It seemed to be some kind of augmented reality (AR) feature resembling the ones used nowadays in smartphone games and the like. “Is this supposed to be a game?” I grunted, trying to trick my limbs into moving. For some reason, my body felt a little lighter as I did so.

"----! ---!"

I had no idea what the lizardman was saying to me, but I could guess. “You want me to take this sword and fight?” Barely recovered, I struggled to get my body to move, reaching for the sword. As silly as it might seem, considering I was dreaming, the fear I felt was completely real.

I gripped the weapon as if grasping at a straw. At that moment, for whatever reason, it didn’t occur to me to beg for my life.

"----!"

My mind raced. I had never taken any kind of fencing or kendo lessons. I hadn’t even lifted a hoe on a farm or used a mallet to make mochi on New Year’s Eve. So my only experience with a blade was what I’d seen in anime and manga and stuff like that, with no actual bearing in reality.

"----!"

I grasped the sword tight with both shaking hands and desperately planted my feet. The lizardman sneered as he readied his spear. Unlike my fake swordsmanship, my opponent’s posture showed a high level of mastery.

The word he kept repeating is difficult to describe—I might spell it out as mokuugwa or makueuga. Of course, I had no idea what it meant.

"----!" As he shouted, he jabbed the glowing red spear into my shoulder. It hurt—a lot. I’ve heard people say you feel heat more than pain with a stab wound, but no, it was pretty much just pain. It was unbearable. My mind was too focused on my shoulder to come up with any sort of action to take.

Pulling the spear out of me, the lizardman then stabbed at my leg as if toying with me. As the spear pierced my thigh, I was struck with a fresh wave of agony and toppled unceremoniously onto my backside.

Considering how pathetic I was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d passed out from the pain at that point, but instead, for some strange reason I stopped feeling it. Maybe it was my imagination, but my fear seemed to be fading, too. Perhaps I was so scared, my emotional limiter had snapped?

My arms and legs stopped shaking, and I was finally able to think straight. The HP gauge I could see by my opponent’s head was nearly zero, but I doubted I could fight him and win. If I tried coming at him with my sword, surely he’d easily counter my attack and put a quick end to things by slashing my throat.

Luckily, it looked like my enemy’s movements were as pained as mine. I had to create some kind of opening while he was tormenting me and make a break for it.

As I stood up, I grabbed a fistful of the dry soil. Throwing dirt in an opponent’s eyes might be cheap, but I didn’t have the luxury of a fair fight right now. I watched the lizardman carefully and struck his spear with my sword just as he drew back. I must have underestimated my remaining strength, because the shove threw him off-balance.

Now’s my chance!

I flung the dirt at his face with all my might. It scattered in midair, but enough of it still reached the creature’s face. Unfortunately, my opponent was a step ahead of me—he defended himself by throwing an arm up in front of his eyes.

Damn it, you’re supposed to be mortally wounded! But at least his arm was blocking his vision. Aiming for his legs, I swung my weapon and let go, flinging it forward. But I had apparently swung too hard—it flew toward the lizardman’s torso instead.

I had planned to run away the moment I released the sword, but the scene unfolding before my eyes stopped me in my tracks.

“Huh?!”

The sword had left my hands with shocking speed and cut right through the lizardman’s middle, dividing him in half. Blood gushed out of his severed body.

Oh god… I’m not good with gory stuff. And I’d never seen anything so gruesome before, not even in movies.

“He’s disappearing…” Just like an enemy in a video game, the lizardman’s corpse was fading away. However, the traces of blood left behind were proof that the battle had been no illusion.

I sat down hard on the ground and looked up at the sky, then finally took a deep breath. Whew! This dream is exhausting… If I have to dream something so realistic, couldn’t I be on a tropical beach or something, making out with hot girls in bikinis?

***

I took off my polo shirt to try to treat my wounds. It was chilly, but not so much that I’d catch a cold. Putting it into Storage, I used my T-shirt to wipe off the blood.

Strangely enough, I’d stopped bleeding. I would’ve expected a stab wound from a spear to last a lot longer. When I rubbed at the hardened blood with my finger, it fell away in clumps. Underneath it was perfectly clear skin—not even so much as a scar.

The pain had stopped, too, I realized. Maybe this gamelike dream had a system where you healed automatically after clearing a mission? I opened the status screen to confirm; sure enough, my HP had been fully restored. On closer inspection, in fact, my maximum HP had increased. Not only that, but my level had jumped from 1 to 310!

The crazy speed of that sword throw before must have been because of my high level. My strength, as well as all my other stats, had been raised all the way to the max value.

I must have leveled up so much because of all the enemies I defeated with those Meteor Showers. Wanting to see the aftermath of the Meteor Showers, I looked over the edge of the cliff. The scenery below was terrifying. A veil of dust still hung in the air, obscuring the wasteland, but the ground I could make out through it was dotted with craters. The area where the army had stood was thoroughly pockmarked, too.

My assumption had probably been right: The lizardman I’d fought before must have escaped a direct hit from the meteorites because he was some distance away from the rest of the group. Since he had still been on the verge of death, the shock waves alone must have been incredibly powerful.

As for the canyon in the distance, the Valley of Dragons, it seemed like a good deal of the area had caved in. It looked less like the aftermath of a magical in-game attack and more like the battered surface of the moon. Well, that was only to be expected if a small pocket of land was hammered with three attacks of more than a hundred meteorites each, I guess.

The scenery looked like something from a movie, so maybe that was why it didn’t feel real. Ah, right—this is a dream anyway…isn’t it? It was too vivid for a dream, yet far too strange to be real life. If anything, it seemed more likely I was inside a game.

Well, if this is a game, you’d think beating all those enemies would trigger some sort of event.

Trying to gather more information, I looked at the log screen. It started with the message WELCOME TO OUR WORLD. Normally, this would seem like a pretty significant statement, but since FFL starts with that same message, I skimmed past it.

The log showed what icons I had used, the defeats of the lizardmen and other enemies, and the defeat of some dragons that had apparently been the former rulers of the Valley of Dragons. It also included notifications of level-ups and the acquisition of various titles and then, finally, my victory over the last lizardman. After this was a line that said SOURCE: CONQUERED THE VALLEY OF DRAGONS, but I had no idea what that meant and simply ignored it.

Next was a log of all the spoils I’d gained in battle. Even the corpse of that lizardman was listed among the loot, which would explain why it had disappeared. Am I supposed to become a necromancer now, or what?

Remembering my opponent’s graphic death, I made a Graveyard folder in my Storage and stowed all the corpses in there. After a moment’s thought, I gazed at the folder and clasped my hands together in a brief prayer.

As I continued checking my status, I noticed that those emergency skills for beginners that I’d used earlier had been registered in the magic menu. I hadn’t been able to access that menu, but now it seemed I could use the new magic skills on the list if I selected and enabled them.

I wish this dream didn’t have all these annoying systems.

Testing out Search Entire Map wouldn’t necessarily prove its effectiveness, so I decided to try out the Meteor Shower spell. A quick check of the map confirmed that I was alone, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I had to test it out while I had the chance, lest I find myself in a dilemma and try to use it only to get a NOT ENOUGH MP message or something.

I selected Meteor Shower in the magic menu and chose use. Perhaps because there weren’t any enemies on the map, a pop-up appeared that said Please select a target. I guess I have to mark a target area for destructive magic, like in WW. I picked a site about three times as far away as the Valley of Dragons.

Apparently, this was good enough, because my MP meter decreased immediately. I felt like something was being drawn out of my body, much more intensely than when I had used Search Entire Map. This hadn’t happened the first time I used these skills, probably because I wasn’t using my own magic power then. This time, my MP went down by a thousand points or so, about a third of my total.

I looked up at the sky. No meteorites yet. Going by the first time, they should be showing up any moment now. Finally, I saw something burst through the clouds like before, but…

What’s going on? They’re HUGE!

The boulders streaking toward the ground were almost a hundred times the size of the rocks I’d summoned before. No, considering how far away they were, they must have been even bigger. Before I could start wondering why, I instinctively broke into a run. Away from the hail of meteorites, obviously!