Chapter 1

After a tiring day, I shut my laptop off and laid on bed thinking, what have our world come to? With World war 3 on a verge of breaking out and the entire political scenario being so fired up along with a potential civil war as a combination among several sects of several ethnicity and religion, news sure sucks a lot these days.

I really miss the days when news actually were forced to cover daily soaps as they had nothing to cover. I know that sucks for journalists but the lesser content they have, the peaceful the entire earth seems to be.

But who am I to comment, I’m just an ordinary concerned citizen of one of the 200+ nations on our planet where each nation feels they are superior to the rest. I don’t really want to get into all that as a grown up kid who happens to be 28 years old, I truly have childish likings as others say to me.

Yes I still play video games and watch anime and read manga light novels. Trust me I truly feel better about life when I am into these kinds of stuff as real world truly sucks. I always wondered what if I could be thrown into some parallel worlds based on novels/mangas I’ve read.

Such worlds are truly badass and I truly would have done something about it there. I could have done something about it in this world too if I had power, well I am seriously only a human and there is no magic in this world.

The era in which I live is also very modern at least in terms of warfare and this world have guns. Seriously, I am terrible at reaction speeds even in games how the hell can I ever think of a gun fight in real life?

The people in army truly deserve my respect for this reason that they go for a tough battle with guns where combat is clearly almost instant. No tactics only reaction speed is what I can think of for those soldiers who play the melee role in battlefield.

But that’s just a part of my worries, with increasing market price of nearly all commodities and to top that increasing taxes and GST, I just have to work hard enough. Not because I get to earn more if I work harder but there is just another monster called automation always ready to eat our jobs. If religion didn’t specify hell as a place you get to after living a sinful life,

I’d call this timeline a living and breathing hell with all sorts of tensions as punishment for a regular human being trying to survive.

Clearly, there is no way out of this mess and I truly am not cut out to make any changes to it as only political and popular people can be heard and even they get roasted even if they just sneeze let alone talk about world matters. Everyone is scared of speaking their minds.

Yet we proudly say we live in 21st century, the most modern and advanced form of human civilization ever. I doubt that. AGGRESSIVELY!

We only have 6000 year old historical evidence of human civilization and scientifically, we have existed a lot longer than that. There have to be ancient civilization that was much better than today’s. I am surely positive. I am sure when the technology was not so developed there were people who lived were living peacefully. I am sure of it. No matter what history books tell, we humans aren’t a scums of all times. We cannot be. Can we?

Too much pressure, I wish I remained a kid and lived a careless life, I just wish I could get rid of this world and find a world that I day dream about all the time. A world with magic, kingdom, swords, loyalty, princesses, god and angels that actually interact, adventurers. Sighs, what a lovely world would it have been. Living a fiction, should be everyone’s dream.

I thought all that while laying on bed and never thought when I fell asleep. I really don’t understand what kind of dream I saw as I woke after 8 hours all gloomy. I get up and stretched my body, still thinking about what exactly I saw. It feels like it’s almost there and just when I feel I am close to recalling it, I forget all of it. Well who cares, it was only a dream. Who cares about that stuff? Guess I will head to my work place.

“Ah, welcome Eli, what’s up?”

Well that’s my manager, he sure seems to be always happy every day. Wish I earned as handsomely as him. Well I’m only a human and jealousy is a common traits. Although I truly don’t feel proud of it.

“Same old, same old, you tell?”

“Today, is your presentation day, I hope you have prepared the PPT for how we don’t need automation in our track”

To be honest, it’s just not me who is worried about automation, it’s everyone in this industry. No one is safe, software are fully capable of replacing us today and we are still doing our best to convince our clients that replacing us with such tools will be a decision of haste. Software only uses algorithm to make choices in terms of ‘if’ and ‘else’ scenarios but they are not capable of making human decisions. But clients seems to care more about saving a monthly amount they have to pay to humans and prefer more on costlier software as they are only one time payment.

After completing the PPT, we somehow managed to convey our message to client and they surprisingly seem to consider it. Well I am very happy that my efforts are paying. If this was Skyrim, I surely would have gained some “speech” skill points. I know getting to a parallel world seems too much of a day dream but I sometimes do imagine things like achievements like RPG element, keeps me motivated.

“That was a great presentation Eli, I didn’t expect it would be so effective”

“Yeah, it was alright. At least we can work with a bit lesser pressure for a few days”

“Don’t worry, raise your technical skills like I am doing, sticking to just one technology is worthless, trust me”

“Yeah but what to learn, everything seems to be getting obsolete and I am not really cut out for management work or stepping in development. It’s been ten years I left programming you see”

“We gotta work hard mate, else we will end up getting replaced by a code, nothing is more terrible than that, trust me, it’s a word of your senior”

“Copy that”

I take my word back when I said my manager is the happiest guy in industry (if I really said that). It’s like the dark souls vibe in our environment, depression is in every corner of my sector. Anywhere I see, from a distance, it looks great but when I interact with them I get to know the complete picture. Such depression. With booming population, no wonder these suicides by employees might be seen as a good thing and what if government actually provides incentives to those who quit world by paying their families. A human being who cannot afford bread and butter by the end of the day is just useless and a liability on government. With war coming up, we might be used as frontline soldiers but week ones like me will probably end up dead there on my first day, or even in training days. What a drag. I should really refrain from thinking like that.

If only there was a solution to all this. If only I was powerful enough to put a stop to all this. What would I have done if I was powerful enough? Hmm! Things most people are facing in their daily lives isn’t something a hero can fix. Even if I was all powerful, I cannot force employers to give up on automation, or trying to save their expenditure. After all, they are humans too and they have their level of problems too.

Such depression. Yet again I get reminded of darksouls. There are no humungous monsters to kill but it still gives that essence.

Home, my very own “bonfire”

Yup, I didn’t die today, not sure if I should be glad about it or not. I end my day with such mixed feelings. I have a subscription to a new mmorpg I like to play but every day these thoughts keep me so tired that I barely get the time to play it. Childhood was really so awesome.

“What? Of gosh after a tiring day I come home only to see server maintenance?”

I really am angry right now. What am I supposed to do? Sighs, guess I will open news as there is nothing else for me to do.

After getting tired, I again sleep wondering if this was the only reality we can ever afford to live in? Everything blurs around me and I fell asleep yet again. The place I can see seems familiar. I guess I have been here before. Is this dejavu? I guess I am still dreaming that I am sure of but what is this place.

My consciousness disappears and I feel like I am drowning into abyss. It kind of feels like how you feel when you have low blood pressure. I can feel it’s cold and my cheeks are having those funny feelings. I guess I should ignore it I must be too tired.

*Somewhere else*

A dark castle with lightening sound every 10 seconds. A man covered in hood on a delivery wagon enters the Castle main gate which opened on its own. The lamp on side of the road was blinking and was almost extinguished by the presence of the man but again turned normal once the man went past it. With heavy rain and mud, the horses are facing difficulty pulling the wagon and it seems there is something inside the wagon. Or rather some body

“Sire, I found the body of the unholy one”

THUMP!

The coffin was dropped on the floor and the castle echoed to every corner and bats flew up away in the sky towards the huge full moon.

“Impressive work, to think you would finally find the corpse of my lord back to his home”

He throws a bag of gold towards the man in hood, who picks it up silently and leaves the castle.

“Wait”

The man stopped.

“Sikandar was it? I would like to see if you have brought me the real corpse”

“Surely your highness, but as we all know his Excellency, I fear I will be eaten alive should I open the coffin and he seems displeased by the unrest caused while he sleeps”

“You sure know a lot about his lordship”

“I have read in stories about how ruthless and aggressive unholy king was, it should be my second nature to be afraid of him even though I am a warrior”

“Mercenary is the right word for the likes of you”

Silence remains while lightning bolt hits one of the trees near castle.

“I will be leaving then, hope you find the right sacrifice to trick and open the coffin”

Sikandar politely leaves while Egor clenches his teeth in anger.

“Now I need to work harder, to find the right sacrifice”

“hmmm, I guess I might have the right Idea”

*Egor starts evil laughter*

***