Author note: In case you don't read the author thoughts below, I wanna say that I will try to publish a chapter every Saturday and at most it will be 5 chapters those days. Now enjoy the story.
Harold Cight's life was quiet.
The hum of fluorescent lights.
The soft ding of the gas station door as another customer came and went.
The smell of burnt coffee that had been sitting in the pot for far too long.
These were the constants of his life, monotony, repetition, routine.
And Harold liked it that way.
He didn't ask for much—just a place to sleep, something to eat, and stories to keep him company.
His small, one-bedroom apartment had nothing but the essentials: a creaky twin bed, a thrift-store couch, a cheap foldable table, and a beat-up laptop that had long since given up trying to update itself.
It was enough.
For Harold, who spent his nights binging web novels and light novels, imagining worlds of monsters, heroes, and systems—it was perfect.
Reality had never offered him adventure, but fiction always delivered.
That night had been no different.
He came home from his shift, reheated leftover noodles, and curled up under a thin blanket, reading until his eyes began to droop.
Another story unfinished, another peaceful day behind him.
Then came the heat.
It was subtle at first, like an oddly warm dream.
But the warmth grew—too hot, too bright.
When Harold's eyes shot open, the world around him was orange and screaming. Flames danced across the ceiling.
Smoke thickened in the air like ink spilled in water.
Coughing, he stumbled out of bed, disoriented.
His door was a wall of fire.
He turned, searching for another exit, but the windows were already cracked with heat, flames licking at their edges.
Panic clawed at his chest.
He grabbed a towel, soaked it in the bathroom sink—barely functional under the dying groan of the pipes—and wrapped it around his mouth.
The air was thick and biting.
Each breath was pain.
He made it halfway across the room when the ceiling groaned—a sound he would remember for the rest of his short life.
A split-second later, a beam crashed down, slamming into his back.
The world tilted, then spun, then faded.
He didn't feel the explosion
The next moment his eyes shot open and he found himself in what seemed to be some sort of shallow ditch or hole surrounded by trees and it was raining.
'Where am I? The last thing I remember is being hit by that roof beam and then everything went black.'
He tries to stand up but throbbing and piercing pains are felt in various places on his body and one of his arms is even broken as well as a couple ribs it feels like.
Harold has always been cool headed and calm even under pressure, so he bites back panic, keeping his breathing slow while assessing his injuries as best he can in the dim cloudy morning light.
He wonders how he got here and where here is again and tries to stand up once more and assess his surroundings, this time putting a little pressure on his chest so it's easier to stand.
He successfully stands and manages to step out of the ditch he was lying in but when he notices something in a rain puddle he steps back and almost falls back in.
The thing that startled him was his own reflection…
'That's not me, who is this, who am I?'
A young teenager with jet black hair stared back at him in the reflection, with bruises and marks all over his body.
He appeared to be wearing a ripped blue tee shirt that seemed more like a rag, and tattered grey pants.
His star like yellow eyes glared back at himself through the puddle,
A blinding pain tore through his skull, sharp and sudden like a blade splitting thought from thought.
Harold staggered, gasping, as memories not his own flooded in—unfamiliar images, sensations, and fragments of emotion.
They didn't belong to him, yet they clung to the body he now inhabited like dried blood on skin.
Names, faces, voices—ghosts of another life—pressed against his mind until one name rose above the noise:
Cleve Coal.
The rain fell in cold sheets, running down his cheeks as if the world itself wept for the boy whose life he'd stepped into.
Sixteen years old.
Fragile.
Forgotten.
Cleve had been born without lineage—no noble blood coursed through his veins.
No magical affinity stirred in his soul.
He lacked even the bare competence for swordsmanship or martial arts.
While others around him discovered sparks of greatness in academies or inherited legacies, Cleve remained painfully… ordinary.
It was why they looked down on him.
Why they laughed.
Why Gerald Kolm, the arrogant son of a wealthy house, had made him a favorite target.
And when Cleve, in a moment of quiet defiance, dared to stand against that cruelty—he paid the price.
His family was slaughtered in cold blood.
And Cleve himself…
Dragged into the woods, far from help, far from mercy…
Where fists and boots made sure he would never stand again.
Until now.
Harold, or rather now Cleve took a moment to process all that has happened.
It seems he has been reincarnated as this boy or at least transferred into his body.
The biggest surprise to him wasn't that though, it was the fact that this is a whole different world all together, a whole new universe, and one with swords and magic!
This was turning out to be like those web novels, light novels, and manga he read all the time.
Instead of scared out of his mind, he was excited!
Anyone could look at him and see he was like a kid in a candy shop.
He was already starting to make plans on how he would somehow avenge the original Cleve and his family for him and how he would become the strongest just like in a novel, but then reality struck him.
He remembered he had no lineage nor did he have any magic or any skills whatsoever to help him do the fantasy novel things he wanted to do!
Just then a purple screen appeared in front of him.
[Host synced successfully]
[Beast system initializing]