Chapter 3 - Roaming Earth

…

‘What … is going … on? Where … am .. I?’

‘Mh? What is … this … intense l … light!’

‘It must b … be a … memory?’

BROOM!

“Woah!”

Jolted awake by his thoughts as he realizes that this is not a memory, Mark instantly sits up as a reaction to the car passing by him, his gaze completely blank as he takes in the sight. He is currently seated on the ground, staring blankly in front of him. As far as he can remember, he has no recollection of any memory resembling this place. Could that actually mean that this was indeed no memory of his, but actually the reality?

Raising his hand in a slow motion, the feeling is so weird. It is as if he knew he was moving his hand, but had no way to check or feel it. This kind of surrealism, it took the gist out of him. He could understand if he had fainted and become unconscious, but how could he fail to feel his body. He could hear and see. Yet there was no smell, and he could not feel anything.

Since he was trying to slowly move his hand in front of his eyes, to check, it felt like ages for him before the hand appeared before him. The moment he saw his hand, he fell into despair. What he saw was a flaring white light with a bluish hint to it, apparently replacing his hand. Looking down to see his feet, he saw himself hovering above the ground, with a similar white light replacing his body which looked like a flame upside-down.

He had been so sure when he had woken up, that he had sat up the instant he awoke. Yet, he found out that he was mistaken, his whole body was nothing but a white light with blue mixed within. Dumbfounded, he decided that he needed to find out what could possibly have caused this transformation.

Moving around in this new form didn’t cause him much strife. Using one’s will to move was actually much easier than moving your body with your nerve system. It was as if his will was the fastest intent in the whole universe.

It took him hours to find the street he used to live at, yet he had a vague feeling that something was different. The trees all looked taller, some had even died. But it was not only this street that was like this, many things had actually changed. New buildings had been constructed, cars that could drive themselves were appearing on the roads regularly.

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Something had definitely changed. He could not put it in words, furthermore,  how could he not notice that while he was soaring through the air to find his home, no one had even glanced at him. He was invisible to the naked eye of others! Maybe he was reincarnated as a spirit, to wander the earth.

He tried to open the front door, but his hand just went through the handle when he clutched it. Somewhat surprised, he tried to copy the ghosts in movies and go through the door, which he somehow managed. It reminded him a lot of how noclip functions. After wandering around his house but finding no one, he flew into his room and tried to turn on his computer.

As he had feared, his finger simply passed through the “on” button, leaving him in immense dread. Breathing in and out to calm himself down, he started analyzing the situation. A long while later, he decided that since he could neither interact with people nor use his computer anymore, he was left with the only option to go around the world and visit famous places.

During the first few weeks, he just went around the continent, visiting famous places, and entering secret places like the FBI to check that all that was said in the movies was true. He was quite deceived when he found out that those enterprises were mostly filled with people wearing glasses that were stuck to their computer, hacking into a lot of North Korean sites. At night, since he didn’t need to sleep, he would mostly go to young single women's houses.

After having visited most of the popular places in America and being bored of all the sightseeing, he decided to use his time as a ghost to learn new stuff. Firstly, he went to Japan to learn how to speak Japanese, since he had been a fan of Japanese mangas and animes since he was a little child. He was surprised to see that thanks to his previous knowledge, it only took him approximately a year and a half to successfully understand all of those weird characters.

He then hesitated on whether he should go on and learn Chinese, but finally decided against it, since he had never had any impression on that culture. After contemplating the different choices that were offering themselves to him, he finally chose to learn the different arts of this world, such as the art of trade, blacksmithing, martial arts, and so on. However, he had no idea where he could learn all of these activities. Therefore, he just roamed around, firstly going to different successful markets and seeing how the people over there managed to attract their customers and sell their products. He then went on to the auction houses, where he observed the auctioneer, most of the time a female, that made everything she was selling look tons of times more attractive than it really was. Some of these auctioneers were so proficient in their job that the buyers, who were bidding high sums, would rather be fighting over her than the object in question. Upon seeing this, Mark was really enlightened.

After spending years and years observing this trade, it could be said that Mark was one of the most proficient in it. Satisfied with his gain in knowledge, he then tried to learn what is present in most MMORPGs, that is, blacksmithing. Sadly, this art had been less and less practiced along the years, and therefore, he could only learn the basic parts of it, like how to search for ore and smelt it in a furnace, and then remold it into items such as microprocessors or telephone covers. Regarding this, Mark was a bit disappointed, since he had hoped that he could learn more advanced stuff, like how to sharpen edges or other information of the sort.

Moving on, was what he had been expecting for ages, martial arts! Unsatisfied with just going to a dojo in America, he traveled once again to Asia and tried hard to learn the different techniques that marveled him. Although he couldn’t do practical training, since his body was ethereal, thanks to his mind that was no more limited to the mere capacities of a human brain, he started building an array of martial techniques in his mind, virtually creating combos as he started to imagine his own techniques.

During the immense amount of time he spent, Mark subtly began accepting that he was a spirit.