Irid123: this is pretty meta ngl
GeorgeDoshington: character development amirite?
PrestoFive55: feels a bit too real…
SpoOo0oOon: don’t cry Nana it’s gonna be okay
SpoOo0oOon: the robot is gone

I continued to sob, trying to get it all under control. I just couldn’t help it. I may have acted strong and decisive, but in reality, I had been terrified of my situation.

“How…” I sniffed. “How are you guys even seeing this? There’s no camera.”

GeorgeDoshington: we live in your eyeballs
GonguuH: we can see and hear what you can, I think?
GeorgeDoshington: no dont listen to him
GeorgeDoshington: we live in your eyeballs

“Oh… That’s just… weird. How does that even work…?” I poked my eyelids, tried closing one eye, then the other, as if that would do anything.

 “Also, how long have you guys been around? Did you see me almost get nailed by that robot?”

PrestoFive55: before you hatched
GeorgeDoshington: saw you run like a chicken yup
Irid123: the stream started a few hours before you hatched
Irid123: it was just black for a while

“Wait what? Hold on! Doesn’t that mean you saw me naked? Am I gonna get banned?!” I yelled, before quickly realizing the absurdity of that thought.

Who the heck was going to ban an interdimensional stream?

Irid123: it was censored
GeorgeDoshington: black screen

“That’s just weird…” I murmured and tried willing the status screen into existence again.

It worked.

The window looked identical, except instead of ‘Calibrating…’ under racial skill, it now showed ‘Streamer’.

“Is there a description or something…?” I wondered out loud, and as if it heard me, another smaller window popped up.

Streamer:
Stream your own sense of sight and hearing to a familiar audience and read their responses, reactions, and other feedback. This cannot be turned off. Output is censored during bathroom breaks or scenes of nudity.
This skill works retroactively.
Half of your Tempor reserves are locked for this skill’s use.

Racial skill - Allows access to tier 1 human skills in the skill shop. Purchase every upgrade to this skill to unlock the next tier of human skills and the first Limit break.

Upgrade: Extra features (3SP)
Upgrade: Admin rights (3SP)
Upgrade: Stream history (3SP)
Upgrade: Faithful cameraman (3SP)

“Huh… That’s…” I hummed. “Can’t be turned off. Well, great. I guess you guys are getting sleep ASMR streams every night. The censor is cool, I guess…? Works retroactively… That’s why you guys could watch me before I even got the skill. That’s just weird… Hmm, the heck is Tempor?”

Then my eyes slid down.

“Whoa, wait. Upgrades? What’s all this mean? Admin rights? You mean I don’t have admin rights for my own stream right now?!” I yelled in indignation.

A smaller window appeared to answer my question.

Admin rights - Allows banning, muting, and timing out viewers, and giving moderator rights to them.

“...Wow, I really don’t. I need to buy an upgrade first. That’s so stupid!” I crossed my arms in annoyance. “Well, okay, I guess. What do these other upgrades do then, Mr. Status screen?”

Extra features - Grants access to direct messaging, polls, subtitles, and group chats with selected viewers.
Stream history - Allows you to watch the past records of your own stream and chat.
Faithful cameraman - Allows you to stream from a different point than your own position. You can freely move this point in a ten meter radius around yourself.

JamieWasTaken3: facecam mode!
Jeofffff: get the cameramna
Jeofffff: cameraman

I blinked.

“That’s interesting… Wait, watch past records of my stream? So since this is my own sight and hearing, I can just look back to what I’ve seen and heard? Isn’t that kinda like a perfect recall with extra steps?”

GeorgeDoshington: you can go and watch how you flailed against that robot lol
Jeofffff: oh shit, that’s true!
Irid123: the polls would be nice to have
Jeofffff: you can analyze your fight and figure out what you did wrong

I grimaced at the thought of having to fight something like that robot again but still nodded. “You’re right Jeoff. That could be useful…” Then I stopped and frowned. “...But none of this would actually help me beat that robot. What’s the point of getting upgrades to my stream if I just die?”

I dismissed the little explanation windows and looked at the line I’d skipped over in the streamer skill.

“Racial skill… Tier one human skills? A skill shop? Limit break…? What is all this…?” I murmured, once again mentally demanding an explanation.

A big window opened in front of me alongside a smaller one.

“Whoa!”

My eyes zeroed in on the smaller one first.

Limit breaks
Once you hit a block in your growth, you can attempt to initiate a limit break. Doing so will require you to complete a set of trials in a timeless space specifically curated for you, designed to push you to your utmost limits… and then past them.
Completing a limit break will unlock a new tier of all skills in the skill shop, open two new skill slots, allow you access to incausal rifts and memory temples, and triple your Ether, Intra, and Tempor reserves and regeneration rate, as well as granting some skill points.

Warning: Performing a limit break may cause long-term trauma.

Limit break #1 - Trials of courage [LOCKED]
Fully upgrade your racial skill and gain one or more Tier 3 achievements to unlock.

Limit break #2 - ??? [LOCKED]

Limit break #3 - ??? [LOCKED]

The more I read, the more it felt like I was reading a wiki page on some end game content while still trying to figure out the tutorial. And then I read the warning and noped the heck out of there.

Irid123: foreshadowing!
GonguuH: interesting…
JamieWasTaken3: the hell are incausal rifts
Jeofffff: oh shit, ascension mechanics
Irid123: what’s Ether, Intra and Tempor though?
SpoOo0oOon: that warning is ominous…

“Yeah, no. This is for much much later… or never. Yeah, never sounds good,” I declared and closed that window.

Jeofffff: noooo, my ascension mechanics! D:
GeorgeDoshington: you’ll be weak forever then
RetconRanger: I bet you’ll go for it eventually…

I made a face but mostly ignored the comments wanting me to do something that literally had a warning about causing trauma. Not like I could do it right now anyway.

Then, I focused on the other big window that had popped up. It was labeled Skill shop at the very top, and then it was split into two columns. One labeled Human and the other Phoenix. Both then had the sub-title of Tier 1 and then a massive list of what I could only assume were skills. All of them had parenthesis with what was probably their skill point cost, but the vast majority of them were labeled as [LOCKED]. Below that, it continued with Tier 2 [LOCKED], then tier 3, 4, and finally 5.

It was way too much stuff that I couldn’t even do anything with.

“Okay, what the heck? Why show all the locked ones too? Could I… Oh, there we go. Thanks, Mr. System.”

Just as I’d asked, all the locked skills disappeared, leaving me with just a few skills still available in both columns.

In the human one, I had:

Tier 1:

Persistence (1SP)
Soulbound item (2SP)
Craftsman (2SP)
Appraisal (2SP)
Hunter’s eye (3SP)
Conqueror (5SP)

And the phoenix one had:

Tier 1:

Heat vision (2SP)
Fire breath (3SP)
Featherfall (4SP)
Flameguard (5SP)

As I looked over the much shorter list, I frowned.

“Hold on, why do I have phoenix skills…?” I muttered before my eyes went wide. “Oh shit! The egg! So it was a phoenix!”

JamieWasTaken3: yea obviously
Irid123: you have that cursed skill
Jeofffff: cool system so far
GeorgeDoshington: lol literal birdbrain

“Wait, what? Cursed skill?”

I hurriedly thought about looking at my main status screen and immediately noticed the elephant in the room I’d somehow missed before.

Other skills(0/3):
Phoenix blessing [CURSED] [FREE] [TEMPORARY]
Empty (+)
Empty (+)
Empty (+)

“Wait, what the hell?! Cursed? Hold on, how is it both a blessing and a curse?! What is this thing?!”

Another explanation window appeared.

Phoenix blessing [CURSED] [FREE] [TEMPORARY]:
Time left: 59d, 18h, 21m, 14s
You have been granted this skill as a result of equipping the ‘Fire blessed’ title. It grants the following:
- Minor fire resistance
- Minor boost to fire-related skills and spells
- Resisted fire damage will heal instead of wounding
- You age 60x faster

PrestoFive55: phoenix powaaah!
Jeofffff: oooh nice
JamieWasTaken3: you can start showering with fire lol
Jeofffff: you gotta start stacking fire resist
Jeofffff: wait it’s temporary… meh
GeorgeDoshington: lmao speedrunning ot grandma

I blinked as realization dawned on me.

“That was why that robot’s flamethrower didn’t kill me! I have fire resistance from this thing! And I can heal from fire too? Is that why the green fire healed me…? Or was it… Wait, what the heck? I age sixty times faster?! Why the… Oh…”

I touched my tiny hand on my tiny stomach.

Because my body was that of a five-year-old, huh? If I did the math, aging sixty times faster for… two months – if that timer was to be believed – would be about ten years worth of growth. So by the time this skill ran out, I would look like I was fifteen? That was super weird…

“Hold on, that still hadn’t answered the cursed thing! Or the other two tag things!”

Three little windows popped right below the skill’s explanation.

[CURSED] - This skill cannot be replaced or removed by any usual means.
[FREE] - This skill doesn’t take up a skill slot.
[TEMPORARY] - This skill will permanently disappear after a set amount of time.

I blinked.

Replaced or removed? Right, the status screen did say skill slots, implying that I could normally swap skills in and out. But [CURSED] made it so that I couldn’t.

“Okay, this is starting to make a bit more sense. Cursed and temporary basically make it so that I have to keep this skill in my skill slots until it runs out. But that’s not really a big deal since it’s also free and doesn’t take up a skill slot. Neat.” I nodded to myself.

Although, that still didn’t explain why I had access to the phoenix skills. Maybe that title thing had something to do with that? I’d skipped over it as well last time… Let’s see…

Titles:
Certain achievements and feats can unlock equipable titles. Titles have unique passive effects separate from skills and can be changed every 30 days.

Available titles:
Fire blessed (EQUIPPED)

“Right, okay. And what does this title do then?”

Fire blessed:
You have been reincarnated by a phoenix using the ‘Molten ash of new life’ skill.
The title is automatically equipped right after reincarnation. Having this title equipped allows the wielder access to tier 1 (this is fixed) phoenix skills. Equipping it for the first time also grants the ‘Phoenix blessing’ skill for 60 days with [CURSED], [FREE], and [TEMPORARY] modifiers.

And there it was. Both the confirmation that a phoenix was responsible for my predicament and also the reason why I had access to phoenix skills.

GonguuH: yup, the culprit was a phoenix
DecadentLawyer: hey guys
Irid123: neat, I guess we’re looking for a phoenix now
DecadentLawyer: what’s Nana doing?
GeorgeDoshington: sup lawyer
PrestoFive55: ARG

I stared at the little windows for a good while, not sure how to feel. Where was this phoenix who had reincarnated me? Why did they do it? Why me?

I pursed my lips, remembering going to sleep last night. Remembering how hot I’d felt.

“Hold on…” I muttered. “Did a phoenix break into my house and burn me alive?!” I shouted. “Why?! Why would – Wait.”

I finally noticed what was happening in my chat.

Irid123: she’s doing this meta ARG stream where she pretends to be isekai’d
JamieWasTaken3: yea its super high quality
JamieWasTaken3: cant even tell its a voice changer
JamieWasTaken3: its cool
DecadentLawyer: oh? interesting
RetconRanger: It feels a bit too real to be ARG…
Irid123: I’m just waiting to see how she excuses stopping the stream
Jeofffff: she just figured out she has an RPG status screen and we’ve been going through it
GeorgeDoshington: lol wtf? phoenix bulglar?

“Wait… No. Chat. This isn’t an ARG!” I denied. ‘This is real! I’m really in another world!“

JamieWasTaken3: even stays in character at all times
JamieWasTaken3: super cool
Jeofffff: yes, you definitely are in another world, ignore us
PrestoFive55: ok prove it

I felt my stomach sink as I read the comments. They never believed I had really gotten isekai’d, had they? They had just been ‘playing along’. After all, they were just watching a stream. Nothing magical or supernatural there. And there was no way I could prove this was real, was there? What could I possibly do to prove it?

Nothing.

For some reason, I felt incredibly lonely at that thought. Not like them believing me would somehow make me less alone but…

SpoOo0oOon: Nana are you okay?

“...Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied. “I just need a moment.”

SpoOo0oOon: I believe you Nana. And I believe you can make it back home
RetconRanger: I believe you too!

Despite myself, I smiled.

They probably weren’t serious. Probably just played along as well… But it still made me feel just a little better.

“Thanks Spoon… You too, Ranger.” I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Alright chat, I–”

I blinked, just now realizing that my surroundings were a lot dimmer than before. I glanced to the side and saw red clouds in the sky, indicating sunset.

How long had I been sitting here?

“Oh…” A chill went down my spine as I realized the predicament I was in. “Crap! It’s getting dark! Chat, what do I do?!”