On the Northern Continent, within the vast and ancient Nim Forest, Ronan, dressed simply and carrying a longsword, wandered aimlessly through the dense undergrowth. The soft earth beneath his feet, moist and springy from a recent rainfall, gave slightly with each step. The fresh scent of rain hung in the air, mingling with the earthy aroma of moss and pine. Birds chirped faintly in the distance, though he paid them no mind. The pleasant scenery—sunlight filtering through the canopy above, painting dancing patterns on the forest floor—created a tranquil atmosphere. But within him, there was no peace. He felt nothing. There was a strange emptiness inside him, a hollow sensation that even the serene beauty of the forest could not fill.
A gold coin bounced into the air, glinting briefly in the sunlight before landing in his open palm.
"Five days," he muttered under his breath, voice edged with frustration. "Five whole days, and I haven't seen a single town…"
He stared at the coin for a moment, eyes dull and disinterested, before crushing it into dust with a careless flick of his wrist. The fragments scattered in the breeze, glimmering as they fell, before disappearing among the grass and leaves. He barely glanced at them, already turning away, his mind elsewhere.
Sitting beneath a tall, broad-rooted tree, he allowed his back to rest against its thick trunk. The bark was rough against his skin, but he didn't care. Memories surged up, uninvited and vivid, washing over him like a wave. He sighed deeply, his breath long and weary.
"What good is infinite wealth if there are no towns to spend it in?" he lamented aloud, the words tinged with both irritation and disbelief. "Damn it! What kind of forsaken place is this? A wasteland?" He looked around, as if expecting the trees themselves to answer. "Where in the world did I end up?"
Five days earlier, a different life—mundane and all too human—had been his reality. Back then, Ronan had been a lowly office worker, a cog in the corporate machine, perpetually overworked and grinding through late nights. His days had blurred together, one after another, the weight of his responsibilities pressing down on him without mercy. That evening, he'd planned for some rare, quiet time—a relaxing session in his favorite online game. His goal was simple: to log in and apprentice under the legendary master Wind Spirit Moon Shadow, a figure he'd long admired in the digital realm. But then… he'd died.
Perhaps it had been the excitement. Perhaps his exhausted body had simply given out. It had been sudden. Sudden, but not entirely surprising. In some strange way, he'd even found it understandable. Maybe the next life, he had thought in that brief moment of fading awareness, would be better.
But there was no next life.
Instead, he had transmigrated—transported body and mind into an entirely different world. And not just any world. He had brought with him the overpowered abilities of his in-game character, powers that would have made him unstoppable in a virtual setting. He had assumed, perhaps naively, that life would now be effortless, a cheat-code existence where problems vanished before they could even appear.
But the world he found himself in was utterly deserted.
No cities bustled in the distance. No villages dotted the roads. No people crossed his path. Only endless trees, the unbroken wilderness of the Nim Forest stretching as far as the eye could see. Days passed in silence.
Fortunately, among the powers he now possessed, two stood out: invincibility and infinite stamina. With them, he could theoretically survive for hundreds—no, even thousands—of years without eating or drinking. In a primitive environment such as this, without those abilities, he would have starved long ago. There were no supplies, no tools, nothing resembling civilization. Just wilderness.
As for speed boosts and teleportation… they sounded impressive in theory. But Ronan had overlooked a crucial detail—this wasn't a game. This was reality. Reality wasn't a static, pre-loaded dataset; it was alive, dynamic, constantly shifting. Two-dimensional functions didn't translate perfectly into a three-dimensional world. It was like trying to modify variables in a living system, one with no fixed stats, no preset framework. It simply didn't work the same way.
In his game, Wind Spirit Moon Shadow could adjust enemy stats with ease. That was because the game's developers had set those stats in advance. But here? If no stats had been pre-programmed, what exactly was he modifying? It made no sense. Moreover, he experienced the world not from a detached, god-like, third-person perspective, but from within—first-person. Without a wide-angle view, seeing more than a few meters ahead was nearly impossible. The forest was dense, and visibility was often limited to the nearest few trees.
He had tried using his speed boost. Once.
It hadn't gone well.
Crashing into trees at double—or sometimes even higher—speeds wasn't just painful; it was disorienting. His mind couldn't keep up with the rapid movements. Sure, he didn't lose health. Invincibility had its perks. But his clothes... shredded. After that first disastrous attempt, he'd quickly lost any enthusiasm for such Flash-like antics. The embarrassment and inconvenience weren't worth it. Since then, he'd settled for a more modest, more manageable double-speed, moving just fast enough to save time without slamming into every other trunk in the forest.
Even so, five days had passed, and he hadn't even made it out of the forest.
The shade above swayed gently, branches whispering to one another as sunlight flickered through the canopy, dappling his skin in golden patches. The wind carried the distant rustle of leaves, and for a moment, everything seemed calm again. Ronan leaned more heavily against the tree trunk, letting his head tilt back and his eyes drift shut. He exhaled, long and low.
He pulled out another handful of gold coins, created with a mere thought, and crushed them one by one. The act, pointless though it was, released some of his pent-up frustration. The glittering dust fell like sand between his fingers, vanishing as quickly as it came.
He could fly away from here. He could leave this planet entirely, if he really wanted to. His powers allowed for that. The sky, the stars, even other dimensions—none of it was out of reach. But somehow, the thought didn't appeal to him.
After all, he had finally arrived in another world.
To leave now, without experiencing any of it, without exploring or enjoying even a fraction of what it had to offer… that felt wasteful. Foolish, even. The air here—so clean, so pure—was fresher than anything he had ever breathed back in his home world. Even the most idyllic countryside back there hadn't matched this.
As he pondered this…