Once the man named Asher Ryder had left, Ewan finally took the time to organize his scattered thoughts.
The original owner of this body was named Basil Vance, a young man who had just turned twenty. He was the youngest young master of a family on Planet Capitalis that was so wealthy their money could likely pave the streets.
Being a rich kid from the Capital Planet sounded fantastic on paper, but reality was rarely so dreamy. The Vance family apparently had some serious issues regarding gender dynamics. They only doted on their strapping, high-status Alpha sons. Basil Vance, who had the misfortune of differentiating into an Omega, was treated like defective goods and tossed into a forgotten corner of the mansion. The pinnacle of this tragedy occurred recently when his beloved family decided to sell him off in a marriage alliance to a man over fifty for economic gain.
Rumor had it that this fiancé had some incredibly perverse hobbies and specialized in torturing people for pleasure. Basil might have been gentle, but he wasn't stupid. There was no way he was jumping into a fire pit willingly. Harboring a deep grudge, he waited for the bodyguards to drop their guard, stole a mini-spaceship, and fled for his life.
But his luck was truly rotten. The pursuit was too intense, his navigation system malfunctioned, and he plummeted towards this planet, crashing into the sea. The poor young master drifted to shore and dragged himself to the edge of the forest before his strength completely failed him.
In his dying moments, a fierce unwillingness to accept his fate flared up. Basil recalled a forbidden sacrificial art he had once secretly read about in the ancient library and recklessly attempted it. Who could have guessed that through sheer blind luck, his chaotic incantations would actually summon Ewan's soul to inhabit his body?
All things considered, the kid had a wretched life. Ewan mentally tutted in sympathy for his predecessor. Fine then, since I'm borrowing your body, I'll live out the rest of this life properly for you.
Ewan lay dazed on the bed again, staring blankly at the ceiling, letting the thoughts in his head dance around like a troop of drunken monkeys.
Being abruptly yanked from a civilized world to this godforsaken backwater... expecting him to adapt immediately would require him to be a saint. To make matters worse, he had crashed on a lawless planet. Hearing the nonchalant tone Asher Ryder used when mentioning this place, Ewan shivered internally.
"This place is definitely the Deluxe Edition of a refugee camp." he thought: "The only difference is that the scale is the size of a village... or worse, perhaps this entire planet is equally broken."
Ewan squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and rummaged through the chaotic, tattered memories of this body to grasp the situation.
Just as he predicted, this world operated on a biological framework that sounded like something out of a novel. Aside from male and female, humanity here was differentiated into three secondary genders: Alpha, Beta, and Omega.
Betas were like normal people, playing the role of the hardworking masses. Alphas were favored by the universe, born with silver spoons in their mouths, possessing ox-like strength and dominant genes. As for Omegas... Well, fortunately, this world didn't reduce Omegas to weak, walking baby-making machines who cried at the drop of a hat. On the contrary, Omegas here were actually quite fierce; many were top-tier leaders in major fields.
The only nuisance for the Omega demographic was the so-called "Heat Cycle". It sounded sexy in theory, but in reality, it was a ticking time bomb. If they didn't use suppressants in time, an Omega could be compromised by surrounding pheromones, easily leading to a loss of control. However, it was usually just a mild loss of control, not a full-blown riot. This world placed a heavy emphasis on developing technology to ensure human reason prevailed whenever pheromones flared up.
But the tragedy of Basil Vance's life wasn't just his gender, it lay in something called "Ability Awakening".
In this era, anyone who awakened an ability was considered a darling of the heavens, treated by their clan like a fragile egg or a precious flower. For Basil, however, his awakening was the straw that broke the camel's back, pushing him onto a path of inescapable tragedy.
To make it sound fancy, his ability was: Elemental Summoning.
Cool, right? Impressive, right?
In reality... it was just a nice name. The so-called "elements" were actually useless, good-for-nothing Slimes that looked utterly derpy. They didn't know how to fight, and their defense was zero. To top it off, the "universe" was so stingy that it capped his maximum summons at five. He couldn't even use a "human wave tactic" to overwhelm enemies with numbers.
The only bright spot - if one could call it that - was that these Slimes were technically immortal. If they were beaten to a pulp, they would auto-respawn after a cooldown period. When Basil fell into the sea, his squad of Slime minions had all perished. Ewan didn't know if they had finished "loading" yet, or if he had to summon a new batch.
But thinking it over, in a dog-eat-dog world, what was the point of owning a bunch of immortal Slimes? Keep them as pets to alleviate boredom? Use them as seat cushions?
No wonder the Vance family had left him for dead. Raising him cost rice and money, but getting such a trash-tier skill in return? That was a heavy return-on-investment loss.
After struggling for a while, Ewan finally managed to stand up wearily. His body hurt less now, so he decided to take a look around. First, he needed to understand the living conditions of the planet he was harboring on.
Based on Asher Ryder's description, Ewan had prepared himself for a grim scenario. But when he actually looked around, he realized his imagination was far too impoverished to comprehend the actual poverty here.
The room he was in was as tiny as a nostril. The thing called a "bed" in the corner turned out, upon closer inspection, to be a massive, cold slab of black stone covered by a thin, worn-out mattress. No wonder his back felt like it had been beaten, the cold had seeped right into his marrow. A mattress as hard as a rock - its heat retention functionality was definitely in the negatives.
Ewan ran his hand over the mattress, a rough, coarse sensation met his fingertips. It looked exactly like the burlap-sack-style clothes Asher was wearing. He shuddered. Had this planet been so impoverished that it had reverted to the Stone Age?
The interior design was minimalist to a heartbreaking degree. Aside from the "stone bed," a set of table and chairs sat forlornly in the middle of the room. calling it a "set" was generous; it was essentially a stone slab ground flat to serve as a table, accompanied by two crudely hewn, wobbly wooden chairs. Looking at that precarious construction, Ewan suspected that if he sat down with any force, the chair would snap in two, sending his backside to greet Mother Earth.
The room was bare, with drafts coming from all directions. Wardrobe? None. Reading desk? Keep dreaming, sweetheart. Thinking about it, given these circumstances, the locals probably struggled just to eat; who had time for literacy and desks?
Ewan sighed heavily and dragged his feet toward the side passage Asher had pointed out earlier. passing through a dark corridor about five or six paces long, he saw a dilapidated wooden door.
Creak.
Ewan pushed the door open, and the harsh sunlight immediately assaulted him, forcing him to squint.
This was the backyard.
Or at least Ewan assumed so, based on the crumbling perimeter walls and the low roofs of neighbors visible in the distance. From where he stood, he could look out and see the hazy foot of a mountain. In the far corner of the weed-choked plot stood a small hut built of stone, with two or three chipped water jars sitting beside it.
Ewan guessed that was likely the bathroom and toilet, built detached from the house.
Good heavens and earth! Why was it so dirt poor, so destitute, so pathetically impoverished?
In his old world, no matter how poor someone was, they usually built the toilet inside the house. Even if you couldn't afford one per room, there should at least be one indoors! If the cold season arrived, he would turn into a walking block of ice before he could even step back into the house after a bath.
Screw this world!
Where were the books? Where was the media? Wasn't this the Interstellar Era? Wasn't this the 4.0 Cosmic Age? Shouldn't there be spaceships zooming around and wars fought with laser mechas going pew pew? Why was the place he crashed so backward and primitive, no different from prehistoric times?
All those Isekai novels were full of scammers! It was a classic bait and switch!
Ewan's face crumpled, wanting to cry but finding no tears. He didn't want to stay in this godforsaken place anymore!
Let him go back to Earth, please! He promised to be good! He promised not to stay up late binge-reading stories anymore, boo hoo! He wouldn't even read pirated chapters over people's shoulders anymore, he promised!