“You’re lying.” Jonathan repeated it to himself and the old woman, getting louder and angrier every time he said.

“You’re lying.”

She has to be, he thought. She had come to him with a long, largely irrelevant story about herself and expected him to trust whatever she said. The worst part was that some part of him believed her, instinctually as if everything she was saying was truth. He had doubts near the start he started to gradually feel like everything she said was truth, with no proof. Every word she said carefully nudged his thoughts. It was as if her words could control his emotions....oh.

He picked his head up from where it lay in his hands and muttered under his breath;

“I can’t believe it.”

He even cried after he heard her say he was a fictional character in a novel or whatever the hell it was. When he heard it, he felt like he was getting ripped apart. Like everything he knew was real wasn’t. He didn’t believe it when she told him and he still felt like it was the truest thing he had ever heard. Like every truth he had heard before simply couldn’t match up to it. Was that the effect of whatever she had done to him, or was it something else. Did she lie about that? Something made him doubt that she did.

Logically, it stood to reason that believing something without any sort of collaborating evidence was…dumb. She gave him no evidence to match her words and it was more than likely that she was lying to him, but it just felt true, no matter how dumb he knew it was.

When he thought about it, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that this whole ordeal being something from a story. The first thing that occurred to him as a form of evidence was the system everything seemed to be part of. Why was it so similar to an RPG system from video games? In retrospect, it felt a lot like something an author would include in a book just because he or she liked video games. In particular the way the stats were distributed felt very similar to something he had played before…Dragon Quest IX. Magical mending was a stat that was introduced in Dragon Quest IX to determine a characters’ magical healing capabilities although it looked to be used here to determine the number of spells that can be cast-

He stopped himself. Before he pulled the opposite of a Descartes and disproved his own existence, he decided to calm down. He could always wax lyrical about what he was thinking later. Right now he had to focus.

“Why can’t I leave?”

His voice came out a little shakier than he had hoped but he felt calm. He felt nowhere near as angry as he should have, he felt cold. He preferred it this way, this way he felt protected. The woman kept her mournful expression as she spoke.

“You are trapped because you have now received abilities that you could not on Earth. You have irreversibly changed from how you were when you first arrived. Your presence as you are on Earth would cause large changes in how the Earth would work; otherwise you would be able to operate outside what is allowed by the laws governing Earth.”

“Because of my skills, or rather-how my skills work.”

“Yes. Even if you knew the mechanism of how to get to earth works, you would never be able to actually get there. Earth would not allow you there.”

Realizing what she meant, he asked;

“So you know how to get to Earth.”

“…Yes.”

She hesitated.

“….You won’t tell me, will you?”

“No I will not.”

“Why?”

“I cannot tell you. It is not yet time.”

“Now that is some bullshit.”

Jonathan brushed his hand through his hair. He tried to at least. He realised he needed a bath and a haircut, badly. It was obvious that whatever actual reason made her tell him what she did also kept her from telling him the truth. Whatever the hell that was.

“Why did you manipulate my emotions? In fact, how did you manipulate them? [Calm Mind]] should have activated.”

The mournful look stayed on her face.

“I did not. However you felt about my words, was due to you. None of it was my influence. If your skill did not activate, it was ”

Jonathan sighed before speaking.

“This is getting increasingly unproductive. You said you wanted to help me out which is cool I guess but your story had too many holes for me to count. Maybe you are what you say you are but I doubt it, if you were some kind of omniscient being or something similar to it, you would have stayed away. If what you said about alternate realities being made every time a story is written, it wouldn’t matter if you made them happen or not, new realities would have been created anyway. Your story about the gods also didn’t make too much sense either when I think about it. No one no matter how arrogant would place all their bets on one singular plan. Especially if that plan was thought up by the enemy.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change.

Jonathan sighed. This woman was dangerous. He had to be careful when speaking to her in the future. As he was thinking about what else to ask her, he suddenly felt tired. Very tired, abnormally tired. Maybe it was the toll of a long day, maybe it was the old woman. If it was the latter, he was getting close to something she didn’t want him to get close to. Keeping the mournful look on her face, the old woman spoke;

“It seems that our time together has to come to a close, Jonathan.”

Bingo.

“-we shall meet again, do not worry. I hope what I have told you can assist you in the future.”

Jonathan woke to a start. Hlaza stood over him looking panicked. It was understandable, he had just seen Jonathan collapse after talking to himself. He hadn’t interacted much with the other ogres back in his home village, but he knew that excessive fighting could cause madness for those who fought. He hoped that fighting the horned wolf and the imps hadn’t taken too much of a toll on Jonathan. Crazy bosses gave crazy orders.

“Well, that was a waste of time.”

Jonathan tried to sit up but had difficulty moving his left side properly. He felt no pain besides the scabbed over wound on his shoulder and the cuts and bruises he got from collapsing but his entire left side felt…off. It felt stiffer. He tried to ball his left hand into a fist but had trouble moving his fingers properly. He stood up and his leg felt the same as his arm and hand. He almost thought it was because he had his body weight on the left side of his body when his was out, but he felt no pins and needles.

“Shit. If [Mantra of Madness] activates again, I might paralyzed.”

Jonathan was careful not to get angry, he couldn’t risk [Mantra of Madness] activating again. Instead he felt distant, as if he was watching this was happen to some character in a novel and didn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things, probably because if the old woman was telling the truth, it was and it wouldn’t. Jonathan realized that he wanted to cry but felt self-conscious, if people were reading what he did, what did they think? He thought about it. If people were reading his adventures and saw him cry as a result of the things that happened to him, would they condemn him for not being ‘manly’?

Probably not. After all he was going through; anyone who thought that holding his emotions when release was much healthier was insane. So, he cried. After a few minutes of sobbing which surprised Hlaza enough for him to try a balancing act on a rock to cheer him up, he calmed down. As he cooled down he got a series of notifications;

[You have killed: One horned wolf and 2 green belly imps.]

[Hlaza’s loyalty has increased.]

[You have survived encounters with a hostile god and high ranking being, Solod.]

[You have gained 9450 experience points.]

[You have reached Level 17.]

[You have earned 18 stat points.]

[You may use ‘Appraise’ to view your attributes and allocate points.]

“Solod? So the old woman’s name is Solod. Alright, I’ll try and get information about her later.”

Jonathan decided that he needed the distraction and looked at the

Name:

Race:

Gender:

Title(s):

Class:

Level:

Traits:

Jonathan Sipho Mthembu

Otherworld Human

Male

-

Formerly Enslaved Human

17

[Racial] Tenacity [Character] Monster in Mans’ Clothing

Attributes:

Strength:

Attack:

Defense:

Agility:

Magical Power:

Magical Mending:

Magical Defense:

Luck:

32

35 (+3)

20

45

0

0

5

13

Skill Points:

18

Skills and Magic:

Skills:

Magic:

[Quick Learner][Calm Mind][Attention to Detail][Pain Tolerance Lv.2][Will to Live][Paranoia][Temperance][Appraisal][Desperation][Starved][Mantra of Madness][Lead]

-none-

Abnormal Status Condition(s)

Former Slave

Gods’ Displeasure

Crippling Madness

Your physical scars mark you forever. Your likeability towards the Octavian Empire and its allies decrease. All allies of the Empire will attack on sight.

Due to your status as an otherworldly human, you have earned the being in charge of Arda’s displeasure. You have no ability to use magic as a result and your luck decreases.

Continued use of [Mantra of Madness] will take control of your body from your mind, until you are left unable to control your body.

Jonathan barely looked at his status conditions, he had already figured out the last status condition already so he looked at his stats. Besides the minor paralysis in his left side, Jonathan felt stronger than he did the day before. He still didn’t know if the added stats were exponential or additive but he felt that he would soon find out. He speculated that they were additive, only because as far as he knew, they were additive in Dragon Quest and if the writer of this story was a fan of the series as Jonathan thought, he would have included it in his novel.

Jonathan couldn’t believe how easily he had gotten over the news of him being fictional. Although, he admitted to himself, if he had really gotten over it, he wouldn’t be thinking about it.

He ran his hand over his hair. He realized that he and Hlaza had no armour…or clothes. Jonathan spread the bits of wolf pelt on a large rock and used a smaller one to remove pieces of flesh from the pelt, bracing it using his right leg and let it dry, As he let the pelt dry, he heard a howl. Jonathan hoped it didn’t mean what he thought meant. He heard another one in the opposite direction of the first. Jonathan motioned for Hlaza to get closer before whispering to him. Jonathan hadn’t noticed before but Hlaza was starting to look taller.

“Hlaza, it looks like we have to fight again. How many spells cast can you cast right now?”

Hlaza put up one finger.

Just my luck.

Jonathan gave Hlaza the horn they took from the horned wolf and readied his short sword.

“Damn, ok. Get ready, if I’m right, the howls are from the same pack as the one we killed.”

Another howl reverberated through the forest. Jonathan tried to hide his nervousness by asking:

"I got your back, you got mine?"

Hlaza grunted in confirmation.

"Let's do this."