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During Gawain transmigration, a little problem occurs. After hovering in the sky above the land of a strange world for over hundreds of thousands of years, he realizes that perhaps his transmigration is completed by acquiring a physical body. Never did he imagine that he would have to guide the body out of a coffin after going through great difficulties to obtain it, only to come face-to-face with his two extremely shocked great-great-great-great... great-granddaughters, and also— Be thrust into a world that's the verge of its era’s end.
At a certain second of a certain minute, on a certain day of a certain month and happening in a certain year.
The world below was the same as always. It was clear and windless with a thin layer of clouds, as far as the eye could see.
Gawain contemplated the endless stretch of land quietly, mulling over his life in silence—after all, there was nothing else he could do, anyway.
He could not remember how long he had been like this anymore. He did not even know how he looked like right now. Although he could roughly estimate time based on the alternations of day and night, he could not be bothered to keep track of it after a hundred thousand iterations of it.
Did this even count as transmigration?
To be honest, Gawain was pretty open-minded about this whole "transmigration" thing. It was not that he was so enlightened that he thought of life and death as nothing, but that he had, as the plane he was in came crashing down in his previous life, realized God's truth that life and death were impermanent things.
He had been floating in the sky for only God knows how many hundreds of thousands of years.
Gawain did not know what condition he was in right now. He was unable to change his perspective nor feel his body. In fact, besides having his sight, he had lost all his abilities to sense the external environment. Thus, he did not know if he was a wisp of his remnant soul, or a corpse orbiting in space. But there was one thing he was certain about—he was not drifting up here as a normal human being.
He was sure of this, for he did not think he could retain such clear thoughts and intact memories if he had the mental structure of a human consciousness while he floated adrift in the sky after hundreds of thousands of years. And he could even spare the effort to ponder about the meaning of life.
A normal person would have succumbed to insanity a long time ago.
Not him, though. And not only that, but his memory was outstanding.
The sands of time, even as more than hundreds of thousands of years had passed, had not eroded Gawain's memories at all. Even now, he could distinctly remember the things that had happened to him in his last moments of life—the piercing screams, the alarms, the violently shaking plane, the rolling world outside the porthole, his neighbor failing to put on their oxygen mask, and the deafening sound the plane made as it disintegrated in mid air.
These iMages were crystal clear, as though the event had only happened the day before. He could also remember, with clarity, how stunned he had felt when he reopened his eyes after that thundering noise, and found himself adrift and orbiting this strange planet.
From the moment he reopened his eyes, he knew that the continents and oceans he was seeing were not of planet Earth. Consequently, he used a little time to understand and accept the reality that he was in a foreign world now, and used a longer bit of time to figure out how he could stop floating.
It was with much regret that he could not succeed on the second objective.
He found that he was "stuck", or rather, that his current form allowed him no mobility at all. He had become a being that was locked in, and could only look down at the world from a "fixed angle". Sure, he could observe the planet, but that was the only thing he could do. Although he could even inspect a restricted area of land below—this land mass seemed anomalous—and see the surrounding ocean, his field of vision did not allow him to see anything wider than that.
It was impossible for him to look to the left or right, so he could not determine if there were any other landforms in that ocean. It was also for that same reason why he had not been able to catch a glimpse of the stars in this world till this day.
He was not even certain if this world had other celestial bodies—perhaps if he turned his head, he would be able to see a white-bearded god holding up a light that shone on all matter, d*ammit.
D*mn, he really wanted to flip on his back…
Even if flipping over meant that he would forever only see a white-bearded being that held a light that shone on everything.
However, everything was just a wild wish. Changing his viewing angle of the world was out of the question.
Despite that, Gawain had found that he could work with this perspective, after putting in effort for a long, long time. Even though he could not look left or right, he could zoom in or out of his field of vision, or rather, pull and push his angle of view.
After making this discovery, he had been euphoric for a prolonged period of time, and then tried out various zooming levels on his sight. Even though he was not able to see anything outside of that circle of ocean at the maximum he could zoom out, he could at least choose to zoom in on whatever he wanted to see on that piece of land.
It was lush and vibrant, obviously teeming with life.
Well, it would be nice if he could scrutinize the daily lives of these pseudo-Earth people. Even though he could only float up here, it would probably take away some of his boredom if he could observe the strange people's local culture and customs.
He had then zoomed in as close as he could, until he could see all the grasses and trees on the land clearly.
On that day, he had despaired as he found that none of the mammals on the planet…
Had learned how to walk on their feet yet…
But it was alright. Gawain had plenty of patience. He might have had a limit to his patience while he had still been human, but he discovered that he had enormous patience after transmigrating and ending up with this perspective.
He waited until that bunch of monkeys learned how to walk upright.
And then, after many, many years, he personally witnessed the discovery of fire by the first human.
It had been sparked from flint.
Fire catalyzed many changes thereafter.
Gawain had no clue on what happened, but after the ignition of the first fire, he felt everything "speed up". Or rather, his perception of the passage of time became muddled as the events on the land bloomed rapidly, as though he was watching a video that was being fast-forwarded a zillion times. He witnessed the humanoids swiftly building their first primitive clans, which then transformed into an early form of a city-state. He observed as the humanoid race mastered incredible powers and used what seemed like magic to expand their territory. Yet, before he could see what was happening clearly, these early kingdoms fell into ruins one after the other, and the surviving humanoids rapidly built new cities on the foundations of their ancestors…
The humans began to contend for living space with the other races on the land. Various kingdoms and beliefs came and went quickly as they warred with one another while crying out the names of their gods.
The process accelerated, and Gawain gradually began to be unable to process the sea of information that was bombarding him. He saw dragon-like creatures burst into his field of vision suddenly, but did not know if these "dragons" evolved from land or water.
He saw armies with their swords held high and the flames of war that almost destroyed the entire continent, but new civilizations were reborn in just the blink of an eye.
It was only after another lengthy period of time before he realized that the world had never sped up, but that he had "jumped over" a tremendous amount of information.
His "observations" became intermittent glimpses, changing from constant surveillance to glancing down every few years or even decades. When he connected these disparate iMages together, it gave him the impression of the world accelerating.
He had not realized this before because his thoughts were silent when he had taken a break from his observations.
Now that he restarted his surveillance, his thoughts began to flow seamlessly again.
Thus, he could not have noticed anything wrong with himself.
Impact incoming.
These words flashed across Gawain's mind like lightning, but the idea of this thought probably took a few centuries to hit him.
He could see the transformation of the land below clearly. At the same time when these words appeared in his mind, another kingdom had fallen from the heights of prosperity to utter ruin again.
Gawain had no idea about what was going on, but he knew this situation was definitely not normal. From the iMages that only appeared before him every few years and then rapidly swept past his vision, he realized that his thoughts were on the verge of disappearing.
His thoughts barely took up one second for every century that had passed.
The "breaks" in his thoughts were lengthening too.
He noticed that the changes on the land were happening in an unimaginably queer way, and the rapidly evolving "slides" he skimmed over were now almost indecipherable.
At the rate this was going, or maybe after a certain moment had passed, the consciousness named "Gawain" might disintegrate in this strange place completely, and he would slumber in that moment forever, with no chance of revival.
It had been ages since Gawain felt a sense of urgency. He began to think rigorously for a solution to break free from this situation. If he had a brain, his thoughts would be crazily overwhelming it, as countless thoughts spewed out. However, the rapidly changing "slideshow" on the land showed him that his mind had slowed down to one frame per one thousand years.
Of course, putting it this way seemed like an exaggeration, but his actual situation was not any better than before.
Break free from this situation. Break free from this. Break free. Break free….
No matter the means or method, he had to break out of this, even if he had to return to that crashing plane. He could not let himself die in such a strange place in such an inexplicable way!
Gawain felt his thoughts becoming muddled and his mind becoming foggy. His once "seamless" train of thoughts were now breaking up. He thought with all his might angrily, but as a transmigrated being who only had a fixed bird's eye view, his levels of fury had no impact on his situation.
However, just as he felt as though his thoughts were going to either disintegrate or be silenced into static forever, a voice intoned from an unknown place.
"Power source daMaged. Mainframe restart failed.
Initiating escape sequence."
In the next moment, his fixed perspective disappeared—darkness now engulfed Gawain's vision.
But his train of thoughts did not stop.
It was the first time in an eternity that he was still able to think when he "closed his eyes".
He did not know how long he had remained in the darkness. He felt as though he was rolling as he tumbled down into a cold and narrow space. Strange feelings had returned to his limbs, making his mind confused. And in his state of confusion, he vaguely registered a young woman's faint voice that sounded rather flustered.
"Don't… Don't kill me yet! Your ancestor rattling in his coffin is a more pressing matter! The lid is about to blow!"
