Chapter 1
Jerk!
At the hour when the sky outside the window was beginning to grow faintly light, a figure suddenly sat up in bed.
Then, as if he had seen something that wasn't there, he opened his eyes wide as lanterns and looked around.
“W-What? Where am I?”
The man wore an expression of utter bewilderment as he took in the unfamiliar room.
As he did, he ruminated on his final memory.
The sensation and pain of thinking, This is how I die, had been vivid, yet strangely, his body was perfectly fine.
If anything, he felt mentally clearer and more refreshed than ever.
“I must have died. Ah, or maybe I didn’t? Is this a dream?”
Smack!
Thinking it might be a lucid dream, the man struck both cheeks hard with his hands.
He did so to confirm whether this was a dream.
But the vivid pain in his cheeks made him realize that this was not a dream.
“What the……”
The man stared blankly as the stinging continued.
He was wondering what in the world was happening.
Yet the pain in both cheeks and the soft chirping of birds outside the window told him this was reality.
But then his head began to throb.
“Ugh!”
Along with a stabbing pain, countless memories flashed through the man's mind like scenes in a revolving lantern.
Memories of the clothes he was wearing and of the bed he had been lying in came rushing into his mind.
“That’s impossible……”
Though it wasn't frequent, this sort of thing happened once every few years even on Earth, so he wasn't surprised.
What surprised him was something else.
He could tell that this was not Earth, and that the body's original owner looked remarkably similar to him.
So he got out of bed and approached a small mirror hanging on one side of the wall.
“Just how did this happen? Even if dimensional travel is possible, why me?”
The man wore a dumbfounded expression.
No matter how he thought about it, the situation was bewildering.
He had been born with nothing to his name, but not once in his life had he wished to travel between dimensions.
He was merely a reader of web novels.
“Why is this happening to me? I just wanted to die quietly.”
Looking down at a body nearly ninety percent identical to his appearance on Earth, the man muttered.
The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
And he wanted to ask someone.
Why in the world was this happening to him?
But no matter how much he muttered to himself or let out hollow laughs, nothing changed.
All that happened was that dawn drew closer.
“This is way too out of the blue. There’s supposed to be something called causality.”
In the end, unable to bear it any longer, the man vigorously scratched his head.
Loose strands of hair tumbled harmlessly to the floor.
At the same time, memories began surfacing one by one.
They were the original owner's memories.
“His name is Jade. He’s twenty-one, and his occupation is hunter.”
The more he dwelled on the memories surfacing, the more his temples began to ache, but he was accustomed to pain of this level.
Thus, the man—or rather, the man now named Jade—continued calling up memories.
“And he’s an illegitimate son of Baron Leon’s household.”
Confirming the memory buried deepest of all, Jade's face hardened.
Those memories told him that his current situation was far from favorable.
At the same time, he was able to clearly understand his present circumstances.
“I’ll have to leave.”
He had lived quietly until now, but there was no guarantee he could continue doing so.
Since the House of Baron Leon had had few children for generations, once the heir learned of his existence, he would surely find a way to kill him.
Given the nature of nobles, he would not want to leave even the slightest room for trouble.
Things might have been somewhat different if there had been another male sibling, but unfortunately, he had no other siblings.
“Of all the lousy bodies, why did I have to be given this one? There must’ve been plenty of other ordinary bodies.”
Jade grumbled.
Being dragged to another world without even knowing why was irritating enough, but having a life as disposable as a fly's was even more infuriating.
But now was no time to be irritated.
The original owner of the body had apparently been preparing to leave as well, for a backpack was ready in one corner of the room.
“I suppose I should be glad there’s at least somewhere to run. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s a place where I can survive comfortably.”
He searched every nook and cranny of the room and gathered all the food.
He also stuffed every item that seemed necessary into the bag and his pockets.
Though he had the memories, everything was unfamiliar to him.
So Jade took everything he could carry and slung the backpack over his shoulders.
“Hup!”
Perhaps because he was a hunter, his body was fairly well-trained, but the backpack was still heavy.
Heavy enough to make him stagger the moment he put it on.
But he barely regained his balance and strode toward the door.
Swish. Rustle.
Jade, struggling to move his feet under the weight he still could not get used to, scratched his cheek.
His cheek had been itchy because of the gently swaying breeze.
But this time, the back of his hand itched.
It felt as if foxtail grass were rubbing against the back of his hand, and Jade turned his head with a frown—then was startled.
“What?”
Whoosh! Whish!
Jade, who had turned his head thinking it was a flying insect, opened his eyes wide.
He had been startled to see something like a small, translucent fairy hovering in midair and smiling at him.
But the fact that their eyes had met seemed to delight it more than Jade had been startled; the fairy, with a pale green body, excitedly darted around him.
“A fairy? No, a spirit? It’s a fantasy world, so spirits wouldn’t be strange, but why all of a sudden?”
Jade blinked at the sight of the spirit circling around him with a bright smile.
He wondered what kind of situation this was supposed to be.