CHAPTER 3.

UNCERTAINTY

*

I felt it. The cold, damp air, the chilling ground underneath. I smelled it. The smell of wet rocks and minerals right before my nose. I heard it. The echoes belonging to an underground cave, and dripping water. And when I opened my eyes, I saw it. A dark, yet not completed unilluminated cavern, risen higher than the sky and stretching further than the horizon. 

My body was heavy, and it took me a lot of effort to sit myself up. Strange - I thought. I had assumed I would wake up after being sucked in that white light, but it seemed the dream still continued. Nevertheless, for a dream, everything was rather realistic. Too realistic. The smell, the sensation of the stone ground below me, and the detail of the cavern. I could even feel my tongue, and the taste of saliva in my mouth. There’s no way it could be this authentic. Unless…

There’s… really no way, right? A drop of sweat rolled down my forehead. I slowly put my thumb and index finger on my cheek, and twisted it good.

“Ow!” A cute, feminine voice was heard. Startled, I frantically looked around to see if there was someone nearby, but there was none. Thinking it was just my imagination, I remembered the sensation of pain on my cheek. It was still tingling. I tried pinching myself a couple more times, which instead of yielding a different result, just gave me a burning hot, swelling cheek.

“Is...this is for real? Did I actually get transferred to a different world?” I still couldn’t believe what I saw. 

“...No, it's impossible. This is real life, not some kind of isekai web novel made by someone that was so bored they decide they would do something they absolutely hate - writing", I told myself. The situation must be that I was drugged and brought here by some cult, and this place is where they worship their whatever-the-hell-they-are god. Yep, that’s gotta be it.

“That’s right, me. Use common sense, like a normal human being.” I reassured myself, then patted my chest to calm down. Which was when I felt something rather… soft. And round. “Huh, strange. It was supposed to be more boney than this. Is there something on my…?!!”

There was something alright. Two rounded, unidentified objects were stuck to my chest. I stared at them in silence, yet in my head a whirlpool of galaxies stormed wild. Slowly, shakily, I reached down to my crotch. 

“Ahhh… this is another world alright…” A single tear fell down my cheek.

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As I sat alone, frozen in place, staring at the dark horizon, I reminisced about the past and the things I had taken for granted. “My dearest child… You were so young, so pure, so innocent… But now you’re gone, forever, without giving me a chance to use you…” *Sniffs*

“Farewell, my child. I will miss you…” I saluted as I said goodbye to a brave (but never dispatched) soldier. 

At last, the time has arrived when I must come to terms with reality. “It’s a girl.” A sentence I did want to say some day, but absolutely not about myself. I wanted to blame god because they didn’t mention the hero companion's gender, but couldn’t, as I realized I didn’t ask about it either. It was totally my fault and I hate it.

“Haiz… Well, what’s done is done.” I sighed in self blame, and decided to take a close inspection at myself – or rather, the body I had inherited. My hair was blocking my right eye so I tried to comb it out of the way, but gave up as it just dropped down again, with nothing to hold the strands in place. I was wearing some kind of skin tight, black leather mini skirt and sleeveless shirt, with long fishnet gloves that went up to my elbows, and fishnet stockings covering my whole lower body. 

Thing is, though my skin is practically all hidden aside from the shoulders, the clothes still looked kinda… erotic, somehow, the way they tightly wrapped against my body. It didn’t really feel like I was wearing clothes, and more like another layer of skin. They were very comfortable, though I'd rather not wear them in public and get weird looks. My boots were unusual as well, seeing that they didn’t have soles and were basically just cloth wrapping around my feet. Because of that, I could directly feel the stone ground underneath. 

Lastly, there was some kind of metal cuff around my neck. It was really thick and heavy, to the point where I could feel its weight pulling me down if I were to lean forward. And it was cold as ice, which logically shouldn’t have been the case with metal and body heat. I couldn’t see its shape, but from what I felt, the cuff was a single piece of rough metal bent into a circle, with one end bending 90 degree outward and had a hole in it. The thing was quite rusty as well, adding to the discomfort. 

“Was this girl a criminal?” was the natural reaction to the presence of the cuff. I couldn’t be blamed for thinking so, as there shouldn’t be any other reason why somebody would put such a big lump of metal around her neck. I then tried to search around in the girl's head to get information about her, the reason for the cuff and the place I was at, but I could only find my own. It seemed that her memory had been erased, or at least blocked from my perception. It was unfortunate, as her knowledge would’ve helped me a lot in finding my bearing in this alien place.

“…Great. On top of being a supposed criminal, she has no memory. And now I’m possessing her.” With no knowledge to rely on and a criminal charge on my head, I was starting to think the task that god had given me was nigh on impossible. A feeling then began to encroach that this jerk was just toying with me, and they were probably having a good, hearty laugh up there.

“Damn it…” I cursed my terrible luck. Knowing my history with gacha games, I should have not left everything to chance. “Can I even survive in the first place, let alone meeting the hero…”

When in a pinch, one's prime instinct is to find means to defend themselves. Luckily, I had quite a few of them on me. My assets consisted of a small leather pouch on my waist, which housed a pair of hammer and chisel, four small and very thin double edged knives, seemed to be meant for throwing strapped on each thigh - eight in total, and two daggers cross-sheathed on my lower back. The daggers looked plain, lacking any decoration. The knives were the same, aside from the fact that each of them was numbered from one to eight on their handles, and there was also two weird symbols, resembling Nordic runes, carved on their blades. Both the knives and daggers were riddled with rust and cracks from age and extensive use.

“...What the hell am I supposed to do with these? They look like they’re on the verge of breaking already…” I lamented. The hammer and chisel were out of the question, and the daggers seemed like they’d shatter like glass with just one more swing. “Well, if it breaks, it breaks.” I sighed, then proceeded to stab one of them in the stone ground below me anyways. And to my utter amazement, it dove straight in, with the slightest hint of resistance. 

“The hell?” I quickly pulled the dagger out, revealing a perfectly clean cut, as if the stone had been put under a high grade industrial cutter, and not a rusty knife. The weapon itself was perfectly intact, showing no sign of chipping, aside from the ones it already got. In disbelief, I repeated the process multiple times, and got the same result.

“…Isn’t this thing… actually amazing?” I mean, what knife do you have that can cut through stones like butter? These daggers would definitely make all the chefs around the world envious. And as a weapon, no one would ever ask for more. As a result, I brightened up a little bit, knowing that my chance of survival had gone up significantly thanks to them.

“I guess you can’t judge things from their looks, huh. Especially when one’s in another world.” I contemplated. Wait, can I just cut the collar with these daggers? If they could cut stones with ease, then metal shouldn't be too tough for them either. Thinking so, I put a dagger under the collar and pushed relatively hard. "Come on... Break god damn it... Urgh!" Nope, not a dent. The metal collar felt like bedrock under the dagger. I could've tried harder still, but by that point I had just realized my head was directly above the collar, so in order not to slice it in half, I decided to stop there.

Disappointed, I directed my attention towards the knives. Assuming they were of the same quality, I was about to take them out for a test throw, when I heard a distinctly low growl resonating from the entrance to the temple-looking building.

A figure with the silhouette of a world record weight lifter slowly walked forward. It was so tall and huge that the three meters tall doorway couldn’t accommodate its height. But the figure didn’t lower its head in order to fit through the entrance, but rammed its skull right through, causing rubbles to fill up the place. When the dust had subsided, it revealed a bull’s head, growling and breathing heavily, attached to an absolute unit of a human’s body. Imagine The Mountain, but upscaled twice, walking around in a bull’s costume and blowing smoke out of his nose. It also carried a double axe the size of itself. As it swung the thing around, I could hear and feel the air being violently ripped apart.

It looked around the area before locking eyes with me. Then it let out a deafening roar, making the entire cavern rumble and my hair stand on ends. If it was the me before, then I would’ve been shaking in resonance with the cavern as well, out of fear. However, the current me was standing my ground, calm and collected. I didn’t know whether it was the mentality of the girl still lingering within this body helping me not getting panicked, or the fact that I was still only half-believing I was actually in another world. 

*

SoggySpaghetti

Fixed a detail in the chapter to make it sounds more logical, but didn't tell anyone what it was so I don't have to face my mistakes. Just like real life.