The room was small, dark, and quiet.
A young man sat in front of his computer wearing nothing but a loose white T-shirt and shorts, the glow of the monitor painting sharp shadows across his face. Outside the open window, the sun was setting, bleeding orange light into the apartment like a dying signal.
On the screen were numbers.
Accounts stacked neatly in columns. Dollars. Euros. Yen. Crypto wallets fractured across chains and mixers.
A sum exceeding 200 million.
He stared at it with indifference.
"Money Laundering is such a drag, I guess I will die of old age before i even get to use all this money."
He stood up stretching his body and reached for the pull-up bar bolted into the doorway.
One.
Two.
Three.
His breathing stayed even.
"I need to stay fit to live longer, looks like my dream isn't going to become reality anytime soon"
"Looks like it will take longer than expected I better stay alive until then."
Pull-ups turned into push-ups. The rhythm was mechanical, almost ritualistic.
"Everyone only has a limited time in this world" he continued. "So I'll squeeze mine until it bleeds."
His phone buzzed.
INTRUDER ALERT.
His movement stopped instantly.
The screen lit up with live footage from hidden cameras placed around the building. Men in dark gear. Coordinated movement. Vehicles blocking exits.
"Guess this place is about to be raided huh" he said calmly
He reached under the desk and pulled out a black backpack. EMERGENCY was stitched on it in dull red.
"Neuro, Lock everything up" he said to his ai assistant on phone which he built himself to assist in situations like these.
Every door in the apartment sealed at once. Internal drives began wiping themselves into static.
He didn't wait. He moved.
He exited through the roof access, clipped a rope to the railing, and swung cleanly to the neighboring building. His movements were efficient with No wasted effort or hesitation.
Below, nearly twenty people surrounded the building. More were arriving.
He did some crazy ass parkour and escaped.
"activate Escape Sequence Two" the young man said.
A translucent map flickered onto his phone screen. White marked his position. Green marked compromised vehicles. Orange and red pulsed steadily nearby which are potential task force units.
"Three viable vehicles," Neuro reported. "Two compromised."
"Looking at vehicles, One is too far away, another one has few police near it, if they are searching for me it would be bad. Another one is bit far but if i take this shortcut i can make it."
As he sprinted, footsteps echoed behind him. Two men. Not law enforcement.
Cartel.
"Desperate enough to outsource, Must be short on manpower."
He ran towards a tall wall, planted his foot, redirected momentum upward, hands catching the edge with ease and jumped cleanly over it while the two fat guys have trouble climbing.
The streets were strangely calm and empty than usual. which felt really off for some reason.
He grabbed an electric bike, plugged a device from his bag, and and watched Neuro break into the Firmware.
Security bypass complete. Limiters removed.
It took few seconds. The bike started and he vanished into the city.
He ditched it two districts later, vanished into a subway, changed clothes mid-crowd. Hoodie. Cap. Track pants.
"activate Escape Sequence Three," he whispered.
On the train, he chose a corner seat. watching out side the window and eyeing for suspicious people.
In few moment he already analysed the situation that he's in and the ways he can get out of it.
He was still running calculations when a man sat beside him.
Middle-aged. Well-dressed. Calm.
"Do you mind?" the man asked with a pleasant smile.
Something felt wrong.
The man offered a handshake. "Name's ——."
The moment their hands met, metal clicked shut.
Recognition hit a heartbeat too late.
"Oh," the young man said calmly. "You're that detective from the documentary."
The man's eyes narrowed.
The calmness on young man's face felt off. I better report to HQ in case he tries to escape, the man thought.
"So," the young man said calmly, "what made you chase a small hacker like me?"
The man studied him. "A respected doctor by day. A notorious darknet operator by night. Perfect grades. Clean reputation. No red flags in college or at work." He shook his head. "You were so spotless I almost crossed you off the list."
"I don't get it," he continued. "You had everything. Why commit crimes? You must be corrupted by greed"
The young man scoffed. "I love it when government types talk about greed. Want me to leak your files? There are crimes far worse than anything we criminals have done."
"We already prepared the cover-ups and propaganda. There's no benefit in leaking anything. And you don't strike me as someone who fights for anything beyond personal gain."
"Haha you got me there, can't argue"
48… 49… 50.. almost a minute the young man counted internally.
He struck.
The fight was brutal and short. The detective was trained. Stronger. Faster.
But not prepared.
The punch barely landed on the detective's chest before the cuffs snapped tight. The officer yanked him back and slammed a punch into his face which made the young man hold the support pole, twisted with the impact, he then feinted low and drove a fist into the man's eye. but the officer blocked it effortlessly.
"You should give up," the officer said coldly. "You can't beat trained combat."
"I wasn't trying to," he replied.
59… 60.
He shook his wrist. The cuff fell away.
At the same instant, alarms screamed. The train jolted to a halt. Doors burst open.
He shoved the detective aside and sprinted out, leaping from the tracks to the road below.
Sequence Three was already active.
If he failed to unlock his phone every sixty seconds, Neuro would trigger the train's fire evacuation protocol.
If the train reached the next station, he'd be surrounded.
Inside the carriage, the detective clenched his teeth.
"He was buying time, patiently picking the lock while distracting me"
"Truly a waste of talent, he still had no chance against everyone combined"
Two men were already waiting where he landed.
Stun guns raised. "Hands up."
He slid his hands out of his hoodie pockets, lifting them slowly—
Then his wrist snapped.
The EMP detonated with a dry crack, frying every electronic device in range before either of them could report the situation.
Every second that passed only makes things worse when you are getting chased.
A truck surged past. He jumped, fingers locking onto the rear frame as momentum dragged him up.
The stun shot slammed into his back.
No effect.
The insulation layer in hoodie was built for this exact moment.
He tossed a handful of spikes onto the road.
Tires burst. Vehicles fishtailed. A traffic jam bloomed behind him like a controlled explosion, cutting the task force off cleanly.
Then his vision glitched.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Reality warped, like a corrupted frame skipping mid-render.
He jumped off at the end of the highway and disappeared into the city hiding somewhere safe. The distortion followed him like a curse.
Stun gun?
No. That didn't fit the symptoms.
The young man went into a rundown building an hour later after making sure he isn't being tracked. He dropped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling while his head pulsed painfully.
The blur returned. Black squares tore through his vision like missing data. The world shifted, folding inward, and a drowning sensation crushed his chest.
For an instant, he saw somewhere else.
Two lines trying to overlap.
"Shit… I can't think straight—"
Darkness.
—
Consciousness snapped back like a severed wire reconnecting.
Did I black out?
No—wait.
Where am I?
A ceiling stared back at him. White. Too clean.
"This looks like a Hospital."
It was Night, judging by the faint light bleeding through the glass panel across the room.
"Damn," he muttered. "My head feels like hell."
He tried to move.
Nothing.
His body didn't respond, pinned beneath its own weight. That alone would have triggered panic in most people. Instead, he assessed. Sensation was present. Temporary paralysis, most likely.
An oxygen mask covered his face. An IV line was strapped to his arm. Medical equipment, but wrong. The design didn't match anything he knew.
Different country?
No.
He shifted his gaze to the glass door.
The reflection showed a teenager.
His face. Younger.
He tried to backtrack his memories.
One part refused to come into focus. A vague sensation of drowning. Pressure. The edge of death. That was the only gap. Everything else was clear.
Too clear.
This didn't feel like a dream. Dreams unraveled. This held together.
Two sets of memories sat in his head, overlapping but distinct.
His head still hurt.
He needed to write everything down before the thoughts fully collided and something was lost.
He tried to sit up.
His body kept refusing.
So he lay still instead, eyes open, recapping everything he knew. His life in this world. The previous one. Separating facts from noise.
"Just when I thought the situation couldn't get any worse"
He exhaled slowly.
Panic rose, then died just as quickly.
Panic was unproductive.
If this was real, then how he ended up here was already out of his control. That didn't matter.
What remained was the situation, the variables, and the options available to him.
He need to analyse what options he had how he could influence them.
Like chess, the board was already set.
All that mattered now was making the best possible move.
"So this body belonged to a younger version of me. Not past, but a parallel equivalent."
"What had happened to my original body was still unclear. If what happened is something like body swap. Then It's a really big mess I left him back there. Hehe"
"I am more curious how this even happened in the first place. Do these people here have anime type powers?"
As the thought settled, foreign memories surfaced on their own. Not forced. Not painful. Just information sliding into place.
This world ran on Ether.
Everyone had it. A form of energy drawn from the environment and stored in the body. Ether itself did nothing until shaped. That was where runes came in.
Runes are just stones for the most part. Each have different functions depending on the code written in them. Less magic, more engineering.
"So basically I can code a rune stone to convert my ether into bullets and shoot until i run out of ether"
Ether recovered slowly on its own. Too slowly in a fight. That's why Ether crystals existed. Concentrated energy crystals we can absorb.
Simple. Efficient.
Combining memories from both lives, the conclusion was obvious.
Ether wasn't unique to this world. It existed everywhere, across all dimensions.
The difference was adaptation.
Back in my previous world either its very faint or people didn't adapt to sense it, let alone use it. So they built civilisations on nuclear power, thermal and electricity. Here, people evolved differently.
Like bats without sight, evolved echolocation to navigate.
"I have quite an inventory of runes, as I am an engineering nerd in this world.
All of them are bottom of sequence 1 so basically it's more like DIY tools than actual weapons which deals damage."
"That drowning feeling… no images, no memory. Only the raw sense of brushing death.
I can clearly recall memories before and after that incident.
The trigger for transmigration was there. That much was obvious."
He closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
The next day, familiar voices woke him.
Three boys stood beside his bed, all wearing the same academy uniform.
"How are you holding up, Lian?"
"Heard you got hit pretty bad in that fragmented domain. You have some of the worst luck of all the people i know." Nox said.
"Ignore him. Walking out without permanent injuries is itself insane luck." Lin Ling added.
They were his friends in this world. All from the same academy. A place designed to mass-produce cadets for military deployment.
"I'm fine," he said. "Doctor says I'll be discharged tomorrow. Still don't remember much about what happened in the fragmented domain."
"Yeah, probably trauma," Sunny said. "You've always been a massive pussy."
Lian glanced at him. "Oh yea but at least I'm not someone who cried for a week because his girl left him."
Laughter broke out.
"There's only one week left before the semester exams," Lin Ling said, adjusting his glasses. "Actually—if we don't start studying now, we're ending up in Class D."
That mattered. More than they realised.
According to previous Lian's memories, failing wasn't an option. His parents here wouldn't tolerate it.
They would be so mad he could possibly get kicked outa house if he fails.
"Alright we lock in from tomorrow." Nox said.
Agreements followed.
Then Nox grinned. "Hey, Lian. Why don't you make some invention to help us cheat without getting caught? You're always building weird runes nobody uses. Total waste of talent."
"Its not that easy," Lian said. "You can't use runes without getting caught. Classrooms have Ether sensors. Anything outside academy-authorised runes gets flagged immediately."
He paused. "Not impossible to bypass. Just not worth the effort. Easier to study than build a backdoor for the sensors."
"Tch. I'm getting into Class A next year anyway," Sunny said. "All the girls there are hot."
"fucking Simp," Nox replied without hesitation.
Laughter followed. The conversation drifted, light and unimportant.
Lian watched it all like background noise.
Class rankings. Reputation. Honor.
A high position in the military. Money.
All of it was superficial.
He had already touched most of those things in his previous life. He knew exactly how fragile they were. Until one reached the very top, they were nothing more than decorations placed on a pawn.
As long as he remains a pawn his fate is always written by whoever stood above the board.
This world had given him a second chance, not to climb the same ladders again, but to step outside the board entirely.
Although he is weak and lacked talent He was intelligent. Calculating. Patient. Enough to compensate.
Strength could be borrowed. Tools could be built. People could be used. Until then, he would stay out of direct conflict.
He had never relied on brute force anyway.
In his previous life, every step forward had been paid for with deception, exploitation, and carefully chosen crimes. People were resources. Trust was leverage. Morality was a language used by those who needed protection.
That wouldn't change no matter the world.
He never intended to rise through ranks like the rest of students.
He would walk the same road he always had. One paved with blood, crime, betrayal, and unending loneliness.