Ambrose Edward Rogers was a loser. No family he could stand talking to, no friends who had time for him, a mediocre job, and overall, a mediocre life. The only interesting thing about him was the name his parents gave him. Ambrose, of course, thought it was pretentious, only worsened by the fact that his parents were called Mark and Melissa.
After a long weekend of agonising over what exactly he should be doing with his time, only to fail once again to do anything at all, Ambrose was tired. Though this wasn’t unusual, Ambrose was always tired. Between chronic depression, long nights of pondering the mistake he made over a decade ago, and the overall monotony of his life, being tired was a near perpetual state of being for Ambrose. Except of course for when he was trying to sleep. Naturally, this was the point of the day he was most “awake”.
Rather than remaining on his lumpy, uncomfortable, second-hand mattress, begging the darkness to swallow him whole, Ambrose pulled out his phone. After all, everyone knows that blue light really helps you sleep. Loading up his most recent fantasy series he was following, some LitRPG novel about another random guy who, despite having nothing special about him in his original world, gets thrown into a new world, only to be some amazingly overpowered monster of a human, who holds the fate of the world in their hands.
It was probably the tenth of this kind of book Ambrose had read in the past year, he knew he should expand his tastes, but something about the genre really pulled him in. Maybe he would search for a female lead, after catching up on everything. Ambrose asserted to put it on his new year's resolutions, hopefully the couple months between now and then would give him enough of a break to get caught up on everything.
Several hours of reading passed before Ambrose finally felt his eyelids pulling down, there was no longer enough time for the full ten hours he needed to act fully rested, a fact Ambrose lamented, but would inevitably repeat the next night. At least the book was good, and as he put it down, returning to the darkness, he wished as he so often had that he could find himself in a different world. Not one of the post-apocalyptic worlds, or ones with those tutorials where basically everyone dies, but a nice fantasy world where he could learn magic, craft wondrous items, explore a dungeon or two and, if the gods allowed it, actually get a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or a really cool dog. Basically, Ambrose just wanted to feel needed, without the entire world resting on his shoulders.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
It was with these happy daydreams he fell asleep, or began to, before he was jolted awake by the sensation of falling. Ambrose despised the feeling, with falling being his only real fear the sensation made his heart race, and his skin go clammy. He felt his body growing cold from the sweat, the panic heightening his senses to the point where he became uncomfortably aware of how uncomfortable his uncomfy bed really was, in fact it was beginning to feel like a cold stone underneath him. The panic also made him notice the wind blowing, he sheets somehow, no longer covering his pyjama clothed form, he could even now see through his closed eyes that the room around him seemed far brighter than it should be.
Ambrose paused, thoughts racing through his mind, surely these feelings were just a mixture of half spun dreams and fear. With his panic held at bay by confusion, Ambrose slowly opened his eyes, face locked into a grimace. Panic was no longer held at bay. His heart began racing once more as a dimly lit room met the corners of his gaze, with the centre of his vision taken by a semi translucent, glowing pane of glass that popped into existence just in front of him, with numerous additional panes seeming to stack behind the first. His eyes adjusting, consuming the text forced in front of his eyes.
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WELCOME OUTWORLDER!
“Oh F*BEEP”