Water was solved. The stream was clear and cold, and after a moment of paranoid hesitation, Kazuto drank. It tasted better than Tokyo tap water. He refilled his empty water bottle, ate the sad half of his protein bar, and felt slightly more human.
The package sat beside him on a mossy rock. He stared at it.
Alright, think. I have a supernatural voice in my head and can't be stabbed. That's my current inventory. He poked his own arm. It felt normal. So it's not always on. It reacts. To… hostile intent?
He needed a plan. Wandering a magical forest alone was a one-way ticket to becoming something's lunch. He needed people. A town. A map. Someone who might, against all odds, know what to do with a mysterious cardboard box.
He decided to follow the stream downstream. Water led to rivers, rivers led to settlements. It was basic logic.
The forest began to change. The giant, glowing mushrooms thinned out. The trees were still huge, but more spaced apart. He started to see signs of something else: snapped branches at a consistent height, a path worn into the soft earth. A trail.
Hope flickered in his chest. He adjusted the box under his arm and picked up his pace.
The trail led him to a clearing, and the sight that greeted him stopped him cold.
It wasn't a town. It was a mine. A rough, open pit dug into a rocky hillside. Wooden scaffolding looked ready to collapse. And there were people.
Dwarves. He recognized them from fantasy games—shorter, stocky, bearded figures. But there was nothing heroic about them. Their clothes were ragged, their faces gaunt and smeared with dirt. Heavy iron collars were locked around their necks. They moved in a weary, shuffling line, carrying baskets of raw ore from the pit to a large, rusty cart.
Standing between them and the cart was the problem.
The creature was tall and wiry, with grey, pebbled skin and eyes like chunks of cold flint. It wore polished black leather armor and held a barbed whip loosely in one hand. It looked like a cruel cross between a man and a lizard. A dozen more, similarly dressed but looking bored, leaned on spears nearby—guards.
One of the dwarves, an older one with a beard streaked white, stumbled. A chunk of ore spilled from his basket onto the ground.
The overseer's arm moved faster than Kazuto could blink.
CRACK!
The whip snaked out, striking the dwarf across the back. The dwarf fell silent, biting back a cry, a fresh tear appearing in his tunic.
"Clumsy filth!" the overseer hissed, its voice like grinding stones. "Pick it up. The quota for Seat Talene does not wait for your weakness!"
Kazuto's body moved before his brain could catch up. He'd never been a hero. He'd broken up a few shouting matches between customers, that was it. But seeing that whip fall… it was wrong. It was a delivery so poorly handled it broke the contents.
"Hey!" The word was out of his mouth, loud in the quiet clearing.
Every head turned. The dwarves stared, their eyes widening with a mixture of fear and disbelief. The guards straightened up, looking amused. The lead overseer slowly turned, its flinty eyes locking onto Kazuto in his bright blue uniform.
It looked him up and down, taking in the lack of weapons, the ridiculous package. A slow, nasty smile spread across its face.
"A lost surface-worm," it sneered. "In pretty rags. Come to join the workforce?" It gestured with the whip. "Seize him. The Black Phoenix always needs more fuel for her forges."
Two guards sauntered forward, grinning.
Panic shot through Kazuto. Hostile intent. That's the trigger.
« NOTICE: MULTIPLE HOSTILE ENTITIES DETECTED. THREAT LEVEL: LOW. »
The first guard reached for his arm. The moment the guard's intent to grab and restrain solidified, Kazuto felt a subtle shift in the air around him, like a pane of glass sliding into place.
The guard's hand stopped an inch from Kazuto's sleeve. He pushed. Nothing. He grabbed with both hands, grunting. It was like trying to grip smooth, solid steel. He couldn't even touch the fabric.
"What the…?" the guard muttered.
The second guard, annoyed, swung the butt of his spear at Kazuto's side.
Thud.
The weapon stopped dead, the vibration jarring up the guard's arms. Kazuto flinched, but felt nothing.
The overseer's smile vanished. "Enough games! Pin him down!"
More guards rushed in. A spear thrust at his leg. A hand tried to grab his ankle. Another went for the box. Each attempt was met with that same, impossible, invisible resistance. It was a chaotic, silent scrum of grown humanoid creatures pushing and grunting against an unseen wall, while Kazuto stood in the center, clutching his box, looking more confused than threatening.
"He's using some kind of barrier magic!" one guard yelled.
The lead overseer's face darkened with rage. "Magic? A pitiful shield? Let's see how it holds against this!"
It raised its whip high, the barbs gleaming. It wasn't aiming for Kazuto. It was aiming for the nearest dwarf—the old one who had stumbled.
"You break his spell, or this one loses an eye!" the overseer shrieked.
The whip snapped forward, a blur aimed at the dwarf's face. The dwarf closed his eyes, tensing for the blow.
Kazuto's mind screamed. No. Not because of me.
« NOTICE: PREEMPTIVE HARM TO NON-COMBATANT DETECTED. »
« ACTIVATING SUB-SKILL: [ABSOLUTE RESCUE PROTOCOL]. »
Space did a strange, hiccuping twist between the dwarf and the overseer.
The whip, mid-crack, suddenly wasn't there. It was instead neatly coiled around the wrist of the overseer who had thrown it, the barbed end tucked politely into its own belt loop.
The overseer stared at its own wrist, utterly bewildered.
At the same time, with a soft pop of displaced air, the old dwarf vanished from where he was cowering. He reappeared two feet to the left, neatly placed behind a large, protective grinding wheel. He opened his eyes, found himself in a new location, and his jaw went slack.
The clearing fell into a stunned silence. The guards stopped their pointless pushing. Everyone stared at Kazuto.
Kazuto's heart was pounding. He looked at the furious, confused overseer. He looked at the hopeful, desperate faces of the dwarves. The voice in his head had called this place a world of monsters and magic. These dwarves weren't monsters. They were just… people. With a terrible boss.
A cold, professional resolve settled over him. This was a problem. A logistics problem. How do you safely extract multiple units from a hostile environment?
The overseer, purple with fury, threw down the coiled whip. "Kill him! Just kill him!"
The guards raised their spears, murder in their eyes. This was different. This was lethal intent, focused and sharp.
« NOTICE: LETHAL HOSTILE INTENT CONFIRMED. »
« DEPLOYING AREA-CONTROL SUB-SKILL: [DIVINE OMNI BARRIER]. »
The world tinged with a faint, golden light for a split second.
Transparent, shimmering walls—like perfect, hard crystal—sprang from the earth. They didn't form around Kazuto.
They formed around the guards and the lead overseer.
Each one found themselves inside their own personal, cube-shaped barrier, about ten feet across. One guard was mid-lunge, frozen in place. Another was trapped while scratching his head. The lead overseer was sealed inside his cube, screaming silent, muffled insults, pounding fists that made no sound against the immovable walls.
« NOTICE: PRIMARY HOSTILES CONTAINED. »
Kazuto stared at the collection of floating, person-sized transparent boxes. They looked like bizarre, angry snow globes.
Well. That's a new one.
He slowly walked over to the cube holding the head overseer. The creature was raging, spittle flying inside its prison. Kazuto stopped a foot from the barrier. He met the creature's hate-filled eyes.
"I'd like to speak to the manager," Kazuto said, his voice quiet but firm. It was the tone he used when a delivery had been clearly misrouted by the warehouse. "But for now, you're going to take a time-out."
He turned his back on the fuming cube.
The dwarves were all staring at him, a sea of stunned faces. The old dwarf he'd saved stepped out from behind the grinding wheel. He looked from the floating barriers to Kazuto, to the simple cardboard box still held securely in his hands.
He took a hesitant step forward, then bowed deeply from the waist. His voice, when he spoke, was rough with emotion.
"Master… who are you?"
Kazuto looked at the tired, hopeful faces, then down at his own uniform. The company logo was smudged with alien dirt.
He gave a tired, slightly helpless shrug.
"Kazuto. I'm… just the delivery guy."