Volume 3 Episode 3: Changes
"You must seek out the answers by yourself. If you are indeed 'The One', you would either be the key to resolve everything or destroy it all. But I have no choice but to trust you. I hope you shall not fail me."
Lin opened his eyes, with the words of the mysterious entity still ringing in his ears.
'Who was that?'
Lin didn't know who the person was, but he did know that it wasn't someone ordinary. It was only for a mere second, but the tremendous pressure he felt during that fraction of a second told Lin that they were much more powerful than anyone he had ever met.
'Are they related to The Man Upstairs?'
Lin had noticed that the mysterious person had a certain celestial glow that couldn't be described, much like when he had met The Man Upstairs. Perhaps, they were even more powerful than the godly being that sent him here?
Lin thought about it for quite a bit, but before he could come to a conclusion, he realised that something was off.
He looked around, and to his surprise, he wasn't at the chamber with the statues anymore. It looked like he was in a normal high school student's room, for some reason.
'Am I hallucinating or something?'
He quickly got up from the bed he was lying on, and walked to the mirror. As he turned on the lights, a look of disbelief spread across 'his' face. Or, in this particular case, across someone else's face which he did not seem to recognise. Lin stared at the mirror, which seemed to reflect someone else's face and body back to him. He was, in fact, in someone else's body.
'Did I get sent to another world once again?'
Lin scratched his head, trying to figure out what had happened at the hidden chamber for him to be transported to another world for the second time. Did another celestial assign him with a mission once again? He had no idea what to make of this bizarre situation.
'What is this? Why is this happening?'
Lin had to know what the hell was going on. There was no mention of jumping through alternate worlds in the agreement with The Man Upstairs.
'Wait, is he even aware of my situation?'
Lin had many questions, but no one to answer him. Or did he?
Suddenly, Lin's face lit up, and he opened his mouth to speak.
"System!"
The words had barely left his mouth before a transparent window opened in front of him, and a robotic voice answered his call.
[ Yes boss? ]
'Oh thank god, I thought I would've lost the blessings as well.'
Lin sighed in relief, happy at the fact that he didn't lose his blessings with him switching bodies. After calming down, he quickly returned to his usual stone cold expression, and turned to the system screen.
"System, where the hell am I? Whose body am I inhabiting as of right now? Who on earth sent me to this place?"
The system took a few seconds to respond to Lin's questions, showing the loading symbol on the transparent screen in front of him. Perhaps it too had a hard time adjusting to the new world.
'Is the system useless in this world?'
The possibility of the system not working due to the unplanned incident with the celestial being drifted through Lin's mind, but all his worries quickly disappeared once the loading was completed and the system replied like everything was usual.
[ Apologies for the delay. It appears that boss has been trasported to an alternate world using a celestial power that is not part of my archives. The current world seems to not have any sort of connection to magic, quite similar to, although not the same as boss's original world.
The body that you are inhabiting as of right now is that of Peter Han, a seventeen year old boy who seems to have passed away by overdosing a dangerous amount of drugs.
As for who sent you here, I'm afraid I do not have that information right now. I sincerely apologize. ]
"Forget it. I didn't expect you to know about celestial beings anyways. I mean, you don't even have information about The Man Upstairs, so I'd be lying if I said that I expected any answer to that last question."
Lin dismissed the system's apology, and looked at his current body, which was extremely skinny and pale compared to a normal high schooler. The boy was definitely on drugs, and he must've been taking them for a while.
He moved his gaze towards a picture frame at the corner of the desk, and picked it up for closer inspection. The picture appeared to be a family photo, with the boy standing in the middle along with his parents and his sister in front of a luxurious villa.
Lin looked at the room he was standing in and back to the picture. His room was much cheaper than a room of a rich and expensive villa, which meant that they weren't staying at a some sort of resort, but a normal house as of right now.
'Something must have happened within the family which resulted in their current financial situation.'
Lin came to the conclusion that the family must've been wealthy before, and something must've happened which made them lose their money and drop to middle class.
Of course, Lin didn't wish to know more about it, so he didn't ask the system for the information. He wanted to quickly leave this world and back to the previous one to finish his mission. Who knew whether The Man Upstairs was aware of what was happening with him? He had bigger things to worry about, and didn't want to waste my time doing useless things.
"System, do you happen to know what the purpose of the celestial being who sent me to this world?"
Lin certainly wasn't expecting an answer to it. The system had already told him that it didn't even know who sent him here, so how could it possibly know what the unknown entity's purpose of doing it was? But he wanted to make sure whether there was any information that it did know. Fortunately, the system did appear to know something about the entity's purpose.
[ Although I do not have any information regarding the entity that sent you to the alternate dimension, it seems that surprisingly, my archive does indeed have a folder regarding the 'gatekeeper of the tomb', but unfortunately it appears to be an encrypted file that I'm not able to unlock. I do not know the reason for this encryption, but I'm afraid I do not have any more information to give. ]
Lin was disappointed at the revelation about the guarded information that seemed to reside within the system. But it quickly got to him thinking, how did the encrypted folder get inside the system in the first place?
'Did The Man Upstairs create the folder? No, wait a minute, up until now I've been assuming that the system was something that was created by The Man Upstairs, but is it really the case? It seemed reasonable at the time to believe that someone as powerful as The Man Upstairs could be the only one capable of building an artificial intelligence filled with information, but now that there's more than one celestial being, it opens up the possibility that there might be even stronger people.'
Lin thought about the encrypted folder, the system buzzing at the mention of tombs, and the celestial being that sent him to this world.
'Is it possible that the system was not created by The Man Upstairs, but instead only used by him, like a computer that you buy. If so, is it the creator of the system who hid the encrypted folder?'
Countless questions riddled Lin's mind, but he didn't find any answers, which frustrated him. Ever since he crossed over to the magical world, he thought that he would be getting more powerful to stand up on his own against an unfair world and not feeling helpless like before.
But it didn't feel like that at all. He was indeed becoming stronger, but at the same time he still felt the feeling of helplessness grow along with it. He had thought that the stronger he got, the less helpless he will feel, but it appears he was wrong.
The more powerful he got, the more information he was introduced to. And with that knowledge came the information about places, and beings that were countless times more powerful than him, making him feel helpless every single time.
Lin didn't want believe in limits. He didn't believe in peaks. He didn't wish to believe in it, because if he does, then it might become reality, and he definitely didn't want that.
As he looked at the reflection of the body that wasn't even his, he decided. He will get even more powerful. While the people that are above him will eventually peak at some point, he won't. He didn't wish to end his life feeling helpless. No, he wanted more than that. He wanted to be satisfied.
"System, is there a tomb in this world?"
Lin wanted to know if the tombs were any sort of connecting point between the worlds. His mind was telling him to look for the tomb, and remembering how the system almost led him to the secret chamber, which resulted in him being transported to another world, he had a feeling that the tombs and the celestials were somehow connected. Plus, the information hint also enabled him to make near accurate guesses, so he was believing in that as well.
Sure enough, the word tomb made the system go berserk once again, and popped up a window with the location of the tomb written on it. Brusnia.
"Brusnia. Is that a country over here?"
Lin was puzzled at the name, which the system clarified as a different country, not the one they were inhabitants of, which was Ales.
Lin, now clear about his destination, was getting ready to leave. That was, until he realised he had a very big problem…
He had no money.
Lin had forgotten the most crucial part of his plan, which he didn't have to consider all this time because of his wealthy family, which was that he needed money. And now, here he was, stuck in an alternate world, in an unknown body, with no money and no magic.
"Well, this is bad."