There was a quiet ringing in my head. It did not hurt, but it wasn’t a pleasant feeling either.

I slowly opened my eyes. It felt as if I had just awoken from a ten-thousand-year long slumber. The first thing I noticed was the blurry ceiling of green above me. Narrow rays of light fell from above and illuminated my surroundings with a dim haze. The dust that aimlessly drifted in front of my eyes resembled scattered sprinkles of starlight.

I subconsciously furrowed my brow. This wasn’t the ceiling that I was normally used to. My bedroom was plain and unassuming. It had beige-colored walls and a white ceiling.

After a few seconds, my taut face gradually relaxed. Worrying about all this was too annoying, so I stopped. My vision was still a bit fuzzy and my head was still a bit muddled, so that might be why I was seeing all these weird things. Either way, my body felt uncomfortably lethargic, more so than usual.

“How long was I asleep for?” I quietly whispered to myself. My voice sounded hoarse, almost like a croaking frog. It felt like forever since the last time I spoke.

By reflex, I absentmindedly pulled out my smartphone from my pants pocket. I lifted it up and brought it close to my face.

“…”

I squinted hard, but no matter how hard I squinted the screen remained blank. I even clicked the buttons and touched the screen, but still nothing. It took me a second to realize that my phone was turned off. Rather, it refused to turn on.

A giant crack ran down from the top of the screen all the way to the bottom. My phone was broken.

“…”

I stared at it for a moment before my hand limply fell to the side. I breathed out a weary sigh.

My phone was thoroughly broken, which spelled bad news for me. What’s more, summer just started! It couldn’t have happened at a worse time than now. I mean, it’s not like I get a whole lot of calls or texts, but there was more to a smartphone than just communicating with people.

For example, there was this mobile game that I was currently hooked on. It was the sort of game where you spend real money to collect various characters. This game, in particular, had a feature where they give away special deals and free rolls during certain days or holidays. If the situation continued as is, then I’d miss out on all the summer giveaways!

Should I grovel in front of my parents and ask for a new phone? If they find out that I broke it, then they’d definitely kill me…

Such worries plagued my muddled head.

Eventually, time passed. As I was wallowing in my own self-pity, I suddenly noticed a throbbing ache near my lower back.

“What the hell’s wrong with this bed? It’s no different from the floor!” I bitter feeling rose from deep within my chest.

I just woke up and already, my irritation was reaching a tipping point.

“In the first place, whose room is this? My bed’s not nearly this—”

Then, I remembered. Images dyed in red flooded my mind. Suddenly, the ache that I felt no longer mattered.

I immediately shot to my feet. I had risen so fast that I felt a little bit lightheaded. Still, I gritted through the discomfort. With a panicked expression smeared across my face, I frantically scanned the area.

I wasn’t in my bedroom. In fact, I wasn’t in anybody’s bedroom.

All around me were towering sycamore trees. The ground beneath my feet felt soft and malleable. A wide variety of plants and bushes littered the surroundings. I was in the middle of a dense forest. More memories rushed back to my head.

The dog-like monster, the life-threatening fall, that weird game system hallucination, these little bits of broken memories came rushing back like some sort of twisted jigsaw puzzle. The fog in my head rapidly dissipated. I remembered everything.

How could I have forgotten?

I tried to calm my beating heart as I carefully thought about my situation. After inspecting the nearby surroundings, I noted that nothing had really changed. There were no monsters around and the sun was still up high in the air. It did not look like much time had passed. If there was any change, then it would be the corpse beside me. Underneath the summer sun, it was starting to smell. I quickly backed away from it.

Only after I confirmed all this did I start to relax.

“Since there’s nothing wrong with my surroundings, I can check ‘that’ next.”

I tried to bring up my status screen.

As expected, a single thought later and a half-transparent square appeared before my eyes. I scrutinized the screen.

“Can I take this as evidence that I’m not really hallucinating?” I muttered to myself with scrunched up eyebrows.

Well, it was still a bit too early to decide that. After all, this screen wasn’t real in the sense that it was not a part of the material world. I could neither touch it nor physically interact with it. In short, it really was all in my head. Even though I was fully aware of this, I still lacked the necessary mental fortitude to snap myself out of this ‘delusion’.

I despondently shook my head. For now, I pushed the issue to the back of my mind and refocused my attention on my status screen.

Status Screen

Name: Holden Day

Sex/Age: Male/ 18 years old

Race: Human

Titles: Trailblazer

Class: Writer Lv 1

Skills: Penmanship Lv 1, Eyes of the Observer

HP: 100/100

Mana: 100/100

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 9

Constitution: 5

Intelligence: 11

Unused SP: 0

Current Condition: Healthy.

My status screen really did change. The most obvious one was the change in my skill. [External Observation] transformed into [Eyes of the Observer]. I don’t really know what changed, but considering the fact that it was a reward, then it should probably be something good, right?

Aside from that, something else was different too. It took me a second to recognize what that new change was.

“Ah, my HP is full…” I widened my eyes in surprise. Now that I mention it, I wasn’t in pain anymore. Aside from that slight muscle ache I got from sleeping on the ground, my body was in tip-top condition. Even the system confirmed this.

“What happened to me?” I immediately inspected my body. After a few seconds, I quickly confirmed what I had already known. Even though my clothes and skin were still caked in dried blood, all of my injuries were gone.

“Did I somehow heal myself? Is this another effect of this new system? Self-healing on par with what you see in videogames?”

Although it seemed like the most likely scenario right now, I still felt a bit hesitant.

In some games, players had this passive ability to slowly regenerate their HP as time passed. This was most commonly seen in online MMORPGs. This self-regeneration function was sometimes mitigated. For example, players might only be allowed to passively heal when they were outside of combat or in some sort of safe zone. Still, it was an incredible ability that would break all sorts of rules if it were to ever appear in real life.

Of course, not all videogames were like this. Despite the similarities between the two genres, regular RPGs worked differently from MMORPGs. In a regular RPG, the player usually doesn’t have a self-healing function. This was especially the case for turn-based games, where the player needed to actively heal himself to prevent a game over.

I did not know what rules this weird system was playing by. As of now, it seemed to be a mix of different styles of gameplay.

Just as I was pondering over this issue, a new screen suddenly popped up.

You have (1) new message.

Do you wish to open it?

Y/N

“What the hell?” I subconsciously furrowed my brow. It even has this sort of function?

I hesitated for a moment before I accepted the new message. Immediately, another screen appeared before my eyes.

It’s an after-service healing~!

Are you surprised?

Those were the first words to pop up on screen. My expression immediately fell. It was just so… unexpectedly bubbly, far different from the mechanical coldness of the system from before. Whether it was through a computer monitor or in person, I was not good at dealing with this sort of personality.

“Did an actual person send this to me?” I continued reading.

You’re not very strong, but since you somehow survived, I thought I’d give you a little help! After such a lucky event, it would be a shame if you were to just up and die from blood loss. Where would be the fun in that?

Keep going a little more, you’re not out of the woods just yet (lol)

Sincerely,

-GG

P.S.

If you get the chance, pray to me, okay? ♥♥♥

“…”

What the hell was this?

To be honest, I did not know how to react. There was a lot to unpack from this message.

First of all, the messenger signed off as GG. I do not know what those initials stand for, but considering the fact that they asked me to pray to them, I was somewhat inclined to believe that the message had been from some sort of God. But therein lay the problem. What kind of God talks like a stereotypical teenage girl?

It seriously didn’t make any sense!

Also, the fact that they knew what had happened to me was a sign that I was constantly being monitored. This was a greatly discomforting realization that would make anybody’s skin crawl.

I tried to respond to the message, but there was no such feature anywhere on the system. Apparently, this exchange was destined to remain completely one-sided.

“Either way, am I supposed to thank them for saving me?” I could not quite decide. After all, even I felt a bit reluctant to thank the people responsible for causing this mess in the first place.

Afterwards, since GG didn’t send anything else aside from that initial message, I decided to properly investigate my new skills.

[Penmanship] and [Eyes of the Observer].

I picked Penmanship first. After scrutinizing the skill for a few seconds, a new panel popped up.

Penmanship – Lv 1

A writer’s most important weapon is their writing.

After reading that very brief introduction, I reflexively let out a groan. I expected to read something like a description or an instruction manual on how to use this skill. Instead, I got this overly vague nonsense. This system was absolutely defective.

I thought for a moment, before I pulled out a ballpoint pen from my back pocket. Surprisingly, it was still intact, albeit slightly bent.

Since the skill was titled penmanship, I naturally planned to do some writing. I uncapped the pen and quickly wrote something down on the back of my hand.

‘GG is a piece of shit…’

Such were the words that I wrote down. For a moment, I was inwardly worried that lightning might fall from the heavens and strike me down. Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened. This led me to conclude two possibilities: either the Gods of the system were not all powerful or GG was a plain old masochist.

After some thought, I decided to correct my initial writing.

‘GG is a masochistic piece of shit…’

I nodded in satisfaction. As I wrote, I also felt this weird surge of energy. No, that wasn’t quite the proper way to describe it. The feeling was more like something leaving my body and moving towards my hand.

After I finished, the feeling quickly disappeared. I looked back down on my writing. It was a bit hard to tell, but the penmanship seemed a bit… smoother? I scrutinized it some more and quickly confirmed that it really did look better than my regular handwriting, but… was that it?

Was my skill only capable of improving my handwriting? What sort of bullshit was that?

Naturally, I felt disappointed. What’s more, after re-examining my status screen, I quickly discovered that my mana had gone down from 100 to 90. Not only was it a bad skill, it even consumed mana. The demerits of this skill were quickly coming to light.

I breathed out a heavy sigh.

Harping on this issue any longer would only make me more depressed, so I quickly moved on.

Now, for something a bit more… hopeful. I checked the next skill.

“Eyes of the Observer… I wonder, what can you do?”

While harboring a bit of expectation, I carefully read the status panel before me.