It was, in fact, not easy.

  Setting up the fire pit was easy enough, as it simply involved gathering sticks and stones. Everything in the forest was strangely damp, as if it had rained just moments prior, but after enough rummaging through piles of leaves and empty burrows—he got himself quite the collection of usable firewood.

  The problem was the act of lighting the fire. He’d thought the process just involved smashing stones together hard enough to cause sparks. This, however, worked about as well as kindly asking the sticks to set themselves on fire. That is to say, it didn’t work at all.

  “This isn’t going as expected. Not at all.” Norman grumbled to himself between meek hits of the stones. The stones barely even made a sound whenever he clacked them together. As expected of a man with a strength stat of 3.

  After a good 20 minutes or so of hitting, Norman finally decided that this wasn’t gonna work. With a disgruntled noise, he threw the rocks away in a majestic throw that would surely get him into a world-renowned baseball team… if the rocks didn’t awkwardly fly for a meter before falling down with an unsatisfying ‘thump’

  [DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE?]

  “I’ve got this! Asking for help after just one try isn’t the way to progress!” Norman responded with mock confidence. He wasn’t confident, not really. If this didn’t work out in the next 10 minutes, he would probably get frustrated and give up. He was good at concentrating on numbers but not so much when it came to survival skills.

  Savant was silent after that. Either it believed in Norman’s capabilities, or it decided that arguing was a fruitless effort. They’re soulmates, after all, and soulmates know what battles they can win against each other. Though maybe that idiom would be best used for a married couple instead of a parasite and it’s host.

  After a valiant, yet admittedly poor, attempt at making a bow drill with a piece of wood and a sturdy piece of grass, Norman promptly gave up. Trying to figure it out himself was stupid when Savant supposedly knew everything he’d ever want to know, right? Even so, asking it for help after proudly stating that he didn’t need any help didn’t feel good. It reminded him of his days as a new hire, fresh out of university and fully convinced that he knew everything he ever needed to know—only to be corrected on his first day.

  [DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE, NORMAN?]

  Savant repeated. Norman was probably imagining it, but he could sense a hint of gloating in the response. Maybe he felt Savant’s emotions through the same link that made it read his thoughts, or maybe it was a spiritual connection. Is this what being soulmates entailed? He hadn’t ever been in a human relationship, so he had no way of knowing. By the way those poems and love songs put it, this was probably how it worked. He could sense himself getting off-topic, so he quickly refocused on the question. Of course, he would ask for help, even if it meant looking foolish. The sun was starting to set, and spending the night in an unknown forest without any warmth or light sounded like a terrible idea.

  “Yes, please. I would like assistance.” Norman responded with as neutral of a tone of voice as he could muster. If one listened closer, one could hear the slightest hint of a salaryman’s wounded pride in the words.

  [YOUR GLASSES SEEM TO HAVE THE APPROPRIATE LENSES FOR STARTING A FIRE.]

  Ah! Why didn’t he think of that? Of course his glasses would work as long as the sun was up, which it wouldn’t be for much longer. After finding an appropriately wet leaf from a nearby oak-like tree, he sat himself by his would-be fire. He was pumped (well, as pumped as Norman could be), and he was ready.

  There was only one, teeny, tiny problem. To use his glasses as a lens, he would have to take them off. This wouldn’t be a problem for the average person. Sure, things would be a bit blurry for a while, but they would manage pretty well. Not Norman, however. If Norman wasn’t born in the 21st century—he would be a blind man. His glasses were the width of a children’s book with the strength of a magnifying glass. Perfect for starting fires and even more perfect for being able to make Norman see. The only problem was that, well, without them, his vision would be as good as nothing.

  But as they say, the ones who make the greatest discoveries always go in blind. A saying that probably didn’t mean what Norman was willing it to mean as he took off his glasses and the world turned from a sprawling forest into vaguely green blobs.

  [ARE YOU ALRIGHT, NORMAN?]

  “Oh, good! I can still see you! Yes, I am perfectly fine.” He lied to himself and his system. He wasn’t fine at all. A bear could come up behind him and maul him to death and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing. Even with the threat of bears looming, he decided to push on, as fantasy worlds probably didn’t have bears to worry about in the first place.

  He squinted his eyes as he sloooowly brought the leaf in his hand to the center of his glasses (or what he thought were his glasses) before angling the leaf and letting the dew gather on the lens. Norman was pretty sure he got it. Savant didn’t tell him he was messing it up, and that was a good enough sign for him.

  Norman slowly and carefully lifted the glasses up to the glowing orb in the blurry sky that he assumed was the sun. If it wasn’t the sun, well, the fire would be the least of his worries. When the position felt right, his eyes were glued to the undefined brown blob where his fire pit was. Surely this would work.

  And it did! After an agonizing 4 minutes a small ember appeared in the fire, which grew to a proud flame. A flame he could only see after he put his glasses back on. It was small and kind of pathetic, but it was fire! Humanity’s greatest feat was taming fire, and now it was Norman’s greatest feat in this new world. He felt like Leonardo Da Vinci, Marie Curie, and Steve Jobs, all rolled into one.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  [CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FIRE. YOU WORKED HARD.]

  Despite only knowing Savant for a few hours, being complimented by it felt oddly nice. Although he took great pride in being complimented at work, it didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy as this. It must be a side effect of having the same body… probably

  “Thank you for the advice, Savant. I learned a lot from this experience.” Norman sagely nodded to himself as if he pretended to learn some valuable and profound lesson from sitting in the dirt rubbing rocks and sticks together for 2 hours.

  [I AM ALWAYS HAPPY TO HELP.]

  After a long yet comfortable silence in front of the fire, Norman suddenly remembered that he was in a fantasy world with magic powers. This normally wasn't something anyone would forget, but Norman usually had better things to think about, such as what kind of moss was growing on the trees around him, or if this world has toilets.

  “Could you please show me the magic part of that status thing? I would like to see what that is all about.” Norman asked. Well, that's what he wanted to ask, but the pop-up cut him off as soon as the word status left his mouth.

  [AFFINITY SKILLS]

  EXCHANGE (LVL 1)

  Exchange an item you are holding for an item of equal value. The item has to fit in the palm of your hand, as does the item you are exchanging it for.

  Cooldown: 10 Minutes — MP: 3

  LIFE SWAP (LVL 1)

  By saving the life of a creature with a soul, you gain SP. Spend your SP to drain the life force of a designated target.

  Cooldown: 24 Hours — MP: 1

  GOLDEN EYE (LVL 1)

  By focusing on an item, you can instantly know its current market value with a 50% margin of error.

  Cooldown: N/A — MP: 1

  Norman thoroughly inspected his new magic skills, and he could draw a few conclusions regarding them. One was that MP probably means magic points, maybe mana points? And he would need a certain amount of them to cast spells. That made sense; nothing in life is free, even in fantasy worlds. How he would get these mana points was a mystery for another time. The second thing was that, well, his powers were quite terrible for survival. They were fantastic for accounting, however.

  “Excuse me, Savant. How would I go about doing magic? I don’t see any button to press or spell to chant.” Norman asked as he scanned his status again, just in case there really was a button and he completely missed it.

  [FOCUS YOUR ENTIRE MIND ON THE SPELL. THE MANA WILL UNDERSTAND.]

  Focusing, huh? Sounds easy enough, yet also quite inconvenient. What if he wanted to research a spell but accidentally cast it by focusing too hard on his research? These things would have safety measures back on Earth, but he wasn’t on Earth anymore, so he simply made a mental note not to think about anything too hard just in case it was a spell.

  With that, he cleared his mind and focused on GOLDEN EYE. First, he focused on the name itself, imagining his eyes turning from a dark black to a mystical golden color. When he felt the tingling sensation of the mana gather in his eyes, he started focusing on the description of the skill. Knowing the price of something was a very valuable skill, though the 50% margin of error made it less than worthless. He focused intently on his wristwatch. It was a cheap thing he bought for necessities sake. If he remembered correctly—it was worth about $35.

  Norman felt a third of his energy leave his body, and the watch light up in his vision before a popup similar to Savant’s entered his vision, though this one was a shimmering gold color instead of Savant’s dull gray.

  [OTHERWORLD WATCH - 20,000 LAPIS]

  Now, THIS was interesting! He had assumed that he would get the price in Earth currency that he could easily understand, but this was obviously not any currency from his homeworld. How much was a single Lapis worth, and how did it convert to dollars? $35 turning into 20,000 Lapis was also very curious. Was the Lapis going through some sort of hyperinflation, or was this world not developed enough to have wristwatches? Perhaps the fact that it was from another world was what made it expensive. There was also the 50% margin to keep in mind, which complicated things.

  The fact that he just cast real magic was also sort of interesting in a way, but the new system of currency and the market value of things in another world was far more exciting to Norman. This was his bread and butter. His greatest joy, even. Money was fun to spend sometimes, but keeping track of it was even better. He had wanted to be a banker growing up, but when the banking market went online, he switched to accounting instead.

  “Savant? I am sorry for all the questions, but could you tell me how much a Lapis is currently worth?” Norman asked with sparkling eyes. The kind of eyes someone would have when looking at their firstborn child.

  [ONE LAPIS IS WORTH THE SAME AS ONE LOAF OF WHOLE GRAIN BREAD.]

  “Ah! Wonderful! That’s an easy to understand conversion rate. I assume this is a less technologically advanced world where food is the top priority. Is that correct?” Norman wanted to write this down, but as he was in the forest with nothing to write with, he simply just made a writing motion with his hand.

  [CORRECT. THIS WORLD HAS YET TO ADVANCE FURTHER THAN THE MEDIEVAL AGE DUE TO THE CONVENIENCE OF MAGIC.]

  So it's a classic fantasy world, then. I suppose it made sense that nobody would bother to discover electricity if everyone could produce light from their hands or boil water with fire magic. Maybe there was even teleportation magic that halted the invention of trains or healing magic that made medicine obsolete. What a convenient world he found himself in.

  As the sun dipped below the horizon—Norman found himself unbearably tired. Maybe it was the long walk, the use of magic, or the whole being transported into a new world thing, but Norman could barely keep his eyes open. Logically, he knew that falling asleep in some unknown forest was a bad idea. Perhaps one of the worst choices a man can make. But his body wouldn’t listen to reason as he laid down on the slightly damp ground.

  He had Savant to watch over him, so everything would be fine.