1 The Otherworlder

Since the dawn of time, humans have been preyed upon by monsters: Demonic creatures of humanoid and monstrous parts blended in strange and terrifying mixtures, granting these beings power beyond human comprehension.

Some were stronger, some were smarter, and among them resided a few enigmatic ones, but they all shared the same unquenchable desire to subjugate humankind under their dominion.

They captured humans to please their twisted inclinations through rape, abuse, or even consumption. But the Goddess Ilias, unable to bear the sight of her precious humans falling victim to the demons' cruelty, granted them the strength to protect themselves.

And thus, Heroes were born, blessed by the Goddess to smite down these devilish monsters.

The war between the Heroes and the Monster Lord lasted for tens of centuries, starting from time immemorial and still ongoing in the present times.

The Monster Lord spread their kin across the world to attack travelers and adventurers unfortunate enough to get caught in the wilderness and weaken the humans.

And to counterbalance that, the Heroes retaliated against the Monster Lord and fended off any aggressive monster in sight to grant everyone the peace they sought in the past.

That's how it all began, how it was going, and how it would continue in the foreseeable future…

…Or at least, that's what the folk in this city shared with him.

In the middle of a large plaza ─ surrounded by beautiful water pathways ─ a young man was sitting on a bench and staring at the tiled ground with an unfocused gaze.

His dark hair was short, his eyes were green, and his clothes were quite plain. Such details were all shared with the inhabitants of this city one way or another, but there was one thing that nobody else in the whole world had in common with him…

His origins.

Some people were born in this city, others arrived from the surrounding region, but this young man came from a different world! A world where humans were the apex predators, where Heroes and Monsters were only parts of fictional tales…

That was his original world, Earth.

But how did this happen? How could he possibly jump between worlds when several light-years separated them?

Frankly, he had no idea how to explain that.

At one moment, Ashton fell from the stairs because he had accidentally stumbled. In the next one, he woke up outside this city's border walls, with nothing on himself other than foreign clothes that did not belong to him.

That was quite literally what happened.

At first, upon observing the undeveloped civilization around him and the circumstances behind his teleportation, he already guessed what could have happened to him. But after hearing the various knowledge that the common folk in this city shared with him, he was sure of it…

He was a victim of the common trope of "Isekai", a word referring to the clichè of being transported to a different world.

While some people would be happy to have this sort of thing happen to them, Ashton was instead inflicted with a terrible panic attack that brought him down on the bench he was currently sitting on, coping with the fact that he was so away from home.

However, not all hope was lost, as there was a silver lining in these pitch-black clouds, taking the shape of a blue digital screen floating in front of him.

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[IDENTITY]

(Name: Ashton)

(Surname: Cobb)

(Species: Human)

(Gender: Male)

(Age: 19 Years)

[STATUS]

(Level: 1)

(Strength: 158 H)

(Endurance: 164 H)

(Dexterity: 87 I)

(Agility: 136 H)

(Magic: 313 F)

[MAGIC]

(N/A)

[SKILLS]

(N/A)

[ABILITIES]

(N/A)

______________________________________________________

Yes, this thing was just what it looked like, a System!

As a novel reader, Ashton loathed stories involving this trope. For him, they were just cheap novels with no exciting content that liked to push the protagonist to unreasonably powerful levels as quickly as possible. It was like playing a modded game filled with cheats.

But considering the current circumstances, he could find solace in having this kind of support, at the very least.

Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that he was stranded alone in this unknown world.

Sure, he had once wanted this sort of thing to happen in the past, but this wasn't how he wanted it to be… No, that wasn't right.

It was more accurate to say that he didn't foresee the consequences behind that context. It also didn't help that most works and shows implementing this troupe ignored the more negative parts.

But now, Ashton would learn of those consequences the hard way.

With no friends he could lean on for support and nowhere to vent his frustrations, all the negative emotions bottled up in his heart grew with each passing second, to the point where he felt like he was suffocating in his own anguish.

He didn't like this feeling, he didn't like it at all! He didn't want to stay alone in this old-fashioned world any longer!

He wanted to return home! He wanted to be together with his family! He wanted to relax by surfing the internet and chatting with his online friends!

What was Ashton supposed to do here anyway?! It wasn't like he got summoned here to fight against this Monster Lord menace or how that trope was supposed to work… Never mind that, he didn't even know how he got here in the first place!

Was it because of the whims of some random omnipotent being in the 11th dimension? Because of some extremely unlucky circumstance beyond the eyes of science? Or did this world's Goddess…

…Wait, that's right! This world had a genuine Goddess inhabiting it!

As if a light switch had been flipped in Ashton's head, all the dark gloom in his mind got brightened by that detail the local folk mentioned before.

In this world, the deity wasn't like the one on Earth whose proof of their existence was represented by questionable evidence and kept existing through faith alone. But it was an actual entity that not only existed for the sake of existing but also repeatedly came in contact with humans.

One might look down on him for believing in the existence of a Goddess he only recently found out about without genuine proof, but before he arrived in this world, Ashton didn't believe in mystical cross-world travel either.

At this point, he knew that keeping a closed-minded attitude would make things more awkward for him in the future, so he was willing to believe that the Goddess was real, especially if she might know how he could return home.

After all, who possibly had more knowledge and wisdom than a literal God? Even if she might not be the monotheistic omnipotent deity like the biblical God, she shouldn't be by no means stupid.

However, there still was one glaring issue with the idea of meeting the Goddess to solve his crisis… How could he even begin to interact with that kind of existence?

Ashton scrunched his eyebrows as he reflected on that question.

According to what he heard, there were "Heroes" who received the Goddess' blessing and set out to fight the Monster Lord with it, meaning there was some form of interaction between the Goddess and those Heroes.

He could start from there, but Ashton had to research further before making any drastic decision.

Unfortunately, in his conditions, he couldn't possibly access the internet to search for the data he sought… Not like it would be helpful, knowing there were probably no servers he could connect to even if he managed to.

However, that didn't mean that Ashton was utterly helpless. It's been a while since he did it this way, but he simply had to do it old-fashioned, through books and people.

But first, there was something else that took even greater priority than seeking that kind of information…