[Starting synchronization.]
[0%, 1%, 10%, 23%, 47%, 59%…… Synchronization has stopped due to an unexpected error.]
[Executing forced synchronization.]
[0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%…….]
“Uuuuuugh…….”
Hyeon-seong’s head hurt as if it were splitting apart.
His entire head throbbed, and it felt as though his brain might burst.
The pain continued without end, as if someone were beating the back of his head with a hammer again and again.
It was hard to breathe, and cold sweat poured down him without stopping.
He had heard that when pain became too severe, a person could not even scream, but he had never imagined he would experience the truth of those words firsthand in his own body.
[5%, 6%, 7%…….]
The gauge slowly filled, and the numbers gradually increased.
Hyeon-seong did not know it, but the source of the pain was that someone had forced his head open and shoved an enormous amount of information into his brain.
The identity of the information tormenting Hyeon-seong was someone else’s memories.
And those memories gradually became Hyeon-seong’s own.
‘Why is this happening to me?’
Along with the incomprehensible situation, the pain Hyeon-seong felt continued to grow worse.
And…… the voice he had heard from beside him from time to time since earlier.
Someone was holding his hand, sobbing, and continuously saying something.
It was a language he had never heard before in his life.
He could not understand what that voice was saying, but the emotion contained in it was so heartrending that Hyeon-seong naturally listened to it.
The voice seemed as though it might give him strength and ease his pain, and he could clearly feel that its owner was worried about him.
Even as he focused on someone’s voice, the synchronization continued.
Amid the tremendous confusion and pain, Hyeon-seong prayed only for this moment to end quickly.
An eternity of pain followed, and in the end, Hyeon-seong could not endure it and lost consciousness.
“Hah.”
Hyeon-seong’s eyes flew open as he breathed out, as if startled by something.
He had fainted and then awakened.
Hyeon-seong thought that was fortunate instead.
Thanks to fainting, he had not needed to suffer that terrible pain afterward.
After regaining some measure of composure, Hyeon-seong examined his own body.
He had sweated so much that his whole body was damp, as if he had gone into water and come back out.
Fortunately, the headache had subsided.
Only the afterecho of the pain remained.
At that moment, a message appeared before his eyes.
[100%. Forced synchronization has finished.]
Hyeon-seong could not understand what in the world was going on.
Forced synchronization?
That was a message he had only seen in games.
Could it be?
Hyeon-seong sprang up from his seat and looked around.
This was a room he had never seen before.
‘Wait, where is this? Why am I here?’
Antique furniture, marked by someone’s touch, like something he had only seen in movies.
In front of the fireplace occupying one side of the room stood a comfortable chair.
Hyeon-seong planted his feet on the carpet spread across the floor and stood up.
Through the soles of his feet, he felt a soft, warm, and very familiar sensation.
‘Why does this feel familiar?’
The moment he tilted his head at the familiar feeling in a room he was certain he had visited for the first time, Hyeon-seong saw the crude mirror on the table and was horrified.
The face visible through the crude mirror on the table was…….
Not his own.
“Hah!!”
Hyeon-seong’s eyes widened as if they were about to tear.
‘What is this? Why does my face look like this?’
Inside the mirror was the face of a sickly-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes.
He could not believe it, so he touched every part of his face with his hands, but….
This was definitely his face.
‘Shit. This is my face? No. I don’t look like this. My skin and hair…… my race itself is completely different. What the hell is happening to me right now?’
He was confused.
Faced with a situation he could not possibly understand, he was so shaken that his jaw trembled.
And before long, along with a surging shock, all his memories began to rise to the surface, as if his head had been thrown wide open.
And he realized.
I am Lawrence Romanov.
‘I’m Lawrence……? No, why do I think of myself as Lawrence? I’m Choi Hyeon-seong…….’
Yet unlike his reason, his sense of self was telling him that he was certainly Lawrence.
And slowly, his reason also began to accept that fact.
‘Yes, I’m Lawrence, and I’m Choi Hyeon-seong too.’
Hyeon-seong accepted this fact far too easily.
It felt as though the person named Lawrence and he had merged.
No, more precisely, it was correct to say that his self had entered Lawrence’s body and fused with him.
And Lawrence’s life became his own.
His thoughts, emotions, wishes, likes, things he had wanted to do, and everything else naturally became Hyeon-seong’s.
‘How is something like this possible…….’
Lawrence had been sick.
Terribly so.
Every single day, he had suffered pain that far surpassed the limits a human being could endure.
The disease he had contracted was mana necrosis.
It was a disease in which mana failed to fuse with the body and instead attacked it.
It was an incurable disease that medicine in this age could not heal.
And the reason Lawrence suffered even more from this disease was that his mana affinity was extremely high compared to other people.
Because of that, mana accumulated inside his body faster than others, and as a result, it made him suffer even more.
For the past ten years or so, Lawrence had been unable to rise from his sickbed, and since it would not have been strange for him to die at any time, he was simply waiting for death.
His parents’ hearts ached as they looked at such a son, but by now, rather than hoping for a miracle, they wished that their son would escape this terrible pain and fall peacefully asleep.
Hyeon-seong looked down at Lawrence’s body, which had now become his own body.
A body so thin it was all skin and bones.
It looked as if only leather had been stretched over bone.
However, he soon realized that his mana necrosis had been cured.
Because the pain that had made him think dying would be better no longer existed.
Suddenly, Hyeon-seong thought that Lawrence had taken the illness with him as he left for his sake, and before he knew it, words slipped out of his mouth.
“Thank you.”
Hyeon-seong’s cheeks flushed slightly as he expressed his gratitude.
He had merely thanked Lawrence, but he thought that to anyone else, it would look as if he were thanking himself.
But his embarrassment lasted only for a moment, and Hyeon-seong accepted that he had inherited all of Lawrence’s life and will.
Knock, knock, knock!
At that moment, he heard someone knocking carefully.
Soon after, the door opened, and a woman carrying a washbasin and a towel quietly entered.
“Aaaah.”
The woman was startled when she saw Hyeon-seong standing, fell backward, and landed on her backside.
And because of that, the washbasin tipped over, and the water scattered across the floor soaked her backside, but she did not notice it at all.
“Y-Y-Y-Young Master.”
The woman who called out to Hyeon-seong in a trembling voice was Helena, a maid.
“Helena, hello. Sorry for startling you.”
Hyeon-seong greeted the startled woman in a gentle voice and slightly raised his hand.
When Helena faced this unexpected situation, her mind went blank for a moment.
That was how shocking it was that Hyeon-seong was standing.
And before long, as if she had realized what she needed to do, Helena sprang to her feet and left the room.
From the pounding sound of her footsteps, he could tell just how hurriedly she was going.
Soon, the sound of two people’s footsteps approached.
One of them would be Helena, and he knew who the other was without needing to see her face.
It was his mother.
“Lawrence, Lawrence, are you all right?”
Lawrence’s mother, Adela, entered the room on the verge of tears.
Her eyes were full of tears.
It looked as though they would pour down like a waterfall if they were touched even slightly.
And Hyeon-seong knew that she was the owner of the voice he had heard amid the terrible pain of mana necrosis, the voice that had always cared for him and called to him plaintively.
At that moment, an indescribable emotion surged up in his chest.
That feeling he had forgotten for so long.
It was love.
“Are you all right now? Don’t overdo it. Sit down first.”
Adela hurriedly sat Hyeon-seong on the bed.
“Mother, I’m really all right now. I’m completely cured, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
At Hyeon-seong’s words, Adela could not contain the emotion welling up inside her, and tears streamed endlessly from her eyes.
The tears flowing down her cheeks showed no sign of stopping, and soon she began to sob with her shoulders trembling.
Hyeon-seong gently drew his mother into his arms.
His chest grew damp from his mother’s hot tears, and his mother’s sobbing made his heart ache even more.
“You’ve suffered so much all this time, Mother.”
“No. What suffering…… If anything, you were the one who suffered. What did I even do? You have no idea how sorry I was that I couldn’t do anything for you. Still, I’m truly glad you recovered safely like this.”
The House of Count Romanov, located at the southernmost end of the Kingdom of Lumiere, was not well off.
Even so, Adela did her best for her sick son.
Unlike the wife of any other count, she did not even keep a maid for herself.
And she personally cleaned not only her own room but also her husband’s office.
Since her son had fallen ill, she had not bought a single piece of clothing, nor even one common ornament.
But no matter how hard she tried, because the House of Count Romanov was not well off, there was not much she could do for her son, so she always felt sorry.
“No. I know you held my hand every day, Mother. You called healers and priests for me, even though things were difficult. I was able to recover like this because you never gave up until the end. I’m the one who’s more grateful.”
At her son’s warm and dependable words, Adela’s heart ached with the joy flooding through her.
An emotion that could not be compared to anything else surged over her.
It felt as if all those difficult years had been repaid at once.
“So there’s no need to apologize to me, Mother. Ah, but perhaps because my body has only just recovered, I feel a little tired. Would it be all right if I rested for a while?”
Hyeon-seong said this once his mother’s sobbing had calmed.
He wanted to give his mother more time to compose herself, but he also desperately needed time to organize his own thoughts.
“Yes, I understand. I was so happy that your illness was cured that I…… I failed to consider your situation. I’ll return for now, so don’t overdo it and rest well.”
Adela lovingly stroked Hyeon-seong’s face, then left the room with Helena.
Left alone, Hyeon-seong slowly went back over what had happened to him.
Then, suddenly, he recalled the message about synchronization that he had seen amid pain he never wanted to think about again.
Come to think of it, that was the first screen that appeared when connecting to the game for the first time.
‘Wait, then did I enter the Arcadia game?’
But this was not the game world he knew.
Before buying a game capsule, he had already played the game several times in a capsule room.
The world he had seen in Lawrence’s memories was clearly completely different from the game world he had experienced then.
‘If I didn’t enter the game either…… then where in the world is this place? And how did I get here?’
Faced with this unbelievable reality, Hyeon-seong naturally sank deep into thought.
But he could not grasp even the smallest clue.
At that moment, one scene came to mind.
‘Ah! Right, there was an error.’
He clearly remembered that an error message had appeared during the synchronization.
Which meant…….
Originally, he should have been connected to the game, but for some unknown reason, he had connected to another world, and in that process, an error had occurred, causing forced synchronization to take place—at least, that was what he thought.
Then could that have been implemented too?
‘Status window.’
When he repeated status window in his mind, the game interface appeared before his eyes.
Name: Lawrence Romanov
Class: None
Level: 1
HP: 100
MP: 100
Strength: 3
Stamina: 2
Agility: 4
Sense: 10
Skills: Mana Affinity.
His guess had been exactly right.
Although he had entered another world, fortunately amid the misfortune, the game interface remained intact.
He guessed that the Mana Affinity skill had appeared because Lawrence’s constitution had been reflected as it was.
Hyeon-seong had succeeded, in his own way, in guessing what kind of situation he had been placed in, but in truth, the real problem lay elsewhere.
‘How can I return to my original life?’
No matter how much he thought about this problem, he could not find an answer.
Since he did not even know how he had crossed into another world in the first place, there was no way he could find a way back.
Then there was only one choice left.
To live on in this other world.
But after reaching that conclusion, this did not seem like such a bad choice either.
In truth, it was already no different from having lived here.
Because he had not merely received Lawrence’s knowledge; Lawrence’s soul and Hyeon-seong’s soul had merged.
Moreover, hadn’t he obtained tremendous power?
He would be able to use the game interface in another world, and he would likely be the only one who could.
On top of that, he even had the Mana Affinity skill.
In another world, mana was a symbol of power.
Since he could easily gather such mana, this was no different from an incredible blessing.
Because of that, he could not know the limits of how far he could grow.
On top of that, he had modern knowledge as well.
Now, he would be able to achieve not only all of Lawrence’s dreams, which had become no different from his own, but also everything he wanted.
As Hyeon-seong thought of the future that would unfold before him, his face flushed with anticipation, and his heart beat pleasantly.
He could not even remember how long it had been since he had felt this kind of pleasant excitement.