Prologue

The man gripped his sword with both hands. Raised vertically, the blade reflected the sunlight.

["O Baldur. Grant me strength."]

The blade shone as though answering his murmured prayer.

The man let out a sharp breath, then kicked off the ground and leaped. His launch left a hollow in the earth, and the air shuddered for an instant before rushing after him.

A horde of monsters filled his vision.

His blade shot toward one of them: a bull with two horns, standing on two legs.

["Urgh...!"]

SHICK

The blade flying toward the bull’s temple barely cut through its hide.

That was where his all-out attack stopped.

The bull reached out and grabbed his leg. Caught in midair, the man was helpless.

WHOOSH

The rush of wind battered his senses.

["—!"]

THWACK

The bull whipped him against a nearby tree like a wet towel.

His back, his side—something struck, something broke, and blood surged up from somewhere inside him. He vomited it out.

His body clung to the tree for a moment before sliding down.

The leg it had grabbed was broken too. No, snapped was the right word.

Lying facedown, he raised his head and looked up.

Sunlight shone down. The same light that had made his sword gleam only moments before. It scattered through the masses of green spread by the trees.

And the bull.

The bull looked at him with its bovine eyes.

["... O Baldur, lord of justice and light, please..."]

There was a sound.

CRUNCH

* * *

I stared at the monitor for a moment.

The words “GAME OVER” sat in the middle of the screen, blunt and insolent.

Hmph. I exhaled through my nose, then drew in just as much air.

“This game is trash!”

I almost slammed my keyboard, then remembered how much it cost. I nearly hurled my mouse, then remembered its price too.

My hands hovered in the air for a moment before I folded my arms.

“I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

Etius. A game of swords and magic, gods and monsters.

I could say with confidence that no one had gotten as deeply into this game as I had.

Everyone else had called it trash and escaped long before me.

And now that I’d finally declared it trash myself, that made me both the stupidest gamer and its biggest victim.

“I thought it was a masterpiece.”

Lifelike AI, a vast open world, compelling characters, endless content.

When it launched, people said it was as though an actual fantasy world from another reality had been put into a game.

In truth, it was an unbalanced piece of crap.

No one had ever seen this game’s ending, unless the protagonist dying counted.

For all its vast open world, monsters formed a boundary you couldn’t advance beyond. Cross it, and even ordinary trash mobs were hard to kill.

It didn’t seem like the game had been designed to be beaten. The company had no intention of fixing it, either.

But that only made me want to take on the challenge.

‘If they aren’t going to fix it, there must be some way to beat it.’

That was what I’d believed.

Why had I done that?

“I’m exhausted.”

I rested my arms on the desk and buried my face in them.

It was time for me to say goodbye to this game too.

That last game over had been the final strategy I could think of for beating it.

Now that it had failed, I had nothing left.

“Frondier.”

In the end, Etius had become the first game I couldn’t beat.

Maybe I could leave it out of the count, since no one else had beaten it either.

“Frondier de Roach.”

... Wait, what was that?

I heard a strange voice in my room, where I should have been alone.

When I lifted my head toward it—

“...?”

I saw something that looked like a blackboard.

In front of it stood a woman who looked like a teacher, holding a book that looked like a textbook, apparently giving something like a lecture.

That teacher was looking at me.

“Oh, me?”

I answered without thinking.

Frondier? I’d never heard of any name like that.

“Who else would I be talking to?”

The teacher said it as though it were obvious. As though I was obviously this “Frondier,” or whatever.

I looked around. I saw the faces of students in uniform.

Some were snickering at me.

‘This isn’t my room.’

This was a classroom. My room had turned into a classroom. All I’d done was bury my face in my arms on the desk, then lift my head.

‘... Oh.’

Was this a dream?

Had I been so obsessed with Etius that I was having dreams this vivid?

“Frondier, can you tell me the name of this weapon?”

The teacher brought up a screen to her right.

It was a Wizerview, a magitech device that projected images in midair.

Seeing magical technology right before my eyes, when I’d only ever seen it in a game, was quite an experience.

‘That’s...’

I looked at the supposed weapon the teacher had displayed on the Wizerview.

It was a branch. Not a weapon.

‘... Aha.’

I had a pretty good idea what answer she wanted.

But this was a dream.

Why not play a little more clueless?

“That is a branch. It isn’t a weapon.”

The students’ laughter grew louder at my answer. The teacher sighed too.

“As I thought. You haven’t listened to a word of today’s lesson, either.”

I certainly hadn’t listened to any of it. I hadn’t exactly had the chance.

“... Ma’am, was today’s lesson about Baldur?”

Baldur, the god of light and son of Odin in Norse mythology.

He was said to have died after being pierced by a branch of mistletoe.

That branch was called Mistilteinn.

In other words, I should have looked at that branch and answered “Mistilteinn.”

The teacher looked at me as though I were something bizarre.

“... Yes. Frondier, if you knew that, why—”

“Ma’am.”

I looked again at the branch on the Wizerview.

There was no doubt. It was just a branch.

“Mistilteinn doesn’t look like that.”

A weapon that would one day be wielded by the protagonist in the world of Etius.

I’d seen and used it countless times.

Telling a mistletoe branch apart from Mistilteinn was no trouble at all.

“...”

The students and teachers stared at me in silence. Their eyes were full of displeasure, anger, disgust, and the like.

Of course they were. At the beginning of the game, everyone believed Mistilteinn really looked like that.

“...”

Okay, so.

When was this dream going to end?

* * *

... A week later.

I decided to accept it. This wasn’t a dream. Whether I acknowledged it or not, this place was real.

Thinking it was a dream, I’d needlessly run my mouth about Mistilteinn and only damaged my reputation.

As I walked down the hall, I heard people whispering about me.

“Is that the guy who was spouting nonsense in class?”

... With me playing the roles of both “that” and “the guy.”

“Well, I guess this body already had a bad reputation.”

I was now inside a mansion. The mansion where this body’s original owner had lived.

As for how I’d found it, the moment school ended, an assistant had been waiting at the front gate to pick me up.

I’d climbed into a very luxurious sedan and come here.

... Up until then, I’d still had some hopes. I’d realized that, even if I wasn’t the protagonist, I was the son of a distinguished noble family.

Besides, I quite liked the face I saw in the mirror.

The deep, jet-black shade of his hair and eyes gave him a refined look, as did the rest of his features.

Before I learned who he was, those looks had almost fooled me.

I looked at the wristwatch on the desk in my room.

A smartwatch.

It was the only thing I’d brought over from my original world. Was that because I’d been wearing it on my wrist? If so, why had all my clothes changed?

I still had no idea.

I’d wondered whether the smartwatch would even work. But not only did it work—

? Name: Frondier de Roach

? Age: 17

? Affiliation: Second son of the Roach family, first-year student at Constel

? Race: Human

? Divine Power: None

Skill Details >

Magic Details >

Quests >

It worked in an entirely different way.

This wasn’t a mere watch anymore.

The status screen I’d seen so often in Etius was inside my smartwatch.

Seeing it made it sink in. I really had landed in another world.

For someone like me, a complete outsider here, this status screen was one of my few saving graces.

“... Frondier de Roach.”

It was an unfamiliar name. It had taken me ages to remember him.

I’d played this game obsessively, trying to uncover every hidden detail in every corner. Yet even I had trouble recalling this character.

When I finally remembered, the first thing I did was sigh.

Frondier the Human Sloth.

An insult comparing him to a sloth. No deeper meaning. Just an insult.

Slothful but powerful.

Lazy, but hiding something special.

He wasn’t anything like that.

He was simply a slothful, lazy character. That was all there was to him.

“With a skill set like this, I can understand why he got lazy.”

In Etius, only skills, magic, and divine power determined whether someone was strong or weak, capable or incompetent.

Divine power, as the name suggested, meant power bestowed by a god.

Gods from all kinds of mythologies appeared in Etius and granted humans power. Not many humans received it, though.

Receiving divine power was practically the same as being chosen, and everyone who possessed it was a named character.

Skills and magic, on the other hand, could be learned by anyone, but their power was meager compared to divine power. That didn’t mean they were easy to acquire, either.

A very rare few did develop skills and magic that surpassed divine power through talent and grueling effort, but...

Frondier had no divine power, almost as a matter of course.

He didn’t even have magic.

And as for his skills...

Skill Details >

[Weaving]

? Grade: Unique

? Description: Stores and replicates images of objects. However, they are illusions. Involves the processes “Workshop” and “Replication.”

- Workshop: Stores woven objects in a virtual space.

- Replication: Replicates objects stored in the Workshop.

That was what it said.

To explain what that meant:

I picked up a fountain pen from the desk and used Weaving.

I stored the fountain pen’s image, and that stored image took shape before my eyes as though threads were being woven together.

Like something coming out of a 3D printer.

That was probably why it was called Weaving.

[Viet Trading Company’s Luxury Fountain Pen] (Replica)

? Grade: Common

? Description: A woven imitation of a fountain pen. Has no physical substance.

I held the real fountain pen in my left hand and the replicated one in my right.

To my eyes, they looked absolutely identical.

This was Weaving. It replicated objects as illusions.

Once I used Weaving on an object, its image was stored in the Workshop.

As the description said, the Workshop was like my own virtual space, where I could easily view what I’d stored.

I could see it with my own eyes, like augmented reality, and display anything from weapons to tools.

That meant I could use Weaving anytime, anywhere.

But only on objects I’d seen with my own eyes.

Even if I knew about a weapon, it wouldn’t be stored in the Workshop until I actually saw it.

Some weapons, armor, and other items were already stored there. Frondier must have tried using it a few times before I possessed him.

... It sounded pretty impressive when I put it like that.

But it was all imaginary. All fake.

A fountain pen replicated this way couldn’t write, much less pierce a single sheet of paper.

Besides, only I could see it, so other people couldn’t even tell whether I’d used Weaving.

An imaginary creation that couldn’t affect reality at all.

... We already had a word for that: “delusion.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it.

“I never saw this skill once while playing Etius.”

Since I’d never seen it, naturally, its grade was Unique.

In Etius, Unique was different from the other grades.

Grades ranged from Common at the bottom to Divine at the top, but Unique wasn’t part of that scale.

Instead, Unique had a different defining trait: it was one of a kind.

So the Unique grade couldn’t tell you whether something was good or bad. No matter how trivial it was, if it was the only one of its kind, it received the Unique grade.

... But could a Unique skill really be this useless?

“Frondier the Sloth.”

This skill seemed to prove the insult true.

From now on, I had to survive in Frondier’s body in a game I hadn’t been able to beat even as the protagonist.

“Just getting by isn’t the only problem.”

I tapped the Quests tab on my smartwatch.

Quests >

[Main Quest: Changing Fate]

? Description: You know the end that awaits humanity: extinction. Save humanity and change its fate

This quest had been there from the first time I opened my smartwatch. It had probably been there from the moment I possessed Frondier.

As the quest description said, I knew how this game ended. Or rather, I knew how it ended if you failed to beat it.

Humanity’s end was utterly pitiful.

Humanity wasn’t destroyed by the sort of thing you’d expect in an ordinary game: a demon king, some equally powerful final boss, a vast conspiracy, or a shadowy mastermind.

It was simply slaughtered by monsters. Humanity’s lands were gradually taken from it, until it could no longer withstand the surging waves of monsters and was swept away.

Even this game’s protagonist met an end that empty.

And it wanted that stopped. By me.

Ha ha ha.

KNOCK KNOCK

A maid’s voice came from the other side of the door.

“Lord Frondier? May I come in?”

“Y-yes, please.”

I’d answered politely without thinking. Frondier had been born a noble, so that way of speaking would sound odd coming from him.

The maid who entered was giving me a slightly puzzled look too. Of course, she wouldn’t voice that thought.

“Lord Frondier, a letter has arrived for you.”

“A letter? From whom?”

I forced myself to speak as her superior. It would feel awkward for a while, but I’d get used to it.

“From Lord Ampere.”

“... Father?”

Ampere. Frondier’s father.

I might not have known Frondier as a character, but I knew Ampere. Very well.

The Iron Wall of the North, Ampere de Roach.

A superhuman who had never once allowed a monster incursion into Yeranhes, his territory on the frontier of the Terst Empire.

The reason Frondier was unfamiliar to me was that his father, Ampere, and his eldest son, Atzier, accounted for almost all of the Roach family’s prominence in the game.

As a general, Ampere had the leadership to command an army corps. In personal combat, he rivaled the Zodiac, the twelve strongest on the continent.

Atzier had inherited every bit of his formidable father’s talent and would grow beyond him—an officially overpowered character in Etius.

And now Ampere, who was my father, had sent me a letter.

Nervously, I took it from the maid and broke the seal. The letter contained only a few brief sentences.

[Frondier, I have tolerated enough of your sloth.

Rank among the top ten overall in your year at Constel.

Fail, and you will be disowned.]

I read through it, exhaled through my nose, then drew in just as much air.

“... This game is trash!”

“What was that, sir?”

“Nothing!”

It looked like my life was going to be brief too.