Chapter 1 A grey sword cut my shoulder. The thin line at the top left corner of my field of vision reduced slightly. At the same time a cold hand passed over my heart. The blue line—called the “HP bar”—is a visual rendering of my life force. There was still a little over 80 percent left. No, this phrase isn’t appropriate enough. Right now, I was about 20 percent closer to death. I dashed backwards before the enemy’s sword even began its attacking motion. “Haaa…” I forced a huge breath to steady myself. The «body» in this world didn’t need oxygen; but the body on the other side, or rather the body lying down in the real world, would be breathing heavily. My limp hands would be soaked with sweat, and my heartbeat would be off the charts. Of course. Even if everything that I see right now is nothing more than a rendering of a 3D virtual reality, and the bar being reduced was nothing more than a bunch of numbers that showed my hit points, the fact that I was fighting for my life didn’t change. When you think about it like that, this fight is extremely unfair. That’s because the «enemy» in front of me — a humanoid with dully shining arms covered in dark green scales along with a lizard’s head and tail—was not a human, nor was it really alive. It was a digital lump that the system would replace however many times it was killed.