Truly Luckless

I spent the whole night scrutinizing every inch of the UI, and barely any information is given on any of its functions.

Looks like I'll have to learn all of this from my own experience or other players.

Standing up from the bed, it looks like this time would be around seven in the morning?

It depends on whether or not this world's time cycle is different from the normal one, but I can see tiny rays of light, so it's time to get moving.

Getting up from my bed, I started walking down the stairs to the tavern-esque lobby.

This room was mainly wooden, with wooden floors, chairs, tables, counters and so on. Most of the furniture was quite simple, and had a pale brown colour in the morning sunlight.

The bartender-like NPC was still washing up, and there were around ten players already down here so early.

Does that NPC even sleep?

Something I can find out later.

Walking through the room, I came across a crying Japanese boy with a plate of uneaten food. He was too busy crying to eat or look around the room, and he didn't notice me walking by.

Is the situation really that bad to these people?

Walking up to the boy, I began to comfort him.

"Listen buddy, if you're going to kill yourself later on then why eat that food? Actually, scratch that, even if you won't throw yourself to the monsters on purpose you'll still die, so why eat that food? You'll die soon enough anyways, so eating those vegetables would be such a waste! Just give them to me," I said with a kind smile on my face.

The boy's eyes filled with tears, but he didn't budge, looking at me with a frown on his face, probably expecting me to leave after one attempt.

Looking back at him, I subtly kicked his calf with my foot, signaling that I wouldn't give.

Still nothing? He's less depressed than expected.

Leaning forward, I stared at him with a cold look in my eyes, yet my face was adorned with a bright and kind smile.

"…A-Alright, I'll go."

"Attaboy!" I said while smacking him on the back. "So hand over that food."

"He-here you go…" he got up from his chair and motioned for me to take his spot.

I always knew I was good at sweet talking.

A small-minded person would think that I'm some cruel bully, "harrassing" that boy because of his ethnicity so that I can see him in anguish, but that is not the truth.

In reality, I am strengthening his will to handle abuse, because there are some people in this world that are truly twisted and will hurt him without any regard for his life.

Truly the world is a threatening place, and fortunately there are beacons of light like me to take care of him.

If he can't handle this light punishment and really does what I told him to, then I did the right thing, because I allowed him to be free from this cruel game we call life, and I did my best to be kind to him.

Overall, this is the thing an upstanding citizen would do to help a boy.

He might even see his family again.

I motioned for him to leave, and he followed my command, walking outside of the building.

Starting to eat the food the kid had left me, I noticed someone walking towards me.

"Hey, you. How could you do that?! You just made that kid feel even worse!"

The girl walking towards me had blond hair, pale skin and green eyes. Instead of the typical starting equipment that all players I've seen wore, she had a cheap brown cloak draped over her equipment. Her shoulders drooped slightly, as if shaken by what she had just seen.

"If you're so worried, then why are you scolding me instead of going to comfort him?" I asked with an innocent face. "You know that if you wait any longer then you won't be able to do anything, and then who would the real murderer be?"

Her eyes narrowed at that, wanting to harass me further, however, she started running out of the inn instead. She quickly disappeared into the sunlight.

I finished my breakfast quickly, before more people could disturb my morning.

As I left the building, I looked across the town.

It looks like the rest of the players were either too tired to do anything, too depressed, or probably both.

There's also those that just didn't notice anything.

So what should I do now? Testing out my newfound strength in stats sounds nice, but I also need information, a task I mostly failed to accomplish yesterday.

All I got was a map in terms of info.

Pulling that map out, I found my position and decided to visit the marketplace again.

While walking there, I heard some interesting gossip from the nearby players.

"Did you hear how a guard died last night?"

"Died? Looks like NPCs don't respawn after all."

"There was also a marketplace that had nothing to buy, and then BOOM! The whole thing got restocked last night as well."

The market was restocked? How did that happen?

A game mechanic? For all that talk about this game becoming "real life", there's a stupid amount of video game aspects to it.

And what they said about the guardsman, did he really not respawn last night?

I can't rely on the information of these people, so I'll just check everything out myself.

Arriving at the market, everything really was restocked. Checking my inventory, all of my loot was still there, so these came from somewhere else.

Let's see if I can steal stuff again.

Walking up to the same apple salesman I met yesterday, I grabbed an apple off his stand and started walking away.

"Please stop, boy. Pay for your apple."

So it's triggered as stealing when I try to leave the immediate vicinity of the shop, rather than when I try to leave the marketplace.

Giving the apple back to the man, I noticed a new guardsman patrolling the area.

I'll try to get some information out of this one as well.

"Hey, you," I said. "What happened to the other guardsman here?"

The man turned to me, wearing the same gear as his predecessor but with a more youthful face this time. Not even any stubble was present on his face, and his brown hair wasn't as messy as the other guard.

"You mean my father?" his face scrunched up at that. "There was… an accident last night. He got drunk and fell off his horse, breaking his neck."

That's convenient.

"So you took over his post?"

"Yes," he said. "Now go. I must watch out for any thieves."

How in the hell did something this major happen? Why didn't this occur the last time he died?

Having NPC's respawn once before fully dying is the weirdest, and dumbest thing I've ever heard, so it can't be that.

I remember the letter I got from the so-called "Cardinal System", telling me that it fixed the "bug" I had exposed, so I guess that's the thing that fixed it?

If that's the case, I don't have much to worry about for my safety. It's like a natural process of this world if what I've seen is true. The best guess is that it fixes any problems in this "new world", so it's trying to make this world livable for players and people.

A good effort, but unfortunately, it was given horrific raw material to work with.

As I began walking away, I simply thanked my luck yet again.

With the map on hand, I have no real reason to scout out the town right at this moment. The map will do for now, I want to test out my strength.

Turning a corner while looking at my map, I bumped into a man who smelled like he was drenched in liquor with bloodshot eyes.

"W-watch where you're goi-ng you mo-ronnn!?"

A perfect chance. I remember there was a duel function.

"What happened, my friend? Your friends died?"

"Sh-shut up!" he said while stumbling backwards. "My wife DIED!"

"Oh? You couldn't protect the love of your life? Truly a drunkard weakling," I asked with a kind smile. "Were you too busy drowning in alcohol to help her?"

I'm only helping him confront his inner insecurities while also giving him an outlet to vent his anger; like a benevolent man would.

"Dun t-talk to me like that b-bastard!"

"If you really want to shut me up, challenge me to a duel. Though, if you couldn't even protect your wife while sober, I'm not sure what will happen when you're drunk."

He seemed to get even angrier at that.

"F-fine! I'll kill you in front of everyone you sh-shithead!"

"Woah whoa buddy, you sure you want me to kill you? It's not surprising that you're suicidal though, considering your wife died."

He started grinding his teeth against each other.

"Alright alright, calm down," I said with a laugh. "Do you want to take this somewhere else? This isn't the best place for a duel."

"N-No need to go anywhere! When you d-duel someone, it sends the challengers to an arena, and players nearby are notified and can watch! Now accept my challenge!"

Wait… is he a beta tester? There's no other way he could know this.

"Alright, I will accept," I said, noticing a display box show up in front of me, asking whether or not I accept "Daisuki's" challenge. "But first, tell me, are you a beta tester?"

"YES! AND THAT'S HOW I'LL KILL YOU! NOW ACCEPT!"

Hahaha, this guy is honestly so funny.

However, considering how much I've riled up that drunk mind of his, and how much he wants to release his pent up emotions on me, even if I spared him he wouldn't give me any information that beta testers are privy to.

Though, I don't regret this decision. This should be the fun I was looking for.

"Don't blame me for what happens," I said while clicking accept.

We were teleported to something of a colosseum, with sandstone floors and seats all around us.

Looking across the battle floor, I saw a five minute timer between us, along with large block lettering saying "TO THE DEATH."

I presume that's because duels can be set to multiple winning conditions, and this man set ours to kill the opponent to win.

I must be one hell of a sweet talker to get a normal man so willing to kill me.

As players started appearing in the stands, I yelled out to the man.

"WHAT SHOULD THE REWARD FOR WINNING BE?"

The man seemingly didn't care, and simply responded with, "WHATEVER YOU WANT! NOW SH-SHUT UP UNTIL I CAN KILL YOU!"

Whatever I want?

While I was wondering what that meant, a screen appeared in front of me where I could decide what my reward was.

HAHAHA! One of the choices is "Everything." What that means is that I get all of his levels, stat points and items!

This man is level three at most, with his beta tester knowledge that's only to be expected within the first day, so he most likely went to a dangerous place with big rewards and got his wife killed, but his levels and loot aren't what matter.

What if I went around challenging everyone to duels? I'm a level ten, I could probably beat everyone in this town.

Well, that can be exploited later. For now, I just need to slaught- I mean, educate this fool.

Choosing the "everything" option, I noticed the stands had noticeably filled up, with lots of chatter.

"STOP THIS! DON'T KILL EACH OTHER!"

"This should be fun to watch." "I hope we can actually see some nice action."

"They're not actually going to kill each other, hahah! I bet it's just a prank on all of us here."

"I didn't know that the duel function did this. This would be a great way to become famous!"

Mostly useless, but there were a few comments worth thinking about.

This would most likely be the easiest way to gain fame in this world, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone made a business out of the duel function.

As the timer hit three minutes, I wondered what I should do, as the stands were nearly filled up.

While I want to test out the full extent of my strength, I can't do that on this guy without killing him in thirty seconds.

I also can't play around with him since that would make me look cruel to the audience, but then again, despite all these plans I was making to keep my reputation clean, who cares what they think?

In the end, I either die, or I'm remembered as a bad guy who killed another player. These people are simple, I can't win with them. So why bother?

While being known as the guy who killed a player wouldn't be the best for various reasons, I can just brute force my way through anything if I want to.

Actually, nevermind. He's a beta tester, having these thoughts of being able to kill him so easily is foolish until I know how strong he actually is.

However, the other factors still apply.

As the timer hit one minute, I wondered what this guy would fight like.

Even if he invested all his points into one stat, it still wouldn't be enough to kill me, and if his stats were balanced? They're too low to do anything anyways.

The only factor I'm not sure of is his skill in fighting itself.

He's a beta tester, so he has more experience fighting with his weapon than me, but does that amount to anything in this reality?

We fight manually in this "new world", so it depends on whether or not the beta testers were assisted by the game when they actually played it.

It's highly doubtful that a game expects its players to learn to use weapons, but it wasn't a typical game, was it?

Actually, nevermind. My base power should be so much higher that it doesn't matter.

The thing I'll get out of this match is information. Whether or not beta testers have actual experience using their weapons, and how I measure up to a beta tester. Though I'm sure there's more dangerous beta testers out there, they probably all have some knowledge in common that the rest of us don't have, and this is my chance to get a glimpse into how they typically fought.

If I struggle or if this is a close match, I'll start power leveling and training my technique as much as possible to make sure I don't get killed by some sober, actually skilled beta tester.

If not, then I have no need to panic, though I'll still train and level as much as I can.

As the timer hit zero, I wondered how I should mutilate this boisterous drunkard.

(A/N: Edited after posting, changes: conversation with boy at beginning tweaked; part where MC questions the revival of the guardsman added.)