I fell into another world.
There wasn’t any special reason for it.
I hadn’t thrown myself in front of a truck to save someone, or been struck by lightning from a clear sky, or typed out 7,500 furious characters in a novel comment section.
I had simply been playing a game called Minecraft Dungeons.
Why was I playing that trash game, you ask?
Because it was a trash game, of course. Why else would I?
I’m a connoisseur of bad games. I can’t stand missing out on this kind of thing.
There’s always a strange joy in playing a game nobody else touches.
And while I was savoring that wonderfully rotten game, light burst from the screen and dumped me in a rural village with no sign of modern civilization anywhere.
Worse, when I looked at my reflection in the water, my face had changed, and my field of vision had dropped. I’d gotten shorter too.
I was 168 cm before I shrank, damn it. Getting even smaller than that was way too much!
My reflection in the river looked like I was just a little over 110 cm tall.
Are you kidding me? At this point I’m basically a dwarf!
What kind of human is only about 110 cm tall...!
That’s so depressing...
This really is a goddamn trash life...
In a fit of rage, I slammed my fist into the ground, but my skinny wrist had no strength behind it, so all I did was kick up a cloud of dust.
A bitter laugh escaped me.
Even in a situation like this, the fact that my brain was still thinking in game terms was ridiculous.
But if I didn’t think that way, I felt like the weight of this absurd reality would crush me and drive me insane.
For several days, I wandered the village and struggled to survive.
I tried to sleep in a barn and got chased out by a farmer’s pitchfork. I tried to steal fruit that was on the verge of rotting and got thoroughly beaten by a market merchant.
In the novels and webtoons where people get transferred to another world, everything always seems to go the protagonist’s way...
Why did I end up like this? At least give me some kind of isekai starter perk...
I even thought maybe I should just make money somehow.
But making money from nothing, from bare ground, made no sense.
And in a medieval world, it would only be harder.
Hunger felt like a sharp blade scraping through my insides.
Then one evening, I was leaning against the window of a small village tavern, soaking up the warmth leaking from inside.
That was when a voice, bright with excitement, rang out from within.
The owner of that voice was clearly a traveling peddler.
He slammed his mug down and ranted at the villagers around him.
“Damn it, that war-crazy Ares has stirred up the eastern trade route again! I swear, that cursed Kingdom of Rakia never knows a quiet day!”
One of the villagers asked worriedly, “So the rumors are true? Rakia’s army is eyeing Orario again?”
The peddler snorted.
“Eyeing it? Please! Even if they drag their whole army over here, they won’t get past a single wall of Orario! You lot don’t understand. Orario isn’t something you break through so easily!”
He lowered his voice and glanced around.
“A single first-class adventurer from a top Familia is far scarier than thousands of no-name soldiers from Rakia!”
The peddler spoke with such pride that you’d think he was a member of Orario himself.
Amid that noisy conversation, I caught hold of a few words.
Orario, Dungeon, Rakia, and gods.
At once, a lightning bolt of realization struck through my mind, and I stopped breathing.
No way. No, it wasn’t “no way.”
There was only one place that combination of words could point to.
DanMachi.
Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka.
In short, DanMachi.
The place I had fallen into wasn’t some generic fantasy world. It was the world of that novel I’d once enjoyed reading quite a bit.
Suddenly, I could see a path ahead of me.
If I received a Falna from a god, I could become stronger.
Then even a penniless little kid like me might survive if I could just get into a Familia.
Bell Cranel, the protagonist, had started out weak too, hadn’t he?
Let’s go to Orario.
Once I had a goal, a faint spark lit up the heart that had been filled with despair.
The next dawn, I secretly hid in the cargo bed of a merchant wagon bound for Orario.
Inside the rattling wagon, between sacks reeking of cheese and dust, I held my breath like a mouse.
I recalled what I knew about DanMachi.
It was a long time ago, so I didn’t remember clearly, but the protagonist, Bell Cranel, had started by meeting a goddess named Hestia.
I needed to meet a kind god like that too.
But the world wasn’t likely to be that forgiving.
A few days later, a massive tower rose in the distance, stabbing up toward the sky.
Babel.
When that tower I had only seen in the novel appeared before my eyes in real life, I was briefly left speechless by its overwhelming presence.
Just looking at it made my heart pound.
After setting foot in Orario, I immediately set out to find a Familia.
I also had a little confidence from knowing the story.
At the very least, I knew the world’s basics, so I should have an advantage over other outsiders.
I started by looking for the famous Familias.
“I’d like to join the Loki Familia!”
A member standing guard in armor in front of the huge gate looked me up and down.
“Kid, this isn’t a playground. Get lost.”
So a big guild really was impossible unless you were the protagonist.
Wait, hadn’t even the protagonist been rejected?
I steadied myself and went looking for other Familias.
But reality was far harsher than the novel I knew.
“Do you have equipment? Money? An identity? You have nothing. We’re not a charity.”
“Look at your body. You’d get toyed with by goblins and die before you even entered the Dungeon.”
I changed tactics.
Like the protagonist in the novel, I started searching for newborn Familias that had only just descended to the surface and had no members yet, or small Familias with weak influence.
Maybe they’d take in someone like me.
I knocked on the door of a small Familia tucked away in a shabby alley.
What came out was a tired-looking dwarf captain.
“You want to join a Familia? Hah... I appreciate the thought, but we’re barely keeping ourselves fed right now. We don’t have the room to provide equipment for a new member, much less even a single meal. Sorry.”
His words stabbed my heart more painfully than any mockery or contempt had before.
A refusal wrapped in pity.
That was the real bottom-line reality of this world.
My hope collapsed like a sandcastle.
Story knowledge? It was useless.
Bell Cranel had just been lucky.
No matter how broke you are, meeting a kind-hearted god isn’t easy.
I was just one more failure among countless others.
As time passed, hunger dulled my reason.
The smell of fresh bread drifting from a restaurant on the street made me dizzy.
Tears welled up from sheer misery and hurt.
I want to go home...
So this is what they meant when they said leaving home means suffering like a dog.
I never wanted to understand that phrase this way.
In the end, I reached for something I should never have done.
I tried to steal fruit from a street stall and got my wrist caught.
“You filthy little thief!”
The merchant kicked me, and I rolled across the ground.
Every curse hurled at me, every contemptuous stare from the people around me, pierced like a dagger.
Like the fruit trampled underfoot, my last shred of pride shattered to pieces.
Before I knew it, the sun had set and rain had started to fall in a miserable drizzle.
Cold rain seeped into my tattered clothes and chilled me to the bone.
I no longer had the strength to keep walking.
To escape the rain, I staggered into a foul-smelling back alley.
I curled up beside a pile of trash and buried my face in my knees.
The people passing by didn’t even glance at me.
To them, I was just another piece of filth in the city.
My vision blurred, and painful spasms twisted my stomach.
Was I going to die like this?
So this was my ending?
I’d almost rather have been run over by a truck. At least that would’ve been more dramatic.
This world had rejected me.
From the beginning, there had been no opening for someone like me to squeeze through.
I gave up on everything.
As my consciousness faded, I only wished for the pain to end quickly.
Then it happened.
Through the cold rain, a faint fragrance brushed my nose, as if pushing back the stench of the dirty, damp alley.
And then a shadow fell over me.
With great effort, I lifted my head and saw a woman looking down at me, dressed in brilliant white.
White hair that seemed to shine even in the pitch-black darkness, golden eyes filled with kindness.
She was so beautiful it was hard to believe she was a real person.
Even looking at my filthy state, she didn’t so much as frown.
Instead, her eyes were full of deep pity and concern.
“Are you all right?”
A gentle, warm voice.
It was the first voice I had heard in this world that held no hostility and no caution at all.
I didn’t even have the strength to answer, so I could only stare at her blankly.
Then she bent down to my eye level and smiled softly.
That smile was like a miracle, melting the hunger, the cold, and the despair that had frozen my heart solid.
She held out her white hand to me.
That hand was spotless, utterly out of place in this filthy alley.
“If you have nowhere to go, would you like to join my Familia?”
The pure white goddess said as she extended her hand to me.
“I’ve only just arrived in the Lower World, so I can’t offer much support yet, but if you join now, would you be willing to serve as captain?”
I fell for the goddess smiling at me with such kindness at first sight.
“Are you sure I’m okay?”
“Of course. I may look like this, but I pride myself on having a good eye for people.”
She was the first god in this other world to show me kindness.
In that moment, I made up my mind.
I would follow the goddess standing before me.
“Please take care of me, Goddess.”
“Fufu... My name is Istarot. I’m Istarot, the god of time. I look forward to working with you.”
Wait, is Istarot a God or Goddess? I hope a Goddess 😏😏