"You can see me?"
An eerie voice echoed through the air.
Instantly, a bone-chilling coldness engulfed Rosen's entire body, as if he'd been plunged into an ice vault.
Though all he could hear was this disjointed, rasping sound—like a broken bellows wheezing in agony—Rosen knew, without a doubt, that death was rapidly closing in on him.
Two seconds later, a grotesquely twisted humanoid figure emerged from the distant street and charged straight toward him—a creature straight out of the horror movie Grave Encounters.
At the sight of it, Rosen's scalp prickled, cold sweat drenched his back, and his entire being went numb.
His life flashed before his eyes like a carousel of memories.
Rosen—a transmigrator from the Heavenly Dynasty.
Male. Straight. Hated nothing more than overloaded semi-trucks.
He remembered it clearly: right before his transmigration, he'd been struck and sent flying into this other world by a triple-overloaded, speeding, oversized semi-trailer.
After arriving here, his body had regressed to childhood. With his adult memories intact, he'd successfully lived through sixteen years in this new life.
At first, he'd had no time to fantasize about becoming some overpowered protagonist like Long Aotian or Ye Liangchen. After all, aside from his youthful body, he possessed none of the typical "golden fingers" every transmigrator from the Heavenly Dynasty was supposed to get.
During his early years in the orphanage, he'd even spent three whole years testing every possible method to trigger his "Schrödinger's Cheat Ability."
All that effort only earned him a reputation as "that kid whose brain's a bit off." He never found anything useful—nothing at all.
Eventually, he gave up on fantasies and resolved to simply live this second chance at life well. He decided to pursue a practical path: make money in this new world.
Thanks to his adult memories and experience, things went relatively smoothly.
By the time he entered high school, his goal was clear: study hard, get into the University of Tokyo, and secure a respectable job—maybe as a teacher or lawyer—to live out a quiet, stable life.
Of course, getting married and having kids was part of the plan too.
After all, even without a cheat ability, he knew for certain that famous names like Kasumigaoka Megumi, Sakurajima Mai, Kato Megumi, Kitagawa Haimu, and others were all attending the very same high school as him.
Just as he'd set his first "romance route" target on Kato Megumi—the "Ordinary Girl" from Saekano—and prepared to leverage his foreknowledge of the plot to make his move…
…he saw something different.
Though Rosen had long stopped obsessing over the idea of a "golden finger," he'd still occasionally wonder, while alone on his balcony after school, whether he'd missed some hidden trigger.
Then, as he glanced toward the roadside—about to grab a quick cup of instant noodles for dinner—his peripheral vision caught something unusual.
A pitch-black, swirling silhouette, barely discernible as a decaying humanoid form.
Its rotting flesh and grotesquely exaggerated features were the kind that would make even the bravest person shudder—and send anyone with a weak heart screaming in terror.
Rosen initially assumed it was just a prop from some horror film set.
But the moment he looked at it a second too long, the "prop" turned toward him, arms dangling limply, and charged forward like a mindless titan.
Its putrid mouth opened and closed, spewing words Rosen could actually understand.
At that sight, Rosen felt like a mouthful of old blood was stuck in his throat—he nearly choked to death on sheer shock.
Who the hell could've predicted this?!
He'd thought this was just an ordinary slice-of-life world. But just as he'd accepted his mundane fate, reality slapped him with the cruelest joke imaginable.
It's over.
Everything's ruined.
As the monster closed to within three meters, Rosen felt surprisingly little fear—only profound despair.
This world really does have supernatural horrors. He'd just been an ordinary guy who'd never noticed them before.
The distance was now two meters.
At this distance, Rosen could clearly see every grotesque detail: the textures of its decayed skin, exposed bones, and raw, glistening flesh.
One meter.
He could practically smell the stench of rot and blood wafting from its gaping maw.
A shadow loomed over his heart.
He felt like he was about to snap.
"What the hell is this thing?!"
"How did things get so messed up so fast?!"
"Even if you're gonna go berserk, at least follow the damn script! Who just rushes in for a point-blank finisher right off the bat?!"
This made absolutely no sense!
Paralyzed by shock, Rosen stood frozen—though the entire sequence had lasted mere seconds.
The creature's jaws, now less than half a meter away, kept widening—until they stretched large enough to swallow an adult whole.
Rosen's head was already halfway inside its maw.
And then—
the impossible happened.
The monster's jaw snapped shut… and froze mid-motion.
The fetid wind swirling around it halted abruptly.
Time itself seemed to stop.
At the very threshold between life and death, something within Rosen finally shattered—some long-sealed barrier breaking open.
The power that had eluded him for sixteen years finally awakened from within.
And at last, the voice he'd longed to hear finally spoke:
[Ding~~~]
[Tree of Life successfully bound.]
"Huh… what the—?"