God, if You actually exist, please give me some justice.
I had just finished my thesis defense for Civil Engineering. Four years. Four years of living like a zombie, befriended by AutoCAD, multivariable calculus, and structural analyses that made my hair fall out faster than leaves in autumn. I had envisioned a bright future: becoming a contractor, embezzling—I mean, optimizing—project budgets, and retiring filthy rich by forty.
But what did I get? A swerving truck.
Right as I stepped out of the campus gates with my diploma in hand, a heavy-duty truck with a driver who seemed to be high on glue slammed into me.
Darkness.
Then, a cold sensation. Not a refreshing cold, but a bone-chilling one—the kind of cold that makes you realize you aren't wearing pants.
I opened my eyes.
The first sight I saw wasn't the gates of heaven or hell, but a decaying wooden ceiling, covered in spiderwebs and... good grief, is that Pithomyces chartarum mold? A spore concentration that high could kill a man in a week! My perfectionist civil student reflexes kicked in instantly.
"Who's the bastard that built this house without proper cross-ventilation?!" I shouted.
My voice was hoarse. And strange. Too deep.
I jolted upright. Pain hit my head like a sledgehammer. Memories that weren't mine flooded my brain. They weren't memories of reinforced concrete formulas, but memories of a man named Alaric Von Tepez.
That name... it was familiar. Too familiar.
I felt my face. High cheekbones, a sharp nose, pale skin, and jet-black hair. I crawled down from the rickety rocking bed—the structure was completely unstable, dammit—and searched for a mirror.
In the corner of the room stood a dull copper mirror. I stared at my reflection, and my heart nearly stopped.
This face. A handsome face that looked inherently devious, with a smirk that naturally looked like he was plotting mass murder or tax evasion. This was the face of Alaric Von Tepez.
The minor antagonist from the fantasy novel I finished reading last week: "The Saga of the Holy Knight and the Seven Dragons."
Alaric wasn't the final boss. He wasn't even a mid-boss. He was just a piece-of-trash Count from a bankrupt border territory who appeared in Chapter 10 to try and sell his own fiancée to pay off gambling debts, only to be brutally killed by the protagonist, Sir Kaelen, in Chapter 12.
He only lived for two chapters!
"Noooooo! This is impossible! I just graduated!" I screamed hysterically, gripping my black hair. "I haven't even tasted my first salary! I haven't even committed corruption yet! Why do I have to die at the hands of that high-moral holy knight in two chapters?!"
I collapsed onto the creaking wooden floor, sobbing. My fate was more tragic than a bridge collapsing due to frequency resonance.
But wait.
If I am Alaric, then right now is... when?
I scrambled to recall the novel's timeline. Alaric tried to sell his fiancée, Princess Isabella, after the Tepez territory was hit by a severe three-year drought that destroyed all harvests and piled his family's debt as high as a mountain.
A cold sweat poured down. I ran toward the single window in the room and forced it open. The hinge was rusted and snapped as I pushed—yet another material maintenance failure—but I didn't care.
I looked out.
And the view made me want to die for a second time.
The Tepez Territory.
This wasn't a domain. This was an apocalyptic wasteland.
There was only cracked red earth as far as the eye could see; it was so dry it looked like the skin of a dehydrated crocodile. There was no green. Trees stood like horrific black skeletons, without a single leaf. The air felt hot and dusty, suffocating.
In the distance, I saw the Seraphim River. In the novel, this river was described as the lifeblood of the northern region.
Lifeblood my ass!
The river had receded, leaving a murky stream no wider than a gutter in Jakarta during the dry season, flowing sluggishly at the bottom of a deep, rocky ravine. That wasn't a river; it was an insult to hydraulic engineering.
"This... this is impossible," I muttered, my eyes bulging in horror. "How can humans live here? This is a total violation of human habitability standards!"
Alaric's memories fed me his financial condition:
Von Tepez Family Debt: 50,000 Noir Gold Coins.
Remaining Cash: 12 Silver Coins and 5 Copper Coins.
Starving Population: 5,000 Souls.
Time until Debt Collectors execute me: 3 Days.
I slumped beneath the window, my soul feeling like it was escaping through my mouth.
"So, I'm not just going to be killed by the protagonist, but I'm going to die of hunger and thirst before that? God, You truly have a dark sense of humor!"
I lamented my fate for thirty full minutes. But then, something inside me shifted. Perhaps it was the survival instinct of a civil engineering student used to sleeping one hour a day, or maybe the madness inherent in Alaric's body.
The tears on my face dried, replaced by something else.
The original Alaric Von Tepez was a stupid, gambling piece of trash. But me? I'm a Bachelor of Civil Engineering.
I stared at the barren red earth outside. My mind began working at full throttle. The formulas I once hated started swirling in my head like a chaotic but beautiful orchestra.
'Drought? That's just a problem of poor water resource management!'
'Debt? That's just a cash flow issue that needs optimization!'
I stood back up, a slow smile spreading across my face. A smile that, if anyone else were in the room, would make them run in terror while wetting their pants. It was the smile of a demon who had just found a legal loophole in a contract with hell.
"You think you can kill me with drought and debt?" I murmured, my voice low and full of unconscious malice. "You're dead wrong."
I am a contractor at heart. And the first rule of a contractor is: Blow the budget, build something absurd, and charge the cost to someone else.