In a rundown apartment located in a Metropolitan city, there lived one of those gentlemen that kept daydreaming of fantastical glory. Just like the likes of many of you.
An endless stream of streaming services for his shows and movies, a monthly subscription box for gourmet snacks, a fitness app he rarely used, a premium music service, a delivery app membership to save on fees, and a relentless addiction to unlocking premium webnovel chapters all conspired to devour three-quarters of his income before he even noticed.
The rest of it went on collector's editions of physical books he reread hundreds of times, vintage jackets and boots he wore only once, and gadgets that gathered dust on his shelves, while on weekdays he made do with an old hoodie and scuffed sneakers that had seen better days.
He lived alone in a rented apartment, with no girlfriend, and apart from work and gyming, he only left his apartment for the quarterly boys hangout. The age of this gentleman of ours was twenty and two; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a chronic gym rat.
He had a peculiar name; this name, however, is of but little importance to our tale.
You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman, whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly any iota of free time he could get), gave himself up to reading books of fantasy with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his bodybuilding and even the management of his workplace; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he forwent expensive health insurance to buy books of fantasy and sci-fi to read and brought home as many of them as he could get.
He used to lie awake striving to understand the complexity of the characters from the various books he read.
In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise and his free days from dawn to dark, pondering over them; and what with little sleep and much reading, his brains got so dry that to the average person he looked like he had lost his wits.
When he wasn't slaving away at work, his head was full of what he read: enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that to him no history in the world had more reality in it than his favorite books.
He used to argue with fellow readers that a certain transmigrated keyboard warrior was the very best example of a gentleman, that a certain reincarnated king with masochistic tendencies couldn't compare.
In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he could find a way to transport himself into a fantastical world.
And so he searched the Internet for every piece of knowledge—the very wrong kind of knowledge—and exposed himself to peril and danger.
His efforts were mostly fruitless, for surely no one had thought of the strange notion as he did. Sometimes he'd fall for a scam, sometimes he'd download a virus, plenty of malware too. In the end he learnt about astral projection and the ability to explore higher frequencies of the world.
Already the poor man had easily gotten information on how to astral project, so he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution.
#
There was only darkness in the beginning, with it floating around in no particular direction.
What happened to me? Its memories were still clouded, and its sense of self was undefined.
A sudden violent force pushed it out of its home and into a cold, lightless liquid. It suddenly began shivering.
A moment later, its mind registered the cold. A chill that pierced the skin. Salty, cold liquid... most certainly seawater... rushed into its mouth and nostrils.
It quickly understood it was drowning, but body coordination was a mess, and it could only flail in fear.
Suddenly a hand, most suitably a giant's, gently pulled it out of the cold liquid, then the cold air assaulted it.
Making it shiver and cough violently. But the sudden onslaught of alien yet once-familiar sensations caused a panic. At the same time, it began writhing in distress, caught up in a violent struggle to breathe.
Unable to remain calm enough for rational thought, all it could do was thrash about.
A strong but gentle force hit its back, and the viscous fluids in its airway were expelled. Finally, it could breathe but quickly fell asleep.
What little energy it had was spent, and it needed rest.
#
For the next couple of years, it lived in objective time, with consciousness lapsing in and out at unpredictable frequencies.
The vessel's brain had not developed fully enough to support the mind of the placed soul.
What is this? What happened to me? It couldn't maintain awareness for very long, and the memory of being placed in it had scrambled with its mind even worse.
So its fading consciousness just barely registered before it drifted into oblivion.
The next time a hazy sense of comprehension dawned, it was stupefied, not surprisingly.
If its memory was correct, it should have been in his apartment, but after coming to, it was somehow inside a small stone cottage, getting its mouth wiped by a nurse or a maid.
From the windows, it could infer the sky was grey, or maybe it was no sky at all.
If this was a hospital, then a safe assumption could be made that there had been some sort of accident.
Blurry vision could be explained by injury as well. Yet now that its eyes could see clearly in the poor lighting, it could make out old antique wooden furniture. And the inadequate illumination… apparently came from candles.
"Matt, open up, dear."
At the same time, it noticed a bizarre lack of electrical appliances nearby. In the modernized age of 2023, there was a room devoid of modern electronics yet riddled with items long considered antiques.
"You mustn't be picky; how will you get stronger? Open up!"
It was a scoop of vegetables that had been stewed into mush. It wanted to retort, but seeing the opening. The lady thrust the spoon filled with mushy vegetables down its mouth.
"Good boy." Stewed vegetables. That's all the woman had stuffed into its mouth. But for the person in question, the action only made things more bewildering. In other words, it—I—am Matt? Thus, a cry arose from the depths of its soul: How?
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