Alex died in a forgotten corner of the old academy building and his body sat up.
The concrete floor of the storage room pressed cold against his palms.
Dried blood marred his shirt and the side of his face, but the pain was already gone.
He lifted his left hand and watched its split knuckle close by itself, the skin smoothing over as if nothing had happened.
"Ugh!" A groan escaped his lips as a cracked rib popped back into place with a dull click. He touched his jaw; the swelling shrank under his fingers.
"What is going on? Where the hell am I?" he muttered. The voice came out lower and rougher than the one he had always known.
He was alone, only accompanied by the darkness of this decade-old corner of the academy.
Metal shelves lined the walls, stacked with broken desks and old sports equipment. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, throwing weak yellow light across the floor where he had been lying. The door at the far end stayed shut.
"That last thing I remember is entering the hotel to meet her…" He whispered, his breathing sped up.
This was not his body: it was younger than he was, the arms were thinner, the skin paler and instead of his black office suit he was wearing a black tactical vest, black pants and sturdy black boots.
He scrambled to his feet, staggered, and caught himself on a shelf. A stranger's face stared back at him from the dusty glass of a trophy case — short black hair, sharp cheekbones, and wide, alarmed yellow eyes.
"Is that me?"
He paced the narrow space between shelves, boots scraping over grit and blood.
His hands shook. He pressed them against his chest, felt his heart pounding way fast it should in a chest that felt too narrow.
He kept moving until his heart settled just enough for him to consider his current situation.
He took a deep breath and sat down on a wooden crate.
"Did I transmigrate?" He asked himself with closed eyes. It sounded absurd but that was the only conclusion he could make.
Just as he said that, memories flooded his mind.
He was in the body of Alex, a first-year student at Ironheart Academy. Orphan at a young age, surviving on the governmental relief fund which would stop the next month.
And the way his own cousin and her parents treated him, he had long since become the person everyone loved to bully.
A few hours ago, Marcus and his lackeys had dragged him here after class and beaten him savagely, leaving the body cold on this floor.
Alex's eyes shot open, his hand flew to his mouth. "How is this even possible?!"
In his past life, most of his nights were used to read webnovels and in all of them one was his absolute top. It was his peak. His GOAT.
Evil Protagonist's Viewpoint.
He was so obsessed with it that he binged the entire story in just three nights, barely sleeping until he caught up to the latest updates which never came because apparently the author felt like it wasn't doing good enough.
He sighed and focused on the matters at hand.
In the novel, after getting beaten to near death by Marcus, the original Alex had survived by connecting to the Origin Dominion — an entity which governed the world.
He was pulled out of death because it had healed him on the spot.
That was how the protagonist had survived.
But for god knows how the original Alex had actually died and he had woken up inside his corpse, and somehow the body was healing itself right now.
'Is this the healing effect of transmigration everyone goes through?' he thought and pondered over his current situation.
Tomorrow — technically in minutes — was the first of the month.
At 12:01, the system would link every 18-year-old on the planet to Origin Dominion.
A system window would appear for each of them, and some would awaken a talent while most would just be able to use the mystical energy upon which the world functioned now — Mana.
On the first day of every month, every player would be pulled into Zyandra — an enormous game-like world filled with ruins, forests, dungeons, various civilizations, and monsters.
The goal inside was simple: survive and grow stronger. That place was full of dangers and fortunes, some people returned rich, others did not return at all.
The academies all around the world, which was ten times bigger than earth, taught combat basics and strategy.
Alex already knew that he would awaken a broken talent:
SSS-Rank – Hall of Great Evils.
It had allowed the original Alex to enter a separate dimension where history's worst villains waited — warlords, tyrants, and killers who had once wiped out millions.
Inside the hall they were bound to the Hall Master and could not refuse his commands. He would be able to enter that place at will, question them, learn from them, and summon them when needed.
A faint smile crossed his lips.
He would be lying if he said that he wasn't excited and scared.
His previous life was boring and something he couldn't do much to change — He had studied diligently, made good connections, but because of his cursed luck he had witnessed a politician's son who was also one of his connections murder someone out of spite.
His politician father had made sure to keep him in check and under the pretext of helping, he had forced him into a job in his own backed company.
He let out a sigh and looked around; the storage room looked the same, but most of the fear was gone.
He stood up, brushed dust from his torn uniform, and mumbled, "I am already healed…"
Alex had never thrown a punch in his past life.
He was just an ordinary guy who sat behind a desk and read stories and now he was inside the body of the person who was named The Monarch In Gray, standing at the edge of a brutal world full of monsters and quests he knew nothing about except from words he had read to forget about his own boring existence.
He clenched his fists and mumbled, "I need to find him before the awakening."
Alex crossed the room, pushed the door open, and stepped into the empty hallway. The lights overhead buzzed.
Farther on the wall, a clock showed 11:54 p.m.
He only had seven minutes.