Year 4094 since the Great Assembly
Snowhang Forest, 0:01
Say, how long does one swift blink last? It should, more or less, take no longer than one movement of the second hand on a clock, right? Avah Striken pondered this as he found himself impressed to have been transmigrated into another world during that brief moment, though not amused by the experience.
Avah was, by no means, a superstitious person.
On his 3rd birthday, his parents faced great misfortune, almost going bankrupt after being betrayed by a close family friend. His family struggled for years before stabilizing again. Then, on his 13th birthday, humanity almost went extinct as various terrors emerged from strange rifts in the sky and ground. Earth became a living hell, with newly-awakened humans unable to control their abilities. Finally, peace was restored as the years passed and Earth’s population decreased by a few digits.
Regardless, today was his 23rd birthday. Avah was not superstitious, nor did he believe in fate, but the first time could be a coincidence, and the second time was suspicious. So, he decided to host an all-night birthday party at his house and spend the night surrounded by high-ranking awakened friends he trusted with his life, in his highly secured mansion.
Even then, he found himself forcefully transported to a different world right under their noses. While he expected something to happen, a higher-dimensional experience like ‘isekai’ was beyond his expectations. He was certain he was ‘isekai,’ not kidnapped by random people because no one from Earth was capable of kidnapping the No.1 world ranking awakened as himself especially when he was with his two close friends, ranked 2nd and 4th in the world.
Secondly, in every direction he looked, there were leaves and branches as red as ever, blanketed by the equally bloody red thing hanging in the sky looking ever so majestic. Looking up at it, his first thought was it looked like a common stop sign, warning him to halt his wondering.
As far as he remembered, the moon he knew was neither crimson nor square.
The forest floor was still adorned with newly fallen dried leaves, despite piles of leaves and trash under the trees showing attempts to gather and clean the area. Only one spot was completely cleared.
Instead of the golden and rouge hue of the leaves, under his foot was a puddle of dried-up blood challenging the moon’s redness.
The source of the puddle appeared to be him, specifically, the slashed wounds on his throat and chest. The amount of blood that even the ground and his clothes failed to absorb suggested imminent death after a few last breaths of agony, yet he felt no pain as the wounds closed up at a visible rate, as if under a time-reversal spell.
1, 2, 3, …, 611, 612, 613, …
It took approximately 10 minutes for the wounds to completely close. The surreal forceful opening on his chest that gave him an illusion of the wind around him penetrating through the gap to stroke his ribs, had turned into a barely noticeable, seemingly age-old scar. He couldn’t see how his neck was sliced and didn’t have the gut to touch it out of fear that his head might just fall off, but now he couldn’t even feel a difference in texture as he rubbed across his skin.
‘Ha, is this the privilege of transmigration?’
Though the entire experience was absurd and nonconsensual, he was somewhat pleased with this minimal pain shield. After all, Avah hated pain as much as any other normal being. Accepting this new reality, Avah quickly moved to cover the spot with leaves, hoping no one would pay too much attention to this apparently uninhabited forest.
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‘If luck was on my side maybe no one visit here for now.’ Just as soon as he thought that-
“-vah!”
“-Avah!”
“-master Avah!!”
“Just great,” he cursed. “There are people, at least five or more, yelling what sounds oddly like my own name…”
With his body painted with blood, their reactions were bound to be unpleasant and all kinds of misunderstandings and antagonistic conclusions of himself would be drawn. ‘Shit, even I have no clue what this setup was all about.’ Suicide? That can’t be as the slash across his chest was definitely inflicted by a second person and cutting your neck would be unimaginable unless you can’t feel pain at all. And where was the weapon used? He decided to save his questions for later and focused on silently moving away from the yells. Even before he could lift his feet above the ground, a soft and calm ‘Young master Avah’ reached him uncomfortably close. Avah sighed audibly, giving up on his hopeless half-attempt to escape, he looked around for the source of the voice as chilling as midnight.
The moon. The leaves. And a pair of eyes. Each with a uniquely similar shade of red. ‘From this moment onwards, red really should be the representative color of bad news for me,’ he declared inwardly.
Those eyes belonged to a woman he guessed to be in her early 50s, looking younger with her hair neatly tied up in a symmetrical bun. In her fine uniform, her stern, emotionless face reminded Avah of those dignified but strict professors and instructors from hell. If only she wasn’t staring down from one high branch of the tree looking as if she belonged to a haunted house.
“Oh, I was hoping to see your face all paled from fright but ended up scaring myself. Is this your latest research on how it feels to be a corpse in that get-up, young master?”
So, the ‘young master’ was him. Even with such misfortune, the foundation of his luck was still intact, working overtime to save his ass. From the only son of the two richest people in his country, he was still lucky enough to become a ‘young master’ after transmigration, knowing all the things he could have become.
It was the most truthful version he could offer. He indeed was dragged here from another world, and someone had been observing him from the moment he arrived. Right. Someone witnessed his ‘birth’ in this world, the very moment of transmigration. Even before he opened his eyes, he could feel an amused pair of eyes on him.
He didn’t rush to meet the witness. After all, he probably wouldn’t get to meet them even if he tried to knowing they had concealed themself. He also considered the fact that as long as that person had something to do with his arrival, they would have no choice but to meet again. In chaotic moments like this, he had to forget about some other problems and focus on the most urgent ones, like the completely unfamiliar woman in front of him.
“I see… our young master, who has been slacking on his training for so many months, managed to fight back unexpected assassins and even chased away that ‘someone.’ As expected of our prodigious young master.” She said as her loud rhythmic claps echoed throughout the forest.
Great. Even he thought that was a lame excuse, so she, of course, would not buy it. He watched as she whispered some words into a pearl-like shining object before crushing it with her bare hands.
“The blood must belong to that ‘assassin,’ otherwise, you would be yelling for your mother, her grace. Let’s return to Swallowed Sun first.”
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Year 4094 since the Great Assembly
Swallowed Sun Castle, 1:07
“Young master, how did you get into that situation?”
‘How did I get into this mess?’
Maybe there was a glitch or a bug in this transmigration system. There was quite a delay in memory transplant. Only after Avah arrived back at this three-floor mansion did he slowly and continuously receive the memory of this world as ‘Avah.’
During a lengthy shower, Avah thoroughly collected his thoughts. Starting from the moment he opened his eyes to see a bright square moon in this world, his gut feeling told him that unfortunately his previous life had most probably come to an end. From now on, his story would be continued as Avah Striken, the only and youngest son of Duke Striken of the Ponian Empire.
He wasn’t surprised to find out that he didn’t feel much sadness about this sudden change. Nor did he feel an urge to find out the truth about his transmigration immediately and find a way ‘home.’ After all, for him, ‘home’ had always been wherever he was alive and could live. While he did love the people around him and treated them the best he could, he would not feel depressed when it was time for them to part. At the very least, he would try to not cry about it knowing it would not change anything. After all, his job as an awakened on the front line meant he was not oblivious to how easily death could come knocking and how fragile humans truly were.
Even then, there were things he couldn’t help but feel remorseful about, thinking about what he could have and should have done. What hurt his conscience in this situation was that he didn’t get to give a heads-up to his parents before this sudden disappearance. He could only wish that their old souls could bear and overcome the burden of losing their only child without any explanation whatsoever. He hopes his old man won’t miss his meals, and his mother won’t be completely absent-minded for days and weeks because of their disobedient child.
‘The least I could do for them is to promise a good beating to whoever is responsible for this.’
“Her lady’s faithfulness to young master Avah…” The woman’s voice contained a hint of a sigh that had been held back. This young master of hers made her hair turn grey and tested her patience every day.
“Young master, please… could you spare this old woman some attention? It has been ten minutes since I have been waiting for your answer.”
Oh right, that must have been a pretty long internal dialogue I was having, “Sorry. I forgot you were still here, nanny. Right, about this situation. I have something very important to tell you.”