The room they had given me was one of the few intact spaces left in the Haven, a small chamber tucked away from the main halls. Stone walls bore fresh cracks like veins in marble, and the bed was a simple pallet of silk and furs salvaged from the wreckage. No tapestries remained to soften the edges, no crystals to glow with false warmth. Just dim torchlight flickering through a narrow slit in the wall, casting long shadows that danced like mocking ghosts.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, the weight of the day pressing down like an invisible hand. Sleep refused to come. My body ached from the endless cycles of cultivation, muscles humming with that unnatural golden energy, but my mind spun in useless circles. Why me? The question looped endlessly, a dull throb behind my eyes.
Back on Earth, I had been nothing. A 28-year-old code monkey hunched over a keyboard, living on ramen, energy drinks and hentai, too awkward to hold a conversation with anyone who wasn't on a screen. Hell, I even watched hentai at work. Thinking back I really was despicable. Why the hell would anyone even do that? I remembered falling asleep at my desk, head dropping forward mid-line of code, the screen blurring into darkness. Was that death? A heart attack from too many all-nighters? An aneurysm popping like a bad fuse? It felt too mundane, too accidental. People didn't just pass out like that and wake up in a world of endless sex and magic. Or did they?
I rolled onto my side, the furs shifting beneath me. The golden light pulsed faintly under my skin, a reminder of what I had become. Stronger. Faster. Able to fuck for hours without tiring, to spill load after load into desperate, beautiful women who begged for more. It should have been paradise. But in the quiet hours, it felt hollow. Was this hedonism the point? Endless pleasure, for what? I had power now, real power, but what for? To rebuild a broken world? To fight more monsters from the veil? Or just to keep cumming until everything blurred into oblivion?
I sat up, rubbing my face. Doubt gnawed at me, sharp and insistent. If I had truly died, there would be no reason for me to be here. Why this? Chosen, they called me. The first man in a thousand years. But chosen because of what? I believed I had died, the memory of that final blackout felt too final, too empty. But conviction slipped away in the dark. Maybe I was in a coma, dreaming this all up from a hospital bed. Maybe I would wake up any second, back in my shitty apartment, alone and ordinary.
The women were real enough, though. Their bodies, their moans, the way they clenched around me, flooding me with power. But that was the trap. Fucking all I wanted did not excuse me from thinking properly. I could not let the pleasure drown out the questions. If I stopped using my brain, stopped probing for answers, I would become just another tool in this world's machine, spilling seed without purpose.
I stood, pacing the small space. The torchlight flickered, throwing my shadow huge against the wall. Tomorrow I would push harder. Not just with cultivation, but with questions.