Waking up from the silence of the night, Najin groaned, thankful nothing killed him while he slept.
'At least I'm still lucky.'
With nothing but the extra rags he had picked up while walking around last night, he was dressed like a beggar. He protected his limbs from the elements, his feet from blistering, and his skin from the insects.
Najin sat up from the cold stone floor of a narrow alleyway. The humidity made the ground damp, and the walls—all of which were cracked, peeling, and somehow tired—seemed to lean into him. A distant clang of metal echoed somewhere in the rundown maze of streets, reminding him he was far from comfort.
Not to mention… his body ached.
"Sigh,"
Then, the realisation truly hit him.
After the manic exploration of yesterday, his adrenaline settled down. The excitement of rebirth, the novelty of a new world, and the fire to conquer it, had all left with yesterday.
Today was a new day.
Today, his wariness had left.
Now, there was only fear… and maybe dread as well.
Still feeling the coldness beneath him, Najin closed his eyes. He was hungry and stressed. Dressed in rags and penniless, he might indeed become a beggar.
However, there was a more powerful sensation welling up in his gut.
Fear.
A pertinent fear that didn't seem to go away.
Last night, this fear had been pushed down by distractions, and now those distractions were gone. After figuring out the setting, he now faced the problem itself.
Navigating said setting.
He had to find a god for a Falna, delve into the dungeon, kill monsters, level up, then somehow navigate divine politics and maybe even those War Games that he had heard whispers about from some crazy-sounding adventurers.
After that, he would then have to kill the thing that wiped out the previous strongest organisations of Orario—the Zeus and Hera Familias—and then die two deaths.
That was the plan.
"…And colouring it in feels impossible."
Unless he had the proper mentality, of course.
And what kind of mentality would he need? Well, in Najin's personal opinion, he needed a god complex and perfectionism. From now on, he would need to consider his every move first, predict the actions of everyone around him, foresee the resulting environmental, social, and violent influences those actions would cause, and finally choose the best response available to him.
Honestly?
To do that 24/7, for anything and everything, in a high-speed, high-stakes environment like the dungeon, was inhuman.
But Najin knew for a fact that the adventurers he had been eavesdropping on were all inhuman.
Even a Level 1 bearer of the Falna was already superhuman!
So, what Najin had to do… was take the first step towards that. Everything else would follow. Even if his desires seemed hopelessly out of reach.
"Hooooo,"
Calming himself, he mentally set the parameters for his mindset and the beginning of all of the habits he would need to acquire. It was like preparing to slay the Klinhon, the Demon of Woes, back on Earth. An elaborate plan involving all the small things he had to do in order to fully paint in the colours of the big picture he envisioned.
A dead demon and a [Storybook] for himself.
In this case, he just had to reframe his point of view.
The image he envisioned was fearlessness, prediction, and perfection. So, he had to be brave, keen, and particular first and foremost.
Najin had already come up with a name for what kind of mindset he would have.
[Divine Virtues].
It was egotistically apt for someone who needed a god complex to survive.
Thus, Najin began the slow and gradual process of reshaping his brain and inclining it towards perfection.
"…It's like weaponising a mental illness." Najin comforted himself with a chuckle, "Brainwashing my own brain."
First, he needed to leverage the chemicals and built-in responses in both his mind and body. Fear, fight or flight, and the subsequent adrenaline rush.
With his eyes closed and the noises of this dilapidated area growing with the rising sun, Najin allowed himself to become afraid. Unnervingly afraid of everything.
So, paranoia gradually slithered into his mind. Venomous and deadly. A slow-acting grasp of death.
…Only if left untamed.
Using his own fears, Najin began taking note of the details. Anything to alleviate the terror of existing on the precipice of death.
Because he was afraid of everything, everything had escalated in importance. All of those details he would subconsciously ignore became dire threats.
What if the winds brought about a sharp speck of dust and sliced his skin? What if some scrap metal had found itself in the trashed ruins of that house nearby—sharp enough to cut? What if the rising morning sun burned through his skin and caused it to flake and wound? What if he stood wrong, and blisters appeared on his feet?
The questions grew worse and worse. A dark, spiralling cascade of anxiety.
What if the swinging of his limbs as he walked caused him to brush against the wrong thing? What if his own nails dug too deep? What if he bit his tongue? His lips? The inside of his cheek? What if the heat and humidity caused a nosebleed?
…What if a cough wounded his throat?
Suddenly, Najin realised that dying in his sleep just a few hours earlier could've happened. He was luckier than he realised.
So much luckier than he could've ever imagined.
All these questions brought him closer to insanity. The hunger did not help. The loneliness much less so.
Najin was alone in a new world, and even the smallest of things could kill him. With an impossible task ahead of him, was it really necessary to even try?
Should he just… give up?
"Hm,"
Najin let out a grunt as he held his thoughts there with all his might, not letting it progress into self-destruction, yet making no effort in alleviating his own agony. The nagging voices of his self-induced anxiety attack screamed in his head.
They wailed liked damned banshees burning in hell. Again, and again, and again. Clawing at his brain and threatening to tear every coherent thought apart in a barrage of what ifs.
…But that was okay.
This was what he wanted.
For now, at least, by being endlessly worried about everything, he would become more aware. More careful.
More likely to avoid injury.
The next steps would come eventually.