LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 1 (A New Life)
System> {User Recognized:
{Time until apocalypse: 335hrs, 53m, 18s}
Currently Tracked mission: Survive: Reward: (1GP)}
Message: 'Good luck 07, I'm rooting for youuuu!!!'}
Those words flickered annoyingly in front of me, floating as if projected in front of me. Sighing to myself, I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself, hoping it was just some sort of hallucination. However, the words continued to float obstinately in front of me. Seeing them there, blinking, slightly illuminated by a gold and pink collage of faint lights, I couldn't help but be reminded of that damn goddess's face. Even if it was a beautiful thing to think about, right now it only made me unnerved.
I looked at the words displayed there, seeing the overly cute message that ended off that ominous timer. I couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous contrast between the two. I'll acknowledge, however, that nothing about this situation was funny to me. While I was in bed, I couldn't tell if it was mine or not. My body was covered in a cold sweat, and there was something off about the sheets. But compared to those floating letters in front of me, everything else seemed secondary.
Taking a closer look at them I noticed that rather than floating in space, the letters seemed to be aligned with my field of vision, staying in my field of view no matter if I looked left, right, or even straight down. They weren't present when I closed my eyes, but I could still feel that they were there. I really wanted to start yelling out about the laws of physics or something, but I never paid much attention to those sorts of things. So, for all I knew, floating letters were perfectly acceptable in the laws of the universe, though I had a strong feeling that wasn't the case. I also really wanted just to assume I was crazy, but the numbers slowly counting down in front of me seemed to rebuke that thought with their ordered ticking.
There were a few other words at the corner of my eyes. Even I, a logical man of the scientific twenty-first century, was half ready to start thinking that I was in some sort of video game at this point, though I felt like I would lose something important if I thought about this as a game. So Instead, I'll lay down my pride as a man of modern sensibilities and just accept that somehow all of this makes sense. Above all else right now, I really wanted to have a chance to yell at that crappy goddess for throwing me back to earth with a mental disorder, she could at least have had the decency to label me as fragile before shipping me back.
At that very moment of thought, as if to mock my resolve to give that Phoney goddess a piece of my mind, I saw the words that before had so insolently kept themselves in my field of vision slowly fade away in an annoyingly cute flash of multicolored sparks to be replaced with a new set of words.
System> { Welcome to the GSSL
Goddess }
Soul }
Support}
Line}
[Message box] . . . . . . . . . . . . [No New messages] . . . . .
>Start Typing Here<
If you have any questions about any services you have received, please leave a message here, and I'll respond as soon as I can, -Love {undecipherable} Goddess of {undecipherable} >*< \o/}
Seeing the new message being displayed in the same overly happy style made me unsure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I really couldn't tell if I was being made fun of here. I mean, come on, did I get reincarnated or just finish signing up for a newsletter? Either way, I guess it didn't matter, but I think I had gotten a better understanding of how this weird system works. It seemed this support line popped up when I started swearing my justified righteous vengeance on that crappy goddess. To confirm that I thought about replying in the box labeled for typing, channeling my fury into the box, a string of words quickly began to appear there.
You ***** Phony self-proclaimed Goddess! I'll ***** if you don't explain to me wha…
Laughing slightly as my own thoughts began to appear unfiltered in the box, I thought that maybe angering a god, even if it was a crappy self-proclaimed one, probably wasn't the best idea I had ever thought of. So, even if I wanted to yell at her until she repented for her actions, I summoned up all the courage and restraint that had served me so well through all the times of being berated by superiors at work and pestered by my buddies at home, to delete the previous message, which was done the same way as typing it out. In its place, I left a much more measured response.
Hello Your... Holiness? I am writing to inform you that I recently was "assisted" by your... services? And am having a very unpleasant experience. So get down here and fix this already!
Despite all my attempts to hold myself back, I could just barely string together that sentence in my mind and quickly sent it before my real thoughts started to appear in the box. like seriously who makes a text box that is filled through thought? Is QC dead or something?
A short delay after sending the message, I saw a notification window, which lacked the same pink and gold stylization as the rest of the previous messages, pop up with a small ding sound, displaying the message.
message sent<
My mood, which had been pretty abysmal before that, peaked a bit as I thought maybe she might actually come to help me. But even after I waited for a while, staring at the message box window, I didn't see anything that would indicate a reply.
Along with this new contentious notification were a few new displayed icons at the corner of my eyes. Only three of them seemed to be active, and one of them, which seemed to be some sort of heart, was currently glowing with a slight yellow tinge. I assumed that this was the currently active and dubiously useful GSSL. Most of the other ones were grayed out. A few of the icons that looked useful were the ones labeled "shop" and "map," but I guess the goddess thought it would be funny to taunt me with them and only have her stupid customer service be available.
By the notification were two additional windows, which were transparent and didn't seem to serve any greater function than playing a few lines of text.
GP(O) >Soul Integrity (3%) + {undecipherable}%
I didn't understand what either meant, but seeing as the soul integrity was green, I figured that it was probably nothing to worry about, though I did wonder if I was accepting these kinds of things a bit too easily lately, it even contained that error which seemed to be showing up more, and more recently.
Below that was the same mission icon from the first set of messages. All it said was survive, but it didn't specify anything more than that. So, it honestly could have just said nothing at this point. It's not like I exactly planned on dying, well again, that is.
Somehow, that was all that looked interesting to me. A thought in the back of my mind told me I should be a bit more skeptical of this oversimplified game-like UI that suddenly appeared before me, but I guess at this point, I had gone through so much of the incomprehensible that this system which seemed to be designed like some sort of mobile game was almost comforting in its familiarity.
However, with most of my vision now free, I was able to get a better look at the space around me, and it was anything but reassuring. While some of my vision was still blocked by icons and messages, everything but the two informational icons disappeared when I thought about the idea of closing them, something I wish I had thought to do earlier. What met my eyes when they all left, was a room which at first looked unremarked, but upon looking closer it appeared abandoned.
Scattered around me was a loose section of ruffled paper, dusty textbooks, and various fast-food containers, from brands I couldn’t recognize. The curtains were all closed, blocking out most of the sunlight from entering, and strangely enough, not a single light seemed to be on, giving the whole place an overly eerie feeling. Honestly, it reminded me in some ways a lot of how I behaved in college, but at least there I could pretend it was some sort of overcomplicated system of organized chaos, but here it was just a mess. I tried to get up from my bed to take a closer look, but my entire body felt too sore to move much, and I was forced back down into the bed with a sigh.
I honestly felt defeated here. My entire life, everything I worked up to, my job, my friends, my education, was taken away and replaced with what? Some mobile game system with a uselessly vague objective that will get me mistaken as a madman and interned. Or maybe I should tell everyone how I have a customer support line with a super pretty goddess. I'm sure that will help me when they're shaking their heads sadly going 'I always knew they were going to snap' while taking me away. It was all really starting to weigh on me, and I really wanted to punch that phony goddess. Along with this thought, the GSSL tried to open itself again, but I forced it to close just as soon as it did, forcing myself to laugh along with the notification sound it cheerfully made on its way out.
Letting that weak pitiful laugh out I sighed and tried to move my body a bit more, even if I didn’t really want to walk around this room. It's not like laying in bed moping around would leave me any better off. I decided to play it safe and only attempt to wiggle my toes, but even that was hard every muscle was stiff, and my body barely seemed to be working, I hadn’t noticed this up until now as I had been too focused on the System, but my body was starving, and more than that I was thirsty, incredibly thirsty. It was like my lungs and throat were made of sandpaper.
Acting on their own accord, my legs bent and stood up.
Well, that’s a relief, at least that goddess hadn’t made me a cripple. Not that it mattered if I ended up dying of thirst before I could make use of them.
I stumbled in the direction of the kitchen sink, grasping at its handle. With a flurry, I turned first one, then both of its handles. I leaned my chest over its edge in an effort to get my mouth under the escaping flow. My movements were much more awkward than they had been in my past body, but that thought hardly entered my mind before it was replaced with the task at hand, which was going rather poorly even after fiddling with the sink for some time. I had not gained a drop of water. Retracing my steps, I looked around for another solution. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another door in the room that I had missed before. Rushing over to it, I pushed open the door, relief hitting me as I witnessed the familiar layout of a bathroom. Planting my hands on the sink by the door, I said to nobody in particular:
[Unknown Women]; “Gasp, gasp, perhaps the goddess hasn’t abandoned me yet. I knew she wouldn’t just toss me into some world only to have me die of something so stupi...d.”
My words trailed off as once again the sink failed to fulfill its purpose. After I finished swearing vengeance on the phony Goddess for what must have been the umpteenth time today, my face became downtrodden.
“Huh, I was really sent to hell then. What did I do to deserve this? Well, there was that one time when I did a ten pull on my friend's Gacha account and got him a dupe, and that other time when...”.
As my mind continued to reconcile my past transgressions and concede defeat, I managed to walk out of the bathroom, headed to the mini-fridge, and opened its door. I let out a sigh as I wondered what the point of trying was when I had already figured out the reality I was in. The fridge's contents weren’t any cleaner than the room. Inside was a collection of moldy food, various condiments, and a few things that might be edible if I was desperate enough. Just as I was shutting the door, I noticed in its drawer a row of unlabeled bottled water. Quickly pulling a few out, I began sipping on them, slowly at first, in case I choked, but after the first few drops hit my lips, the thirst was too much for me, and I ended up drinking the remaining bottles in what must have been a record time, after that I finally felt satisfied perhaps the sudden thirst had made me a bit stupid as I began thinking.
If that Goddess wasn’t an evil one she would've had the decency to reincarnate me with a full stomach and a bottle of water, and hey a mint under the pillow would have saved her a few curses from me. As I continued adding adjectives to the growing list in front of the goddess’s name, I finally had some time to think about besides trying not to keel over from thirst.
The first thought that came to mind was, who am I, I had at this point noticed this wasn’t my body, and I’d be stupid to think this was my apartment, so I really had to know who am I, I had noticed from the few times I had spoken, even though my throat was dry, and the voice was raspy and weak, it still had a sort of softness, to it which was something that was definitely not present in my “own” voice, even though I wasn’t particularly tall in my last life, I could tell I was a bit shorter now, the pieces began to connect in my mind, and I was starting to form an idea of what happened to me after I was . . . reincarnated. . It was a thought which I didn’t want to be right about, not that it would be a blow to me personally, but if I was correct, it’d be a nail in the coffin to any hopes of returning to my previous life.
A bit hesitant I pulled my eyes up from the sink and looked in the mirror, what met my eyes, surprisingly, was a face that didn’t surprise me in the least, it was about what I had expected, a woman's face staring back at me, and maybe if I had just woken up like this just at random, after returning home from work, I would have said something dumb like “what is this really me” and maybe run my hand over my face with either a smile or a frown, but honestly at this point, this about what I expected, plus the face that was reflected wasn’t bad at all, but it wasn’t exactly what I would call beautiful, maybe at one point it had been, but now any of that previous beauty was covered up by what seemed to be a combination of malnutrition and lack of care. Even though her skin was fair it was exactly clean, and her eyes were shadowed by long bags. Looking at her, or rather me it was a little hard to accept it really was “me” reflected there, but I didn’t have much choice other then too accept, a feeling I was begging to grow accustomed to, it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed, but until that Goddess fixes this, there wasn’t much I could do. Taking a closer look at the ragged face reflected before me I could only imagine that whatever life she lived, it wasn’t a happy one.
My hair was a dark black color, something which might have once been quite eye-catching, was now filled with tangled up, and dry, everything about this body was dim like a candle that had burnt all it had to give, something which could have at sometime burned brightly, but was now entirely put out. The only thing which held any feeling of life in it were the listless set of blue eyes reflected before me, but I could tell that whatever semblance of life displayed there was something brought by me, not inherited from this body.
Pausing my gaze as I felt a bit guilty about judging the person whose body I was now inhabiting, and that if she was in my body I wouldn’t exactly be pleased that my personal space was being violated so thoroughly. Turning my head away from the mirror, I decided that I needed to know more, and that It was probably best to examine the room carefully. Retracing my steps, I combed through every inch of space before ultimately returning back to the bedside to arrange what I had found.
As I approached the bed, I noticed that the color of the sheets seemed off. What I had at first assumed to be just a pattern on the sheets now appeared to be a large red splotch in the spot where I had woken up.
Unnerved by this display I quickly looked down to check this body, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary besides seeming a bit scrawny, I couldn’t find any cuts, or injuries, and though I did see some red blotches staining the simple uniform I seemed to be dressed in, these were long dried and almost faded, I didn’t get a full look at this body, as even I wouldn’t go that far to some poor woman's body I happened to be thrown into, but even without knowing my condition under my clothes, I couldn’t feel anything that so much as hurt much less would have me bleeding out, despite my apparent wellness everything still seemed to be pointing towards one conclusion.
And I wasn’t so stupid as to not get the implications of that stain, on the bed everything seemed abandoned, as much as It made me uncomfortable once again I was forced to accept a hard truth. I mean, unless this body's previous owner just really liked sleeping in a bed straight out of a horror movie, in a trashed room, with no running water, and was able to live without any signs of doing so, yeah then maybe what I was thinking was wrong, but honestly even I couldn’t comfort myself with that.
After this realization, I decided it was best to avoid the bed for the time being sitting down on the floor. To distract myself by inspecting my “loot,” I felt a little bad for the item's original owner, but I figured I’d be able to make better us of them than they would at the moment. In front of me was a wallet which I had found on a nightstand next to the bed and a handbag which was next to what I assumed to be the front door. Even by my past life's standards, which weren’t exactly high, the room was pretty much barren. I mean, ignoring the essentials that someone would need to live, the place had not a hint of uniqueness; there wasn’t even a table or chairs. I ended up putting that thought aside. I picked up the wallet first, as given the state of the fridge, I wasn’t holding out hope for the phone to work. Pulling out the first card that was inside, I began to read it.
NIIC Issued 25/7/1634
Name: Iris Sinclaire
Identification Number: 000991124
Date of Birth: 5/3/1613
I can’t tell if I was lucky that I was able to read most of the information on the card, or if I was unable to understand what that information actually meant, but at least it solved one of the many thoughts on my mind, even if it did offer a couple more in their place. For one none of the dates seemed to be ones I was familiar with, and I’m not sure what an NIIC is in the first place, an idea crossed my mind that maybe I was somewhere in Europe or Asia, but given the extra factors that lead me here I didn’t think it’d be that simple. In an attempt to search for something to verify my suspicion, I reached for the phone lying nearby. I clicked the power button, and to my surprise, the screen lit up. Displaying a lock icon. Which I tabbed, unfortunately. The only thing that popped up was a keypad asking for a password. I stared at the image, who would have thought that the only thing stopping me from uncovering my new identity would be an electronic security feature? I didn’t, however, have much time to dwell in my state of misfortune, as a new message from the system once again filled my vision.
System> [New Message]
[message pending]. . . . . . . .[Message received]
[would you like to access this message?] . . .
[YES]. . . . . . . .[NO] }
{Current Time until apocalypse: 333hrs, 32m, 46s}