Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World Volume 1 prologue part2

Translator: DarkHeartedAlchemist     

【Prologue, Part 2】

With my excitement quickly rising, I decided to click on the link. Who knows, maybe it will point me towards some good alternatives to suicide? I am just a teenager in his second year of high school after all, so checking out the alternatives before committing myself to the real deal was understandable.

Now let's see what we have here… uh-huh, all right, cool, I get it…

I muttered to myself as I was slowly scrolling down the page. To give you a brief rundown of its contents, it stated that if you find your own world to be a shitty place where you absolutely cannot live, ten why not move to another one?

That was… not what I was expecting, if I am to be honest. But on the other hand, there was a surprising amount of sense in it. I mean think about it: if you're fed up with the world you live in, then switching to the one that that is more to your liking is kinda obvious.

The page listed many examples of such worlds: a world which is technologically advanced, a world where pirates and their ships make the law, an ancient world filled with swords and magic… such a world might really not sound so bad. If I chose something like that, I could move to a world which would have been inhabited not only by disgusting humans, but also beautiful and noble elves, hard-working dwarves or even demi-humans and beasts lived together. That would certainly be interesting.

But how can you move to such a world, you ask? That's simple, really. The answer to that question is: through games. Internet ones, to be more specific.

And it just so happens that the page was providing links to the main pages of all kinds of games, not only the ones that I listed above.

I guess I could give one of them a try, just for the hell of it. It will certainly be healthier than spending the whole night reading the comments of the other users of the suicide site for who-knows-which night in a row. Yes, let's think about it like a much-needed change of pace, or a breath of fresh air. See, for all my earlier trash-talking I can still act like a semi-decent human being if I want to. If I have to fill my head with something then I'd much rather like it to be games than suicidal thoughts. Maybe it's my internal coward speaking through me now, but I have seen for myself for a past few days there were many people who thought exactly the same, so maybe those kinds of advertisements were made specifically to appease them? Well, whatever.

When it comes to online games I can proudly say that I am not a total noob, since I did play some of them in the past. Although I have to admit that my friendless loner attitude must have rubbed off on me pretty hard, because even when playing online games, where meeting new people and cooperating with them is kinda the point of it all I was a bona fide solo player. I was what you might call a quintessential casul, playing only what looked nice and casting it aside as soon as I got bored with it. But when I did play, I made sure to enjoy every second of it. Even if the game was a literal piece of crap, I didn't hate it per se, just the people who made it this way.

All right, so when I entered the page of one game that looked interestingly enough for me, the first thing I was told to do was choosing my race and the country of origin from an actually impressive selection of choices. Hmm, maybe I should aim for something interesting, like a mixture of the most unexpected things possible? And if I get tired of it anyway, I can always just start over from scratch.

The next page was about the frequency of wars occurring in the game's world. So it is the setting where countries fight with each other for supremacy instead of being friendly I guess? I wonder if it's going to be similar to the battles between guilds, but on a much larger scale?

Well, not that it's going to have that much meaning for me as a solo player anyway. With that in mind, I think I'm going to choose one of the more friendly countries. Okay, now that that's done, what do we have next? Dungeon type or Field type? Now this is going to be a difficult decision. Can't I just choose both at once? Oh, well would you look at that, apparently I can. Sweet, both it is then. It's also good that you can just choose the settings recommended by the game itself since there are just so many detailed options to choose from that carefully reading through all of them would have probably taken me an entire night's worth of sleep.

One of the last things to choose from was the language settings. Huh? What's this, how come Japanese is not the default one?!What even is this Brahim language? I have no idea, but since it's a default one then it's probably better to leave it as it is without messing around with it too much.

Soon after that I have arrived at the section of the character creation labeled as [Bonus Points Distribution]. Huh, I guess every online game has one of those nowadays. The system itself was similar to the one featured in the classics like D&D where you had to [roll] your character statistics based on the total value of your roll. You have a total of 6 basic stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intellect, Wisdom and Luck, and the total value of the roll of your virtual [dice] determines the numerical bonuses to those 6 stats. Thankfully it looks like you can reroll your character stats as many times as you like until you roll your ideal desired results so at least I don't have to worry about being stuck with something totally useless and not suited to my preferred playstyle. The only downside to it is that rolling "exactly" what you want might take a considerable amount of time since the RNG was not on the players side most of the time when it came to stat distribution. But since I don't want to half-ass everything this time around, I should take my time to roll something that will at the very least be decent to play with instead of a total random.

Points-wise, many of the initial stats were at the values between 10 and 20, meaning that they were the very basic ones and we want something better than that, so we're rerolling that one.
The next roll scored me a total between 40 and 50, so I wasn't as bad as the first one, but it wasn't good either. Another reroll then, don't fail me this time. Let's fast forward a number of rerolls into the future where I finally managed to score myself something genuinely good. I have a feeling that this is the best result I could have hoped for, so I'll be keeping that one. Also, the color of all the values was green, which indicates that my roll was an above-average one. All right, looks like we're off to a pretty good start in here, but I wonder if we can perhaps do a little bit better?

Generally speaking, in games that use the dice rolling system for deciding the stats rolling anything which has a total value of 75 and above is considered to be good, but most of the players (at least from what I've heard online) always aimed for a total 80 or above in order to really maximize their roll and squeeze every additional point they could to ensure the best start possible for themselves. My current total is 79, so the million-dollar question is: should I keep it or try to push my luck a bit and aim for that famed 80?

…. Ah screw it, You Only Live Once Rolls for the win, we're starting over!

As a result, I ended up with a total value of 60. Figures. Nothing like a little bit of F rank gacha luck kicking you in the nuts to remind you that you're not the hot Sh*t you thought yourself to be. Are we going to leave that poor 60 be and finally start the game? Hell no! I rolled something good once, so I can do it again, even if I have to result to using the most secret, forbidden technique of stat rolling: [Rapid Fire Mouse Clicking]! While I am furiously clicking away, here's some random trivia about this technique for you: the most skilled of its users are supposedly able to achieve the clicking frequency of 30 clicks per second! Isn't that like, awesomely unreal?! I wonder what games they were playing in order to achieve such a form at using it (TL NOTE: Ever heard of StarCraft, kid?).

As I continued to click like crazy, having nothing more but my eyes to rely on when to stop, a number 8 flashed before my eyes. Was that number 80 just now? It was 80, wasn't it?! Unfortunately, the number that was displayed on the screen when I stopped tapping that left mouse button was a measly 19. CRAP BASKETS! I did it! For just a brief moment I have scored that legendary 80 and I blew it out the window! OF-FUCKING-COURSE!!! And you know what comes next? That's right, you guessed it, we're starting over one more time!

*Inhale*… *Exhale*… *Inhale*… *Exhale*…

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined even more than it already was. *Sigh* well, no use crying over spilt milk I guess, we're just back to the Redoville for the moment.

The next few attempts were filled with 60 and 70 somethings, but let's be real here guys, all right? You know as well as I do that after scoring that 80 once I wasn't going to stop until I scored another 80 again. This is what we players do after all, it is literally in our blood, that competitive drive, or what normies would normally call a [Hold My Beer Syndrome]. We've all been there or at least saw someone from our surroundings being there, right? That certain someone who is like [Come on man, there's no way that you'll actually *insert whatever stupid thing here*] and the other guy, being an absolute Chad Thundercock of a madman that he is being all like [I'm not going to do it? I'm not going to do it?! Here, hold my beer!] usually followed by poor Chad either embarrassing himself in front of everyone or hurting himself in a really stupid way. Of course, with my personal situation being the way it is I have never really had the chance to be such a Chad myself, which is why now is a perfect, probably once in a lifetime opportunity for me.

Oh yeah? Well you know what?! Screw you! Screw every last one of you Chads with all your Stacies and successful normie lives! This is my time to shine now! I will do it! I will beat this Reroll icon like it's my meat on a lonely Friday evening and I'll roll the best stats possible!

Okay, everyone ready? Hold on to your seats then, cause we're taking this icon on a ride!

Chapter end