I actually transmigrated? And I was killed by a bottle of soda?!
Roland sat on a sagging, dilapidated bed frame, staring at the weathered wooden planks that formed his walls. Through a small, grime-streaked window, he glimpsed an unfamiliar horizon. His mind was reeling in sheer, unadulterated shock.
He tried to piece together how he had ended up in this medieval fever dream. Just moments ago—or was it a lifetime?—he had been holed up in his apartment in Berlin, basking in the glorious chill of the air conditioning. He'd been glued to his computer screen, eyes scanning the final subtitles of a cinematic masterpiece.
"A tree like a tower pierces the earth, scattering its fruits to the world—a tree thriving on infinite possibilities, closer to the sky than ever before."
"Past and future, reality and fantasy, flesh and spirit, space and time... the boundaries between these four are slowly dissolving."
As the scene faded, the heavy stone that had been sitting in Roland's chest finally vanished. He stood up from his desk, wandered into the kitchen, and pulled a glass bottle of ice-cold soda from the fridge. He hurried back to his room, flopped into his ergonomic chair, and twisted the cap.
Gulp, gulp... BURP!
Setting the bottle down, he stretched his limbs with a look of pure bliss. "I finally did it. I finally cleared Lobotomy Corporation!"
He let out a long, weary sigh. "I totally get why people online call this 'White-Collar Corp.' By the end, every single day feels like a grueling overtime shift where one mistake ruins everything."
He shuddered, recalling the maddening moments when the "Cultural Preservation Association" abnormalities would breach containment simultaneously. The second that Level 3 alarm wailed, he knew his entire day's progress was toast. Every time he saw that "Restart Day" button flashing, his liver would literally ache with stress. There were moments he'd genuinely considered throwing his monitor out the window.
As a typical university student in Germany, Roland's idea of a "wild Friday" usually involved scrolling through video essays while lying in bed. That was how he'd stumbled upon a deep-dive lore video for Lobotomy Corporation. He'd been instantly hooked by the dark, surreal world-building.
He'd even spent hours on various forums researching the developer, "Project Moon." They had a whole interconnected universe: Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, Limbus Company, and the Leviathan comic. After getting a handle on the overarching plot, Roland decided he had to conquer the first title himself.
In the game, you play as the Manager, directing employees to "work" on terrifying abnormalities to produce energy. If an abnormality escapes, alarms trigger based on the threat:
* Level 1 Alarm: No biggie. Just a localized mess.
* Level 2 Alarm: Okay, time to sit up and actually focus.
* Level 3 Alarm: Day ruined. Initiate the TT2 Protocol (Restart).
After two months of relentless grinding, he'd finally seen the credits roll this afternoon. He was so hyped he started gesticulating wildly at his desk, reenacting his final victory. He didn't notice the condensation-slicked soda bottle wobbling dangerously near his elbow.
With one particularly enthusiastic swing of his arm—SMACK!
The bottle tipped. Because he hadn't screwed the cap back on tightly, the sugary liquid surged out, flooding directly into the power strip nestled beside his PC.
Roland instinctively lunged to grab the bottle. The moment his fingers hit the wet plastic, a violent surge of electricity tore through his arm. His body went into a localized seizure, convulsing under the high-voltage stimulation. A blinding white light consumed his vision.
In that final millisecond of consciousness, Roland didn't see a montage of his childhood or his first love. Only one terrifying thought echoed in his brain:
"I haven't deleted my browser history yet!"
When he finally came to, a rhythmic throbbing hammered against the inside of his skull. Roland clutched his forehead, squinting as he forced his eyes open.
His gaze darted around the room. It was a ruin. The walls were uneven, plastered with drying mud and straw. Aside from the rickety wooden bed and a scarred table, the place was empty. A lone candle guttered on the tabletop, and a heavy, rusted two-handed sword leaned against the bedpost.
"Who am I? Where am I? What am I even doing?"
The questions piled up like a car crash. He struggled to sit up, his head swimming. He remembered the game, the soda, the shock... so he should be in a sterile hospital ward in Munich, right? Not a medieval shack.
As his mind cleared, a torrent of "foreign" memories surged into his consciousness, like a hard drive being overwritten. After a grueling few minutes of mental sorting, the truth hit him.
He had transmigrated. He was in a world of high fantasy—a realm of dragons, gods, and magic. The social structure was firmly stuck in the Middle Ages, and he was currently inhabiting the body of an eighteen-year-old youth also named Roland.
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered, staring at his calloused hands. "Death by soda. That's my legacy. And now I'm in a world that defies every law of physics I ever learned. This is absurd."
As he processed the inherited memories, he realized there were two pieces of news: one good, one catastrophic.
The good news: In this world, "Extraordinary Power" was a real, tangible thing. Even a commoner could theoretically master magic or combat arts to transcend their social class.
The bad news: He wasn't a commoner in a bustling trade city. He was a dirt-poor peasant in a backwater village. He didn't have a copper to his name, let alone the gold required to buy a spellbook or pay a mentor.
Roland looked at the peeling walls of his hut, his brow furrowing. "Am I really supposed to just... farm? Am I going to spend the rest of this second life as a drudge, breaking my back over a plot of soil just to barely stave off starvation?"
He didn't have anything against farmers—they fed the world, after all—but in a world like this, subsistence farming was a death sentence. Between the heavy tithes of the local lords and the threat of monster raids, a farmer's life was short, brutal, and utterly disposable.
He briefly considered trying to trigger an industrial revolution using his modern knowledge. Soap? Glass? Gunpowder? He quickly shook his head. In a world where power was concentrated in the hands of a few "Extraordinary" individuals, showing off a new invention without the strength to defend it was just a fast track to being kidnapped or executed by a jealous noble. Knowledge wasn't power here—power was power.
His own knowledge wasn't exactly "Grandmaster" level, either. He was a fresh university student; most of his high school chemistry and physics had already begun to evaporate into a haze of forgotten formulas.
Just as despair began to settle in, a specific memory from the "previous" Roland surfaced. A plan.
"I'm going to leave this place. I'm going to be an Adventurer."
In this world, a mysterious substance called "Mana" permeated everything, leading to the rise of terrifying monsters and the existence of ancient, trap-laden ruins. Adventurers were the brave (or desperate) souls who explored the frontiers, took on dangerous contracts, and hunted for lost relics. It was a high-risk, high-reward profession.
For a peasant, it was the only ladder out of the mud.
The reason the young Roland had decided to flee his ancestral home was rooted in an event from three months ago. His family of six had worked themselves to the bone for a year, finally yielding a decent harvest. They thought they were safe for the winter.
Then the tax collector arrived. Under the guise of a "Special War Levy" for the local Duke, nearly the entire harvest was seized.
That night, the boy sat on his doorstep staring at the moon. He realized that no matter how hard he worked the land, he was just a sheep being raised for the nobles to shear. He decided to leave. By becoming an Adventurer, he'd remove one mouth from the family table and, if he was lucky, send back enough gold to change their lives.
He had spent the last two months pestering the village militiaman to teach him the basics of the blade. Through sheer persistence, he'd learned how to swing a sword without tripping over his own feet.
His family had been horrified. They begged him to stay, citing the mortality rates of greenhorn adventurers. But when they saw the iron resolve in his eyes, they didn't cast him out. Instead, the entire family pooled their meager savings to buy him a heavy, second-hand two-handed sword from the village smithy. It was their way of saying, 'If you're going to go, at least try to come back alive.'
Roland looked at the heavy sword by the bed. Tomorrow, he was supposed to board the village cart heading for the nearest town to register at the Adventurers' Guild.
He let out a breath, his grip tightening on the edge of the bed. "Alright, Roland. You cleared the hardest game on Earth. Let's see if you can survive a world that's actually trying to kill you."