In another world, twelve beings of immense power sit in a circle of raised thrones and discuss a petition by a weaker member of their peers. Ten-foot-tall, godlike beings whos aura would stop the hearts of lesser men just from their divine presence, sit in judgement. Each of them, in the prime of their life, are adorned in enchanted Mythril plate with shining crowns upon their brow. An old man stands before them in the centre of the ring of thrones, merely 8 feet tall and dressed in simple robes, he radiates power, lesser than theirs, but still formidable in its aura. Then, he speaks.


He speaks to the beings sitting in judgement of his plea. "I demand the right to a champion, you lot have been calling heroes for millennia and I feel like it is finally my turn. I have not used my right since my ascension, no matter how invalid some of you may feel it was, it is my RIGHT to summon a champion."

One of the enthroned giants, who is wreathed in lightning, slams his fist against the arm of his throne and thunder booms across the room. "You have no rights Pretender, if the system did not protect you we would have removed you from your portfolio and crushed your soul into oblivion."

Another of the titans, this one surrounded by spiked vines, raises her voice to join the conversation. "You did not earn your power as we did in the beginning, you stole it, you dare demand more than what you have?"

The old man shrugs and grins sheepishly. "Stolen or not, The system recognizes my divinity just like yours, It is not my fault one of you offed yourself, I simply took advantage of the situation and claimed his domains. Now if I do not get my perfectly reasonable request granted I WILL set my domains to counter yours and we shall see if your worshippers continue to be faithful when I subvert your blessings." He looked as smug as a cat to the gathered congregation as he issues his threat.

"Mortal born bastard." One of them spits in response.

Another god, one with blood-red strips of silk attached to his armour that flutter as if in a breeze, says. "If we allow you a summoned champion, then they could gather followers for you. We shall not let a pretender like you raise himself to be equal to us in the eyes of the mortals."

The old man grins. "Fine fine, what if the ONLY thing I can choose about this champion was what world they came from? I would not be able to pick the individual, would not be able to talk to them before their incarnation into our world, All they would have is my boon like any other champion would get from their god and that's all."

One of the titans laughs, the odd one out among the twelve divine beings sitting in judgement. They wore no armor, and the crown on their brow was made of stag horns, rather than the mithril of their peers. "Oriath. I fail to see how this benefits you in any way at all then, and yet I know down to my marrow that this is clearly one of your ridiculous plots. Had you only been born to my people you would have been a raven." They chuckle and face their compatriots. "I say we grant his request. How could he possibly gather followers with this?" They knew somehow this would all work out in the old man's favour, but they also knew it would at least be an entertaining plot to watch unfold.

The lightning wreathed god peers down at the old man. "Pretender, you swear you will not turn your domains to subvert our blessings if we grant you a champion under those terms?"

"For the next 500 years, I swear I shall not subvert your blessings with my domains if you grant me a summoned champion from a world of my choosing, that I shall not speak with them before incarnating them in our world, that I will not influence them in any way to found a church for me." The old man holds his right hand over his heart. "I so swear on my domains, should they fail me if I break my oath."

The ground rumbles and the old man glows for a second.

A god with a voice like cracking boulders and skin of obsidian exclaims. "You fool! if you swear on your domains then if you break your vow you will lose the system's protection! Your soul will be free to be torn asunder and broken into oblivion, lost to the cycle!"

"Then you know I will uphold my vow, don't you." The still smirking old man says, he faces the lightning wreathed god. "So how about it? Incarnate a soul from a world of my choosing and you have the chance to remove the 'Pretender' from your midst if I break my word." 

The twelve great gods discuss for days more but eventually reach consensus. The thirteenth god, The god of invention and madness, Oriath the fool, The Pretender, Sheperd of the dead, The only mortal to ascend to godhood by stealing a gods domain as the god committed suicide, will be allowed one summoned champion from the world of Earth around the sun called Sol.

DAY 1

Jason wakes up gasping and clutching where the bullet wound is... was? why didn't he feel blood? or pain?.... or clothes?

He sits up, he is naked in what looks like some woods. Jason was very very sure he had been shot outside the courthouse, not perfectly fine while naked in the woods.

There was no time spent wondering if this was a dream, he always knew when he was dreaming. This was real and he was NAKED IN THE WOODS. You can understand that he would be very stressed by this.

After spending a good amount of time freaking out and wondering if he was drugged, and worrying about what whoever did this did to him while he was naked, he starts to worry that maybe whoever did this would come back. So he picks a direction and hopes he hits a road or something.

He spends the rest of the day walking, swatting mosquitos that landed on his exposed skin, it's even getting kind of cold as the sun goes down. he eventually cannot see a foot in front of his face with the tree canopy hiding the moonlight and decides to climb a tree to sleep in, in case of snakes or other such critters.

He falls asleep cold and tired and itchy.

A level 5 horned carnivorous rabbit hops under Jason's tree and eyes the creature It knows is weaker hungrily, it is about to leap and skewer Jason off of his branch when a level 12 Red beaked Shadowhawk notices a glowing glint below it and that causes it to notice the rabbit, diving after it. The rabbit runs off and the hawk is too interested in the rabbit to notice Jason sleeping.

He avoids death due to the mysterious glow distracting a hawk, and will never know how close he was to death on his first night in this world.

DAY 2

The sun rises and a beam pokes through the canopy onto Jason's face, he wakes up and almost falls out of his tree before catching himself, he carefully climbs down and examines himself.

He has lived almost exclusively indoors his whole adult life and barely walks anywhere, and his bare feet are blistered and bleeding because of it and he feels like he is covered in sexagintillion mosquito bites.

He walked a whole day and didn't find a road, so he must reaaaaally be way out in the wilderness, time to bear grills this shit.

Step one is: always find water first.
Luckily he thinks he passed a stream maybe 4 hours back in the other direction, so off he goes on his aching feet.

About 2 hours into his walk back to the river, a level 1 horned carnivorous rabbit steps into Jasons path.

A unicorn bunny? what? that's not... you would think he would have heard of a real-life unicorn animal, there would be clickbait Buzzfeed articles about them at least, kids would have them all over their walls and toys and everything.

It's a pretty dang cute rabbit. But this is not normal, is he still feeling aftereffects from being drugged? it has been almost 24 hours... what lasts that long and leaves you feeling sober for most of it?

The rabbit leaps at Jason! powerful little legs propelling that dangerous horn right at him!

FUCK FUCK! In a panic, Jason jumps away and the horn grazes his side.

[you have lost 2hp] flashes before his eyes.

The rabbit comes back for another stab.

KICK! Jason kicks out blindly and his foot connects and sends the rabbit crashing into a tree with a meaty THUD.

The rabbit tries to get back to its feet but one of its back legs is clearly broken. It doesn't look all that cute anymore as it bares clearly carnivorous razor-sharp teeth at Jason, rows of triangular teeth like a piranha.

What the actual fuck is this thing? Fucking bastard grazed him!

Jason grabs a nearby rock and smashes it down on the helpless monster rabbits head, it crunches in a really gross way.

[You have gained 2 Exp, would you like to auto-loot? Y/N ] Appears before Jason's eyes while he is busy retching an empty stomach at how gross killing that rabbit was.

After he is done retching he notices the message floating in front of him. This... was this... no fucking way. "I got motherfucking isekai'd? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" He screams at the forest in disbelief.

Well... might as well see how this works, he tentatively taps the Y in the message, assuming it meant yes.

The rabbit vanishes in a little flash of light! left on the ground are the horn and a small parcel of meat, much less meat than was on the whole rabbit, maybe the size of a fat thumb, but it was well-butchered meat all the same.

Well damn... The rabbit was pretty large, so much of the meat just vanished and who knows how easy finding more food will be in this forest.

Note to self, no more auto-loot.

He grabs the meat and the horn, that sharp pointy horn looks pretty sturdy and useful.

Time to keep walking with raw meat just in his hand being gross and raw, fun.

While he is walking he will attempt to access the rpg system that was obviously in place here, he tries these out loud verbal commands.

"Menu? Status? Inventory? Escape? Teleport home? Exit program?"

The only command that actually does anything is [status]

||   Current Status:
Health: Lightly wounded

Stamina: Getting tired

Stats:
Lvl: 0

Strength: 5
Dexterity: 8
Constitution: 10

Intelligence: 13
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 9

Status Effects: none

CLASS: Hero
bonus to Exp gain, bonus to learning lvl1 of certain skills without a skill tutor, the Exp needed for higher levels of skills is reduced significantly.

PERKS:

|Blessing of an unnamed God| You now have perfect memory that shows all of your personal history accurate to reality, you can search your memory for certain topics and get all relevant memories. You will thank me later~

Achievements:
None

Skills:
None   ||

Jason ponders what he's looking at for a while, says "Huh..", then doubles over and throws up what little bile he had left in his stomach.

The shock of knowing he's been isekai'd, that he's been taken to another world, that he will likely never see his family again, that he will never see his cat again, that this world has already proven dangerous, that for the first time he killed something larger than a bug and it went 'crunch' in the most horrifying way as its skull shattered, it all catches up to him at once.

He takes a long time to calm down and stop hyperventilating.

Eventually, he calms down enough to start thinking rationally again.

This is still just needing to bear grills this shit to survive, with rpg elements from an unknown game system and who knows if there is a gm that's a malevolent bastard and.... okay no, stop catastrophising, one step at a time. Let's test the skill.

Remember anything with perfect clarity huh? Then how about actually bear grills?

And as soon as Jason was actually trying to remember something perfectly did he get very a disconcerting and distracting case of seeing two things at once, the forest around him, and him on the couch a few years ago watching the episode of bear grills he wanted to remember, the effect was actually pretty nauseating. However, as soon as he focused more on the memory, the image of the real world seemed to fade away. Which didn't seem super safe in a dangerous forest, and remembering the scene seemed to be in real-time.

After a bit more experimentation it seemed he could skip around time in the memory, going fast-forward or rewind like an old vhs, but it's not like he could understand what bear was saying when it was sped up, it was only useful visually and to get to the parts of the episode that seemed useful, to be watched in real-time.

The memory also seemed clearer than what he would be seeing if he were there, he was certain some of these details he could see in the memory were not things he would have noticed at the time at all. He could see everything around his couch in perfect detail, all the merch and anime gear on his shelves and posters all clear as if it was a 4k video, and hear sounds from down the street he was sure he would have been tuning out at the time, if he focused he could hear a conversation going on outside his apartment as if he were right next to the people talking, turns out one of the neighbours forg0t to buy milk back then.

But as neat as the skill was, that episode of bear grills show he was viewing didn't actually help all that much with specific survival tips, more just general survival guidelines.

Well, that was... weird, useful, but weird. Something to experiment more with, in a safer place.

But still, one thing he already remembered had from that episode was still relevant, find water. He had not drunk all day and part of the last day. He was surprised at how okay he still felt actually, he would normally be expecting dehydration headaches by now. He moves to continue toward the river when his side stings, FUCK! he forgot all about the injury the Unibunny did to his side.

He looks down and checks his wound, it actually didn't seem as deep as it felt when he got the injury, it wasn't even bleeding anymore, and this... seemed unnatural, as much of a shut-in Jason had been as an adult he had gotten injured a LOT as a kid and knew this was strange, but it seemed unnatural in his favour and maybe this was an effect of whatever rpg system this world ran under, it didn't stop him from walking toward the river and all it did was sting a little bit, something to worry about later.

So off he goes, trekking back towards the river he passed.

He tries to memory view a few times while walking but every single time it causes him to trip on a root or a rock or some other debris because he was paying attention to the memory and not his footing. He missed smooth paved footpaths so much, he could read a book while walking to school on nice flat walkways back when he was a kid, memory viewing while walking would totally be possible on those.

And finally, a river! it is a pretty and idyllic forest river, babbling over smooth stones with clear water. As far as Jason can tell there are no potentially dangerous animals around he might need to share the river with.

And he very much was looking for murder rabbits just in case, so good thing the river seems unoccupied at the moment. He puts his blistered and itchy feet in the cold water and it feels amazing, cooling down his feet and the terrible mosquito bites. He decides to risk drinking from the river also, it seems clear and moving water was usually safer, and the bear grills water purification tricks didn't really apply, he did not have any pants to rip up into a filter or any containers to boil the water in, dehydration seemed the more pressing risk right now than disease. So he drinks, the water tastes fine to him, tastes clean at least.

After sating his thirst he finds a climbable tree and gets up in its branches for a safe place to think, the tree has a nice depression between where the larger canopy branches split up so he didn't really have to worry about falling out.

He checks his status and the only thing that changed was stamina and a status effect.

||Stamina: Lightly drained||

||Status Effects: refreshed [slight stamina recovery] ||

Lightly drained seemed better than the getting tired description earlier, guess the water helped too with that status effect.

Its time to plan, he walked for a whole day and found no sign of a road, which means civilisation if it even exists here is considerably far away, far away enough that he needs to build up tools for the trip, he needs at least a basket or pouch to carry food and water in, something to defend himself from murderous Unibunnies, shoes, and hopefully some clothes though that seems the hardest to make right now.

He might have still survived using half-remembered survival youtube videos but thankfully he had that memory skill. It seemed so super useless when he first got it, hero skills should be cool things like sword beams or holy rays of destruction, but this memory skill was exactly what he needed right now in this survival situation. When the survival youtube craze happened he had left them on in the background while chatting online and now he had those hundreds of hours of content in perfect clarity at his beck and call to learn from.

So he searches his memory for fire making, he wants to cook the rabbit meat, and the smoke might keep the bugs away. Oh yeah, the fire plow video. Idiot proof, way simpler than a fire bow or finding flint.

It occurs to Jason he doesn't really know what kind of wilderness he is in, doesn't know what flavour of trees there are that he would be able to use for tools, it didn't look at first glance like a jungle at least or the biodiversity would kill him even without rpg monsters. He looks around to see if there are any trees he recognizes. Please oh please to any of the powers in this world let there be bamboo.

Nope, no bamboo, it actually takes a few uses of memory search to try and guess what continents type of trees these are. Luckily, nothing looking like Australian trees, an Australian type rpg world seems VERY BAD what with the mountains of venomous critters down there. Nothing you'd probably find only in asia either, no bamboo to Jasons greatest regret, none of the other common trees he'd see in Chinese kung fu movies or remembered from childhood holidays to Bali and Kuala Lumpur. Looks like the kind of hardwoods you would find in Europe and massively transplanted to north America, no specific tree species look the same but the forest has that kind of vibe, it would explain the rabbits anyway. 

While Jason is using memory search to figure out the trees he realizes he can memory search recent memory too, fast-forwarding his trek through the forest to see if he missed any bamboo or other resources. That's a pretty useful thing to be able to do with his skill, review everything he saw in higher detail in fast forward.

More importantly to jason though, FUCK! THERE'S NO BAMBOO! The fact there was no bamboo changed survival from easy enough to actually tough, it really was a cheat level material, without bamboo as the greatest cheat survival material of all-time it meant most of those videos of watching people just build stuff in the forest weren't as helpful anymore since almost all those channels heavily used bamboo as a material.

But in any case, time to get that fire plow going, he had seen (and memory viewed) some likely chunks of wood on his trek. So he climbs down from what he already thought of as his tree and lugs back to it a nice bone dry hunk of easily splittable wood and a dead branch about as thick as his wrist.

Following the video he remembered, he found a nice sharp rock by the river and used it to split the wood hunk into a more manageable sliver about as thick as a finger and a half in one direction and half a finger thick in the other and still long enough to grip well, to make a wedge of a stick to plow with, then he split the branch he had vertically so it had a nice flat exposed side to it, he bashed a tiny groove with the rock into the flat part of the branch, stuck his harder wood wedge in the groove in the branch and started to plow the groove back and forth over and over. Hopefully, eventually, the friction will make an ember in the groove as the stick gets rubbed back and forth on the flat surface and digs itself a trench. Much easier to do than spinning a stick or trying to find flint or having to make twine to make a fiddly fire bow.

He plows.

And plows.

And plows some more.

The groove gets bigger turning into a little trench in the branch, he's making sawdust-like stuff as he plows like in the video at least, his hands hurt a lot and are already blistering, he's been at this for a whole hour, finally, he starts to get black dust but no usable embers yet and his arms ache. Apparently, this is what a strength of 5 gets you, but he pushes on.

Eventually, an ember! a little glowing piece of hope to be carefully nurtured into the greatest tool of man, fire.