Riku Tanaka was having a pretty normal day. Well, as normal as it could be when you'd just blown your entire paycheck on the new limited edition Rimuru figure and three volumes of manga you'd already read online.
He was walking home from the anime shop, bag in hand, earbuds in, humming the opening theme to his favorite isekai. The crosswalk light turned green and he stepped off the curb without really paying attention.
A horn blared.
Riku's head snapped up just in time to see a truck barreling toward him. His body moved on instinct, jumping back onto the sidewalk so hard he stumbled and fell on his ass. The truck roared past, missing him by inches.
"Holy crap," he breathed, heart hammering. "I almost got Truck-kun'd for real."
He laughed nervously, gathering his bags. A few people were staring but he waved them off. "I'm fine, I'm fine!"
Still shaky, he decided to take the scenic route home through the park. Fewer cars that way. The path wound along a cliff edge with a nice view of the valley below. He'd walked it a hundred times.
What he didn't notice was the construction warning sign that had blown over in the wind earlier that day. Or the weakened guardrail section where they'd been doing maintenance.
Riku was looking at his phone, checking the new episode release time, when his foot hit a loose piece of concrete. He stumbled, reached out to catch the guardrail, and his hand went right through the gap.
There was a split second where he felt himself tipping forward. His brain had just enough time to think: *Oh. Oh no.*
Then he was falling.
The world spun. Sky, ground, sky, ground. He didn't even have time to scream before something massive and metal came falling after him, tumbling down from the construction site above. The last thing Riku saw was the bottom of a truck, and the last thing he thought was: *You've got to be kidding me.*
---
Everything went black.
Then, slowly, sensation returned. Grass under his hands. Wind on his skin. The smell of earth and trees.
Riku's eyes opened.
He was lying face-down in a forest clearing, sunlight filtering through unfamiliar leaves. His head felt fuzzy, thoughts coming slow like he'd just woken from a deep sleep. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, and that's when he noticed something was wrong.
His hands looked different. Younger maybe? The scars he'd gotten from a childhood bike accident were gone. And there was something on his face.
He reached up and felt smooth material covering everything from his forehead to his chin. A mask. He grabbed the edges and pulled, but it didn't budge. It wasn't tied on or strapped, it just... was. Like it was part of his skin.
"What the hell?" His voice sounded the same at least.
Then the messages started appearing.
Not on a screen or anything physical. They just appeared in his vision, floating there like subtitles in an anime.
[SYSTEM ERROR... ERROR... RECALIBRATING...]
[ANALYZING WORLD PARAMETERS...]
[UNIQUE SKILL ACQUIRED: AKASHIC LIBRARY]
Riku blinked hard, but the text didn't go away. His brain was trying to catch up with what was happening. Him falling, the truck that fell after him and now the holographic messages.
"Did I... did I actually die?" he whispered.
He looked around properly now. This definitely wasn't the park. The trees were too big, too wild. The air smelled different, cleaner. And those messages floating in his vision were pretty hard to ignore.
On instinct, he focused on the words "Akashic Library" and suddenly his mind expanded into a different space. It was like stepping into a room that existed only in his head, a massive library with shelves stretching up into darkness. Books were floating through the air, organizing themselves, their spines glowing with faint light.
Most of the shelves were empty, but a few books had already settled into place. He could read their titles just by thinking about them: "Previous World: Earth - Personal Memories", "Anime Knowledge Database", "Tensura Plot Summary Vol. 1-20".
"A library?" Riku said out loud, his voice flat. "My cheat skill is a library? I got isekai'd and the universe gave me a LIBRARY?"
He dismissed the mental space with a thought and it vanished, leaving him back in the forest clearing. Great. Just great. He'd spent years watching isekai anime, reading light novels, dreaming about getting cool powers like time manipulation or super strength or at least a sword that could cut through anything.
And he got a library card.
"This is the lamest power ever," he muttered, standing up fully. His body felt okay, no pain from the fall. He patted himself down and realized he was wearing simple clothes, like medieval peasant stuff. Brown pants, a loose shirt, basic boots. And that mask still wouldn't come off.
In the distance, he heard voices. Human voices? No, wait. They sounded higher pitched, chattery. He crept through the trees toward the sound, keeping low.
Through the branches, he saw a village. Small wooden buildings with thatched roofs, dirt paths winding between them. And walking around, going about their business like it was perfectly normal, were goblins.
Actual goblins. Green skin, pointed ears, small and wiry. Some were carrying baskets, others working on repairs to buildings. They looked almost exactly like the ones from...
"No way," Riku breathed. His heart started pounding for a different reason now. "This can't be... Am I in Tensura?"
He ducked back behind a tree, mind racing. If this was really That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, then he needed to figure out where and when. The goblin village could be any number of settlements. This could be before Rimuru even showed up, or during his reign, or after. He had no idea.
His stomach growled, loud enough that he pressed a hand against it. Right. He was alive, which meant he needed food and water. And he had no supplies, no weapons, no idea how to survive in a fantasy world.
Some isekai protagonist he was turning out to be.
He was trying to decide whether approaching the goblins was a good idea when he heard something else. A low growl from deeper in the forest behind him. Then another, answering it.
Riku turned slowly and saw them stepping out from between the trees. Wolves. But not normal wolves. These were huge, easily the size of bears, with red eyes and fangs like daggers. Their fur was matted and dark, and they moved with the coordination of a hunting pack.
Direwolves, his brain supplied helpfully. Thanks, anime knowledge.
There were three of them, and they'd already spotted him. One lowered its head, lips pulling back in a snarl.
"Oh crap,"