Beginning at the top there were four categories: ‘Novice Jobs’ followed by ‘Advanced Jobs,’ ‘Master Jobs,’ and ‘Transcendent jobs.’ The latter three were greyed out and marked with a padlock icon and wouldn’t open. It was at this point she realized she was controlling the menus with her mind like some kind of hallucination. She hoped that meant she could also close them.
“Hey! Jessica! You okay? I don’t see the snake so I think ya scared him off!” John said, pushing aside barley stalks to find it.
“I— I think I activated my adventuring stuff!” she said.
“Ain’t that somethin’! I knew you were an adventurer from another world. No one from our world knows about micro-demons and stuff so I figured y’had to be.”
John’s praise faded into the background as Jessica scrolled through the options available to her until she found the ‘Alchemist’ job. Her plan was to have it synergize with her real-life chemistry knowledge. If she could violate the laws of conservation of mass the way you could in video games—which she did not play—then her progress to finding a way out of this world would accelerate. There were a lot of problems she could bypass with ‘create solvent’ or ‘conjure ammonia’ spells.
She selected the Alchemist job class and was brought to a menu with four different trees of skills, each beginning with a single root skill. These were:
- Acid Vial I (Brew an acid potion that deals slight damage over time)
- Antivenom I (Brew a potion that provides 25% Poison resistance)
- Might Potion I (Brew a potion that gives a 4% attack buff to an ally)
- Forager I (Extract 15% more ingredients from scavenging)
“The hell is this?” Jessica said.
“The heck is what?” John asked.
“My skills suck! I can’t use any of this sh— okay, not true. I can use the acid as a solvent. Probably. But the rest is garbage.”
Jessica scrolled further up the tree and her fears were confirmed: None of this was real chemistry. The four trees gave her, in order: More things to deal damage, more things to cleanse/heal, more ways to buff allies, and more passives. What she could ‘brew’ were all chemistry-less facsimiles of material reality.
She didn’t even know if the acid actually could be used as a solvent, since the icon showed something neon green which maybe could be nitric acid and copper if she was kidding herself. What she had was stuff that was only good for adventuring.
“Y’know what? Whatever. I’ll use the stupid skills to show I’m not a serf and then use my chemistry skills to convince the king to give me a laboratory and then I’ll start an industrial revolution. It’s fine. Things are still fine,” Jessica said.
“Oh… That sounds good at least,” John said.
Jessica unlocked Acid Vial since it gave her something to demonstrate to obnoxious aristocrats. Best case scenario it might let her adjust pH levels.
Jessica grabbed her boots. “I’m gonna go kill things and gain experience. I’ll be nearby in case Sir Hayek shows up though.”
“Oh, uh, sounds good!” John replied with a hesitant wave.
The heat seemed to ease as she left the field. Just having an incremental sign of progress had her soaring. That and being freed from forced labor. That was definitely a plus.
She passed Rosemary and Charles as she was leaving and hastily explained how she’d stumbled on the job system and that she was off to go grind a few levels.
Rosemary wiped sweat from her brow. “Am I still brewin’ ash for soap then?”
“Probably not. I’ll send you some money once I’ve gotten this adventuring stuff down and then you can buy as much soap as you need,” Jessica said.
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Rosemary shrugged and turned back to reaping.
“Stay hydrated,” Charles said. “There’s some nettle tea in the pot if ya need it.”
Jessica thanked him and broke into a jog. If other adventurers had been here for years, she had a lot of time to make up.
She learned from John during their work chat that there weren’t any monsters in the nearby area. The Emperor had driven them out. But if the snake gave her an experience point then wild animals could be used for the same purpose. A slower grind, maybe, but she only needed enough to get her out of Barleyfield—the name of the hamlet—and off on a real adventure.
South of the hamlet was a chain of hills hooking around to the west side like a quarter-circle wall. Cresting the first of the hills, she spotted woodland running over and through a dale between hills which was almost certainly where Sir Hayek had found her.
The main road of Barleyfield linked up with a paved road running north and south. Jessica followed it south into the hills until it forked. The sign at the fork informed her that the Sultanate of Al-Mazra'a lay to the south while the western road, the one Sir Hayek dragged her along, led to a town called Glassbed.
Following the road into the forest, another sign proclaimed it, ‘Protected Hunting Grounds of the Crown,’ along with a warning to poachers that their hands would be cut off if caught. Jessica looked down at her own, dirty and scratched from reaping barley. Into them she summoned a bottle of fluorescent green acid.
“Come and take them, Hayek, you son of a bitch,” Jessica said, marching down into the forest valley.
Unfortunately, hunting was not a skill Jessica took with her from Earth. No one in her family hunted or fished. Her father had preferred nerdy pursuits like video games while her mother was a homemaker in the classic mold. Aside from sports betting, her younger brother was a lot like their dad. Outdoors activities had mostly passed her by growing up.
It didn’t help that she was hunting with less-than-optimal means.
Testing the acid bottle, she hurled it at a nearby tree. As expected, it shattered and exploded outwards as though under internal pressure. Green goo more viscous than any acid she’d ever seen splattered across the tree. The goo sizzled and burned holes in the tree trunk and surrounding grass. After a few seconds, it disappeared.
Equipped with a better sense of how her ability worked, Jessica set off looking for animals to dissolve. Unfortunately, none were lining up. The few squirrels she saw quickly scampered away, and bigger game, if there was any, kept out of sight. The only animals around were birds sitting well outside her throwing range as if to taunt her.
This went on for over an hour before she let out a scream of frustration.
“How the hell are you supposed to make any progress!?” she yelled.
Jessica had always imagined that being reborn in a fantasy isekai world—not that she knew anything about them—would entail a challenging, yet meritocratic progression system which rewarded ingenuity and persistence. So why the hell wasn’t her ingenuity and persistence being rewarded? Surely making it to the fifth year of her PhD program qualified her as one or the other if not both?
No, she was persistent. She was resourceful. One way or another, she was going to hunt with her cartoonish bottle of acid.
First, she needed to calm down. Taking a few deep breaths, her frustration subsided. With a clearer mind she realized running around was harming her chances. Every animal in a mile radius could hear her stomping through the woods. What she needed was a good spot to sit and wait.
Jessica followed the trail down to a creek along which she spied an outcropping hidden by bushes. She lay down in them and waited. And waited. And waited some more, allowing her impatience to pass through her.
Just as she was congratulating herself on achieving this state of zen, a doe emerged from a line of willow trees on the opposite bank.
The doe’s flanks were speckled white and it had a short, fluffy tail which bounced with each graceful stride. Her large black eyes faced Jessica without noticing her amid the bushes. She was so beautiful Jessica couldn’t bring herself to summon the acid vial. Progression system or not, marring the beautiful creature disturbed her on a visceral level.
But what other options did she have? If she wanted to escape this world she needed levels and that meant killing something. Had her quarry been some ugly goblin or non-sentient slime the decision would have been easy, but this doe was all she had.
“I’m sorry…” Jessica whispered.
The doe’s ears perked up. By the time she saw the vial of acid flying, she could only bleat in horror. Instead of neatly dissolving into experience as the snake had, the deer stumbled around in distress as its hide sloughed off in melted sheets.
“Oh God! Pl-Please just die!” Jessica said, biting her knuckle.
After the longest, most heart-wrenching minute of Jessica’s life, the deer finally ceased its bawling and lay down in a sizzling pile of bones and melted flesh. Above it floated an ephemeral ‘+3xp’. Willing the system menu to her mind, Jessica could see she was now 6xp away from gaining a level. Two more melted deer to go.
As Jessica stood to find another spot, she felt a light thud against her back accompanied by the sound of glass shattering. Liquid trickled down her arms and spine. Before she could reach back and figure out what hit her, her muscles seized.
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MIRROR KING
A LitRPG Adventure
Gregory Zell is a relatively normal, thirty-year-old paramedic living in Northern California.
Life is good. He owns his own home, has a wonderful wife, a couple of dogs, and plenty of friends. Until the day he drops an ancient mirror down a staircase in San Francisco.
In trying to catch it, he falls.
The mirror does not break.
It swallows him.
Greg awakens in a world where magic is real, power is earned through mysterious books, and nearly everything is trying to kill him.
His goal: grow powerful enough to return home… and bring those he loves with him.
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What Awaits Within These Pages
? 2–3.5k words per chapter
? Mature, weak-to-strong progression
? RPG-lite system
? Skill-focused advancement
? Language, gore, horror elements
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