Once is a coincidence.
Twice is already a pattern.
Folk wisdom.
Unknown author.
A spit-covered basement.
God, I feel awful.
Hmm…
Who exactly is “I”?
A name…
Every person should have a name.
But am I even human?
No, I think I used to be one, but I can’t remember when.
What do I remember about myself at all?
Hmm…
Genetics student.
Researcher.
Just an idiot.
Sooo…
A sense of humor.
Gods, was I really such an asshole?
Heh, well, maybe he deserved it, although cat food…
Interesting.
Did I have a family?
Friends?
No, it’s like someone cut those memories clean out.
And what’s this fragment?
I delve deeper into my memories.
There’s nothing else to do anyway.
In this state, it’s difficult not only to move, but even to think too hard.
There I am, a blurry figure in a black cloak.
A small flashback.
“I’ll try combining Night Serpent’s talent with the mutation I got from that kamikaze portal-maker.
If my calculations are correct, the power of the accumulated charge should be enough to tear apart the space-time continuum.
And while I’m at it, I’ll test Strange’s theory about the unity of separated entities…
If he’s right, it’ll be fun, and the possibilities that open up will be truly limitless.
Well then, let’s begin.”
I cut my arm, and several drops of blood wrap themselves around me, the symbiote.
“Hmm, exploring a new world with my ass hanging out doesn’t exactly appeal to me.
What should I take with me?
Mmm, yes, this should come in handy.
And if it doesn’t, I can always sell it to the locals as some rare and ancient artifact.”
With those words, I place a long sword beside me.
Katana, the memory tells me, but not an ordinary one.
The money from selling it could probably buy me a small island, all thanks to its composition…
Pure adamantium.
I suffered through hell casting it into the shape I wanted, and getting the edge sharpened properly was another nightmare.
No, a monomolecular blade is an incredibly useful thing, but very, very difficult to produce.
If I hadn’t been able to work with energy barriers, I never would have managed it.
Still, it had been worth it.
I’m pretty good at handling this toy.
Thanks to Li and his skills, as well as my inhuman strength and speed, of course.
“Oh, almost forgot the most important thing!”
A small safe is placed beside the sword.
Inside is my most precious treasure: a dozen phones capable of communicating with one another at distances of up to a hundred kilometers.
But that’s not their most important feature.
Every single one is packed to the brim with my favorite music.
The batteries are made using metal from Victor.
I should probably remember who that is someday.
In any case, that means I won’t need electrical outlets, which is rather convenient.
There might not even be electricity wherever I end up.
The devices themselves can also survive being struck by a blacksmith’s hammer.
“Well, I think that’s everything…
May Darkness help me.”
I step aside and open the portal.
It’s difficult, but it works.
And then I fall into the darkness of the portal.
The last thing I manage to notice is another me wiping the sweat from his brow.
End of flashback.
Hmm, I see.
So I decided to explore other worlds.
A good goal, but why is my head such a mess?
Unforeseen consequences?
Well, whatever.
With all the abilities I managed to collect, getting established here shouldn’t be difficult.
All right, let’s turn on my vision and take a look around.
The panorama was painfully familiar.
Some spit-covered basement, with a staircase against the opposite wall.
The sight brought images of an almost identical basement to mind, along with the indescribable “flavor” of those stairs.
Oh, hell no.
Not this time, sweetheart.
I remember having levitation abilities.
Maybe I don’t have a body, but the templates should have remained in Simba.
And so, with the slightest mental effort, I proudly floated above the floor…
Yeah.
Three whole times.
When you’re unlucky, you’re unlucky in everything.
The symbiote’s genetic memory was as clean as a newborn baby’s.
Not a single ability remained except its own absorption and enhancement.
The Inner Hamster sadly folded its little paws and stared at me with the saddest eyes imaginable.
The staircase seemed to grin mockingly.
Gods, what did I do to deserve this?!
I’ve been in this world for barely twenty minutes, and I already hate it here.
And why are all portals to other worlds so in love with dumps and filthy basements?
The Creator has a strange sense of humor.
Or whoever is responsible for this sort of thing.
Whether it took a long time or a short time, eventually I got out of the basement.
And what a beautiful sight greeted me.
A ruined village.
Columns of smoke rising into the sky.
Bodies scattered here and there.
In short, I had arrived at a very “fortunate” time.
To make matters worse, the only suitable body belonged to a boy of about seventeen to nineteen years old.
I didn’t realize that immediately.
The dirt covering his face and his completely white hair made him look another ten or twenty years older.
His shattered head didn’t exactly make him look younger, either.
Realistically, he had less than an hour left to live unless a miracle happened.
I was already preparing to crawl over and take possession of him when the conscience I thought had long since died somewhere deep inside me raised its head.
Yeah…
Conscience is like a hamster.
Either it’s sleeping, or it’s chewing.
The Inner Hamster took offense at the comparison and declared a boycott until it received some sort of tasty treat.
Still, I tried not to use ordinary people in my schemes.
Only individuals who had completely given up on themselves and refused to improve, or criminals.
But I had no choice now.
Getting into dead bodies was disgusting, and restoring one would be a massive pain.
Fine.
I’ll try negotiating.
He’ll die without me anyway, but he deserves the right to make one last wish.
Concentrating, I crawled toward the boy.
Sarien.
An ordinary villager.
The boy lay in a pool of his own blood, trying to understand.
Why?
Why had this happened?
He had no answers.
The cruelty of the Dark Ones had been completely senseless.
They simply wanted to have fun.
Those bastards had slaughtered almost the entire male population.
Sarien himself had survived only by a miracle.
At the very beginning, a flying stone had struck him in the head, and his attackers had assumed he was dead.
His sister and mother had been far less fortunate.
They had died slowly.
The boy had watched and been powerless to do anything.
He couldn’t even avenge them himself or hire a guild to do it for him.
He had no Power, no magic.
And even if he had possessed magic, he would have lived in a city and worked in a shop, or perhaps joined a guild, rather than sitting in a village on the edge of civilization.
As for hiring someone, he simply didn’t have the money.
Nobody worked for “thank you,” not even the Light guilds.
And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that he probably wouldn’t survive the night.
His body had almost stopped responding to him.
There wasn’t even any pain anymore.
And so the young man lay in the ashes of his burned village, praying to the heavens for vengeance.
But the heavens, as always, remained deaf to the pleas of mortals.
Someone much closer, however, was willing to help.
For a certain price.
Sarien didn’t notice the strange black puddle crawling toward him.
But then, there were many strange things in the world.
A soft, insinuating voice sounded inside Sarien’s head.
“Tell me.
What do you want?”
“Who’s there?” the boy rasped, but the village remained just as dead as before.
“I think I’m going crazy.”
“Oh no.
You’re perfectly healthy.
At least mentally.
I can grant you one wish.
Though I will take my price in return.”
“Are you a demon?” Sarien coughed.
“Hard to say.
It depends on what you mean by that word.
In a way, I suppose I am.”
“My family…
Can you bring them back?”
“No.
I can heal, but I cannot resurrect the dead.”
“Then kill them.
Kill them all…
The bastards who did this.
Can you?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.
Take whatever you want…
My soul, my body…
I don’t care.
Just make them die…
Make them die slowly.”
“So be it.”
And Sarien’s world sank into warm darkness.
Still Unknown.
But now with a body.
Everything went much more easily than I had expected.
I inherited the boy’s memories and echoes of his emotions.
Now, even without the contract, I would have gone and reduced those “Dark Ones” to zero.
Though, in my opinion, they were just ordinary bandits.
In general, the locals had a rather strange understanding of “dark mages,” just like they did of magic itself.
Still, I was incredibly happy that magic existed here at all.
I’d always dreamed of getting involved with this art.
Sarien himself wasn’t a mage and had only the vaguest understanding of magic.
Hopefully, I’ll fare better.
At worst, I’ll change bodies.
But that’s something to think about a little later.
First, I needed to get myself in order by sorting out the body and its memories.
Then I’d prepare myself and act.
The Deal hadn’t specified a deadline, but reaching those bastards was something I wanted just as much as the former owner of this body had.
But first, food and some adjustments to my parameters.
Lunch in the ashes of a burned village wasn’t exactly the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but what could I do?
At least I found a spot where there were no corpses in sight.
Not that I cared, but they certainly wouldn’t have improved the atmosphere or my appetite.
Well, whatever.
After eating my fill, I slipped into meditation and began improving the body I’d inherited.
Under the current circumstances, the only things I could rely on for now were my sword and my skills at “quiet” infiltration and killing.
The problem was that those skills had been developed for a somewhat different body, so I was going to have to work for it.
When has anything ever been easy?
A couple of hours later, a young man rose from the ruins.
He wore a black cloak and had silver hair reaching down to his waist.
He was about 185 centimeters tall and had a slender build, although calling him skinny would have been a stretch.
I decided to keep the white hair, though not completely.
As I remembered, hair could be any color in this world, so I suddenly felt like becoming the proud owner of a silver mane.
I had to spend some time tinkering with the gene responsible for hair color, but the result was worth it.
Well, whatever.
Hair wasn’t the important part.
The important thing was that my clothes obediently materialized according to my wishes.
I really didn’t want to walk around in torn sackcloth pants.
By the way, I had another interesting discovery.
While remodeling the body, I dug deeper into the memories.
What I saw left me mildly shocked.
The village was located on the border, not far from a certain kingdom called Fiore, where the Magic Council was in charge.
Well, this was quite a situation I’d landed in.
My idiot’s dream had come true.
I was in Fairy Tail.
What an interesting quirk of consciousness.
I couldn’t remember who I was, yet I remembered the plot of this anime perfectly well.
But the peculiarities of my memory bothered me.
I remembered physics and mathematics.
Everything I’d learned in the Marvel world.
By the way, I should try mastering blood again.
I knew the principle of similarity, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to call upon the Vitality Force.
I also remembered my life before entering that strange world.
I even remembered the plots of a dozen anime and manga series.
But I couldn’t remember myself at all.
Not my name.
Not my appearance.
Not my friends or acquaintances.
Nothing.
It felt as though someone had simply cut pieces out of my memories.
I don’t know why, but I already wanted to tear something off that someone.
My thoughts were jumping all over the place, too.
I wanted to do something unusual and amusing, and energy was practically bursting out of me from every possible opening.
Speaking of thoughts and fairies…
I wonder if there really are that many beauties in the guild?
All right, put the lewd thoughts aside.
Business first.
The first thing on my list was retrieving my belongings and coming up with a name.
I found the basement quickly, but getting inside was another matter.
For a black puddle, the entrance had been quite large.
From a human perspective, only a cat could have squeezed through that opening, and even then only after going on a diet.
I had to clear the rubble.
Fortunately, thanks to the enhancements I’d made through the symbiote, I managed to do it fairly quickly.
And then…
Nooooo!
Not this!
Why?!
Sob.
How cruel is this world?!
Strangely enough, the sword was still there and in perfect condition.
But it would have been better if that had been the thing that got damaged.
Alas, the goddess of luck continued showing me the part of her anatomy I’d grown thoroughly tired of seeing.
Or am I simply asking for too much?
Either way, I’d lost my music.
Inside the basement, all that remained was a piece of the safe, as though it had been sliced apart by a gigantic knife.
Of my treasures, only a single earbud had survived.
Technically, that was all I managed to find.
No.
The universe definitely had something against my music players!
Saying my mood was ruined would have been an understatement.
Sure, I could get myself a guitar and even reproduce some songs.
In fact, I should get my hands on such a useful instrument.
I’d conquer the female population with my melodious voice and mysterious songs.
Or I could simply “listen” to them in my head.
But that still wasn’t the same.
Hopefully, I’ll manage to find some kind of equivalent to a music player in this world.
Otherwise, things were going to get depressing.
First for me.
Then for the world.
I spent the rest of the day practicing with my sword, getting used to its length and weight all over again.
What can I say?
Compared to my former self, I was still miles behind.
But even my current speed and strength clearly surpassed human capabilities by an order of magnitude.
My wounds also healed quickly.
At first, I did mess up one of the connections and nearly chopped my own leg off.
It hurt like hell.
Well, at least there was that.
Night finally fell, and it was time for me to pay a visit to the local rabble, the ones known as the Dark Ones.
After that, I would head out into the wider world.
I wasn’t going to the Fairies just yet.
I needed to at least get somewhat familiar with magic and figure out where exactly I had landed in the timeline.
I didn’t want to find myself unprepared in the middle of a conflict with Phantom Lord or Grimoire.
Though, knowing my luck…
Well then.
Assassin class, level one.
Experience: zero.
Gold: zero.
Objective: gain knowledge and experiences, and do it in such a way that everyone else dies of envy.
Or not necessarily envy.
Along the way, I could conquer the world.
Or create myself a harem.
Damn, what the hell happened to me during the transition?
Did Slaanesh bite me or something?
Well then.
Let’s go!