The first thing he felt was the mud. It was cold, wet, and it seeped through the thin, rough-spun cloth of his trousers with a clammy insistence. The second thing was the pain. A sharp, blunt impact against his ribs, followed by another, and another.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
It wasn't the sterile, temporary pain from a video game hitbox. This was deep, bruising, and real. It rattled his bones.
"Get up, you useless sack!" a gruff voice snarled.
He tried to open his eyes, but one was already swelling shut. The world was a blur of dull browns and greens—mud, wood, and the grimy faces of three young men standing over him. They were dressed in similar rough peasant clothes, but they were broad where he was thin, strong where he was… not.
"Look at him," another one jeered, kicking a clod of dirt at his head. "Can't even take a beating properly. Just lies there."
Where… where am I? The thought was a spark in a foggy mind. My apartment… the energy drink… the all-night raid…
A foot connected with his side again, and he curled into a ball, a pathetic, instinctual gesture. The movement sent a fresh wave of agony through him. This wasn't right. This wasn't his body. His body was soft, pampered, sustained by pizza and caffeine, not this frail, aching vessel.
"Please…" a voice croaked out. It was his voice, but thin and reedy, laced with a fear he didn't recognize as his own.
"Please?" the largest of the three, a brute with a flat nose and beady eyes, mocked him. "The pretty boy says 'please'! Did you say 'please' when you tripped and spilled the well-water all over my clean tunic, Kaelen?"
Kaelen? The name meant nothing to him.
And then, like a dam breaking, it did.
A torrent of memories, not his own, flooded his skull. A child called Kaelen. A life in this shithole village, Oakhaven. Parents he barely remembered, their faces smiling one day, gone the next—torn apart in a "beast raid." The pitying, then impatient, then disgusted looks from the villagers. The weak body that couldn't swing an axe, couldn't hold a plough steady. The face that was too handsome, too fine-boned, that made the girls stare and the boys hate him. He was the village clown, the punching bag, the living reminder that beauty meant nothing without strength.
He—the consciousness that had been playing Elden Ring just moments ago—was now trapped inside this walking tragedy. An orphan. A weakling. A joke.
"Rolf, just leave him," the second thug said, sounding bored. "He's not even fun. He doesn't even cry right."
Rolf, the flat-nosed leader, wasn't having it. "No. I'm not done. I want to see if I can make that pretty face a little less pretty." He leaned down, his breath smelling of stale beer and onions. "Maybe a scar will make you look like you belong here."
Despair, cold and heavy, settled in his—in Kaelen's—gut. This was it. This was his new life? Dying in a mud puddle in some backwater world? After a life spent as a shut-in, an Otaku who lived through screens? He'd consumed everything—the epic sagas of One Piece, the brutal philosophy of Berserk, the sheer power fantasy of DBZ, the nuanced heroes and villains of Marvel and DC. He'd laughed at comedies, cried at dramas, and yeah, watched his fair share of porn when the nights got too lonely. He'd even made a decent living grinding in MMOs, selling gold and items. He had lived a thousand lives, all of them vicarious.
And for what? To end up here? As this?
It was so profoundly, cosmically stupid that a sound bubbled up in his throat. It wasn't a sob. It was a choked giggle.
Rolf paused, his fist pulled back. "What? What's so funny?"
He looked up, his one good eye meeting Rolf's. The memories of two lives collided. The shame of Kaelen. The cynical, media-saturated mind of… well, of him. He needed a name. Leo. Yeah, Leo would do.
"Nothing," Leo-who-was-Kaelen slurred through a split lip. "It's just… the graphics are amazing. The pain feedback is a bit over-tuned, though. You should patch that."
Rolf and his friends stared, their confusion evident. "He's lost his mind," the third one muttered.
"Talking nonsense," Rolf growled, his confusion turning back to anger. "Maybe I'll knock the crazy out of you!"
The fist came down.
And stopped.
An inch from Leo's face, Rolf's meaty hand froze. Not because he showed mercy. But because a blue, translucent screen, shimmering with a light that had no place in this muddy world, had popped into existence between them.
[Soul Signature Detected: 'Leo Croft' (Designation: Otaku-Class).]
[Interdimensional Signal Acquired...]
[Syncing with Local Reality...]
[Welcome to the Omni-Bazaar.]
Leo stared. The text was crisp, clean, and in perfect English. It hovered in the air, unaffected by the rain or the grime of this world. Rolf and his cronies were completely oblivious, still frozen in their tableau of violence.
I've finally cracked, Leo thought, a hysterical laugh caught in his chest. The isekai brain-rot has finally consumed me. I'm hallucinating a UI on my deathbed. Classic.
[Initializing User Profile...]
Another screen appeared next to the first.
USER: Leo Croft / Kaelen of Oakhaven
RACE: Human (Isekai'd)
TITLE: Village Pariah
NEXUS POINTS (NP): 100 (Welcome Bonus)
[Scanning User's Core Memories for Contextual Pricing...]
[Database: Anime, Manga, Western Comics, Cinematic Universes... Loaded.]
[Catalog Access: Tier 1 Unlocked.]
The screens glowed, solid and real. This wasn't a hallucination. This was… a system. His system.
The despair that had weighed him down evaporated, replaced by a wild, soaring euphoria. The laugh he'd been holding back finally broke free. It wasn't a gentle laugh. It was a raw, slightly unhinged cackle that tore from his throat, echoing in the quiet lane.
Rolf flinched back, startled. "What in the hells is wrong with you?!"
Leo ignored him, his eyes darting across the screens. It was a shop. A goddamn multiversal shop. Categories flashed in his mind's eye: Powers, Items, Knowledge, Services. He could see sub-menus, a dizzying array of everything he'd ever geeked out over. The Sharingan, the Iron Man Armor, the Power Ring, the Zanpakutō… all greyed out, their prices astronomical. Millions of NP.
But at the very bottom, in the "Knowledge" section, he saw it. Something affordable. Something perfect.
Skill: [Observe - Basic]
Cost: 10 NP
Allows the user to view basic information about people, objects, and creatures.
Skill: [Deductive Reasoning - Sherlock Holmes Tier]
Cost: 90 NP
Grants the user peak human intuition, pattern recognition, and analytical ability.
A plan, cold and vicious, began to form in his mind. He wasn't Kaelen the victim anymore. He was Leo, the player. And these three idiots were the first NPCs in his new game.
"Hey, Rolf," Leo said, his voice suddenly clear and steady. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, the pain in his body a distant annoyance.
Rolf, still confused by the sudden change, glared. "What?"
"I was just thinking," Leo continued, a lazy smirk spreading across his battered face. He looked at Rolf, really looked at him, and selected [Observe - Basic].
A new, smaller tag appeared over Rolf's head.
[Rolf. Village Bully. Level 2. Status: Confused, Aggressive. STR: 12. VIT: 10. INT: 6...]
Oh, this is good, Leo thought. He then purchased [Deductive Reasoning]. A wave of cool clarity washed over his mind. The fog of pain and confusion vanished. His thoughts became razor-sharp. Details he'd ignored now screamed for his attention.
"You know," Leo said, his tone conversational, as if they were sharing a drink. "That story you told about the wild boar goring your leg last week? It's a load of crap."
Rolf's face went slack with surprise. "What?"
"The wound on your leg. The way you're favoring your right side. It's a clean puncture, not a tear. That's from a iron-tipped pike, not a tusk. You got into a fight with Old Man Hemmel's son over that girl from the next village, didn't you? And you lost. Badly."
The other two bullies glanced at each other, then at Rolf, their certainty wavering.
Rolf's face flushed a deep, blotchy red. "You're lying!"
"And your breath," Leo went on, his smirk widening. "You told your dad you were going to the mill to work. But you've been drinking his cheap ale. The same ale he counts every night. He's going to notice it's missing. And when he asks, you're going to blame your little brother again, the one with the stutter who can't defend himself. Just like you always do."
The color drained from Rolf's face. It was one thing to be called out. It was another to have your deepest, shamesome secrets laid bare in the street by the village idiot.
"How… how could you know that?" one of the other thugs whispered, taking a step back.
Leo just tapped the side of his head, his one good eye glinting with a cruel amusement. "It's all right there. In the mud on your boots, the way you hold your shoulder, the smell on your clothes. You're all just open books, and I just learned how to read."
He turned his gaze to the second bully. "And you, Jaren. That 'lucky' rabbit's foot you carry? You didn't find it. You stole it from your sister's hope chest. The one she was building for her wedding. She cries herself to sleep every night because of it."
Jaren's jaw dropped.
Rolf, humiliated and enraged beyond reason, let out a roar and lunged forward. "I'LL KILL YOU!"
But Leo was ready. He didn't have the strength to fight, but with his new deductive power, he could predict. He saw the telegraphed swing a mile away. He simply leaned back, letting the fist whistle past his face. Rolf, thrown off balance by the missed punch, stumbled forward.
As he did, Leo stuck out his foot.
It wasn't a powerful move. It was a tripping move, the kind of thing a clever, but weak, person would do. Rolf went down face-first into the same mud he'd been grinding Leo into, with a satisfying, wet splat.
For a moment, there was silence, broken only by Rolf's sputtering.
Leo slowly, deliberately, got to his feet. He brushed the mud from his clothes as best he could, his body screaming in protest. He looked down at the three of them—one in the mud, the other two staring at him as if he were a ghost.
The rush was incredible. This was better than any video game. This was real.
He leaned over Rolf, his voice dropping to a low, chilling whisper, a mix of Naruto's playful menace and Sasuke's cold disdain. "The next time you, or any of your friends, even think about looking at me funny," he said, "I won't just tell you your secrets. I'll tell them to everyone. I'll tell the miller's daughter what you really do when you follow her into the woods. I'll tell the blacksmith where his missing tools went. Are we understood?"
Rolf, lying in the mud, could only manage a terrified nod.
"Good," Leo said, straightening up. He gave them one last, dismissive look. "Now run along. The grown-ups have things to do."
He didn't wait to watch them scramble away. He turned and walked, each step painful but filled with a new, terrifying purpose. He had a system. He had a world to play with.
And as he limped towards the rundown shack he called home, a genuine, wide smile spread across his face—a face that was a haunting mix of Gojo's effortless charm and Kakashi's hidden intensity. The villagers who saw him pass shivered, though they didn't know why. The clown was gone. Someone else had taken the stage.
Back in his leaky, one-room hut, Leo collapsed onto the straw mattress, but his mind was racing. He pulled up the Omni-Bazaar interface again, the blue light illuminating the squalor around him.
"Okay," he whispered to the empty room, his eyes gleaming in the holographic glow. "Let's go shopping."