Once again, Song Joong Woo woke up unaware of how he had passed out and where he was. He shifted around to feel his surroundings and found himself lying in what felt like grass. So he finally opened his eyes to see a blue sky peeking behind a tree he was laying underneath. He looks to his side and sees grass and more trees in the distance; he is lying in a forest or at least he assumes he is. He looked around more, only to confirm that theory as he saw more of the forest. Wherever the One Being put him, he hoped it was somewhere close to civilization.
After climbing to his feet, he quickly realized something about himself. He was no longer the old man he used to be. No more did his body feel tired, or his bones creak or crack in unnatural ways. The days of liver spots, worry lines, wrinkles, and crow's feet were long gone. And now he could feel his toes and fingers alongside his once-white hair. From the looks of it, he was young again, and somewhere between 16 and 18. Something he hadn't expected since his teen years were some of the worst he could recall.
However, this brought a question to his mind. If he was reborn in a new world, why was he a teenager and not a newborn baby in some random woman's arms? Then again, this is the best outcome. Song Joong Woo didn't know how he felt starting from square one as a nursing newborn with the mind of a 70-year-old man, but he knew it didn't feel right. So he just counted his blessings as he thought of this new body.
As he looked himself over, he noticed his clothing was highly different from what it usually was. He didn't know the first thing about fashion, but they seemed pretty…old. But not how they would fall off him, but more like they were old-fashioned. If he didn't know any better, he'd assume that his clothing was from the Middle Ages. High brown boots and brown pants, a blue shirt so long it came down him like a dress, and a studded leather vest on top of the shirt. Coupled with a thin belt under it, a brown sweat rag on his head, and a green cape that was tied off with a metal clip on one shoulder. He almost looked like a well-dressed peasant, but a peasant no less.
After examining himself, he looked around the forest, finding…more forest. He had no idea where he was or even where he should go, but he liked that he could stand on his feet without getting tired. He liked it even more when he could walk, run, bounce, and jump without a single vertigo spell! It was nice to be young and healthy again! Song Joong Woo ran and ran and ran until his young body couldn't run anymore!
He fell to the soft ground breathing heavily and with newfound passion! He lay there and looked up to the sky between two trees, where he admired the sky he never used to look up to before--watching as the cloud changed shapes and moved by. It was nice to enjoy a silent moment like this. But it didn't last long as a thought crossed his mind--the final words of the One Being.
What did it mean by a new but dangerous world? Aren't all worlds like that to some extent? What was so different about this one? Had he gone back in time? He rolled over to notice a flower beside him as he thought about this. So he lied on his side and began to poke at it while thinking. Something popped up in his face as he did this, causing him to panic and try to scramble away. When he finally got ahold of himself, he was surprised to see a tiny computer window, no bigger than his face, floating above the flower with the word 'Flower' written inside it.
He approached the window and asked aloud, "What in the world is this?"
As if to answer his question, the window closed, and another, much larger one opened to reveal what appeared to be a stat block window with…his stats? It had almost everything one would see in an RPG apart from his name slot, which was blank. His height, weight, hair and eye color, body type, birthday, blood type, and even age which was 18. So at least that mystery was solved. It even had his picture and two boxes, one labeled Skills and the other his stat block.
In order, he had: 10 Strength, 10 Stamina, 10 Health, 5 Charisma, 5 Fortitude, 5 Knowledge, 0 Magic, and 20 Speed.
Well…at least the speed was higher than the rest. So that was good…he thought. Then he moved on to the next one, his Skills box, which only had four. Magic Pocket, Magic Cooking, and…Appraisal? He wondered what that one was, so he touched it, hoping it would give him a clue. And to his surprise, it did, and a new window showed up where it gave a description of Appraisal, which was now at level 1.
Appraisal- grants the ability to know what something is by touching or looking at it.
It was then he realized what the One Being mentioned before. He was now in a world where magic was real and had some of his own! Now becoming thoroughly intrigued, he decided to mess around with the skill. So he thought about the window closing and just like that it disappeared. He returned to the flower and touched it, thinking his Appraisal skill. The window appears back in a flash and with the word 'flower' inside of it.
This would be highly underwhelming to anyone else, but to Song Joong Woo, this was the most fantastic thing he had ever seen! So he did the only thing a normal childhood stunted old man in the body of a teenager would do and touch everything in sight. Everything he touches gets the same one-word window. Flower, tree, leaf, grass, dirt, stone, pebble, boulder, root, hill, molehill, and so on and so forth. he did this for hours until he exhausted himself and flopped onto the forest floor.
After catching his breath, he looked over to another flower and touched it, but this time, something different happened. Instead of getting a vague one-word description of the thing, he gets an actual description of what he's appraising, which he reads.
Wild Daisy- Grows in forests and open fields.
Wondering how this happened, he opened the skills menu and saw that Appraisal had increased to level 2. Now, he could know exactly what he was looking at and get some information. So he did the only thing he would do in this situation and decided to do exactly as before. And so Song Joong Woo spent the next few hours appraising everything in sight until he was exhausted. Soon, this became a trend for him throughout the entire day until he passed out late into the night. When he woke up with the warm afternoon sun on his face, he calmed and controlled himself not to try and do what he did all day yesterday.
After getting up and dusting himself off, he brings up the skills window only to be surprised by what he's done! The Appraisal skill shot up to level 4 over his manic hyperfixation binge. Then he notices something else in his stat block. His Magic score went up by one. From this, he can only summarize that the more he uses a particular skill, the higher the level goes up over time, and specific skills can increase certain stats. From here, he notices another thing in his status window: Skill Tree and Skill Points.
Song Joon Woo had always wanted to get into RPGs but had not gotten the chance in his past life, so he had very sparse knowledge of these words and their meanings. So he tried to open the Skill point window but found he couldn't, so he concluded that it was only to show the amount he had, which right now was about 200. Since he had brought his Appraisal skill up to level 4, that could only mean one of two things: each time he leveled up a skill or ability, he would gain 50 points for it, or he would get a set amount for every level he got with the max becoming bigger and bigger, with the current amount just so happening to be 200.
So he moved onto the skill tree, where a new window opened. There, he saw, as the name entailed, a line of different words he didn't understand that branched out into many different segments. Unfortunately, none of them had a description, and the ones above it were locked away, with a picture of a lock symbolizing it, with no means of seeing what was ahead. So, after browsing it for several minutes, he concluded that he could only know what that thing was when he unlocked it with the Skill Points he collected. But before he decided to unlock things that could potentially be super dangerous or useless, he carefully read through them to see if he could determine anything off the bat.
After another several minutes of browsing, he found something in a tiny branch called Window Clairvoyance. Song Joon Woo knew that Clairvoyance meant clear or able to see through, and the window part must mean that he could see ahead of things in the Skill Tree window! Or he could see through actual windows. Either way, it was a small price, and he decided just to go for it! So after clicking on every branch of this tree, he found that not only did the bottom rung of the tree limbs give him a description when he looked into it, but he could also see the description and name of their advancements directly above them and possible requirements to unlock them alongside the number of skill points needed to do so.
When he looked back at his skill point amount, he noted that he only had about 20 points left. From this and the new, much more straightforward layout, he noted how the higher you advance a specific skill, the more points it needs to unlock it, plus any secondary requirements. So, if he wants to max out any one skill, he would have to do a lot of grinding! He was almost happy with himself for wasting a whole day just to level up one skill to accrue many points to spend on getting this specification.
Since any of the bottom rung and brand new skills required anywhere from 5 to 20 skill points, he decided to save the ones he had in case of emergency. After confirming all this to himself, he vaguely remembered the other skills he had when arriving at this place. Magic Pocket and Magic Cooking. So he pulled up the window and the descriptions for both, reading them as the following:
Magic Pocket- grants the ability to place anything inside a trans-dimensional pocket dimension that the user can only open. Additionally, anything in the pocket will not wilt, wither, or die.
Magic Cooking- allows the ability to produce cooking utensils and equipment that requires no fuel. Current tools are; a whisk, knife, spatula, bowl, cutting board, and oven.
Song Joong Woo likes the sound of these two! With these magic skills, he could have a chance to chase his dream! But first things first, he has to get the materials to make the food. The only problem was that he needed to figure out where to start. Then he remembered the times when he got to watch TV and books in his free time. TV shows on gardening and outdoor survival alongside books on foraging and cooking. All he needed to do was cross-reference his memories, and he'd be fine; adding his appraisal skills would be a snap!
So he tracked into the woods to find ingredients for his start as a baker. Thanks to his leveled-up Appraisal skill, he no longer has to touch something to activate it directly. Now, he only had to look at something, and the window would appear with an in-depth description. After a long search, he finally found the items he sought: yeast on wild wheat growing near a river. Looking at the description, it read:
Wild Wheat- lightly coated with natural yeast that grows wild. Perfect for cooking and foraging. It grants a temporary boost to fortitude when eaten raw.
Song Joong Woo took a grain off one of the stalks and popped it into his mouth. It was unusually sweet with a bitter aftertaste. Very crunchy and very hearty. But he knew he needed more, so he looked around the river bed and forest while not straying too far from the wild wheat. After searching with his Appraisal skill he found fresh wild Basil.
Wild Basil- grows in the forest during the spring and flowers in the summer. Has a natural, soothing aroma. It grants a temporary boost to strength when inhaled and health when eaten raw.
So he picked and plucked as much of the herbs as he could until his hands and arms overflowed with them, leading him to realize his error in judgment. But then he remembered his Magic Pocket and considered turning on the skill. Within a second, a blue portal opened nearby, and without waiting, he shoved every plant he had into the hole! Surprisingly, it grew in size to compensate for the mass of objects being forcefully shoved into it. After all the plants were inside, he dusted himself off, and looking at the opening, he wondered if he could go into his pocket dimension. But after thinking about it, he decided not to test faith.
So he went back to the wild wheat and thought about how to collect it. He considered trying to pull it out for a brief moment, but that would cause a mess and exhaust himself. So he thought about his Magic Cooking and tried to manifest something that could help. As he concentrated, a blue light illuminated his hand, and it turned into a chopping knife. He looked over the knife and swung it around to test it, noting how light it was. It was almost as if it were made of air, but it felt very real and solid.
So, like a fool, he decided to touch the top and run his finger across the blade, only to find out that he couldn't cut himself. He wondered if the edge was even sharp, so he tried to use it on a stalk of wheat. When he did, he swung it so slow and sloppy he didn't think it even hit the plant, only to watch as it and several more around it fell to the ground! He jumped back from the sight, looking between the fallen plants and the knife in his hands! He was shocked, to say the least, but also found himself unusually exhausted from that one sloppy cut.
So he pulled up his stat sheet and found his stamina had gone down by five points out of ten! With this in mind, the only thing he could think of as a reason for this unforeseen backset was that the right tools had to be used for the right job; otherwise, they would eat into him by some nature of the magic itself.
Sometimes, he hated how many rules have to go into something abstract like magic. He sighs, pulled up his skill tree again, looking for something in farming, and found Magic Farming, which would give him a hoe, bucket, and sickle. It could have been better, but it would do for what he needed, so he used ten of his remaining points to unlock it.
Putting away the knife, he imagined making the sickle with his mind, and the blue light turned into the tool he needed. Without hesitation, he began cutting down as much wheat as possible until nothing was left. After wiping his brow, he pulled up his stat block again and saw that he only lost one point from his stamina this time, leading to his theory being true. Now, he had to separate the grains from the stalks while grinding them down into powder.
It's too bad he didn't have a thresher; that would make things much more manageable. And from the looks of his Magic Farming skill, he couldn't get anything more advanced for a while, so he'd have to do it by hand. As for pulverizing it, he would need a mortar and pestle. He tried to manifest one, but it didn't form; it was just a meat-tenderizing hammer from his Magic Cooking. So he looked through his skill tree again and saw the word Alchemy appear. Looking further into it, he found he could summon a simple set of alchemy tools, much like his other two magic tools. With a heavy heart, he spent the last of his skill points and manifested a mortar and pestle with tears in his eyes.
However, just before the window closed, he noticed something strange. He had yet to lose all his skill points; he still had a few left. He was sure that only ten were left, but now there are still ten. He thought this over for a minute before realizing a skill increased without him knowing. So he opened his stat window again and saw that Magic Farming had gone up to level 2. Looking at the skill tree for Magic Farming, he saw that the secondary level had yet to be unlocked but was available for no skill points. He also noted that Appraisal was in the skill tree, alongside many others, and had an upgrade slot for a level 5 upgrade in exchange for a certain amount of skill points.
So, thinking about this, Song Joong Woo realized he could level up in two ways. First is doing any action with the already unlocked skill until it levels up naturally or forcefully leveling it up by unlocking it with skill points and particular requirements. If the conditions aren't met, the skill will simply branch off to the next skill that doesn't require it.
After noting this, he made his first bakery item, fresh bread with basil. So he set to work with vigor and zeal! First, he ground the basil and wheat with the mortar and pestle, separating both into different piles until he had two large piles sitting on a flattened rock he found earlier by the river. Next, he mixed the wheat flour with water. So he placed all the flour into a bowl and went down to the river to grab a bucket of water. Once he returned to his cooking spot with the water bucket, he noticed that the bowl had disappeared and the flour was all over.
He wondered what had happened, thinking the bowl had disappeared or vanished when he left the area. Either way, he manifested the bowl back into existence, only for the water bucket to vanish and splash water on the ground! Song Joong Woo was confused by this and a bit freaked out!
Had he lost control of his magic, or did he not have enough? That could be the case since his magic was a measly score of one. So he tried to manifest the bucket again, only for the bowl to disappear. Then the answer hit him; he could only summon one magic tool at a time. Sometimes he really hated magic, then got a foreboding feeling that this would either be a recurring event or thought.