was still afraid if I were to ask about sensitive things, like mentioning to anyone about my true power while I couldn't even protect myself.

Go to: Transport to any point in town towards important places.

....

That was all, I guess? I just listed random short names to describe the skill in its entirety, but I didn't have good naming sense.

If this was a game, there would be more features ain't it? Like the most important one.

[Save Game] obviously!

With that in hand, I'll get my final failsafe!

Just as the thought crossed my mind, a hard-cover notebook materialized on my lap; a divine aura seems to overflow from it.

[This is a diary, it will record your previous adventures at Inns and Save Points. You can return at the recorded point every time you're defeated. Keep in mind, when you load this point, the said record will be deleted.

You currently have one slot.]

The system voice was that of a little girl--cute. It was a monotone speech but there's a strange charm which made me all comfortable.

Oh yeah, I just heard this voice now. Previously it's all just a bunch of text, I wonder if anything was upgraded during my lapse of thoughts earlier?

My inner devil was working at full throttle; it's basically infinite tries whenever you screwed up since after you load from this point, you could just keep filling it again. Except when you're screwed up and forgot filling the diary.

Ah...there's still the Church. Usually, when you're defeated in battle, you'd end up at the last ones you visit, with or without penalty.

Let's visit that next after I got things ready.

Wait a second.

How about [Load Game]?

It would suck if I had to wait until I screw up.

[Ability locked. Please notify Administrator or progress through your adventure to unlock this feature.]

Administrator, huh? Was it some kind of deity in this fantasy setting? That aside, this voice was just so fluffy and adorable.

Maybe I could get her to call me daddy.

[Please do not think of such creepy things, mister.]

Ah, she replied. Well, it's nice that I got someone to talk to when I was lonely but, let's save my records for now.

I tapped the diary and said [Save]--the diary finally opened up. Before that, I couldn't even make it budge no matter how hard I tried. Even if I was weak I didn't think even a strong person would be able to pry it.

Currently, the diary had only one blank page which couldn't be turned over; a certain part with the shape of a hand glowed beside the page. I instinctively placed my right hand to the said part, and the previous blank were rewritten as:

[Monkey Island Cymbals, Hero's Room

Day 2, 6:09 PM]

There was a color picture of me sitting on top of the bed, placing my hands on the diary.

[Tutorial Finished, the Clock feature was added.

Time flows similarly to Earth. 60 second is one minute, 60 minutes is 1 hour. Every day consisting of 24 hours. Every week 7 days, every month 30 days. There were 12 months per year—360 days in total.

Please check the [Go to] function to see how much time would be spent in the meantime during fast travel.]

Finally, I could know what time it was exactly.

Hey, you didn't tell me if the time moves like usual and regardless of what I do, the plot would still advance?

Anyway, I tried asking the System but she simply replied with: 'just make the best use of your time, can't you actually understand simple things?'

Now I got even more confused.

As much as I didn't like it, since this world was similar to a game...maybe it was better this way.

Even I prefer to just relax and take my time, it's also fine—since I was basically just a bystander in this other world. I had no noble goals; I can do whatever I want.

...but first, I gotta experiment with the System.

"[Quit Game]"

[Invalid command.]

"[Exit Game]"

[Invalid command.]

"[Alt+F4]"

"[Ctrl+Alt+Del]"

[Inva---]

Ah goddamnit.

"I love you, System-chan!"

[Shut up, you're annoying.]

Oh...

"Your next line is, 'did you just make me spout a J*Jo reference?'"

[I refuse. One of the favorite things I, System likes to do is saying no to those who think they're hot shit.]

Wow, even the feel of her monotonous lines were perfect for her deadpan loli character. Of course, after she said 'I refuse' I blurted out 'what?' with a big exclamation before she continued on. It was really fun that way.

Well, I guess to neutralize the flow of time, all I had to do was just.

"[Za Waru--]"

[I had enough of you, I'm leaving, please don't bother me and get a friend.]

Ah, she finally left. I tried muttering commands over and over but there's no reply this time. If she continued on I was planning to tease her with cheat-related jokes or probably even try putting a Ko**mi code.

Speaking of which, let's just go down. I'd feel like gathering more info.

When I came downstairs, a message appeared.

[Event Mode: NPCs temporarily activate full-human characteristics and may interact with you at will.]

Uh oh, I got a bad feeling about this. I generally didn't like interacting with people though.

Fiona and System were different since they seem more like anime girls.

That aside, what I really want to do was ending the game and continuing from where I left off since I couldn't load from here. Oh well, maybe if I unlocked the [Load Game] feature, there'd be many more ways I could take advantage of this world's mechanics.