Pain. White-hot and jagged, erupting from my left shoulder. It wasn't the dull ache of too many hours at a desk, or the sharp sting of a papercut. This was deep, bone-deep, tearing, and utterly wrong. My gasp sucked in air thick with the stench of rot and damp stone.
Where...?
My vision swam, blurred shapes resolving into cracked cobblestones inches from my face. Cold seeped through thin, coarse fabric – rough trousers, a tunic that felt like burlap. Not my hoodie. Not my apartment floor. Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the pain fog. I tried to push myself up. Agony lanced through my shoulder again, forcing a choked groan. My right hand flew to the source, fingers encountering sticky warmth soaking through the rough cloth. Blood. A lot of it.
Memories slammed into me, disjointed and terrifying. The screech of tires. Shattering glass. The world tilting violently. Then... darkness. And now... this.
Not my body. Not my time.
The sounds filtering in confirmed it. Not city traffic, but the distant, ominous thunder of artillery. A rhythmic, mechanical drone high above – planes. The sharp, sporadic crack of gunfire, closer than the booms. Shouts, muffled but urgent, in languages I barely recognized. The air vibrated with a tension I'd only ever felt in history documentaries. War. Real, raw, and terrifyingly close.
1940. World War II. And I'm... a peasant? Shot?
Despair threatened to swallow me whole. Reincarnated into hell. Injured. Alone. No resources, no knowledge of this specific place, no allies. Just pain, fear, and the crushing weight of impending global catastrophe. How long before the front lines swept over this town? Before a patrol found a bleeding nobody in an alley and finished the job?
I slumped back against the cold, rough brick wall of a building, gasping. The trash can beside me overflowed, adding its sour tang to the air. A fitting throne for a king of nothing. Think, Kevin! Think! But the pain was a relentless drumbeat, and the sheer scale of the problem – survival in this, right now – was paralyzing. I needed a plan. Shelter. Medical attention. Food. Escape. But every avenue seemed blocked by my ignorance and this damned wound.
I'm not smart enough for this. The thought was brutally honest. I was just an average guy from the 21st century. History buff? Casual. Survival skills? Theoretical, at best. Outthinking Nazis and surviving bullets? Hopeless.
Then, like a switch flipping in the core of my being, something hummed to life. It wasn't a sound, more a vibration, a sudden awareness of an internal... interface? A presence. The word surfaced from the fragmented memories of the previous owner of this body, or perhaps from the void between lives: Goldfinger.
It wasn't a finger, and it wasn't gold. It was a system, an intrinsic ability, part of the reincarnation package. And its nature unfolded in my mind with crystalline clarity: The Three Ultimate Spirits Technique.
The concept was staggering. It allowed me to create three idealistic spirits, bound solely to me. Invisible, intangible to all unless I permitted otherwise. And the key? Each spirit would utilize 100% of its potential from the moment of creation. No training, no growth period. Pure, focused, ideal expression of its purpose.
Hope, fragile but fierce, sparked through the pain and despair. This. This was my lifeline. My cheat. But what to create first? My immediate threats were physical: the wound, exposure, enemy soldiers. But trying to fight or run in this state was suicide. My real lack was knowledge. Where was I exactly? What was happening locally? Where was safe? How could I leverage this world? I needed intel. I needed a plan. I needed... a mind.
The Spirit of Mind. The concept crystallized instantly. Its potential: to utilize 100% of my mind's capabilities. Not a separate intelligence, but the absolute, idealistic optimization of my own cognitive potential. Reasoning, analysis, memory access, learning speed, calculation – everything my biological brain could do, pushed to its theoretical, perfect limit. An externalized, hyper-focused version of my own intellect.
The alley seemed to grow quieter, the distant booms fading as I focused inward. The Goldfinger interface pulsed. Creating a spirit wasn't a physical act; it was an act of profound will, visualization, and a slight, unsettling drain on something vital – maybe my own spirit energy, maybe my stamina. I concentrated, pouring my desperate need for knowledge, for strategy, for survival into the form.
Shape it. Define it. Spirit of Mind. Utilize 100%. Idealized. Mine.
The drain intensified. Sweat beaded on my forehead, mingling with the grime. My shoulder throbbed in protest at the tension. One minute stretched into five, then ten. The sounds of war felt like they were closing in. Hurry. Hurry!
And then, it was done. The drain ceased, replaced by a strange, silent presence beside me.
I opened my eyes, blinking against the gloom.
Floating about a foot off the filthy cobblestones, cross-legged in mid-air, was... well, me. But not me. It was a translucent, shimmering figure, like heat haze given form. It had my face, but refined, sharper, devoid of pain or fear. Its body was small, almost childlike, but its head... its head was disproportionately large, a bulbous dome radiating an intense, quiet luminescence. Wisps of pale light, like neural pathways, flickered faintly within its form. It regarded me with eyes that held the depth and calm of a supercomputer. There was no emotion, only pure, focused potential.
"Master," its voice echoed directly in my skull, calm and utterly devoid of inflection. "Directive?"
A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat, choked off by a wince of pain. It worked. It actually worked. I had just severed a piece of my own mind and turned it into a floating, giant-headed ghost-me. The absurdity warred with the profound relief.
I gestured weakly, my voice a raspy whisper. "See that?" I nodded towards the end of the alley, where the imposing stone edifice of a massive library loomed, its windows dark but promising sanctuary of a different kind. "Library. Knowledge. Everything inside. Maps, history, local records, newspapers... anything that tells us where we are, what's happening, and how the hell I get out of this alive. Absorb it. Analyze it. Find us a path. Fast."
The Spirit of Mind didn't nod. It simply turned its luminous gaze towards the library, its oversized head seeming to pulse slightly brighter. "Acknowledged. Commencing acquisition and analysis."
Without another sound, it drifted forward, silent as a thought, passing effortlessly through the solid brick wall of the alley and vanishing into the library's shadowed depths.
Alone again, slumped by the stinking trash can, the cold reality rushed back in. The throbbing agony in my shoulder. The distant, ever-present rumble of war. The crushing vulnerability. I had sent my mind into the library, but my bleeding, helpless body remained here, exposed in the gathering gloom.
I had taken the first, desperate step. Now, I just had to survive long enough for my giant-headed spirit self to find an answer. The clock was ticking, measured in the booms of artillery and the sluggish seep of blood through my fingers.
(Chapter End)