This world was crap. Isekais were supposed to drop the main character off somewhere safe so they could get accustomed to the new world. Summoned into a castle by a priestess was a classic for a reason, after all, because it showed the best that world had to offer, But instead, Lucas was dropped of in the middle of nowhere, in some smelly cabin. There was also a horribly strong blizzard raging outside, and he had been attacked by some feral wolf. Also, when he killed said feral wolf, he didn’t even get a level up. What the hell was up with that?

[Ice Mage Level 20]

Yes, he knew he was level 20! No need for pointless messages, system.

What was next? Was some demon going to pop out of the dresser? No, no, he didn’t want to jinx it, but he did keep an eye on the dresser while he tried to crawl his way over to where he dropped the health potion.

It wasn’t nearly as effective as the MP potion had been, and it tasted like what he imagined raw sewage tasted like. Someone clearly cared enough to make some of these potions tasted alright, so why did some of them still taste this bad? Anyway, after drinking that awful potion, it didn’t even recover him to full health, it only recovered a little over half of it. So either this potion was incredibly terrible, or all health potions were terrible. He hoped it was the former, but there was no way to tell since his [Observation] skill didn’t identify the potion for whatever inane reason.

Also, now that he thought about it, wasn’t it awfully convenient that his [Ice Lance] spell even worked, let alone was powerful enough to kill the first monster he came across? Plus, there wasn’t even any ice in this room, how was he able to form it? Although the skill seemed to give him the inherent knowledge on how to form it, it neglected to give him the reason as to how magic worked, or why it even existed. Great. He hated it when he was told that things just worked because they did, and to shut up and not question it.

Something fishy was definitely going on here, but he knew that the moment he realized he was no longer on Earth. Oh well, he’d probably get some answers eventually. That’s how these stories always played out, they’d tease some intrigue to build suspense, then slowly drip feed those sweet, sweet revelations.

Lucas had moped around long enough, though. He didn’t feel great right now, but this didn’t seem like it would be the type of world that would just wait around for him. If he waited around here for too long, those other wolves might show up. If they even existed in the first place, since apparently the wolf he killed was a Mirage Wolf. So maybe they were just, uh, mirages. Yeah. That would be nice, if there was only the one wolf here, even though wolves were known to move in packs.

All his muscles complained when he stood up, but he had long ago learned to ignore the all the whining, complaining, and sass his body gave him. Working multiple 12 and 16 hour shifts at his job – well, his old job now, he supposed – taught him that he didn’t need to listen to his body, since it could put up with a lot more than it wanted to.

Peeking out from the stairway, it didn’t look like there were any wolves left in the cabin. Either they pissed off somewhere else, or they were really just fakes created by the dead one in the basement. On the one hand, if those other ones really were mirages, that was a huge relief, but on the other hand, it didn’t bode well for Lucas in the long run. He didn’t like how a stupid wolf of all things could cast magic, because that meant that potentially everything could cast magic in this world.

Now that the coast seemed clear, it was a good time to go through the rest of the messages the system gave him when he drank that [Potion of Enlightenment]. Something about how all his skills got a tier up, which was nice. Quickly looking through his skills, the choices for them were obvious. Evolving [Ice Shield] into [Ice Barrier] was obvious, since from what he understood, [Ice Aura] aura didn’t have any defensive capabilities, and instead opted for damaging enemies that got too close to him via extreme cold. It sounded cool, but he knew the value of solid defense skills shouldn’t be underestimated.

[Ice Manipulation] just advanced to [Expert Ice Manipulation] without any branching choices, and the same thing happened with [Water Manipulation] and [Expert Water Manipulation]. It was frustrating that he had no idea what either of these skills did. Even when he tried thinking about both of them really, really hard, his mind came up with a blank. When he tried using [Expert Ice Manipulation] on the snow outside, nothing happened.

Unfortunately, [Observation 0] didn’t improve whatsoever, but that was fine. He suspected it was some sort of curse anyway, and while he could and would complain about how terrible the skill was, he knew it likely wasn’t going to upgrade anytime soon.

So, the rundown:

[Ice Lance]: Very good damage, but he doesn’t have MP for it. So he can’t really use it. Plus, its cast time of about 10 seconds was terrible, he’d likely be killed before he could actually cast it.

[Ice Barrier]: Good defensive skill. He had no idea how it would actually hold up in combat though, since he hadn’t used it.

[Expert Ice Manipulation]: No good trash that he didn’t know how to use.

[Expert Water Manipulation]: No good garbage that he didn’t know how to use.

[Observation 0]: Shit.

Yup, he was a failed character. Wonderful. Astounding, even. No, this was fine. There were no problems here whatsoever.

Changing the subject so he didn’t go completely insane from thinking about how terrible his skills were, it was odd that he wasn’t freezing to death right about now. The door to the cabin was blown open, and there was snow piling inside, but at most, he felt comfortably chill. Even when he put his hand in the snow, the coldness didn’t feel bad at all, instead it actually felt good. What the hell was going on?

[Passive: Cold Resistance III]

Oh, so he had a passive skill. Neat.

Why the hell didn’t it show up until now? What other passives did he have?

[Passive: Expert Ice Manipulation]

[Passive: Expert Water Manipulation]

[Passive: Blood Magic Adequacy]

Three more, great. Blood magic sounded extremely ominous, though, and he wasn’t happy that someone had forced some chuunibyou’s wetdream skill on him. How the hell was blood magic even supposed to work here if it was a passive skill? He assumed it would be something like casting blood spears or summoning blood swords or other nonsense like that, but he didn’t have any skills like that.

And another thing, why were two of his previously active skills now passives instead? That explained why he couldn’t use them, but what a bummer. Now he was down to a measly 2 active skills. One which made him feel like death, and the other one which hadn’t even been field tested yet. Hopefully skill points were easy to get, because he definitely needed more skills. Only having 2 combat skills in a world like this didn’t make him feel safe at all.

Also, wait a minute, why didn’t [Cold Resistance] tier up when he drank the potion earlier? Was it because he didn’t know he had the skill in the first place? That’s so stupid. Insanely, idiotically, frustratingly stupid.

Fricking fantastic. Even when he tried to not think about his skills he ended up thinking about them anyway. To repeat what he already knew and risk sounding like a broken record, this world sucked. He really, really, really hoped that in the future he wouldn’t be worrying about his skills day in and day out, because that sounded miserable.

You know what? He was sick of this cabin. Nothing good happened here. Lucas wanted nothing more than to slide the belt that was still on the desk on, attach as many potions as he could to it, and leave. It was tempting to do that now, despite the blizzard, since he wouldn’t have to worry about the cold anymore. The loss of sight posed an issue though, but if he couldn’t see, then the rest of the animals/monsters out there couldn’t see either. Probably. And it wasn’t like he knew where he was going anyway, since he didn’t have a map skill, let alone an actual map, so sight was overrated anyway. Screw it. Blizzard exploring sounded like an adventure, and maybe the snow would clean up all the… gunk… that was still hanging on him from when he ripped that wolf in two with [Ice Lance].

It was too bad that he didn’t have an inventory, like every other stupid otherworlder in every other story had, because he wanted to take his old work uniform with him. Call him crazy, but he kind of liked the thing. Oh well. At least he could take his phone with him, even though he doubted it would be useful here. It was just a dead phone, after all, but it comforted him knowing that at least a little part of Earth was still with him.

“Right, let’s set out then!” He tried to pump himself up, but he was really not feeling it. Anything could be hiding in that blizzard, and he wouldn’t be able to see it. Actually, he wasn’t in a rush to leave the cabin, now that he thought about it. Sure it stank and the front door was broken, but he could hole up in the basement and wait for a better time to leave than this. Yeah, why did he ever even think leaving in the middle of a blizzard would be a good idea? He wasn’t that stupid, he’d driven in blizzards before, he knew they were dangerous. Although, he supposed sliding his car on ice and crashing into a concrete barrier at 50 MPH isn’t really a danger here, so maybe going in the blizzard would be fine…

No. No. No. Why does he keep thinking going in the blizzard is fine? It’s not fine. It’s not!

“Something must be wrong with me,” Lucas muttered. His eyelids felt heavy, and clearly his brain wasn’t doing its job properly right now. Maybe he could take the chair downstairs and take a nap. Wait, no, that was a bad idea too, because there was a messy wolf corpse that was currently ruining the feng shui in the basement. Maybe he could just take a nap on the straw bed, since he had cold resistance and all, the open door wouldn’t really bother him. No, that was stupid too, what if some other monster needed shelter from the blizzard, and saw his cabin? With an open door, he would be defenseless against it while he slept.

“Is going out in the blizzard really the best option here?” He heavily considered it, but again, he knew how terrible of an idea it was, so he threw that idea out again for what, the 3rd time. Or maybe it was the 4th time now, he wasn’t really keeping track of how many times his idiotic brain tried to get him into danger.

As much as he hated it, the best choice seemed to be taking the chair downstairs and sharing a room with a corpse. With a disgruntled moan, he grabbed the surprisingly heavy chair and carried it downstairs.

The smell was bad, real bad, like he had walked into an open freezer that had malfunctioned and all the meat had gone bad. And, and, and like someone let some rats into the freezer too, and there were rat feces all over, and the poop smell mixed with the rotten meat smell. Then, the metaphorical cherry on top was, someone came into the room before him, saw how awful the room was, and puked everywhere.

That was what the room’s stench smelled like. There was absolutely no chance in hell he was going to spend any time in here.

“I need to clean all this blood off me before I start smelling like this,” Lucas gagged. Maybe the blizzard really was the right option here, but even if it was the right one, he knew he definitely shouldn’t take it right now. He was tired before, but after carrying that chair downstairs he was wiped out. Even the straw bed that looked so unappealing before looked like a 5 star hotel’s premium bed now. He needed rest, even if it was only for a couple of hours, but he wasn’t stupid enough to just fall asleep up here without a plan.

First, he took a few steps out of the cabin, and used the blizzard to wash himself clean. Thanks to his cold resistance, the snow wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Instead, what made this the worst shower of his life was finding out just how much of the wolf’s… insides… he had clinging onto him, his clothes, and his hair. By God his hair. He never wanted to have another monster explode on him again. The shower left his clothes drenched, but he didn’t care, because once again cold resistance proved its usefulness, so he wasn’t freezing. The wetness felt annoying, but since it didn’t make his body shiver or endanger him in anyway, it was tolerable.

Once his cold shower was over, Lucas walked back into the cabin and pushed the desk – which was heavier than the chair, mind you, but his life was on the line here – into the doorframe. It took up enough space that a larger monster like that mirage wolf from earlier couldn’t just walk in without making some noise. Obviously, a smaller predator could climb over the desk or sneak its way under the desk, but if that happened, then so be it. There was nothing else he could do, except maybe go back downstairs and carry the chair back up again, but the thought of going down there was too repulsive, and putting the chair on top of the desk wouldn’t really add all that much to his crappy make-shift barricade anyway.

After having done all that, he fell onto the straw bed. It was scratchy and made him itchy all over the place, but it was soft enough to be comfortable. Closing his eyes was no problem, even though he was paranoid about some monster sneaking into the cabin while he slept, but despite all his worries, sleep came to him easily, taking him into his dreams, where he wouldn’t have to stress out about giant wolves and dangerous new worlds.