I was about to enter the chat when my body suddenly jerked and a strong wave of disorientation washed over me.
It was "that feeling", a mix of depersonalization, surreal detachment, and deja vu.
For a couple of seconds it was as if my brain had begun to reboot.
Then I slowly looked around, as if for the first time trying to make sense where I am, and of what the hell was going on.
I had lost part of my memory. Found myself in a meadow. With the System. And a multiverse chat with three girls from different worlds.
Absurd. And yet, from now on, this was my reality. Countless unanswered questions flooded my mind, starting from - why?
The answer that felt most familiar to me was - out of interest of some entities.
But what could possibly be interesting about an ordinary guy passively standing in the middle of a field? Nothing.
Which suggests that the interest lies beyond the hills or tied to the girls in the chat.
The first almost certainly means "you are the chosen one, therefore suffer" dangers.
While the second hints at intimacy.
Because adventures and femininity are fundamentally about exactly such things.
About... Not exactly, yet almost... Hunting and Relationships.
I let out a small cackle and shook my head from side to side, concluding that I was procrastinating. Or rather, my disorientation caused me to constantly shift from one form of mental procrastination to another.
But is that really so bad?
From a certain point of view, procrastination is subconscious slowdown in situations with dangerously insufficient information, for accumulation of more of it.
Right now, I lack sufficient information about anything. So it's natural that, before taking any action, my brain would try to fill in as many blanks as possible through chaotic, but rapid, inference.
Which should be overall rather normal behavior.
In Minesweeper, if the minefield is completely obscured, it's best to spread probing. To outline the general outlines of minefield.
When lost, it's best to identify as many landmarks as possible.
When arranging facts on an investigation board, the best approach is to first place all available facts, and only then try to find the relationships between them.
Also, didn't Schopenhauer said that understanding is causality, and causality begins with perception? Isn't self-perception also a part of such perception?
Anyway, my brain struggling to cope with the chaotic coordinates and is trying at least somehow, to sort them before putting them to use?
Fine. This is still far better than a multitude of far worse alternatives. Many people in my place would simply sit and cry, or scream, or do other things which people do when they lose their grip on reality.
After patting myself on the back for rationalization my procrastination, I entered the chat in search of new questions and answers.
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⚜️Max⚜️ I'm back.
🔮Bella🔮▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Astra was rude to me!
🌟Astra🌟 Hey! I wasn't rude to her! Look at the logs! I asked about her world, and she called me a wench!
🔮Bella🔮 ▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: Don't twist it! Yes, I did say "your behavior is unbecoming of a lady, please don't act like a wench." However, only after many of your inappropriate "jokes"!▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Do you think she behaves like a decent maiden?
🌟Astra🌟 Pay attention to the chat! I'm almost a princess!
{{{ Why does this feel even more surreal than using extradimensional space? }}}
⚜️Max⚜️ When I have time, I'll look through everything. Here's what I rolled. What do you think?
....
....
....
🌟Astra🌟
Enginseer will lead you to civilization! You have shoelaces, right? It's almost a cat-string!
Multishot. Once item transfer kicks in, I can pass you my training bow. And the other girls will eventually find something that can help you with magical arrows. Do you see any puddles around? If you pick up Fishing skill, you could try training bow skills by shooting worms in water.
Casual Wear. I can snag you some leather armor. Perhaps even chain mail. Before this... I know! You have some trees nearby? I once saw bark armor in a cartoon. With Casual Wear, it should work like a charm.
Iron Limbs also should help against wolves, though I'm not sure how much. Isn't the skin too thin for this ability to make a real difference?
Treasure Hunting: sight. If you are some sort of novel protagonist, this will definitely give you a lot of good loot! Alas, probably only once. Afterward you'll likely forget the ability even exists. However, I don't think that such forgetfulness would affect the main plot. Except, perhaps, of "Did you think I forgot? I didn't forget!" cool resolution moments. But these kinds of moments only happen in long novels. And for this you need to take...
Unmatched in style Squirrel Familiars! "Hey, who are you?" "I'm the Squirrel man, I command squirrels! Squeak! Squeak!" Aww. So much cuteness, stupidity, and cringe. So much anime! Exactly the kind of thing that keeps the audience hooked.
Overall - anticlimactic. By any chance, you didn't accidentally offend someone named Rob recently, did you?
🔮Bella🔮 ▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: Anticlimactic?! Free and nearly instant casting of powerful elemental spells isn't "anticlimactic"! I'd give a lot for something like that!
⚜️Max⚜️▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: The outer layer of skin, the epidermis, is really thin, but full skin thickness is about 2–4 mm. For comparison, industrial kitchen knives are 1–2 mm thick. So 2-3mm of good steel, especially with the skin's elasticity, should be enough to stop a knife strike, let alone wolf teeth. Sadly, such protection still leaves the most vital body areas unprotected.
🌟Astra🌟 ▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: Anticlimactic. Meh-meh for mages with identity crisis, high-end Int-build archers, or rich crafters.
🔮Bella🔮▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: I don't understand what you mean by this.▪️▪️▪️💬Max: Is it sensible?
❄️Mei❄️ ▪️▪️▪️💬Max: I support your and Astra's opinions about using the Fishing skill for combat. If the Fishing skill applies to all fishing methods and gears, then it should also apply to spears and javelins. I've also heard of masters who used ropes, nets, and hooks as deadly weapons. From your clothes, you can create at least the first.
🌟Astra🌟 ▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: Of course it's sensible! It's refined culturespeak! Alas... The exquisite culture of highly advanced civilizations isn't something one can grasp easily.
⚜️Max⚜️ I think we should stop talking about abilities for now. I'll take what I need, when I actually need it.
As I already said, Fishing, without doubt, is better than other skills. However, even if I could take all 15 skills and abilities, they still wouldn't be enough to cover most of my needs if I'm days or even weeks away from civilization.
Unlike the possibility to acquire up to 30 items.
However, to get them, I require something that is actually valuable to you. All of you. That's why I think I should take the Wooing skill.
Right now, I can offer you only one universally useful thing - information. And I know a lot. Yet, most of such knowledge is highly fragmented and incomplete.
But the moment the Wooing skill gives me top-tier knowledge, I'd obtain a universal and effective way to earn exchange points with all of you, simultaneously, by joint analog of elite etiquette lessons. At least the part dealing with strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of men and women.
No other skill can do that. They are too much niche.
Abilities also cannot provide anything comparable.
I still have my clothes, and there's always a chance that I find something useful for you behind hills. However, all of that require time and risks.
Wooing skill is the only universal, high quality product I have.
Not only for you, but for me as well. Knowledge about social interactions between women and men will be enormously helpful for adapting to new world cultures, and for earning "relationship points."
🌟Astra🌟 I knew it! I knew it!
nasal voice
OH! MY! GOD! I'M! A! ECCHI!!! COMIC! RELIEF! CHARACTER!
nasal voice
🔮Bella🔮 ▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: What is ecchi?
🌟Astra🌟▪️▪️▪️💬Bella: Cannot say. Too indecent.
⚜️Max⚜️ I'll be completely honest.
I'm not ignoring the fact that the System "rolled" as my clients three, if I am not wrong, young women.
Yet, firstly, let me remind you that "Apprentice System" with "relation points" and the "Multiversal Service System" with "exchange points" are shown in the System menu as two separate parts.
And secondly, there are plenty of possible interpretations besides the "obvious" - that I can earn "relationships points" by relationships with you.
It might be accidental. If Astra is right, and universes of my clients have partial "mirroring" in the books of my first world, then the chances of my clients ending up young and female were rather high from the start.
Or, perhaps starting bonuses indeed did give me young beautiful women. Yet, not for any specific purpose. Just to provide a complete range of options and possibilities for young healthy male.
Or, because, for some reason, you need man-related services, like a male perspective about something.
Or something else entirely. Like, yes, there are possibility of our mutually beneficial cooperation by close relationship. However, not between us, which rather questionable because of skewed power dynamic. But between me and someone close with you. Tentatively "protagonists."
⚜️Max⚜️ Even if it turns out that I really can earn "relationship points", or any other resources that would give me a better range of options than I have right now, through romantic relationships with you, I don't see that as a grave problem.
Foremost because I would agree to something like this only if:
The benefits clearly outweighed the risks of a "workplace romance."
Will be safe and sane.
And only after your voluntary consent (in my culture anything consensual and not harmful to others almost automatically counts as acceptable).
At the same time, sorry for bluntness, before I find civilization, romantic and intimacy would be the last thing on my mind. And after I do find civilization, it would be far easier for me to simply pay money for it, than to risk complications with things my survival depends on.
🔮Bella🔮 Sorry, but I don't understand. Why are you talking about relationships? Aren't we from different universes?
🌟Astra🌟 Dude, you can earn points from relationships. And you got a chat with two girls and beautiful almost-princess. For the sake of some "SErvicES." And thereafter literally rolled Wooing.
There's just no room left for "maybe."
You need proof? Here it is:
Your stupid System didn't give you such "opportunities" because such "workplace romance" with us can be Easy Mode for you. But because even with all such "opportunities" it will be Nightmare Mode! With One Life And Timer!
I... Let's just say my rose has wilted, my oyster has dried up, my pussy ate chocolate and croaked.
And we both know what Mei's icy icon means. Even with protagonist-tier luck, the full route from the lake to the jade bed would take decades! For you? No chance.
Which leaves only our Miss Pr~ude~oper Lady, who would faint even at the hint of anything indecent or unladylike.
{{{ WHAT. THE. FUCK. ARE. YOU. DOING!? }}}
❄️Mei❄️▪️▪️▪️💬Max: It's the second time Astra has suggested that something might be wrong with me. What does it mean?
🔮Bella🔮 ▪️▪️▪️💬Max: See! She is doing this again. Such rudeness shouldn't be tolerated!
⚜️Max⚜️▪️▪️▪️💬Mei: This is about an unproven surmise which completely irrelevant at the moment. Please, believe me, it's not the time for such guesswork. I'll explain what she is implying when I have time.▪️▪️▪️💬Astra: I'm introducing a penalty system for you. 3 penalties within a three-day period, and there will be noticeable, long-term consequences. Right now, you have one.
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🌟 Hey! I was just kidding!
Haven't you heard of reverse therapy? Or psychology. Whatever. I helped you with Bella! I turned "No, I'm not that kind of girl!" into "No, I'm not that kind of girl! But, AGRRR, that bitch Astra said I can't be a slut! I will show her how wrong she is!"
⚜️ Even by postmodern standards, your "just kidding" goes too far. Let alone for residents of feudal worlds! How can you not understand that when you yourself live in a feudal world?
If you keep acting like this, you would ruin your relationship with them on the very first day we met.
I appreciate your attempts to help me, nevertheless, I'd appreciate them even more if you asked me first.
🌟 Why should I act the way some stock characters expect me to? I don't want to become besties with them, just set up a mutually beneficial item exchange!
⚜️ Why do you think they'd want to trade with you?
🌟 Why not? I have what they need, and they have what I need.
⚜️ That's not how people behave, especially in traditional societies.
As far as I understand, at first you grew up in a world where you viewed reality through the merged lens of thousands of book and movie characters. Which is generally good via a broader perspective. But not entirely, because too many of such characters came from too much unreal worlds with too much unreal problems, and therefore "unusable in real life" experience.
Thereafter, you became a high noble surrounded by opportunistic yes-men.
Both of those realities weren't wrong per se, yet they are completely outside historical norms and inherent to them "ordinary people." Which always feared and disliked ANY sudden changes. Especially changes that touched their own befits, habits, and cores of their identity - social traditions.
🌟 I don't get it.
⚜️ Your "culturespeak" have a lot of meanings which was created not because they were effective in real life (before and after industrialization), but because they were understandable and entertaining for authors and audience (both predominantly with shallow historical knowledge).
If in your second life you become anyone except of high noble, you would have quickly realized this.
🌟 That's what I'm talking about! Why I should lower myself to the level of their ignorant stupidity if I'm at the same time from more advanced civilization and is a high nobility?
⚜️ I'm not talking about "ignorant stupidity", though you're partially right in this. I'm talking about the difference between rules of social and cultural reality of the almost all human past, and how it was shown in popular entertainment-caricaturish. You constantly cite the second, when the first is completely different and orders of magnitude more important right now.
🌟 What rules?
⚜️ Most important rule right now - necessary for politeness, courtesy, discretion, and other antonyms of brazenness.
Before compulsory education, a huge part of society never experience things like internal monologue, retrospection, planning ahead, or complex imagination. Because these skills arise and develop either through reading, or through very adventurous and risky life. And most ordinary people had neither money for education and books, nor the desire to take unnecessary risks.
As a result, their life was subjugated by very complex, static, fragile even to "wrong questions", social traditions and rituals.
I'm not saying Bella and Mei are the same as those people. But they were undoubtfully raised in cultures shaped by such people. The only known alternative to such kind of reality - printing press, universal education, personal freedoms aftermaths.
Under influence of their cultures Bella and Mei also, at least partially, also believe that ANY sudden changes are BAD. That your current behavior (shaped by the opposite belief - that rapid change is improving adaptation, therefore good) is BAD.
🌟 Don't preach to the choir, I get that they are primitive. But I still don't understand why I should degrade myself to their level of primitiveness?
⚜️ In layman's terms. Since Bella and Mai experienced hundreds of times less banter than you, they react to it hundreds of times stronger, and with hundreds of times longer consequences.
So if they get very upset with you right now and decide they don't want to help you in any way, that decision might stick for months, years, or even become permanent. Get it?
🌟 Yeah, I get it. You should have said it like that from the very beginning. Ok, I will try to behave a little more primitive. Like characters in old woman serials, right? I think I still remember a few series from my childhood.
About other things - I don't think you're right.
If you are time traveler, talks about history would have sense, but dude, we don't time travelers, we isekai MAIN characters! Hence, should behave as isekai MAIN characters.
Sure, you are free to try any untested path you want. Still, I think it's stupid.
If you isekai character, why do anything except of things that worked for other isekai characters? Like trading silliness, risk-taking, sociopathy, lechery, or other audience-catching traits for luck.
No, I get you. I was in your place 7 years ago. But then I realized that if isekai is real, and it is real, I shouldn't pretend it's real only partially.
⚜️ At first, you said you don't like "primitiveness." Then you essentially said it's better to role-play main characters archetypes, which from my position is very primitive. Don't you see the contradictions?
🌟 Perhaps. But not for me! I can role-play a main character and just be me the same time!
I'm definitely from a higher universe! Like those siblings in the movie who found themselves trapped in a black-and-white old TV show world without masturbation.
Or from a higher genre, like it was with Frank Grimas from The Simsons.
But during my first months in my second world, I realized that it would matter only after I understood how forgiving my new universe was of my attempts to change it.
Only once I was sure that I actually had the luck protection and reality-bending weight of a main character.
Of course, even now I believe that I'm a main character. No offense, but my story is 7 years longer than yours. Yet, don't despair! There's still possibility that I'm a side character. For example, the protagonist of dropped fanfic, who had plot armor only in the first and only chapter, and was then picked up by other authors or multiverse entities. There are also a lot of stories with a few main characters! Or maybe we're characters in a collaborative fanfic! Each with our own author!
Anyway. 7 years ago, I didn't want to repeat Frank Grimas fate. So I tried to figure out whether I was a main character or not. Alas, the locals didn't appreciate exalted needs of higher beings, and wouldn’t untie me from the maid even when I sleep! Bastards!
Then I remembered a very important thing! There is one very plot-armored archetype that equally effective for both main characters and side characters! Even better! This archetype allows me to be a more childish version of myself!
So I started behaving as a MAIN character, a lucky side character, and my free and funny self - all at the same time.
Smart, right?
And considering that I'm still not married - very effective!
{{{ She is mad. However, what does it say about me that I can see a kind of logic in her madness? }}}
⚜️ Perhaps, it's my first few hours as a potential character, so I'm not sure whether I can fully appreciate what you said.
🌟 No problem! Don't worry, you'll understand soon! Just don't steal my tricks. Seriously, too many comic relief characters lead to tragedy arcs. Just don't. Also, without tricksters! It's intersects!
⚜️ I won't. You also won't provoke Bella and Mei, okay?
🌟 Yeah, I'll try. Look. I'm sorry that I'm causing more trouble for you. But it's not because I want to, it's because I've spent seven long years sticking to frankness and improvisation.Also, all this time I dreamed of returning to civilized life. So when it suddenly happened, I got a little more carried away than usual. Just cut me a bit of celebratory slack, and I'll return to normal soon.No, now that I'm not alone, I'll even try to become a little more boring, just like you want me to!
⚜️ I already cut you such slack a few times.