My Perfect Isekai: Pragmatic Protagonist, Progression Fantasy and Strategy

The morning sun struggled to pierce the thick mist shrouding the damp roofs of Ladvia. I stood by the window of my rented room in the ”Weary Bear”, calmly sipping hot water. Something alien lurked near my window at night. It left a burned mark on the wooden frame – a small sign resembling a distorted crown that made my skin tingle. Someone watched me. Someone much stronger than the local trash, clearly not using standard mana.

Pure logic dictated a simple truth: I memorized the sign, assessed it coldly, and pushed it to the background. Since the intruder only watched from hiding and lacked the courage to enter, it was not my problem yet. I had no intention of running through wet bushes in the morning chasing an anomaly. I would wait until trouble came to me asking for a hard verification. I gathered my things, threw the black coat over my shoulders, and ran down the creaking stairs. The edge of the starting village resembled a chaotic mess. Count Valerius’s convoy was forming. Three decorated carriages, ten supply wagons, and a mass of mercenaries making as much noise as if they were preparing for a village parade, not a crossing through the most dangerous trail in the region.

Captain Kael was the loudest of them all. Dressed in polished armor, he yelled at a terrified stable boy over a bit of mud on his warhorse’s hoof. I approached the group with a slow step, keeping my hands deep in my pockets. ”You make an awful lot of noise, Captain,” I stated loosely with a slight smile. ”At this pace, the beasts from the Pass will hear our merry company before we even pass the last hut in Ladvia”.

Kael turned abruptly, and his massive armor groaned pitifully. He scanned my slender silhouette, his eyes narrowing at the total lack of visible weapons at my belt. ”And who are you?” he snorted with the typical superiority of an aristocratic grunt who had never seen real blood. ”Another beggar looking for a free meal in the Count’s shadow?”. ”This is Dave,” Valerius interjected hastily, nervously emerging from behind his carriage. ”Captain, this is a special escort. I paid him from my own pouch after what he showed yesterday in the tavern”.

Kael’s face reddened. ”This slender kid? Count, my men are veterans. Professionals. We do not need a vagabond in our ranks who will panic at the first howl of a wolf in the forest”. My smile grew wider. My mind assessed his motor skills in a fraction of a second. ”I prefer to travel with light equipment, Captain,” I replied. ”It is a matter of mobility. Besides, looking at this on pure logic, your outstanding veterans hold their shields definitely too low with tragic tension in their shoulders. Their balance is completely off. I will probably be the one pulling you out of trouble today when the monsters flock here. Are we moving, or do you plan to outshout the rest of the route?”.

I bypassed the gasping officer and took a position at the very front of the column. I heard his furious panting behind me, but in my private assessment of threats, he posed less of a problem than a field stone. The ”Black Trail” fully deserved its dark name. It was narrow, stifling, and soaked in the smell of rotting leaves and old blood lingering in the moss. Gigantic trees pressed from both sides, intertwining their crowns and creating a natural tunnel of eternal twilight. I walked in silence at the front. My steps made absolutely no sound on the undergrowth.

After a dozen minutes of marching, my sharpened hearing caught the first disturbing grind in the surroundings. It was not the sound of the wind. A dry branch snapped somewhere deep in the bushes. My mind instantly cut off unnecessary stimuli, focusing on the vibrations of the ground. ”Your armor grinds with every step of the horse, Captain,” I said calmly, without taking my hands out of my pockets or turning my head. ”Your veterans pant like after a marathon. Do you not hear it? The birds fled from here a good ten minutes ago. A dead silence in such a forest is never a good sign”.

Kael was opening his mouth to throw a primitive retort when a spark suddenly ignited in my chest. I felt that characteristic jump of adrenaline. Murderous excitement at the thought of the upcoming fight hit my head. This sudden surge of emotions acted as a brutal kick for my brain. It forced it into the highest gear. My natural spatial imagination flawlessly painted a tactical map of the entire area in my head. I located them down to the millimeter based solely on minor rustles and wheezing breaths, before they even jumped out of the bushes.

Three beasts. Rushing from the right and rear. Three huge Chimeras shot out from the thicket – disgusting mutations with lion bodies, goat heads growing from their backs, and venomous snake tails. The first Chimera considered me the easiest target and jumped straight for my throat. I executed a fluid dodge, letting its drooling fangs pass by a few centimeters. I knew I lacked the raw mass to simply tear this beast apart with one blow, and wrestling with a big cat was a waste of time. Pure logic suggested precision. When its open maw passed my face, I slipped my hand under its jaw. I released a short pulse of Sapphire Lightning straight into its soft palate. The high voltage struck directly into its brain. The Chimera went out in a fraction of a second, cooked from the inside. Its limp body hit the moss with a hollow rumble. The skin and the hard core remained intact.

The second Chimera pinned a terrified guard to the ground. Its snake tail shot towards me like a spring to inject venom. I reacted instinctively. My right hand immediately covered itself with Sapphire Slime, forming a hard glove that I reinforced with brutal will to the density of solid stone. I caught the writhing whip in mid-flight. I jerked the monster, transferring all the momentum from my back to my arm, and threw its heavy body straight into a thick oak. The sound of a cracking skull and a breaking spine ended the matter immediately.

The third beast, seeing the sudden death of its kin, immediately turned back and tried to escape into the dense forest. I kicked up the guard’s abandoned spear, caught it smoothly in flight, and threw it with the speed of a bullet using a push of telekinesis supported by the strength of my arm. The shaft pierced the fleeing beast completely, pinning it high to the trunk of a nearby tree. It hung dead. Absolute silence fell on the trail. Kael’s guards looked at me like a demon from their worst nightmares. Their swords still rested in their scabbards.

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I walked slowly to the injured soldier, who was writhing in pain with a nasty torn thigh. I did not play healer and had no idea about light magic. I had my Sapphire Slime instead. I crouched next to him, ignored his screams, and squeezed the blue slime straight into his bleeding wound. The slime acted like a physical seal, instantly drying and hardening upon contact with the air. It bound the torn tissues in seconds, completely stopping the bleeding and stiffening the leg like a perfect dressing. The soldier stopped screaming, staring at the connected leg in mute disbelief.

”Sometimes you just need to turn on logic, choose the right tools, and not panic, Count,” I threw loosely towards the shocked Valerius, wiping the blood from my hands. We set up camp in a small clearing. The guards, still in a massive shock after the morning clash, avoided my fire by a wide margin. Shadow Ravens emerged from the dense dark at night – small beasts feeding on the scent of human fear. I did not wake the watch. I simply considered it a great opportunity for accuracy training. Sitting comfortably on a fallen trunk, I fired precise sparks of Sapphire Lightning from my index finger. The beasts vanished one by one with a quiet hiss, torn apart by hits from a distance. Pure Brazen chill.

At dawn, Captain Kael finally broke under the weight of his own trampled pride. He could not stand the fact that his veterans feared someone without armor. He approached my fire with a heavy step and drew his decorated sword with a clink. ”Stand up when an officer addresses you!” he roared, waking half the camp. ”You will not humiliate me in front of my own men, vagabond! I challenge you!”. I sat completely relaxed, not even taking my hands out of my coat pockets.

”Captain... I saved your asses yesterday, and today you want to duel before breakfast?” I asked with pity in my voice. Kael, red with fury, took a swing with his sword. I did not even flinch. Instead of using any magic, I simply unlocked a barrier in my mind and released unfiltered Blood Lust. The air around us drastically stiffened, becoming heavy like concrete. A raw murder intent, poured directly outward from my psyche, hit him like a physical wall. Kael bent in half with a monstrous groan, dropping his expensive sword. He grabbed his throat, choking from the lack of oxygen, and crashed to both knees into the dense camp mud with a metallic clatter, unable to lift his head under the weight of pure terror.

”Did your expensive armor suddenly become too heavy?” I asked with an extremely nice smile on my face. ”P-please... f-forgive...” he squeezed out, and I saw total paralysis in his dilated pupils. I withdrew the murderous pressure. Kael immediately crawled away towards the wagons, avoiding the gaze of his own men. Valerius, watching this from a safe distance, only swallowed loudly. We had peace. Just three hours before reaching the main walls of the great city of Oakhaven, the forest trail was suddenly blocked.

The road ahead swarmed with men. A large gang of fifty brutes – mostly deserters in heavy armor – barred our way. Their leader, a fat brute with a nasty scar, stood in the middle and began a boring speech about leaving the gold.

That specific Brazen chill crept onto my face. I moved. I did not take my hands out of my black coat pockets. With a slow step, I walked straight into this dense crowd of fifty men. When the first thug swung an axe at my head with a roar, my pure logic assessed the situation. I based the tactics on the pure force of my lower body. I twisted my left foot into the ground, lowering my center of gravity. I executed a fluid rotation and struck with my right leg. My boot drove straight into the attacker’s jaw with a roar of breaking bones. The guy flew backward as if he had collided with an anvil, falling unconscious.

The rest of the gang froze in shock for a fraction of a second, and then furiously rushed at me from all sides at once. I continued my slaughter with my hands deep in my pockets, relying entirely on physics and rotation. I jumped lightly, rotating around my own axis, and my leg delivered crushing, precise hits. I supported my flight path with silent pulses of telekinesis to maintain a perfect balance in the air. A roundhouse kick to the temple turned off the lights for another one. A hard boot hit the solar plexus, completely clogging the lungs of the next thug. I balanced in the air, breaking local combat schemes. The sheer force of my blows simply turned off the pawns in fractions of a second. No impact magic. Pure, physical beating on pure logic.

In less than a minute, forty-nine thugs lay unconscious in the mud, writhing in pain and gasping for air. Only the terrified leader remained on his feet. I stopped. My smile vanished. I took one quick step towards him, propelled myself upward, and sold him a hard series with my heel straight from above onto his armored chest. The thick steel bent inward with a loud crunch. He spat blood and fell limply on his back, completely knocked out. I stood straight in the very middle of the battlefield and lazily brushed my boot against the nearest stone. I finally took my hands out of my pockets and turned towards the convoy.

The reaction of my proteges was absolutely priceless. Captain Kael sat in the saddle pale as a wall. His sword slipped from his limp hand and fell to the ground with a quiet clink. The commander of veterans just realized that all his learned tactics and armors meant absolutely nothing against brutal physics. He trembled, reaching the conclusion that in the morning he wanted to fight a guy who killed fifty armed men with his hands in his pockets. Valerius, meanwhile, wiped his sweaty forehead with a silk handkerchief. He looked at me with a gaze full of pure fear, but also immense relief. It dawned on him what a powerful anomaly he had let into his wagon. ”By all the gods...” the Count squeezed out. ”I am beginning to understand why those beasts were just a warm-up for you. Oakhaven completely does not know what is coming to them right now”.

”It is enough to keep good manners and turn on logic, Count,” I replied with a free smile to their mute terror. ”Let’s move, I really want to make it for a proper dinner”. Just before noon, the massive walls of Oakhaven finally emerged on the horizon. Colossal gates, soaring towers, and a gigantic dome of barrier mana stretched over the entire city like an invisible shield. We were entering the great military center of the Eurasian Empire, the place where the real game was about to begin. Instead of thinking about rest, I felt hunger. I was hungry to verify the higher spheres, and in this new, great city I still had a hell of a lot to do.