Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)
Volume 1 - Ch 1.5

Chapter 1: The First Village, Part 5

Yeah, thats right. I shouldnt allow something like that to bother me at all! In a medieval setting events like that are an everyday occurrence, so theres no sense in getting depressed over them if it was just a first from many more that will probably come my way. If I wont be able to at least do that, then I probably wont be able to go on living in this world.

I take a deep breath and make my decision.

From now on, this is my reality. A place where Ill have to live from today onward, and in order to live, I will definitely have to get my hands dirty, so I cannot be afraid of doing it. Do whatever it takes for me to survive. And speaking of surviving, there actually is a way for me to confirm my suspicions of this world being a game.

The Character Reset option.

What came to my mind was the Character Reset screen. As if I was sitting in front of a computer screen, I was able to see the images of how all of my stats would look if I decided to reset my character and all of his skills. As expected, resetting all of the stat points and Bonus Skills would be not very effective, because contrary to the character creation process a reset cannot be performed over and over again on one character page until you would achieve a desired result, and all of the changes would be apparently applied in-world without logging me out, so there goes my hope of bypassing the rules set by the system to no-way-fag my way out of this predicament.

So according to the system warning I have received at the end of the character creation process I have made a decision to permanently leave Japan and begin my life anew in another world. But heres the thing: it wasnt exactly my conscious, thoroughly thought-out decision, but rather one made while being tilted and annoyed that I couldnt begin playing already and just smashing the okay icon with my mouse. Had I known it was going to end like that, I would have never clicked that blasted OK button and just moved on with my life, probably to replace myself a new game to play, preferably the one that would be less sketchy then this one.

Anyway, currently I had 1 Bonus Point left to use for some reason. I should have used up all of the ones I had, but maybe I overlooked this one? Ah, whatever. I guess I should just drop the whole resetting thing and leave my character as it is, at least for the time being and change into the clothes the village Chief prepared for me.

But really now, is the way back to the real Japan closed for me forever? If that warning was for real, then I guess that was really it for me. I cant go back and thats final. And oddly enough, that might end up working surprisingly well for me, since I was contemplating whether or not I should kill myself in the first place. Back in Japan, nothing is really waiting for me to return. Not the school where I had no friends nor my abusive shit-of-a-father.

Thinking about it, what was keeping me alive there anyway? Was it the need to see the next issue of all the mangas I was reading or the taste of the meat buns from the bakery that was near where I lived? Because if so, then I have to say: Kaga Michio, those were some legitimately crappy reason for continuing to put up with the dicking that Life was handling to you.

Will I really live in this world? Can I do it? The clothes the Chief presented me with were too large for me and didnt fit me at all. They were rough and itchy and not comfortable at all, just like that ragged towel I had to wipe myself with. I guess another thing I will have to say goodbye to will be the soft and comfortable Japanese clothing I was wearing my whole life. Ehh, its fine, its fine. Just another compromise I will have to get used to. Besides, if all of the villagers were wearing them then that has to mean they are not as bad as they look. I just have to stop being so nitpicky about everything and thank him for letting me borrow his clothes. I tried to use Identify on them, but apparently normal clothing was not considered an item by the games systems. I have to make sure to remember that there is such a distinction, but for now there are more important things I have to focus my attention on.

For the time being I guess I should remove Durandal from the items I have equipped on me. It is a great sword. An amazing sword. A very powerful sword. I fully realized that during that earlier fight.

Which is exactly why it can become the target of thieves or other bandits. If this is a game, then it probably wont get stolen, because it should be safe in the space of my personal inventory, but itll be an entirely different story if this is not a game. For now it is my only weapon, so if I lose it I will be in such a deep shit that I dont even want to imagine it. I think that the best course of action in regards to that will be to sleep with one eye open, just in case someone tried to pull a sneaky on me with their sticky fingers.

In regards to that, I am curious about the sandals I am wearing right now, because technically they are someones property which I have unlawfully appropriated upon my awakening in this world. So if somebody elses sandals can become mine when stolen, then the same can probably be applied to my Durandal. So just like in real life, stealing can go both ways here, except for the fact that if I get my Durandal stolen for me it will be equivalent to losing 63 of my Bonus Points which Ive spent to get it, and if theres one thing I can consider to be my ally in this strange, unfamiliar world, that would be Bonus Points, without a doubt. Those 99 points I have received at the beginning helped me out tremendously in gaining a good head-start, so I absolutely have to make sure I will treasure every single one of them I can get from now on.

Another thing that I have to be wary of is the possibility that those who might want to steal Durandal from me might do it the easiest way possible: by killing me, its owner in order to obtain it, which brings us to the next issue: how is death treated in this world? When I die, will I just be revived in the nearest church or cathedral with a little less gold in my pocket and lowered experience value, or is death treated here the same way as it was in my world, something final that cannot be undone by any means? In any case, I shouldnt be going around with my holy sword on full display like that all the time if I want to avoid trouble. Worst case scenario, I will simply use the reset option to get rid of it. If I wont be able to use it anymore, no one else will!

But wait, will I even be able to just delete it after it will be stolen from me?

Okay, time for a little test.

I tried resetting my character in such a way that it didnt have Durandal, that is by not putting enough Bonus Points in the Bonus Weapons category. As a result, the Ring of Determination which I was wearing on my finger got removed. So its just like I suspected, huh? Looks like if Durandal is indeed stolen from me, both the stat bonuses it was giving me and Bonus Points required to obtain it will be wasted.

After performing another reset to get Durandal back, I just stood with it for a while, contemplating my options here. For now I removed Bonus Weapon 6 from my skill list, making Durandal disappear.

Okay, now that thats done maybe I should twiddle with the Jobs settings for a bit. I imagined my character status screen in my head and moved to the list of Jobs I had available. Currently there were 3 of them.

Villager Lv2

Thief Lv2

Hero Lv1

That third one, Hero was not present when I awakened, so Im guessing it must have unlocked after the battle with the Bandits? I wonder if its maybe because the Chief saw me as a hero after I helped him? All right, lets examine that new class of mine a little bit closer, shall we?

Hero Lv1

Class Effect: Heroic Bravery Raises the value of each statistic by 10 points

Class Skill: Overwhelm

Looks like a pretty good Job to me, definitely efficient in terms of stat bonuses it provides. As for the acquisition since I obtained the Thief Job by stealing a pair of sandals, then I truly must have acquired the Hero Job after defeating those Bandits. Will I have to level this job up by performing other heroic deeds? And I wonder if the stat boosts are going to keep increasing with class levels? Because even at Lv1 its waaaaay better than those of the other two, but I guess that was to be expected from a class reserved exclusively for heroes. As for the other two, the Villager Job grants only a slight boost to the STR stat and does not grant any additional skills to go along with it, so in my book its literally the thrashiest of all Jobs. The Thief Job was somewhat better than the Villager, except for the fact that instead of a slight STR increase it offered a boost to AGI stat, but it also had no skills associated with it. In conclusion, those two starting classes suck so much ass that its actually unbelievable how bad they are.

All right, that settles it, Ill perform the character reset again since I managed to acquire that third Job. This time maybe Ill try to build myself around it and put all the remaining Bonus Points into the experience-based skills. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.