The sky over the city was dark, heavy with a relentless downpour.
Tall buildings stood like silent sentinels along the street, their facades streaked with rain.
The storm had driven everyone indoors. The streets were deserted; no vehicles passed, and no pedestrians dared to step outside.
Except one.
In the middle of a crosswalk glowing green, a young man, barely twenty, stood perfectly still.
In his hands, he clutched a trophy—a prize he had won earlier that evening at a local chess tournament.
His head tilted slightly, his gaze locked with unwavering focus on something ahead. It seemed like whatever he was staring at was extremely important.
'The girl on the billboard looks so good,' Hiro thought seriously.
Her long black hair, neatly tied back, framed her warm brown skin. Her upturned head and provocative eyes seemed to meet his own, while her elegant, poised stance radiated a quiet confidence.
Hiro was completely absorbed, admiring the beauty on the large screen, yet he hadn't lost track of time.
'Ten more seconds before the crosswalk turns red,' he calculated. 'Not like there's any traffic anyway.'
The street stretched out to his left and right, empty and silent under the rain.
But then, a blinding flash of light shattered the stillness.
Hiro's head snapped to the right.
A white truck, roaring down the road at an impossible speed, bore down on him, its headlights cutting through the rain like knives.
'Strange. How did it appear out of nowhere? Also… why can't I move my legs?'
These fleeting thoughts were Hiro's last as Truck-kun sealed his fate.
***
Hiro opened his eyes groggily, surrounded by pitch-black darkness.
"Spell your first name out." The melodious voice of a woman rang out from somewhere ahead.
Though her tone was sweet, it carried an unmistakable authority that compelled Hiro to respond. Rejection wasn't an option.
"H-I-R-O," he said, his voice still sluggish.
"Now your last name."
"A-N-T-E-E." Only after the words left his lips did Hiro's mind snap fully awake.
'Where am I? Who's asking these strange questions?'
A brief silence followed, and then his surroundings lit up in a dim glow, as though a spotlight had been cast on him.
He wasn't alone.
Some distance away, another spotlight illuminated a woman. She was the most beautiful person Hiro had ever seen, and he assumed she was the one asking the questions.
She began addressing him, "Welcome, Hiro Antee. You—"
Even though he didn't quite understand what was happening, he was forced to speak up against the woman's atrocious pronunciation of his name.
"Hold on a second! It isn't 'Aunty'—it's pronounced 'Anti,'" Hiro interrupted. The woman's eyes widened momentarily, but she recovered with a nod of acknowledgment.
"Alright, Hiro Antee. You—"
"Wait!" Hiro cut in again. This time, the woman's patience visibly thinned, a frown creasing her face.
From somewhere in the darkness to his left, a booming voice roared, "Now what!? Stop interrupting!"
The sheer force of the voice nearly knocked Hiro off balance. Scratching his cheek, he explained, "Where I come from, we say the family name first and the given name last. It's Antee Hiro, not Hiro Antee."
The response came from the booming voice, not the woman in the spotlight.
"We don't care about the customs of whatever backwater village you came from. Now that you're here, you'll follow our customs!"
Was it truly so difficult to accommodate such a simple request? Hiro sighed, unsure how to deal with these unreasonable people.
The woman in the spotlight, now showing signs of impatience, continued, "You're about to be made a landed ruler—a Baron—in an area under my Divine Domain. Before you begin, I will bestow a gift upon you." Towards the end, her tone regained its generosity.
Hiro stared at her without saying a word.
"To determine a suitable gift for you, you'll have to take a simple talent test. Do you have any questions so far?"
"Well, I do have something to say," Hiro said with a serious face.
"You have my permission to speak," the woman reciprocated his serious demeanor.
A handsome smile quickly replaced Hiro's furrowed brows, "Actually, it is about you – your beauty has captured my heart! Your purple hair shimmers like twilight, and those beautiful amethyst eyes could pierce through the coldest of hearts…" His voice was steady and sincere. He wasn't done yet.
"Your elegance is unmatched, and that dress… well, it truly highlights your divine beauty in ways words can't capture." Hiro made a somewhat clumsy attempt at complimenting the woman's ever-so-slightly revealed cleavage.
Ignoring her stunned expression, he added, "You're totally my type. Would you mind giving me your number? We could share some good times." He finished with a wink. The wink was prefect.
The room fell into complete silence.
Then, voices erupted from the darkness on either side of him.
"How dare you!?"
"You're courting death, human!"
"Do you even have a brain?"
The voices were so powerful, so filled with fury, that Hiro struggled to stay conscious. Slowly, the world around him began to fade.
He caught fragments of a heated discussion before his awareness slipped entirely.
"… is not … hero's blessing, Your Majesty!"
"What … do with him?"
"Abandon … there … to die."
And then, Hiro's consciousness faded to black.
***
Hiro found himself standing on flat ground, but something felt off about the earth beneath him.
The soil beneath his feet was dark, almost black, with similar ominous patches scattered across the area. Grass dotted the flat expanse around him, but some of it had withered, exuding an air of decay that made his skin crawl.
"I guess all of that wasn't some sort of a prank. Welp."
Looking around, Hiro realized he stood near the foot of a mountain. A tall, imposing peak loomed behind him, its summit capped with snow. The air was chilly, prickling his skin as he took in his surroundings.
Some distance away, a canopy of trees loomed, shrouded in mist. The fog was so dense it limited visibility, cloaking whatever lay within the forest's depths. A faint sound of flowing water reached his ears, a gentle contrast to the oppressive silence of the eerie landscape.
In another direction, quite far away, was a towering structure shaped unmistakably like a big, black, cock.
And finally, a wooden chest sat nearby -
"WAIT. A big, black WHAT!?"
Hiro's head whipped back toward the structure. He realized he'd glossed over something very important. Narrowing his eyes, he strained to observe it more clearly.
The structure was dark, though not pitch black, with a rugged texture that seemed almost organic. Its base was wide and tapered upward to a narrow tip. Two hemispherical structures rested symmetrically at its foundation.
It was colossal—towering at least five stories high, perhaps more. Its sheer size could instill feelings of inadequacy in even the most confident man.
"The good news is that it's too big to fit inside any woman," Hiro muttered, exhaling in relief.
"The bad news… well, everything else seems like bad news right now."
He was alone in a strange and ominous place after all. The sky was filled with dark, brooding clouds, just like before his transmigration. The only consolation was that it wasn't raining.
His gaze fell on the wooden chest nearby. He approached it in order to investigate.
'Let's see what's in here.'
Hiro dropped to one knee and unlatched the chest. As he pulled the lid open, his jaw dropped due to what he saw on the interior.
'What the fuck is this!?'
The chest's interior defied logic. Instead of walls, there was an infinite expanse of pitch-black void. Floating within that void were a stone tablet and a shimmering pile of gold coins.
The sheer absurdity of what he was seeing made him question reality, but everything felt far too vivid to be a dream.
He reached in and picked up the stone tablet. Surprisingly, it was much lighter than it appeared.
The moment he touched it, one surface lit up, glowing like the screen of an electronic device.
[Welcome to Warnath, newly ascended Ruler.]
"!!"
'It seems like that woman really wasn't lying. She said she would make me a Baron in her Divine Domain. Baron – it's the lowest level of landed nobility.'
'And Divine Domain… could it be that she's an actual Goddess and not just a delusional person?'
Things finally started clicking for Hiro and the reality of his situation began to settle in. He waited for the stone tablet to proceed with the introduction.
…
"Oh, do I have to click on the screen for it to move on?" After a few seconds of blankly staring at the text, Hiro realized that it truly was a touch-based interface.
Old words faded, and new words appeared on the screen.
[You are now a Baron, and the land around you, your Barony. Explore it. Expand it. Exploit your realm's resources. Exterminate any and all enemies that stand in your way. Forge your path to becoming a mighty Emperor!]
"On one hand, reading this makes my blood boil, but on the other hand, I feel like this text has been ripped off from the description of a video game." Even though he said that, a small feeling of anticipation grew inside Hiro.
Becoming nobility and owning land wasn't a career path he could've pursued on Earth.
'Most importantly! Ruling my own land like this means I can set the rules. Which, in turn, means I can legally sleep with as many women as I want…'
With each passing second, the implications rammed Hiro. With each passing second, his excitement grew.
'Okay. Let's do this. Next.' He clicked on the screen once more, wondering what the stone tablet would tell him next.
[Good Luck]
"…That's it? Just good luck?"
This time, Hiro did not have to click anything. Within a few seconds, the text on the screen was soon replaced by what looked like the home screen of a mobile phone or tablet.
There was only one app on the screen: 'Shop'.
'Really? Just one app?' Hiro thought. 'How considerate of you to spare me the burden of choice...'
He clicked on the only option available to him.
The Shop interface resembled online delivery platforms Hiro remembered from Earth.
At the top of the screen, his balance was listed – 100 gold, 0 silver, 0 copper. This total corresponded perfectly with the hundred gold coins Hiro had found in the pile inside his chest.
He browsed the shop for a while, his expression steadily darkening with each passing moment.
By the time he finished browsing, about seven or eight minutes later, only one question lingered in his mind.
'Why does this feel more like a survival game than a kingdom-building one?' Setting aside the fact that this wasn't even a game to begin with... When he was browsing the Shop's catalog, Hiro had been simultaneously thinking about the next course of action.
He had hoped the Shop would offer items to improve his current situation.
And it did, actually—despite the steep prices, Hiro purchased a shortsword, a bag of woodworking tools, a bag of construction tools, and a set of Baron's clothes, the first set being complimentary.
All the items were magically and instantly delivered to his Chest of Holding—the same chest where he had found the stone tablet and gold coins.
'I mean… these items WILL help me… but do I really have to do menial labor right now!?'
Hiro was firmly in denial.
'I'm a ruler, a Baron, aren't I? I should be lounging in a lavish mansion or palace, surrounded by a host of beauties—not chopping wood and building houses!' This thought encapsulated his frustration. Where was his army of peasants to work for him and pay taxes?
For several moments longer, Hiro procrastinated, mulling over ways to escape his current predicament.
Finally, he came up with what he believed was a brilliant idea.
"Oh wait... Why didn't I think of this earlier?! I should try killing myself!"