It had all ended in the blink of an eye, that’s how long it had taken for Seth to realize his life was about to end when he finally noticed the car racing down the street at high speeds directly into the driver side door of his car. He didn’t get the time to apologize to his family for not being able to show up to his father’s 80th birthday, he didn’t the time to pray to any religions he believed in or even vaguely understood, all he got was a simple yet blaring honk and a world of excruciating pain before everything finally went dark. Seth wasn’t quite sure how long he’d been in the dark, but he’d found it strange to be aware yet unable to do anything about the fact until eventually giving up on trying anything save for trying to keep track of time. After losing track roughly three times, he had eventually all but given up attempting to do anything and was left wondering what exactly would happen to him now.
He didn’t wait long to figure out as finally something happened. It was subtle at first, barely even noticeable to Seth as he was left meandering in the dark, but it had grown more prevalent, a sense of weight as if he were falling from some unseen height. At first Seth had thought it to be nothing more than his mind playing tricks on him, but as the feeling of falling grew faster and faster with every passing second that feeling of ambivalence turned to curiosity then then worry and then finally fear as the sensation seemed to to reach its peak with Seth feeling as though he were falling miles with every moment.
That’s when Seth finally noticed light, a small little pin-prick of color in the void of nothing, and it was growing bigger and bigger the more Seth fell. Eventually other colors started mixing in, blues and greens filling in the pure white that it once was. Those colors eventually began to take shape with Seth finally realizing what he was looking at. He wasn’t falling towards a hole of light and colors, he was falling towards an entire planet itself. Paralyzed in fear from this fact, Seth could do nothing except scream as he finally touched the light and the seemingly endless darkness finally vanished from around him revealing the full extent of just how screwed he was.
In the back of his mind, even with the fear of oncoming death, Seth couldn’t help noticing that the landmass he was falling towards didn’t look like America or even any other country he knew of, it didn’t even look like any continent he knew of from all the times he had to stare at the world map in his geography classes in highschool. Instead the entire land mass looked like something out of a fantasy novel with the landmass taking the shape of a western dragon looking like it was about to eat a massive island like some kind of stylized yin and yang symbol. Looking past the strange land mass he was falling towards, Seth would also notice that either there were no other land masses anywhere close by or the whole thing was some flat disk of water with only the dragon made of land that existed.
For a moment Seth wondered if his mind was simply trying to make him forget about the fact his death was soon to come about but he realized it didn’t matter. His death was coming for him, there was no possible way he could ever survive something like this but that didn’t stop the fear of it all as he continued falling further and further, eventually reaching the point where the land mass filled so much of his vision he couldn’t even see the sea that had been surrounding it any more as instead massive mountains and expansive forests filled up the majority of everything he could see. Eventually even those fell out of sight as Seth finally found himself now falling under the tree line.
Expecting earthy browns of dirt and dirty grays of stone, the sight of a bright red was not something Seth had expected, much less the fact that the red was the color of the clothing being worn by someone who looked like they were sleeping in the middle of a forest with Seth falling directly towards them. While Seth had come to accept his oncoming death, if only partially, he wasn’t in the mind of letting his fate be the end of another.
“LOOK OU-” Was all he was able to say before it was too late, his speed simply too fast to give him the time for his words of warning to the sleeping person before the pain of impact.
Except, there was no pain. There was no feeling of every bone in Seth’s body breaking or his organs all rupturing at the same time. All that he did feel after finally landing was tired, like he’d just ran a marathon to work and back and that was it. It wasn’t the most pleasant of sensations to be had, but it was a far cry from the unimaginable pain and misery he had been expecting.
Wait, what about the other guy?
Quickly getting up and looking around, Seth was more than confused as he found the person who had been laying on the ground now completely missing. He didn’t even see a small puddle of red suggesting they had collided when from Seth’s fall. It was only after looking at himself that Seth finally realized what exactly had happened, he was the man that had been laying on the ground, he was wearing their clothing which amounted to bright red robes that covered his entire frame alongside at least a foot or two of the ground behind him.
Not the kind of clothing someone would wear outdoors normally. This robe looks more like something a celebrity would wear to show off.
Tugging off the oversized robe, Seth found he was also wearing more realistic clothing underneath the clothing but they were so garish and frilly that it was a wonder what the man who’d had the body previously was doing out in the middle of the woods of all places.
Oh shit, I’m in someone else’s body!
Reacting out of instinct at the realization that the body he currently possessed wasn’t his own, Seth Immediately tried attempting to pull at his face like it were some kind of mask but nothing he did worked, leaving him a mess of bright red cheeks and bruised skin.
What in the hell is going on here, why am I someone else, how did I even get here?
“That’s something I’d like to know as well.” The moment Seth heard the voice, his entire body froze. Feeling a cold sweat running down his back, he slowly looked around and found a rather old looking man staring at what appeared to be a floating screen and just from the stern look on his face Seth could feel nothing but dread at the idea of what would happen to him if this man, no this being, gave him any sort of attention. Seth wanted to do nothing more than to run away and hide away for the rest of his life the longer he looked at the thing that took the shape of a man.
Even as his body was screaming for him to run away in fear on a primal level, though, he didn’t and instead put all his efforts into standing before the thing before him. In Seth’s mind, he’d already faced death twice over at this point and each time left him with questions of what had happened and why. He needed answers and from how things were going this being before him was the only existence that could give it to him.
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“W-who are you?” Seth finally asked, able to keep himself from stuttering through his entire sentence. The old man didn’t even look up from his screen.
“None of your business. The better question is who are you? You don’t show up in my system.” Voice still stern, it seemed to have lost some of the hidden edge that it once had but that did nothing to stop the fact that Seth felt like he was looking death in the face.
“I’m Seth.” At that, the old man finally looked in Seth’s direction and for a brief moment it felt as though everything about himself was laid bare before the being that stood before him.
“Seth huh, I suppose that fits considering what just happened here.”
“You know what happened to me?” Seth exclaimed before realizing what he’d just done but the being didn’t seem to care, instead he simply nodded.
“Double soul transmigration, a fairly potent one at that with a 99.999% synchronization rate.”
“Double soul transmigration, what does that mean?” Pulling out another screen at, the being went back to looking over it, this time Seth noticing what looked to be lines of code flying by at unreadable speeds.
“What it means, Seth, is that I'm not allowed to fix this mess. Had it been 98% or lower then this conversation wouldn’t be happening.”
“Why is that?” Seth asked, finally feeling himself fully relaxing at the idea that nothing bad would happen to him, though still more than a bit tense at the current conversation. Instead of giving a direct response though, the old man instead seemed to gauge Seth for a moment as if determining something but gave no hint to what he decided. When he finally did, the old man snapped his fingers and a new screen would appear, this time infront of Seth.
[Returning Participant Added:]
[Please select your Realm]
***
Meanwhile, all across the globe as Seth now looked at the screen that had just appeared before him, similar screens would appear before many others. For some sight of the screen brought laughter and join at the idea someone new was to be added, for others all that could be heard was bellowing anger at the idea that they had more participants to deal with, and for what remaining few were left to look upon the screen they simply mulled over the information that they had been given specifically the part about this new participant being someone who was returning.
***
“Wait wait wait, let me get this straight! You’re telling me I’m now part of a prophecy to determine the king of the world?” The old man nodded, relaxing on a lawn chair he had created out of nowhere while sipping on what appeared to be an ice cold lemonade.
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Shouldn’t I get a say in this on whether or not I even want to participate?” The old man shook his head no.
“Not how it works. Prophecies don’t let you pick your battles, they come to you. It’s all a matter of how you decide to deal with them.” Seth Couldn’t help groaning in annoyance at the old man’s flippant attitude, his fear and anxiety having long since disappeared after learning just what was in store for him.
“Can you at least tell me what happened to get me into this mess, please?” Putting his iced lemonade down now, the glass looking to have never emptied no matter how many times it was sipped, the man opened another of his strange screens.
“From what the system logs are telling me, the previous owner of the body you’re currently in was apparently assassinated while on his way to a diplomatic meeting between the kingdom he hailed from and their neighbors. Just before dying though, he apparently had unlocked his own realm mid plummet and upon trying to use it to save himself he inadvertently pulled your soul from limbo and into his body. As for his soul, it’s no doubt replaced where your own soul would be so the system of your own world hasn’t noticed anything having gone amiss and likely never will.”
“You talk about this like it’s some kind of computer simulation…we’re not in a computer are we?” At that the old man would wiggle his hand in a so-so fashion.
“We aren’t in a computer like what you’re thinking of, every part of it’s completely natural, but the universe does run on rules and the system is sort of the guideline to how those rules operate and how they interact with one another. It’s not perfect though, and that’s where I and many others like me come into play keeping things in check. You could consider us admins of sorts, keeping watch over the system and stepping in when things deviate too much from the set parameters. That’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t do anything about you, your soul met the parameters required so the system would view my actions as interfering with the system and flag me as hostile. Instead I simply let the system do its thing and put you back into the running of the prophecy.”
Taking a moment to process everything he had been told, Seth needed a moment and finally took a seat of his own on the nearby rock before looking to the screen that had appeared before him. Remembering the mention of realms, and how it was a realm that put him into this mess, he suddenly got excited but needed to know more.
“What about this realm thing you mentioned? You mentioned the previous owner of this body had one and that’s what put me in this mess. Could a realm possibly fix this whole mess?” again, the old man wiggled his hand.
“Realms are tricky. On one hand they are what you would consider powers that fall outside the typical norm of this world, but at the same time they aren’t absolute, they have to follow rules of their own that the system puts in place, so to answer your question the answer is maybe. I suppose if you chose a realm that would let you hop between universes you could get away with that for a while, but the systems would eventually flag you as an invader and you’d need to leave eventually.” Seth would deflate after hearing that, his ideas of returning home having been crushed immediately.
“What’s the point of even having this realm thing then if I can’t even do the one thing I care about.” At that, Seth would flinch back at the feeling of an ice cube hitting him right on the nose. Looking up he found the old man with a rather annoyed look on his face.
“These realms are for more than just your personal use. They’re the power given by the system itself to give people like you greater access to what the system has to offer, to better the entirety of the system and develop it further.”
“You make it sound like people like me are the next update for the system.” At that, the old man looked away with what Seth could only attribute to embarrassment but said nothing to dismiss Seth’s claim. Seeing as they would just keep going around in circles if he kept complaining, Seth decided it was best to drop it and instead focus on his own predicament.
“Alright, so I’m stuck here and can never return home unless I wanna become the main target of the system running my, I mean my old, universe. Do you have any suggestions on what I should pick?” At that, the old man would look thoughtful.
“I can’t really say. Most everyone else picks some kind of realm of controlling something or using something really well.”
“Most? What about the rest?”
“Well we do get a few who decide to make an entire profession their realm and they did end up causing pretty sizable changes to how things were done but they never lasted very long. They usually ended up being the first to get snuffed out by the other participants, though there was one who decided alchemy was their realm and they ended up causing pretty big changes to the point that dwarves ended up with their own kingdom. That’s around the time that the system eventually created humans to fill in the gap” Ignoring the comment about their being dwarves, and the comment that new races could apparently be added in at any time, Seth began thinking. From what it sounded like to him, focusing his realm on a specific thing was the most common way to go about doing things and apparently guaranteed a longer chance at life, but on the other hand if he didn’t focus his new realm on a specific idea it could cause much more drastic results in shorter amounts of time. Essentially he could choose the slow and relatively safe way of doing things, or he could risk it all for bigger rewards at the end.
Looking at the screen that still floated in front of him, he’d made his decision, all that mattered now was the wording and he had a pretty good idea on what to choose.
[You have chosen the realm of [Creation]]
[Congratulations]
“Creation huh, can’t say I’ve heard of someone being so ballsy to choose such a broad idea, but you-do-you I suppose. Oh, and if it makes you feel any better, I’ll be rooting for you.” Getting up now, the old man began dusting himself off and Seth couldn’t help snorting. After having spent enough time with the old man, he reminded Seth of his father, someone who tended not to treat anything too seriously unless it was a big deal. If it wasn’t, or if it wasn’t something he was interested in, you’d be hard pressed to get him to do anything.
Once the old man was fully cleaned off, he disappeared like he’d never existed to begin with, even the glass of lemonade and lawn chair he’d been sitting on were nowhere to be seen.
“I suppose we will.” Seth said simply as he got up from his seat. He didn’t have time to waste and he needed to figure out how his new power was supposed to work.