4 Volume 1 Chapter 4: Is this cheating?

(Walson)

"You always go and pick fights for no reason at all! Goodness Gracious... You're not getting dinner tonight you hear that!?"

The old Nun threw me into an old room which had the "Rank-1-Magic-Disable" ward placed.

A ward comes into completion by magic, creating an area that has certain restrictions or special conditions. In this case, the room if a Mage was thrown into a room with "Rank 1 Magic Disable", then they cannot cast spells that are ranked 1 or below no matter how hard they try.

But since I am not a Mage, neither have I learned any Magic (only orphans who are older than ten can take classes to learn them), the ward in this room made no difference to me.

This old room only has a rickety old table, with a moldy "Goddess Bible" set on top of it, and an almost broken bed. Nothing interesting here, a perfect place to hold "irresponsible and naughty children" in the eyes of the adults.

The "Goddess Bible" is a bible from the religion of Vantinom. Vantinom is a religion that worships the goddess of the same name, and is considered to be the most popular religion in the known world.

The Orphanage that I am currently living in is a branch-church of Vantinom, the Goddess is...

Well...

I think we should leave that particular topic for the future.

Anyway, since this room is used to isolate naughty children from the world, the words: "Repent for your actions" is heavily implied.

But seriously, does a normal child have the brain capacity and attention span to repent when even the majority of adult have no idea how to do it?

Since I frequently stand up for Grace and fend off the bullies for her, I have entered this room so many times, that I can safely call myself a regular at the naughty room.

Most of the time, the adults preach things such as "Don't solve things with violence! Tell the adults first!" or something when it happens, but I think all of us can agree that it's a load of bull crap.

As orphans who have nothing - no family, no possessions, no worth - all that we have is ourselves, and our fists. So naturally, we solve conflicts with the limited things we possess.

...

...

...

Oh right.

Hello everyone, I am Walson. And yes, I am breaking the fourth wall to speak to all of you.

My name before my reincarnation to this world is unimportant, so I will just leave that out. My real age... is relative, since my physical body is currently seven years old, while my, err, "Soul" is thirty seven. I died when I was thirty.

Yup, I'm just a kid now.

As for the fact that I have been reincarnated, I personally believe that I am the only person who is aware of that. Although Grace has technically also been reincarnated, she holds no knowledge and recollection of anything, since she was formerly a computer program filled with zeroes and ones.

Seriously though, I bet all of you have read bunch of stuff about how people become over-powered after being reincarnated or reborn. So you must be wondering why I don't seem to be capable of anything special?

Well, it all has to start with the occupation system of this world.

In this world, there are roughly three categories that can define all the sentient species that exist: A Fighter, A Mage, or A Commoner.

... Well, technically there are only two categories, the Fighter and the Mage, with the Commoner encompassing all the other 'less useful people'. There are also many different ways to call a Commoner, such as a Villager, Peasant, Bumpkin, Peon, etc. But most people stick to calling us kind of people "the Commoners". Personally I like 'Villager' best (because of "Testificate"! ... You don't get the joke? Well too bad), but I'm sticking to Commoner.

There exists a special artifact in this world that distinguishes people, it's called the "Stone Tablet of Identification". As the name implies, it is used to identify something.

The way this stone tablet works, is by touching the stone tablet with any part of one's body (or in the case of an object, letting a part of the object touching the stone) will make it start to list off the statistics of it. Things like Health, Mana, Attack, Defense, Agility, Accuracy and Experience Points... and other similar things will be provided.

You heard it right. Basically, this world is just like a big Role Playing Game. If it's not, then it's something very similar to a RPG.

So, by referencing the statistics shown by the stone tablet, one can deduce and predict an individual's future career and occupation. People who are born with higher physical stats will be more likely to become Fighters, and people with higher magical stats will become Mages.

There are also various smaller branches to these two very generalized categories. Mages can be Elementalists, Summoners, Curse Mage, Warlock, etc. And Fighters have Lancer, Warrior, Swordsman, Martial Artist, Archer, etc.

So what about Commoners? And what makes a person a Commoner?

Basically, people who do not have any outstanding stats, and anyone with average stats is considered to be a Commoner.

Nothing in this world prohibits Commoners to train and become Fighters or Mages, but it has been proven again and again, that it will be much much harder.

As for me, I am someone who does not have outstanding stats, and was therefore been labeled as a Commoner. I doubt my former occupation in my previous life would make any difference on what I am in this life, so I just let it go.

"Steve" from Minecraft was nothing but a normal guy with a pickaxe anyway, so even if something Minecraft related was mixed into my rebirth, I guess the best I can end up with would be a miner.

By the way, Commoners also have smaller branches like Farmer, Logger, Worker etc. I have confirmed that Miner is part of the Commoner branch.

As I sat on the almost broken bed in the room, I contemplated on what could be happening outside right now.

I am certain that before I was thrown into the naughty room, it was supposed to be "Chore Time". My chore was to tend to the farm and fertile fields, but since there are so many orphans, I personally doubt that my absence will make a difference.

"No one needs me at the farm anyway." I muttered to myself as I opened my Inventory and took out a Bread.

Then I took out a Crafting Table and set it on the ground. Initially, the Crafting Table was just a small block that was in my hands, but once it no longer came into contact with any part of my body, it swiftly began to turn into a square block that roughly had the diameter of one meter.

I suppose this ability would count as being very special, right? But this does not change my stats on the stone tablet, it did not make any difference in my categorization as a Commoner.

So, my ability allows me to turn anything into blocks and store it away in a special space that only I have access to. I call this space the "Inventory". Yes, yes, laugh at my lack of originality please, why don't you.

No matter how many things or how heavy they are, none of them will affect my body once converted into blocks by my special ability.

Although this is similar to the very over-powered "Hammer Space" where infinite amount of things of infinite variety can be stored, my ability has a capacity limit.

Regular objects turned into blocks has a 'stack limit' of sixty four. In other words, I can have as many as sixty four of something before I have to use up another bit of my space to make more stacks. The stack limit varies between different types of things, and sometimes there are even things that cannot be stacked at all.

And, my Inventory has the space of forty stacks, therefore, forty slots. The first thirty is the 'bag' and the last ten is the 'belt', or more generally known as the Hotbar. There is also the 2x2 crafting grid available, so it's basically just like Minecraft.

As mentioned before, my ability will convert almost anything into 'blocks', and a majority of times, the shape of the item were not anywhere close to rectangular, but will end up as rectangular once removed from the inventory.

An example would be a small piece of chopped firewood. Once I removed it from the inventory, it became a sizable rectangular block of log. This phenomena is irreversible, so I have to be mindful when I want to place things into the inventory.

Tools generally do not turn into rectangular blocks, or gain any 'blocky' appearance like Minecraft tools, which still mystifies me at times.

I simply named this process as "Conversion".

There are other interesting things to note.

When I played Minecraft, I installed the Minimap mod, and damage indicator mod. It seems like they have followed me into this new world and became part of my special abilities.

The minimap allows me to view things with a third person point of view on the map, it also shows me if there are any friendly or hostile life forms around me. The range is a circle that is precisely one hundred meters radius, sounds big, but actually isn't.

The damage indicator enables me to see very basic information of someone else.

Such as,

[Grace

LV3

HP: 12/12

Status: Normal

Title: None]

Not very specific, but its more than enough. Just like normal RPGs.

Currently I have only discovered these two. Maybe some of the other mods I installed made it into this world. But I have yet to discover them. I held immense amount of gratitude for people who develop and create mods when I was alive as a gamer, but now I wished I could worship them.

I munched on my bread as I placed three cobblestones and two wooden sticks onto the crafting table to craft a stone pickaxe. I carefully stole a few pieces of firewood and converted them into blocks of wooden log. And after crafting a wooden pickaxe, managed to sneakily mine some cobblestones from the riverbed near the orphanage.

So, what was I doing with stone pickaxe in the naughty room you ask? Why, I am going to use it to break out of course!

Since I am supposed to stay in here until the next dawn, I could use this time to do things I want without being disturbed.

Such as going for a walk on the mountains.

If I 'mine' the walls, then fix it by placing the block right back into the opening, and Voilà! I would be out!

All Minecraft players know that a locked door has no meaning.

Monsters appear regardless whether if its day or night, but it has been generally approved that night time is more dangerous. So I might encounter a few, but it's nothing to worry about since the most I would have to fight with would be a very low ranked slimes.

So long as I avoid going too deep into the mountains that is.

I really want to experiment my powers and abilities on my own, and I deemed the mountains to be the best place to do so.

As a side note, seven years ago, around the time I came into this world, a new type of monsters seem to have appeared.

They are the "Block Monsters". a.k.a, Minecraft mobs.

I heard this from Father Marbon, the priest guy who held me when I was a baby in Chapter 1.

The sudden appearance of the block monsters seems to be linked to my appearance into this world, so they probably came along with me.

News has been spread that a city in the south was completely annihilated because a large swarm of creepers came out of the local 'Dungeon' and destroyed the city wall, letting all the other monsters into the city in the middle of the night.

Anyway, the reason I want to experiment was because of the other things that I hold in my inventory.

When I was reborn into this world, the items that I held onto in Minecraft came along with me.

I currently have 1 Enchantment table, 13 Blaze rod, 64 Glow Stone (a full stack), 4 Netherrack, 2 Nether wart, 1 Melon seed, 6 Soul Sand, 64 block of red stone, and 13 potatoes.

I don't think I need to explain how showing off all these things would be very bad for me, right? None of them are things that I can casually take out from the inventory.

Sigh... I really wish I have a secret base or something.

I heard three knocking sound from the small window in the Naughty room.

I took a look at the minimap, and saw that it was Grace outside.

I opened the window and said, "Isn't it dinner time? What are you doing here? Aren't you going to go have dinner?"

Grace timidly shoved something into my hands, and left after a quickly muttered "... For you."

Oh, its a piece of bread.

How thoughtful.