Meteorites probably wasn’t the right word for these giant chunks of rock tearing through the atmosphere. A wave of sound bore down on me so hard my skin rippled, and I ran even faster, shrieking at a volume that rivaled the thunderous roar. I have no idea what I actually screamed, if anything. I do remember the incredibly strong air resistance, like I was running through water.

As I fled, I eventually noticed that I was going way too fast, but it was too late to hit the brakes. I braced my legs with all my strength, but I still couldn’t stop. The physical stress shredded my sneakers like scraps of paper. My heel smashed through a rock, and when my hands hit the ground, my fingers carved out ten grooves in the stone.

But even that wasn’t enough to stop my movement, and I went flying off the edge of the cliff into the air. Since I’d managed to kill most of my momentum, I was able to land on a protruding rock formation about fifteen feet down.

Man, that was three times scarier than a free fall.

Periodic tremors in the earth made it impossible to stand. I clung to the protrusion, not wanting to fall all the way down. A tidal wave of dirt, like a muddy river, flooded across the ground. Occasionally, I’d see rocks the size of a car rolling along with the dust, sending a shiver up my spine.

Once the earth had stopped shaking, I attempted to climb back up the escarpment to see the results of the Meteor Shower. The air was still hazy with debris, so I wrapped my T-shirt around my face in lieu of a mask. It smelled of blood a little, but it was better than breathing in dust and having a coughing fit.

When I pressed my fingers into the cliff face, they made little finger-size holes. The rock didn’t seem to be particularly brittle, so I was able to climb up with relative ease.

Upon reaching the top again, I remembered that I was now barefoot, so I searched through my Storage. I found some sandals and tried taking them out, but they were covered in blood, so I hastily put them back.

If I have to use something bloody anyway, it might as well be my own blood. I took the red-stained polo shirt out of Storage, ripped it in two, and wrapped each half around one of my feet. Not exactly stylish, but it would do for now.

When I raised my head and peered into the distance, I saw something that looked like a mushroom cloud. Moving to the edge of the cliff, I could make out a red light on the surface. Was it lava that had burst out from underground, maybe? It might have just been fire, but since I couldn’t tell from here what the situation was, I decided to look at the map.

I switched the map display from 2-D to 3-D. Judging by the fact that my target marker was now floating in midair, the ground must have collapsed considerably. The land around where the meteors had struck was warped and distorted, too.

Gazing at the mushroom cloud, I silently opened the magic menu and switched the Meteor Shower spell from enabled to disabled, rendering it unusable.

This spell is dangerous. If I used it over and over, I’d turn right into a demon lord. They say a wise man stays away from danger, so I was better off keeping it sealed away.

The reason it was so much stronger than the first time was the increase in my level or my intelligence stat, or so I figured. And it looked like my other attributes had powered up, too. That I was able to make holes in the rock with my fingers was probably thanks to a heightened strength stat, and my ability to endure the recoil from that was probably my higher stamina. And that mad dash that was fast enough to create air resistance must have been my agility stat at work.

I picked up a pebble and fiddled with it experimentally, but luckily, it seemed like I was able to control my new strength perfectly. I didn’t feel any stronger than usual as I held it then rolled it around between my fingers. But when I tried for a moment to use enough force to break it, it crumbled in my hand.

At one point, I’d accidentally sneezed while holding the pebble, but I didn’t crush it or anything. That was a relief.

Maybe it was all the dust blowing around, but the weather was starting to look dodgy, so I found a tent in my spoils and set it up to take a break. Munching on a protein bar, I found a Well Bag among my loot, which I used to quench my thirst. Apparently, this was some kind of Magic Item that never ran out of water. Very convenient, but trying to figure out how it worked seemed like it could keep me up at night, so I decided not to think about it too much.

Rain had started falling at some point, and it seemed unlikely to let up anytime soon. Since I had some time to kill, I decided to check out the rest of my spoils.

Most of the items were damaged to some extent, probably squashed by the meteorites. There were all kinds of tools, equipment, and everyday necessities, but with most of them broken, I made a few dedicated folders and set them aside.

There were tons of gold coins, silver coins, and all manner of jewels, too. I guess it’s true that dragons like shiny things. I found all kinds of currency from various places, and I quickly lost interest in sorting through it. The most numerous were the gold coins from someplace called the Flue Kingdom, of which I had more than ten million—a preposterous 303 tons. Maybe the humans there had been forced to make periodic tributes to the dragons?

I don’t know if this is a dream or a game or what, but if I find my way to a human civilization, it looks like I won’t need to worry about money. I hope there’s no bartering system…

Among my Magic Items were all manner of Holy Swords, Divine Blades, and the like, plus something called a Magic Gun. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, my middle school self was going nuts. All the swords had stupid names like Excalibur and Durandal, but since it was my dream, I guess I had my own subconscious to thank for that.

Possibly as some kind of antitheft measure, the Holy Swords unleashed a static-like shock that damaged me when I pulled them out, so I put them away for the time being. I’d been able to use them for only a minute, but the swords emitted a pretty blue light when I did. The light faded after a brief moment, though, so maybe they just glowed in the dark.

Moving on, I took the Magic Gun out of Storage and fired it experimentally at a nearby rock. There was a little bit of lag between when I pulled the trigger and when the gun fired, but it was still pretty powerful.

At any rate, now that I’d played around for a bit, it was time to get back to the work of sorting all my items.

***

Before I knew it, the rain had stopped.

I think I must have dozed off while sorting. This was much more sleep than I’d gotten in a while, so I woke up feeling refreshed. That I was able to sleep so soundly on a cliff like this shows just how exhausted I’d been.

I poured water into a pail I’d found in Storage and used it to wash my face.

…Huh? Wait, something didn’t look quite right there.

I looked again. Something was definitely off. Pulling out the flip phone from my pocket, I snapped a selfie.

“Yeesh! This is what I looked like as a first-year in high school…” Maybe it was just my imagination, but even my voice sounded younger. Well, I guess it wasn’t that unusual to dream about being a student again.

Having gotten a good night’s rest, I figured it was probably time to move on, since there wasn’t much else to do here. Looking at the map, I found an area called the Soldiers’ Stronghold about sixty miles to the west. It seemed to be devoid of life, and it was on the very edge of my map, so I wasn’t sure what the situation might be beyond it.

But I didn’t see any other significant man-made landmarks, so I figured I might as well start in that direction.

Before heading out, I opened up the skill screen to mess around a little. I had ignored it yesterday, but it looked like a lot of new skills had appeared on the list. I counted eleven in total: “One-Handed Sword,” “Throwing,” “Evasion,” “Parry,” “Practical Magic: Other World,” “Summoning Magic: Other World,” “Fear Resistance,” “Pain Resistance,” “Self-Healing,” “Observation,” and “Ancient Scalefolk Language.”

Maybe I had just learned them by leveling up, but it seemed like there would be more if that was the case. Did I acquire skills through my actions somehow?

Skill levels ranged from 1 to 10, and you could enhance them by allotting skill points to them. It was a simple conversion rate of one point for each level, and I currently had 3,100 points left, so I just leveled them up as I saw fit.

I didn’t want a repeat of that lizardman encounter, so I started by maxing out any skills that had to do with resistance or seemed like they’d be useful in combat. It looked like you could also turn them on and off after allotting points.

I descended from the cliff and ran along the ground.

I was wearing an item I’d found in my Storage called Wing Shoes. The ambiguous flavor text stated that they make small adjustments for walking a difficult path, but at any rate, they were certainly sturdy. I’d changed my clothes as well, into a robe I found in my spoils made of something called Yuriha fiber.

Presumably because of my increased stats, I was moving at almost forty miles per hour, yet I didn’t feel tired or out of breath at all. Worrying about it too much threatened to make me trip on my own feet, though, so I tried to just focus on running.

With the morning sun at my back, I cleared my mind and kept moving forward.

Hmm? What was that?