Chapter 1

Ezekiel woke up groggily since something was poking him in his back making his bed very uncomfortable. Not only that, his bed was suddenly hard. Although his finances were low, he still made sure that he had a comfortable bed since he knew that a good rest was the only thing that he could reward himself at the end of the day.

He was already 29 years old but due to the recession, he was let go from a high-earning job that he was a part of and the only job he could find right now after the pandemic, even with his education, was a manager at a fast food chain. A year had passed since the pandemic and Ezekiel knew that he could find a better job but after doing a full day’s work, he didn’t have any energy to look for a new job anymore and even during his weekends off, he couldn’t get the energy to look for a job and spent the hours either watching anime, playing games, or reading fantasy and science fiction novels.

Based on one of the famous short video streaming sites, there were a lot of side hustles that one could do to earn a lot of money and if he had a better body, he would even be tempted to join an adult website but Ezekiel knew deep inside that even if he was a bodybuilder, he wouldn’t have the courage to show his nude body to people. A lot of his friends told him that he was handsome and his three previous girlfriends were so obsessed with his looks that they kept saying that he could be a celebrity.

The only reason that he parted ways with all of his previous girlfriends was for some reason, they all had to move to different cities due to different reasons, like their family, their job, or responsibilities whatever it may be, and all of them decided that a long-distance relationship with him wouldn’t work.

Ezekiel was a mild otaku and an introvert but he wasn’t obese or anything like that. His weight looked proportional to his six feet height. His dark hair and vivid blues were the cause of why he was considered handsome. It’s just that he knew that he was a few pounds above the right weight for his age and height and he just knew how to hide the extra weight using his clothes.

What scared him the most was that he might have contracted some incurable disease like cancer or something else since he was always tired. He used to be an avid gamer but right now the only thing that he could do after work was to lie down, read a few pages of a web novel that he was currently interested in then after that just sleep since he didn’t have any extra energy to do anything else. He knew that he might just be scaring himself and he might have been just deficient in some sort of vitamins or minerals but he decided that the next day, which was his rest day, he would go to the hospital to have a full body checkup. He was just glad that he managed to save enough funds so that he could afford health insurance.

Lung Cancer. Ezekiel was bewildered since even though his energy was low, he could still go to work without any issues but then after a whole day of checking, the doctors told him that he had Lung Cancer. He didn’t even remember what stage it was since the moment he was told that he had cancer, his mind blanked out. He couldn’t even remember how he reached his home.

He wasn’t even a smoker and both his parents died in a car accident but they were healthy their whole lives. He didn’t have any relatives since his mother was from an orphanage. His father’s parents were already dead as well and his father didn’t have any living relatives.. The house that he was currently living in was the only thing that his parents left him plus some funds.

He was still stuck and didn’t know what to do. Ezekiel didn’t know if he should tell his few friends about his cancer but that would only burden them.

Ezekiel thought that the best thing that he could do was to sleep since he was sleepy anyway and would decide what to do next the next time he woke up.

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When he woke up, after a few minutes of groggily looking for his phone, he immediately became alert. Ezekiel wasn’t in his room. He found that he was lying on some sort of forest ground and was surrounded by trees. The scene was so cliche that he immediately knew that he might have been transported, transmigrated, or even resurrected to another world. Although unlikely, somebody might have just simply kidnapped him and transported him somewhere.

Ezekiel thought that since he was so stressed due to the news that he had received he might have sleepwalked to a nearby forest. The only problem was he was now wearing some sort of home-spun clothes that were worn by peasants in the Middle Ages based on what he had seen on TV. His arms were also incredibly thin like a malnourished child.

The transmigrated, transported, or resurrected to a forest scene was so cliché that if he were reading a web novel, there’s a good chance that he would have skipped it but there he was.

So the first thing Ezekiel did was to do something that a veteran reader of web novels should do if they find themselves thinking that they had been transported, transmigrated, or resurrected to a different world. Summon the system.

He then tried saying Menu Open first and nothing happened. Then he tried saying System Open, and there it was. His golden finger. His system appeared to look like the last browser that he downloaded on his laptop. He tried saying System Close and his system panel disappeared. He tried opening it again by thinking of System Open instead of saying it out loud and it opened and thinking of System Close, the panel disappeared.

Ezekiel would have liked to explore his system but he was nervous about remaining in an open space and he was hungry as well. He tried to stand up but fell again. His body was so weak but he kept at it until he managed to stand up. He walked towards the nearest tree since sitting having his back in a tree would make him feel a bit secure.

Looking at his thin, malnourished arms, Ezekiel wondered how old this body was. Then thought of the fact that he was now in here. There was still a possibility that this was a dream and he was in his bed or a hospital hallucinating all of this but the hunger and thirst that he was feeling felt very real.

As a veteran web novel reader, Ezekiel was hoping very hard that he wouldn’t encounter the typical scenario of a protagonist waking up in another world, and that was encountering his very first magical enemy like a slime, or a goblin.

With how he felt, having a hard time walking just a few paces to the tree which was extremely hard he knew that any sort of enemy, even just a simple chicken would probably kill him.

Now Ezekiel thought of a very important fact that he was trying so hard to avoid. If he did transmigrate in this location, that could only mean one thing. He might have died on his bed. For a very brief moment, he experienced severe grief. He did have a life. Granted that life wasn’t ideal but he was content with his lot. He wasn’t rich but he had enough to buy all he would need including the important things in life like his hobbies which were games, animes, TV shows, movies, and novels.

Ezekiel had always thought that because of his hobbies, he wasn’t miserable like some of his other friends who always felt lonely if they were not in a relationship of some sort even if that relationship was toxic. He was an introvert who was content to be alone and he was thankful for that.

After a few minutes of grieving for his life on Earth which might have ended abruptly, he took hold of himself and decided to live the best in this new life and that meant surviving this very dangerous moment. It was a good thing that he had very few close friends and he was sure that they could handle Ezekiel’s disappearance. He was also glad that his parents had passed on since he didn’t have to worry them about his cancer and now disappearing. His job could easily be disregarded since he knew that the company could easily replace him after a day. That realization was important because it allowed Ezekiel to let go. The only thing that he regretted was he didn’t have access to the internet anymore. This meant he also had to say goodbye to his animes, web novels, TV shows, movies, and games, and that actually hit him harder than he expected.

Compared to not being able to see his friends and his co-workers anymore, what he was grieving about was not his life on Earth but his access to the internet and to be honest about it, he would be perfectly happy living anywhere as long as he had access to his hobbies.

Even if he didn’t have access to those things anymore, he still wanted to live so Ezekiel knew that he would need to solve his most immediate problems which were his hunger, thirst, and his safety.