Aww, man… This sucked.

An understatement of the century, considering my situation. Disowned by my family? Banished from the village at the age of sixteen? Tied up and left in the middle of the forest for the wild animals to munch on me? Check, check, aaand check!

What a delightful situation. 

Now, why was all this happening? Well, simple. According to some ancient elven myths, red hair was a bad omen. And I mean… fair enough. But come on! It could barely be called red! It was more like a bit darker shade of orange! Stupid semantics…

That aside, it was my sixteenth birthday! At least they’d had the decency to wait till I was an ‘adult’. At least according to what they had said. Very odd, if you ask me. Weren’t elves long-lived? You would think I would be considered an adult later rather than earlier.

But honestly, with the way everyone had treated me, I was kinda glad they allowed me to leave already. Despite it meaning that I would have to survive in the wilderness on my own.

Jeez, weren’t you supposed to get your new life served up on a silver platter after you got reincarnated? This was like the exact opposite! I felt cheated.

Anyway! Birthday. Since this was another world, it wasn’t copyrighted, right? And since nobody was here to sing it for me, I had to do it myself!

[Redacted]

The escort elves who were just leaving visibly hurried their pace. My happy singing probably creeped them out. Good bonus.

Now then… with everyone out of sight, it was time to make my amazing escape!

The ropes tying my wrists and legs vanished. Or more specifically, were put into storage.

Yup. Even though my body had basically zero mana capacity, my birth family as well as the entire village hated me, and I was still a frail little elf… at least I had my special ability. Every otherworlder had one, apparently. I had no idea how I knew that. I just did.

With my limbs free, it was time to start playing a survival game on hardcore difficulty. If only I could fell trees by simply punching them. Ah, well. Maybe one day.

First order of business, gather up some food into my storage and look for something I could use as a weapon in case a random wandering dragon decided my day wasn’t bad enough yet.

Oh, here we go. Brown and sticky -- a stick. The perfect tool to slay a dragon with. Or at the very least slightly discourage a wolf from making a dinner out of me. It would do for now.

As for food, I didn’t have to worry about that too much, since I recognized a lot of the berries growing on the bushes. After all, even if everyone in that village had hated me for the melanin in my hair, they had still given me food. And since I hadn’t died after eating it back then, it was fairly safe to assume I wouldn’t die now, either.

Moving on. With food and a weapon secured, I finally felt like I could relax for a second. The village of the dumb hairist elves was finally behind me, and I would start a wonderful adventure in a fantasy world as an elf! That’s how it was supposed to go, right?

Maybe not. The oversized bunny with sharp claws and toothy mouth in front of me seemed to have a different opinion. Well, at least I’d noticed him in time before he could ambush me. Gotta look on the positive side.

The bunnyraptor -- name pending -- dashed at me, his claws meeting my mighty stick. To nobody’s surprise, the stick snapped in half, leaving me wide open.

Luckily, I was a master at dodging, thanks to the kind neighborhood kids who’d often thrown stuff at me due to jealousy of my beautiful hair. As such, I managed to dance out of the way right before his claws caught me.

The epic battle continued… with me running for the hills and practicing saying a long, high-pitched letter ‘A’. Very loudly.

Luckily, I remembered my training. Since I’d constantly had to find a way to escape from the neighborhood kids forcefully trying to play tag with me, as well as the adults wanting to lecture me after I pulled an innocent prank on them, I’d learned how to climb trees with impeccable efficiency. Before the bunnyraptor could catch up to me, I picked a random tree and climbed up.

It left my pursuer utterly stumped. No glaring up at me would magically teleport him near me.

Sorry friend, you clearly hadn’t evolved to climb trees with these claws of yours. Too bad, maybe next ti--

The bunny swiped at the stump, creating a cut. Then he did it again, and again, and--

Well, maybe he wasn’t built to climb trees, but that didn’t really matter if he could cut them down, did it?

Alright, fine! Time to unleash my secret weapon! I summon thee! Ancient elven hero! Chad!

I dramatically spread my arms and used my power causing the hero to materialize in front of me, before promptly falling down onto my assailant. 

There was a loud crunch sound… and then silence.

I looked at the hero made of stone doing his heroic pose on top of the bunny pancake beneath him.

Once again, Chad the elven hero had managed to save the elfkind. Or at the very least, me. I counted as elfkind, even though I was originally a human.

“On that note, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Chad, because your full name is just impossible to pronounce!” I said as I jumped off the tree and looked up at Chad.

His stone-cold expression told me everything I needed to know. He not only didn’t mind at all, but he was extremely happy to be on this adventure with me instead of posing in the middle of the village square.

I agreed. It had been such a waste… luckily, I had rescued him just yesterday. And it definitely had nothing to do with the teacher giving us a lecture about how Chad had once slain the evil red-haired elf. Nope, not at all. We simply became great friends with Chad.

Hmm, thinking about it, maybe their hero leaving for my pocket dimension had something to do with the elves tossing me out sooner? Eh, whatever. The result was me having Chad on my side, and them having an empty plinth. A clear win for me.

As I kept on complimenting myself for my great victory, I stored away the furry pancake into my pocket dimension, saluted the hero, and invited him inside as well.

Now then, with the first epic battle of my adventure behind me, I set off to find a better weapon to defend myself with since my old one had decided to retire mid-battle.

The direction? Directly away from the village. I didn’t wanna risk someone finding out I hadn’t become rabbit food yet, and deciding to promptly rectify that fact.

The terrain was rough, however. Nothing like the paved paths and trimmed canopies back in the village. But hey, I could deal with that. At worst, I could store entire trees into my pocket dimension, as I’d found out. Sure, I couldn’t fit more than one or two with the hero already camping inside, but that didn’t matter since I could toss them out right away.

As the day went on, I encountered a few more wild animals. Luckily, those weren’t as aggressive as the bunnyraptor. Most of them ended up running away from me rather than the other way around.

The sun gradually set and I was left wandering inside a dark forest. It was at that moment that I realized: I was screwed.

Unfortunately, just like humans, elves needed to sleep. And sleeping all alone, unguarded, in the middle of a dark forest, without any shelter… was the perfect scenario to get myself eaten in my sleep.

Darn.

Once again, my internal reaction severely understated my current situation.

Not having any better ideas, I decided to climb up a random tree and nap on one of the branches, hoping I wouldn’t roll over in my sleep and fall off. Well… it was still much better than leaving myself wide open to bunnyraptors if I slept down on the grass. After all, there weren’t many wild animals who could reach me up here.

As if to prove me wrong, I heard a draconic roar resound around me. Upon looking up, I saw a huge winged creature circling above me.

Oh, great. The dragons had finally decided I’d had enough fun. Come on now! Didn’t they have better things to do?

My internal rant was interrupted by the beast swooping down right at me. Luckily, me being master of dodging and climbing, I rolled out of the way, caught a branch to swing on, and eventually made it safely down. Just in time for the treetop I was on to fall right next to me, making me squeak.

A second later, as I was in the process of recovering my dignity, something landed right in front of me. Scales, wings, tail… yup, I was screwed. Utterly, and completely.

The worst part? It wasn’t even a dragon! No, dragons had four limbs and two wings, this thing only had two legs to accompany its two wings. So… a wyvern! Not a dragon! This was like being defeated by a mid-boss rather than the final one! How lame!

The wyvern lunged at me and I screamed. At the last moment, I remembered my ability and my guardian napping inside.

The creature smacked its face into my stony hero and let out a painful roar.

“Hah! Serves you right!”

I put the statue away once again and carefully took a few steps sideways. The wyvern recovered and was staring right back at me… while also making some steps sideways.

We circled each other until my opponent decided to charge again. But once again, the hero blocked it off.

“I can do this aaall night, buddy!” I taunted it, clearly enraging it even further.

Once more, a few steps to the side from both of us before the wyvern dashed. Unfortunately, it seemed to be able to learn from its past mistakes, and instead of ramming head first into the statue, it somehow climbed over it and ambushed me from above.

I dodged out of the way… but didn’t manage to get the hero back into my pocket. Now, there was nothing standing in my opponent’s way. I was going to become wyvern dinner.

My foe charged at me for the last time, with a victorious roar. I also roared in response -- or maybe screamed -- with my eyes closed, all while doing the equivalent of mashing buttons with my power.

I fell to the ground and covered my head on instinct, waiting to be ripped apart.

…

But it never happened. I cowered for a few seconds, before meekly looking up and seeing that… not only was the wyvern gone, heck, the forest was gone.

I looked around, confused. I was inside some sort of… bubble? Weird.

And even weirder, there was some stuff with me. Some berries… sticks… the ropes I’d been tied with… the bunny pancake… and other miscellaneous things I’d ‘collected’ over the years of living in that village.

Oh… What?