Suffocating ivy overgrew the exterior of the abandoned house, with a decaying front porch, its roof bowing low under a thick rug of moss.
A path of cracked slate stones was barely visible through the overgrown weeds, and windows stared out like empty eye sockets, with only a few jagged shards of glass clinging to the frames.
He took a step towards the front porch, feeling the icy surface of the slate stones with cracks that spider-webbed across the path.
"Tap, tap, tap."
He walked faster towards the front door, which was swollen with age and hung crookedly on a single hinge. Scratches marred its peeling black paint, as if something had desperately tried to claw at it.
He reached out with both hands, grabbing the doorknob with his left and the side of the door that hung crookedly with his right, and moved it to the left.
The rusty hinge screamed as it twisted inward, revealing an empty room with a thick coat of mildew on the walls and a door in the right corner.
He sighed, walking forward and entering the room. He turned around, closing the door behind him as it was before. The room was dark, with some moonlight coming from the windows. He walked towards the right corner of the room with great familiarity.
Reaching out with his right hand, he grabbed the rusty doorknob, turning it clockwise with a click. He opened the door, revealing a room with a bunk bed in the left corner, a wooden table beside it that had blue plastic containers stacked on it, and a plastic chair in-front of it. Surprisingly, on the right wall was a window with blurred glass.
Stepping inside, he walked towards the chair, sat on it, and immediately a calmness washed over him, pulling his body out of the fight-or-flight mode. The coldness he had been ignoring had caught up to him; he clenched his teeth, shivering. He grabbed the upper container.
Enduring the cold, he opened the blue container containing worn-out clothes. He grabbed the thick black hoodie and some socks, immediately putting them on. Feeling the warmth of the thick clothes, he relaxed a bit.
Reaching into his right pocket, he grasped the orbit in his right hand, taking it out and putting it on the table for closer inspection.
The orbit's texture was smooth, with a pointy edge. The surface was black with glowing symbols inside it. He recognized one of the symbols: it was the Infinity "∞," while he didn't recognize the others at all, nor had he seen them anywhere else.
"Will I gain the power of infinity and beyond if I consume it?" He muttered to himself, trying to find some humor in his situation.
While fiddling with the orbit, he contemplated how Raven had ended up dead in a pit with his organs taken out. He had accepted a job yesterday from the Chamber gang to steal an orbit from the opposing gang.
If nothing went wrong, he should have carried out his theft today. Did information get leaked, or did the opposing gang know the Chamber gang would send him to "test the waters"? Raven had ended up killed, his organs taken out, his body thrown in a pit in a dark alleyway that seemed to belong to the Chamber gang's territory.
"This was life in the outskirts," he sighed. "So Raven got caught up in a turf war between gangs without realizing it."
He remembered the details of Raven's life as he had experienced them himself: surviving on edible paste that tasted like mud but had all the nutrients one needed to barely survive, and bread that had rock-like hardness.
He sighed deeply, shaking his head. To get rid of the dark mood he was in, he thought about his transmigration. While in a trance, he had a "lightbulb" moment: he had formed a hypothesis about how he had transmigrated.
He murmured to himself, "After buying the crystal, I took it home and accidentally cut myself, letting a bit of blood stain it. If I reenact the incident, will I transmigrate back home?"
Zen Lee's eyes shined with newfound hope. He thought about another possibility that he didn't want to consider: "If I don't transmigrate back even after reenacting the incident, I will have to consider becoming an Orbiter."
Thinking about this bizarre world, he recollected the information he knew.
For the average person, being chosen by the orbit was as much of a risk as it was an opportunity. Kids learned survival skills and fighting techniques in school on the off chance of being chosen. Rich families hired private tutors to train their children in all sorts of martial arts.
Those from the Orbiter organization even had access to powerful artifacts, wielding weapon artifacts and mystical items in their first visit to the Singularity Realm. The richer your family was, the better your chances of surviving and becoming an Orbiter were.
The Singularity Realm is a vast realm that encompasses a whole galaxy. Humans are brought to a planet in the Singularity Realm by the orbit at a certain time of the year; after they survive their first trial. It is also a place where orbits are born. The orbits contain a "seed of singularity," making the humans who consumed the orbits, after being chosen by it, to form a connection to the Singularity Realm.
After recollecting the information he received from the memories of Raven Scott—which wasn't much, considering Raven dropped out of high school because of his circumstances — but it was enough to make a decision in his situation.
He would reenact the incident of getting his blood on the orbit, and if he didn't transmigrate back home, he would consume the orbit and take the first trial of the orbit.
After thinking about it, he couldn't live as a slum rat, doing odd jobs, stealing things from gangs, scavenging for food, surviving on rock-hard bread and edible paste, and ending up as a corpse with his organs taken out because he accepted a job that ended up "testing the waters" for a gang. He sighed; he had made a decision. He would rather face the brutal trial of the orbit than endure the life of a slum rat, scavenging for food and barely surviving.
Of course, that was on the chance that he didn't transmigrate back. The reason he was so nonchalant about not transmigrating back was because of the Singularity Realm. This realm encompasses an entire galaxy. He didn't know how the Orbiters confirmed that, nor did he know the name of the galaxy because of his lacking education, but alas, it seems that high-ranked Orbiters could travel between worlds.
After making hard decisions, he murmured, "I'll do the reenactment tomorrow morning."
A few minutes had passed since Zen Lee had made the hard decisions. He was fiddling with the orbit, trying to balance it on its pointy edge to entertain himself. After failing a couple of times, he gave up. He reached out with his right hand, grasped the lid of the upper container, and put it to the side of the bottom container. With both hands, he picked up the container and put it in front of him. Then, with his right hand reaching inside, he searched at the bottom of the clothes.
Finally, he grasped an object. The object was three inches long and two inches wide with a smooth texture on the back and a flawless surface on the front.
Pulling back his arm, he saw a black glass screen on the front, a metal covering on the back, and a button on the side. It was a wallet Raven Scott had received from his mother on his 14th birthday. Money in this world was in the form of digital points, and the wallet with a screen was used as a transaction device to make transactions and store money.
Zen Lee pressed the side button. The wallet turned on, showing his balance on the screen. It was "147 p." This was the advance he had received for the job of stealing an orbit because of the risks of the job.
He chuckled and stood up, grabbing the orbit with his left hand and the wallet with his right. He moved them to the bottom of the clothes in the container, put the lid back on it, and picked up both containers, putting them at the bottom of the bunk bed.
He walked towards the door, grasped the doorknob, closed it from the inside, and walked back to the bunk bed. Pulling up the rugged bedsheet, he laid down on the bed, covering his body with the bedsheet. He closed his eyes.