I Reincarnated as The Protagonist's Best Friend

After bombarding the riverside walls for more than half an hour, Quash ran out of ammo, the other students ran out of patience and shooed him away.

​The disrespect was off the charts.

​But he didn’t mind because his thoughts were elsewhere. He had not found the spot!

​"What a scam... now what do I do?"

​He asked himself while sitting on the riverbank like an orphan with no parents. He had no ammunition left. And even if he did, the constant bombing sound got on people’s nerves, so they wouldn’t let him be anyway.

​But the most concerning part was that he had literally melted a portion of the 10th floor by bombing it so frequently.

​Now he wondered where he should go. After a while, he decided to check the opposite side of the river. Maybe the dudes he had asked lacked knowledge about the entire area, since they were first-years just like him.

​Quash stood up, patted off the dust, and jumped to the other side of the river, the light ball still following him. This was taking way longer than he had expected. This was already his fourth scroll. If he ran out, he would have to stumble back to the surface with no illumination whatsoever.

​So he needed to keep tabs on that as well.

​Since Quash only had one Light Magic Scroll left, he decided that he would use the rest of his time to scout the entire floor and try to locate abnormal amounts of Natural Energy.

​He started to run around. He found some dudes working along the way, and they just snickered at him since they could tell he had run out of ammo.

​But Quash didn’t pay them any heed and continued his jogging expedition. He quickly got bored and tried the Naruto run. And boy, was it uncomfortable.

​The anime made it look like their hands float through the air like they do in water. He understood that ninja needed to take items out of their pockets, but running while hunched forward at almost ninety degrees felt very claustrophobic, to be honest.

​He couldn’t even use the full strength of his legs. Maybe he was the problem, but he gave up on the Naruto run very quickly.

​If someone saw him running like that, it would be a disaster. Quash had his Proprioception on at maximum capacity.

​After his constant fights—especially the last bout with the Barbarian—his control over it had increased dramatically. The range hadn’t expanded, but the amount of information it could catch now had increased significantly.

​He could now perceive a full 3D map of his surroundings inside his head, and he was relying on that to find any anomaly. If he failed, he would have to come back tomorrow with better gear because he was an idiot.

​He honestly wondered why the status window would show that he had a near-1000 IQ when he was such an idiotic person. In the span of nearly three months since coming to this world, he had made so many stupid choices that it was embarrassing to even think about.

​He wondered if it was a side effect of reincarnation. He wanted to dismiss it as an excuse he was giving himself for underperforming, but it kind of made sense.

​Why else would he suddenly become such a troll? He wasn’t like that in his previous life. But suddenly, another thought crashed into his mind: how exactly was he in his previous life?

​Quash involuntarily slowed down after coming to a section he hadn’t explored before. The place looked like it contained many rooms, probably old living quarters.

​His thoughts still circled around the sudden question about his identity. He walked around absentmindedly while trying to remember who Andrew David was to the core.

​Was he calm? Dead inside? A jolly person? A troll?

​He thought for a while but couldn’t remember. One thing he was sure about, though, was that he loved to create things very much. Perhaps the IQ metric depicted that specific aspect. And that aspect of his mind was so high that the overall Intelligence stat got carried to 98, since the metric wasn’t an absolute, single-track line either.

​Quash suddenly felt like an invisible pressure had been lifted off his chest when he came to that realisation.

​"What’s this? Looks like the world got me good as well."

​Quash couldn’t help but chuckle at his thoughts. When he first arrived in this world, he had noted that people associate themselves with stats way too much. And over the past three months, he had become one of them, growing arrogant about his intelligence score.

​But now he realised his intelligence had a dominant aspect that hard-carried the stat to absurd heights.

​He decided to think about it later. He could train his mind when he had more time, but first, he needed to find what he came here for.

​The light ball was slowly getting dimmer, indicating that the half hour was almost over.

​He needed to either head out or roam around more. Then he realised something once again: he didn’t need to see at all. He could just pull off a Gojo build and use his Proprioception like a pro.

​He did just that. He treated his blind spot like a feature and moved forward. Now it didn’t matter if the light was there or not. He couldn’t help but sigh. He really didn’t think things through anymore, as if nothing felt real to his subconscious.

​"...Huh... do I subconsciously think this world isn’t real just because it’s similar to a novel I read?"

​He asked himself, but he couldn’t reach an answer yet. He needed to think it through properly. He had suddenly discovered many flaws within himself. He had always prided himself on being a self-aware person, but he didn’t know he was this deep into the delusion of self-awareness.

​Quash felt ambiguous about his current situation. He decided to reflect on it later when he had more time or was completely alone. Right now, finding the Spirit Water took priority.

​And after looking around for another half an hour, he finally found the anomaly he was looking for.