I have a dagger. Dagger, as in, that's all I have. I don't want to admit it, but I fell into another world. It's embarrassing, I know. What's worse is that it happened when I was bored, browsing my spam email, and got one that said:

"Would you like to become a Hero in another world?!?!"

And since Google told me that you couldn't get a virus just by clicking on a spam email, I clicked it. Now, here I am. Wow. Can't wait for the easy girls and magical powers to show up. But, for now, my status looks like this:

[Main Character A]

Lvl: 1 (Loser)

STR: Eh.

DEX: Meh.

INT: Low brow? You wish.

WIL: W i z a r d ~ w o o ~

Skills: None.

Inventory: Dagger.

Zooming in on the Dagger in my status, this appeared:

[Dagger]

Broad leaf blade made by a dwarf blacksmith while drinking. Hilt slapped on by an elf high on shrooms. The handle is pleasantly smooth, which makes for a terrible gripping experience. Upgradeable, if you upgrade it.

Has a chance of killing something if you stab said something in the right place.

What, is the dagger the main character? Am I an add-on? It is a dagger. But, only a dagger. I'm encouraged by one part:

"Upgradeable, if you upgrade it."

So, it's like, going to turn into some super Dagger +15 that'll let me one shot a Demon Vicar. If there happens to be a Demon Vicar. What's a Vicar, anyways?

I slid the dagger in and out of its sheathe, contemplating the status menu while I walked through your everyday ambiguous fantasy forest full of nothing but trees. Cicadas sounded out their drone, telling me that they did indeed cry. I have a dagger. Yes. But you could also say I only have a dagger. Leveling is high priority. Only priority. Need something small and weak to dagger. Ideally, many small weak cute things to dagger to raise my level. Then, once I have all the small weak cute things daggered, I can move onto daggering more worthy daggering targets.

Circle of life.

Strength is levels, so I want levels for strength. Then, I'm sure the rest of the usual will fall into place. So right now, I want to do a lot of daggering. Walking through the trees and more trees, despair grew at nothing to dagger. Clutching at my throat, I longed for water.

More than that, I can't remember when I last ate. More than that, I don't like the screaming and evil snickering coming from the road ahead. More than that, someone has to save this Princess looking girl from these bandits.

"Help!" She says. Very stereotypical of her, looking all Princess-ish and having some Grey haired august knight defending her. I'm looking on from the trees, keeping hidden as there are a lot of bandits and I doubt I could take a sewer rat right now. It'd be nice to have more than a dagger at this point.

Am I supposed to be the Hero here? If so, I'm failing right now.

Wait, why is that guy in jeans? I see jeans. These can't be from this world, the bandits are in furs and rags, the princess in cat gothic loli-ness that could only be seen at a cosplay convention, the knights falling around her have leather armor.

The jeans guy crouched in the carriage in front of the princess with a shield held high. Grey knight brandished his sword so none of the bandits could get close. Watching, I noticed his movements were strange. Not just his movements, but the battle itself.

It looked like, lagging. Like watching a video game split into disconnected still frames. A bandit would strike at Grey's head with mace, and I could clearly see Grey's head knock back. But then, Grey's head would look fine, not even a bruise, and the bandit's mace and body would snap back into position.

Grey roared, the knight charged into a pool of bandits. Jeans yelled after him, "Stay here, you're getting too far away!" The princess called out from behind Jeans, "The skill, Gilandris!"

'the skill' huh? Is that a cheat power? Is it a cheat skill? I want to know more. I unsheathed my dagger. There is also daggerable targets.

Gilandris quickly got swept even further away by the bandits who blocked Jean's exit from the carriage. Looks like they heard what Jean's said and took action on it. Gilandris's lagging while fighting continued, but the bandits managed to push him away from the carriage with their numbers and attacks.

Though it looked like he was invulnerable, physical force and sheer numbers drove him even further away from the carriage. He's a goner.

I could play it safe. Go find a slime and dagger it. Go find a squirrel and dagger it. Or, I could use this confusion to get to daggering the most daggerable.

I rushed from the trees, making straight for the carriage. Most of the bandits were leading Grey as far from the carriage as they could, circling and fighting him. Jeans held a shield up, bashing back five bandits from entering the carriage.

The few bandits had all their attention towards getting into the carriage, and none of them thought there would be a daggering. But, there was. My dagger.

The first one I slid for his kidneys, both of them, he went to the ground. The second bandit turned with shock, and I stabbed his neck. The third raised his sword, and I quickly realized this was a poor idea. He swung.

Snapping back from the brush of the bandit's blade, I gauged the situation. Two bandits on the ground, one aware of me whacking the other two bandits with his free hand to get their attention focused on me.

One bandit held a mace. Longer than my dagger. Sword bandit held his sword, looking very upset about the daggerings. The sword is longer than my dagger. The final, tallest bandit held a sledgehammer, much longer than my dagger. From looking at his height and muscles I doubted he needed a weapon to ruin me.

Options not looking good. I guess this is what you get when you only have a dagger.

Then, the sword bandit took a shield bash from behind. Leaping out of the carriage the guy in jeans ran straight past the bandits. He shouted. My eyes snapped towards the melee Jeans looked at. Gilandris had gone down, mobbed by fur skins and shouts.

Jeans looked straight at me. Running straight towards my side, he levered up his shield, turning his face to mine.

"Let's do this. I'll back you up, don't worry, as long as you stay near me, you won't lose."

Well. What is it? Do you have a Lag Aura? Is that it? Either way, have dagger, will dagger.

My level rose from the first two daggerings. Let further leveling begin. Leaping ahead of Jeans, I closed in on mace bandit. His strike fell straight into my face.

Or so I thought. A second later, and instead of the mace to my face and pain I expected, I arrived at his flank.

His open flank, completely unguarded, smooth open skin with matted furs hanging around it. And so I daggered.

"AAHHHHH!"

His scream hurt my ears more than his mace did. A sword ran through my gut. Cold steel froze my organs as blood spilled over the ground. Nah. Instead, I turned on the spot. Took another sword to the gut. But then, I pushed forward, noticing that although it looked that way, although it felt that way, that there was no sword in my gut. Sweeping my dagger to the sky and stepping forward, I lunged. And there's the neck, overextended from his slicing.

And now, my slicing.

"guug....gurgs."

Something in the throat? That sounds awful. I feel bad about this. This is violence. But, it's okay, it's okay because I would die otherwise. So this is the okay kind of violence. Think of the levels!

I guess. As the sledgehammer hit my face. This time, I felt it, like a huge gust of wind pushed me back. I stumbled, confused, as Jeans yelled at me from behind. "Keep going! It'll work! Just focus on using that dagger!"

These are words I, indeed, needed, and wanted, to hear. I focused on the dagger.

Another gust hit me, I leaned into the wind as I felt like my upper body tore off. But, still in one piece, I reached daggering range. Thrusting forward, my dagger stopped. Thick fingers looped around the blade, twisting it straight out of my hands. I fell back as the sledgehammer handle slammed into my body. Bouncing onto the ground, my head knocked against the carriage's wheel, and I blacked out.

My eyes were open the next second, holding my dagger in front of the sledgehammer bandit. Completely overwhelmed. My hands trembled. Despite what I felt and saw, the dagger's smooth grip is still in my hand. I pressed forward again, only for the thick fingers once again to close around the dagger's blade.

"Don't try the same attack twice!" Jeans yelled from behind me.

"How does this thing work? What is even going on?!" I found myself yelling back. I sounded more upset than I thought. Sledge to the face. Sledge to the face. I backed up, not from taking an attack, but from my senses being overwhelmed. Thrusting forth from another side, I took another huge gust of wind and faltered back.

The distance between me the sledgehammer bandit widened, giving me space to think. When I saw this ability from a distance, it looked like Gilandris was taking a mace on his head, then he was fine. All of the attacks I thought I took, I didn't take. Instead, I was allowed to dagger all I wanted.

If this is a 'Lag Aura', that wouldn't be possible. This guy behind me, he's altering events, somehow. But whatever he's doing, it's not enough to just let me dagger right away. Not against sledgehammer bandit.

"Try something else!" Jeans said. Yeah yeah, I get that much. I crouched low. Change of tactics. If I can't dagger where I want to dagger, I'll dagger where I can dagger. Namely, ankles. I sprinted low to the ground stabbing sledghammer bandit's foot.

A manly grunt came from above as I rained strikes into his feet and legs. A few hundred or so images of myself getting stomped into the ground and ground into paste later, and sledgehammer bandit lay strewn across the ground.

I had to work my way up from the legs and it was much more work than I thought it would be, but once I hit the sweet spot it seems like he died the most. I never knew there was this much effort to daggering.

When I came to, I found the final bandit near me and finished him in a quick stroke. Felt much faster than before, as if my dagger turned into a leaf falling from a branch. Lighter, quicker.

What level am I?

There's a mob of bandits charging at me, but I could only grin at the number. Charging forwards, I got the first one in the face. Pure brazeness filled my heart. This ability, it favors aggressiveness. So, I'll be aggressive.

Taking the initiative, the bandits reeled back in a wave. I sliced and stabbed where I could, wearing down the bandits in my range, closing range when I could. They backed off, I saw fear on their faces as bodies dropped one by one.

My movements are faster, my stabs feel neater. What's more my confidence pumped the more the bandits reeled back. I yelled back to Jeans in the melee, unable to turn away from the enemy ahead of me.

"Keeping up?!"

"I'm right behind you!"

My speed picked up knowing he was there. Had this been a real fight without that cheat skill, I would have wavered. The bandit's morale broke, but before they could think of fleeing I had given them parting stabs in the back.

I stood over a lot, a lot, of corpses. "This... this a lot of dead." I said, turning to Jeans. "This is a lot of dead."

Jeans met me by my side, looking at me in my eyes as if trying see who was there. "You okay?"

Looking away and surveying the scene, I swung the dagger with a flourish I felt was cool at the time, sheathing it. "Uh. Yeah, yep." This is what having a dagger is like.

"Hi." He extended an open hand out from behind his shield. "Thank you. We would've died without you. I'm Scott."

"Scott, huh." I said. Then, I shook his hand. I got it bloody. "I. Uh." I looked at my dagger. "I have a dagger. What about you?" "Later," Scott said, pointing at my bloody clothes and all the corpses. He lead me towards the carriage, stopping to talk to the girl. She lead us to a river with a pleasant smile. I thought it a bit strange to have a face like that after events like this.

I washed up and dressed in the knight's clothing I was offered, then returned with the both of them to the carriage. The horses were gone already, reins cut. Bandits must have rode them off.

In the carriage with Scott, the princess-esque girl introduced herself. "I'm Pixie, of Nyan-cat Kingdom. Thank you for coming."

"That is such a dumb name." I said.

Scott nodded. "Yeah, I was holding back saying anything, because, I didn't want to be rude."

Oh, yeah, politeness. After all that daggering, I seem to have lost something important. But at least I'm level 11 now!

[Main Character A]

Level: 11 (Less of a Loser, More of a Murderer)

STR:Armadillo

DEX:Cat

INT:Pufferfish

WIL: W i z a r d ~ w o o ~

Skills: Dagger +2.

Inventory: Dagger.

Yaaay murder. No, yaaay daggering. Yeah, that's better.

"So, what are your skills?" Scott asked.

"Dagger +2."

He waited a moment. Then the moment passed. And I still didn't say anything. He's waiting for me, and I'm waiting for him.

"Dagger +2? You killed all those bandits with that?"

"And the dagger. Mostly the dagger. Was only level one before the fight."

Pixie nodded as if this was normal, but Scott was full of bafflement.

"A magic dagger then?"

"Nah, it's a normal dagger."

"You only have a dagger?"

"I only had a dagger."

Scott turned to Pixie. "Those were trained knights I was fighting with all this time, what makes him any different? If this, if this dagger maniac can go through all of those bandits like nothing at level one, why couldn't those trained knight manage?"

Pixie looked at my dagger. "He's special."

"I'm from another world." I added.

Scott looked at me suspiciously. "Now that I think about it, your clothing was weird when I first saw you... before you got soaked in blood."

Says the guy wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans in a fantasy setting. Meanwhile, I look the part. You couldn't think to change, Scott? Were those jeans that comfortable for you?

"My skill, [Combat Log Management], must work better with you since you're from another world."

"It wasn't [Lag Aura]?"

"Yeah it does look like lagging, doesn't it? It's really me changing what happens in combat. Like, if you put all the events of combat down into a log, 'You take 4 damage from the toad!' or something like that, I can change that, a little." Scott laughed, with a tinge of nervousness. "When that big guy came for you, I thought there was nothing I could do, but I kept focus and made sure none of his attacks landed. He kept grabbing your dagger, that was hard to deal with, mentally."

What a weird ability. "It takes a toll on you? How does it work?"

Scott held his head. "Just gotta keep managing all of the combat in the log. Fights can be pretty fast, so if I miss some of the action, someone could get hit. Have to actively change events as they happen."

"OP." I accused.

Scott looked out from the carriage window over at the dead knights. "Not OP enough."

"You couldn't fight them yourself?"

"What, fight and manage the combat log at the same time?"

"I'm sorry. Seems like there should be a better way to make it work in our favor if we work together."

"'We'?" Scott said, glancing at the princess. Pixie nodded.

"You haven't got a lot of options." I looked out at the corpse field, then to the slashed horse's reigns. "Neither do I. Just got here. Together, we have a better chance of surviving."

Scott leaned back, glancing at Pixie again, who simply nodded and smiled, then he sighed. "Alright. We should get to town. Those bandits took our horses, if they get suspicious that no one returned to their camp, they'll come looking around here, then come hunt us down. You know the area, right Pixie?" She nodded.

We gathered up the remains of our supplies. Taking off into the forest, I took one last look at the remains. I saluted to the sledgehammer bandit, and to all the rest for their contribution. Well daggered.