Chapter 3
Smack!
“Ow! Why’d you hit me!”
“I hit you because it should hurt, you little punk! How many times do you have to fail before you’re satisfied?”
Rubbing my stinging back, I listened to my mother’s scolding. I started to say something back, but the way she glared at me with both eyes blazing made me swallow my words.
Honestly, I had no defense.
After graduating high school, I went to work for a defense contractor and busted my ass for three years. When my alternate military service was over, I quit and started studying for the civil service exam. That was when I was twenty-three.
Now I was thirty.
And I was still preparing for the civil service exam.
I had just received another rejection notice.
“Stop chewing him out already. He’s still young, so what’s the big deal? What matters more is that he doesn’t give up.”
My father laughed from the side and defended his one and only son.
He had always been generous with his encouragement and support.
He was a good man.
I gave him an awkward smile, and got another smack on the back for it.
“Oh, look at you, grinning like that. What are you smiling about right now? Your cousin has already joined a major company and is even getting ready to marry, you brat!”
By now, the cousin story she always dragged out had become unbearable. He was a year younger than me, but he had a solid job, a handsome face, and no trouble finding dates. He was easy to like, too, which made him impossible to hate even when I was being compared to him like this.
But in modern society, a cousin like that was probably exactly what counted as normal and successful.
I was nothing like him.
In other words, I was a loser.
I lived with my parents, studied, worked part-time, played games, watched manga and anime, and otherwise spent my time enjoying every distraction available to me. And before I knew it, I was already a whole fried egg.
Maybe I really did need to get my act together now. Wasn’t this getting dangerous?
At my age, I had accomplished nothing at all.
Every time I looked at the whitening hair on my parents’ heads and the growing number of lines on their faces, I felt guilty.
I felt disgusting, living by draining the life out of them.
The New Year came, and with it my thirtieth birthday.
Like every year, I steeled myself and made a resolve.
And like every year, it lasted three days.
I reinstalled the Yatube app I’d deleted, and instead of opening a book after waking up, I sat down in front of the computer.
I chased the pleasure and entertainment right in front of my eyes.
That was how it went today, too.
After a mountain of nagging and encouragement, I went into my room and turned on the computer.
“Damn, the graphics are insane.”
Then I saw an ad for a 3D action fantasy RPG that had appeared without warning, and I started salivating.
“Ragnarok?”
The oddly named game wasn’t officially out yet, so it was recruiting beta testers.
My eyes widened at the global limited recruitment, and I hit the application button.
[You have been selected as a tester.]
“What? It’s first come, first served?”
The result came back the moment I applied. I’d even won the drawing.
I could start playing right away.
- Son! Come eat!
“I’ll be there in a bit!”
I answered my mother’s voice from outside halfheartedly and kept my eyes on the monitor.
When the download finished and I launched the game, majestic background music swelled and the screen filled with fantasy-style illustrations.
“I’ll just make a character and go.”
Obviously, I picked a female character. Why the hell would I make a male one?
I spun the internal random appearance preset a few times at random, then moved straight to the character trait section.
“Penalty compensation?”
There weren’t many basic traits to choose from, and all of them looked lousy.
Then I discovered that if you gave your character a penalty trait, you could choose a high-grade trait in exchange.
The penalties were all over the map.
Some were simple, like [Allergy]. Others were stranger, like [Missing Limbs] for an incomplete body or [Mana Disorder] for someone unable to use magic.
After wavering for a bit, I picked [Blind].
“It’s not like the character goes blind. I’m the one who still gets to see, right?”
I’d probably find out what effect it actually had once I started playing, but [Blind] was what appealed to me most right now.
- Son! What are you doing? I said come eat!
There was a little urgency mixed into my choice, too.
It was only a beta test character anyway. I could pick at random and it wouldn’t matter.
When I selected the penalty trait [Blind], it said I’d received the high-grade trait [Extra Sensory Perception] as a tradeoff.
Even the name sounded impressive.
- Son!
“I’m coming!”
I didn’t have time to name it, so I hit random generation and then pressed the confirm button.
Now all I had to do was eat and come back to enjoy the game.
That was all I had to do.
And yet.
Why am I getting so sleepy?
It wasn’t time for bed yet, was it?
I couldn’t fight off the sudden flood of drowsiness.
My eyelids grew heavier and heavier as they slowly drooped shut.
I’m going to get hit on the back again.
I remembered my mother calling me to dinner, and my father trying to stop her.
And that was it.
That was the last thing I remembered of my parents.
On some day before I drifted into another world, in a cozy home I missed before I even realized it was gone.
I tore the bars away and stepped out.
With a little force, they snapped off cleanly.
Good thing it was just iron.
“Where am I?”
I turned in place and looked around.
At a glance, it looked like some kind of prison, but for some reason everything was shattered and collapsed.
“There’s no one here.”
My mana field, which was basically my sixth sense, expanded at once.
Within a radius of one kilometer, there wasn’t a single person, not even a rat.
Something was caught under the ground, but I figured it was probably trash and ignored it.
I climbed over the rubble and headed upward.
It opened into a large room.
“Looks like I really did make it back to Earth.”
I found a crushed nameplate lying on the floor, and the Korean word for break room was written on it.
Korean. A deep, aching nostalgia welled up in me and made my throat tighten.
“Mm. Ah. A-a. A-e-i-o-u. Ga-na-da-ra-ma-ba-sa. A-ja-cha-ka-ta-pa-ha. O-yo-u-yu-eu-i.”
I was pronouncing Korean for the first time in decades.
I wasn’t going to use the continental common tongue or the Demon Realm’s Twelvefold Literary Language or anything like that here on Earth.
It seemed better to practice ahead of time.
“Huh? I’m doing better than I thought.”
Was this muscle memory or something?
At first I stumbled a little, but before long fluent Korean came spilling out of my mouth.
“Good. Language is fine for now.”
I looked around the desolate break room.
There didn’t seem to be anything here that could give me useful information.
“What now?”
I was back on Earth, but the road ahead looked hopelessly vague.
I wondered if I had been too reckless in coming back, but thinking about it now was pointless.
“Hm?”
That was when my constantly active mana field caught a presence.
It looked human, but something beastlike was hot on its heels.
“Well, it’s not like I was doomed from the start.”
Now that I’d found a person, I could get some kind of information from him.
I lifted my index finger.
A drop of blood formed at the tip, and I dragged it straight upward.
Rrrip. Boom!
Starting from the ceiling, the structure above split cleanly in two, and warm sunlight poured down.
I leaped lightly and shot upward.
“Wow, it’s a complete disaster.”
When I emerged outside, the sight was shocking.
Like a scene from an apocalypse disaster movie, the city stretched out before me in a wrecked, abandoned sprawl.
“Is that him?”
After scanning the area for a moment, I spotted a group crossing an eight-lane asphalt road.
When I focused my eyes, I could see a strangely shaped motorcycle racing at incredible speed through the enhanced vision granted by [Extra Sensory Perception].
“A man?”
Unfortunately, the rider on the bike was a man wearing a thick mask and goggles.
What a shame. A young, pretty woman would have been better.
Let’s see.
Then what was chasing him?
“Huh, Karitos?”
Two-headed crows bigger than most vans.
For crows, they were too stupid to fly at all and just ran around on two legs instead.
“Why the hell are they on Earth?”
Karitos were monsters that normally lived on the Demon Realm grasslands.
They had no business being on Earth.
“No clue. I’ll save him first and ask later.”
I gave a small jump from the top of the building and hurled myself downward.
My target was the midpoint between the man and the Karitos.
I dropped in on a diagonal and slammed down in one clean motion.
Crash!
I made a small crater with my hero landing.
If I said so myself, it was a perfect landing.
I raised my head with a flourish.
“I have arrived.”
“Aaaah!”
Screeeech, bang-
“Huh?”
It was fine that the Karitos pack had stopped, but a loud noise came from behind me.
When I turned around, the man and his motorcycle were tumbling across the road.
Was that maybe my fault?
“Hey. Don’t die, friend.”
I came here to save you, so what am I supposed to do if you die because of me?
That would be a nightmare.
I hurried over to him.
Blood was running from his head, but he didn’t move at all.
“Hey. Quit joking around and get up.”
I grabbed his shoulder and pulled his upper body up, and his head flopped forward.
“Oh. His neck snapped.”
Only then did I realize I was facing his back.
And he wasn’t breathing. His heartbeat had stopped too.
“Hah, come on. How does a person die just because his neck snapped?”
It’s not like he was some frail thing, either.
“Ah. Right, he was a human.”
This wasn’t a continent occupied by the Demon King’s army. It was Earth.
“Damn, I’m really sorry.”
I hadn’t meant to, but somehow I’d killed a human the moment I returned.
“Kiiokko! Kii-oook!”
“Huh? What, you guys still haven’t left?”
I turned toward the loud cries.
The Karitos were craning their heads in every direction, looking indecisive and agitated.
Most creatures would run without even looking back once they faced me, so had they gotten greedy for their prey?
As I watched in confusion, I noticed that several of the females had swollen bellies.
“Ah. It’s breeding season for you, huh?”
“Kiiok!”
The male who seemed to be the leader let out a loud cry.
The fact that it understood me meant it was a pretty capable specimen for a Karitos.
“Hey, but you’re going to have to give this one up.”
I was already sorry about killing him by mistake, but tossing the corpse to monster food felt like too much.
No matter how much of an asshole I was, if I still had any conscience at all, then as a former human it was only right to bury him properly.
Even if it was a pain in the ass.
“Kiiokko-ko.”
“I feel bad for you too, so I’ll give you something better instead.”
With a nasty crack, I tore off my right arm and threw it to them.
The leader pecked at the arm that had arced through the air and landed on the ground a few times, then snatched it up and turned away without a trace of hesitation.
The other Karitos started running after him.
“You little bastards. Go forth and prosper.”
I know from experience that my body is packed with nutrients.
The effects of [Super Regeneration] would last a long time, so one arm would feed those brats and their young plenty.
“All right, then. What now?”
I stroked my chin with the arm that had already grown back.
I only thought about it for a moment.
“Good. Let’s start with some looting.”
I crossed myself in the directions of the dead man.
I wasn’t entirely sure that was how you were supposed to do it.
Still, may his soul rest in peace, amen.
So, would you mind sharing what you’ve got?