Outside the door was neither the endless primeval forest nor the barren wasteland Yu had imagined.
The sky was leaden gray, and heavy clouds hung low enough to cast the entire area in gloom.
Fortunately, visibility remained decent.
The slightly muddy ground was covered with uneven patches of weeds and shrubs.
However, the instant Yu stepped out of the cabin…
[Common Foxtail Grass]
[Common Fern]
[Unidentified Low Shrub]
[Moist Soil]
[Small Stone]
[Rotting Leaves]
[Damp Soil]
[Another Patch of Foxtail Grass]
[…]
Countless information windows suddenly appeared, completely overwhelming his vision.
They were densely packed and layered over one another.
Every nearby blade of grass, patch of soil, and stone seemed desperate to display its own label.
For a moment, Yu felt as though he had been thrown into a chatroom flooded by endless messages.
His vision filled with surging text until he nearly grew dizzy.
‘Stop!
That’s too much!’
He instinctively shouted in his mind while trying to control his newly acquired ability.
As if responding to his will, every label identifying ordinary environmental objects vanished without a trace.
His vision became clear again.
Only relatively noteworthy objects—or things he deliberately focused on—continued to display brief labels.
“Phew…”
Yu breathed a sigh of relief and rubbed his aching temples.
He would need time to adapt to and fine-tune the Eye of Omniscience’s information-filtering system.
A passive effect was convenient, but without restrictions, it became an unbearable bombardment of information in a complex environment.
Yu raised his head toward the gloomy sky.
This time, only one clear and unobtrusive information window appeared.
[Weather: Overcast.
Heavy cloud cover with high humidity.
Forecast: 30% chance of precipitation within the next 12 hours.
Tomorrow has an 80% chance of clearing and a 10% chance of rain.]
“It can even forecast the weather?
Not bad.”
Yu nodded.
This support function was surprisingly practical.
He surveyed the area around the cabin, examining the land that would serve as his starting point.
The cabin stood at the edge of a forest clearing.
Dense trees behind it blocked all sight of the forest’s depths, while a relatively open, weed-covered slope stretched out ahead.
Then his gaze stopped.
Roughly a hundred meters diagonally ahead of his dilapidated cabin stood another wooden structure.
Farther away on the opposite side was a third.
Both were built in a similar style and looked equally run-down.
They had the same crude log walls, the same drafty holes, and the same crooked roofs.
Through the Eye of Omniscience, a simple label floated above each cabin.
[Unnamed Shelter (Player)]
[Unnamed Shelter (Player)]
The abnormally large number of monsters listed in the Beast Tide information suddenly made sense.
“So that’s it…” Yu murmured in realization.
“The Beast Tide is three times larger because I’m not the only ‘player’ in this area.”
Apparently, this was how starting areas were assigned on the Wilderness Continent.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
Having companions created opportunities for cooperation, but it had also brought them a survival trial three times as dangerous.
Judging from the condition of the other two cabins, their owners had probably received starts no better than his.
At that moment, the doors of both dilapidated cabins were pushed open almost simultaneously.
Creeeak—
Clatter!
Both doors made an awful racket, clearly no sturdier than Yu’s.
A tall figure emerged first.
She had striking short hair in a deep violet shade and wore a Gothic Lolita outfit that exposed a pair of long, pale legs.
The second girl appeared slightly younger.
Her light-blue hair was tied into twin tails, and she wore a sailor uniform with a knee-length skirt, giving her the classic appearance of a Japanese high school student.
Both girls immediately noticed Yu standing in the clearing.
Other than themselves, he was the only living person in the area.
After a brief hesitation, they approached him one after the other.
As they drew closer, Yu gained a clearer view of their faces and clothes.
Even amid this bizarre survival scenario, both girls were exceptionally beautiful.
The curvy figure of the Gothic girl was particularly devastating from such a close distance.
At the same time, the Eye of Omniscience activated automatically, displaying basic information about his two new neighbors.
[Kitagawa Marin]
[Strength: 7 | Dexterity: 8 | Constitution: 8 | Intelligence: 10 | Luck: 9]
[Talent: Cosplay]
[Complete specific Character Missions to increase compatibility with the character being portrayed.]
[Reaching 10%, 25%, 50%, and 100% Compatibility respectively unlocks increasing bonuses to attributes, skills, or traits.]
[Current Character: Shizuku-tan]
[Compatibility: 0%]
…
[Togawa Sakiko]
[Strength: 6 | Dexterity: 11 | Constitution: 12 | Intelligence: 13 | Luck: 5]
[Talent: Debtor]
[A fixed amount of Debt is generated each day.
Repaying it grants a reward, while failure to repay it on time results in punishment.]
[Current Debt: 0/100]
[Resets and generates new Debt daily at 00:00.]
[Additional Information—Debtor Talent Rules]
[Penalty: Failure to repay today’s Debt results in 30 minutes of mild electric shocks.]
[Reward: Repaying today’s Debt grants ???]
Yu quickly scanned the information.
Kitagawa Marin and Togawa Sakiko—the names and their distinctive appearances immediately matched two familiar anime characters in his memories.
Apparently, ordinary webnovel enthusiasts like him were not the only people dragged into the Wilderness Continent.
Of all people, he had encountered these two.
One was Kitagawa Marin from My Dress-Up Darling, while Sakiko-sensei hardly needed an introduction.
‘Could this be the world’s idea of a special perk for me?’
Yu examined their status panels.
Marin’s attributes were relatively balanced, with a slight focus on Intelligence and Luck.
Her [Cosplay] talent seemed to hold tremendous potential, but it required her to trigger and complete missions.
For now, it provided no bonuses.
Sakiko’s Strength was low, but her Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence were all high.
Her Intelligence had reached thirteen, making it the highest among the three.
As expected of Sakiko-sensei, who had practically speed-walked across half of Japan.
Her Constitution was even higher than that of an adult man like Yu.
However, her [Debtor] talent was clearly a high-risk, high-reward ability.
The description of its electric-shock penalty alone made his scalp tingle.
As for why the reward was displayed as [???], even Yu had no idea.
The two girls stopped several steps away from him.
Marin was the bolder of the two and spoke first.
“Um…
Were you also brought here by that strange voice?”
“Yeah.” Yu nodded.
“It looks like the same thing happened to all of us.
We were thrown into this ridiculous place without any warning.”
Marin visibly relaxed after hearing his confirmation.
She instinctively patted her ample chest and spoke with lingering fear.
“Thank goodness there are other people here!
I was all alone in that broken cabin.
It was freezing, I was terrified, and I had absolutely no idea what to do…”
Her curves bounced beneath the outfit with every pat, while the low neckline revealed a deep valley of pale skin.
Yu’s gaze was involuntarily drawn toward the dramatic movement.
He immediately realized how inappropriate it was and hurriedly looked away.
His eyes happened to meet Marin’s when she looked over.
His heart skipped, and he quickly changed the subject.
“That…
outfit of yours is pretty unusual.”
He was not lying.
Marin’s clothes certainly did not resemble an ordinary outfit.
They looked more like several scraps of fabric that had been crudely assembled around her body.
“Huh?
You mean this?”
Marin looked down at herself before spreading her arms and turning in a small circle to show it off.
“What do you think?
I made it myself for a cosplay!”
As she moved, the already limited amount of fabric seemed to struggle even harder to cover everything, nearly forcing Yu to avert his eyes again.
“You’re cosplaying Shizuku-tan, right?”
Yu steadied himself and repeated the information he had seen on her status panel.
“What?!”
Marin’s eyes widened.
“You actually recognized her?!”
Yu merely smiled without explaining.
He could hardly tell her that his talent had directly shown him [Current Character: Shizuku-tan].
Marin was initially delighted to receive recognition from a fellow fan, but her excitement quickly deflated.
Her shoulders slumped as she tugged dejectedly at her cosplay.
“But it’s still awful, isn’t it?
It doesn’t look like her at all.
The fabric is wrong, the cuts are crooked, and every detail is a complete mess…”
“If a real fan saw this, they’d definitely laugh at me…”
“I think it’s fine,” Yu replied evenly.
His priorities were simply different.
The outfit itself was admittedly terrible, but on Marin, those crude scraps of fabric exposed and emphasized her voluptuous figure.
As far as Yu was concerned, he had certainly enjoyed the view.