. . .
A quiet garden stood majestically on a pillar of a concrete-like material, carefully maintained as if it had been set up at that very moment, steel railings surrounding the garden preventing anyone from falling into the infinite void beyond.
However, the garden that should have been empty, was inhabited by one person, an individual who looked completely lost, oblivious to all the aesthetics of the space that surrounded him, only one word fit him like a glove, γ Intruder. γ.
"...Huh?"
A soft moan of pain came from his lips as he looked around, where was he? An abyss of fog and a field of flowers were not the best indicator after all.
"...Well, first of all..."
He hit himself, that young man had hit his cheek in an attempt to wake up, that, however, ended up failing, leaving him with pain and more confusion.
This time he didn't speak, he thought it was a stupid dream where it wouldn't matter if he looked like a madman talking to himself, but now that he had to face the harsh reality, the idea of losing the sanity he had pretended not to have seemed less ideal.
After all, there was no place like it on earth.
The whitish flowers in the garden moved with the wind, if there was even one in the first place, because he didn't feel even the slightest breeze despite being practically next to them.
"What the hell...?"
Every detail he began to look deeper into made him question his location more and more, the thick mist didn't seem to come from anywhere, and yet it extended far beyond the observable horizon. The flowers he had overlooked now looked even more macabre, their color looked lifeless, stained with the cold embrace of death despite standing tall as if they were alive.
But that wasn't the worst, it didn't even come close to him.
He felt it, that intruder who didn't know how he had gotten in that place realized it at that very moment, his skin crawled, his blood froze, he held his breath and stood still while looking directly at what he felt.
He could see a workshop damaged by the passage of time, which despite everything, remained together as if its materials refused to give way, but that was not what exuded that suffocating aura, it was what was above that workshop that made it look like a deteriorated shack.
The moon, that elegant circle that reflected the light of the sun, that seduced his eyes so that he couldn't look anywhere else, was the most disturbing thing in the whole area.
"...If there is no sun..."
How is it shining? He wanted to finish the question, but he felt that if he did, whatever inhabited the moon would hear him.
And that? That would be his end.
He shook his head and did everything he could to forget that disturbing feeling. The first thing he had to do was try to figure out how he had gotten to that place, which didn't take him long because those memories were still fresh in his head.
He had died, his life was taken from him in a robbery at the hands of some inexperienced thieves, who pointed the gun at him, and in an unfortunate turn of events, they ended up pulling the trigger, firing a bullet straight into his head.
"..."
Death hadn't been that painful, almost instantaneous, so his reaction wasn't what he was expecting. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry and curse at the top of his lungs, but with that presence "watching" him, he decided to put it on hold for now.
"Well, I died, and now I'm in this strange hell. How could I escape?"
His past came back to bite him in the heels, that young man nicknamed Arthur came from the areas where crime abounds and where he had earned that nickname for being able to take any object from even the most skeptical. These business acts had taken him to prison more than once, where through bribes and his charisma, he had managed to escape, if that could be called escaping.
"...I have nothing, who could I bribe in a place like that? I don't think... 'That' would be interested in money... Damn, I might be totally screwed?"
He was, from a completely logical point of view, he didn't know where he was, he didn't know why he was there, and what stressed him the most, he was alone. The loneliness that he had desperately tried to escape from most of his life had returned in the form of this strange personal hell.
"...To think about those things I'd better go do something useful, maybe there's some clues in that workshop."
And with those words, he headed towards the workshop, his steps, contrary to his words, lacked the conviction to maintain a constant rhythm, causing him to almost fall repeatedly along the way.
But despite everything, he managed to reach the door, two metal rings that previously functioned as door handles had already fallen due to the inescapable passage of time, forcing Arthur to open the door with nothing more than his own body weight. Pushing with all his strength, he finally managed to open the workshop.
And there, he found an answer.
The interior of the workshop was just as expected, several workstations with tools that had already been corroded by rust, a small altar with several inscriptions in an unknown language next to still lit candles, notes scattered across the varnished wooden floor that surprisingly still shone.
And his answer, a floating grayish orb hovered over that altar giving it an almost divine appearance, its surface reflected Arthur as if it were water, despite the aura it radiated saying otherwise.
"...It seems that the answer to my prayers would have come if I prayed harder..."
With that attempt at a joke, he finally collapsed on the floor, his hands and legs trembling as he relaxed from not feeling the suffocating presence of "that being", but unlike his relaxed body, his mind was in total chaos, trying to make some sense of the situation.
Taking a breath of the stagnant air of the workshop, he stood up and began his journey towards the orb, taking each step carefully and cautiously. As he arrived in front of the altar, the surface of the flying object began to tremble, the reflection that once looked calm now looked as if it would explode at any moment.
And from one second to the next, it calmed down.
Arthur, on the other hand, was visibly affected by the orb's uneasiness, trembling and moving away in an attempt to protect himself from a possible explosion or divine attack.
But nothing happened, and the orb returned to its usual appearance, urging the young man to come closer once again. Once Arthur returned to his previous position, the floating object began to tremble less violently, as if it were processing something.
"...Huh? I've never seen a computer like this, is it a wind-?" βBut the words didn't come out, his silly joke fell on deaf ears as all sound in his world was cut off.
Frightened, he tried to scream, he turned away from the orb and tried to run away, but as he was moving after that target, he noticed that something else was missing, his sight.
Feeling the wood of the floor, this time he tried to crawl as fast as his terrified body could manage, although his poor excuse of an action would also prove to be useless, because after losing his sight, his touch was next.
Then came his taste, he could no longer even feel the blood coming from his mouth from biting his tongue from the fall, and if that weren't enough, he slowly lost the stagnant and rusty smell of the workshop as well.
His world plunged into nothing but darkness, the same one he had spent time in before entering that lucid dream.
And after what seemed like endless years of mental torture, he woke up.
The γIntruderγhad finally completed his journey, His destination? The world of a novel he had read in his free time, Shadow Slave.
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Touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing, all of this came back in a torrent of information that threw a sleeping Arthur into a state of high alert, despite his entanglement in the sheets of his bed.
Yes, he was not in that hellish space where he had "died" a second time, he was now in the comfort of a warm bed, which could easily have been mistaken for heaven in his current condition.
"...What...? What happened?"
He had woken up in a strange bed, in a strange room where only darkness surrounded him, and all this after dying in a space guarded by a being that resided in the moon.
His next objective was clear, he got out of bed as best as he could and went to one of the windows where a fine amount of sunlight filtered in, and with one pull he lifted the curtain over his head, observing the landscape.
In front of him, the sunlight shone on a completely ordinary neighborhood, there were several houses, cars, and everything that a neighborhood would have to be considered one, except that there was one slight detail.
Everything seemed more advanced, and... "Magical."
Thousands of ideas crossed his mind as he watched a vehicle whose design was unlike anything he had ever seen circulate as if it were everyday bread, and with the reaction of the passersby who walked oblivious to those cars, he got a rough idea.
"I'm in another world, and from the looks of it, it's more advanced." βHe scratched the back of his neck as those words came out of his mouth. He never thought he would find himself in a situation like this, he wasn't someone who read often, but he had seen several novels with a similar plot.
He shook his head, for now, the important thing was not to speculate if it really was a different world, he had to check the place where he apparently resided in this "alternate world", and as soon as he said that, he walked around the house from top to bottom analyzing even the smallest detail.
Surprisingly, it was a painfully average house, it had two floors, the upper one being mostly the master bedroom with a bathroom, while on the lower floor was the kitchen, the living room and a strange room that Arthur could only infer functioned as a warehouse.
"...Maybe I just fell into a coma and they moved me to a state house..."
It was not the case, because while he was looking for clues he had found different papers where the ownership of the house was credited to a person he had never heard of, however, he also discovered that that person had died and left his house abandoned.
"I was reborn as a squatter, thank you very much Moon, I appreciate it."
Finally free from the lunar presence, he was able to curse until he ran out of breath, and only then was he finally able to understand the situation he was in; he had no information about this world, nor how much time he had left until the house he was in was demolished.
So in a moment of brilliance, he decided to go to the largest and most accessible library of knowledge on the entire planet, the Internet.
"If there are cars and houses like this, there must be something like the Internet, right?" βIt seems that those meaningless moments had left his mind in a rather worrying state, but with the stress of the situation, he could only let it go.
But nevertheless, he was right, on a small desk located in the living room what appeared to be a computer with the screen off was waiting for him, seducing him with the infinite knowledge that was hidden under its black facade. So without waiting more than a second, he jumped onto the chair, and turned on the computer ready to learn as much as he could.
After spending hours and hours obtaining information on the Internet by posing as a foreigner, he managed to discover several things that were considered "common sense", although they had little in common.
"1) There is a being called the Nightmare Spell that chooses certain people to suffer a life of bloody and grotesque battles, 2) There is no escape, once it catches you, you are screwed, 3) There seems to be no imminent danger of losing the house and 4) I think I recognize where I am."
Aside from the really important information he had gathered, he discovered a very important detail that had increased his chances of survival, at least by 1%. He had discovered the world he currently inhabited.
"Slave of the shadows... Or something like that."
He let out a very tired sigh as he leaned back in his chair, he had experienced a roller coaster of emotions from one moment to the next and it had clearly taken a toll on his stamina. Deciding to get some sleep before facing his new reality, he went back up to the upper floor traversing the stairs that were becoming more and more challenging, and finally, he laid down on the bed. He had secured the things that mattered most at the moment.
Tomorrow he will be able to review the information he has and what he has collected, but before that, rest comes first, his mind already began to feel true fatigue once his head hit the pillow, the memories of that strange dream and his previous life took advantage to attack his weakened mind, but sleep came just in time.
"..."
But despite having resolved the most imminent, he still felt that he was forgetting something, a fact that could change the trajectory of his life if he were to sleep without having remembered it.
"I'll think about it tomorrow..."
And so, that's how the first day of the one who shouldn't be in that world ended, and in the morning of the next day, problems began to ariseβ¦
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