“You have been conscripted to become the 42,782,408,421st Hero of the Holy Kingdom!”
“This fertile land flowing with milk and honey, along with the kingdom's subjects, cheer for your arrival! Morale is soaring!”
“Please eliminate the invaders and complete the direct missions issued by the King. You will have the chance to enter the Royal Capital, receiving direct commendation and supreme honor from the King!”
“Now, pick up the weapon beside you, assist the villagers in driving away the goblins invading the town, construct a defense line, and strike the bell tower of victory to let the King in the Royal Capital know of your existence!”
“The system will periodically issue a set number of quests based on your strength. Please complete them on time to receive Hero rewards!”
“You have inherited the previous Hero's hideout. The property left behind by him will serve as your first pot of gold on the path of a Hero.”
“Pick up your Hero Handbook, save this land, slay the Demon King, and strive to become the hero who saves the world!”
...
Salty, musty air surged into his nostrils, carrying a strange foul odor with it. It woke Wu Shuang up in no time, his mind groggy as if he had just suffered a terrible hangover.
“Where am I...”
Wu Shuang felt a throbbing pain in his forehead. Bizarre nonsense words still echoed in his ears as if coming from far away, yet every single word remained crystal clear, carved directly into his mind.
“Wasn't I driving? How did I end up here...?”
He pushed himself up off the bed. It felt like coarse cloth that had dried into hard lumps, and his hand had brushed against something long and hard. He turned his head to look.
“Holy shit!”
Wu Shuang cried out, springing back over two meters as if shocked by electricity. He slumped onto the floor, staring back at the bed while his heart pounded wildly.
A desiccated skeleton lay on the bed. There was no telling how long it had been lying there; the flesh had already decomposed, leaving only tattered rags along with yellowish-brown fascia and hair that refused to decay, faintly resembling a human shape.
It wasn't Wu Shuang's first time seeing a dead body, but those had always been resting peacefully inside coffins. This was his first time encountering a corpse up close, and he was thoroughly terrified.
Only after ten or so seconds did his buzzing brain recover. What he had just touched seemed to be the dead person's femur. The bedsheet had dried hard and blackened from being soaked in corpse fluid, and he had actually been lying right on top of it taking a nap.
“Urgh!”
Wu Shuang vomited unceremoniously, his stomach churning as he threw up most of the lunch he had eaten earlier.
Once he finished vomiting, he felt much better. Sitting on the floor, he began reassessing the room and pondering his current predicament.
The room was small, less than twenty square meters, with only a single window covered by a grayish, hole-ridden cloth. It didn't even have a proper door.
He ruled out dreaming first—it felt far too real. If it were a dream, he should have woken up by now.
“Did I hit the jackpot and get transmigrated to another world?”
He speculated. The earlier voice from his dream echoed in his mind again with utmost clarity, and he gradually began to grasp his situation.
“Hero... Kingdom... Demon King... Transmigrated into a fantasy magic world and became an isekai Hero?”
“Wait, that's not right. Shouldn't I be in a royal palace, standing on a summoning magic circle with a princess in front of me?”
“Not a single thing matches up, except for the Hero part...”
Wu Shuang muttered to himself, sensing that something was wrong. This didn't match the classic tropes of standard royal fantasy manga.
Combined with the dead body of the previous Hero lying right there, plus the ridiculously huge count of predecessors mentioned in the system message, every detail oozed an uncanny atmosphere.
Something was off.
Something was definitely wrong with this world!
He looked toward the window letting in faint light and tried to call out the system, but failed.
After hesitating for a moment, he decided to follow the “system's” instructions and first inspect his “first pot of gold.”
“Pardon me...”
He whispered as he approached the skeletal remains, noticing that it only had a right arm.
The shoulder blade of the left arm was wrapped in weathered linen. The person had seemingly been bandaged after suffering a severe wound in life, but failed to push through and died in bed.
Yet even so, his right hand still clutched a rusty hatchet with a weathered wooden handle, his knuckle bones gripping it tightly enough to have blackened part of the shaft.
This is a bit much...
Wu Shuang felt strangely uneasy. He carefully pulled the rusty hatchet into his hand, but just then, a shadow darted out from within the skeletal remains, giving Wu Shuang a fright.
“Holy shit!” he shouted again.
Wu Shuang looked closer and saw that it was a fat rat, immediately flying into a rage born of embarrassment.
“Fuck your mother!”
He raised the hatchet and gave chase, taking very little effort to turn the nearly twenty-centimeter-long rat into a dead rat, which calmed his mood considerably.
Returning to the remains once more with his tetanus hatchet in hand, Wu Shuang had learned his lesson. He used the flat of the blade to nudge aside the cloth on the corpse. After searching around, no second rat ran out, but beneath the body he discovered a palm-sized booklet. It had a sleek black cover with gold lining and looked quite high-end, featuring four bold words on it—《Hero Handbook》.
Wu Shuang pulled out the handbook and held it in his hand. It felt as though it were crafted from some premium leather, so pristine it looked straight off the factory floor.
Right as he picked up the handbook, a system notification chimed in his ears.
【The Hero Handbook has been bound. You may retrieve and view it at any time.】
Then, the handbook dissolved into blue particles and vanished, remarkably magical.
When Wu Shuang willed it, the handbook reappeared in his hand, which was quite neat.
He opened the handbook, finding his status recorded on the very first page.
--------------
Name: Wu Shuang
Hero Number: 42782408421, Class: Apprentice Hero
Health: 100%, Stamina: 100%, Humanity: 108, Color: White
Mana: 10 (Reaching zero results in weakness; full recovery takes 24 hours, with the exact rate depending on the Mana stat.)
(Humanity is a collection of emotions, memories, self-awareness, and desires. It is not unique to humans; other living beings possess it as well, though humans express it most richly, hence the name Humanity.
Humanity is a quantifiable resource in this world, which can even be used as a medium for exchange or spellcasting.
Excessively low Humanity leads to self-effacement, turning one into a mindless roaming corpse suspended between life and death.
Excessively high Humanity may cause an individual to fall into uncontrollable extreme emotions, sinking into obsession and madness, though it may also grant special power.)
Talent: Extra
(Extra: Your life background is exceedingly mundane, clean as a blank sheet of paper—a textbook extra. As a result, your Humanity naturally gravitates toward white, making it difficult for you to fall into extreme emotions. In at most one month, your Humanity will revert to the most ordinary white.)
Abilities: None
Magic: Appraisal Spell
(Appraisal Spell: A special spell granted to Heroes by the system, allowing the user to appraise a target. Casting cost: 1 Mana. Information will be recorded in the Hero Handbook and can be browsed in the codex at any time.
If the distance to the target is too great or the gap in strength is too large, appraisal will yield only partial information, or even no information at all.)
Strength: 4 (0/100)
Agility: 5 (0/200)
Constitution: 5 (0/200)
Willpower: 5 (0/200)
Mana: 5 (0/200)
Overall Combat Rating: -1 (Overall Combat Rating is equal to the sum of all attributes minus 25)
--------------
“Combat rating -1? Extra... what...?”
Wu Shuang wished so desperately at this moment that he were at least a scrub with a combat rating of five, but he couldn't even reach that. And what was even more wrong...
“Humanity... Would a proper magic world even have something like this?”
“Something's off. There is a whole hundred percent wrong with this!”
Wu Shuang's heart sank. He looked over toward the window loosely covered by the tattered cloth and walked across the room.
Rate on N.U.
