By the time Jaka Adiwasesa turned five years and three months old—a very important distinction, mind you—he had come to a sobering realization.
His body? Still soft. Still small. Still distinctly five-ish in all the wrong ways.
His mind? Over twenty years of corporate crunch, bug reports, lore design, and game balancing.
It made for a strange existence—like putting a grizzled software engineer into a kindergarten class and expecting him not to go insane when the crayons didn't follow the rules of symmetry.
But Jaka had adapted.
Sort of.
Strength: G (82/100)
Agility: G (76/100)
Dexterity: G (91/100)
Endurance: G (88/100)
He read the stats in his mind like a Wall Street trader checking the latest stock drops. His lips twisted into a proud grimace.
"Not bad. Almost all physical stats nearing rank F."
In this world governed by the Divine Path of Infinite Mystery—or DIPM, as Jaka sarcastically shortened it—the stats increased just like they would in real life… if real life had floating invisible spreadsheets behind your eyes and rewarded you for spoon-kata.
Yes, Spoon Warrior, one of his highest-ranking jobs in current log.
He still wanted to cry.
"Of all the job progressions, why is Spoon Warrior is high?! I invented this system! This wasn't even in the game!"
But there it was.
Job Proficiency
Spoon Warrior: E (97/100)
Philosopher: A (9/100)
"I was supposed to be a proud Ksatria by now!" he whined internally. "A noble warrior of the Majapahit! Not a—"
"Jaka, where's the spoon again?" his mother Sekar called from the kitchen.
"...coming!" he replied with a sigh.
Every time he practiced self-battles with the carved wooden spoons, mimicking the heroes from his game like Raden Arya or Laksamana Bhima, DIPM rewarded him. His Spoon Warrior proficiency grew, and along with it.
It was humiliating.
Especially when Philosopher—a class he assumed wouldn't even be available until at least adolescence—appeared with a high rank than anything.
Notification after he spent a week mentally criticizing his own lore inconsistencies while lying in a rice field.
Apparently, brooding in philosophical despair was a valid grind method under DIPM.
He had unlocked it not through action, but through depth of internal reflection and awareness of "truths beyond the world." Well, of course he knew. He made the damn world. The system must've thought he was the reincarnation of Buddha.
"I knew writing 1.200,000 words of lore would pay off someday. Not emotionally, but at least mechanically."
Still, he couldn't shake off the one nagging stats at the bottom of his screen.
Charisma: G (8/120)
At first glance, the high rank looked like a blessing. But for Jaka, it was a developer's trap.
Raising Intellect at A-rank was like trying to add water to an already full jar with a lid welded shut. The system required new knowledge to grow. But how do you gain new knowledge when you're the one who wrote the entire game?
He knew every mechanic, every monster, every temple and bug and historical inconsistency. He had designed the world to feel deep and alive—but never expected to live inside it.
Books? Scarce and expensive. Most only available to the Waisya caste. His family—though respected—was far from that scholarly class.
Without formal sponsorship from Ksatria and Brahmana caste to ancient libraries, reading material was practically non-existent.
He had already memorized the only scroll in the house—his mother Sekar's palm-leaf book of medicinal herbs. Even trying to act out curiosity didn't help anymore.
He poked bugs. Observed basket weaving. Cooked without a recipe—causing a minor fire and earning the most intense otherworldly mother death-glare in the archipelago.
Still, his Intellect barely moved.
And worse—he had filled the world with stories. Beautiful, intricate, background-type lore meant only to enrich the immersion. Dialogues by old NPCs about forgotten heroes. Fables told by drunkards near campfires. Superstitions whispered by shepherds.
Lore he hadn't written only to fill the silence.
Now, ironically, that was his only hope.
If there were hidden threads, stories buried deep in the simulation, myths that had evolved beyond his own hand—those might count as new knowledge.
So, he made a decision.
He would listen.
He started hanging around the elders, quietly soaking in their tales. Let old lady Ranti ramble about ghost goats in her barn. Let the traveling merchant recount exaggerated adventures in the northern marshes. He nodded, questioned, probed—not as a developer correcting the lore, but as a student hoping to find something he hadn't coded.
One day, while pretending to nap under a jackfruit tree, he overheard two villagers debating whether the mountain spirits required salt or sugar as offerings.
Something clicked.
That detail—he hadn't written it. He never created mountain spirits with sugar cravings. Could the simulation be evolving? Was DIPM procedurally generating new stories?
His pulse quickened. If the world was growing beyond him, then maybe… just maybe…
Intellect +1
He gasped.
It was real.
It was working.
Now as for Charisma...
That was a whole different nightmare.
Unlike Intellect, which just required knowledge, Charisma needed people. Social interaction. Empathy. Persuasion. Things Jaka had never really excelled at—even in his past life.
He wasn't anti-social, but... focused. He loved building games more than bonding over coffee. He spoke in code logic and bullet points, not small talk and flattery. Now, to grow Charisma, he had to unlearn years of tunnel-visioned independence.
He made an effort.
He tried listening more. Nodded thoughtfully when old lady Ranti talked about her goat's bowel habits. Asked the fruit seller if their mangosteens were crying that morning. Told kids stories with dramatic hand gestures.
"...And then, the demon banana rose from the grave and shouted—PEEL ME!"
The kids clapped. One threw a banana peel at him in solidarity.
Charisma +1
Intellect +1
He almost wept.
Two most stubborn stats increased at once.
It was slow. Painfully grind. But it was working.
Still, it didn't stop the regret from creeping in.
"I should've made the system less realistic," he muttered while washing his feet in the stream one morning. "I could've just gone full MMO with skill points per level up. But nooo… I had to simulate life."
The system didn't answer. It never did. But occasionally, it rewarded him. Little victories. A small ping. A glimmer of progress.
"Still… This world's stability is insane. No visual bugs. No asset clipping. Even the cow pathing is fixed."
He glanced at a nearby cow slowly crossing a bridge—without falling through the geometry.
"Miraculous."
The world of Majapahit was alive. It breathed, whispered, and thrived. And he was beginning to realize… it wasn't just a beta version anymore.
It was the version.
But he didn't have time to philosophize. He had spoons to swing, charisma to build, and knowledge to hunt.
And maybe, just maybe, one day—he'd reach Rank S in Spoon Warrior. For a joke purpose.
One afternoon, while attempting to reenact a famous scene from his game using nothing but two spoons and a tree stump, his father Wirajaya watched from the forge doorway with folded arms and a half-smile.
"You keep swinging those spoons, kid?" the man chuckled.
"I'm in deep training, Father. Spoon mastery isn't for the weak-hearted."
Wirajaya let out a booming laugh. "If only the Majapahit army needed soup stirred aggressively, you'd be a general by now!"
Jaka pouted. "Hey, even generals need utensils. That's basic logistics!"
"Your mother says you talk to yourself a lot," Wirajaya added, amused. "Is that part of your... training too?"
"It's... uh... inner reflection."
"Then reflect while carrying this charcoal. It builds character."
Strength +5
By now, Jaka had accepted his fate: spoon-wielding philosopher trapped in a five-year-old's body, grinding life as if he were still in a QA test server.
He wasn't sure where the path would lead—he hadn't coded this part of the game. If DIPM was now self-aware or auto-generating content, it meant the world had evolved beyond even his own design.
A terrifying, exciting thought.
But for now...
He raised a spoon toward the setting sun and whispered, "Soon… I will be ready. Ready to trade this utensil for a real weapon."
The spoon wobbled in the breeze.
"…Eventually."
This was going to be a long journey.