This Is Going To Be A Rocky Do-Over

002

Day five of being a rock. Ever since that bird flew off, not much has changed. It ended up pecking me enough that the voice in my head announced an increase to my defense twice. Assuming I started at level one, my defense must've reached level three now... unless I had started at zero.

GAH! Why isn't there a manual or menu or something to tell me how this crap works?!

Unfortunately, I didn't obtain any more useful skills with the second increase to my defense, which means there was a more complicated set of rules at play here. My working theory was that there may be other attributes of my character to progress. If I leveled up my defense by being pecked in the head repeatedly, then there was a probability that some sort of attack skill could also be elevated.

But how am I supposed to test it if I can't move?!

Since I had been unable to do anything but bask in the sun and moon day after day, it left me with countless minutes to do nothing but think. I suppose it was better than being stuck in that hellish loop back at home, but where did I end up? Some mythologies would lead individuals to believe that there's such a thing as reincarnation. I personally never gave it much contemplation, but if that crazy woman did end up taking my life, well... I never expected reincarnating into a rock to be on the table. Then again, the idea of reincarnation was more of a spiritual belief than anything—an explanation about the process after death to help people cope with their inevitable encounters with existential dread. Though it seems like along with many others, I was under the misconception that when you died and reincarnated, it was into something else that was considered living.

How does a rock even have the capability to think about this stuff?!

It was all getting a little exhausting... I supposed the only thing to do was rest until something happened. Back in my old life, I always wondered what it'd be like to shut down and have no responsibilities to anyone or anything. I didn't know it would be this boring.

#

Day eight of being a rock.

Someone, please save me from this hell!

#

Day seventeen of being a rock. I could feel vibrations on the ground. I figured it must have been due to becoming more in tune with the mountain's surface. Other than that, things hadn't changed much. A pair of rain storms came to pass, and while I had hoped it would cause some sort of increase to my defense, alas, it only slicked my surface. I had also tried pushing my Self-Aware skill to its limits, but it seemed quite restricted. It was like watching a closed circuit camera or a television show starring a lone rock that doesn't move, only exists.

This show would flop in the first episode!

At that point, I was defeated. It felt as though the universe had played another trick on me.

"Ha! You thought your life was hopeless before, look at you now!" The powers in charge must have been having a good kick right about now, cackling in low ominous tones.

I bet their laughs are stupid... You hear me whoever you are?! Your laugh is stuuupid!

If only I could sigh... then my exhaustion would have been correctly conveyed. The only thing that gave me any hope for entertainment was this vibration that seemed to be growing in intensity. What could it possibly be? A larger bird. Just another winged devil to toy with my hopes of being pecked at so I could finally experience something new.

Oh, joy.

"—"

Wait... that noise? Sounds of mumbling were resonating from below.

It can't be. People?!

I honestly didn't know why I got so excited. All of my recent interactions with humans were close to insufferable at times. Being taken advantage of, belittled, stabbed, none of those possibilities were worth involving myself with people again.

Though I suppose it'd be hard to be stabbed now that I'm a rock.

A rock... that's right. Even if I wanted to avoid encountering others, I couldn't. The only thing I was able to do was sit and wait. But wait for what exactly?

Before my grandfather passed, he had always said if you want to know the answer to something, all you have to do is ask and one way or another, even if it takes your entire lifetime, you'll one day receive your answer. I always blew it off as another mantra some movie star came up with or recited in a popular flick. But...

Grandpa, if you can hear me, you win this time.

Shoes appeared just inside my Self-Awareness skills viewing angle. They weren't in any way modern-day climbing sneakers, nor were they even everyday shoes. If they bared any familiar semblance, I would say they almost looked like clogs if those wooden feet traps had ragged cloth holding them together instead of wood. Not only that, but the design completely lacked anything relating to a shoelace. The foot covers seemed to be stitched together with some sort of hand-crafted rope.

What kind of backwater country did I end up in?

"Isabelle," a young man's voice called for an unseen other. "We've finally made it to the top. Is it not beautiful?"

"Oh, Rickard. It truly is, and you glow in the setting sun with such radiance," his female companion proclaimed back to him.

Is it just me, or is this tension a little high?

"Come here, Isabelle. Let us engrave our love atop this hilltop where your father has no say."

I don't like where this is going...

Then, a thud—one that could only be described as two bodies embracing one another—made an impact right above me. One of the impostor shoes appeared once more, then disappear, then reappear, but unattached from whosever foot it was covering, then appeared a rugged cloth that resembled something of a tattered s**t.

Oh god.

I turned off the self-awareness, but the noise... I could still hear it. The sounds of lips smacking. The sounds of skin rubbing. The moans. It was all there! In my past life, I might have actually enjoyed some fraction of this, but not while I'm a rock!

H.E.L.P.M.E.

But then, another thud, this time on the surface of my body, and a sudden pressure consumed me.

Is that wind?

I opened my self-awareness and it was truly a shock.

I'm falling!

One of those delinquents must have kicked me from the top of the cliff. My only hope was that I land somewhere with a bit more shade. A few moments passed and my body knocked against the cliff. Luckily it seemed that my body feels no pain, but...

—Defense Raised—

Yes! That's what I've been waiting for!

My body continued to tumble. If I'd been reincarnated as a snowflake, I would have turned into an avalanche, but of course, my life wouldn't be that convenient.

—Defense Raised—

—New Skill—

—Recall—

Recall? Like recall to my last location? What a useless skill!!!

#

I had to have fallen several stories, and while I did tumble several more times, my defense hadn't increased. In most video games I had indulged in back home, the programmers of the game would develop leveling systems accompanied by a scaling system. If a player walked into a dungeon and defeated a skeleton, the player would most likely level up if they had started a brand new character or were playing for the first time. But the game would get dull pretty quickly if that same player walked up and defeated another skeleton only to level up again, and again with the next one after that. A scaling system prevented this by including an algorithm in the code that would scale the amount of experience it took to level up between each level. With that in mind, the only conclusion was that my skills have that same feature implemented.

Bummer.

However, that adventure down the cliff landed me in a much nicer resting spot. The gentle touch of the swaying grass. The cool shade underneath a tree. Why would I ever want to go back to my original spot with some stupid skill like Recall?

#

Day eighteen of being a rock.

I swear you stupid blade of grass, if you swing over one more time and hit me, I will find some way to grow a limb and rip you out of the ground!

Just as the universe would have it, the grass blade swayed once more, rubbing its green body all over me.

That's it you pitiful piece of crud!

I struggled with all I could muster, and still, after eighteen long days, nothing had changed. This must have been divine punishment, weighing my options between the torture caused by a blade of grass, and basking in the sun atop a cliff with some peace.

That's it... I'm using recall.

Just as I had with Self-Awareness, all I had to do was think about Recall, and it activated. Yet... I remained in the patch of grass under the shade of the tree while a new screen similar to that of Self-Awareness popped up in my mind.

It showed a land formation for a while. After some time, an earthquake hit, and the land formation broke apart into boulders. Some more time passed and the boulder broke down further into rocks. The camera continued to focus on one rock in particular.

Is this the memories of the rock I am now? That doesn't seem possible with rocks not having a brain to retain memories with. Maybe it's just a recording of this rock's existence then?

Many moon cycles flashed by in a frenzy without the rock moving even an inch. But after many years of inactivity, the hand of a human picked up the rock and traveled with it to an interior where it remained for several days. After those few days of shelter, the rock along with several others were stored away in a sack and were eventually used in a bloody battle against what looked to be monsters of some sort.

Wait... am I in some sort of fantasy world?

The rock lay atop the eerie battlefield for many more moons. Soon, enough time had passed where the blood no longer stained the ground and a city was erected close by. The rock was picked up by some children and brought to a sandy beach for whatever reason and was tossed into the shallow end of the water. It lay there, resurfaced by sand for many more years, until one day, the tide had receded enough for it to be noticed by a tiny human-like winged creature resembling that of a fairy, who found some interest in the stone. The being had carried the stone far and wide before using it in the structure of its home. However, one day the stone was thrown from its place in the walls as the house was destroyed by a rampaging creature. The winged homeowner landed beside the fallen stone. Some words were spoken that the stone could not hear before it was carried away by the winged creature to atop the cliff where they both rested before the fairy took flight once more before leaving the stone behind.

It all hit me like a flash of knowledge; some unknown origin that I had no clue about suddenly resonated with me.

I must find that fairy.