"Looks like I'm still dreaming…" Those words came out of my mouth. I was so shocked. Before my eyes was a female character from my favorite book. The fictional girl that I admire the most is right in front of me.
Either I'm still in a dream, or I'm going crazy and she is some kind of hallucination. This couldn't be real. Could it be some kind of side effect of reading a lot of chapters of a novel in such a short period of time? Does that kind of thing exist?
But the red-haired woman looking at me seemed so real.
"Why are you making this face? Is something wrong?" asked Sarah. She leaned towards me. Her expression had changed from anger to curiosity. Her shining blue eyes fixed on me.
She was close. Really, really close. Her face was just a few centimeters away from mine. Her pleasant smell from before was entering my nose, activating my senses. She seemed pretty real to me.
Also, because she leaned in my direction, her cleavage was exposed from my perspective. And again, her breasts appeared to be real.
"Eh?" However, something seemed strange in her eyes. I took some time to realize because I was mesmerized by Sarah's beauty. It was supposed to be me reflected in her pupils. But it wasn't, or at least not my face.
"Sarah…" I said reluctantly. I had a bad feeling about my body.
"Yeah, that's my name." The woman was talking to me as if I had hit my head and gotten a concussion.
"Do you have some kind of mirror?" It must've sounded strange, but she didn't complain about my request.
She was carrying a bag on her back, and from inside it she took a shiny object. The handheld mirror that she gave me had a coral dusk border decorated with little pink flowers. I opened a small smile.
'I see. Just like the book, the Sarah in front of me likes girly things, even if it's way too feminine for a Swordsman.'
I took the mirror in my hands and, for the first time, I could clearly see my new self.
"W-why?" My smile vanished when I saw my reflection. I recognized this face. It was…
"Rick, is everything all right?" She grew concerned when she saw my gloomy expression.
"No, it's nothing, Sarah… You can go ahead of me. I'll meet you and Leo soon." I tried my best to fake some tranquility. It seemed to work. The girl looked more at ease.
"If you say so. Just don't take too long." Sarah said, then exited the room.
When her footsteps couldn't be heard anymore, I started to pull the hair out of my head.
"Fucking shit! This is the worst scenario possible!" I shouted to release all my frustration. It's confirmed. I transmigrated to the world of "SSS-Class Ragnarok Legend".
But I became the worst character possible at the beginning of the story. Now I'm Richard Forster, also known as Rick, one of the early members of the main hero party at "SSS-Class Ragnarok Legend".
I could just stare at my new appearance. My face has changed into this character's, but I still seemed to be in my early twenties. My eyes turned cyan-blue and my hair became short and layered with bangs, like an anime character.
"My hair looks like K*rito's. For real? Hey, wait a minute…!"
I also noticed that my height had changed. I had 1.85 m (6'1''), but Rick had 1.70 m (5'7''), so I'm down by 15 centimeters. "Hey, in my world people have to pay a fortune and break their bones to gain mere 5 centimeters. And I lost three times that. Are you kidding me?"
I looked at my crotch. There was the possibility that another thing besides my height had gotten smaller. In a gesture of courage, I pulled down my pants and faced the truth.
"It looks like my friend from the other world." For some reason, my dick was identical to mine before transmigrating: color, shape and size. The weapon between my legs was a perfect replica.
"It isn't a Big Fucking Sword, but it didn't turn into a Mythril Knife either…" I sighed, a little calmer after the discovery.
However, my physical change wasn't the worst part of all that. There was only one truth. This transmigration was a death sentence.
Usually, this would be a good thing. Being sent to another world, a fantasy world on top of that. A new exotic reality with more possibilities than the modern world. It was something that the majority could only dream of.
I am supposed to be happy about it, but in my case, there was a caveat. I became an Extra who had a bigger role at the beginning of the story, when the power level was still low.
Among the three party members from the start, Rick was the weakest. And that was because of one single difference. Rick Forster didn't have a class suited for combat, or skills that would compensate for that. At least not as an offensive type.
In this world, the skills, the powers that you can use to fight monsters, depend on your class. Knight, Swordsman, Mage, Priest, Assassin, Monk and many others are classes given to you at birth and revealed to you by divination. If you are born without a class, you won't awaken one later on in life.
Rick was different from everyone else. His class was called Everyman: a rare class that allows its user to learn any skill from any other class. I know this idea may sound like this class is OP, but the devil is in the details.
Unlike the other classes, Everymen cannot learn skills by leveling up. They acquire skills only by life experience out of combat. If an Everyman prays a lot for protection, he can gain a defensive skill from the Priest class, but it's not certain if he will gain it in the first place.
The good side is that once he learns a skill from another class, he can use it. A Knight can't use "Fire Ball". Mage can't use "Shadow Walk" and so on. Most classes are limited in this regard.
In theory, he doesn't need to take risks in a dungeon mission, but in practice there's no certainty about what he will learn, or if he will learn at all. So Rick is a lucky guy gifted with a rare class that is worth SHIT!
But that isn't the worst part. Rick's character dies during the first arcs of SCRL, killed by one of the initial villains. So if I follow the story from the original book, I will die as well.
Rick was destined to die at the beginning as a sacrifice to motivate Leo and Sarah against their enemy. This was his function in the plot. And now it was my function.
"As if I would say that! This is extremely unfair! I was taking care of my life until I was dragged into this situation. What kind of sick joke is this?"
If it were another circumstance, without a death omen, I would be glad to be sent to another world. Fight monsters, defeat evil mages and do it with beautiful women. It wouldn't be easy from the start, but I thought that was the fun of it.
The modern world was pretty boring to say the least. Nothing that people call an accomplishment in life seemed meaningful to me. Every win seemed pointless, but just one loss hit you hard. It looked like a world designed to kill your will to live. Maybe I just didn't fit.
But a fantasy world is a different case. An infinite number of possibilities in a medieval setting, dungeons to explore, and calamities to be stopped. It looked more exciting than the hell made of concrete. Even the darkest of stories seemed more interesting than any calculus lesson that I had in the past.
I had a good friend back there, Hugo, a good loving family, and I liked to read fantasy books, but living an adventure in a world of swords and magic was an offer that I would accept without thinking twice.
'So why am I so reluctant? Death is near, but will I just be a coward and give up? Will I run to a faraway place where the deadly event cannot reach me? This world is a new life. A new start in the kind of world that I've wished for.' I thought inwardly. 'If I survive by running away, I will regret running from the main plot of this story for the rest of my life.'
'Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. I won't see you guys again, but you didn't raise your son just to live like a bird in a cage, right? My biggest regret is that I didn't say goodbye to you all.'
I sighed deeply. 'There's no point in getting mad. I'll just waste energy and cloud my own thoughts. I need to think straight, so I can find a way out.'
So I breathed until I calmed down.
'I really am inside the world of Ragnarok Legend, so the novel became my new reality. This is something that I can't change. But accepting reality didn't mean accepting this death. Rick is not dead yet, so maybe, just maybe, I could change the events of this world.'
"Wait a sec…" An idea popped into my head. If I were a cartoon, a lamp would light up above my head.
At the beginning of the novel, the MC received his powers after a certain event inside the dungeon near his town.
Inside that low-rank dungeon, he discovered an ancestral secret and unlocked a cheat power. He didn't instantly become OP, but his destiny changed at this plot point.
"He changed his destiny, so why can't I?" It didn't need to be him. I knew where the secret place was, and knew which plot events could unlock this scenario.
Just one thing needed to be done.
"I'll go to that dungeon, and steal MC's cheat power…" I said with determination.
A strand of red hair fluttering in the wind passed through my life. If I solved the main problem, my life in this world could become a paradise.
"... and I will build my harem, starting with Sarah!"
A fantasy world should be a universe full of possibilities, not just one single dead end. If I could change that thing, I could build the life of my dreams.
I won't die a pitiful death. I won't run like a coward. I'll face this fate and fight death itself if it's necessary.
…
A/N: I hope you guys enjoy the beginning of this novel. If you do, consider helping by adding it to the library or giving a power stone.