Chapter 1: Chapter 01- Transported to a Curious World

Life sucks. But maybe I had it coming. Maybe I always had it coming.

I died once and got recruited by a goddess because of my skill set. 

I got a power, modified it, and used it to do the goddess's dirty work.

I got struck down by deific lightning at the mission's end.

I didn't stay down, and now, here I was, standing face to face with the bitch in her sanctuary.

"Mari," she said, that disco ball personified. "You've grown too much. You're like a cancer to my world. You understand, don't you? I have to cut you out like the tumor you are."

My situation was troubling. She had me in a bubble. She had gone and used a power I had never seen before. It'd take me a little to formulate how to get out of it. If I wasn't so angry, I could have thought a little more clearly, but my temper had gotten the best of me.

"I should have taken you out when I had the chance!" I yelled.

"I could say the same to you..."

It was a stand-off. She couldn't kill me, period, and I couldn't kill her until I thwarted the bubble.

"But, this will do... I will never see you again."

"Wait!" I yelled. "Don't you dare--"

Blinding light swallowed me up, and I felt a unique and familiar sensation.

Bastard... She's sending me to another world. What? Is that your big move? You're going to throw me away? This is what it means to cut me out? Yeah. Okay. We'll see about that!

I exited the light and fell straight down. A forest--I was falling through a forest. I finally hit the ground with a thud. My head was a bit rattled from the sudden stop, but I was okay.

I rubbed the back of my head. "That hurt more than it should have, though..."

Getting hurt from a fall? It had been a while since I felt that sensation. I got up and wiggled my body a little. I was still wearing my gear from before. I had my black coat, black turtleneck, boots, and belt with all my pouches, though... yup, the pouches were empty. I hopped a few times and became disoriented.

"What the?"

My body felt heavier. I couldn't move it the way I wanted it to. I set my eyes on a tree a dozen feet from me and took one forceful step.

"No."

I should have reached the tree. Instead, I only took a single step and had almost fallen forward because I was expecting to have more momentum I needed to manage.

I stared at my hands as I studied my body and the sensations within it.

"This world... it's like it has different gravity."

I flexed my fingers a few times.

"There's less mana in the air too... It almost feels like I'm about to suffocate now that I think about it..."

I came to a single preliminary conclusion.

"You... you couldn't deal with me, so you sent me to a world with inhospitable conditions?"

The goddess's world was a video game-styled world with stat menus, skills, magical weapons, and dungeons. I developed my own special ability using the rules of that world until I finally broke them. I had become someone that sorry excuse for a goddess couldn't deal with--and I was pretty proud of it too. But now?

She sent me to a world that could limit me somehow--I didn't even know that was possible. I thought I'd get to keep my gains...

"It's kind of like if I left Earth and went to a different planet with different gravity and atmosphere... actually..."

I held out my hand and tried to make a ball of mana. I could just barely see some flickers, but even that made me lose my breath.

"No way..." I said, clutching my chest. "Isn't this just like... mana deficiency?"

The metaphor about the different atmosphere was apt. My body was used to a mana-rich environment, and now I was realizing the magic from the goddess's world needed that environment. What I was feeling now was a worse version of existing with close to zero mana for too long.

"You called me a cancer... You put this little cancer cell in a body that can't sustain it." I clenched my jaw. "Damn it... This isn't fair... I thought... I had made amends."

I shook my head and tried to open my stat screen. It appeared for all of a second before it started flickering.

"The stat screen never consumed my mana to open it but... maybe it needed ambient mana to power it like a fire needs oxygen." I squinted and saw that many of my main stats were red... That probably meant that they had been reduced. My Level had probably gone down too. My eyes wandered down to the last third of the screen, where my major titles would be.

My heart jumped. Yes. A hundred times, yes.

[She Who Has Resolved To Make Amends]

[The Reaper of Fluttering Butterflies]

Those titles--they were ones that were linked to the abilities I developed using the freedom of the goddess's world as a springboard. They were abilities born from my heartfelt efforts.

"They had transcended the goddess... so maybe... they can transcend this world too?"

These abilities--calling them cheats or glitches wouldn't be so wrong.

I straightened up and smiled. "I'm not totally stripped here... I still have some kind of advantage."

If I could maintain an advantage against the average denizen of the world, I would be fine. I held out my hand and focused. A single black-winged butterfly flew out of my hand and existed for a few seconds before fading.

I nodded. "I'll abandon the spells and magic of the goddess's world and focus on getting the abilities she feared back up to a usable level. She can't take them away from me."

I started walking with my hand on my chin.

"I'll need to go back to the drawing board with how the abilities work... Since mana isn't as abundant here, I have to assume that I need a new fuel... but how do I do that? I was able to create and modify the abilities by entering a metaphysical landscape and exploiting the rules of that reality... but here..."

I looked around. Forest. Mossy forest. Oh, and with some unsettling mist rolling in. It definitely didn't look too magical.

"Did... did she send me back to Earth?" I did a full 360-degree spin. "It looks mundane enough... Maybe Earth-like..."

I kept walking, a little curious and confused.

"If I'm on Earth, I already have an advantage, given that I can do some level of supernatural things... Earth had its own set of mystical rules... If worse comes to worst, I can see if they were true and regain power through the domestic systems... It's great that I have a better awareness of subtle energies now too." I groaned. "Thanks for that, Goddess."

I walked and walked, mumbling to myself as I did. Halfway through, I made a note to myself that I needed to stop talking out loud. I had gotten too used to having a magic-based [Telepathy] on.

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As I walked, I observed my body more and tested out a few things. I definitely had near peak-human condition. If this was Earth, that was a definite advantage. Given that I could still access a stat screen... Yeah, if I figured out how to Level Up here, I could get back to a reasonable level of power.

"In a world like this, would Leveling Up mean I got more used to the atmosphere? I should keep an eye out for anything that points to supernatural systems of development... Hmm?"

I stopped and looked around.

"Didn't I... Didn't I come through here earlier?"

I looked up toward the treetops and to the gray sky beyond them.

"Time has definitely passed."

I looked at the ground and dropped down. In a few moments, I found footprints--my footprints.

"Hmm... Tricky. If I had my All-Seeing Eyes, I could see through a possible illusion but..." I closed my eyes and tried to activate them. "That was a power the goddess gave me directly. She must have taken them back at some point."

I stood up again and felt an eerie chill. A branch snapped behind me. I turned quickly and was a little surprised.

"Hello?"

A pale woman in a white nightgown stood many feet away from me, between two trees. Her brown hair looked wet... Her whole body looked wet now that I was focusing. Had she climbed out of a lake or something?

She stayed silent and pointed to her left, lifting up a single arm.

"Creepy."

There was another snap of the branches behind me, and I turned quickly--

Something's closer than before!

I scanned the forest and spotted a brown fox running away.

"Oh, just the wildlife." I turned around. "Hmm... Even creepier."

The woman was gone. Of course she was gone.

"Yeah. Okay. This is what we're doing."

I picked up a stone and walked over to where the woman had been standing. I dropped down onto my knees and studied the ground.

"No signs of footprints..."

Curious, I looked over toward where she had pointed.

"Well, what do we have here?"

There was a large tree many, many feet away. This one had something fastened to it.

"How did I miss that?"

I walked toward that large tree while glancing back every so often. It really was odd. There weren't any other trees in a twenty-foot radius around it. And I was sure I walked down that way--I would have seen it.

"Then again, if I'm caught in an illusion, this level of tricks is to be expected."

As I got closer to the tree, I got more and more creeped out. Eventually, I just stood in front of it, my head a little cocked and my jaw a little loose. 

"Is this some kind of totem?"

A mass of dry, dark brown straw was strapped to the tree. It was in the shape of a human and had many tied-up bundles of dry grass sticking out from it. The ropes that bound it--they looked old and weathered. There were also what looked like small animal bones stuck in it. 

I touched one of the bones in the 'palm' of the totem.

"That's really in there. Is it a nail? Did they crucify you, Mister Scarecrow? That's kind of unnecessary. What crows are there to scare here?" I chuckled. "Maybe they crucified you because you weren't too good."

My eyes went toward the base of the tree.

"Curiouser and curiouser."

There was a glass jug sitting right there and many dried-out cigars next to it. Again, I got on my knees and investigated. The bottle was half-full. Smelled like alcohol... I was reminded of rum. I wasn't going to drink it, though, in case this was one of those situations where drinking something from the forest trapped you in it forever, fey style.

"The cigars look like they were smoked at some point--"

A crow cawed behind me, and I almost fell over. I looked up at the blasted bird and got back onto my feet.

"Goddammit. Not funny."

I looked at the totem again.

"Thanks for not disappearing... Guess there were some crows... You're not very good at scaring them, though, are you?"

The scarecrow said nothing back, thankfully.

Then, I looked around again. That lingering mist was getting thicker. As I was contemplating where to go next, off in the distance, walking between trees, was a young woman with a basket in her hand.

"Hey!" I yelled as I ran toward her.

That woman--she looked more full of life than the last. She stopped and looked around. 

"Hey! Pardon me!"

She turned toward me, and we made eye contact. I ran a little faster, hopping over mossy logs and running between the gaps in the trees. She just stood there, one hand covering her mouth.

I finally reached her, "Hey, thank you for not running."

"You shouldn't be here," she stammered.

"Huh?" I looked up at the young woman and saw a single tear rolling down her cheek.

"You shouldn't be here," she repeated.