Tapping sounds echoed from outside the room of a run-down apartment. Rain poured heavily outside. But a man in his mid-20s paid no attention, fully engrossed in the game he was playing on his laptop.
If anyone looked around the room, they'd find that the laptop was likely the only thing of value in it.
"Holy hell, we're about to win this, guys! Let's all push mid-lane!" Norris yelled over voice chat while playing his favorite online game.
"Hey, do losers like you guys think you'll still win? Look at our towers—they're still usable for the next game," Norris typed in the game chat, trying to provoke his enemies into making mistakes.
'Double Kill, Triple Kill, Quadra Kill, Penta Kill…..'
"They're all dead! Let's finish this!" he yelled again, full of excitement.
'VICTORY'
"Finally, I made it to Challenger after playing this crappy game for years!" Norris screamed excitedly after winning the game.
"Damn, this might be my lucky day. I just got a double promotion—one at work, and now I've been promoted to Challenger rank. Might as well make the most of this luck and try asking Lisa out again. Maybe she'll say yes this time, now that I'm no longer the broke guy who couldn't afford to book a nice restaurant for a date," Norris thought to himself.
Norris was about to close his game to chat with Lisa when suddenly—'BOOM'! A bright flash lit up outside, accompanied by a deafening roar of thunder.
A sudden burst of light also flashed from Norris's laptop, and he felt a jolt of electricity surge through his body.
Moments later, he collapsed and lost consciousness.
'Ding', a notification sounded while Norris was unconscious.
[Special Skill Activated: Soul Reincarnation]
*****
Recovering a bit of his senses, all he could see was darkness all around him while he was holding on a ball of light a bit larger than the size of an egg in front of him, he was being pulled by it along the unsettling darkness.
"Arghh," Norris grunted. His entire body ached, and a terrible headache pounded in his mind.
"Did I just die? Fucking bad luck—just when I thought fate was finally turning around for me," he thought to himself.
He was slipping into unconsciousness again, and his body was starting to feel numb, but for some reason, he felt compelled to hold on to the light, as if it was the only thing that could save his pathetic life. This went on for what felt like an eternity, though he had no way of knowing how long it truly lasted.
Suddenly, pain surged through his entire body. His vision remained blurred, and the ball of light that had once guided him was nowhere to be seen.
"Arghh, what the hell was that? What just happened? Am I dead or alive…?"
A flood of questions rushed through Norris's mind as he lay there, dizzy and disoriented.
"Damn, Alexander, how could you be so unlucky and foolish? Look at yourself right now," Norris mumbled to himself.
"Hey, what am I thinking? Why does my memory feel so jumbled? And why did I just call myself Alexander?" Norris wondered, struggling to fully open his eyes.
With his eyes half open, he could see the dark sky through the opening of what seemed to be a cave above him. Ice-cold water surrounded his body, just deep enough to submerge everything except his face, allowing him to breathe as he lay there.
"Where am I? How did I survive being thrown into this cave? Wait… I got thrown into this cave?" Jumbled thoughts and puzzling questions kept flooding his mind, making him even dizzier.
"Hell, this place even reeks. Fuck, I can't take it. If shit could shit, then this must be it. How can there be such a nasty smell in this world?" Norris grunted.
He slightly turned his head to find something that terrified the living shit out of him. It wasn't too dark yet, so he managed to see a rotting corpse floating beside him.
The shock jolted his body into motion, and he immediately scrambled out of the water. He was shivering—not just from the cold, but from the fright of what he had just witnessed.
Norris had always been a scaredy-cat when it came to morbid scenes. He couldn't even bear the sight of blood or cuts on a person, so how could he not be terrified by the sight of a decaying corpse?
"Bloody hell, sweet son of God, holy fucking hell…" Norris shouted curses he didn't even know he knew. He was panicking so hard, he completely forgot about his situation.
He scrambled away from the corpse and out of the water, forgetting all the pain that had overtaken his body. He was able to move to dry ground not by sheer will but by sheer terror.
He pressed himself against the cave wall, eyes shut tight, doing his best to stay as far away as possible from the rotting corpse in the water.
Roughly a hundred or two hundred meters away from the cave, a group of uniformed servants was searching for someone in the woods when they suddenly heard shouting and curses echoing from afar.
"Hey, did you hear that? That sounded like Master Alexander's voice. I think he's in that direction," said one of the uniformed servants.
"Thank goodness, I think we've finally found him, it's almost dark. Hopefully, he's not in a bad situation. Let's hurry," said another of the uniformed servants.
A few moments later, Norris heard the sounds of footsteps approaching and people shouting a name that seemed strangely familiar.
"Master Alexander! Where are you? Are you okay?" the servants shouted, trying to get a response from the voice they had heard earlier.
Norris could hear people shouting and calling for someone. Strangely enough, it wasn't in English—the only language he was accustomed to speaking. Even more surprisingly, he could understand it and speak fluently in that language. It was as if he had been using it his entire life.
"Hey, somebody help me! I'm inside this cave. Please, hurry!" Norris shouted in that strange language, too busy to care who they were looking for.
"Hey, I think Master Alexander is under that hole over there!" exclaimed one of the uniformed servants.
"Master Alexander, are you down there?" a servant shouted toward the opening of the hole. He couldn't see clearly if anyone was beneath it—the hole was very deep and dark.
"Quickly, get me out of here!" Norris yelled, still closing his eyes and not paying attention to why they were calling him 'Master Alexander.'
"Alright, Master Alexander, just stay calm. We'll be right back with a long rope to get you out of there," said one of the uniformed servants.
His uniform was different from the others; while they all wore plain gray tunics, his was adorned with embroidered trim, suggesting he held a higher rank than the rest.
"Everyone, hurry and go back. Let's find a long rope in the manor to fetch Master Alexander from the hole." Said the high-ranking servant while running.
In their mix of haste and panic, they forgot to leave someone behind to watch over their supposed master at the bottom of the hole. Once again, Norris was left alone, giving him a moment to calm his emotions and take in his surroundings.
He noticed that his body felt smaller and lighter. He also wasn't wearing his usual T-shirt and boxers combo, the outfit he typically wore because he lived in a hot area and was too stingy to get the air conditioning fixed. Instead, he was dressed in some kind of tunic. It was torn in some areas and was soaking wet.
He also noticed injuries on some parts of his body. Thankfully, none of them seemed fatal, but they still hurt badly.
He was inspecting his entire body when he reached down to check his nether region—only to jump once more in absolute horror.
"What the hell! My little brother has become even more… 'little.' Did it get chopped off somewhere?" Norris exclaimed.
"And what's with this headache? I don't even have any injuries on my head… so why does it hurt so much? Arghh…" Norris mumbled to himself, clutching his head.
A few minutes later the terrible headache subsided but he suddenly found that he had some memories that were so foreign. It was as if he had another life as a different person.
"Bloody hell, why do I feel like I'm a different person? Am I Alexander? Do I have a split personality? Or did I die and take over someone else's body?" The questions swirled in his mind.
"Is this what those shitty novels call reincarnation or transmigration? Am I dreaming? Did I read so many of those novels that they even slipped into my dreams?" he thought to himself.
"Based on all the novel clichés I've read, I'll probably have to save the world or something equally ridiculous next," he muttered to himself.
"Arghh… damn, with all this pain, I highly doubt this is a dream," he mumbled, gritting his teeth in agony.
He looked around again and noticed that the cave was small. A pool of water sat in the center, with the corpse lying right in the middle of it.
He looked at the corpse—it appeared to be a man, though he couldn't discern the face, as it was already rotting. The body was dressed in a dark robe, and on one of its fingers was a ring.
Norris was about to take a closer look when suddenly—'Baam!'—a thick rope dropped down, striking the corpse and snapping off one of its arms.
"Hey, you fucking moron! Be careful! What if you hit Master Alexander down there? I'll have you hanged if anything happens to him!" the high-ranking servant shouted, cursing at another servant who was now trembling with fear.
Sounds of arguing could be heard from above the hole.
"I'm fine, you idiots didn't manage to send me to hell once again," Norris yelled angrily.
"Master Alexander, thank goodness you're okay! Can you grab onto the rope? We'll try to pull you up," the high-ranking servant yelled.
Norris quickly moved closer to the rope, too scared to stay another second in that place. In his haste, he slipped and fell face-first into the water.
"Of course, I'd fall face-first into this stinky water. With my luck, I should've seen it coming," Norris grumbled to himself, struggling to steady his footing on the slippery rock.
Desperately trying to grab something to steady himself, he accidentally grabbed the detached arm that had flown off when the rope struck the corpse. He held on so fiercely to the finger with the ring that he actually snapped it off.
Upon realizing what had happened, he quickly shook his hand to throw off the broken finger. In his panic, his hand barely opened—but while the finger flew away, the ring stayed clasped tightly in his palm. Too frightened to even notice, he immediately ran forward and grabbed onto the rope.
The rope had a bowline knot at the end, which Norris managed to slip his body into and sit securely. This made pulling him up much easier and safer.
As he was pulled up, he contemplated everything that had happened. Then it hit him—he had been reborn into the body of a young noble named Alexander.
"Yep, mental note: the moment life finally goes smoothly, that's when lightning shows up to screw you over. What a bad day to die."