Time seemed to flow by in a gentle current as the two girls kept hugging each other. Only the silence and the golden sunlight accompanied them in the cozy room.

 

[+ 10 AP]

 

Ayuna heard the notification sound again, indicating that she’d received another affection point from Liana. 

 

She’d been hearing these notification sounds for a while now but had been ignoring them due to the inconvenience of the situation earlier. But now that she’s here in a place that seemed safe, she decided it was time to finally check out her dating sim system. 

 

In the back of her mind, she actually had a bit of doubt whether this system of hers really was a dating sim system or not. Or maybe it was some other kind of system that ran on the similar principle with the dating sim system—using affection points.

 

Well, she could only find out…

 

Ayuna released her embrace and looked at Liana. “Liana, I need to use the toilet, but…” She looked around and couldn’t see the toilet anywhere.

 

It couldn’t be that people in this world did their private business in an open field, right? That would be a pure horror. 

 

If she were to be in her old body, as a guy, pissing and shitting outside was no big deal, but now that she was in an unfamiliar body of a little girl, she kind of felt complex emotions rushing through her by the thought of doing that.

 

Luckily, her worry was unfounded.

 

Liana smiled. “The toilet is in the back of the house.” She pointed at the wooden door in the back wall corner. “There. Go through that door and you’ll find it right away.”

 

Ayuna inwardly sighed in relief. So there was a toilet after all! 

 

She nodded, got off the bench, and walked toward the door…

 

———

 

The reason why she wanted to go to the toilet wasn’t because she felt the urge to pee; rather, she wanted to check out a few things, and what better place to do so other than in the privacy of the toilet?

 

She opened the door and went inside, turning around and locking it with a wooden lock. She looked around and noticed the old fashion pit toilet you’d expect to find in the underdeveloped countryside. 

 

Obviously, this didn’t look as comfortable as the modern day toilet, but as a guy on the inside, she didn’t find this slight discomfort that much of a big deal.

 

Moreover, she didn’t come here to use it in the first place…

 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Now, how should she go with it? What did the isekai protagonist say again? Was it…

 

“Status,” she muttered, opening her eyes, expecting to see a system screen popping up.

 

A few seconds of silence passed by and nothing showed up. 

 

Ayuna frowned. 

 

Did she say it wrong? So it wasn’t “status” just like in those isekai novels she’d read? Well, maybe she should try something else, then.

 

And so, followed right after were “status open”, “menu”, “menu open”, “command panel”, “system”, “initiate system”, “system open”, etc…

 

She tried anything she could think of but still couldn’t open the status screen. What did she do wrong?

 

She pondered about it for a while…

 

Wait, now that she thought about it, wasn’t she able to open Liana’s status the first time she met her? Back then, what did she do again…?

 

She thought back to that moment and realized that back then she just focused on the notification screen, and the next moment Liana’s status just popped up on its own as if responding to her will…

 

Oh, that’s it! It responded to her will!

 

Ayuna threw all the command words cliché out of her mind and focused on her feelings…

 

Indeed, after focusing inwardly for a bit, she could feel the different sensation she’d never felt before. It’s like she suddenly grew a new limb and knew how to use it by instinct. Or in her case, it’s like there was a switch in her mind and she just happened to know how to turn it on and off instinctively.

 

She focused on that feeling and turned on the switch.

 

*Ding!*

 

MENU

• Status

• Skills

• Character and relationships

• Shop

• Gallery 

• Save and load

 

 

Ayuna’s eyes widened as she stared at the pink translucent screen that suddenly popped up in front of her.

 

It was a success. She was finally able to open her system screen, and indeed it seemed to be the dating sim system by the look of it. No other system she knew of had the “Character and relationships” option in the menu panel.

 

But… that’s not her main focus right now… Right now, she was truly astonished. Her eyes fixed on the last option in the panel.

 

Save and load.

 

It was the “Save and load” function. The fuckin “Save and load”, for Christ’s sake! 

 

She was an avid fan of the dating sim games, so she knew full well what this function could do. The “Save and load” function worked just like its name implied. It allowed the player to save the game at whatever point the player wanted and then continued playing from that point on if the player wished to. 

 

This function was very common in the dating sim games. Ayuna already expected to see such a function.

 

Though, when she finally saw it for real, she still received quite a shock. Why? That’s because such a function was an ultimate cheat!

 

With such a function, one could cheat their way through a game easily. Like, if the player chose the wrong choice in the game and went in the bad route, they could always go back in the saved timeline and play it again without having to restart the game from the very beginning.

 

Now think about it in real life. If someone were to have such power to save and load like in a game. That would be a real OP cheat! (Pun intended.)

 

Something bad happened to her and her companions? Hah! No big deal. She could load, go back in time, and avoid the problems! Easy peasy lemon squeezy~

 

Making the wrong choice? No worries! She could just load, go back in time, and make a better choice!

 

What more? Peaking into the future, going back in time, and using that future knowledge to her advantage was also possible! 

 

The possibilities were endless. You could say that as long as she’s alive, she was technically invincible! Nothing could faze her for she could always go back into the saved timeline and fix whatever she wanted!

 

Ayuna suddenly felt a ray of light shining on her. It was a ray of hope, of the expectation that she would surely have a bright future in this world.

 

Her excitement went through the roof. Her heart began beating fast. Her face split into a wide grin.

 

Though, her hope shattered the moment the next notification popped up…

 

*Ding!*

 

Warning! Every time you use Save and load function, a part of your memory will be erased each time. Do proceed with caution.

 

Ayuna’s smile cramped as she stared wide-eyed at the new window that’s just popped up.

 

She was rendered speechless.

 

W-What…? S-She would lose a part of her memory every time she used the “Save and load” system…?

 

What kind of bullshit was this!? Give her expectations back!

 

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was still able to use such a broken function, that’s great, but it came at a very high price.

 

Losing a part of her memory? How much? And which part, anyway? Was it the older part or the newer part? 

 

She had no idea and didn’t intend to figure that out. 

 

Losing one’s memory, even only a part of it, was still a big deal. Losing one’s life was no big deal if one could still get reincarnated with their memories intact. But losing memory was equivalent to losing one’s existence forever.

 

That’s such a sad thing, really.

 

Ayuna looked at the warning screen with a complicated expression.

 

Though, now that she thought about it, having to pay such a heavy price kind of made sense. After all, this function was extremely OP and broken that it defiled a law of nature many times over. It made total sense that the one who possessed such power had to pay a heavy price for it…

 

Ayuna sighed and shook her head. 

 

It was regrettable, but this was still better than nothing…

 

She looked at the other options in the menu screen. 

 

Next up was “Status”.

 

*Ding!*

 

STATUS

 

Name: Ayuna

 

Race: ?

 

Class: -

 

Strength: 30

 

Endurance: 50

 

Intelligent: 30

 

Speed: 50

 

Magic: 1,000

 

Perception: 30

 

Charisma: 200

 

Looking through the status panel, Ayuna’s eyes widened once more as she went into a total shock! 

 

W-What’s with these high numbers!? She’d just woken up in this world not long ago and her status was already this high? How was that possible?

 

And what’s with her race? Why wasn’t it shown as “human”? No matter how she looked at it, her body was just like that of an ordinary human girl, but why didn’t her status say so?

 

Ayuna tilted her head and put all of her focus on the “Race”. Then as she expected, the new screen popped up.

 

You are not strong enough to reveal this information.

 

What? Not strong enough to reveal this information? What did that mean? Was the system trying to tell her that she wasn’t a human?

 

Ayuna was speechless. She didn’t know what to say to this…

 

But wait. Thinking back on it, she did indeed notice something strange with this little girl's body she was in. Like that time when she was able to catch up to Liana’s speed and stamina. She had concluded then that this body was of no ordinary little girl. And now that she looked at the system screen, she became even more certain about this.

 

But… if she was no longer a human, then what was her true race?

 

Ayuna wanted to find the answer to this question, but she could only shrug it off for now. Just like the system said, if she wanted to know, she had to get stronger.

 

But… 

 

Glancing at the status screen once more, Ayuna felt like she was already quite strong—for whatever reason that was. But… maybe she was just confused by the high number. Maybe the average status of the people in this world was already that high?

 

She focused her attention on the “Strength”, and a new screen popped up.

 

Your strength is that of a well-trained human warrior. 

(The average human’s status being 10 in every aspect.)

 

Ayuna became astonished for the nth time! 

 

What? Her strength was that of a well-trained human warrior? This little girl's body was that strong?

 

Ayuna looked down at her own two hands and felt some indescribable emotion.

 

Although she knew already that this body wasn’t of the human race, she never thought that such a small and delicate body could hold such power…

 

Unbelievable.

 

She looked through the status screen again. 

 

Going by what she’d just read, then that meant she was now three times stronger than the average human in terms of strength, having five times more endurance, three times more intelligent, five times faster, one hundred times more powerful in magi— W-Wait! O-One thousand!?

 

Why was her magic power so high!? 

 

Now that she looked at it, it was way, way higher than any other stats!

 

At first, she kind of just skimmed through it with her eyes, and the high numbers of all her stats just made her astonished for a moment. Now that she looked through it carefully, she finally noticed that her magic stat was extremely high.

 

What’s going on? Why was her magic stat so high?