Chapter 1: First Day in an Old World

An uncomfortable sensation welled up in the pit of his stomach. Flies buzzed all around his body. Something sticky and disgusting clung to his skin. He felt smothered. Drowning, suffocating, he could hardly breathe. Images of maggots and rotting oranges floated through his head.

Theodore Harp woke up with a start.

Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. The vibrant blue of the sky and the lush green of the forest went completely unnoticed, as he clamped a hand over his mouth and resisted the urge to gag. His expression was ugly, while his face turned pale and green. One second, two seconds, after five seconds passed, he doubled over and vomited.

He kept vomiting until he completely emptied out everything in his stomach, which in all honesty, did not amount to much. His hands were stained with gastric acid, while a wet layer of saliva dripped out from his parted lips.

His vision spun. A wave of nausea washed over him.

Eventually, he rolled onto his back and absentmindedly stared up at the sky. Weariness and fatigue were etched all over his face. Rays of light seeped in through the cracks of the canopy. Behind the treetops, he could just barely make out the bright blue canvas that covered the world. Swirls of white peacefully drifted across the sky.

“…What the hell smells so bad?” He mumbled out through the bile stuck in-between his gums.

It was a smell like death, but only if death had rolled around in a pit of pig shit then dumped a cocktail of expired milk and cockroach puree all over its head. Vile, putrid, rancid, foul, he was running out of words to describe exactly how bad it smelled.

It completely overpowered the rest of his senses and even threatened to steal away his consciousness.

He pinched his nose and warily looked around his surroundings. Nothing but endless cypress trees and a forest floor littered entirely in dead leaves and dried twigs. His frown grew even uglier. He could not, for the life of him, figure out where that horrible stench was coming from.

After a few more seconds of bloodshot searching, an odd expression colored his face.

He felt a certain sense of familiarity with his surroundings. He knew this place, he had been here before… that was what his subconscious was telling him, but that was wrong. In the last twenty-five years, he could not recall ever being in a place like this.

So, why then? Where did this uncanny familiarity come from? Why was this place so familiar?

He hesitated for a moment, before he sniffed the air. Again, that smell hit him like a runaway freight train, but this time he was ready for it. He resisted the urge to gag and sniffed again. This time, he noticed the smell. It was like a perpetual thundercloud that rained on him and him alone. The smell was coming directly from his body.

He scrunched up his nose and reflexively scowled. “Why the hell do I smell so bad?!”

For the first time, he closely inspected his body. A regular sized build with hardly any muscle definition. Thin fingers, pale olive colored skin, and a mess of black hair that constantly covered his eyes… Nothing out of the ordinary, that is until he noticed his clothes.

A brownish button up shirt coated in varying degrees of filth and decay. It was matched with a pair of dark navy-blue pants. The pants were in a somewhat better condition than the shirt, but that was only relatively speaking. They were probably once dress pants, but right now, they resembled tacky ripped jeans doused in shit.

“Wait, whose clothes are these?” He exclaimed loudly as he jumped up and frantically pawed at his own body. The strangeness of the situation spooked him, and the thought of these filth ridden fabrics pressing up against his skin sent a cold shiver running down his spine.

Why was he wearing all this? Where was his usual outfit?

“Who took my armor? Where the hell is my sword?! Even my spatial ring is gone!”

Upon seeing his empty ringless fingers, Theo truly began to panic.

He had a bad habit of hoarding all of his possessions in one place. From the medicinal herbs that he picked up off the roadside, to the mountains of gold coins whose worth rivaled that of an empire’s entire treasury, everything had been neatly tucked away inside that spatial ring of his.

Without it, he was essentially naked, no better than a beggar within the slums of Aslan Kingdom’s royal capital.

Thinking of all the artifacts and treasured weapons that he had painstakingly gathered, a profound bitterness spread through his heart.

“What the hell is going on!?” He shouted out loud for the world to hear, as he grabbed at his ruined shirt in desperation. Just as he was about to rip the clothes off from his body, he suddenly stopped. His shoulders trembled. He stared piercingly at the emblem stitched to his shirt’s breast pocket.

The emblem was caked in so much dirt and filth that it was almost impossible to make out, but nevertheless, he recognized it. A black outline in the shape of an opened book. In the middle, there was a pudgy white bird flapping its wings over an entirely red background.

The emblem of the fat dove. Of course, other than the students, nobody really called it that. It was the emblem of a certain high-school that he once attended. If it was only just that, he wouldn’t be so surprised, but there was one problem; that high school was somewhere back on Plume, his original world.

Theo wasn’t on Plume, or rather, he shouldn’t be on Plume. So why? Why was this familiar emblem etched onto a shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in over two decades?

He hesitated for a moment. His thoughts were currently in chaos. His fingers moved to the stitch marks that connected the right sleeve of his shirt. It was faint, but unlike the rest of the shirt, the stitches here were of black thread.

He recalled faintly that he had once ripped his uniform. At the time, his family’s financial situation wasn’t the best, so instead of going out and buying a new shirt, his aunt opted to patch it up herself. Back then, she had used black thread, which stood out all the more amidst the white fabric of the shirt.

“This… is this really my old school uniform?” He was a bit hesitant to admit it, but after finding that neatly done stitch mark, he could do nothing but accept the truth.

Once he had acknowledged this fact, the questions came pouring out. “How did I get back here? Am I really on Plume again? I haven’t seen this thing in over two decades, why am I suddenly wearing it now? Why does it smell so much?”

He spoke out loud, half-hoping that somebody might answer his calls. Unfortunately, no otherworldly voice responded back. Only a quiet forest and a peaceful blue sky.

“Wait a minute, a blue sky?” Theo’s eyes narrowed. That shouldn’t be right. The sky he was used to was one colored in pale green. It had two moons and one bright red star that glowed regardless of day or night. During the mornings, the sky appeared violet, while at night, it was colored a dark indigo. Why was it suddenly blue now?

The last blue sky he had seen was the one back on his home world. Twenty-five years back, to be exact.

“Am I really back?” His voice was like a quiet whisper. Amidst the silence of the forest, one could even make out the slight tremble in his throat. “Am I seriously back on Plume?”

For a moment, he simply sat there, stupefied by his own conclusion. He truly found it hard to believe. Plume had long since become a faraway memory for him, something that he had once idealized as unreachable and illusionary. Now, staring at the familiar forest, the nostalgic blue sky, and the broken emblem on his chest, there was almost no doubt in his mind.

He had returned.

Upon confirming this, Theo suddenly doubled over. This time, he did not vomit, instead, tears came pouring out of his eyes. He had not cried in over ten years, but today, at this moment, he cried his heart out. The tears were not ones of sadness nor grief, but rather, they were of pure unadulterated joy.

“FUCK YES!” His hoarse voice echoed through the forest. “FUCK THAT SHITTY WORLD! I’M FREE, I’M FINALLY FUCKING FREE!” A flock of birds suddenly flew out in a panic, as he screamed with as much force as he could possibly muster.

****

Theodore Harp was originally from a place called Plume. A long time ago, roughly twenty-five years, he was summoned to the fantastical otherworld of Mistelhan. That world was a typical swords and magic sort of world, and he had been summoned in order to act out the role of Hero. Essentially, he was the chosen one, fated to save Mistelhan from evil, and destined to slay the tyrannical Demon King.

It was the typical run-of-the-mill plotline that you’d find on the synopsis page of any unoriginal web novel. Despite their cookie cutter contents, Theo had been quite a fan of such stories, so one could only imagine his delight when he suddenly found himself as the protagonist of one.

And for the most part, he lived a life reminiscent of those stories.

He toured a vast world reminiscent of fantasy novels and enjoyed a life of adventure and heroism. He battled it out against hordes of hideous Ogres and schemed against corrupted nobles. He stole treasures from an Ancient Dragon’s lair, and then subsequently slew said dragon immediately afterward. Saving villages, curing incurable diseases, and preventing one-thousand-year-old curses, he had truly done it all. Well, almost all.

You see, despite all of that, there was one important reason why he hated that world.

The main reason why Theo was able to adapt so well, and readily accept his abnormal situation, was primarily because he held expectations within his heart of a rose-tinted romance. Basically, he was a youth driven by lust.

Beautiful princesses, bossy female knights, boyish crossdressing female rogues, sanctimonious priestess, alluring dancers, he had expected to get with at least one of these archetypes, and even held some hope of forming his own harem of sorts. Unfortunately, to his disappointment, reality wasn’t so kind.

Guys, guys, guys, and even more guys.

Instead of a beautiful fantasy, he was met with twenty years of testosterone-fueled hell.

Princes with hatefully handsome faces, arrogantly popular knights, hypocritical gentlemen thieves, barbarian swordsmen, broody anti-heroes, it was a cast so terrible that he wanted to personally torture and maim whoever came up with such a horrible lineup.

And to make matters worse, his own party, which he had once dreamed of filling with cute and beautiful girls, consisted only of sweaty muscle-clad men. What’s more, he sometimes felt spine-shivering stares from a few of those men. He did not even want to imagine what the hell they were thinking about with those starry-eyed gazes of theirs.

He wanted to cry.

Remembering it all now, he seriously wanted to cry.

He had arrived on that world when he was only seventeen, a time when his mind consisted of fifty percent sex and fifty percent girls. Although he had mellowed out over the years, he still carried that faint childish desire deep within his heart. Living in that world, living in Mistelhan, living in that sort of situation, it was honestly torture.

He truly lived a hateful existence.

Whenever he wanted to flirt and get along with the local girls, something would always, without fail, interrupt him. For example, just when he was about to receive the gratitude of the village chief’s daughter, an army of ogres suddenly attacked the kingdom’s border. Another time involved a cute tavern girl of a certain city. She had wanted to give Theo a little ‘reward’ for saving her family’s inn from a group of unruly bandits, but just when they were about to march on up to the bedroom, an evil cult suddenly invaded the city.

Even when he finally couldn’t take it anymore, and went to a brothel to release all of his pent-up frustrations, not a second after he stepped through their doors, his party members suddenly dragged him back out, raving on about some world-ending dragon hovering over the townscape.

It was as if the whole world had it out for him! If he so much as breathed near a woman, you bet your ass that the universe would be there to spit on his face and drag dirt through his hair.

The most frustrating event happened during the final crusade on the Demon King’s castle.

To his utter surprise, the final boss and legendary scourge of Mistelhan was, in fact, a seriously beautiful mature-looking demoness. When he first arrived at her castle, he had originally wanted to flirt with her and settle things through a less… ‘violent’ method. Unfortunately, before he could properly woo her with his imaginary charm, his damned party suddenly fired off their strongest special moves.

He was forced to do battle, all the while he kept insisting, pushing for peaceful negotiations, preferably those done in the bedroom. Of course, he was ignored and, in the end, he accidentally killed her. His only reward for saving the world was a group bear hug, courtesy of his entirely male party.

Feeling the ground beneath his feet, smelling the horrid scent of his clothes, and staring up at the blue sky above his head, Theo felt unimaginably happy right now.

Theo thought himself a bit more mature than his past seventeen-year-old self. The impressionable him of that time only cared about girls and looking cool in front of girls. His extended stay in Mistelhan had humbled him, or rather, that shitty world had broken his heart and spirit. Now, despite returning to Plume, he did not expect to suddenly live a rose-colored life. Heck, even getting a girlfriend was already a stretch.

No, as long as he could peacefully watch and occasionally interact with those of the opposite sex, then Theo would be satisfied.

Delighted by his future prospects, a goofy smile stretched his lips. He would have started jumping up and down in celebration, had he not suddenly remembered something.

“In the end, how the heck did I get back here?” He tried recalling the last bits of memory he had on Mistelhan.

It happened shortly after the final battle.

Unsatisfied by how things had turned out, Theo turned to the castle, intent on healing his heart through the treasures that it offered. You see, in order to cope with the stress of his daily life, Theo developed a hoarder’s mentality. Decorative swords to rare medicinal ingredients, ancient relics to monster corpses, he collected it all. In truth, it was a bad habit that had cost him quite a bit of time and money, and he had been meaning to kick it to the curb one day, but once again, he had fallen into temptation.

He remembered now. Theo was in the Demon King’s bedroom. He had been searching for treasures and stumbled upon a dresser that looked like it was hiding something valuable. Of course, he was expecting ancient artifacts, but stumbling upon a pair of panties or two wasn’t bad either. When he opened the dresser, instead of artifacts or underwear, he found a crystal.

It was black and opaque. It looked quite valuable and resembled the centerpiece on the Demon King’s crown. Just as he inspected the item and injected some of his energy inside, the crystal suddenly cracked. A spatial wormhole appeared out of thin air and sucked him inside. He lost consciousness shortly afterward.

“That crystal should be the reason why I’m here.” He quickly surmised. “For a final reward, it was a little lackluster, but at least they had the decency to send me back home.” He inwardly critiqued the rewards system of that shitty world. Still, since he got what he wanted, he did not feel like pursuing legal action against whatever god or author directed this script.

Pushing the issue to the back of his mind, Theo eventually stood up and dusted himself off. Of course, his actions were meaningless, on account of the clothes he was wearing, but it was more done out of habit than anything else.

He slowly scanned his surroundings. The years he spent on Mistelhan had taught him how to remain calm, and maintain his composure. Often times, he truly believed that his most important strength was his ability to analyze whatever situation he found himself in. Even if he was back on Plume, the habits built by years of experience would not so easily disappear.

Shifting through his memories and taking into consideration the surrounding environment, he quickly deduced his location. Right now, he should be somewhere on Harwick Mountains. It was a small mountain range located to the north of Harwick city. The locals often called it Lake Mountain Valley, for it was rumored that there existed a beautiful lake somewhere in the heart of the mountains.

Although the exact location was off, it was the general area of where he had gone missing all those years back.

If he remembered correctly, then there should be a hiking trail somewhere downhill.

With that, everything became much simpler. Theo first decided to head into the city and get a concrete bearing on his current situation. Twenty-five years had passed since he first went missing. Although he had once been a hero, on Plume, he was simply an aimless man with no education or money. With his qualifications, what could he do? Where could he go? Even going back to his family… would she even still accept him?

He was inwardly concerned, but he did not put too much thought into the matter. Living on Mistelhan had given him a strong mental fortitude. Rather, his greatest concern right now revolved around his attire.

What would happen if he were to walk into the city dressed in rags and smelling like shit?

Even hobos weren’t as badly dressed as he was. A part of him wanted to throw his clothes away and burn the fabrics to ash, but unfortunately, these were the only clothes he owned. Unless he could stomach running around the city naked, then there wasn’t much he could do.

“If only I had my spatial ring with me, then I wouldn’t have to suffer such an injustice…” He regrettably muttered to himself, as he stroked his empty finger longingly.

For all the joy he felt about returning to Plume, there also existed a certain sense of loss.

The loss of all of his precious items and artifacts was a given, but the thing that truly took a toll on his heart was the loss of his previous strength. He noticed this fairly late, but his current self was weak, or rather, it was back to normal. As a hero, Theo naturally possessed inhuman strength and quite a few mystical abilities. He lost all of that.

Theo’s current guess was that the process between transferring worlds sapped away all of his energy and even some of his physical body’s vitality. No, it was even more than that. If felt as if he was in an entirely fresh body, free of any training or enhancement.

It essentially turned him human again. In fact, he was even weaker than a normal human.

After years of being strong and mighty, turning back into a regular person made him feel… vulnerable. He had learned a long time ago that in order to protect the things that he loved, there existed certain requirements. One such requirement was strength. Although Plume was relatively more peaceful than Mistelhan, the same sort of rules still applied, even if it was to a much looser extent.

He vowed then and there to find a way to increase his current standard. He did not expect to return to his peak, but being stronger than what he was now was a good a start as any.

Unfortunately, in order to do that, he needed a considerable amount of resources. Securing those resources might be a bit of a problem for the current him.

After thinking about it for a few seconds, he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “For now, let’s just get off this mountain. I’ll figure things out along the way.”

With those words in mind, Theo walked down the mountain and began his search for the nearest hiking trail.