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<figure data-carousel-extra='{"blog_id":192886159,"permalink":"https:\/\/ariandeltl.wordpress.com\/prologue\/"}' class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1"></figure>\nHaving another ego awaken inside me and realizing the necessity to first think about whether I was insane or not, made me start contemplating on just what had I done wrong to deserve the above. ă\n
Nameâs Erich. No family name. Reason being of course that I was born as the 4th son in a remote manor of Rhine Tri-Empire. A simple landed farmer, a peasant was not allowed to have a family name, at most and pushing it: Erich of Koningstuhl Manor, more commonly: âthe youngest son of Johannesâ my father.\n
As for my ego, it first started churning out complicated thoughts such as these when I was five, springtime, this was the time when I was left alone rather unattended since mother was very busy taking care of my newborn sister to whom she gave birth to last winter.\n
Guess this is what you would call previous life? I seem to have another sense of self with completely different experiences and memories.\n
Normally a five year old kid, for better or worse, is an innocent, simple-minded creature. As befitting they would run around even as they get dirtied in mud, snot nosed they would toy with lives of various small animals and insects. All the more so in farming villages like these which I find myself quite unfit for by the way, where thereâs nothing notable but mother nature.\n
Yet I am strangely enlightened in my way of thinking or rather, I was already endowed with mature thought process the moment I perceived âmyselfâ which also came accompanied with various foreign experiences that technically should have nothing to do with myself, nonetheless I canât help but to perceive them as anything else than my own.\n
According to these experiences, I have another identity. These are memories of a man named Fukemachi Saku.\n
Ego and experiences that can only be described as past life belonged to a very normal man in his thirties. Born in an ordinary family, he was blessed with a relative amount of happiness although unluckily, he died unceremoniously from AYA cancer as a single unmarried man.\n
I think it was a life with relatively few regrets, working at a trading company, climbing up to a managerial position, having sufficient time to enjoy my hobbies. If there was one regret I probably had it was being unable to bless my parents with grandchildren because of being single but even then I had an able older sister who had already accomplished the feat so it wasnât that big of a deal.\n
The real big deal would be the question of why is the above described me existing as a 5 year old kid, in this completely unfamiliar land. Although, I also had a hunch as to why.\n
Due to the nature of my fast progressing cancer I had given up early on the treatment and often times indulged in calming meditation while being in terminal care. The spiritual exercise of being immersed in ones self while in lotus position helped alleviate the fear of my physical body which was creaking with illness. And it was in the middle of this meditation that I met Buddha.\n
No really, even I understand itâs the height of bizarreness and verging on insanity when you put it this way so simply but thereâs no other way to describe it. After all, the man I had a chance meeting with, sitting on a lotus flower claimed himself to be a future Buddha in training to become a bodhisattva.\n
According to this future Buddha, (since he is the next Buddha that would make him Maitreya I imagine?) among the 3000 worlds he governs there exist many worlds where humanity is prone to decline and ultimately collapse in the future. He explained that after the gods he has entrusted with managing those worlds ask for his aid, he assists them not directly but by sending in various souls in these worlds through whom he hopes for the issues to be solved in the future or either for them to be delayed and prevented. \n
At any rate as he mentioned, governing and preserving the worlds itself is that very training for until he can become the bodhisattva and bring salvation to all living things. \n
Then I thought if that was the case there was no need to make contact with a dying ordinary man like me and simply fix those issues with divine power or whatever yet apparently it doesnât quite work like that. And that is because if the gods intervene directly too much, in many of the cases it can bring the opposite effects such as humanity declining from sloth instead, which is why the gods hope to fix things by facilitating for the humans in those worlds to rectify their own problems by accommodating them indirectly thus in the end solving entire circumstances without direct intervention.\n
According to him, many of the prophets I know in myths who laid foundations of various ethics and religious dogmas were in a similar position as I am now and had received similar offers, then becoming known as enlightened people or sons of god throughout history.\n
Honestly? The topic at hand was so absurdly grand and far-reaching, as an average lower middle-class guy who thought of buying bulky TRPG rulebooks and supplements as supreme luxury I found it very hard to follow everything.\n
And honestly? This was a bizarre choice of personnel. How about some philanthropist with a nobler ethos and more outstanding personality than me? Choosing someone like a good samaritan or some enlightened person would make more sense. \n
Nevertheless, in the end it seems the decision of his holiness could not be overturned and here am I as matter of fact, as the 4th son of a peasant farmer, Erich of Koningstuhl.\n
In the end though despite all the big talk I didnât get any concrete mission. No prophesies to spread in this new world, no teachings to impart, nothing. I was left with just this very peculiar yet familiar set phrase and gospel: âDo what thou wiltâ \n
Am I being tricked by an evil god?\n
Well jokes aside, thereâs probably some profound and complex intent here that would be difficult for me to comprehend and which would only be understood strategically at the level of gods. Iâm sure whatever I do from here on out is designed to be beneficial to his holiness in some way. Yes, for better or worse. It must be meaningful for me to just exist in this world, in that case as long as Iâm alive what other choice do I have but to simply live out my life.\n
Now then, there was this one piece of evidence that led me to believe in the existence of the above mentioned god and that it wasnât just my imagination. His holiness at the end of that chance encounter mentioned he would also confer upon me a blessing together with the gospel. According to him it was a power and authority to do as one pleased with oneself. I couldnât comprehend what he meant at the time yet now that my sense of self has solidified in this world I do have an idea of what it is.\n
In other words that means being able to âdevelopâ my abilities âas I see fitâ. If I focus my mind, before my eyes appears a blueprint of myself and who I am. What I can do, what Iâm good at, what I can become good at. Absolutely everything is revealed about myself. Furthermore, Iâm capable of fiddling with all these parameters âAs I pleaseâ.\n
Complexly intervening, reciprocally interacting and infinitely extending list of components such as stats, substats, race, disposition etc, wasnât this exactly like my cherished pastime activity from my previous life? Building my own self from scratch to my hearts content, what lay before me is the supreme of the supreme amusements in the whole wide world.\n
Iâm immediately enchanted by the simplistic yet tasteful system. The main basic status screen showcasing my physical body in 3D, intricately surrounded by various other extensions and screens such as professions, skills, special traits that become the components which make up my âcharacterâ.\n
When I first fully comprehended the above, I thought to myself.\n
Yo this is a TRPG.\n
While the interface itself is that of a computer game, isnât the basic internal structure that of the familiar genre I indulged in using thick expensive player handbooks? Indeed itâs exactly like the character sheet of a human-powered role playing game where you and your friends get together to create an adventure similar to that of a theater play and which you start off by kneading up a life story of your character on a piece of paper that will become your future avatar.\n
Ahhh, how magnificent. Because If this really is a thing I would have infinite amount of possibilities in front of me. You see, normally all living beings receive experience and proficiency proportional to what they do, even in my past life. For example pulling weed and doing miscellaneous chores would make you more efficient at getting them done, swinging a sword daily would raise your sword proficiency as you would become more skilled. This all quite logical, as you wouldnât be able to for example learn the inner workings of swordsmanship by simply pulling weed.\n
However this blessing I have makes it different.\n
All the experience I receive from any source is âmaterializedâ and stocked temporarily, which can then be allocated to any aspect of my build I desire. Itâs like if an adventurer in a TRPG at the end of hack n slash segment could gain capacities of a Sage.\n
In other words this means if I put my mind to it I could even become a master swordsman by continuously pulling weed.\n
Truly fun isnât it? This system really is similar to that of TRPGs. By going on adventures and piling up experience, I could then even acquire a completely different craft that has nothing to do with the aforementioned adventures at all, itâs exactly like the world Iâve come to love in my sessions.\n
So then, is it any wonder that my newly awakened mature and perceptive ego would doubt my own sanity considering Iâve been given something as insanely convenient as this among other things? After all itâs not unlike a hypnagogic hallucination one sees right before dosing off in bed.\n
However I indeed exist here in this new world and my new power worked âas expectedâ, the undeniable proof being the simple wooden idol Iâm holding in my hand right now. I donât want to admit but in my past life I was clumsy. Even the plastic models I bought were âstraight buildâ types which is the most I could handle as they were pretty straightforward, you didnât even need to paint them yet I kept gluing the wrong parts, breaking parts and things like that so it tended to turn into various mini disasters.\n
But how about that huh? I used up my stocked up experience and poured them into dexterity which in turn unlocked and made it possible for me to acquire (scale I) level of wood carving skill and made it possible to make something as modest as this idol here despite the supposed clumsiness with nothing but a piece of wood and a simple knife.\n
Ah yes, I am Erich of Koningstuhl, a man who can achieve whatever he sets his mind to.\n
[tips]: Experience points are a shared requirement for Basic Stats, Special Traits, Skills, Capacities. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n