Vaile kept his eyes open as he hid under the pile of discarded clothing, using a small gap to see out of his hiding spot. The smell of salty seawater that accompanied the fog slowly faded away, as did the fog itself, which seemed to reverse out of the building that he was hiding in as though he was watching a movie in reverse. The way it billowed in through the windows and the crack in the door was unnatural, but what was even more unnatural was how it exited, flowing out those same entrances as if it was a living thing.

As a result, Vaile was very much of the mind to keep hiding in the pile of clothing. He just needed to wait a fair bit longer, as his arm and clothing were nearly restored. The whole process of regrowing an entire arm felt utterly grotesque to him. He could literally feel his stump bubbling and distorting and the nerves that were growing were sending out all manner of signals. What put the most butterflies in his stomach out of all of it was the sensations born from the fact that his fingers and thumb were starting off as little nubbles with barely any bone or other tissues, but they were gradually extending and morphing into functional digits.

It took another few unnerving seconds for the last of the damages to his body and attire to be undone, and in Vaile’s mind, the fact that he was now complete once again could not have been more welcome. As he lay beneath the pile, he remembered that there was an easy way to check if his surroundings were safe. In fact, he felt like an idiot for forgetting about the minimap in all of his haste to follow his gut.

He pulled up the minimap and, lo and behold, the surroundings had no dots indicating hostiles. This was... well… strange. He had expected that the people who had come in after he had ducked away to safety were hostile and that, by extension, the rest of this place would be hostile as well. This did not seem to be the case, as all of the dots on his minimap showed not only no hostility, but they showed that they were allies. Given that his gut had never steered him wrong before, he assumed that there was some sort of trick going on, but now that his body and outfit were back at 100%, he was more willing to try and roll the dice.

Emerging from his hiding spot, Vaile walked over to the door he had entered the building through and cracked it open by about a half-inch. His mask was a lifesaver on more than one occasion, and now it earned its place in his outfit once again by letting him see much farther via a zoom function. The outside was not nearly as empty as it had been just a few minutes prior. No, now it was practically filled with people, a decent number of which somehow did not appear on his minimap at all.

That was… bizarre. But then again, the minimap didn’t show all the random NPCs in a town simply due to the massive processing power needed to tell everyone exactly where each NPC was and what they were doing. Vaile assumed that this was why the number of dots was less than half of the number of people he was seeing. Then again, that might not be the case in this new world, but to be brutally honest he had not really checked how the minimap handled things like that in the few times that he had been around large numbers of non-hostile people.

In hindsight, he probably should have done a few more experiments back in the former Republic of Theien, but it was too late for that now. As the crowd of people went about their business, Vaile decided to bite the bullet and exited the building, taking his chances that nothing would end up happening. And, thankfully enough, nothing did.

He did notice that more than a few people seemed to focus their gaze on him for an unnervingly long period of time before going back to their business, but Vaile wanted to chalk that up to his clothes. After all, everyone around was wearing normal civilian stuff and he was wearing clothes that not even a King could afford. By that logic, of course he would stand out like a sore thumb.

However, the feeling of vague unease still was assaulting him constantly. It wasn’t nearly as bad nor at potent as it had been moments after he got here, but it was still there, always in the back of his mind and constantly nagging him. He wasn’t sure what was causing this vague feeling of discomfort, but he wasn’t about to stick around and find out. To avoid causing too much damage and to avoid earning the ire of the people in this place, Vaile leaped up onto the rooftops and…

Well, he tried to leap up to the rooftops, but instead, he only jumped about as high as he could back when he wasn’t playing a video game. He, at most, got just under a yard above ground before gravity took hold over him and brought him back down to the ground. He tried again, but again he only got a few feet off of the sidewalk before he came down as though he was not in a fantasy world.

Curious about this, he popped open the menu and did a quick check of his stats. Sure enough, nothing in his stat block had changed at all. he was still just as overpowered as he had been the day that he found himself in the new world, which made him wonder why he was unable to exert his body’s full capabilities. He tried to do a few more checks to see how much of his power was being nerfed and discovered that he essentially had the same basic capabilities as a normal human from outside any games. Somehow, right now he was normal; just as normal as he had been when he plugged into the VR games that he played.

Vaile took a look around him and checked his minimap. He was surrounded by people who showed up as allies and many more people who didn’t show up on the minimap at all, and since his physical abilities seemed to be restricted, he decided to roll the dice one more time. He reached up and pulled down the hood that kept his hair from being seen. This seemingly had no effect on anyone, and so he took off his mask and let the full power of his Reversed Attractiveness be exposed to everyone around him.

He fully expected everyone to turn hostile, and if not that, then he expected them to lose their lunches. This did not happen, and instead of either of those things, the people around paid him no mind and simply went about their daily business. And that, more than anything else, sent up massive red flags in Vaile’s mind. He could understand some force or power in the new world limiting his physical prowess, but to cancel out his Reversed Attractiveness? He now knew that something fishy was going on. He knew he was still in the new World, but for all of his abilities and attributes, including his most potent one, to be like this? Something had to be going on in this place, and he wanted no part in it.

It was time to make like a smart person in a horror movie and get the fuck out.