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1: Hunter Goes to Another World
Everything was . . . dark.
Why was it so dark? Could this be what death was like?
I was attacked by a brown bear, I think . . .
I struggled to sit up.
Are you all right?
A woman's voice startled me. Where was I? A hospital? Was she a nurse?
It was so dark! Wait—could I have gone blind?
Um, excuse me, what happened to me?
It's okay. Don't worry. It's dark because there are no lights here. Let me fix that.
There was a soft whoosh, and suddenly a flame appeared, flooding the space with light.
Someone was kneeling in front of me, peering intently at my face.
Who was this?
She was a foreign woman in flowing white robes, with her hair a pale, translucent shade that seemed almost unreal . . . She was absolutely beautiful!
She was holding a glowing orb of light in the palm of her hand . . . What kind of light was that?
Um, excuse me? This isn't a hospital, is it?
No, it isn't.
But I was attacked by a brown bear . . .
This is the afterlife. Mr. Nakajima, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're dead . . .
I'm dead . . .
Yes.
Because of the brown bear attack?
Yes.
Wait, um!
I leaned forward, ready to ask my question.
What about the girl? What happened to the girl behind the elementary school?
She's safe. Thanks to you.
That's a relief.
Three days ago, a brown bear had appeared in the mountain behind the elementary school.
It had been spotted near the school route too, so the town had deemed it too dangerous to leave it alone and had asked the Hunting Association to exterminate it.
I had worked at the town hall in a rural town, and when Grandpa retired from hunting, he approached me with a suggestion.
Why don't you become a hunter?
And so I became a hunter.
Grandpa had been an active hunter until last year, carrying a hunting rifle for pest control and other work. The town hall was struggling with wildlife damage such as deer ravaging crops, foxes attacking livestock. While the town hall where I worked provided subsidies to farmers for nets and fencing around their fields, the damage just wouldn't stop.
The hunters were getting older, and the Hunting Association said there weren't any young people joining. Since I had graduated from the local high school, become a town hall employee, and turned twenty—old enough to get a firearms license and hunting permit—Grandpa offered me his hunting rifle.
I want young guys like you to join the Hunting Association.
He was so earnest about it. I couldn't simply brush off his request.
And so after clearing the difficult requirements of obtaining a firearms license and hunting permit, I officially became a rookie hunter. The town also granted me certification as a licensed pest-control worker. Under Grandpa's guidance, I learned how to handle a gun. But only six months after he gave me his gun, Grandpa passed away from pancreatic cancer . . .
Looking back now, I think he wanted me to carry on in his footsteps.
One year after I became a hunter, the town requested that we exterminate a brown bear.
The plan had been for Hunting Association members to surround the mountain behind the town, climb up, and drive the bear out.
Since I could only carry a shotgun and not yet a rifle, as a precaution my assignment was to patrol around the school area without entering the mountain.
Gunshots echoed repeatedly from the mountain.
It went that way!
The school! It's heading for the school!
Voices crackled through the digital radio on my shoulder. I'd already removed the gun cover from my beloved Remington M870 Grandpa had passed down to me and was loading two sabot slug rounds into the magazine when I spotted a child behind the school building, gazing up at the mountain. It was a girl.
Hey! It's dangerous here! Get back inside the school building!
Why was there a child here? The school was supposed to be temporarily closed!
The trees on the mountain behind us swayed violently, and a black mass came charging down at tremendous speed.
Firing behind the school building like this would violate gun laws. Even as the thought crossed my mind, I was already running toward the child. I pulled back the fore-end with my left hand and pushed it forward again, chambering a round from the magazine.
Still running, I loaded another round into the magazine, bringing it to maximum capacity. I had three shots ready to fire.
Get to the school building!
I gestured frantically for the child to run and positioned myself between her and the bear.
Roar!
A blood-covered brown bear burst from the trees.
Boom.
First shot fired! Did I miss?
Click-clack! I worked the pump-action fore-end to eject the spent cartridge and chambered another round.
Boom. That one hit!
The bear reared up in front of me, about to come crashing down—I put another shot into its throat.
Click-clack! Boom!
Then I was swept away by the brown bear's massive paw and crushed beneath its weight . . .
That was all I could remember.
Who are you?
I am the goddess, Nanotes, who governs the world after death.
Of course. There was no way a beautiful foreign woman like this would be in the rural town where I lived.
After that display of courage in facing that brown bear to protect the child, I couldn't bear to let you die like that . . . So I summoned you here.
Summoned?
Yes. You have died. I can no longer return you to your previous world. But I want to give your life a chance to continue.
What's going to happen to me?
I will send you to another world.
Another world?
So you can start over. So you can live happily there. It's a world that resembles Earth, yet isn't Earth.
I have a job! Family and friends! I can't just abandon everyone and go to some other world!
I'm sorry.
I can't accept that I'm dead!
You may not be able to accept it. But you are dead. Please, won't you come to terms with it?
I started crying. I was angry about dying. Thinking of my parents, my brother and sister, my family . . . it broke my heart.
Dead at twenty-one from a brown bear attack . . .
If I had just stayed working at the town hall, this never would have happened . . .
I was filled with nothing but regret.
May fortune smile upon your new life.
This is so unfair!
I'll help you as much as I can. For now, just focus on surviving.
I can't!
Light spread from the goddess's palm, and everything around me quickly turned pure white . . .
When I woke up, I was in a forest.
Just like that? With no questions asked? Forced relocation?
There was just too much that didn't make any sense!
What the hell was going on here? I needed to check what I had with me. I was wearing my camouflage jacket, cargo pants, trekking shoes, and orange safety jacket and hat. My beloved gun—the old Remington M870—was lying next to me. In my pockets, I had seventeen sabot slug rounds.
What about my backpack? I opened it up and found my hunting knife, Swiss Army knife, some rope, plastic bags, work gloves, and a can of spray paint. There was also bottled water and a roll of sweet bread.
I also found a chocolate bar, my emergency thermal blanket, binoculars, Maglite, gas lighter, and my wallet.
Finally, tissues, several hand towels, and my Nikon laser rangefinder.
In my chest pocket were my firearms license and town-issued licensed pest-control worker certification.
On my wrist was a solar digital watch with a compass. In the side pocket of my cargo pants was my cell phone.
It was no good, there was no signal.
I tried the compass function on my watch. Could I at least figure out which way is north?
I reached for the radio clipped to my shoulder . . . Maybe someone was out there. Maybe this whole thing was just a dream and I was still in Japan.
This is Nakajima, this is Nakajima. Please respond. This is Nakajima.
No response to this either.
This is Nakajima . . .
Hello! I can hear you perfectly!
Whoa!
That startled me! It was a woman's voice!
This is Shin Nakajima. What's your status?
This is Nanotes!
Nanotes . . . you mean the goddess from earlier?
Yes! I'm your assigned goddess now! I oversee this world!
She was so cheerful! What a complete change from before!
I wasn't exactly in the mood for this right now.
Why are you so excited . . .
Well, I'm just so happy that someone from another world has finally come to mine!
But you basically kidnapped me . . .
Don't be so uptight. You did get a second chance at life, after all.
That was right. I did die. I couldn't keep moping around forever . . .
If you run into any problems, just contact me on the radio, okay?
Well, if I use it that much, the battery will run out.
I made it so it never runs out!
That's wonderful, but if you're going to do that, could you make it a cell phone instead?
That area has no signal. Besides, there's no one else you could call, right?
Well, that was true. Though I was still half-convinced this wasn't really another world . . .
Now for the tutorial. Listen carefully.
Okay . . .
She was really taking charge here, wasn't she?
According to the goddess, this was a medieval European-style world with kings, nobles, and commoners, where non-human races also lived alongside humans. I wondered if it was like something out of a fantasy movie . . .
Just think of it as an RPG or isekai anime.
I still couldn't picture it at all.
I was never really into that stuff, so I don't know much about it.
Oh really? What kind of games did you play when you were alive?
I didn't really play games . . . Just zombie horror games at friends' houses sometimes . . .
What about anime? What do you like?
I like anything by Ghibli. My favorite is probably Castle in the Sky.
What about action movies? What do you like?
Die Hard, Terminator . . . I also like Alien and Predator.
Hmm . . . you're not an otaku, are you . . . This is going to be troublesome to explain . . .
Well, there's nothing I can do about that . . .
Ahem. Mr. Nakajima, now then, there's an essential ability for surviving in another world!
Right.
Let me explain your cheat ability!
Cheat?
Well, to put it simply, it's a special ability that people in this world don't possess.
I see.
Please concentrate and chant, "Magic Bag."
Magic Bag?
Pop!
Whoa! A yellow bag appeared right in front of me. I caught it quickly.
That's your cheat ability.
A bag?
The yellow bag is a wonderful, time-honored item considered all-purpose by a certain black cat, you know.
What?!
Please open it.
It's empty.
Please put some money in it.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Japanese yen, dollars, euros, gold coins from this world—any money is fine. It will be automatically exchanged.
Then . . . just 500 yen.
I took out a 500-yen coin from my wallet and put it in. If this really was another world, there was no point in keeping this money anyway.
Now, close the bag and say out loud what you want. Gun ammunition, for instance.
Right. All I had in this world were a single gun and seventeen rounds of ammunition.
Federal sabot slug, copper, 12-gauge.
Please open the bag.
A familiar shotshell was inside the bag.
It was ammunition for my beloved gun: the Remington M870 Half-Rifle, with a scope.
The M870 was a manually operated shotgun manufactured by Remington Arms in the US. It was extremely simple to operate: you just grip the fore-end and pump it back and forth to eject the cartridge and reload fresh rounds, which was why it was also called pump action. It was a famous gun with a simple design and few malfunctions. It was an heirloom from Grandpa.
You might think it was odd to see a scope on a shotgun. This was a special barrel designed specifically for slug rounds.
Normally I used a smoothbore shotgun barrel for foxes and birds, but for deer hunting I switched to this half-rifle barrel designed specifically for sabot slugs.
Quick barrel swaps were one of the M870's best features—you could swap them out in twenty seconds.
Under Japanese gun laws, you needed ten or more years of shotgun ownership experience before you could be approved to use a rifle, so this was the ammunition that hunters with less than ten years of firearms experience used for deer hunting when they couldn't yet own rifles.
This half-rifle barrel had a cantilever mount attached directly to the barrel that extended backward for scope attachment. With this setup, I could hit a stationary deer at distances of about 50 to 100 meters.
What made it different from regular single-projectile slug rounds was that the bullet was wrapped in a plastic sabot that gripped the rifling and spun as it was fired. The plastic sabot encountered air resistance and fell away, leaving just the spinning bullet to fly. This made it much more accurate than regular slug rounds.
It was called a half-rifle because under Japanese gun laws, sabot slug barrels with full-length rifling weren't permitted for shotgun ownership, so the rifling was cut only halfway down the barrel. It was a law unique to Japan.
How about that? Amazing, right! You can go shopping with this as long as you have money!
That really was amazing . . .
Oh, there was also change inside. Two one-dollar bills . . .
Why dollars? Three dollars per round? In Japan, one round cost 500 yen!
Thank you. Can I buy anything with this?
No. There are some reasonable restrictions—you need to be able to clearly visualize what you want. Right now, the only exceptions are things related to your weapons and guns. That’s virtually unlimited.
That's quite a limitation. Would a cash card work?
Hmm . . . let's make that okay!
Thank you.
I only had about 20,000 yen in my wallet . . .
I had maybe around a million yen in savings? I was saving up to buy a kei car.
But even with a million yen, without any income and even if I spent frugally, I'd be broke in six months back in Japan.
Try saying "Magic Bag" once more.
Magic Bag.
The bag disappeared.
How about that?
Amazing. It's like magic.
Because it is magic.
This world has magic?
It's perfectly normal here.
In a world with magic . . . will I really be able to survive with just a shotgun?
Well, that's something we won't know until you try.
That's pretty irresponsible.
That Magic Bag is bottomless. It can hold anything. Feel free to toss in whatever junk or stuff you don't need. Even if someone steals it, you can just say the magic word to make it vanish instantly or call it back to your hand—so it's completely secure. When you want to take something out, just say what you put in and open the bag.
That's really convenient!
This makes me happy. Maybe I can actually manage in this world after all.
So what do I do now?
That's for you to figure out yourself. Well then—signing off!
Whaaaat?!
Nighttime.
I'd finished both the bottled water and the bread that were in my backpack.
Howl . . . awoo. . .
The cries of wolf-like creatures echoed around me. It was terrifying.
I threw a rope over a tree branch and climbed up.
I tied myself to the trunk so I wouldn't fall while sleeping. Since I was exhausted, I somehow managed to fall asleep. I covered myself with my emergency aluminum sheet, but the night was still a bit cold.
Around sunrise, I put 1,000 yen in the Magic Bag and tried saying various food names.
Sweet red bean bun.
Rice ball.
Hamburger.
Nothing. I had no idea what their food selection was.
Canned food.
That didn't work either.
Canned fish.
Canned meat.
Oh! It worked! What was this . . . SPAM? The packaging was very American.
I guess this counted as canned meat. It was like corned beef. I immediately opened the can and took a bite—it tasted like sausage.
Cola.
Juice.
Tea.
Those didn't work either . . .
Mineral water.
It worked! Bottled mineral water appeared.
Crystal Geyser? This had American labeling too. There was change neatly placed at the bottom of the bag: six one-dollar bills.
Were these US dollars? Was this bag connected to an American shop?
Nanotes, Nanotes, please respond.
Yes! What is it?
I was even able to buy food using this bag.
See? You should be grateful for this, don't you think?
Um, well . . .
Yes?
What I can get with this bag . . .
Yes?
Is it connected to an American outdoor store or something?
There was no response from the radio.
American outdoor stores sell guns, ammunition, and hunting equipment, right? Are you just outsourcing everything to them?
Mr. Nakajima.
Yes?
Let's just do our best!
What kind of sloppy response was that?
It would make things easier if she had just said so.
Anyway, it meant I would have to get my own staple food.
My shotgun, the Remington M870, could fire three shots in succession with two rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Japanese gun laws required that shotgun magazines hold only two rounds maximum. However, this gun's magazine actually had a four-round capacity.
There was a spacer in the tube magazine under the barrel that restricted it to two rounds. So I removed the magazine cap, pulled out the plug, and took out the plastic spacer components inside. In Japan, just possessing it in this configuration would violate gun laws, but that was not a concern here.
Now my shotgun could fire five consecutive shots—four from the magazine plus one.
I didn't keep a round chambered because accidental discharge would be dangerous. Right now, I had four rounds in the tube magazine with an empty chamber. When I needed to shoot, I just pumped the fore-end once and it was ready to fire.
Pump-action shotguns were sometimes called old-fashioned, but their operational simplicity and reliability surpassed semi-automatic or double-barrel types. I think there was a good reason why Grandpa, that old veteran, loved using it. I'd been using it for a year without a single malfunction or failure.
While I was at it, I decided to buy some gun oil with the Magic Bag and do some maintenance.
In my last moments, I had fired three consecutive shots at the bear. If I left it dirty, it would rust. I wiped it down with an oil-soaked cloth, and I wrapped rags around a thin wooden stick that I whittled with a knife to clean the inside of the barrel. Shotguns were easy to maintain because the barrel was so wide.
There were various gun oils available, but I used the general-purpose lubricant WD-40 for everything. One bottle did it all. I had never had problems with it. I heard gun manufacturers used this stuff in their factories too.
What was scary was that I had absolutely no idea which direction I should go from here.
It would be nice if I could meet someone, but in these remote mountains—and in another world at that—that was also terrifying. The first person I encountered would probably think I was suspicious and dangerous, and I had no idea if they'd be friendly.
Actually, wait—we probably didn't even speak the same language, right? Was I going to end up living alone in these mountains, completely reliant just on myself?
That was scary too.
When I climbed up a small hill and looked around, I could see a lake in the distance. There appeared to be a settlement by the lakeside as well.
I didn't know what lived there. But since there were timber-framed buildings, it was probably humans or something similar. I decided to head there for the time being. Even just observing from a distance should tell me something.
There was one more thing I needed to check.
Did guns actually work in this world? I had to test this.
Right now I only had a rifled barrel, scope, and sabot slug rounds, so I would need to hunt deer . . . or maybe wild boar.
Since I was a hunter in Hokkaido, I had never actually encountered wild boar. There weren't any up there.
I took off my orange jacket and stored it in the Magic Bag.
The jacket I was wearing underneath was camouflage for the forest. Only my hat was still hunter orange.
Hunters wore orange jackets to prevent friendly fire among team members. Since I didn't have any companions, I didn't need it anymore. Most animals like deer were colorblind, so the orange wouldn't give me away. Birds could see color, though.
Coming down the hill, I spotted a deer . . . just one. It looked like a cross between a Yezo sika deer and a mountain antelope, clearly different from Japanese deer. Its antlers weren't branched like I was used to. Instead, they looked like thick, massive cow horns.
This might be the first moment it truly hit me that I was in another world.
The distance was about eighty meters. It hadn't noticed me yet.
If it noticed me and bolted, I wouldn't be able to hit it with my skill level. Hell, even a seasoned veteran rarely hit a running deer. Whether I could drop it with the first shot was what mattered.
My scope had been zeroed for fifty meters. Since bullets were affected by gravity and flew in an arc, shooting at eighty meters meant I needed to aim slightly higher. I was using the Nikon Slughunter scope. Japanese rifle scopes had a stellar reputation overseas and were trusted by hunters worldwide. It varied depending on the ammunition, but with the zoom at 6x magnification, aiming with the dot one position below the crosshairs should hit dead-on at a hundred meters.
So I would aim somewhere between the crosshairs and the dot.
You see, hunters didn't mess with a scope once it was dialed in like this—we adjusted our point of aim instead.
We didn't go turning dials to adjust the scope every time like you see in movies. In fact, hunting scopes had covers over the adjustment dials to prevent them from getting knocked around accidentally.
I quietly pulled back the fore-end to avoid making noise, then carefully pushed it forward again silently.
I sat down on the ground, leaned back against a tree for stability, and supported the gun by resting my elbow on my knee. For my support hand, I just rested the gun on my open palm. I didn't grip it.
I lightly pressed the stock against my shoulder with my right pinky and aimed through the scope.
Shouldering a gun didn't require strength. It was more like just resting it against your body.
If you tensed up and gripped it tightly, that alone would throw off your shot every time. You couldn't hold a gun with exactly the same pressure every time if you were too rigid. To be consistent, you relaxed your muscles and let the gun's weight absorb the recoil. That way your body absorbed the recoil the same way every time.
I was aiming for the base of the neck. A neck shot.
Head shots were tricky. With belly, chest, or heart shots, deer sometimes didn't drop right away.
But with the neck, once the slug hit, the impact traveled straight to the head and the deer would drop instantly.
Boom!
The scope flared with bright orange flame, and the muzzle jumped up.
Unlike in movies and TV shows, real guns had serious recoil and muzzle flash, so you couldn't see the moment of impact through the scope. I quickly brought the scope back on target to check on the deer.
It was down!
I got up and walked over to the deer.
I pushed through the underbrush, branches scraping against me as I made my way down the slope, when I suddenly came face to face with someone.
We both froze, staring at each other in surprise.
It was a woman . . .
My first impression was she's huge!
Yeah, she was bigger than me. As big as a volleyball or basketball player.
With her long hair and shapely figure, she was definitely a woman. She wore simple green clothes and carried a large bow with a quiver of arrows. Her long blonde hair was braided and hung down her back. Fair-skinned with blue eyes, she was a foreign beauty . . .
Uh . . . ex . . . cu . . . ze . . . me.
Huh?
Of course English wouldn't work here.
Um, I'm sorry. Did I, uh, steal your kill?
Was I being rude as a hunter? What were the rules in this world? Was this person friend or foe? Not knowing any of this, the first thing to do was smile.
That alone should avoid most trouble. At least it would work back in Japan.
Nah, I was gearing up to shoot too. Looks like we both got it at the same time.
Looking at the deer, there was an arrow stuck right between its eyes. Amazing . . . she had serious skills.
She wasn't speaking Japanese—it was definitely not Japanese—but somehow I understood what she was saying.
The words coming out of my mouth weren't Japanese either . . .
Was I bilingual? Was this some kind of isekai bonus?
That loud sound from before—was that you?
Yes.
The sound of a gunshot. Even a shotgun blast could carry for miles.
What on earth did you use to kill it? I've never heard anything like that before.
Oh, this.
What's that?
A gun.
What's a gun?
She didn't know what a gun was. It made sense—this was another world, after all. She was carrying a bow and arrows.
It shoots copper pellets from this barrel at speeds faster than the eye can track.
Bullets were normally jacketed rounds with copper coating over a lead core.
But Hokkaido banned lead ammunition in recent years. Too many cases of protected wildlife dying from lead poisoning after ingesting spent shot. So now everyone used solid copper bullets, including me.
Amazing. Some kind of magic item? A magical tool? I've never seen or heard of anything like that. Are you a mage?
Ma-magic . . . No, it's nothing like that.
But you're human, right?
Yes.
Where did you shoot from?
From over there.
I pointed to the tree I was leaning against moments ago.
From way over there. Amazing!
She grinned widely. How cute.
Hmm . . . I guess we'll have to split it then. This is where you hit it, right?
She pointed to the bleeding wound at the base of the neck. Did I actually hit where I was aiming? Apparently so.
With my skill, the sabot slugs were grouped around five centimeters at fifty meters, and spread to around ten centimeters at a hundred. Since it was a shotgun originally, it didn't have the pinpoint accuracy or range of a rifle. I guess I got lucky this time.
Um, should we dismember it right here then?
No way! The wolves will come running!
Wolves?! That's terrifying!
They went extinct in Hokkaido long ago.
Nothing we can do about it here. I'm heading to the village, so follow me. We can divide it there.
Is that all right?
Sure. Um, can you carry this?
No way.
I figured as much.
She grabbed the fallen deer by its hind and front legs, hefted it up with a grunt, and shouldered the entire carcass.
Incredible! What amazing strength!
She set off with powerful, determined strides.
What are you waiting for? Come on.
Okay.
Carry this.
Yes.
I quickly pressed the shell latch on the Remington M870's loading port and ejected the shells one by one, emptying the magazine. Then I slung the gun across my body and picked up her large bow and quiver.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Patter, patter, patter.
Should I really be following this person like this? Am I going to be okay?
I'm Saran. You are?
Uh, my name?
Yeah.
Um, uh.
Shin.
Shin, huh. My village is an elf village, but you don't hate elves, do you?
Huh.
Good.
So Saran was an elf. Now that I was paying attention, her ears were pointed.
Out of habit, I had unloaded my gun, but maybe I should have kept it loaded?
I wasn't going to get eaten or anything, was I?
A lakeside village came into view. It was surrounded by farmland, and the settlement was enclosed by a fence.
The people working in the fields looked up at us in surprise.
Saran . . . who's that?
A human.
Well yeah, a human, but . . . that's unusual.
When I first met Saran, I thought she might be some kind of giant, but she was the only one that was tall. Everyone else was taller than me, sure, but it was just like traveling abroad and thinking "Wow, foreigners are tall." Not that I'd ever been overseas or anything.
But even among the villagers, Saran towered a full head above them . . .
