Chapter 1 – A New Beginning
Rusty iron bars, growing thick moss and a chiseled stone floor.
This place was unfamiliar to him, as it was not the usual, metallic, titanium white ceiling he saw every morning.
He couldn’t feel his heart beating, he wasn’t breathing… Despite suddenly becoming conscious of his breathing, he wasn’t manually breathing either.
From what he could observe, his body was ghastly pale, a searing cold spread all throughout his entire body, cold enough to remind him of the cruel and vicious winters he passed while he was on a research expedition on Earth.
For him, these were certainly bad signs that eventually led to a single conclusion: that he had already died.
Was he really dead? If that was the case, then he wouldn’t, realistically, be thinking right now.
‘…’
There was nothing else he could do but accept that, while this body was most definitely dead already, he could still think. From this fact, he can tell that this is a foreign world with some unscientific values.
He appeared to be inside of a prison cell. Though he was virtually immobile, he could see beyond the place he was in.
A dank and gloomy dungeon, seemingly abandoned. The only light source he could see was a torch just outside of his cell. It was the only light-source in this room. He questioned himself if anyone would be able to live in such unhygienic conditions.
A sharp pain assaulted his head, threatening to crack his skull and kill him from inside. He tried to reflexively put his hands on his head, but he could not move them. When the sharp pain he realized what had happened.
New memories were added to the body, completely bewildering him. He felt two new presences besides his’ inside of this shortly-deceased body.
Confusion, chaos and contradiction.
A genius demonic sorcerer and a hardworking immortal hero… He felt like he died thrice.
Two souls of different origins, different worlds, different times, with different lives forcefully brought together. How? Why?
A term came to his mind. One he heard in his later years. It was becoming a big problem those days…
Split personality.
Was it like this? Did the afflicted feel like this, or was this something completely different?
He didn’t know if it was, and even if it was like this, it didn’t matter to him. Getting out of this situation and leaving this place were his number one priority at the moment.
Though he felt impatient, he knew he needed the other souls’ knowledge and experiences to survive. Though “surviving” might not be the correct term, considering the fact that this body seems to have already been deceased for some time, despite seeming
Not knowing if it would work or not, he tried communicating with the two distinct souls, trying to send his intentions towards them.
“Hey!”
No response.
He repeated himself. This time, though, he received a weak response. Vibrating for a moment, they appeared to have ‘woken up’, but were still unable to communicate with him. That’s what it seemed to him, at least.
But now is not the time to think about the other souls! He had to think of a way to get this dead body moving!
He thought for a moment.
Since communicating with them failed, maybe he could learn something if he borrowed the other soul’s memories he could think of a way to get out of here? He began searching through the memories he received while contemplating the situation.
Maybe when souls get inside of bodies, their memories are transferred to the brain? Could that explain why he can ‘see’ their memories? And, if he can do that, can they do it too? He felt his soul shivering at the thought. Thinking like this was worse than when he thought of ending his life.
He shook those thoughts away.
He already has a new life, or, more appropriately, un-life; surely he can make things different now.
Even if they could see his memories, what would they find interesting in them anyways? He was just a normal guy anyways. Interesting things rarely happened in his life and, even if they happened, the most they would be is just him finding a coin on the ground. People tended not to use physical currency anymore, so seeing a coin on the ground would truly be an extraordinary event on anyone’s life. Not that it mattered, since it still was a single coin after all. He stopped his train of thoughts there.
He was actually impressed to see that the sorcerer’s insights and ideas were really close to his world’s scientific geniuses of the past. Comparing his world’s technology with the sorcerer’s, it had similar advances, just in different fields at different times. Had his world been a magical world focused on sorcery, it would have surely advanced the same way. That world had fascinating architecture and fashion that resembled the start of Contemporary History, too!
Of course, the memories from the cultivator were just as interesting. The world was similar to ancient mainland China. The ‘ancient but new’ feeling of the buildings was a novelty for him, while the common-folk that talked with archaic accents, haggling for prices in the marketplace, were an extremely curious sight.
Martial arts competitions and the like were normal, with some allowing the death of its contestants. This, of course, only applied to outsiders.
The memories were mostly composed of the cultivator’s training, their killing of magical beasts for their cores, or participating in these competitions to acquire earth-grade medicinal herbs for their master. The only purpose for grabbing the herbs for their master was, obviously, to utilize the refined pills in their own cultivation.
However, despite the memories of the sorcerer and the cultivator being really interesting, they both had their bad moments…
Memories began to play inside his head…