Today was officially the worst day of Saxon's entire life… and it was about to become the last day of his life.
The day started off pretty much like any regular day—Saxon woke up, freshened up, and then got dressed before heading out of his apartment to begin the new day. He was an ordinary 21-year-old college student living a wonderfully ordinary life, which Saxon was quite satisfied with.
Everything was supposed to be normal today.
Saxon was off to class that morning and had stopped by a Starbucks for his morning coffee before boarding the train. He stood with his headphones on, holding onto the rails for support to prevent himself from being pushed around by the flood of other early-morning commuters like himself.
It was nothing Saxon hadn't done before, and it was supposed to stay that way. But it seemed fate had other plans for him, because before Saxon even realized it, he had crossed through space and time and ended up in an entirely different and unfamiliar world.
That's right… Saxon had transmigrated.
As a young gamer and avid reader of online literature, the concept of transmigration was not an unfamiliar topic to Saxon, but he had never expected that something like that would happen to him.
If that was all, then it wouldn't be that bad. But when Saxon transmigrated, he realized that he had arrived in the new world with his original body, right in the middle of a bustling crowd with plenty of eyes staring at him in shock.
Saxon was rightfully panicked in that moment. Instead of his soul occupying a new body, or appearing in a secluded area where he at least had the chance to hide his identity, Saxon found himself exposed as soon as he crossed over, with no time to process his situation and no idea what to do at all.
What happened next was a nightmare for Saxon…
Before a minute had even passed, and without granting Saxon the opportunity to retreat and gather his thoughts, several streaks of light suddenly appeared from all over the area where Saxon had appeared. A bright barrier formed around his body, trapping him, and various individuals wearing cool-looking medieval knight's armor surrounded Saxon from all sides.
Seeing all this unfold, the crowd that had originally been around Saxon when he first appeared quickly dispersed like he was the plague. Before Saxon could even process what was happening, he suddenly found himself bound and in chains.
After that, Saxon felt like he was in a complete daze throughout the following proceedings.
He was taken to a dungeon inside a massive fortress-looking castle and stripped naked of all the earthly things he had carried with him during his transmigration… like his clothes, phone, and laptop, which he usually used to play and design games for his class assignments.
Even the cup of coffee he'd gotten from Starbucks, but hadn't gotten a chance to drink, was confiscated.
And yeah, Saxon was a gamer, but he was also a student majoring in game design in college. He wasn't like those other loser gamers that could only hide in their rooms under their parents' roof at the age of 30, or rent a crappy apartment and live off instant noodles and cola, never coming out to see the light of day.
Before his transmigration, Saxon's life, though ordinary, was peaceful and satisfying, and he'd had no wish for anything to change in it.
Even if he was given the choice to be reborn in a different world with magical powers and the ability to stand at the top of the world, Saxon might have hesitated—but he wasn't sure he would've accepted that choice if it came.
Much less, if Saxon had even known that all of this would happen to him once he transmigrated, he would not have hesitated to refuse.
Unfortunately, Saxon had no choice in the matter. Now he found himself charged with the crime of illegal transmigration and was being sentenced to execution by guillotine without the right to a trial.
You heard that right. Saxon, a 21-year-old unfortunate soul, was about to have his head chopped off on an empty stomach because he happened to be whisked away to a magical world without his knowledge or control, and he wouldn't even be granted the chance to defend himself or plead his case.
If this wasn't the universe's most tasteless joke, then Saxon didn't know what was.
"Haha, you got me, universe—you've had your laugh, now send me back to my world."
Saxon sat in a tiny cell on the first floor of the castle's dungeon that was usually meant for petty criminals and pickpockets awaiting execution that very day.
He called out to the universe itself, or whatever god governed this region of the world, asking to be sent back to his own world, but nobody answered. All Saxon was left with was silence and his own thoughts, but he didn't even know what to do with them.
Saxon's situation was hopeless. He'd already cried and begged and screamed his lungs out, saying that he was innocent and pleading to be let go.
But the eyes of the people who sentenced him to death without even hearing Saxon's story out stared back at him uncaringly as he was dragged to his current cell.
Now, all Saxon had was a pair of rags on his body that barely covered up his nakedness and a set of chains linked to a collar that hung between his neck and wrists.
Supposedly, these collars were magical artifacts meant to suppress the magic and supernatural powers of whoever was bound with them—but Saxon didn't know why they were used on him since he didn't have any magic or powers.
Thinking about magic and powers, Saxon's mind began to wander as he tried to recall any snippets of what he had learned today as he was being dragged away. Although Saxon was very distraught with grief and anxiety, his attentive mind had somehow managed to glean a few things about his situation.
Apparently, this was a world where transmigration was not an uncommon thing at all.
In fact, it was so common that there was an Alliance of Transmigrators present in this world that was made up of people and individuals who had legally transmigrated into this world and the natives of the world—heavy emphasis on the word 'legally'.
In this world, transmigration is caused by the will of the multiverse and is seen as a privilege to those from alternate universes.
But like most privileges, there is a quota for transmigration, and transmigrants are usually selected internally by the Alliance for reasons unknown.
That means that anybody who transmigrates here, whether by means of rebirth or body swapping and soul possession, has actually been granted a quota and chosen to be here by the Alliance.
Saxon didn't know how this was achieved, but he felt that it was very funny and ironic for some reason.
Just imagining those people who transmigrate into another world only to end up desperately hiding their identities and doing everything to prevent themselves from being discovered—not knowing that there were people who were already aware of their identity from the very beginning—made Saxon want to burst into a fit of laughter despite his dire situation.
It meant that no matter who you were, as long as you were a transmigrator, then you are certainly not the "Child of Destiny" or the "Chosen One," but simply someone who had the luck to be awarded a quota by powerful beings and allowed safe passage into this world.
If not, then they would be like Saxon, who had by a stroke of misfortune managed to transmigrate without being awarded a quota by the authorities.