My eyes opened after what felt like an eternity of the best quality sleep one could ask for. A cool breeze slipped past my face, causing my long white hair to flap about and stick to my face against the wind. My tongue felt dry, yet my stomach felt full and my mind felt absolutely refreshed as if I had achieved serenity within myself. 

“[Inventory],” I heard the familiar ‘Ding!’ sound in front of me. Sticking my hand into the inventory hologram before me, I watched how my hand disappeared as space warped around it and rippled once more when my hand took a pouch of cold water out. I swiped left and the hologram disappeared.

The cold water felt like an oasis against the desert that was my tongue. After a long chug of water, I threw my water pouch back into the Inventory and attempted to stretch but before I could hear any of my bones crack, I first heard something crinkling like glass, then I noticed a slight brightness from below my thighs. 

I looked down. I saw how there were two dimly glowing inner cores, the cores I had completely absorbed but what fascinated me was how I could see everything so. . .clearly. I could see the fake glimmering of energy inside the monster cores, the completely dead, microscopic veins encompassing the cores signifying that I had definitely absorbed all the energy inside them. 

“Urgh,” I let out a little groan since I wasn’t used to my new improved sight. I also felt my bodily senses return slowly to my brain but a quick scan of myself and I knew I had definitely grown stronger. Looks like I had successfully ascended to the seventh circle and turns out I was right. This circle of mortal power did provide you with superhuman levels of strength. Honestly, my legs were tingling with power as if telling me I could jump an entire tree’s worth of vertical length. And my arms? A little squeeze and I bet I could crush iron into powder. 

A bigger question then arose. “All this at only the seventh circle?” Then, I realized my mistake. Shit, not again!

DING!

 

 

“Welp, there goes my question of the day,” I muttered in disappointment. I really needed to do something about my blabbering mouth. Or, maybe search for an option to turn the skill off sometimes. Fuck. 

I read the block of information that had appeared in front of my eyes and especially focused on the seventh circle which I was currently in, and after reading it, my face flushed with embarrassment. The mutated WereRabbit I nearly lost my life killing, turned out to be just a baby, a fucking infant of it’s kind. My cheeks flushed even more when I realized the superhuman circle I had hyped up so much was just akin to a baby mutated monster. Shit, this world really wanted to make a fool out of me, didn’t it?

My muscles, so full of strength before, now deflated as I read the description of the sixth and fifth circle and the monster examples my skill had given. If I still had my balls, they would have shriveled up from the amount of fear that had welled up in my heart. One of the monsters stated there, in the sixth circle, the Black Slime was a monster I had. . .encountered once while I was hunting for slimes. Since its color was peculiar, I tried to hunt it. 

It went so, so bad. In the beginning, I didn’t so much mind the fact that its color was black, or that it was slightly bigger than the rest of its kind or that it was actually devouring its own species. . . .

Yeah, I really should have expected the toxic burn the Black Slime spewed on my right arm, a pain unlike anything I had ever felt in both of my lives, so painful it that nearly forced me to amputate my right arm just to end my suffering. Luckily, I was still smart enough under the hellish pain to immediately use my core skill and quickly heal myself. 

I gulped instinctively from the memory. “You’re telling me that fucking monster is only a sub-low class monster?” I didn’t even bother to read the monsters detailed within the fifth circle as they were monsters I had seen only from afar, and never, ever engaged anything with them. Instead of the monsters, my attention was drawn to the warning provided within the fifth circle. 

Cold sweat immediately drenched my back. “Regressing back to the beginning if you failed to ascend?” My heart dropped just by simply thinking about it happening. It was just a thought but did I actually travel to a world where the difficulty had been set to Hell? Jesus Christ, or whoever was the big guy upstairs, I would really hate it if that were true. 

“Status.” 

Ding!

 

 

 

“Huh?” Did I actually see that right? I clicked on the Constitution Of The Origin, and welcomed the familiar bell sound in my ears.

Ding!

 

 

I clicked on the subskill [Appraisal] since it piqued my curiosity. If this skill was how I think it was, I’d be saving myself a lot of time and effort in my next hunt.

 

 

 

“Huh,” I muttered. I gathered my thoughts, wondering if this was a broken skill due to the last sentences of the skill description. The most important thing in a real fight and quite possibly the main reason for victory is how much information could be gathered on your opponent. After all, nothing is harder than fighting an opponent blind. Or, more idiotic. Trust me, I’d know. I got the freaking message after that Black Slime burned it into me. 

Of course, even if I didn’t succeed in appraising something, that would only mean that the opponent is too high of a level to even attempt anything with it in the beginning. And being a camper, I would never ever take a chance if the risks outweigh the benefits, relationships and friendships be damned. This world ain’t too kind that it’d allow for that anime bullshit to slide past. 

I was in the seventh circle of the mortal realm right now. I wasn’t strong compared to the rest of the world, hell, I’m still so far from the word that it’s not even worth stressing over. However, I knew; I was confident that I could reach the top. How? Call it my gamer instincts or the fact that my core skills were insanely broken, if used right. But first thing first, I needed information.

Information of my next opponents. Information on the world. Information on future enemies, mortals or gods and using an entire day’s worth of [Question] was simply a cost too heavy to bear. Which is why, the subskill [Appraisal] would be extremely beneficial to me especially since I only fought those in my own tier or weaker, so I didn’t really have to worry about the ‘chances of success’. This was real life. Who’d be dumb enough to bet their own life on a battle they weren’t at least 70% sure they could win?

And, even if [Appraisal] turned out to be the bad type of ‘broken’, I still had two more chances to awaken cooler or more OP ocular skills. Perhaps, I could even awaken an ocular skill where I’d set things on cursed, black fire simply by just looking at them like a certain anime? That’d be cool. 

But for now, “[Appraisal].” I muttered the name of the skill and instantly, information flooded my brain, making me slightly tilted. Information about the grass I was laying on - since I’d been looking at the grass when I intoned the skill -  appeared inside my head like I’d grown up studying about this particular bed of grass. 

“Polyo Gramiea is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as wild grasses. There is nothing special about this grass.” 

There were other details about the grass but since it was just grass, I didn’t bother to even memorize it and simply did the mental equivalent of throwing out the trash with the excess information. I should have known better that the grass would have been appraised since I was looking at it but at least now, I knew how the sub skill worked.

I leaned back, enjoying how the wild grass felt cool and slick against the palm of my feminine hands. I thought over what I wanted to achieve in this world. 

“Do I want to be the strongest?”

That was the question that had been hunting me ever since I came to this world but since the transmigration was such a sudden thing, I didn’t have time to even think or ponder over the question. My routine over the past two weeks had been to wake up, eat, spend the rest of the day hunting for monster cores or stocking up on resources - especially any shavings of hardwood for the cold, dreary nights. The first few nights I stayed up the whole night since even the weakest monsters around me could kill me in my sleep. Of course, after I ascended to around the peaks of the ninth circle, I could simply camp around the ninth circle monsters after clearing them and sleep easily. 

Now that I'm in the seventh circle? I could sleep amongst the slimes and they wouldn’t be able to kill me even if they tried. Their poison would be like drops of water as I was now. But of course, this was only true for the slimes under the seventh circle. 

“Should I be the strongest?”

I had the tools to be the strongest. Or at least a larger potential than most protagonists in the history of fiction. This world may be set on Hell difficulty but I was sure only a selected few had a core skill as broken as my [Question]. Now that I had [Appraisal] as well? If I truly set my aim to be the strongest, I should be able to reach at least top 10 or even in the top 50s. Of course, I was still too weak to make full use of my [Question] but if it was already this broken when I was this weak, imagine how it’d be when I reach the first circle of mortality. 

Even in the fifth circle of mortality, I was expecting myself to awaken either another subskill from my [Mystic Eyes] or just evolving my core skill [Question]. I was getting giddy but I forced myself to be calm as I adopted a realistic view of my future. 

A side note; Memories of my past life seemed to be slipping past my fingers, annoying but understandable. It’s not as if I held any ties to my previous world but I was at least hoping to keep it as some form of memorial but it wasn’t like I’d be losing myself if I lost all memories of my past life. 

“What’s important is to focus on the present,” I muttered to myself. My fingers wriggled around and flexed. It felt extremely great to feel this much power welling up within me but also daunting when realizing how there were opponents much stronger than the current power within me. 

 “That’s my new goal,” I declared. “Being the strongest can wait.” I looked over to the distant yet near plains where its current Kings reigned and pointed at them, index and thumb outstretched like a gun. “I’ll be coming after you. Just wait for me.”

That’s right. I may not know if I truly wanted to be the strongest of this world but I sure as hell knew I didn’t want to be the weakest. My right arm throbbed with phantom pain as the black slime flashed in my mind. 

This is a world where the strong took from the weak. I may be a coward but even I would hate it if a bunch of people walked all over me simply because I was weak. Besides, imagine how disappointed literally everyone would be if they heard I died like a dog, unknown on the side of the road when I had all the fucking tools to slingshot myself to the top. 

A strange spring of pride welled up within me. I had declared to the world that I would be the strongest in my heart. I heard the world’s mockery in my ears. 

I needed to prove that I wasn’t a mere dog barking from the slums.

“Grr. . .” 

I turned around. An elemental wolf, a Wood Wolf more specifically, had appeared behind me. From what I’d observed, Wood Wolves were solitary monsters - surprising, I know - and usually left their mother’s nest after the first ten moons to search and mark their own territory. They were also usually either around the eighth circle or seeing how this Wood Wolf had three strangling vines circling around its body, it was at the seventh circle. 

The third vine was still short around its body, meaning it had just entered the seventh circle just like me. Great. My first test. 

My pride still burned bright in my chest. “You’ve come at a great time, little wolfie.” My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears. 

“You’ll be my first victim.” I gave the wolf a smile more beastly than itself. “[Appraisal].” Information flowed into my brain, information that promised me victory. If it was possible, my smile widened even further into a full, maniacal grin.

“Come at me, bitch.”

 

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