Rena

  Alright. So, I’ve been wandering around the dungeon for quite a while now. Every now and then, some roaches seem to pop out and harass me.

  Sure, it was annoying dealing with them, but compared to the first roach, those bugs were heaps easier to deal with!

  Yeah. They were all rank F and only level 1 or 2, but I’m sure my new weapon also played a major role in my massive power boost!

  Literally, this roach leg (the one that looks like a spiked bat) does threefold the damage of the stick!

  Ah. The stick?

  Bah, forget about that thing! I totally threw it away after I was done with it!

  …Totally didn’t splinter it into pieces when I was mocking and defiling the body of that first stupid, abysmal roach. Okay, fine. I was pretty salty, so I kept on bashing it with the stick until it became barely recognisable. And after a few hits, boom!

  The stick just snapped in two. Maybe durability is more important than I thought…? I mean, I’m kinda scared the roach leg will also splinter mid-fight now.

  Bah, forget about it!

  Live young, die fast!

  …Or something along those lines. Not die fast, though. I want to live for as long as I can.

  Hmm… Live in the present, not the future.

  Yeah, that works better.

  Well, that aside, I found out something cool. I never noticed when I first got here since I was totally panicking and not thinking straight, but you know when I first popped in here, right?

  I wasn’t wearing my usual musty pyjamas that only get washed per month.

  NO, I WASN’T NAKED!!! WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT?!

  I spawned in with the default clothes or whatever. And guess what?

  The basic clothes actually have better stats than the shitty, downgraded loot I got from the [Hero] pack.

  I mean, just look at the two different sets of shirts as a comparison!

  
  Armour: 10  Durability: 200  Resistance: 5

  Specials: None

  Rags  Rank: F

  Armour: 1  Durability: 150  Resistance: 5

  Specials: None>

  Can you believe it?

  Even the greatest painting is nothing but a splotch in the distance. The numbers might not seem like much. But relatively? Those miniscule number changes mean the world to me!

  I mean, the change in the armour stat is tenfold! Times ten more defence!

  Yeah, can you believe it?

  Can you?

  I feel a lot more relieved now.

  I mean, I was literally walking around with a bunch of rags before! Like, I had to strategically tie them in order to hide certain parts.

  A single misslip, and this would get an R-rating on the spot!

  Talking about that, changing is also pretty easy. For example, if I just press and hold on the icon for my pants, then…

  …One moment…

  …

  .

  Aaaand, Viola!

  My pants changed, just like that!

  It works the same way for weapons and other items, so I can just store the roach leg in my inventory and pop it out whenever I need it.

  Pretty handy, since holding onto the prickly thing got really annoying. Imagine carrying around the stem of an uncut rose barehand! And then amplify the size of that rose to the size of a cricket bat. Yeah, I had to go around gripping that before I figured out I could store the roach leg inside my inventory.

  Also, I accidentally found out that my inventory can only store a maximum of five items. I was stocking up on roach legs in order to see if there was some sort of ‘craft’ or ‘fuse’ option that would let me fuse the legs together and get a better weapon. The idea was pretty short lived though.

  Why?

  Because I got some system notification saying that my inventory was full or something. I tried jamming the sixth leg in, but I totally got denied access. Sigh, I guess I have to use my inventory space sparingly.

  Right now, I have three items in my inventory. All of which I have no use for. [Rags], [Cloth] and [Sandals]?

  Nah, get out!

  “Empty inventory!”

  

  And so, the useless pieces of unwanted scrap just lifelessly flop onto the ground.

  Who needs trash, revealing armour when you can get slightly better, covered armour?

  And I even got a roach leg—tons better than some random stick I could pick off the floor!

  …I really gotta stop calling my primary weapon ‘roach leg’. Sure, it’s an accurate description, but it doesn’t sound very cool. It also can get pretty misleading and confusing. In fact, it sounds downright wrong! And weird to the boot.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I’ll just call it a… errr…

  Axe…?

  No.

  …S-spear?

  …

  Sword.

  I’ll stick with ‘sword’, I guess.

  Still misleading? Yes.

  Do I care? No.

  I wander around for a bit longer, until a challenger suddenly approaches.

  
  Unnamed

  Level: 4  Rank: F  Class: None>

  Uh-huh.

  I see, higher level than the other contestants. That’s cool.

  I’m still confident that I can beat the living daylights out of it though. The gap between rank F and D must be pretty huge. Oh yeah. Apparently, the system just skips rank E, so it goes straight from rank F to rank D. Seriously, for only being a single rank up, the first roach was such a menace compared to the others!

  The roach rears up and begins snarling. Sidestepping, I dodge its mindless charge before striking it down with my sword. Using the accumulated momentum from the leap as a foothold, I jam the sword up the roach’s backside.

  The roach spurts out some blue blood before its body goes limp.

  I clear my throat.

  Ladies and gentlemen, did you see that epic display of magnificent swordsmanship?

  It seems like I, the undefeated champion, gets to keep her title as minimum wage bug exterminator of the month!

  The crowd goes wild!

  Cheers erupt everywhere!

  Oh no! Someone fainted!

  Haha… This is pretty stupid, isn’t it?

  But, come on. You can’t blame me for getting cocky after accumulating a winstreak somewhere in the tens?

  Oh wait. I spoke early.

  I think I only knocked the roach unconscious, because it got back up again. Except, its legs can’t support its weight, and the bug collapses onto the floor again, writhing in pain.

  Time to end its misery…?

  Crunch.

  
  All basic attributes increased.

  Level up proficiency acquired.

  Proficiency has reached required level.

  Rena Shinohara has acquired skill [Stab Lv1]

  Skill points acquired.

  Combat Points acquired.

  50% of max health recovered.>

  Whew, about time!

  I was killing quite a lot of these F-ranked roaches, so I felt like another level-up was bound to happen sooner or later. Who can’t appreciate a nice reward?

  Besides, I even got a new skill!

  Let’s see what it does…

  <[Stab] (passive): A skill that increases damage from attacks with a piercing attribute. Bonus damage increases as skill levels up>

  Hmmm….

  …Fancy words aside, the effect is pretty straightforward. It just lets me, well, stab better. Useful, since literally all of my attacks are stabby.

  This is actually pretty useful. My entire offense got boosted from just that one skill!

  I also gave [Pain Resistance] a little check-up not too long ago. Similarly, the skill does what it says it does.

  It allows you to resist pain.

  Amazing, right?!

  …

  Since I’m already doing analytical stuff, I might as well sort things out now. Alright, let’s see…

  As far as I’m aware, I’ve currently got three skills—[Pain Resistance], [Stab] and [Appraisal].

  The first at level 2. The second, level 1. And I don’t actually know what level [Appraisal] is yet, since the system hasn’t said anything about a level when talking about [Appraisal].

  My level as an individual is three.

  And, alas, I am but classless.

  Hey, was that classy?

  Get it?

  Classless and classy…?

  …Sorry for the bad joke.

  Alright, I think I got a bit off track. Time to steer back in motion. So in this presumably fantasy world, rank seems to be much more important in determining an individual's strength than level.

  This seems to apply to monsters, people, and even items. Take my sword for example.

  My current sword is ranked F. And the stick was, similarly, ranked F. Yet the difference in stats is almost threefold. Yet, the two are still categorised under the same rank.

  From this, you can assume there’s a large range in each rank, right?

  Furthermore, say that the strongest F ranker has the exact same specs as the weakest D ranker.

  At that point, you could essentially say that the two are intertwined, no?

  After reaching that point, rank F and rank D would theoretically be the same.

  I’m assuming that’s when the secondary factor—levels—come into play. This is all hypothetical, but if what I said above is true, then levels would be similar to stairs, allowing one to move up from one rank to the other.

  If a rank F’s level reaches a certain number, they would ‘upgrade’ to rank D, and their level would get reset. That way, there would be a clear and distinguishable line between ranks in order to separate them and avoid an overlap.

  However, I don't know what that deciding level is.

  Meaning I cou—huff….. huff…. wheeze—Ah, sorry. Not used to talking smart.

  As I was saying, that means I could get cocky and face a rank F roach close to rank D thinking of it as an easy fight. And get absolutely beat up, like that robber who tried to fight a team of rugby players with fists only. Seriously, the robbers face was beat into the ‘:|’ emoji!

  Yeeaaahhhh…. I can’t see things ending pretty like that.

  The higher level a roach, the closer they are to ‘upgrading’. Since I don’t know what exact level a monster needs to be in order to evolve, I guess I’ll stay away from rank F roaches if they exceed level 10?

  I mean, levels are still quite an unpredictable variant. I ain’t gonna gamble on anything when my life is at stake. Of course, this is just pure speculation. For all I know, the ranking system could be totally different to what I envisioned it to be.

  Pure statistics aside, classes also seem important. I don’t have any numbers I can use for pinpoint analysis, but in video games, each ‘class’ gives different perks, skills and such.

  If I want to get stronger, picking a class would probably be a necessity.

  What class would suit me…?

  With the current path I’m taking, I’ll probably wind up stuck with a sword wielding class. You know? Those big meatheads that rush in while yelling childish lines like “RRAAAAHHHH, Take this! Holy Sword Strike of Holiness used to Exterminate Evil and other Bad Things like Blue Cheese!”

  I personally don’t really wanna wind up like that. In fact, with my slim physique, I don’t think becoming a meathead sword wielder would even be possible!

  I’d much rather stick with daggers, and be an assassin class, ninja class, or some other class that uses daggers.

  I guess [Stab] can also be applied to daggers?

  So I can still go down the dagger path right now, since no skills that bind me to swordsmanship have bloomed yet.

  But if I keep on using this… sword, then I’ll eventually end up with so many sword-based skills that I’ll have to go down The Way of the Katana.

  Aw man…

  I wish I could go back and scavenge some parts from the D rank roach corpse to create a set of daggers. Except, the premium corpse is, well… unsalvageable after the atrocities and war crimes I did to it…

  That aside, goal time!

  Goals are perfect for motivation!

  I’d say my super short term goal is to find some decent daggers, or at least something that can take me down The Way of the Kunai. Kunai’s aren’t even daggers, but forget about that.

  My short term goal is to escape this dungeon, and rack up some respectable power along the way.

  My mid term goal is to find a good class,

  And my long term goal is to…

  …Dunno. What happens in isekai? Rise to godhood?

  Not too sure about long term, but my other goals are now set in place!

  Super short term goal is definitely completable. I just need to find a roach with the same or higher specs than the D ranked roach. If I get lucky, I might even get an actual mob drop or something.

  Though at this point, I’m convinced mobs don’t drop loot. You’d think I would have gotten at least a rank F drop by this point, but… nope. Nothing so far.

  This isn’t a game after all. I guess I need to think within the frame of reason. When I kill a monster, I get a corpse. The monster doesn’t just evaporate into nothingness after they die.

  Evaporating monsters usually mean monster drops. You know, the fantasy clichés?

  So since monsters don’t evaporate, looting them is crossed out.

  Though looting monsters is technically possible, it’s just more tedious since you have to salvage raw materials and give them to a blacksmith to forge into a sword or whatever instead of getting items after a kill.

  So, a more realistic system.

  Sure, no problem. I’m fine with that.

  Not sure how long my short term goal will take though, since I have no idea how dungeons operate.

  Do I just have to kill the boss to clear the dungeon?

  Or maybe a set number of roaches…?

  Or is it like those games where I have to survive a number of nights?

  Who knows. I just hope I don’t regret playing aggressive and jumping into every fight after a quick [Appraisal].

  [Appraisal] is handy though. I can guess the guise of strength pretty well, so I know when to run away. If the roach exceeds level ten, RUN!

  Uh-huh.

  Easy.

  Aw man, did I just foreshadow something bad?