Chapter one

At some certain place and time. Somewhere in the vast world, a young man stood in the middle of a major street, gawking stupidly at everything that surrounded him. His static position and confused looks drew gazes from the ever moving crowd around him from time to time.

“Um, so this is one of those ‘I’ve been summoned to a different world deals’, isn’t it?”, the boy asked out loud to no one in particular. The question drew him more peculiar gazes from his surroundings but he was too preoccupied to notice or even care.

His name, well his nickname- he had deliberately forgotten his given name; his shitty father had named him after some sort of snack- was Ace. He came from a wealthy middle-class family on Earth, the third planet from the sun in the Milky Way galaxy and he had an overactive imagination.

So when he had blinked over an hour ago and opened his eyes to a whole new fantasy world, he had slowly dropped his crate of bargain sales eggs and pinched his self- rather viciously- to wake himself up from his daydream. But nothing happened; the various peanut sized bumps on his arms were the testament to his attempt at waking up from the dream he found himself in. Yet, an hour later, the fact that he was still standing in the middle of a street of a typical medieval fantasy world setting proved that the weirdness going on all around him was not a product of his hyperactive imagination. He could try to rationalize it as him being part of a movie production as an unsuspecting character/Easter egg or this being an elaborate prank but the giant lizard like creatures and humongous birds that pulled carriages past every now and then dashed the idea of this being a movie or prank. Hurray for Occam’s Razor.

Sighing, he picked up his eggs and started to walk in a random direction. ‘Might as well explore the new world’, he thought.

Taking various turns at completely random intervals, he was soon totally and utterly lost, finding himself in the back alleys of the city. Sighing again, he attempted to retrace his steps only to find himself coming out of the alley ways into the suburbs. ‘Well, better the suburbs than those dangerous alleyways’, he thought to himself remembering how hordes of vermin and strays had chased him non-stop for his eggs.

Lifting his legs once more, he wandered for hours before stopping at a food cart. The old lady manning the mobile restaurant took one look at him and immediately got a suspicious gleam in her eye. He didn’t mind though, hours of being chased and confused had roughed up his appearance. He was sure he looked like a pauper, and given the fact that said pauper was holding a crate of eggs; it was enough for anyone to mistake him for a thief.

‘Well, better a suspicious old lady than those other unsuspecting thugs’, he thought to himself remembering how gang upon gang of hungry ruffians had chased him for his eggs. It seemed his eggs were a source of constant danger to his life. He wasn’t giving up on them though. These eggs were bought with the last vestiges of his dwindled allowance. All the manga he had bought with most of his allowance were now sitting comfortably in his room, never to be seen again by him- probably.

Sitting against the wall across the street from the cart, he placed his backpack in front of him beside his crate of eggs in between the thighs of his fenced legs. He had forgotten about his bag right until the moment he tried to rest his tired back against a wall and felt something bump him.

Zipping it open, he pulled out all of the worldly possessions left with him; a flip-phone (32 percent and no network or airtime), a Kamvas 16 Pro and electric pen (exclusively for artwork. 20 percent), a Samsung tablet (unsure model, exclusively for reading novels and watching anime. 3 percent!), a portable solar charger with 6 different cords (thank goodness he always kept it in his bag), a black baseball hat with a symbol on it that read ‘No Mercy’ in Japanese katakana (a mature way of showing his pride as an otaku- in his opinion anyway), and finally… an orange? (How did you get in here?)

Well, at least he was able to transmigrate with his gadgets intact. He really hoped the energy provided by the ‘sun’ in this world could power his charger. Or else, he wouldn’t know what to do with his sudden summoning. No mages praying to their ‘hero’. No beauty summoning her ‘knight’. No coming across any weird altars back on Earth. Heck! Not even being summoned by a group of cultists or a demon lord to be bound under a slave pact.

Just a *blink* and then *poof*. Voila! New world! What kind of transmigration was that! Or don’t tell me… he died? Impossible! Dead men only had one thing left; their souls. And even if a goddess wanted to reincarnate them, said goddess should not possess the power to bring him, along with his crate of eggs, clothes, and possessions, to another world. And even if she did have the power, she wouldn’t have done so still. Ace wanted to believe that even those goddesses had their limitations. Instead, they would’ve gone the good old fashioned way of:

Goddess: You are dead.

Him: What!

Goddess: Do you want to get reincarnated?

Him: Of course.

Goddess: Pick an item, skill, or power you want and prepare to be reincarnated into a world of magic and swords. Your duty is to slay the demon king and save the world.

Him: Alright.

Or something like that. And even if he did die and was somehow allowed by the goddess to enter a new world with his previous world’s possessions, why would he then forget such a mind-blowing experience?

Price of him bringing another world’s material into a new one? Bull! He wouldn’t have agreed then.

She deliberately erased his memories? Why then? Wasn’t a reincarnated person supposed to know of his reincarnation in order to fulfill his purpose? Or was she just playing around? In which case, the events surrounding the cause of the currently confused state of his mind would just be for the laughs for some deity-like being sitting in the sky? How embarrassing.

The whining of a mosquito beside his ear drew him out of his chaotic thoughts, and he looked up to find that the surroundings were getting increasingly darker as the ‘sun’ rapidly went down the western(?) skies

“So there are mosquitoes in this world too, huh?” Ace muttered to himself as he proceeded to peel the orange in his hands.

“Oh, I probably shouldn’t call them mosquitoes. I’m in another world after all. Perhaps they’re called something else here.” He continued to whisper as his hands kept on peeling the orange. Once he finished, he rubbed himself with the green peels of the orange. He had once read somewhere that the peels of citrus could keep mosquitoes away. He hoped that was true and that it held across all universes, including this one.

“Wouldn’t want to catch otherworldly malaria now.”

Biting into the fruit, he almost spat it out as his dry mouth received slaps from the sharp juices.

“Damn, that’s sour.” He licked his lips and continued to chew, his face cringing at the new burst upon burst of acidic (or was it basic?) flavor that flooded his mouth. Sharpness faded into sweetness as he continued to chew and occasionally, a mild bitterness would bloom amidst the mix of the two extreme flavors courtesy of his accidentally crushing the seeds

It didn’t take long before he fully devoured the fruit. Burping and smacking his tingling lips, he wiped the juices of the fruit on his tracksuit trousers- licking it would cause his hands to smell, and stood up. Stretching his back, he looked around him. The early and relatively decent houses had already started to light their lamp posts. The sky overhead was a deep purple with a streak of red faintly shining from where the ‘sun’ had just descended.

“Yosh. Time to find a box or a bridge or an untrimmed hedge and fall asleep.” He declared as he picked up his backpack and crate. “I’ll ask around for a job tomorrow. Can’t do anything without money. Thank god I can at least speak the language of this world.” He had found out he could understand the natives of this world perfectly well (even though it was a totally different linguistic system) when he had caught the plans of ‘Call our brothers! Tonight, we’ll feast on eggs!’ when the thugs had been chasing him around.

And with those words he strode onto the street and began heading for the giant towering wall in the distance. After recollecting and analyzing the events that happened earlier in the day, he concluded that his point of summoning was somewhere close to that giant wall. Perhaps behind the walls lay the secret to his sudden appearance in this world. Nah, no way. It was most likely the inner city or something like that.

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He had been summoned relatively close to the wall anyway. How was he now at the slums of the county? City? Town? Whatever. Well, blame that on whichever goddess had brought him into a new world with no knowledge whatsoever beforehand. Of course he would have wandered aimlessly. After all, he wasn’t some kind of sangfroid character that could calmly analyze such a bizarre situation and carry out the most rational and optimal plan.

As a matter of fact, he was still wandering aimlessly. He knew the plan: a) reach the humongous walls and (b) if he couldn’t reach said walls tonight, then look for a box to sleep in and then reach the walls tomorrow. If he couldn’t get through the walls when he got there, he would then think of another plan.

But now, he had come across an obstacle; he didn’t know the roads. And as a result, he was continuously being led into dead ends and to the entrances of people’s homes.

Now, he could have asked for directions on how to get to the walls (he wasn’t so stupid that he would let his pride hinder him on such a trivial matter). It was just that most people had already retreated into their houses (and were refusing to open their doors to a random knocker), and those who hadn’t, looked like the kind of people that would ask him for at least half his crate of eggs in exchange for directing him, so he was left in a dilemma. But such a problem only left him frowning and pondering for a few moments before he found a solution.

“Well, on to plan B then,” he declared, immediately trashing plan A.

Yes. He was just going to find a safe place; probably a box in some alleyway, and snooze the night away. ‘How hard could that possibly be’, he thought to himself as he started walking again.

‘Very hard… impossible even.’ A couple minutes later, he answered his on rhetoric from earlier. He had underestimated the allure boxes possessed in this part of town(?) If you wanted to have a good night’s sleep then you had to have fought for your box during the early hours of the evening. That was the rush hour for seeking sleeping spots. Only local bosses and the like had guaranteed sleeping spots. The rest of the homeless had to rush the resources and grab what they could on time. Nothing was left for latecomers (i.e him). Not even soggy cardboards; they had been divvied up by the stays and vermin.

“So that’s why those kids stopped chasing me the moment they heard that 4’oclock(?) bell. Damn! I should’ve known something fishy was going on. So the entire populace was in this plan against me, and I didn’t notice? The heck?” Spouting such nonsense, Ace took to the streets again and continued to head for that huge wall in the distance. Yes, he had decided to trash plan B and follow the already forgotten plan A once again. What a fickle minded person he was. But what did it matter? He was the one who conceptualized them. It was well within his rights to trash them or follow them.

After countless more dead ends and entrances, Ace found himself on what looked like a main street, which led him straight into the distance. The cleaner state of the street, along with the slabs of rock placed at intervals- akin to tarring- suggested to him that it might be some sort of major road that connected to other major roads and possibly even the other side of that wall. Exhilarated at his stroke of luck, he started running towards the wall.

‘Hopefully, my good luck will continue till I can reach that wall. Maybe even further. Perhaps when I go through it, I will stumble across an old beggar who is actually some kind of legendary magician in disguise. Then I’ll become his disciple and find out I have the greatest talent for magic. Then inherit his legacy. Then make a name for myself in the world. Be invited by kings to dine, enjoy harems of princesses, accept the worship and adoration of many fans. And finally for the peak of my career, I will do what even the Hero couldn’t do and defeat the Dem-! Oops! Close call.’

Indeed, during his daydream, he had almost turned and started running along another minor street. Thankfully, his mind was not totally immersed in his fantasies. Or else, forget becoming a super star. He might very well spend the rest of his life running around alleyways with a crate of eggs in his arms. A little exaggerated yes, but you could never tell with these other worlds.

Just when he was about to continue his trek, he heard the distant clacking of wood against stone approaching him from behind. He turned around and saw a lizard-pulled wagon. A lamp was hung right above the lizard’s head to illuminate the road ahead and the orange light shone against the lizard’s head giving it a greenish-gold sheen.

As the wagon drew closer, Ace was able to make out the silhouette of the driver. It was a small figure, human shaped, and not giving off a dangerous feel. Not finding any reason to hide in a shrub… ahem…, stick around, he turned around and attempted to flee… ahem… continue walking, but the driver, having noticed him- an anomaly of being a person walking the roads at this time of the day, called out.

“Hey!”

Ace kept on fleei- ahem, walking.

“Hey you!”

He continued to ignore them.

The sound of a whip being cracked sounded and the lizard started to pull the wagon even faster. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

The driver’s voice was getting increasingly closer and Ace began to feel nervous.

He started to chant.

“Don’t worry. Even if the world ends, the breeze will still smell fresh. I can’t poo a gold coin but I can eat a rubber shoe. A cart of bread walked up to Apollo’s JJ and asked for a picture. Shabadabadoo… I’m invin~ci~ble.”

To be honest, even he didn’t have any idea what he was saying but he felt himself immediately calming down after ranting off in his head. Maybe he should try saying lines like that as his mantra every morning in order to cultivate a calm and steady mind… forget it, he would just turn into the kind of pervert that only said weird things.

By this time, the carriage had already reached him and he finally turned around to face them. Even at this moment, the driver still spoke loudly as he (the voice sounded like a he now) addressed him.

“Hey! Haah! Finally caught up to you! Why didn’t you respond earlier?!” he talked as if he had run a long distance and was gasping for air.

Ace squinted but couldn’t make out the driver’s visage. The lamp (that seemed to be floating by the way) casted his face in shadows and Ace could only make out a faint outline of his face. Judging from the lack of unusual ears the other party possessed, he didn’t seem to be an elf or a beastman.

‘Such a disappointment,’ he couldn’t help but feel remorse over the situation. It seemed like it was too much to hope to meet a bunny girl and/or an elf so early in his reincarnation. He wasn’t Diablo after all. Wait was it a bunny girl or a cat girl again? Whichever.

*sigh*

Just as he was still mulling, the shadowed driver couldn’t take it anymore and leaned over slightly to wave his hands in his face.

“HEY!!! Can you hear me?!!”

Ace’s mouth twitched.

‘Brother, do you think I’m deaf? What’s with all the commotion? You’ll wake up the sleeping neighbor-hood.’

“I can hear you just fine,” he replied. “Keep your voice down or you’ll wake everybody up.”

While it sounded like Ace was caring for the welfare of the community, the truth was that he was scared of dragging out this populace from their beds. They had already chased him viciously for eggs earlier. What would they do if he disrupted their egg filled dreams. He shuddered to even think of it.

The other party seemed to realize the gravity of the situation also because he nodded solemnly, then…

“Hey!!! Can you hear me?!!”

Whispered the same words again.

Was this an idiot, Ace wondered as his eyes gleamed. It seemed like he had found another of his kind (though this one seemed to be a rather talented individual).

Narrowing his eyes, “Yeah, I can hear you just fine,” he replied with the same words as earlier. The idio- ahem, driver seemed to be satisfied with his response because he gave a hum and a nod.

Just as Ace was about to ask him to step out of the shadows, the driver jumped from his seat and landed nimbly in front of him.

Ace’s eye popped. Now, this was not a case of genetic disorder or cross–world allergies. No, his currently protruding eyes were a result of shock. Shock because the lad in front of him had a head full of green and blue….. FEATHERS! Yes, feathers! The same kind that birds of all kind considered their raiment and used to show off.

He blinked his eyes in an attempt to clear them of any blurriness that might have settled in them. Feeling like he had succeeded in removing the haze, he looked up to view the person in front of him once more. Nope, it wasn’t an illusion. Those feathers- much resembling a peacock’s- swayed in the faint breeze, mocking his shallow-mindedness.

Ace sighed. Why was he so shocked? This was a fantasy world. Men with feathers for hair were the norm. Soon, he might come across walking toilet seats and haggling plates. What would he do then? Run, screaming for the hills (that might as well be the poo of some giant fly)? No. He would take all what he saw from now on in stride be it laughing swords or snoring walls.

He just finished riling himself up with his nonsensical pep-talk when the feather head addressed him.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Me? Call me Ace.”

“Ace, huh? Well my name’s Grinsheit.”

Ace almost stumbled.

‘What the heck brother?! First you have feathers for hair and now your name is green shit? What did your parents drink when they were naming you? Wee? Grease?’

He launched into a tirade, already forgetting his resolution to accept his current reality.

Grinsheit, not realizing the storm raging in Ace’s mind pointed towards the wagon where some figures were now in view.

One was a beautiful girl no older than sixteen, also with feathers for her hair and brows and with soft looking, white fluffy feathers lining the under of her eyes.

Grinsheit pointed at her. “That’s my sister, Kyrisis.” The pretty girl flashed an even prettier smile at him.

This time, Ace did stumble.

‘Oh my God! How could they?! Such a beautiful lady, such a horrific name. Crisis? What the hell.’ Fuck it, he wasn’t going to mind anymore. Whether the people of this world named their babies after shit and calamities didn’t matter to him. He was going to let it be, after all even back on Earth, some people had the sickest naming sense. Schmevick. Lapunya. Willie. Heck; his own father had named him after a brand of cheese balls!

Continuing on, Grinsheit pointed at a short, stocky man with white hair and a full beard that made his face look like it was covered by a lion’s mane. “That old man there is Graff. He’s a solo mercenary.”

Ace nodded at him, trying his best to display a cool, unconcerned attitude. Was that a dwarf? Were there even a race called dwarves in this world?

The apparent dwarf- Graff snorted at him either in greeting or in contempt. Ace didn’t know which. He could never tell with all this grumpy looking old men.

Grinsheit pointed at the next person. He was a pale skinned man with blackish-gray hair (he was the person with the closest hair color to black that Ace had seen since his entrance into this world). “That’s Hal. My buddy.”

Hal sent him a cursory glance before closing his eye once more with a stifled yawn. Is he tired? Does he think I’m lame? Why is he yawning?

Ace began to surreptitiously panic unnecessarily.