For the last ten days, my ears had been subjected to constant echoes of natural noise, the moving of wind through leaves and the buzzing of insects. The Forest of Death never actually slept even if I did. If it wasn't the wind howling through trees the size of skyscrapers, it was the guttural, bone-rattling roars of monsters the likes of which I was still too afraid to fight, the unsettling chittering of poisonous insects the size the size of skateboards, or the magical, pulsing hum of the Great Tree itself. My brain had adapted to survive such an enviroment. But now...
Now, lying spread-eagle on the cheap, wooden floor of my apartment, the only sound was the drip, drip, drip of a leaky kitchen faucet and the distant, muffled hum of a scooter driving down the street outside.
It was wierd to say the least... It felt wrong.
I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position. The floor was hard, cold, and sticky in a way that suggested I had spilled soda there a week ago and just thrown a t-shirt over it instead of mopping. I looked down at myself.
I was still wearing the heavy-duty, dirt-stained denim overalls I had purchased from the AEON digital storefront. My steel-toed boots were caked in dried mud from the Forest of Death, leaving a trail of crusty brown footprints across my floor. I reached over and touched my left forearm. Beneath the thick fabric of the overalls, my fingers brushed against the massive, jagged starburst scar where the monster wolf had nearly ripped my arm off.
"It wasn't a dream," I whispered, the words hanging in the air of the apartment. "I was actually there. I built a cabin. I learned and started farming. I... I have a goddess waiting for me."
A sudden, fierce surge of adrenaline pumped through my chest. I wasn't just the pathetic, overweight loser of Kuoh Academy anymore. I was Ard Voldigoad, pioneer of the Great Tree, slayer of mutant wolves, and a Level 1 survivor with actual, measurable stats!
I leapt to my feet, ready to conquer the day.
"Alright!" I shouted, striking a dynamic, heroic pose in the middle of my trash-filled room. "System! Open Status! Let's see those glorious eights! I want to check my Innovation percentage!"
Silence.
I blinked. I held my pose for another five seconds, waiting for the familiar, sleek blue holographic screen to hum into existence in front of my face.
Nothing happened.
I dropped my arms, a cold knot of dread suddenly forming in the pit of my stomach. "Uh... System? Online Grocery? Come on, man, don't do this to me. I need a sports drink. I need some Wagyu beef!"
Nothing. The air in front of me remained stubbornly, perfectly empty.
"Okay, okay, don't panic," I muttered, tapping my temple. "Maybe the interface is just bugged. Let's try the skills. Danger Sense, activate!"
I concentrated, waiting for that familiar prickling sensation on the back of my neck, the magical radar that warned me of predatory intent. I stared intensely at the pile of dirty laundry in the corner, imagining a goblin hiding inside it.
Not a single hair stood on end. My magical radar was completely offline.
"Fine. Low Presence!" I yelled, trying to blend into the background of my peeling wallpaper. I felt exactly the same.
"Basic Appraisal!" I pointed dramatically at a moldy instant ramen cup sitting on my desk. I waited for the text box to pop up and tell me it was an unlealthy hazard. It remained just a depressing, moldy cup of noodles.
Panic officially set in. I patted my thigh, realizing my military survival knife was gone. I looked down at my hands.
"Farming Tool! Come to me!" I shouted, holding my right hand out, fully expecting the divine wooden handle of the All-Purpose Farming Tool to materialize in my grip.
I stood there like an idiot holding his hand out for a high-five that was never coming.
"No," I breathed, my heart rate skyrocketing. "No, no, no! Did I lose it?! Did the extraction wipe my data?! Am I back to being a normal, powerless human?! Goddess, are you there?! Pick up the phone!"
I frantically paced around the tiny apartment, my heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. I tried every single skill I had painstakingly crafted over the last ten days. Mute. Mapping. Healing Magic. Critical Hit. Hard Fist. Absolutely nothing worked. I couldn't feel the ambient mana of the world. I couldn't sense the 'Natural Flow'. The rich, shimmering energy that had surrounded me in the sub-dimension was completely gone, replaced by the smoggy, mundane reality of Earth.
I slumped against the wall, sliding down until my butt hit the floor.
"Locked out," I realized, dragging my hands down my face. "The system is region-locked. Or maybe it's on a cooldown, just like the Transmigration Gate. Ten days in that world, ten days in this one. And while I'm here... I'm just me."
I squeezed my stomach. The squishy, soft layer of fat was still there. Despite all the grueling, tear-inducing workouts I had done in the Forest of Death—tearing my muscles and healing them with magic to force my stats to an 8—my Earth body still felt heavy, sluggish, and completely out of shape.
"Great. So my stats didn't even transfer," I groaned. "I'm still a Level 1 meat-sack in the real world. This is the worst isekai mechanic ever invented."
I sat there wallowing in self-pity for a good ten minutes, staring at the ceiling. I had tasted absolute freedom. I had wielded magic. I had fought monsters. And now I was back in a shoebox apartment in Japan, powerless, facing another ten days of the exact same miserable life I had been trying to escape.
But then, my eyes drifted from the ceiling down to the state of my apartment.
It was a disaster zone. Empty ramen cups were stacked like leaning towers of sadness on my desk. Clothes were strewn everywhere, a mix of dirty Kuoh Academy uniforms and random t-shirts. Unopened mail—mostly red-stamped final notices from utility companies and threatening letters from the debt collectors my parents had abandoned me to—littered the entryway. Dust bunnies the size of actual bunnies rolled across the floor.
Two weeks ago, this mess would have overwhelmed me. I would have looked at the trash, felt a crushing wave of depression, crawled into bed, and scrolled on my phone until my brain rotted.
But something inside me had changed, not just in the way I felt but in the way I saw.
I remembered staring down a six-eyed mutant wolf that wanted to rip my throat out. I remembered the sheer, agonizing effort of rolling massive ironwood logs across the dirt to build my own shelter. I remembered planting seeds in the earth with my bare hands and forcing them to grow through sheer willpower and innovation.
"I survived the Forest of Death," I whispered, my eyes narrowing. "I built a house from scratch. I am Ard Voldigoad."
I stood up, planting my steel-toed boots firmly on the sticky floor.
"I am not going to be defeated by a pile of laundry and some moldy noodles."
Without my buffed stats, my body felt incredibly heavy. My stamina was pathetic, and my back already ached just from bending over. But my mind? My mind had an Endurance stat of 8. The mental fortitude I had forged in the sub-dimension remained entirely intact.
I grabbed a massive black trash bag from beneath the sink and went to war.
For the next four hours, I became a whirlwind of hard work and dedication. I didn't have my Basic Woodworking skill, but I didn't need it to figure out how to scrub a toilet. I threw away dozens of empty cups, expired food containers, and crumpled-up junk mail. I gathered every single piece of clothing I owned, stuffed them into three separate laundry bags, and hauled them down the street to the local laundromat, completely ignoring the strange looks people gave my mud-caked overalls.
It was exhausting. By the time I returned and started scrubbing the dirt covered floor with a sponge and a bucket of hot, soapy water, my arms were trembling, and I was sweating profusely. My unhealthy body was screaming for a break, begging me to order takeout and lie down.
"Push through," I gritted my teeth, scrubbing a particularly stubborn stain near the fridge. "If I can push through mana exhaustion, I can push through a little elbow grease."
When I finally finished, the sun was beginning to set, casting long, golden rays through my single window. I collapsed onto my freshly made bed, staring around the room.
It was clean. It smelled like lemon bleach instead of despair. The desk was clear, the floor was mopped, and my clothes were neatly folded in the closet.
It was a small victory, but it felt monumental. It was the first time in two years that I felt like I actually had control over my immediate surroundings on Earth.
"Job complete," I sighed happily, staring at the ceiling. "Now... what the hell am I going to do for the next nine days? Man summer vacation is gonna suck *sigh* I guess I could just spend my days working downstairs."
I dragged myself up, walked over to my newly cleaned desk, pulled out a fresh, blank notebook, and clicked a pen. If I couldn't use my powers, I could at least use my brain. I needed a strategy. I needed a ten-day plan for Earth, and a master plan for when the Transmigration Gate finally reopened.
I wrote down the heading: OPERATION: TWO WORLDS.
Sub-Dimension Goals (Return in 9 Days):
Check the Crops: I prayed to the system that my cabbages, tomatoes, and potatoes hadn't withered and died. I needed to figure out if time moved at the same speed in both worlds. If ten days passed there while I was here, my farm might be overgrown with weeds or eaten by monsters.
Upgrade the Cabin: The square wooden box was functional, but it wasn't a home. I needed a bed that wasn't a sleeping bag on the floor. I needed a proper stone fire pit. I needed to test the Basic Woodworking skill to see if I could make furniture.
Water Supply: The Great Tree clearing was beautiful, but there was no running water. Relying on the AEON grocery store for bottled water was burning through my Yen. I needed to explore the forest and find a river or a spring.
Security Perimeter: The mutant wolf got in too easily. I needed to build a reliable fence around the roots of the Great Tree. Maybe use the Hoe to dig a trench or a deep pit with spears hidden inside?
The Goblin Problem: I had mentioned hunting goblins right before I got sucked back to Earth. If there were wolves, there were bound to be other fantasy staples. I needed to test my Critical Hit and Hard Fist skills on something that wouldn't instantly bite my arm off.
Test the Limits of the Tool: If the Axe gave me perfect planks, what did the Sickle do? What did the Shovel do? I needed to learn all the hidden buffs of the All-Purpose Farming Tool.
I tapped the pen against my chin, satisfied with the list. That was a solid plan for my return. But looking at the other half of the page—the Earth half—my stomach immediately tied itself into a knot.
I drew a line down the middle of the page and wrote the second heading.
Earth Goals (Current Nightmare):
The Restaurant: Café Sunrise. The small, run-down diner my parents had aggressively mismanaged before skipping town and leaving the deed—and the debt—in my name. It was currently closed. I hadn't opened it in a week because I had been too depressed and overwhelmed. But the rent for the commercial space was still due, and the ingredients in the walk-in fridge were probably rotting. I had to go there tomorrow, clean out the rot, and figure out if it was even worth opening the doors, or if I should just sell the equipment to pay off the interest.
The Debt Collectors: The Yakuza-lite thugs who came knocking every Friday. They wanted 50,000 Yen a week just to keep the interest at bay. Thanks to the mutant wolf corpse and some semi-valuable plants I managed to harvest and trade in , I had over 200,000 Yen in my digital system wallet. But I couldn't access the system! The money was locked behind an interdimensional firewall. I had to figure out how to stall them, or somehow scrape together fifty grand using mundane Earth methods before Friday.
Kuoh Academy: It's summer break. Granted, even if it wasn't nobody there cared about me. I was the fat, invisible kid who sat in the back. But if I dropped out, the debt collectors would have a field day knowing I had nowhere to hide during the day. I had to show my face, survive the bullying, and fly under the radar.
Physical Training: If my stats didn't carry over, I had to build them up here manually. No magical healing to speed up the process. I had to start doing actual, miserable cardio and lifting weights. I refused to go back to the sub-dimension looking like a blob. I wanted my Earth body to match the Level 1 stats I had earned.
I stared at the Earth list. It was daunting. It was depressing. It lacked the magical thrill of surviving a fantasy forest. It was just raw, unfiltered, crushing capitalism and social anxiety.
But as I looked down at my scarred left arm, I felt that spark of defiance flare up again.
"I killed a six-eyed demon wolf with a hunting knife," I told the empty room, my voice firm. "I can handle a few loan sharks and a high school math teacher. I am not the same person who left this apartment ten days ago...Wait a minute was it ten days in this world ?"
Ard rushed to his old digital alarm clock and found that it was just a day since the last day before summer vacation, a day after he vanished into the sub-dimension earth. This changed everything, it meant...THAT ONLY ONE DAY PASSES BETWEEN BOTH WORLDS!!! YES !!!!!!!!!!
I walked to my desk with a bright, though ugly smile and closed the notebook, feeling a strange sense of exhaustion wash over me. It was just the normal, mundane tiredness of a teenager who had spent four hours aggressively cleaning an apartment and who let out a wave of stress that felt like a weight over his heart.
I glanced back at the alarm clock though for the time, this time around. It was pushing 11:00 PM.
I stripped out of my dirt-caked overalls and heavy boots, leaving them in a neat pile by the door. I grabbed a fresh towel and stepped into the tiny, cramped shower of my apartment.
The hot water felt incredible. It wasn't the magical, instant cleanliness of the wet wipes from the system, but it was relaxing. I scrubbed the last remnants of the Forest of Death's mud from my skin, watching the brown water circle the drain. I traced the massive scar on my forearm with my fingers. It didn't hurt anymore, but the tissue was raised and rough. A permanent souvenir.
When I stepped out of the shower and dried off, I caught a glimpse of myself in the foggy mirror.
I was still fat. The gut hung over the waistband of my boxers, and my face was round and soft. The grueling physical labor of the last ten days in the sub-dimension hadn't magically transformed my Earth body into a chiseled Greek god. It was a harsh reminder of the duality of my existence. Over there, I had an Endurance of 8. Here, I was just a tired, overweight kid.
"Tomorrow," I promised my reflection. "Tomorrow, I start running. If the system won't buff me here, I'll do it the hard way."
I walked over to my clean bed, pulling the crisp, fresh sheets back. The mattress was lumpy, and the springs squeaked loudly, but compared to the damp dirt floor of a root-cave, it felt like sleeping on a cloud woven by angels.
I crawled under the covers, turning off the bedside lamp.
The apartment was pitch black, silent, and clean. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't feel a crushing sense of dread about waking up the next day. I had a plan. I had a purpose. I had a secret life waiting for me on the other side of a ten-day timer.
I closed my eyes, letting my muscles relax completely. My breathing slowed. I was drifting perfectly, peacefully into a deep, dreamless sleep. The stress of the two worlds finally melting away into the comforting embrace of unconsciousness.
PING!
The sound was sharp, loud, and entirely internal. It echoed perfectly inside my skull, violently snapping me awake.
My eyes flew open.
Floating in the pitch-black darkness directly above my face was a glowing, translucent blue interface screen. The system. It was back! Thank you God! Even though you're not here anymore, you still bless me!!!
It was a single, blaring red warning notification.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[Local Environment Stabilized. Host at Rest.]
[Discrepancy Detected: Physical body(Origin World) does not match Soul Blueprint (Sub-Dimensional body).]
[Commencing Correction Protocol.]
[Please brace for intense cellular restructuring.]
"Wait... what?" I whispered, staring at the glowing red text, my sleep-addled brain struggling to comprehend the words. "Correction protocol? Cellular restructuring? What does that—"
The screen vanished.
And then, every single nerve ending in my body simultaneously caught fire.
The pain ramped up to an 11, it hit me like a physical, multi-ton truck moving at Mach 3. It started in my stomach, a blazing, white-hot inferno that felt like someone had injected liquid magma directly into my spinae.
My eyes went wide, locked open in sheer, unadulterated agony. I couldn't even draw breath to scream. My lungs seized up violently as the muscles in my chest began to physically spasm and contort.
CRACK!
The sound came from inside me. It was the sickening, wet sound of my own ribs fracturing and shifting.
"H-Hrrggh!" I choked, my back violently arching off the mattress.
The system was forcibly dragging my pathetic, Level 1 Earth body up to match the changes that happened in the other world.
And it was doing it all at once without warning!!!
Beneath my skin, I could feel the blood in my veigns literally burning and rushing faster trough my limbs then ever before, causing a feverish, agonizing heat that left me drenched in sweat in seconds. My muscle fibers began to violently tear themselves apart, snapping like over-tightened guitar strings, only to instantly knit back together, thicker, denser, and infinitely stronger.
SNAP. POP. CRACK.
My arms and legs thrashed uncontrollably against the bedsheets. My joints felt like they were being crushed in a hydraulic press and then coated with steel. The sheer, overwhelming agony of my skeleton reshaping itself—my shoulders broadening, my spine realigning, my bones increasing in density to support a Strength stat of 8—was beyond words.
My vision faded to a blinding, flashing red. Blood poured from my nose, dripping down the side of my face as my internal organs fortified themselves, my heart aggressively expanding its capacity to match my new Stamina and Vitality.
It felt like I was dying. It felt like I was being ripped apart cell by cell and put back together by a mad scientist with a sledgehammer.
My mouth opened wide, the initial paralysis breaking as the agony reached a point that shattered what was left of my mind. I gripped the bedsheets so hard the cheap fabric instantly shredded beneath my hardening fingers. My eyes rolled back, my throat raw as I finally found the breath to express the absolute, world-ending torture of my bodies change.
" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Hi everyone, if you're enjoying this story so far and hope to read more faster, then for every 10 power stones I recieve I will post 2 chapters in a single day. So every 10 power stones is a day where i'll post twice ! Thanks for your support !!!