Agh! Shit!
Pain shot up all throughout my body, like every part of me was being stabbed with needles that were being jammed in with a hammer.
Imagine taking a toothpick, putting it underneath your toenail, and kicking a wall. It was exactly like that but with every fiber of my being.
Luckily, the pain subsided.
That kind of pain was something I never felt before in my life. Nothing could've compared to that sort of feeling. It came out of nowhere, too. What the hell was that?
I was finally able to relax a little bit while staring at a stone ceiling.
Letting out a breath, my eyes widened when I realized what I was really looking at.
"Hmm!?"
Wait, stone? When did I pass out in a place like this? I remember staring at a white ceiling, with a ceiling light in the corner of my eye.
I passed out after that, my eyes slowly closing, allowing me to finally sleep. I was super tired last night, so the light wasn't a bother to me.
What happened to me? Was I kidnapped or something?
I'm usually a light sleeper, so even when super tired, I could still wake up to just about anything. Even a whisper in another room could have woken me up.
I can't just sit here and wait for an answer.
I have to leave, and if I was kidnapped, I had to do it fast.
Slowly, I got up from an old, withered bed. Actually, it wasn't even that. It was a wooden plank with an old, shredded sheet laid upon it.
Sadly, everything else wasn't as easy to see.
I was in a pretty small room, around five feet by three feet. Everything was made with stone bricks, moss covering it from top to bottom; the corners of the room being the worst. Spider webs littered in the corners. A shiver ran down my spine at the sight of them.
God, I hate spiders.
I look around a little bit more, in hopes of finding anything to protect myself. After turning back to the bed, I noticed something beside it.
It was a stray plank of wood.
Picking it up, I can see that it's in a bit better condition than the wood that made up the bed.
I can't count on it being a good weapon for too long. It's obvious that just one hit will break it.
With that in mind, I know I have to get rid of it and search the first person I attack with it for a weapon.
Just a knife would be great to have.
Then again, this is assuming that they would get knocked out after the first hit. I'm pretty much riding on that chance.
My best bet would be to angle it like you would hold a sword, so I did just that.
It was a little uncomfortable to hold.
I noticed that the bottom of one end had a little bit of give to it, much more than the rest of it.
So, I decided to carefully tear pieces of the wood off to have a makeshift handle.
I also took the sheet and wrapped it around to make it a little more sturdy.
"Nice. . ." This should be good enough. There isn't much else I can do to help reinforce this.
Walking towards the door, I opened it slowly, but it made a loud, squeaking noise. I curse under my breath, assuming that anyone near me would come running to attack me.
. . .
. . . . . .
Nothing? Really?
It seemed my assumption was wrong already. I'm now starting to think I'm not actually captured. But that just makes it more confusing. How the hell did I get here, then?
W-Wait a second. . .
Did I. . .
Did I die?
No, no that can't be the case. How am I walking around, then? A dead body shouldn't be able to move.
But, I am doing just that. I'm breathing, and walking around. Did something weird happen to me?
Hold on, this seems oddly familiar.
This sounds like one of those light novel stories.
Yeah, where some poor soul dies, and their body and soul get taken to another world.
That would explain why I'm in something made out of stone bricks. But why am I the one brought here? Shouldn't some businessman or lawyer be brought here instead of me?
Hmm. . . usually, the protagonist of the story has some appraisal skill. Wouldn't hurt to give it a shot, I guess.
I held my makeshift weapon out, and thought of the word "Appraise."
. . .
I expected something to pop up in front of me to show the name and stats of the weapon, but nothing happened. Maybe I should say it out loud? That might be it.
"Appraise."
Nothing again. Not a single thing was shown to me.
So I don't have an appraisal skill. Okay, that shouldn't be a problem.
This just means that I need to use my keen eye to see the value of items. Like a normal human being. I don't need some fancy skill to help figure things out!
I think.
But this doesn't mean there are no skills in this world at all, right? It's possible that there are other skills. Do I have a status screen, at least? Just to see what I'm dealing with.
"Status."
Saying it aloud made a screen appear in front of me.
NAME: Soma Kai
LVL: 1
HP: 30 MP: 20
STR: 10 LUC: 0
VIT: 3 INT: 2
SPD: 10 CON: 0
PATK: 10 (+5) MATK: 0
PDEF: 5 MDEF: 2
SPELLS: 0
SKILLS: 0
Aha! So there are skills in this world? Yeah, it sucks I don't have any to speak of, but at least they exist. I'm also kind of excited that saying "Status" actually worked.
I wanna know where these values came from. I assumed that everything would have been 1, and my MP and HP would be 10 each.
I'm surprised that I have any defense at all since I'm just wearing pants and a t-shirt. Guess anything has some value in this world.
There isn't much else to look at in this, so I close the screen saying, "Close."
It makes me wonder how I'm supposed to get skills. Do I kill monsters and acquire them, or do I learn them by completing certain tasks? Maybe it's both?
Won't know until I try it.
I don't want to risk my life trying to test a theory, but it's the only thing I can do to make sure.
After letting out a sigh and gulping down my saliva, I try to gain any amount of confidence I can muster.
For the record, I didn't have much in this situation.
All I could do was hold onto my weapon and walk around.
I'm pretty sure I'm in a prison. There are a bunch of doors all along the walls leading into other small rooms with nothing but a bed to sleep on. It just made me wonder if anything was in these rooms. So, feeding into my curiosity, I searched the rooms to try and find anything of use. All I could find were old pieces of wood.
But, I did take the sheets and tie them to my person. I tore a hole in the middle of one of them and made a cloak out of it. Sadly, there weren't any weapons in the rooms. Each time I left, my confidence was being sapped away, bit by bit.
Now I'm just hoping that anything with a weapon came my way so I can fight it. I need something other than some old piece of wood. I should have taken the wood from the other cells to reinforce the one I have right now.
. . .
I'm so stupid.
With that idea in my mind, I actually decided to grab some pieces of wood, and take them unto one cell, closing the door behind me. I sat down and took off some of the sheets that I got. Luckily, there were a few loose nails scattered around this cell, which I used to make the final creation much sturdier.
I grabbed two pieces of wood, and took my weapon, then sandwiched them together. I used the sheets to tie then together to keep them stable while I hammered the nails in with a thicker plank of wood.
After a bit more work, I finished the "sword."
It was in the shape of a sword, but it didn't have an edge or anything. It was more like a Wooden Greatsword. I was able to shave off some of the rough edges by grinding the wood against the walls for a while. The handle wasn't all that comfortable, still, but at least I can hold it with two hands.
When I stood up and walked out of the door, my Status menu appeared out of nowhere. I looked down to see what caused it to pop up, and I was a little surprised.
While words were being revealed to me, a voice echoed through my head.
「New Skill has been acquired. You have learned Craftsman D LVL 1.」
Yes! That's what I like to see!
Craftsman D LVL 1 : Acquired after creating a weapon or armor piece. At LVL 1, the item's rank will vary between rank E and D. The likelihood of the item breaking while crafting is 90%. At higher levels, the rarity of created items will increase, and weapon breakage will be less likely.
Woah. If I wasn't careful, then this would have broken while I was making it? Damn, I must have been really lucky.
What caught my interest was the mention of ranks.
I can only hope to assume that E and D ranked items are at the low end of the spectrum. Something like A and B ranked items were obviously at the higher end. This meant that my weapon was either super weak, or just a little bit stronger. Whatever the case, I'll ditch my sword and grab whatever weapon I see.
I have no idea how big this prison was, and I sure as hell don't want to die while in it. I have to make it outside.
My stomach growled at me at an abrupt time. Of course I still needed to eat while in this new world. But there's nothing here that I can eat, and I'm not going to try and eat those spiders in the corner of the room. I'd rather die of starvation.
Well, I'm at least a bit more prepared than before. I'm praying that my sword can hold up to at least a few fights.
If I can find a rat, or something with meat on its bones, I should be fine for at least a little while. But, water is definitely a problem. The human body is only able to survive without water for around three to four days. At most, a human can live without food for about three weeks.
I'll have to either get out of this place in three days, or find water and live off of that until I get out before my three weeks are up. While I doubt the possibility of being in here for too long, it doesn't hurt to be a little bit cautious and worry about the possibilities.
I should focus on getting out of here soon. Hopefully, I'll be out of here within a day.
Just in case, while I was talking down a long corridor, I grabbed a torch from the wall. Another one was around twenty feet or so away. I grabbed it just in case something happened to make all the other torches go out. I needed something to help seeing in the dark.
A bead of sweat rolled down my temple and off my chin. In any other situation, I'd probably be sweating a lot more out of nervousness and with my anxiety shooting through the roof, but I think it might be due to having a sword on my back. I used another sheet to tie it to my back, but I still kept my hand on the hilt in case I need to use it immediately.
Graaaghh. . .
I stopped, dead in my tracks. What the hell was that noise just now?
My torch was held in front of me, and I could just barely make something out of it.
Green skin, pointed ears, big belly, and a mace.
Yep, it's just as I thought. . .
It stepped out of the darkness and into the torch's light.
GOBLIN LVL 1