Chapter Seven
Reversed Traditions
I slept better than I ever slept before.
My new room was pretty small and cramped, but the soft mattress, fluffy pillow, and unbelievable warmth of the household more than made up for it. I passed out almost as soon as I got into bed and soundly slept through the night, waking up feeling more refreshed than I knew was possible.
I almost cried again when I realized that it wasn’t a dream. I woke up in the same bed that I went to sleep in. Everyone was real. The world was real. I wasn’t going crazy and imagining things.
I knew I wasn’t, but still. There was that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that made me afraid everything would be torn away from me at any second.
But it wasn’t.
I had to make the most of my new life. Seth wanted me to teach the people of this world about how fun clearing dungeons was, and there was no better way than to lead by example.
I also wanted to earn some money to pay back Frolin and Ailsa for their generosity.
They didn’t want any kind of reward, but that made me all the more convinced that I needed to give them the best lives possible.
“Alright,” I said to myself. “Let’s get ready for the day.”
I washed up in the modern bathroom Frolin showed me the night before, got dressed in the same gear I had on the day before, and went out while everyone was still sleeping.
I’d make sure to head back to pick up Rosie before going to any dungeon, but there were some things I wanted to do still.
That was what I figured I would do, anyways.
“I knew it,” Rosie said, revealing that she was waiting outside for me the whole time.
I jumped when I heard her voice. “A-ah, morning. I thought you were still sleeping.”
“Normally, I would be, but I woke up a little early and realized a guy like you would probably head out to a dungeon as early as possible.”
“You know me so well. I actually wasn’t going to go right away, and I was even planning to come pick you up before going, so you can go back to bed for a couple hours if you want.”
Rosie let out a yawn and stood up. “It’s fine, it’s fine. But I know you didn’t get breakfast, so let’s go grab something to eat first. My treat.”
“I can pay for—”
“It’s. My. Treat. Okay?” Rosie looked at me with a smile that told me not to argue back.
After that look I got from her mother the night before, I understood where Rosie got it from.
“I’m only alive right now thanks to you, plus I’ve got more money to my name than I’ve ever had before thanks to the drops.
Oh, right, here.” She opened up a trade menu with me. “Your share of money from what I sold.”
“It’s fine, keep it.” I closed the menu to reject the trade. “I’ve got enough, plus we’re going to make even more today.”
“You’re too stubborn.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Rosie rolled her eyes before grabbing my arm. “C’mon. Let me show you my favorite breakfast place.” She pulled me along before I could even say anything, her tail swishing around behind her the whole time.
The shop Rosie brought me to was a cute little patisserie. When she said, “breakfast place,” I was expecting a place selling bacon and eggs or something like that. Instead, she apparently meant muffins, donuts, and pancakes that looked like dessert.
Not that I was going to complain.
She ended up ordering a banana nut muffin, pancakes with blueberry syrup and whipped cream, and a couple of filled donuts.
I could only look at her chest as she ordered.
One of the criticisms that Custom Dungeon World got from certain groups of people was how basically no chubby women existed. There were chubby men, but no women. Women could be thick in some places, but they were never fat.
When asked why, the developers—Seth, answered, “I prefer skinny girls.”
That only made said groups of people even more upset, but he stuck by it.
It was the same reason why there weren’t any female characters, no matter how strong they were, who were clearly muscular.
Even the strongest berserker type girls of the game still had thin legs and arms with no visible abs or other muscle definition since Seth didn’t like girls with visible muscles.
Instead, he just made their arms and legs a little thick. That was it.
Oh, right. And the reason I ended up looking at Rosie’s chest was because, in that same interview, Seth said, “For girls, any extra calories go to their tits.”
That made me wonder something.
With how much of an eager eater Rosie was, did that mean Frolin’s genes nerfed her even more than I thought? Because if she was even close to inheriting her mother’s chest, then I would have thought she’d be even bustier with how much she ate.
“Can you not stare at my chest so hard first thing in the morning?” Rosie asked while waiting for our food to arrive.
There was no point in denying it, and apologizing for something like that would be pointless since I didn’t regret it and planned on doing it more in the future, so instead, I said, “No.”
“You’re a real weirdo, staring at lumps of fat like that.”
Right.
That reminded me.
Rosie wasn’t embarrassed because I was sexualizing her by staring at her chest. If anything, she was embarrassed because, to her, I was just staring at her fat.
Seth was the kind of guy who made it so that, in this universe, there were some… to put it simply, “reverse chastity” rules at play. The game didn’t fully commit to it, but they were there.
For example.
Most men didn’t care about breasts. Women could walk around with excessive amounts of cleavage showing, but they did so for comfort rather than to show it off, because most men didn’t care about something like that.
Instead, men were the ones who cared more about covering up since women were…
well, very intense appreciators of male bodies of all types.
It didn’t matter whether a guy was short, tall, ugly or handsome, skinny or fat or muscular, hung like a horse or a gorilla, and so on. Girls loved men of all types.
There were also way more women than men in the first place.
About 95% of the population was female compared to only 5% being male.
Thinking back to the day before, I didn’t see a single guy other than Frolin the entire day.
I didn’t think much of it since I was used to it from the game, but now that I was actually thinking about it…
it became extremely obvious just how skewed the gender ratio was.
But anyways, staring at Rosie’s chest in this world was equal to staring at a man’s stretched gut on Earth.
Now, one might ask a certain game developer, “Why did you make the setting like this?”
And in a certain interview, that game developer replied, “Because girls will feel special and happy to have something they view as useless fat regarded as sexy.”
That meant being a male pervert who loved boobs was extremely rare and something most woman considered a total unicorn in the same way that, on Earth, a woman who liked fat guys with small dicks who played video games all day was a legendary unicorn.
I was starting to really understand why so many people criticized those elements of Custom Dungeon World.
As for me, I clapped my hands together and looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you, God.”
“I didn’t know you’re religious,” Rosie said, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Ah, I’m not. Well, actually… maybe I am now? I mean, I met Seth and he’s the one who brought me here and created this place, so I think it’s only fair to worship him as my god in response.”
“Hmm. I wonder if the goddesses know about him.”
“Right. This world has its own canon goddesses.”
“But I guess they’re not really goddesses if some other guy is the one who actually created all of this.”
“I’d still call them goddesses, just not the god. There are plenty of settings that have things like heavenly pantheons with different ranks of gods, right? Seth is just so far above the others that they don’t even know he exists. Or maybe they do know he exists.”
“Maybe. Anyways… um. This is probably bad timing, but it’s going to bother me until I bring it up, plus the food will be a good way to lighten the mood and move on, so…”
“What’s up?”
“After you went to bed last night, my dad talked to me about you and brought up some things that you didn’t tell me. He thought you must have told me already if you told them, so…”
“Ah.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to let you know since he’s going to apologize for it later.”
“You’re probably curious too, right? I’m guessing he stopped as soon as he realized you didn’t hear it yet.”
Rosie looked away as if she was caught. “I—I wasn’t going to ask…”
“I don’t mind sharing if you want to know.”
“Then… if it’s okay…”
“Sure.”
I took a deep breath.
I ended up crying a lot while telling Frolin and Ailsa about what I had been through, but now, I felt good about it. The weight was already off my chest.
Moving on meant being at peace with what happened.
“Basically,” I said, “I was born with -99,999 in my luck stat. I was born with something called brittle bone disease. My bones were weak and couldn’t properly support my body, they broke easily, I was short and had a messed up spine so I couldn’t even stand up straight—I was a mess.
My immune system was shot, too, so I was always getting sick.
Earth didn’t have magic, so these were conditions you had for life. ”
“I—I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want,” Rosie said.
“It’s fine, I promise. Besides, I guess there’s a selfish part of me that wants other people to know about this. Nobody cared back in my world, but here… people care.”
“Nobody cared? How? How could someone not care?”
“Aha, it gets even worse, just you wait. My parents hated me. My younger brother was born healthy, smart, athletic—he was everything a parent could ask for. They preferred acting like I didn’t exist once my mom gave birth to a healthy replacement.”
“How could they?!” Rosie shouted, causing everyone else to look at us.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay.”