1 Chapter 1

"O mighty God in Heaven, I pray that I may be reborn in a fantasy world."

I was in my room, meditating, as I focus my mind. The voices outside of my shut door turned to murmurs, then vanished completely as I cut off all sound from the outside world. Though it was less cutting off the sound and more just ignoring the sound until it didn't even register; it was less mystical in nature, and more just ferociously pretending reality wasn't real, which was one of my specialties. A specialty that also reflected itself in how I was pretending to believe in a sequence of gods in hope that one of them was simultaneously forgiving towards blasphemy and also powerful enough to grant my wish to be teleported away.

"O mighty Palutena in Angel Land, I pray that I may be reborn in a fantasy world."

My list of casual deities to pray to was quite long, and included video game characters as a matter of course. The gods of the ancient era formed from fables and oral traditions spoken over campfires for entertainment, so it stood to reason that they were just as legitimate as video game gods, even if the video game gods were created less out of awed respect for the inscrutable machinations of nature (thunder, the tides, etc) and more out of depraved lust for green-haired goddess babes. That said, I was being a bit presumptuous there. Who knew what the ancients were thinking of when they thought up Aphrodite? Perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Anyway, I rattled through a list of about twenty deities of various fakeness before opening my eyes. The sounds rushed back to my ears and I was instantly blasted right in the ear by the roar of some ungodly beast, so loud I found my self falling to my back. My brain rapidly processed all the sounds rushing to me now: clashing metal, screams, weeping, roars, explosions, and most of all, the roar of a massive green creature in front of me. An orc? I looked up at it and saw its axe lifted high in the air. I threw myself to the side, perhaps not gracefully, and heard the thunk of its axeblade sinking into the mud where I had been seconds ago. I scrambled to my feet and looked around desperately.

There were humans in armor wielding swords and spears fighting massive orcs—I already felt comfortable calling them that by this point, call me quick on the uptake—wielding mostly axes. It may have been organized warfare at the start, but by this point it was an all-out melee, with orcs and humans clashing on all sides of me rather than being organized into steady walls. There looked to be vaguely more humans on my left than to my right, so if anywhere was marginally safer than where I was now, it would be there. Directly to my side was a younger-looking guy trying to solo an orc, but his spear had been snapped down the middle and he was being forced to use its tip as a dagger. I got the feeling that he was losing.

I heard the squelch of the axe being pulled out of mud and bolted left, not even taking the time to look back. I wasn't exactly thinking at ten thousand words per second, and I hadn't exactly come to terms with my dream of being isekai'd actually coming true, but my survival instincts were kicking into full gear, and they screamed at me to run in whatever way looked the safest. So left it was, and left I went, even as I heard possibly the dying scream of the younger-looking guy. If I had more time to think or feel anything, I might have felt sad or angry at myself.

I got maybe a few meters away before my feet slammed into something metal and hard. I flopped forward and hit the mud face-first, a filthy puddle splashing onto my face. I leapt up as fast as I could and looked down to see what had gotten me; it was a person, in plate armor. His helmet was open enough for me to see his eyes staring unfixingly into the sky, with a sword held loosely in his hand. The sight of a body made my stomach turn, but I stifled the sickly feeling and grabbed for the sword. Did I think I could feasibly protect myself with it? No, but what else was I going to do?

Skill unlocked! One-handed Blades: Level 1

Oh, great. A GUI notification in the corner of my eyes. It seemed my prayers had been answered by one of the video game gods. I took a second to think that over. This was good. Skills meant I could get stronger through sheer reptition, and if my genre-savvyness told me anything, its that I would level up a lot faster than the chump NPCs currently being slaughtered by orcs. Just get me a wooden dummy, a few hours, and I would be the greatest swordsman to ever li—

An arrow hit me in the side of the head. Don't monologue in a battlefield, kids.

I fell to the side, horizontally from where I had started, and was surprised to realize I was still alive, albeit in agonizing pain. As I groaned and swiped at the arrow on my head, I saw through bleary eyes an orc—the one from before?—come over and lift his axe. This time, I didn't manage to leap out of the way.

I opened my eyes and saw an orc lifting his axe.

Ah, a time loop! Boy, am I lucky that I got put in a time lo—

The axe came crashing down on my skull. Don't monologue in a battlefield, kids.

I opened my eyes and saw an orc lifting his axe.

Ah, a time loop! I thought while leaping to the side. Boy, am I lucky that I got put in a time loop too. Guess that balances out the whole "waking up in the middle of an ongoing, death-filled battle" thing.

The immediate questions came to mind. Did I have infinite loops? Had I just wasted one through sheer hubris, causing whatever video game god sent me here to seethe with anger at my incompetence? Regardless, I knew how things worked. Treat each loop like it was your last until proven otherwise. That means don't monologue in a battlefield.

I jumped up and ran to the left immediately, back to where I knew the corpse was, once again ignoring the probably soon-to-be dead guy in a 1v1. This time I scooped up both the sword and the dead guy's helmet.

Skill Unlocked! Heavy Armor: Level 1

No skill update for swords implied skills carried through loops, which was quite valuable information. Instantly, I had visions of simply fighting that first orc in an orgy of death and violence for millenia until I emerged a max-level god powerful enough to flick a dragon to death. Unfortunately, that violated my recently-established vow to treat each loop like it was my last, so I would be sticking to scrambling through the mud for my life for now.

I put the helmet on and kept running to the left of where I started, hoping the orcs would thin out and the humans wouldn't stab me in the side for desertion. My jeans and red T-shirt with a marginally out of date pop culture reference on it weren't exactly standard military uniform, however, so I figured they would be too confused by my getup to stab me immediately, thereby giving me a chance to escape. Somewhere. Anywhere. I didn't really have much of a plan outside of getting somewhere I could think for five seconds without being karmically punished for monologuing on a battl—

An arrow, probably not the same one as before, hit the left side of my helmet hard. It didn't cut through the metal, but the kinetic force was enough to knock me onto my face and make me feel like I had a concussion. Note to self: Always grab this helmet ASAP. There be orc archers here.

I stood up in a daze, wavering on my feet, and looked around. Particularly to my left. I resolved then and there to kill this orc archer or whatever at the start of each loop to avoid getting a concussion every time. I got the feeling this would happen every time, since it was so early on in the loop. Eventually I noticed a hill and on it a tree, with a small mass of green visibly shifting within it, though it was hard to tell from so far away. Was that my guy? Only one way to find out.

I rushed to the hill, weaving past the groups of orcs and humans going to town at each other. I kind of got the impression the humans were winning this fight, if only because the orcs were so slow and spears are canonically better than axes. Screw Fire Emblem, spears can stab from far away, and there's not much an axe-wielder can do once they have a spear in the eye. It looked like the humans outnumbered them too, what with two or three guys ganging up on most orcs, but I couldn't say for sure.

My thoughts were interrupted by a whizzing arrow. Without even thinking, on pure instinct, I contorted to the side and just barely missed it.

Skill Unlocked! Dodging: Level 1

Sweet. I had played a roguelike once where I got my Dodging level so high I literally went to sleep in the middle of a slime pit and got to level infinite just by dodging their attacks in my sleep. There were so many slimes it was like nine attacks every simulated second, which meant like... 250,000 dodges over night? Anyway, I had good experiences with this skill, and was glad to have it.

Sadly, Level 1 was not especially powerful, and my godlike instincts only helped out once. I got an arrow to the side right as I reached the hill, and it hurt like a motherfucker. Regardless, I finished running to the hill as fast as I could—Skill Unlocked! Athletics: Level 1—and looked up at the tree. There was definitely an archer in there—a goblin, though, not an orc? And only one? Strange. I waved my sword around in hopes of poking it out, but it was too high. In retrospect, I really hadn't thought this through. It was just staying up on the branches, unable to hit me due to the trunk, but I likewise being unable to hit it. I considered climbing the tree, but if that didn't make me a pincushion I didn't know what would.

In the end, I leaned against the trunk and peered down at the battlefield. The left side belonged to the humans, as expected; they seemed to outnumber to orcs at least two to one, and beyond the melee in the middle there were lined-up rows of soldiers, either waiting their turn or maybe just not sure of what to do. I kept seeing a golden yellow flash to the leftmost side, but couldn't squint enough to see what it was among the mass of bodies. To the right was a mass of green, with a mysterious blue fringe at the far right side. Not sure what that meant, but all in all they had a lot less soldiers, and given how spears kick the shit out of asses (canonically), I had to imagine the humans were going to handily win this one given enough time. I—

A flash of green out of the corner of my eye compelled me to leap forward without a second thought.

Skill Up! Dodging: Level 2

The goblin had stealthily climbed out of the tree and tried to stab me. Motherfucker.

I had never used a sword before, but somehow I still swung with purpose and speed. The goblin jumped back and threw daggers at me. I blocked one with my blade—Skill Up! One Handed Blades: Level 2—but got two daggers to the leg and shoulder—Affliction: Poisoned! Ouch. The goblin went to scamper back up the tree, either out of options himself or due to some other arcane machinations, but after a split-second of thought I pulled a dagger out of my shoulder—Ouch!—and threw it at the goblin's back.

Skill Unlocked! Throwing Weapons: Level 1

A hit. It fell back off the tree, screeching, and I stabbed down with my sword to finish it off.

Goblin Archer Defeated!

Level Up! All attributes increased.

That was generous. If EXP existed, my initial cap had probably been 1. Maybe it was 2 now if it doubled every time, which I kind of hoped wasn't the case, since that was exponential growth. Though maybe it also went like 1, 2, 3. I could probably reach my level cap killing goblins if so, but I needed more information.

After looting the goblin's corpse for loot and finding nothing, I sat down by the tree, away from the battle so as not to be spotted, and closed my eyes in hopes of summoning a status screen of some kind. I waited three seconds, for mysterious reasons, but nothing came up. I opened my eyes again and, perhaps due to feeling loopy from the concussion and/or blood loss, decided to risk looking like a total idiot.

"Status."

Nothing.

"Status Screen."

Nothing.

"Check Status."

General Information

Name: Unchosen

Species: Human

Age: 18

Class: Hero (Level 2)

HP: 103/220 (-0.55/sec)

MP: 220/220 (+1.1/sec)

Attributes

STR: 110

DEX: 110

AGI: 110

END: 110

INT|: 110

WIS: 110 

Skills

One-Handed Blades: Lv. 2

Dodging: Lv. 2

Heavy Armor: Lv. 1

Athletics: Lv. 1

Throwing Weapons: Lv. 1

Bingo. A quick look told me a lot, and also had some big warning signs. Good news: There was no LUCK stat, which felt like an immense blessing to me for reasons I didn't entirely understand. My Class was Hero, which all but confirmed I was the protagonist and therefore in for a good time (excluding all the painful death and such). If I assumed my attributes had started off at 100, then I had gotten a flat 10 in all of them from leveling up. A little tooltip appeared when I stared at one, which revealed that STR impacted my physical damage, DEX impacted my skill with bows/throwing stuff/etc, AGI impacted my speed of movement and nimbleness, END impacted my physical defense, INT impacted my magic damage (probably), and WIS impacted magic defense.

Oh, speaking of which. Bad news: My HP was going down at -0.5/sec due presumably to the poison, and it was probably going to kill me.

Thoughts raced through my mind. I had taken a lot of damage on the way here—arrow to the helmet, arrow to the side, multiple daggers to various limbs—but wasn't completely sure how much of the damage was from poison, how much was from blood loss, and whether I would be notified when the poison went away. I had minutes to live, and my best guess was that the bulk of the damage was from poison. The goblin tried scampering back up the the tree to wait me out, knowing I was about to die. Little fuc—

A massive, unbelievably loud explosion resounded through the air. My back was to the battliefield so I had no idea what just happened, but it was unbelievably loud, and fairly hot.

Once the air settled, I timidly looked around the trunk of the tree to see the battlefield, despite the fact I was near death. Call me pessimistic, given the lack of mysterious liquids on the goblin's corpse, I got the feeling I wouldn't find any antitodes in time. Anyway, what greeted me was probably not good.

Devastation, on the human's side. Massive craters and fires burned everywhere, and any numbers advantage they had had was certainly gone now. Some mysterious explosion had wiped out all the reserve soldiers, and regardless of how (canonically) superior spears were to axes, it was hard to win a 3v1 brawl with huge as shit orcs. The remaining humans were being mowed down, it looked like, and that was that. Strange how the turns had tabled so quickly. War was hell, I guessed, and high-powered explosions made all the difference.

As for me, some orcs saw me and pointed up. A few started coming this way. I figured I was dead in any case, but the holy mantra of "treat each loop like it was your last" compelled me to stand up on staggering feet and do what I could. I noticed to the left another flash of golden-yellow amidst a blob of green and red; I got the impression someone was attempting to solo the entire orc army. Perhaps the yellow I saw as the telltale golden-yellow of a spiky-haired anime protagonist, potentially in the process of going Super Saiyan. It was impossible to say, but their valiant efforts inspired me to never give up as well.

First, I ripped out the other dagger from my leg—Ouch!—and threw it at an orc. To my surprise it sailed fast and true, hitting it in the chest and knocking it back. No level up for that, but it took down one of its friends while falling over, which left me a single orc to 1v1. I drew my sword and YOLO'd a charge. It swung its axe down, and I used my godlike Level 2 in dodging to step to the side, then thrusted. My sword dug into its side, but it wasn't an instant kill. The orc roared and kicked me, sending me flying back into the tree. Oof. The sword was still stuck in its side, which left me no weapons.

I stood back up on staggering feet. "En garde," I said, holding up my fists in a boxing pose. I was pretty sure boxers said en garde. The orc, however, was either not a boxer or just hella rude, and instead of returning my greeting it just swung its axe with another roar. I dodged to the side again—these things were REALLY bad at fighting, no wonder the humans were going to win—and grabbed my sword, pulling. I wasn't actually going to try to bare-fist punch an orc, either in its face or its crude leather armor. My sword slipped out with just a bit of hard pulling, which made the orc roar with pain again. This guy was not having a good day, but neither was I. Reason being, before I could even take another swing, I died of poison.