I ran as fast as I could with a pile of branches tightly secured in my hands, I hugged it to my chest and jumped into the river while laughing like crazy, no way I’m going to die now, no matter how long they chase after me, I will definitely run away.

Let me take the chance while I’m drifting with the current to tell you what is happening, and tell you a little about myself so you can understand me better.

First of all, my name is Ash Gray, I’m almost forty or should I say I was almost forty, my last work was in an office as a secretary for a tiny company, answering the phone, arranging some paperwork, typing some letters here and there, it was a comfortable work, but boring at the same time, and as I’m single I lived alone in a small apartment, I traveled aboard when I was eighteen years old, during these twenty-two years I lived in five different countries and tried everything there is to try in this world.

Since I was a child I always liked the supernatural and fantasy beings, I always had this secret hope that one day the world would discover that they are real, or at least some of them are.

I remember watching many movies about this, one of the movies is talking about vampires and that the vampires showed themselves to the humans in the twenty-first century, and after all these years of living in secret, the vampire race became known and lived side by side with the humans or so said the story of the movie.

What I really like about supernatural and fantasy beings is the magic and superpowers that they supposed to possess. I don’t care about a vampire who just drinks blood, in fact, I may feel disgusted with him/her, but if they have super strength and some other abilities, they definitely will amaze and fascinate me. What I love even more is magic, and all the possibilities that it can offer, whether it is elemental magic or even some weirder kinds of magic like summoning magic or imagination magic, just thinking about it is driving me crazy.

So, during my forty years of living, I always waited for the big change to happen in this world, but nothing ever happened as you can guess. I even wished for some deadly virus to leak from some odd lab and turn people into zombies and mutate who managed to survive into beings with abilities or superpowers like what usually happens in the novels.

Sometimes I even looked at the sky hoping that a meteorite with some alien virus will hit the earth and change the DNA of the living beings on it, so we can evolve like in X-Men, just to change this boring world I used to live in.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Since I’m not stupid and I know that the possibility for something like this to actually happen is far from reality, therefore, my last hope was for somebody to invent a full-dive virtual reality game, so I can live in that fantasy world and try my best to forget the real world, but even this hope is far-fetched, I died and the world kept going in the same boring routine the people live in.

During the last two years of my boring life, I quit my job and holed myself in my small apartment, I go out once or maximum twice a month to buy everything I may need then spend all my time reading fantasy and fictional novels or watching some live series, anime or movies, even comics didn’t escape from my radar to live in these magnificent worlds by reading or watching.

I even tried to play some MMORPG games, I really liked the worlds in them and how I could move my avatar almost as I pleased in there, unfortunately for me, I was a really bad player, I can’t fight at all using the keyboard, if the monster is a little strong my hands start to press in every button in the keyboard and I mess everything up, especially in PvP, I felt miserable, so I decided to hold to whatever dignity I still had and settle for reading or watching anime about them.

So, when I opened my eyes this morning and all my old memories came rushing back to me, of course, I would laugh like crazy, maybe the old world didn’t change, but I left it behind me and moved to another world, the world of my dreams.

I can’t remember how I died, my best guess would be that I died a peaceful death while I was sleeping, sorry Truck-kun, somebody stole your work this time, anyhow, today is my first birthday in this world, like every other individual of the demon race, I had my first evolution when I became one year old, which evolved me from a baby imp to a youth imp.

During the past year, I was just like every other baby imp, almost fifty centimeters tall, with red skin, pointy ears with black hair and eyes; I stayed in the house with my new parents, in the village we live in.

As I evolved today, I was supposed to be almost one hundred and twenty centimeters tall, with brown skin, pointy ears and small horns on the front area of the head with black hair and eyes, and here is where my problem lie.

I evolved into almost one hundred and thirty centimeters tall youth imp with snow-white skin, pointy ears, my horns are not visible at all - you can sense them under the skin only if you put your hand on the skin of the front area of my head - silver hair, gray eyes and a strange golden tattoo similar to a wildflower under my left eye.

So when my mother entered the room to put a new change of clothes and shoes for me, I woke up on a high pitched scream, and footsteps running away from my room.

Just as I opened my eyes all the memories of my past life came back to me with a banging headache, I raised my hand to rub my temples only to notice my skin color and knew the reason for my mother’s scream, thankfully, I still have the memories of the year I spent in this world.