#041 – Introspection is important, you know?

#041 – Introspection is important, you know? I woke up with my face snuggled into something very soft and comfortable. For a split second, I thought that the entire isekai situation could have maybe been just a weird dream, but then I quickly realized what was going on. “G’morning, chat... G’morning, Mr. Gargles,” I mumbled while hugging my awesome turtle plushie closer. I continued to lay there, already thinking of how I would have to go into the dungeon and probably figure out how to beat that stupid tentacle. But then I remembered that I’d decided today would be my break day. “Too bad for you, chat. I’m not getting up anytime soon. I’m just gonna stay in my grassy bed and laze around all day,” I declared and closed my eyes again. “Stream is canceled today. Go home, chat.” I was very grateful that it hadn’t rained since that one time it had woken me up. I didn’t want to have to choose between sleeping in the rain and sleeping in the dungeon with the tentacle monster on the loose. From the corner of my mind, I noticed chat blowing up with messages again, but I firmly ignored it the same way I always did during fights, and just snuggled further into my plushie. If I were to guess, it probably took an entire hour for me to finally relent and get up again. I stretched with a yawn and blinked away the sleepiness, but continued to lay there while Mr. Gargles rested on my chest. I squinted at the trickle of sunlight coming through the trees above me and let out a little sigh. I had absolutely zero willpower to get up and start doing things. I just wanted to lay here the entire day. ... Wow, I had been really stressed out, hadn’t I? I knew I would crash at some point with how much had happened since I’d gotten isekai’d, but I’d never realized just how much I needed a break. People were still trying to catch my attention in the group chats. “Today is a rest day, chat. I ain’t doing no nothing. I have my pizza, my ooze lake, and my plushie. What else could one need?” I would have to get up at some point, but that was for future me to deal with. Present me wanted to enjoy the peaceful morning of laying in grass with my plushie in an empty world where no annoying neighbors would be shouting at ungodly-hour AM. I guess being stranded alone in another world had its perks. Now if only I could turn off the stream... Ugh. If I found a way home, would it let me finally turn it off? I didn’t see a reason why it would, unless I lost all my skills in the process of getting back. Would the system still work on Earth? I didn’t see a reason why it couldn’t, considering that it clearly had some amount of power over Earth as well. But if I returned home with the system intact, would I have to live with having every moment of my life streamed to the world until I died? I hadn’t really thought about that. Worse still, if I kept all the skills upon returning, I would probably be pestered by all sorts of people because of it. Scientists would want to find out how my superpowers worked. Governments would want to use me as a weapon of war. All sorts of nefarious people would want to steal my magical items. I hugged Mr. Gargles to my chest again as anxiety crept inside me. Unless of course, this was just a simulation and therefore when I woke up from it back into the real world, I would naturally lose everything. Or alternatively, I might never get back to Earth. I might be stuck in this world forever, forced to clear dungeons until my Phoenix kidnapper was satisfied with whatever evil plan they had for me. I still had no idea what their deal even was. Who were they? Where were they? Why me? What was the point of this? What was my goal? What even was this world? Why was it empty? What were the dungeons? Was the Phoenix in cahoots with the Fate Weaver who created this world, and now I was here to be the tester? Or maybe the Phoenix was the Fate Weaver? I sighed again. And there I went spiraling again. There was a reason why I’d relentlessly thrown myself into clearing the dungeon. No time to overthink things. I should do something. Leaving myself with just my thoughts always led to a depressive or paranoid echo chamber inside my own mind. Hmm... But... I was never alone now. There were people who could help me with all of this. In fact, I had created a new group chat for this exact purpose just yesterday, hadn’t I? I hummed to myself and narrowed my eyes as an idea passed through my mind. I considered it for a moment before finally getting up. I put Mr. Gargles back into the backpack, looked over the sapling – which had grown a little since yesterday – and then headed back toward the dungeon. But not the entrance. I walked to one of the walls separating the dungeon from the outside. Looking at it up close, it actually looked a bit unnerving. It was a tall featureless concrete wall like a prison would have, rather than the fence that surrounded floor three. At this point, the chat seemed to notice that I was doing things again despite saying that I wouldn’t be and began pestering me, but I ignored them for the moment. Just pretended that the stream wasn’t on. I idly hummed and reached into my backpack before pulling out an item that I’d thought for sure was useless before – the Ether-powered pen. I popped off the lid and tried to scribble something on the dungeon wall just to check that it worked and was happy when it did. Although it was actually quite odd. The surface of the wall was very rough and uneven, and yet the pen had no problems writing on it. Well, magic. No point in complaining. I stepped back and thought about this for a moment. It was impossible to keep chat in the dark completely no matter how much I tried. But maybe... Okay, I needed to get all the Streamer upgrades eventually anyway to unlock the next tier of skills, so might as well get this one now. Hopefully it worked the way I thought it did. Purchase the [Streamer] skill upgrade [Faithful Cameraman] for 3 skill points? Y/N ‘Faithful Cameraman’ skill upgrade unlocked!Alll latest novels at novelhall.com Without saying anything, I curiously prodded the new mental switch and once I figured out how it was supposed to work, I used the subskill. A new system window popped up, but instead of text, this one was playing a video. A video of a cyan-haired girl in blue and cyan outfit staring at the camera with wide sky-blue eyes. My Vcuber. Or rather, me. “Helloooo... Testing, testing,” I murmured and saw the reflection mirror my movements back at me perfectly. I smiled. She smiled too. I had known that I looked completely different now, sure. But it still felt... really nice to look at this girl in the video and know that it was me. JamieWasTaken3: ok fine not simulation FouxMoux: I think you are in the future of some dead scifi world and your job is to figure out what happened through the dungeons I hummed. “That does sound plausible. Like... I’m supposed to figure out where all the people have gone. What caused the apocalypse or something.” JamieWasTaken3: ok new theory JamieWasTaken3: ur in the future but have to go back in time to save this world JamieWasTaken3: that’s why good luck “That... could also be it, yeah. I mean, we already know that it’s possible to mess with time and whatnot.” I glanced at my bracelet and frowned in thought. “You think I’m some kind of destined time hero or something?” FouxMoux: wait there was the thing “The thing?” FouxMoux: the thing that the limit break unlocked FouxMoux: incausal rift I narrowed my eyes at that, not liking how the limit break was brought up again. “What about it...?” FouxMoux: that’s probably time travel, right? “Time travel? Why would it–” I stopped as things clicked in my mind. “...Incausal rift. As in, something that isn’t causal. Something that breaks causality. As in, time travel.” I groaned. “Oh no...” JamieWasTaken3: time to break your limits I groaned harder. “Stop it! I’m already traumatized enough! I don’t need more long-term trauma! I’m not gonna do the stupid limit break!” FouxMoux: it might be the key to returning to Earth tho JamieWasTaken3: yea maybe the phoenix will send you back once you save his world or smthin I sighed in resignation. “Why do you guys gotta be so damn reasonable?!” The worst part about it was that I didn’t have many other options. I could either roam around beating dungeons, hoping to get some clues; or do the damn limit break, find an incausal rift, and hopefully it would somehow help me. There were still a lot of unknowns though. For all I knew, the rifts might kill me instead. JamieWasTaken3: limit break time? I glared at Jamie’s message. “You’re not baiting me into throwing myself into danger again, Jamie!” I sniffed. “You’re being worse than George. Maybe I should time you out too...” JamieWasTaken3: nonono ill be good I rolled my eyes but let her stay for now. trelipideliberitation: ranger is sus “Hmm? What’s up Trelip?” trelipideliberitation: retconranger trelipideliberitation: he knew about the special website trelipideliberitation: who told him about it? I narrowed my eyes. “The website...? Hmm...” Thinking about it, where had Ranger heard about the mysterious website? Had they randomly typed that specific string into their browser? Seemed unlikely. Did Ranger know something more? “Ranger...? You here...?” JamieWasTaken3: found the phoenix! FouxMoux: oh crap There was a moment of silence, but Ranger didn’t say anything. Probably offline then... Or maybe they went silent because our suspicions were right on point– repeaeaeat: the link is in your snitch bio repeaeaeat: it says right here repeaeaeat: StreamerSkill.out “...Oh.” I deflated with a sigh. “Since when? Who put that there? I didn’t!” Because, of course, the system had also somehow edited my Snitch bio on Earth. Why wouldn’t it? trelipideliberitation: wait what? trelipideliberitation: was that always there? “Probably,” I grumbled. “How else would Ranger know about it?” trelipideliberitation: maybe he added it now to be less suspicious repeaeaeat: it was there for a while My eye twitched. “You’re the one being suspicious, Trelip!” I shot back. “Stop making me doubt people in my chat!” Ugh, but now that I had that seed of doubt in my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was the damn Phoenix secretly one of my chatters? If I was an evil mastermind kidnapping innocent Vcubers to post-apocalyptic worlds, I would totally keep an eye on their streams. After all, why wouldn’t my kidnapper pretend to be just another one of my viewers? ... Fuck.