As the black substance went down her throat, Kurushimi realised it was going down easier than expected. It had felt fairly solid in her hands but the substance had become quite liquid-like, although viscous. And to her biggest surprise, it didn’t actually taste bad. ‘If it turns out to be safe, this could be revolutionary in the food market!’ She thought to herself before turning over to look at the results of what’s yours is mine.

Just as the panel came into vision, everything suddenly started getting shaky. “Hm?” Kurushimi reacted before violently grunting and falling to the ground. The faint shakiness of her vision became full-on delirium.

“Kurushimi?” Atelier asked but the drumming in her head didn’t allow her to hear any outside noise. She could only faintly see the figures of the two gods standing over her. However, she quickly lost strength in her arms and fully collapsed, making it hard to even do that.

“What happened?! What is going on?! Kurushimi, answer me! Kurushimi?! ...Damnit!” Voice-san shouted out with panic, crouching down attempting to get some kind of response. Kurushimi lost all vision shortly afterwards, entering a world of darkness.

. . .

‘Clink-! Clink-!’. The sound of what was presumably pieces of metal clashing against each other struck out repeatedly. ‘What…?’ Kurushimi felt very confused by the sudden noise which caused her to wake. Not only had she abruptly collapsed and fallen unconscious, there now was an unfitting scene playing out before her.

Standing by her side was a silver-haired girl. After viewing her face through the hair blocking it, Kurushimi noticed the girl looked eerily similar to herself. A few moments passed by before Kurushimi shouted out, “Wait what, that’s me!” Or at least, she tried to. Let alone talking, even her mouth wouldn’t respond to her and move as she commanded. An attempt to move her body next resulted in the realisation she couldn’t move at all, as if she were paralyzed.

The girl in front of her had slight changes from the body Kurushimi knew; longer hair, a slightly more mature appearance than the child-like one from before and visible changes to the size in her important areas. Despite that, she could just somehow tell it was her… And the girl also wore Kurushimi’s exact clothing, held a similar katana and had a crimson sword aura wrapped around it but that's besides the point.

As she was admiring the slightly-tweaked version of her, her vision suddenly moved away from her body and looked ahead. At this point, Kurushimi was sure she must be looking through the eyes of someone else.

As her target of sight changed, she finally got to see the one the other Kurushimi had been fighting. A man stood opposite, holding a more western-looking sword. Kurushimi was sadly unable to see his face as it was hidden behind a hooded helmet. However, another man stood next to him just like she presently was standing next to herself.

Although Kurushimi described the other man as a ‘man’, its appearance was humanoid at best. It wore a full suit of armour, covering all skin. But the most glaring feature had to be the fire. Its entire body from head to toe was covered in flames and the eyeholes on its helmet were illuminated by the same fire. This ‘flaming knight’ stood just slightly behind the man with the sword.

‘What is that, a stand?’ Kurushimi squinted her eyes as she looked at the absurd creature before her. Although, she couldn’t literally squint her eyes as she had no control over the body she was currently residing in. ‘Is this how Voice-san felt till now…?’ The passing thought flew by before it was cut off by speech.

“Even with that avatar, there is no escape. Give up, Atelier.” The first speech Kurushimi heard seemed to come from the flaming knight and surprisingly, she heard a familiar name. Of what she had seen so far, it didn’t look like there was anyone else other than those she had seen so far. By process of elimination, there could only be one answer. ‘Am I looking through Atelier’s perspective?’ As Kurushimi waited in anticipation for a response, she was suddenly pulled out and found herself back on the ground where she had passed out. She groaned, attempting to stand herself which caused Voice-san and Atelier to look her way. There was still a faint ringing in her head but her vision was slowly returning back to normal.

“You’re awake, are you okay? what happened to you?” Atelier asked.

“I’m okay for now… As for what happened, I have no clue.” Kurushimi replied, coughing a little before noticing the appearance of a system panel. Two to be exact. One stated the stats she had gained from the aberrant, + 7 in all stats. And the other one...

[Skill updated: ‘What’s yours is mine’]

Devour memory: Now when ‘what’s yours is mine’ is used against a target, there is a chance to steal a portion of the target’s memory. The chance of this activating and the amount of memory stolen depends on the level of the skill, ‘what’s yours is mine’.

‘My unique skill updated, huh?’ Kurushimi thought to herself whilst looking over the system message. This mostly explained the experience she just went through, a new addition to what’s yours is mine. This was now the second time what’s yours is mine had gotten a new addition, showing the unique skill really deserved to be called as such. Although, Kurushimi still hadn’t seen the first addition to the skill work yet…

‘But it’s supposed to steal the target’s memory, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure that memory didn’t belong to the aberrant…’ In the end, the most likely conclusion was that the memory she had seen was from Atelier. There was a lot to think about there, like why was there another version of herself there? Who were the people fighting Atelier and herself? Why were they even fighting?

Kurushimi looked over towards Atelier. Although she could tell her about the memory, Kurushimi thought it would probably be best to keep it to herself for now. She didn’t know how Atelier would react after finding out she had peaked into one of her memories and most of all… It was too confusing! ‘If it was a memory, it should have happened in the past. Then how come I don’t remember anything about it?! Also, my hair had grown and I looked older! Wouldn’t that imply the memory took place in the future? That doesn’t make sense! It’s supposed to be a memory so it should take place in the past, shouldn’t it?!’ After a fair bit of internal shouting, she decided it would be best to drop it for a bit.

“Looks like I got a new skill update. I’m fine now, so I’m going to steal the rest of these guys' stats~” Kurushimi said, stretching a little before glancing around the area at the aberrant remains. Unlike most of the times she killed a big group, the remains were very much not intact and hard to differentiate. Which meant individually finding all twenty seven of them would be a bit of a chore.

“After that, you’re still going for more?” Voice-san asked Kurushimi, furrowing her eyebrows.

“It probably won't happen again and I was fine in the end anyway.” Kurushimi replied, making her way to the next pile of aberrant goop. The description mentioned there was a chance of it happening, not guaranteed. And in the end, if it were to happen again, she could perhaps see more of that memory and make a little more sense of it. Although Kurushimi didn’t know whether or not she actually wanted to go back. There was always the possibility things would only get more confusing.

“But it does taste really good, y’know? Honestly, I take this out and sell it as food and I’ll become rich. Really gotta consider doing that after I leave~.” Kurushimi rambled on as she went through them, stealing the stats of the aberrants. After hearing the statement, Voice-san once again questioned Kurushimi’s sanity whilst Atelier didn’t even try to hide her disgust. Eventually, Kurushimi got through all of them but didn’t end up seeing any more memories.

. . .

“Hey Atelier, do you know how I can get stronger?” Kurushimi asked as she walked along. By now, she had already left the shrine and started heading over to her original destination, where she had died in the second run. Now that she had gained the map skill after the advice from Atelier, she had a somewhat better idea in which direction she should head in.

“Hmm, ‘stronger’ huh? A bit vague. But the most reliable and straightforward way other than simply leveling up would be skills.” Atelier answered before continuing, “Why are you looking to get stronger? Do you have a specific goal in mind?”

“I want to beat Karshak eventually, but right now I’m training to beat the rock golems.” Kurushimi replied. Defeating Karshak was the main purpose of her journey through the forest and search for strength. However, that was currently unattainable and would stay like that for a while. Kurushimi’s goal right now was to overcome the rock golems, who had been responsible for the last two deaths.

“That’s a pretty big aspiration… Karshak is definitely the strongest monster in this forest after all.” Kurushimi had suspicions that he would be one of the strongest monsters in the forest, but to hear that from Atelier… And that Karshak is apparently the strongest, not just one of the strongest; Kurushimi really cursed her luck! What the hell was Karshak doing there and why did she have to end up running into him?

As Kurushimi was mulling over what she could have done to deserve this, Atelier continued, “The rock golems are also very strong, although incomparable to Karshak. They are a high level for the monsters in their area already. When assessing one’s strength, you should always add an extra ten levels to its shown level.”

“Then what skills do you recommend I get?” Kurushimi asked.

Atelier: “How many skill points do you have?”

Kurushimi: “2200 right now.”

“2200? Why do you have so many unspent skill points?” Atelier asked with a look of disbelief on her face. Kurushimi knew that she had a lot of them reserved but she didn’t think it was that bad. It was just she didn’t know what was good! Buying randomly could result in getting useless skills and wasting points. “Okay, first buy all the damage resistance skills available.” Atelier commanded, prompting Kurushimi to open the skill list and look through the damage resistance skills.

‘Blunt trauma resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Slashing resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Piercing resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Fire resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Water resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Earth resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘Shadow resistance Lvl. 1’, ‘psychological resistance Lvl. 1’ Kurushimi bought all the resistance skills she had already fulfilled the requirement for. It seemed that in order to learn them, she needed to have experienced it to get the specific resistance.

But she was really amazed by the sheer amount of them there were. The list of types went on for so long, anyone who managed to get all of them should be given a medal. “That cost about 800 skill points, so I have… 1400 left.” Kurushimi said after looking over her remaining skill points.

“Since you are going to fight the rock golems, I recommend buying ‘tenacity’ too.” Hearing Atelier mention a specific skill this time, she quickly searched the skill list for it and opened the description.

[Tenacity: Reduces all crowd control effects against the user.] It was an incredibly short and simple skill yet Kurushimi instantly understood its value. Whilst fighting the rock golems, one of her biggest problems was how the ground would shake violently every time they attacked. This was even worse while fighting multiple of them, making it nearly impossible to move. She bought the skill for 400 skill points, leaving her with 1000 left. “What next, what next?” asked Kurushimi.

“Try searching for skills that cost 1000 skill points. They are called ‘superior skills’. At first, superior skills aren’t very much stronger than low-cost skills. However, they get much stronger due to their unique ability to evolve. Ah-! By the way, your unique skill is also a superior skill.” As Atelier explained the concept, Kurushimi started to scroll through the list of superior skills. Atelier continued, “You haven’t been in this world for long, so it’s likely you won’t be able to get any of them. But it’s good to check just in case.”

“Oh I got one!” Kurushimi excitedly shouted out to Atelier’s surprise. “Umm, it’s called… Dimensional magic.” Kurushimi stated the name of the available superior skill. There were many different kinds of them and the one she could get happened to be another magic-type skill, like her blood magic, shadow magic, spectral magic or storage magic. The magic-type skills were already very vague on their uses so what a superior magic-type skill would look like... Kurushimi couldn't help but be excited.

Despite Kurushimi’s excitement, Atelier only had a look of confusion on her face. After holding her chin and casting her gaze down to the ground for a brief moment, she looked up at Kurushimi and asked with a serious expression, “This is your first time in another world, right?”