When I awoke I found myself lying on the grass and surrounded by trees. Birds chirped from branches, and sounds of wild beasts roaring and howling could be heard as if coming from afar.
There were a couple things that didn't make sense about my current situation.
One, I was supposed to be in the hospital ICU getting a heart transplant.
Second, the air here was so fresh that I could get drunk on it. So I was definitely pretty far from any city.
Third, since when did the 23 yr old me had a lanky 15 yr old body?!
Standing up, I prayed to all the gods I knew that I don't encounter any wild beasts.
"I'll stop stealing so please don't let me die by being torn to shreds by a beast!"
Soon I arrived in a clearing and took a look at my own reflection, to confirm what I didn't want to believe.
My eyes were black, hair the same colour but long and tied together with a thin rope, and I had a little bit of a jawline. My body though was lanky yet athletic. That was good. It was great for escaping.
What I was wearing was weirder. It looked like some sort of uniform. It was a short royal blue cloak with a white full sleeved vest underneath, which had cuffs decorated in silver. The pants themselves were royal blue as well, and I had no footwear on.
Weird. Did this guy lose them somewhere in the forest?
One thing was for sure. I was alive for now, although in a different body. And this time I wouldn't wreck my life by smoking my organs to death. The same couldn't be said about robbing though, that was one precious hobby I didn't want to let go of.
[The host has accepted his new situation. The System is now activated.]
What?
[ The System possesses only three functions for now: Scouter, Map and Storage. If the goddess wills, there would be more functions to come in the future.]
A goddess? Things finally started to click into place now. Something was talking to me in my head and was calling itself "System" and this goddess was probably the one who gave me a second life and programmed this System. Well, sucks to be a diety and have to study engineering.
"Alright, System, what can those functions do?"
[Scouter: Can measure the level and spells learnt of the host and can measure the levels of others.]
[Map: Can display a map pinpointing the host's location and the topography of his location. Can be levelled up.]
[Storage: An unlimited storing space for anything that isn't living.]
Spells? Okay... that sounded interesting. And levels... this definitely wasn't the world I knew.
Thinking so I began finding my way out of the forest with the help of the map. It wasn't much help since it couldn't display the map of the entire forest, but that was better than just following my instinct.
Soon, I was out. There was a dirt road in front of me, with carriages that were drawn by beasts that seemed to be sculpted from stone. And in the distance I saw a large castle. All the carriages headed in the castle's directions had kids my age and older, dressed just like me.
When in Rome, do what the Romans do.
I felt around in my pockets and fished out 3 copper coins that had a coiled dragon carved into them.
I guess this was the currency here. "Hey, carriage! Oh yeah, good. Yeah, just follow those other carriages headed in the castle's direction."
"That would be 2 coppers."
"No problem," and I got onboard. And just as I closed the carriage door, I noticed that there was already a passenger in there with me.
And from the looks of it, she was a teacher.
"What's your name, kid?"