NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1 | Mistakes To Atone For?
“What is...-” he muttered. His ability to make a sound caused him to realize that he had regained control of his body. Turning his head to look around, he realized that his surroundings were completely dark. He tapped the corners of his eyelids to check whether or not his eyes were closed, however, he quickly realized that he could see his hands perfectly fine.
“But there is no light source...” He muttered calmly. The next moment, once his emotions calmed down and his logic kicked back into gear, a revelation hit him square on the jaw.
“I’m... I’m dead?” He said while looking at his hands. They weren’t different from how they normally were. Everything about his body was perfectly normal. ”I was finally going to enjoy life! Now I die? I would stop writing for some time and enjoy the money I made!”
As his rant about how he would live his life differently kept going, his heart skipped a beat. A gentle gust of wind brushed past his neck, alerting him to a presence behind him. Turning around, he saw a floating book, suspended perfectly in mid-air. Its cover slowly opened to reveal unintelligible lines of symbols.
“Fuck you!” The book shouted, its unisex voice rumbling with hatred. Dumbfounded by the inanimate object’s human voice, he took half a step back. He tried to mumble a few sentences, however, he could only speak out one.
“Did... Did a book just swear at me..?”
“Yes, I did. Sorry for that. I had to get it out of my system,” the book answered. Whenever it spoke, its pages would quickly get riffled through, changing directions once it started a new sentence.
“What... Did I die? Am I going to hell?”
“You deserve to. At least in my opinion,” the book said in answer to his genuine question. “However, your sins are too much for you to be sent to hell that easily. Whatever you’ve broken, you have to fix on your own.”
“Broken? Fixed? I’m sorry, can you please explain more? I don’t think I understand.”
“I don’t think I can, bastard author,” the book answered. This time, its pages were much slower compared to before. Maybe it was less angry.
“What you have to know is simple,” it continued. Then, for a few brief seconds, it went silent. It opened and closed a few times. Then, another book appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It came closer to the other book, and they got into a position where their pages started getting stacked on top of each other as they riffled through them.
“You... Am I watching two books having intercourse? What the fuck did they put in my drink?” He asked out loud. The books briefly turned to presumably look at him and continued whatever they were doing. Shortly after, the books disconnected from each other. The initial book revealed its middle page and isolated it from the rest of the pages. It then flipped the page left and right in quick succession. The other book did the same and phased out of existence just like how it had appeared.
“Your new host body is called Alec Greenwood. You’ll go to a magical academy and fix your mistakes from there,” the book said. The squiggly symbols on its page combined into English letters, revealing the name Alec Greenwood.
“My new host... Transmigration?” he asked. However, he didn’t need an answer. He was a seasoned webnovel author, after all.
“Yes.”
“Any... Abilities? A system? Bonuses?” he asked. He knew his abilities well. He wasn’t a quick thinker, got flustered when faced with pressure, and wasn’t a genius planner. “I’m not going to survive on my own if you send me to that kind of place.”
“You’ll get what your soul bestows upon you,” the book answered, then went silent. The lack of further conversation caused an awkward atmosphere to settle down.
‘Why is it opening and closing itself? Is it feeling awkward or something?’ He thought before asking, “So? Are you going to send me now?”
“Just waiting for... Yeah, okay. We’re done,” the book said. “Whatever happens down there. Deal with it yourself. We don’t really care about what you do. If you fail, we’ll just wipe the plate clean and start over.”
“Okay?” he muttered. And that was the last thing he said in his old body.
***
The smell of antiseptics, garlic, and rosemary mixed together into a dizzying stench, making him want to puke. Funnily enough, Alec couldn’t even find the energy to retch, let alone empty his stomach. He forced his eyelids to part, letting light pass through his retinae.
Slowly but surely, the memories of the abrupt end of his life came to him. They were somewhat blurry at first, however, they quickly became more clear.
‘Am I actually..?’ He thought. He couldn’t even finish his sentence before his eyes started paying attention to his surroundings.
He was inside a room with white-colored walls, gently reaching down to a square-tiled floor. He was lying down in a one-and-a-half-person-sized bed. Besides his, there were two other beds, which were neatly cleaned and non-occupied. The white sheets of the beds and the unclosed curtains around them made Alec think he was inside some kind of hospital or infirmary.
Finally getting the energy to turn his head, he scoured his surroundings to see some kind of medical equipment, which he failed miserably in doing. There was only a bedside table with a bowl of fruits and incense to his side, which made him feel somewhat uncomfortable from the lack of medical care.
After all, whatever body he was in currently, it hurt like hell. What he found interesting was, however, the fact that the smoke from the incense did not dissipate at all. As soon as it was released, it would form a thin, ethereal line towards his nostrils and constantly infuse into his body. Each breath he took reduced the pain he was feeling.
‘Is this a painkiller or a quick recovery incense? Probably magical, right?’ He tried guessing while using his knowledge as a critically acclaimed fantasy author.
As Alec contemplated the nature of this incense, the well-oiled door of the room opened slowly, without any creaking. Whoever had come into the room was very light on their foot, as Alec’s ear couldn’t pick up any footsteps. Turning his head once again, Alec felt like he was hit square in the face with a frying pan.
A woman with a lab coat was walking toward him with a slightly baffled expression on her face. The reason for Alec’s confusion was the woman’s face. It was too perfect. No blemishes, no imperfections, not even a little bit. Her face was so beautiful that Alec was more confused than attracted. The woman with shoulder-length white hair and purple eyes walked up to him and looked deep into his eyes.
‘She looks like she has a beauty filter on... Albeit a bit more realistic. Is this some form of esoteric make-up? Magical maybe?’ Alec questioned the situation.
He was woken up from his confusion by the woman raising her palm toward him. Instantly, floating and ethereal lines of green energy started forming out of thin air. They first formed a circle with about 20 centimeters of radius and went inward. They coiled and coiled, forming weird, squiggly shapes that from what Alec guessed, were the letters of a language unknown to him.
As this process repeated for a few more seconds, the woman muttered a word that seemed incomprehensible to Alec’s ears before flicking her finger to hit the green magical circle. The circle shook and started releasing a green light in Alec’s direction.
Surprised by the lack of pain in his eyes from the glaring green light, Alec felt a soothing energy wash over him.
‘Healing magic?’ he thought as his anxiety and pain gave way to relaxation. ‘I’ve written about healing magic countless times in my books, but I never thought about how relaxing it would feel to suddenly go back to perfect health.’
Questioning why they hadn’t healed him while he was asleep, Alec turned his attention back toward the woman. Although there still was a bit of pain, it was mostly manageable. Not wanting to be the one to start the conversation, Alec kept eye contact with the woman.
The uncomfortable silence was broken by the woman parting her lips.
As her voice reached Alec’s ears, his heart skipped a beat anxiously. It did not have anything to do with the way the woman sounded. She didn’t have a magical, muse-like voice that entrapped every man that heard her. She sounded like any other woman from Alec’s past life. The problem was that the words that came out of her mouth were completely incomprehensible. They seemed alien, almost non-human. There was no familiarity in the language that Alec could pick up on that it was from Earth.
The language sounded very bland, in a way that a normal one wouldn’t. There were no highs and ups in her voice. Every movement of her mouth released a relatively similar sound. Even then, there seemed to be something more to it. As if the way those words came together were more than mere grammatical structures.
Unfortunately, Alec’s detailed analysis of how the language sounded was pushed to the side by an approaching panic attack.
‘It’s... It’s one of those nightmare-mode fictions! I don’t even know the fucking language, God damn it!’