When you get transported to another world, you might think you’ll dominate with your modern knowledge.
But once you actually get transported, you come to a single realization.
I don’t know jack shit.
They say half-baked knowledge is dangerous.
Most people didn’t even know how their everyday devices work like computers, smartphones, or microwaves.
You turn on a tap and water comes out.
You turn on the heat and the room gets warm.
You’re hungry, you order food.
All those things we took for granted in daily life were things a normal individual couldn’t reproduce on their own.
Sure, maybe someone with actual technical knowledge could manage something.
But sadly, I wasn’t one of them.
I’m 20.
Never once bothered to think about how the stuff I use every day actually works.
That’s who I was.
“Hey, porter! If you don’t wanna die, carry it properly!”
A gruff voice shouted from behind me.
A big man was running like crazy ahead of me.
He was my employer.
I had suddenly been transported to this world, without status or connections.
The perfect target for criminals.
A nobody the guards could execute on the spot without issue.
I had only one way to survive.
Beg my heart out at a gathering for other transported people, pleading for a job and legal status.
That’s how I ended up as a porter.
The man yelling at me now was my employer.
“Y-Yeah! I got it! I’m carrying it properly!”
Honestly, despite how he talks, he’s not a bad guy.
He pays on time, buys me drinks sometimes, and teaches me how to survive in this world.
But the situation was so chaotic right now, his words were coming out rough.
Did I get any kind of special ability from transporting to this world?
Well, yeah.
But right now, it wasn’t exactly useful.
So now, all I could do was rely on the strong body of a man in his twenties and work as a porter.
It was the best I could manage with no special knowledge.
“You’re so pale, no wonder you’ve got no strength!”
“What do you want me to do about being pale? I think I’m getting even whiter ’cause I’m low on melanin or something!”
“Quit using fancy words, you son of a bitch!”
“Try using that brain of yours; you’re supposed to be a mage!”
At that moment, my employer ran over and swiftly grabbed half the load I was carrying.
He was a professional frontier pioneer, hired from the Pioneer Guild.
He was thirty-seven this year.
A man named Bulldog.
I couldn’t believe someone could actually be named Bulldog, but it turned out that the dog breed “bulldog” didn’t even exist in this world.
Anyway, just like his name, he had a fiery temper.
But he was just as burly, so even carrying half my load, he could still run with long powerful strides.
“Run! We’re gonna die if we don’t!”
“Aaaaaah, okay!”
Shouting back at him, I ran like my life depended on it.
Right behind us, a giant snake that could swallow a person whole was chasing us like a mad beast.
An enormous forest of overwhelming size blurred past us.
This was World 2. A different world from World 1, the place I’d originally been transported to.
We had just stolen this snake’s egg.
It was an incredibly valuable material that sold for a fortune.
So the mother snake grew enraged and was hell-bent on killing us.
“――――!”
The mother snake, with its angular face, roared and spat venom.
My legs felt like they were about to give out at any moment.
It had already been five months since I started working as a porter, and I still couldn’t get used to it.
“It’s just ahead!”
At that moment, old man Bulldog shouted in his booming voice.
He leapt over a tree root as thick as our bodies with all his strength.
I also managed to leap over it by stepping on a foothold that had been placed there earlier.
The mother snake chasing us thrust her head over the root.
At that moment, a magic circle carved into the root flared with intense light.
It was a trap spell Bulldog had set up beforehand.
He might’ve been large, but the man was a battle mage.
Boooom!
The mother snake’s head, which had been chasing us, was caught in the explosion spell and blown to pieces.
Thud!
Right after, the snake’s head fell beyond the root.
It still twitched slightly, maybe from leftover nerve activity, but it no longer looked like it could move.
“Phew, that was a close one.”
Old man Bulldog sighed as he put down his luggage.
I stared blankly at him for a moment before speaking.
“Old man, do we really have to take on work this risky?”
Once I caught my breath, it hit me just how dangerous the situation had been.
Old man Bulldog was a much more capable pioneer than he looked.
He knew his own limits and usually didn’t go after monsters this dangerous.
“What can I say? My son’s getting married soon, and I gotta send him something decent. If I bring him a noble snake egg and some rare materials, I can give him a proper gift.”
He really was such a doting father.
He absolutely loved his son.
“So, uh… any chance a young guy like me could get a gift too?”
“Brat, just be grateful I’m letting you tag along.”
Fair enough.
Honestly, not many pioneers would bother hiring a powerless porter like me.
World 1 Astrafe.
In this world, people from other worlds were regularly transported in.
Transporters suddenly find themselves dropped into World 1 with no idea what’s going on.
They arrive with nothing. Not a single coin or connection.
And for such people, there was no clear way to survive.
That was why they so easily fell into crime.
It was the worst kind of vicious cycle.
Because of that, transporters became the target of hatred.
I knew what that was like. I had suffered a fair bit of that baseless hatred myself in the beginning.
Seeing the gloomy look on my face, old man Bulldog lit a cigarette.
“Haru, you’re a No-Name, right? You really got no powers at all?”
Though I had been transported to World 1, I had forgotten my name.
This was a symptom commonly experienced among transporters.
One unique detail was that those who forgot their names tend to awaken special abilities beyond those of regular transporters.
And that was also why No-Names were particularly despised.
After all, having power didn’t necessarily make someone a good person.
“Not all No-Names end up with special abilities, you know.”
If it was some useless power, it was better to consider it as having none at all.
I walked over to the snake’s head and stabbed my dagger into its forehead.
After peeling away a few scales, I saw the tender flesh beneath.
Once I dug into the soft meat, a jade-colored gem soon emerged.
It was the mana stone of the fantasy beast, the noble snake.
In World 1, it was a valuable energy resource.
“The color’s kind of off. I went out of my way to draw a high-grade magic circle, and this is what I get.”
“Still, if we insist, maybe we can pass it off as green-grade?”
“Grab the scales while you’re at it.”
“Ugh, we’ve already got the egg. This stuff’s heavy.”
“You brat, you’re the porter! Don’t complain about carrying stuff!”
Grumbling under my breath, I packed up the scales.
I knew that if I did, old man Bulldog would give me a little extra in today’s pay.
Once I finished collecting all the scales, the load got noticeably heavier.
Guess it had been worth the trouble for Bulldog.
It should be enough to help his son get a decent place.
Even Bulldog looked to be in a good mood, which wasn’t like him.
If I played my cards right, I might be able to get some bonus pay.
“Got enough stuff already. Let’s head back for today.”
“Sure, works for me.”
As we gathered our things and started moving, huge trees began to appear one after another.
In World 2, plant life was abnormally large.
Maybe that’s why even getting over a single tree root was a task.
I wondered if this was what life felt like for an ant.
“Haru.”
Bulldog called out the name he had given me in World 1.
After five months, I’d gotten pretty used to it.
“Have you heard about that No-Name serial killer making the rounds lately?”
“I’ve heard it so much it’s worn out my ears.”
“Good, just be careful. Try not to draw attention to the fact that you’re a Transporter for a while.”
His advice was worth listening to.
The No-Name serial killer had been active lately.
Because of that, hatred toward No-Names among World 1 residents had reached its peak.
I really wished that guy would ease up. For the sake of the decent people just trying to live their lives.
But this world had far too many people who weren’t in their right mind.
Thanks to them, I now had to hide the fact that I was a Transporter.
If I let it slip, I’d often get kicked out of stores, so I had no choice.
“Why is it that this world is never without incidents and accidents? It’s way too harsh for an ordinary person to live in.”
“That’s just how it is where people live.”
Despite my grumbling, Bulldog answered calmly.
I wondered if, by the time you hit thirty-seven, the world just stops surprising you.
I wouldn’t know yet. I wasn’t that age.
Before I knew it, the entrance back to World 1 came into view.
The huge shape of the gate appeared.
“Can’t wait to get back, wash up, and rest.”
“Haru.”
Just as I managed to relax a little, Bulldog suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He stared silently past a tree root with one hand out in front of him.
I followed his gaze.
Soon, I saw a red trail of blood.
And on top of that trail was a bloody chunk of flesh.
Damn it.
A horrible, chilling sense of dread swept over me.
Bulldog’s reaction was the same.
Because that corpse…had just died.
“…If we ran from here to the gate, how long would it take?”
He asked in a quiet, low voice.
“Five minutes. We’d have to run for five minutes.”
The entrance was close, but still a ways off.
It would take a solid five-minute sprint to reach it.
“No good will come from sticking around. Drop everything and run full speed.”
A smart decision.
In a life-or-death situation like this, things like baggage didn’t matter at all.
I was already prepared to toss everything away at a moment’s notice.
At the same time, old man Bulldog drew his staff and began gathering power.
From the look of it, he was planning to set the forest on fire to buy us some time.
A quick decision, just like you’d expect from a veteran pioneer.
“Run.”
The moment he swung his staff, I threw off my pack and sprinted forward with all I had.
Shkk!
Right then, a chilling sound rang out from behind me.
I instinctively turned my head and saw a head flying through the air.
It was old man Bulldog’s head, the same man who had been all smiles at his son’s wedding.
His head flew for a moment, trailing a long stream of blood, before falling to the ground.
Something had sliced through his neck.
That fact alone registered in my mind.
Thud!
Immediately after, something pierced straight through my chest.
It was something invisible…completely transparent.
Blood gushed out from my chest in a violent stream.
My already pale skin turned even whiter.
A burning, overwhelming pain surged through me. Like my mind was about to snap.
The pain was so intense, not even a scream could escape from my throat. Just choking gasps.
The transparent blade that had pierced my chest was pulled out.
At the same time, a force hit me from behind and sent me sprawling to the ground.
My consciousness began to fade fast.
It was the price of losing so much blood.
I saw blood-soaked shoes.
But then, the shoes turned transparent and vanished.
“An…. ability…”
That was definitely an invisibility-type ability.
And a high-level one ability. So advanced that even old man Bulldog hadn’t sensed it.
It was him.
That bastard was the recently infamous serial killer.
“Son of a bitch.”
With that, something came crashing down toward my head.
What a truly fucked-up world.
Crack!
With the sensation of my skull being shattered and my brain pierced—
I died.
.
.
.
And then, several hours later.
I opened my eyes again.
Covered in blood, with my chest and head a complete mess.
I spat out the blood pooled in my throat and shook out the blood that had gotten into my ears.
That helped clear my head a bit.
“…Damn resurrection.”
I was a no-name.
And yes, I had a special ability of my own.
Though mine was a pretty useless one.
Resurrection magic.
Resurrection.
I have resurrection magic.
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