The room was small, dark, and quiet.
A young man sat in front of his computer wearing a loose white T-shirt, the glow of the monitor painting sharp shadows across his face. Outside the open window, the sun was setting, bleeding orange light into the apartment.
On the screen were numbers.
Accounts stacked neatly in columns with different currencies and crypto wallets.
A sum exceeding 200 million.
He stared at it with indifference.
"Money Laundering is such a drag. I guess I will die of old age before i even get to use any of it."
He stood up, stretched his body and walked towards the window.
He looked out at the crowded city—the towering apartment complexes, the endless noise—and thought to himself.
Everyone only has a limited time in this world, yet most spend it chasing wealth, love, relationships and dopamine hits until death shows up.
His gaze lingered on the streets below.
Humans are beings capable of bending fate itself—accomplishing the impossible, time and time again throughout history. And yet most of us sleep through life, drowning in the mundane, never truly seeing the bigger picture.
Surely, there must be more to life than this.
And then his phone buzzed.
INTRUDER ALERT.
His movements stopped instantly.
The computer screen lit up with live footage from hidden cameras placed around the building.
Men in dark gear moved in coordinated formation, their vehicles blocking every exit.
"Guess this place is about to be raided huh" he calmly exhaled.
He reached under the desk and pulled out a black backpack. EMERGENCY was stitched on it in dull red.
"Neuro, Lock everything up" he said to his AI assistant on his phone which he had built himself to assist in situations like this.
Every door in the apartment sealed at once. Internal drives began wiping themselves into static.
He exited through the roof access, clipped a rope to the railing, and swung cleanly to the neighbouring building. His movements were quick and efficient.
Below, nearly twenty people surrounded the building. More were arriving.
He did some crazy ass parkour and escaped.
"Activate Escape Sequence Two" the young man said.
A translucent map flickered onto his phone screen. White marked his position. Green marked compromised vehicles. Orange and red pulsed steadily nearby marking potential task force units.
"Three viable vehicles," Neuro reported. "Two compromised."
Of the vehicles — one is too far away, another one has a few police near it, if they are searching for me, it would be bad. Another one is bit far, but if I take this shortcut I can make it.
As he sprinted, footsteps echoed behind him. Two men. Not law enforcement.
Cartel.
Don't tell me these guys are working with FBI now.
He ran towards a tall wall, planted his foot, redirected his momentum upward, his hands catching the edge with ease. He jumped cleanly over it while the two fat guys had trouble climbing.
The streets were strangely calm and emptier than usual. which felt really off for some reason.
He grabbed an electric bike, plugged a device from his bag, and and watched Neuro break into the Firmware.
Security bypass complete. Limiters removed.
It took few seconds. The bike started and he vanished into the city.
He ditched it two districts later, vanished into a subway and pulled up hoodie and cap, details like these help throw off cctv surveillance even a little.
"Activate Escape Sequence Three," he whispered.
On the train, he chose a corner seat, sat near the window, and kept watch for suspicious people.
Within moments he had already analysed the situation and mapped out a few ways out of it.
He was still running calculations when a man sat beside him.
"Do you mind?" the middle aged man asked with a pleasant smile.
Something felt wrong.
He offered a handshake. "Name's ——."
The moment their hands met, metal clicked shut.
Recognition hit a heartbeat too late.
"Oh," the young man said calmly. "You're that detective from the documentary."
The man's eyes narrowed.
The calmness on the young man's face felt off.
I better report to HQ in case he tries to escape, the detective thought.
"So," the young man said calmly, "what made you chase a small hacker like me?"
The detective studied him for a second and responded. "A respected doctor by day. A notorious darknet operator by night. Perfect grades. Clean reputation. No red flags in college or at work." He shook his head. "You were so spotless I almost crossed you off the suspect list."
"I don't get it," he continued. "You had everything. Why commit crimes? You must've been corrupted by greed"
The young man scoffed. "I love it when government types talk about greed. Want me to leak your files? There are crimes far worse than anything we criminals have done."
"We already had cover-ups and propaganda ready. There's no benefit in leaking anything. And you don't strike me as someone who fights for anything good or noble beyond your own personal gain."
"Haha, you got me there, I can't argue"
48… 49… 50.. almost a minute, the young man counted internally.
He struck.
The fight was brutal and short. The detective was trained, stronger and faster.
But not prepared.
The punch barely landed on the detective's chest before the cuffs snapped tight. The detective yanked him back and slammed a punch into his face which made the young man hold the support pole, twisted with the impact, he then feinted low and drove a fist into the detectives's eye which the detective blocked it effortlessly.
"You should give up," the detective said coldly. "You can't beat trained combat."
"Who said I was trying to?" the young man replied.
59… 60.
He shook his wrist. The cuff fell away.
At the same instant, alarms screamed. The train jolted to a halt, its doors bursting open.
He shoved the detective aside and sprinted out, leaping from the tracks to the road below.
Sequence Three was already active.
If he failed to unlock his phone every sixty seconds, Neuro would trigger the train's fire evacuation protocol.
If the train reached the next station, he'd be surrounded.
Inside the carriage, the detective clenched his teeth.
"He was buying time, patiently picking the lock while distracting me"
"What a waste of talent. He still had no chance against everyone combined"
Two men were already waiting where he landed. Stun guns raised. "Hands up."
He slid his hands out of his hoodie pockets, lifting them slowly—
Then his wrist snapped.
The EMP detonated with a dry crack, frying every electronic device in range before either of them could report in.
Every second that passed only made things worse when you were getting chased.
A truck surged past. He jumped, fingers locking onto the rear frame as momentum dragged him up.
The stun shot slammed into his back.
No effect.
The insulation layer in his hoodie was built for this exact moment.
He tossed a handful of spikes onto the road.
Tires burst. Vehicles fishtailed. A traffic jam bloomed behind him, cutting the task force off cleanly.
Then his vision glitched.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Reality warped, like a corrupted frame skipping mid-render.
He jumped off at the end of the highway and disappeared into the city.
The young man entered a rundown building an hour later, after making sure he wasn't being tracked. He dropped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling while his head pulsed painfully.
The distortion followed him like a curse.
Stun gun?
No. That didn't fit the symptoms.
The blur intensified. Black squares tore through his vision like missing data. The world shifted, folding inward, and a drowning sensation crushed his chest.
For an instant, he saw somewhere else.
Like two lines trying to overlap.
"Shit… I can't think straight—"
Darkness.
—
Consciousness snapped back and his vision became clear again.
Did I black out? No—wait.
Where am I?
A clean white ceiling stared back at him.
This looks like a hospital.
"Damn," he muttered. "My head feels like hell."
He tried to move.
Nothing.
His body didn't respond, pinned beneath its own weight. That alone would have triggered panic in most people. Instead, he assessed. Sensation was present. Temporary paralysis, most likely.
An oxygen mask covered his face and an IV line was attached to his arm. But the medical equipment didn't match anything he knew.
Different country?
No.
A faint street lamp was visible through the glass window across the room. It was Night.
He shifted his gaze to the window glass.
The reflection showed a teenager.
His own face, but younger.
He tried to backtrack through his memories.
One part refused to come into focus. A vague sensation of drowning and escaping from the edge of death, he couldn't recall clearly what happened after that, or how he ended up here.
He could clearly access two sets of memories sitting in his head, overlapping but distinct.
He tried to sit up but his body kept refusing.
So he lay still instead, eyes open, recapping everything he knew. His life in this world. The previous one. Separating facts from noise.
Just when I thought the situation couldn't get any worse
He exhaled slowly.
If this was real, then how he ended up here was already out of his control.
What remained was the situation, the variables, and the options available to him.
Like chess, the board was already set.
All that mattered now was making the best possible move.
"So this body belonged to a younger version of me. Not a past, but a parallel world."
"What had happened to my original body was still unclear. If it was something like body swap, then it's a really big mess I left back there. Hehe"
"I am more curious about how this even happened in the first place. Do the people here have anime type powers?"
As the thought settled, foreign memories surfaced on their own.
This world ran on Ether.
Everyone had it. A form of energy drawn from the environment and stored in the body. Ether itself did nothing until shaped. That was where runes came in.
Runes aren't just stones — they are technology. Each has a different function depending on the spell written into it. Less magic and more engineering.
"So basically I can code a rune to convert my ether into bullets and shoot until i run out of ether"
Ether recovered slowly on its own. Too slowly in a fight. That's where Ether crystals came in. Concentrated energy crystals you can absorb.
Combining memories from both lives, the conclusion was obvious.
Ether wasn't unique to this world. It existed everywhere, across all dimensions.
The difference was adaptation.
In my previous world, either it was very faint or people didn't adapt to sense it, let alone use it. So they built civilisations on nuclear power, thermal, and electricity. Here, people evolved differently.
Like bats born without sight, evolved echolocation to navigate.
"I have quite an inventory of runes, being an engineering nerd in this world. All of them are bottom of sequence 1, so they're more like DIY tools than actual weapons that deal damage."
"That drowning feeling… no images, no memories. Only the raw sensation of brushing death. I can clearly recall the memories before and after that incident. The trigger for my transmigration lies there. That much was obvious."
He closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
--
The next day, familiar voices woke him up.
Three boys stood beside his bed, all wearing the same academy uniform.
"How are you holding up, Lian?"
"Heard you got hit pretty bad in that fragmented domain. You have some of the worst luck of all the people i know." Nox said.
"Ignore him. Walking out without permanent injuries is itself insane luck." Lin Ling added.
They were his friends in this world. All from the same academy. A place designed to mass-produce cadets for military deployment.
"I'm fine," he said. "The doctor said I'll be discharged tomorrow. I still don't remember much about what happened in the fragmented domain."
"Yeah, probably trauma," Sunny said. "You've always been a massive pussy."
Lian glanced at him. "Oh yeah but at least I'm not someone who cried for a week because his girl left him."
Laughter broke out.
"There's only one week left before the semester exams," Lin Ling said, adjusting his glasses. "Actually—if we don't start studying now, we're ending up in Class D."
That mattered. More than they realised.
According to the previous Lian's memories, failing wasn't an option. His parents here wouldn't tolerate it.
They would be so mad he could possibly get kicked outa house if he fails.
"Alright, we lock in from tomorrow." Nox said.
Agreements followed.
Then Nox grinned. "Hey, Lian. Why don't you make some invention to help us cheat without getting caught? You're always building weird runes nobody uses. Total waste of talent."
"It's not that easy," Lian said. "You can't use runes without getting caught. Classrooms have Ether sensors. Anything outside academy-authorised runes gets flagged immediately."
He paused. "Not impossible to bypass. Just not worth the effort. Easier to study than build a backdoor for the sensors."
"Tch. I'm getting into Class A next year anyway," Sunny said. "All the girls there are hot."
"Fucking Simp," Nox replied without hesitation.
Laughter followed. The conversation drifted toward unimportant topics.
Lian watched it all like background noise.
Class rankings. Reputation. Honour.
A high position in the military. Money.
All of it was superficial.
He had already touched most of those things in his previous life. He knew exactly how fragile they were. Until one reached the very top, they were nothing more than decorations placed on a pawn.
As long as he remains a pawn his fate is always written by whoever stood above the board.
This world had given him a second chance, not to climb the same ladders again, but to step outside the board entirely.
Although he is weak and lacked talent He was intelligent. Calculating. Patient. Enough to compensate.
Strength could be borrowed. Tools could be built. People could be used. Until then, he would stay out of direct conflict.
He had never relied on brute force anyway.
In his previous life, every step forward had been paid for with deception, exploitation, and carefully chosen crimes. People were resources. Trust was leverage. Morality was a language used by those who needed protection.
That wouldn't change no matter the world.
He never intended to rise through ranks like the rest of students.
He would walk the same road he always had. One paved with blood, crime, betrayal, and unending loneliness.