Early the next morning, he was startled awake as he had a nightmare about his death and that of his three friends.
'...What did I dream about to wake me up like this?' he thought as he wiped the cold sweat from his head, unable to remember his dream.
'Wait, so that place wasn't a dream?' he thought as he looked around the room while sitting in bed.
"Sigh... well, I really need to find food and water, but it seems for now I need to drink that nasty alcohol." He then took some time to go to the restroom.
...
..
.
'This world sucks so far, how can the protagonists from those isekai shows live in a place with no running water?' he complained as he walked out of the restroom.
'Anyway, I need to find food first, but as the stuff here is covered in mold, I can only assume it's the same in the other buildings as well. Fuck, who put my second life on hard mode?'
'...Now that I think about it, do I have a status like those isekai protagonists? Let's give it a try.'
"Status." Nothing happened.
"Hmm. Open status?" Still, nothing happened.
"Okay, how about system or open system?" He was beginning to feel like an idiot as nothing popped up.
"What the hell, do I not have anything?" he said to himself, annoyed.
'Well, this is just great. I have no status system or a cheat system, so I'm probably going to die... whatever, I never liked golden fingers anyway.' He came to terms with it quickly and left the inn, going in the direction he assumed was west, as he walked away from the rising sun so he could see better.
'I wonder if there was a map in there somewhere?' he thought as he walked down the empty street.
'Doesn't matter, as it was too dark in there to really find anything small like a map. Not that I could read one anyway.'
"God, this place is eerie." A little unnerved by the quiet, he eventually made his way over to a large broken gate with an S on top of it that looked like something big broke through it into the city.
'...Did I go the wrong way or does the big S stand for something else... Well, I mean, it looks like a fancy jagged S with a small circle in the middle and a... What were those things called again, you used them in math for um... Yes, I remember, it looks like a greater than sign connected to it on the left side of it.' He contemplated as he looked at all the destruction around the gate.
'If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, what the hell happened here?'
He looked for a safe path through the destroyed gate, having to climb over large broken stones and wood from the gate, which made him tired.
'Shit, this is almost impossible with the body of a child.' He sat on a rock on the other side of the gate to catch his breath.
The outside wasn't any better than the inside of the city as it looked like a large war happened. There were fallen trees and statues everywhere, along with large craters. But it seemed that the plants were slowly restoring themselves as most of the destruction was covered by grass and small bushes.
'...I'm gonna stop asking now.'
'Ugh... why does there need to be so many trees outside? I just want to go back to the inn.' He thought as he sat there.
'You know, thinking about it, I don't even know what I can eat out in the forest. Like, I have no survival skills. How the hell am I gonna catch any animal, let alone bleed, skin, and cook it?'
'It's times like this I wish I wasn't alone. Then I could complain to someone.'
*thwack*
As he was sitting there, thinking about what to do about the situation he was in, something snuck up on him and hit him hard from behind, sending him flying forward and hitting the ground with a thud. His bag also hit the ground, breaking the bottle and making the rock come out of it next to him.
His blood pooled on the ground as he lay there in pain, not really knowing what just happened.
'Why did I get hit?' he thought as he struggled to look around and saw a goblin with a wooden club in its hand, with blood dripping off it.
Terrified and in pain, he desperately tried to crawl away from the goblin, but it was too fast. The goblin sneered and raised its club, ready to strike again.
In a surge of pure survival instinct, he managed to summon a burst of strength and roll to the side, narrowly avoiding the goblin's attack. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, he scrambled to his feet, his mind racing for a plan.
He quickly pulled out one of his daggers but dropped it as the goblin attacked again, but missed as he managed to dodge.
'Shit, shit, shit.' was all he could think as he pulled out his second dagger and threw it in hopes of stopping the goblin.
The goblin, not expecting the dagger, got hit in the stomach, causing it to yell in pain and drop its club. In a sudden fit of rage, the goblin picked up the rock he dropped and threw it at him, but due to the pain in its side, it didn't throw the rock hard enough, and he managed to reflexively catch it.
'How did I catch that?' he thought as he looked at the rock in his hand that now had some of his blood on it.
Just moments after he caught it, the enraged goblin lunged at him.
Startled by the goblin's sudden movement, he fell backward.
'Shit, I'm I gonna die again?' he thought as he reflexively swung his left arm with the rock in his hand at the goblin.
However, the goblin saw his attack coming and stepped back to preemptively dodge the attack with a wicked and twisted smile on its face, thinking it had won.
As he saw this, his face was one of despair and pain. He wasn't able to stop his attack; he could only helplessly wait for the goblin's next attack. His hurt back caused him great pain as he was attacking, making his swing too slow to hit the monster.
'Shit, I wish I had a better weapon.' he thought as he closed his eyes in pain and fear, thinking of the only weapon he knew how to use properly.
*Thwack*
As he was waiting for death, he heard the sound of something getting hit and the feeling of hitting something in his left hand.
'Wait, what?' he thought as he gingerly opened his eyes and saw the goblin knocked out on the ground.
'What? Why is the goblin on the ground?' he thought for a moment, trying to understand what just happened.
Then he saw that in his left hand wasn't a rock but a weapon he knew very well.
"What is... how is this here?" he looked closely at the weapon that appeared in his hand. It was his weapon from the DD VR MMO RPG game 'Stones of the Divine.'
It was the last game he played before his death.
'Is this my water staff?' he thought to himself as he looked at the short 3-foot (or 3m) water staff.
'...Why is it so small? What happened to my rank 7 Divine Water Staff?' he remembered he and his friends all had high-ranking Divine weapons in that game.
'If I remember correctly, you don't level up normally in that game. You level up by increasing the rank of your Divine weapon... Wait, I don't have time to think about this right now.' He then stood up and saw that the goblin was getting up as well.
'Shit, couldn't you have just stayed down, you yellow-skinned prick?' His body was shaking from pain as he stood up.
'I thought adrenaline was supposed to numb the pain.'
The goblin looked at him with hate in its eyes. Not wasting any time, he moved away from the goblin before it could attack again.
The goblin ran after him, confident it could dodge his strange weapon made of water. What it didn't expect was the human holding one end of the short staff to his lips and taking a deep breath before blowing air into it as he aimed the other end at the goblin.
'Please work, [Water Bullet].' he thought as he tried to use the beginner skill he chose when he used this weapon in the game.
To both of their surprise, the water staff bulged at the end he blew air into, and it moved quickly to the other end, shooting off a small glob of water right into the eye of the goblin.
The goblin fell to the ground, screaming as it covered its bleeding eye.
'Shit, it seems not only do I have a rank 0 Divine weapon, I don't even have my maxed-out skill proficiency. Why is my second life in this world so hard?' he complained internally as he rushed over to the goblin, dropping the staff as he pulled out his third dagger.
'I need to kill it before it recovers again.' With little hesitation, he stabbed the goblin's throat as he held it down with what little strength he had and stabbed it repeatedly.
*Stab* *Stab* *Stab* *Stab* *Stab* *Stab*
He gasped as he finally stopped, after stabbing the goblin a few more times after it stopped moving.
'Oh fuck, I really thought I was gonna die again.' He was shaking as he dropped his dagger and fell over, lying on the ground next to the dead goblin.
'... I should really do something to stop the bleeding.'