Surviving the Prehistoric Era (1)
Having overcome countless trials and tribulations, you have at last discovered the temple of ■■■!
Congratulations. You are now prepared to undo the seal of ■■■. All that remains is the courage to take that final step.
Reinhardt drew a ragged breath as the system windows flickered across his retinas. As expected, there was something deeply wrong with this temple. No matter what monumental achievement one accomplished, the system had only ever spat out sterile, mechanical platitudes. Yet here it was, transmitting a message practically dripping with emotion.
Why?
That was hardly the only anomaly. The Nameless God, ■■■.
As an active theologian and a professor in the Department of Theology at the Magic Academy, Reinhardt could state this with absolute certainty: a nameless god was an inherent contradiction. A deity's very existence stems from their name. The more fiercely they project themselves, the more mortals revere and spread their title, the mightier they become.
Zeus of Olympus, Odin of Asgard, the Nine-Tailed Fox from the Classic of Mountains and Seas—while there were rare entities who possessed immense power despite obscurity, a god's stature and divine authority were almost universally governed by their name. In other words, the entity slumbering within this temple directly contradicted established doctrine. A doctrine he himself had formulated.
Do you wish to break the seal?
When he lingered at the threshold without entering, the prompt flashed again as if growing impatient. Bizarre, through and through. Dread coiled cold in his stomach. In the study of the divine, an anomaly was more perilous than any known curse—because gods were, by definition, a discipline beyond mortal control.
Thirteen years ago, an S-rank adventurer unsealed an evil god in a newly excavated shrine, and tens of thousands of freshly carved headstones were raised in its wake. That deity had been neither famous nor particularly revered, yet putting it back down had demanded a mountain of corpses.
His fingertips trembled. Was this truly the right choice? The hypothesis that ■■■ was a sealed evil god felt all but undeniable. What made it even more terrifying was that fragments referring to ■■■ had been uncovered in virtually every mythology across history. The deeper he dug into the archives, the harder it became to measure the true magnitude of this entity's threat.
Perhaps he was about to unleash an irreversible catastrophe upon the world... No. That wasn't it.
"Still... I didn't come all this way just to turn back now."
Evil god or benevolent savior, it made no difference. He was consumed by sheer curiosity. If a mystery lay before him, his sole duty was to uncover the truth. That was what it meant to be a theologian.
Do you wish to break the seal?
Reinhardt gave a firm nod.
Thank you.
For some inexplicable reason, it felt as though the system was smiling at him.
"Bullshit. Absolute, unadulterated bullshit."
It had been that hazy, half-conscious state right before falling asleep, when your grip on your phone goes limp and you know full well you won't remember a single thing tomorrow morning. In that dazed stupor, I had been reading a novel. Something about an academy, though the details were a blur. Just another dime-a-dozen web novel. I hadn't even been reading because it was good; I was just stubbornly forcing my eyes across the screen because I didn't want to go to sleep yet.
Still, one piece of worldbuilding had stuck in my head because of how utterly unhinged it was: a chaotic mishmash of every known mythology under the sun. If Mickey Mouse had been counted among the pantheon, Disney's legal team would have slapped the author with a copyright suit in a heartbeat. Those gods directly meddled in the mortal plane, lending their authority, bestowing blessings, turning mortals into villains—all that nonsense.
The protagonist was a theologian from that world who died an untimely death, regressed back to his days as an academy student, and hogged every hidden piece for himself. Standard, paint-by-numbers power fantasy. Ah, right. Now I remember. In his previous life, he had been an academy professor. Right, right.
"So why the hell don't I remember any chapter with fucking dinosaurs?"
A dense, suffocating jungle stretched out in every direction. My brain completely stalled trying to process the shift in reality. Dinosaurs? Seriously? What is this, Jurassic Park? And they weren't even regular dinosaurs—flames were literally billowing from the creature's gaping maw. Goddammit.
Calm down. Keep your head. Stay sharp, and you can survive even in a tiger's den.
If I kept my wits about me, surely I could survive among beasts that looked capable of snapping a tiger in half with a single bite. First things first: take it one step at a time, slow and steady, like punching wood in Minecraft.
I took a deep, steadying breath and whispered the phrase that would inevitably trigger a response if I was truly stuck inside that academy novel.
"Status window."
...Nothing happened.
Why?!
I am not a status window.
A message flickered across my vision, accompanied by an actual voice—clear, resonant, and remarkably pretty. I let out a reflex sigh of relief.
Thank god. The status window does exist.
I told you, I'm not a status window, I'm Belba! If you weren't the very first sapient being, I would have sulked and given you the silent treatment!
"Yeah, yeah, Belba. Just show me my stats."
I'm asking what on earth that even is!
Bizarre. It looked identical to the status windows described in the novel, yet it lacked the actual function? More pressing than that, however, was the fact that I had no clue how far back in time I had been dropped. Her remark about being the 'first sapient being' gave me a rough idea, but...
"Belba, what year is it?"
No such standard exists. It has been approximately three years and two months since this world was created.
"What about Zeus? Odin?"
...Are those names of something? I don't recognize them.
Hmm...
Belba had manifested the moment I arrived here, meaning she wasn't tethered to a physical location. If someone like her claimed ignorance, it was almost certainly true. Setting aside whether she was entirely trustworthy, disbelieving her words wouldn't change my circumstances anyway. In other words, there are no humans in this world besides me.
If my guess was right, this era predated the very emergence of the entities revered as 'gods' in the novel. The full weight of the situation finally slammed into me: I had opened my eyes in the unfathomably distant past. Isn't this scale just a little too absurd?
...First, I need to get a grip on this suffocating helplessness.
Belba proved to be far better company than I had anticipated. At the very least, she made for a decent counselor.
Therefore, there is no way for you to return.
Hardly the answer I wanted, but being able to vent my situation to someone settled my nerves. In a miserable predicament like this, having even a single conversational partner was a blessing—even if that partner was a bizarre notification window of unknown origin.
"Belba, can you express my physical condition in numerical values?"
If it's just that, of course I can.
Before long, something that could passably be called a status window materialized before my eyes.
A uniform row of ones. When I pressed Belba for details, she mentioned she hadn't bothered displaying decimal points. In other words, whether it was raw muscle or endurance, all my stats were pitifully mediocre. Being a low-level scrub truly was miserable.
More than that, the question marks in the name slot caught my eye. Belba piped up before I could ask.
That appears because I don't know your name yet. Just tell me what you'd like to be called, and I'll fill it in for you.
...A name.
"Yoo Yeon-ah."
It was my original name, not that I had ever been particularly fond of it. My father had been an obsessive fan of figure skater Kim Yuna, which led to him saddling me with it without a second thought. People were invariably startled by the feminine ring whenever they heard it for the first time, and it had been a lingering source of stress throughout my school days. Yet standing here now, I couldn't help but wonder if my old man had possessed some terrifying degree of foresight.
Setting your name to Yoo Yeon-ah, then.
A soft glow shimmered, and the question marks were replaced by the name Yoo Yeon-ah. Fascinating as that was, my lower back was throbbing from squatting for so long. For three whole hours, I hadn't dared to step out of this thick brush.
My shoulders ached with a dull, persistent stiffness. Having two heavy sandbags suddenly attached to my chest—weights I had never carried in my entire life—brought a wave of sheer physical exhaustion, even though I was doing nothing but crouching still. Given how chaotic my arrival in this prehistoric wilderness had been, the realization had taken a backseat until now, but the physical transformation wrought upon my body was dramatic.
It's nothing out of the ordinary, really. There must be an immense, profound difference between where you lived and this realm. In the process of crossing over, your vessel simply adapted into a form better suited for survival, that's all.
Yeah, well, normal humans don't just spontaneously morph into women. Still, scrutinizing common sense right now would only give me a headache. That was a luxury to ponder once I had room to breathe. Right now, I was an inch from death; I had no time to whine.
Just moments ago, some raptor-like beast had sniffed around right in front of my hiding spot before barely passing by. It had scythe-like blades dozens of centimeters long protruding from its legs. If it had spotted me, I would have been shredded on the spot. Even if I still possessed the full physical prowess of an adult human male, the only things I could hope to beat in a brawl would be a monster's hatchling or small vermin.
So I had to hold my breath. No matter how miserable, no matter how degrading it felt, I had to grit my teeth and endure. Just one opportunity. If I could seize a single opening, the next step would be easier, and more chances would follow. Belba had guaranteed as much.
That is correct. You possess the power to absorb the physical attributes and special traits of whatever you kill.
The quintessential, wildly broken cheat ability often dubbed 'Predation' in web novels. According to Belba, a few of those beasts out there were born with similar traits, but regardless, this was a massive stroke of luck. At the very least, it gave me a thread of hope to cling to.
I gently massaged my stiff thighs, shoulders, and wrists while holding my breath and waiting. Perhaps owing to the slow trickle of adrenaline, the ache wasn't as agonizing as before. Having something immediate to focus on truly makes a difference; it keeps you from sinking into fury and despair, wallowing in resentment over things that have already come to pass.
When I was eighteen, I received a phone call telling me my parents had died in a car accident. At first, I assumed it was a scam. But then neither of them picked up when I frantically dialed their numbers. My father had always kept his phone on vibrate and my mother on ring, making it impossible for both to ignore a call at the same time.
Suddenly, that distant day overlapped with this one.
A suffocating helplessness that felt impossible to overcome. A crushing weight on the chest. A terror that choked the throat. Fortunately, I already knew how to survive it. Stop overthinking. Fill life with tiny, immediate goals. And keep driving yourself forward, step by relentless step.
Now! This is your chance!
Because I knew that if I did, a moment would come when all of this was left behind in the dust.