His eyes opened again. Blinked once, twice. Great.

Like a start-up sequence, White had completely recovered from the hazy feeling he had before. He scanned his surroundings with interest.

It was a very rocky terrain, where he could not see far from the dust clouds obscuring his vision. Not that it was too bad that it narrowed his range of sight too much, but it was still difficult to see. The ground below him was solid unlike the white room he had been in earlier. There was nothing else in particular that screamed the word 'fantasy' in his mind, and he thought for sure that it must have had been a mistake. Maybe he was brought to the wilderness in the West instead.

Recalling the blinding color of where he had previously been, White felt a faint relief that he was indeed alive now. He took in a deep breath, and exhaled through his lungs.

But he was interrupted. White choked on the dust particles that fogged the wasteland. Feeling irritation in his throat, he could not help but cough a few times to expel discomfort.

"Cough cough!!!"

A little unlucky, one would say to have been reincarnated into such a hostile environment right from the beginning of his story. Or was it more accurate to say that he had been transported or transferred? He had such thoughts in his mind as he rubbed away the spit around his mouth.

He was wearing the same black shirt under his grey jacket. Besides his slightly loose jeans that held a similar dark hue, he also sported a pair of sandals he had worn to the convenience store. Of course, his pendant hung around his neck like usual. There was nothing different about his appearance since he had died on Earth.

If that was the case, then it seemed as if the Goddess did not brief him on anything well during his transfer on purpose. He could not believe that a higher existence like a Goddess would be so careless, after all the novels he had read contained really clumsy Goddesses, but they did help the protagonist in the beginning one way or another.

This was a little too cruel, he cursed silently.

As he walked around to probe his surroundings, White slowly headed towards an area where it was easier to breathe in. He had also taken off his jacket from the heat that felt like a desert to him, and covered the area around his mouth with it.

He rested his back against a withered tree for a few minutes, before continuing on again. The starting difficulty was too high for him who had never exercised a long time ago, and he briefly questioned himself why did the Goddess treat him so roughly unlike the stories that he was accustomed to.

It was strange, White began to suspect the authenticity of this place. He was not referring to the two suns that hung in the afternoon sky. No, that was something trivial for White who was keen to adapt to a new world and relish in the comfort his new life would bring from now on. Such a thing, it was merely a 'cosmetic' difference.

It didn't affect me in the slightest.

What had truly started to creep him out, was that the lack of people... had been accompanied by rotting carcasses that were left sprawled all across the ground spanning more than tens of kilometers. The structure of their bones were extremely unrealistic as compared to an animal on Earth, and most of them seemed to... or used to have very large bodies.

So this was the smell he had felt a little nauseous about ever since he took in that first breath. Naturally, he was accustomed to it after a while, but it was still an unpleasant smell that was slugged in the thick stench of dried up blood and piss.

For a creature to die like this, it was without reason that they had been hunted by something stronger. Clutching the jacket around his nose even tighter, he bent down to inspect one of the carcasses.

Wooden... fences?

There were splinters around him if he looked closely enough. But he could not make anything out of it, nor the bones he had attempted to glean information from. He wasn't an archaeologist.

"Aah... I'm thirsty..."

White resumed his direction towards a place with less dust. Still, no signs of civilisation could be seen. He had been pushing himself further than usual from the excitement that was fueling him, but it had long faded into obscurity as he began to think that the road ahead might be stretching even further than he had initially thought.

This was absurd. This was unreasonable. What is this shitty world... White grumbled with an even more tired expression on his face.

There were a few more new things he had found out, however.

Recalling that perhaps there might be some unspoken rules of this world, he had attempted many different keywords, or 'trigger' words that would invoke some kind of change around him. Magic, after all, was a staple in many reincarnation and transfer stories.

Fireball! No amount of magic 'incantations' was able to bring anything magical out of his extended palms.

Clean! The dirt stuck to his clothes remained along with the sweat sticking uncomfortably onto his skin.

Maybe, cultivation core activate? Maybe the premise of this world was one that favoured inner strength, but that didn't invoke anything either.

There was truly no cheat.

But for White who had nothing to do except talking to himself, he stumbled upon something that gave him a response.

"Status Window."

Stamina [32] Hunger [11] Thirst [3]

"Huh?! There's a response!"

White cried out excitedly. But that excitement quickly died down.

It was nothing more than a way to track his sustainability, he thought.

He thought it was useless, even he could understand when he needed to eat or drink. It did not show his own parameters and skills like he had expected it to.

"As expected... at least... this is a sign that I wasn't crazy? This is another world after all."

He lamented as he looked at the flickering blue screen before him. It would have had been the same exact interface like any other story, except for the fact that it lacked vital information.

But he didn't put the screen away. This was the only thing he had unlocked. Although it would fade away after three seconds exactly, he would repeat the call to open that translucent screen again.

"Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window." "Status Window."

He repeated continuously, hanging onto the thread that something different might occur. But only the values beside each allocated item dropped as time passed. Before long, his 'Stamina' had also reached the red zone at '15' points.

One hour, two. Then three. He no longer knew how much time had passed, but the sky was getting a little darker. His stomach growled, as if displeased with his current predicament. If he knew that he would suffer this much, then he would've preferred to stay back at his apartment. He held a longing for chicken breast meat, a large serving of fries, and a big bottle of coke. The indicators of his thirst value merely made him even more frustrated. He could not even yell out an expletive from his parched throat. He felt like he had been duped, this wasn't exactly how he had imagined his beginning to be.

...But as he was on the verge of giving up right there and then, he noticed something shimmering in the distance. Lighted up by the setting suns, he could see his salvation.

There was a lake about tens of meters away from him.

Was it a mirage? He could not care less. White hung on to the remaining straw that would possibly sustain his life. He was probably exaggerating, but for White who had not suffered from physical hardships for a long time, it was more than enough to say that it was indeed, a form of torture.

Gritting his teeth, White quickened his pace towards the possibility of a water source.