I was cold. And hungry.
Pain that wracked my body came first.
Then, a hazy consciousness greeted me.
Barely managing to open my eyes, I saw shoddily finished stone buildings fill my vision.
Piles of garbage reeking with foul stench, and swarms of rats incessantly twitching their noses.
Even the eyes of beggars in wretched rags.
Naturally, it wasn't my room.
“Ugh….”
I couldn't remember when, or how, I'd ended up here.
In that terrible sense of unreality, my strength gave out and I collapsed to the ground.
The rough texture against my palm, and the sharp pain.
I naturally realized this place was reality.
Looking down, I saw an unfamiliar, emaciated body.
At best, it looked about six years old.
By then, even someone as slow as me had caught on.
‘Ah, so this is an otherworld reincarnation.’
My second life had been twisted from the very start.
I groped through my memories, searching for a lifeline, but barely managed to salvage one thing: this body's name.
I am ‘Valdemar Olsen.’
‘Let's just survive first.’
There wasn't even time to think further.
Ravenous hunger drove me on.
I rummaged through trash cans, chewing on leftover bread scraps, and picked up fruit peels from the market floor to eat.
Sometimes, when crowds swarmed the bakery displays, I squeezed between them and stole a few chunks of bread.
That was all a scrawny six-year-old could do to earn a meal.
Eventually, I was caught by the bakery owner.
Dragged by a viselike grip, ominous thoughts surged through my mind.
I had heard that thieves caught in the village were rounded up and flogged.
The blood drained from my face.
If this body were flogged, the outcome was obvious as daylight.
By the time I was dragged past the guards to the village outskirts, I was trembling in fear that the man would personally punish me.
Yet, despite those worries, the place we finally arrived at was a church.
Its exterior rivaled that of a luxury mansion.
“Sister, please take in this poor lad. He looks ready to starve to death on the streets.”
The man sat me beside him and spoke with the Sister at length.
Only after overhearing that conversation did I realize how clumsy my thieving had been.
The man had been turning a blind eye to all of it.
When there'd been no sign of improvement, he'd finally brought me here.
An elderly Sister examined my face carefully, then eventually nodded.
I bowed deeply toward the man's back as he walked away with the Sister.
“Thank you!”
The man glanced back, waved his hand vaguely, and left.
That evening, as I filled my belly with warm soup and bread, I wanted to offer my prayers not to God, but to that man.
The Sister soon led me to a small annex.
It was far too large to be an ordinary orphanage.
Inside the room I was shown, beds and bedding were lined up in neat rows.
I immediately leaped onto one of the beds.
“Yahoo!”
The rustling straw beneath the thin quilt.
Only then did I feel the relief of being alive.
Now, even if I didn't run around frantically in the evenings, I wouldn't starve or freeze to death.
That alone gave me enough breathing room.
I left the dormitory and explored the building.
At the very least, I wanted to know what kind of place I would be living in.
Then, I found a door that drew my eye more than anything else.
Unlike the others, it was a heavy double door adorned with an elaborate relief mural.
I remembered entering through it.
The orphanage and the church were connected by this door.
I approached it as if entranced.
Carved upon it was a man of gigantic stature, with thick body hair, armed in armor and wielding a hammer.
Somehow, he looked incredibly familiar.
When that faint shard of memory connected to my previous life, lightning struck my brain.
“Ah, fuck.”
The identity of the man carved on the door made it clear exactly where I was.
I had been about to start this game before everything went to shit, so in a way, it was a natural outcome, but I'd been too busy surviving to even think of it.
He was Solistair, the God of the Sun and Justice.
This was the world of the CRPG I used to love.
.
That hipster game that had never been mainstream but always received rave reviews from critics.
The very genre designed to let you enjoy the feel of a TRPG from a cramped corner of your room.
The problem started right there.
From the board game days that formed the foundation of this genre, the rules had been clear.
‘This world must be constantly miserable.’
Only then could the developers create campaigns, and sell them to make money.
Those bastard developers had set the world in a perpetual state of apocalyptic crisis so the players' dopamine would never run dry.
A mad world where liches crawled out from the ground and dragons indiscriminately spewed their breath from the sky.
In this massive arena, extras like me were no different from weeds.
A place where, if you were unlucky, being made a snack by a passing ogre or getting abducted as a mad wizard's test subject was everyday life.
A ruthless world where commoners couldn't even occupy a corner of the rulebook.
And that world was now my reality.
“Status! Status window! Skill! Inventory!”
I shouted the ‘magic words’ with the desperation of a drowning man.
Not a speck of dust appeared before my eyes.
Just like on the first day of my previous life.
I had thought I could breathe easy after arriving at the orphanage, but my anxiety only grew deeper.
Lying in bed, I agonized over how to survive. No clear answer presented itself.
In the end, I had no choice but to cling to the vain hope that maybe ‘cheats’ or ‘perks’ would awaken as time went by.
And so, roughly a year passed.
The world continued to trundle along, but beneath the surface lurked an anxiety like a rickety structure propped up by thin supports.
And only then was I finally able to abandon my hollow hopes and face reality.
A place far removed from the main stage of the game.
A nameless, insignificant orphan.
My only weapon was a twenty-six-year-old mind crammed into a seven-year-old body.
I erased the complacent assumption that this was a ‘game’ from my mind.
* * * * * *
At first, even life at the orphanage wasn't easy.
The territoriality and wariness unique to children were surprisingly fierce.
Behind it lay some rather capitalistic calculations.
The orphanage occasionally selected children to do odd jobs for the church in exchange for pocket money.
Work was scarce, but the number of children entering swelled by the day.
It easily exceeded twice the number of those leaving.
You needed tremendous luck to get your hands on even a few coppers.
The gazes the children cast my way were anything but kind.
Since they couldn't stop me from volunteering, they instead expressed their feelings by isolating me.
But there was one thing they overlooked.
“Even when I fight elementary schoolers, I give it my all.”
I was quite seasoned when it came to dealing with kids.
Quick wit, being a playmate, and skilled mediation.
Children were straightforward, so they naturally flocked around me since it was fun.
Before a few months had passed, I had become the de facto leader of the orphanage.
Even the older boys and girls hung on my every word.
The king of the orphans in the Count's domain.
I had done it to survive, but it was a little embarrassing.
Sister Emma, who oversaw education, was quite fond of me.
“Valdemar, how can you be so mature? Sometimes you don't seem like a child at all.”
“I only did as you taught me, Sister.”
“Hoho, you little scamp. Did you think that would get you extra snacks?”
Of course, I did get extra snacks.
In exchange for maintaining order among the children, I received preferential treatment in many things.
Whenever odd jobs came up, the Sister always called on me first.
Thanks to that, I could keep food on the table.
But it was nowhere near enough to satisfy my ambitions.
Saving these pennies wouldn't secure my future.
I needed to build up independence funds.
I eventually turned my gaze outward.
I went around the village, making myself known to the residents and taking any work I could find.
Cleaning backyards, pulling weeds at public facilities, delivering letters, and so on….
I did anything others found bothersome.
The sound of whistles calling for me throughout the village never stopped.
The ability to buy time with a few coins was an attractive deal.
The undertaker and the church's relic steward, having noticed my diligence, wanted to take me on as their successor.
Each time, I politely refused.
Having seen them come and go, they were always busy moving about, unable to stay in one place.
I had a feeling that if I got tangled up with them, I'd spend my entire life in some damp basement.
No matter how thriving the business, I wanted no part of it.
What was especially popular among my services was weed removal.
I, Kim Han-ul, was unexpectedly a person of delicate sensibilities, and since I had a personality that saw tasks through to the end, the results were always extraordinary.
“Hey, Valdemar. Would you mind taking a look at our yard too?”
As word spread, requests came flooding in beyond simple weeding to garden maintenance, along with ample bonuses.
Having seen the results, they didn't care if I was seven or not.
Since I was a complete outsider to this kind of work, I hesitated at first.
After giving it plenty of thought, I accepted the requests.
Usually, when you pull weeds, the upturned dirt is left exposed in an unsightly mess.
It always bothered me, but all I could do was stomp it down with my feet.
What if, instead, I transplanted colorful wildflowers or moss into those empty spots?
It wasn't back-breaking labor like moving entire seedling flats, and materials were abundant in the nearby forest and roadsides.
The flower beds I completed that way received tremendous praise from the residents.
My reputation grew, and requests poured in from various households.
While going from house to house earning handsome profits, a man wearing a straw hat pulled low came looking for me.
“Little one, you've got quite the eye. Have you considered learning the trade under me?”
His name was Gus, one of the few professional landscapers in the village.
He always taught me the basics of landscaping with a calm, courteous attitude.
It demanded abstract sensibility, so it wasn't easy, but I followed along well.
By the time I could manage fairly decent landscaping even without hints from Gus,
he took me along to the ‘real worksite.’
It was the mansion of Count Rosendal, the lord of the territory.
The mansion's garden was truly another world.
Flowers and trees I had never seen before were arranged in perfect order, and the ornaments placed throughout were too intimidating to touch.
I assisted Gus and absorbed skills by watching over his shoulder.
He took a liking to my attitude, saying I was diligent in a way unlike children these days.
“Valdemar, here. From now on, you take care of the eastern edge.”
“Really?”
“Of course. But don't forget you'll be inspected for the next several days.”
Thanks to that, flower beds of lower importance or easier maintenance became mine before I knew it.
I felt proud to be recognized as a proper technician, and above all, I was pleased with my fattening purse.
I carefully stowed that money away in a small iron box.
I planned to use it as seed capital for when I eventually left the orphanage.
At this rate, I felt like I could manage a decent shop without any trouble.