...
Breeze? He thought in his head feeling the wind hitting in places he was not used to feeling.
It was like a dream where he was seeing a 3d model of what was around him, but... The person he was now wasn't himself?
One of his hands grasped tight in a retorted branch and the other naturally went to between his crossed legs when he went upright sitting in the soil of a thick forest with few traces of snow and frost
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the wind, he could feel it, the gentle rustling of leaves and the faint glow of sunlight filtering through a dense canopy of trees. Everything felt unnervingly real—the soft earth beneath his fingers, the cool breeze brushing against his skin—but the body he was in wasn't his own.
He looked down at his hands: slender, almost delicate, with a faint green hue. His reflection in a nearby stream revealed a pointy-eared boyish face framed by pale green hair flowing from his head to his knees, eyes like jade, and adorned with an intricate crown of vines. His facial structure made him look like a handsome noble who exhaled superiority. Draped around his neck was a brilliant emerald pendant, and in his hand, a scepter made from twisted vines with the head unrolling into vine branches with a single flower each pulsing with latent magical energy on his senses.
Memories of his own life felt distant, like echoes from another time. Yet, knowledge surged within him—a deep understanding of the magic coursing through this body, as if it had always been his.
Then it hit him. He knew this body.
It was the "Forest Youth," a premium skin from the game Buried Borne, his favorite dark fantasy dungeon crawler. This was no ordinary character—this was a high-level Sylph, a mysterious wind elemental spirit renowned for its agility and destructive spells.
(AN: I mean Infinite evasion and block barriers of course.)
For a brief moment, he believed he had been transported into the game itself, to the chaotic and war-torn world where the corpses of heroes rose and fell in endless cycles of carnage, challenging the ominous dungeon and its ultimate adversary, the "Ancient King."
But something didn't add up. The forest was too peaceful, untouched by the decay and corruption that defined the game's setting. It was pristine, almost idyllic. Could this be... the world before the fall? The world as it existed before the Cataclysm that birthed the eternal struggle against the dungeon?
That thought sent a shiver down his spine.
Yet as questions swirled in his mind, the realization dawned that his journey here was far from ordinary. This wasn't just the game, nor was it a simple world since he could feel the magic elements in the air emanating from everything in the forest even the soil under his foot.
Suspicious of his situation, but with little to do about it, the protagonist decided that the best course of action would be to get used to his newly acquired abilities to an acceptable degree before attempting to explore the rest of this world. He knew that it would not be wise to rely on luck and wander about without understanding his true combat and survival capabilities in this magical world.
He first tried using the main attack spell of a Sylph: Air Cutter, a spell that creates one to three blades of air depending on the magic level in the game, dealing considerable damage based on 80% of the magical stat. However, using it would end the player's turn.
The protagonist chose a solitary rock between the trees, less than a meter in height and width, as his target, and extended the fluorescent tip of his twisted vine staff.
"Air Cutter!" he chanted the spell, channeling his magic through the staff. He could feel the wind in the environment change as if responding to his presence. The magic channeled through the staff flowed, almost instantly forming a sphere of wind magic that shot out, distorting into a wide, thin blade before striking the rock at a speed faster than any arrow could hope to achieve.
With a light rumble, the rock was hit, receiving considerable damage in the form of a horizontal cut before splitting in two. Upon closer inspection, he could see a smooth cutting surface of about thirty to forty centimeters, before the projectile lost its cutting power and the rock began to fracture and shatter from the kinetic explosion of compressed air, breaking the upper half of the stone apart.
An interesting feeling stirred within the young Sylph. He knew he could shoot dozens or even hundreds of these highly destructive blades without tiring, causing mindless destruction in a picturesque forest like this.
And that wasn't even the most powerful magic he could use, he thought, before looking at a dead tree trunk, void of life except for fungi.
"Sudden Gust!" he pointed the staff and consumed one of his barriers, affected by his innate Sylph ability, triggering damage equivalent to 200% of his magical stat if he were in the game.
The barrier assimilated into the wind with his racial ability, blocking any attack, transformed into an offensive magic. It was as if all the wind within his perception turned into a compressed air cannon, turning the tree trunk to dust as it struck it from all sides, leaving only a cracked stump surrounded by wood powder below where he focused his attack.
The once-lively forest became silent as the young Sylph calmly said, "Wind Shield," recreating one of the barriers he had just used, consuming his last and third magic.
Sudden Gust consumed a single barrier to use. In the game, it didn't require anything else and didn't end the turn, allowing the player to keep using it until there were no more barriers. In this "real" world, it seemed to require about three times the time and effort to use compared to an Air Cutter. The same amount of time it took to breathe in and out was enough to create a ridiculously powerful shield that could turn into an air cannon capable of uprooting a tree the size of a man and shooting it ten to twenty meters, or crushing it into pieces. And that was with his current power level, which, for all he knew, was just a low-level nub at level 1 of 10,000.
The next thing he did was try to create barriers infinitely to check how many he could maintain at once. After a few minutes, he found a limit that should not have existed in the game. He could maintain about thirty barriers active at the same time before he had to focus intensely to keep them from breaking. Even then, he seemed to be consuming "magic energy" faster than he could replenish it—something that didn't make sense in the game but certainly did in the "Lore" of the game world.
After continuing to test these three magics until the sun began to set, signaling the arrival of night, he decided to move in search of a more defensible position, a shelter, so to speak.
He constantly created and consumed barriers, allowing him to control Sudden Gust and make himself float while exploring from the treetops.
Sylphs were supposed to have wings like those of a fairy made of wind elements (Sylphs), but it seemed the "skin" had transformed him into something different from a normal Sylph. Even though his body was practically made of wind elements transfigured into flesh, with minimal weight and air resistance, he still needed something to propel himself if he wanted to get anywhere close to "flying." Luckily, he didn't have to worry about falling and getting hurt due to his racial ability.
Assimilate with the Air: While a Sylph has fewer than three barriers active, all barriers block.
In reality, this ability allowed him to assimilate with the surrounding air. With three or fewer barriers, receiving an attack would cause one barrier to distribute the damage across the entire atmosphere—essentially punching an indestructible wall supported by the very atmosphere itself.
He couldn't test it against a continuous attack, but the barrier withstood both a Sudden Breeze and an Air Cutter simultaneously—a combo that wouldn't be possible in the game, as each would count as two separate attacks, each blocked by a different barrier.
Considering his racial ability, he decided to maintain only three barriers at all times until he could ensure that having more would be worth the risk of not being able to block a meteor shower four or five times (since he could use Wind Shield while barriers were consumed in defense).
After traveling a few kilometers, he finally encountered other forms of life besides small animals and common birds in this new world.
Three kobolds with dog-like heads, naked and slightly shorter than him if they were standing with their backs straight, were gnawing on the nearly bare carcass of a deer. They looked emaciated, with little muscle and their ribs showing, eating parts of the prey that appeared to have been discarded and left behind by another predator.
Or perhaps kobolds here were scavengers? No, that seemed unlikely. Despite their weak appearance, these creatures were monsters that could easily hunt animals and even humans through ambushes.
The three noticed his landing immediately due to their canine monster senses, and they fell into a triangular formation, exuding an air of hostility as they stared at him with glowing red eyes.
Their postures made them look smaller than they were, hunched forward with their legs tensed. They had an articulated, furry tail that, while it didn't seem like much, was heavy enough to act as a counterbalance for their bipedal stance, likely allowing them to switch between running on all fours for better traction or walking on their legs, enabling quick movements and use of their hands to scratch or grab in combat.
Their growls and guttural sounds were unpleasant, like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth.
Observe.
He used the fourth available skill/magic to check the enemy's details at the cost of a "turn."
Kobold Lv 1
Weakness (Low Energy) (Hunger) (Enraged)
Dungeon-Puppet
He used Observe again on the lead kobold, seeing the same information before they attempted to attack him, holding sharp bones in their hands.
Sudden Breeze!
He used one of his shields to form a cannon and hit the kobold at the rear left of their triangle, at the furthest edge of his perception, creating a blood cloud as the monster was thrown backward by the air cannon.
Wind Shield! Sudden Breeze!
He almost instantly recovered a shield and consumed it, causing the right kobold's head to implode in a cloud of blood.
Air Cutter! The rushed vertical strike only left a blood mist on the back of the kobold that switched to running on all fours, recognizing the previous attacks. It was a glancing blow.
Observe!
Kobold Lv 1
(Slightly Wounded) (Fear) (Weakness) (Low Energy) (Hunger) (Enraged)
HP: 15/21
Air Cutter!
The horizontal slash bisected the kobold, which tried to evade by leaping over the strike but only managed to survive a few moments, dragging itself before losing consciousness and dying.
At the moment he felt something, he received Exp, just like in the game, or at least the real-world version of the experience points. He could feel that he was one step away from leveling up and gaining points in each stat.
He tried the Observe skill on the kobolds, but it didn't work after they were dead.
He was intrigued. Dungeon Puppet was a status only achievable by entering a dungeon room that afflicts everyone inside with the "Puppet" negative status, making their choices uncontrollable until they eliminate all enemies and leave the room, or rooms affected by it.
But this monster had that effect here. Did this mean he was inside a dungeon? Or perhaps this monster was a dungeon slave, and that's why it had this status?
Of course, there were other ways to get the Puppet effect, like curses or a cursed item but the Kobold didn't have these on his status.
He set his thoughts aside and climbed back into the treetops to find a place to spend the night.
Hours later, he found a shallow cave nestled in the rocky slope of a mountain, watching the sunset and the stars appear in the sky above the green forest stretching as far as he could see.
There was something in the distance, like a column of smoke rising from the depths of the forest. A sign of a campfire?