"I actually… transmigrated."
His words sounded ridiculous even as he said them, like a line from the kind of story he had binge-read at two in the morning because it was easier than lying in the dark with his own thoughts, yet the warmth blooming in his chest made it impossible to deny.
When he had first woken up, it hadn't been obvious.
The hospital room was too sterile to scream "fantasy world," but stepping into the corridors had snapped it into place immediately, and now, alone in this dorm, it was undeniable.
He wasn't just in some random other world either.
He was in his favourite game.
The world of ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱, the one he had poured over five years of his life into, the one that had been his escape when everything else had felt like a dead end.
He sat down on the bed, still smiling, still breathing a little too fast, and for a moment, he let himself feel it, the sheer impossible freedom of it, because even if he didn't understand how he had ended up here, the outcome was real.
Then a more practical thought slid in, cutting through the haze.
"But wait," he muttered, wiping his face with his palm. "Isn't something missing?"
In novels, the transmigrator didn't just wake up and suffer.
They got a system, a status window, something to level the playing field, and Isaac, for all his disbelief, couldn't stop the genre instinct from kicking in.
He hesitated, then said it anyway, feeling stupid the moment the word left his mouth.
"Status."
Nothing happened.
He stared at the empty air, then exhaled and rubbed his face again.
"Well, that's embarrassing."
He started to lie back down, telling himself he would deal with it later, that he could sleep and wake up with a clearer head, and then, as if cutting off his thoughts, a chime rang out.
Ting-♪
.
[Initialisation Complete]
.
"Ow—shit!"
Isaac doubled over instantly as pain detonated behind his eyes, far worse than before, and he stumbled off the bed.
Thud!
He hit the floor hard, clutching his head, his vision blurring until the room became smears of light and shadow, his stomach twisting as if his body might throw up purely from the force of it.
This time the pain wasn't only pain.
It was information.
Memories flooded him, not as vague impressions but as perfectly detailed sequences, every sight and sound and thought snapping into place with brutal clarity, as if someone had taken his entire life and remastered it in high resolution.
Childhood moments he had barely been able to recall surfaced intact, along with things he had thought he had forgotten entirely, and threaded through all of it was the sharp, clean weight of game knowledge, routes, mechanics, lore, names, dates, events, systems, everything he had absorbed over five years of obsession becoming accessible all at once.
It was overwhelming, suffocating, and his breath came in ragged pulls as he rode it out.
And still, beneath all that perfect clarity, that one gap remained, the clean blank after the End-of-Service notice, as if it existed behind a locked door in his mind.
He tried, purely on reflex, to reach for it.
Pain flared so violently he gagged and jerked, his fingers digging into his hair.
'Stop.'
He stopped.
He lay there, shaking, sweat soaking into his shirt, waiting for the worst of it to pass, and when it finally eased, he sucked in a shaky breath and let out a laugh that sounded more like disbelief than joy.
"I knew it," he rasped. "They wouldn't just throw me here empty-handed."
Ting-♪
.
[Status Window is now available.]
.
A translucent silver window appeared before him, floating neatly in mid-air.
Isaac stared at it, chest tight, then a grin tugged at his mouth again, because as ridiculous as it was, it was real.
"Holy shit…"
He pushed himself upright slowly, still rubbing at his temple, then steadied his breathing and whispered, careful with the word this time, as if speaking it too loudly might bring the pain back.
"「Status」."
The screen expanded instantly.
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
Age: 18
Race: Human
◈ Titles
- Transmigrator (Year 1)
◈ Unique Skills
- Library of Memories
- ???
◈ Stats
Stamina - 0.2 (F)
Strength - 0.3 (F)
Agility - 0.4 (F)
Mana - 0.3 (F)
Divine Power - 0.0 (F)
Charm - 8.4 (A+)
◈ Skills
- Life Magic
- Basic Magic
└ Aqua (F+)
└ Gaia (F)
.
Isaac stared, then groaned and dragged a hand down his face.
"Ugh…"
Five F's, one A+, and the A+ was in Charm, as if the universe had decided it would be funniest to hand him something flashy and mostly useless.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
He read it again anyway, because denial didn't change a system window, and the numbers stubbornly stayed where they were, confirming what he had already felt in his body, the weakness, the fragility, the sense that if he got into a fight with anyone serious, he would fold instantly.
Charm that high was absurd, higher than most maxed-out characters in the game, but for someone like Soren Arden, whoever Soren Arden had been before Isaac woke up in his body, it looked like a cruel punchline.
He forced himself to keep scanning, eyes moving to the skills.
Life Magic was baseline, something most people learned if they had even the slightest magical aptitude, and Basic Magic with only two spells, both at the bottom of the barrel, might as well have been an insult.
'F+ and F…'
It meant the original body hadn't used magic much at all, and even the slight bump in Aqua probably came from entrance exams rather than actual training.
He searched instinctively for an EXP bar, for some levelling system, any hint of a clean progression path.
There was nothing.
"How the hell am I supposed to get stronger with this?"
For a moment, the disappointment hit hard enough to cool the excitement, because he could already imagine the grind, the pain, the sheer effort it would take to climb from Class F with stats like these, and then his eyes landed on the Unique Skills section.
"Oh? Wait, there is something decent here, actually."
His voice lifted despite himself.
[Library of Memories]
He frowned, and the ache in his skull pulsed faintly, as if the skill was reminding him it existed.
"That's probably what made my head explode earlier…"
At first glance it sounded simple, but he had already felt the difference, the way memories sat in his mind now like engraved text, clear and retrievable without effort, and if it worked the way it seemed to…
His heart skipped.
If he remembered everything from the game perfectly, then he wasn't walking around blind; he was walking around with five years of future knowledge and mechanics sitting in his head.
'Then I have the entire game memorised.'
The thought made him grin again, almost dizzy with possibility.
"Well," he breathed. "That's… pretty overpowered."
Then he noticed the second unique skill.
[???]
No description, no details, only question marks.
"Guess that's locked for now."
He swallowed, and his mind, unhelpfully, drifted toward that missing gap again, because if he could remember everything now, then surely he could remember how he got here, right?
The moment his thoughts brushed the edge of it, the warning pain flared, sharp and immediate.
Isaac went still, jaw tightening.
Whatever happened after he saw the End-of-Service notice was sealed away, and forcing it wasn't going to make it clearer; it was only going to put him back on the floor.
He exhaled slowly, letting the attempt die.
'Fine. I can figure that out later.'
There were more urgent things to focus on than a locked door in his head, especially when he could at least confirm one thing now, clear as day.
He was here.
He was alive.
And the world outside this dorm was Stellaris Academy.
He dismissed the status window with a small wave, and as it vanished the room felt a fraction more real, less like a hallucination and more like a place he could actually touch.
He let his eyes sweep over the dorm properly, taking in the clean desk, the wardrobe, the neatness that bordered on unused, and the quiet that made the air feel still.
Two things stood out immediately.
A large axe leaning against the wall, and a school bag sitting on the desk.
His gaze went to the axe first, because it was impossible not to.
The weapon was too large, too deliberate, the blade wide and polished with craftsmanship that screamed expensive.
It looked like something that belonged in a noble's armoury, not propped casually in a student dorm as if it were a walking stick.
'There's no way I can lift this with those stats.'
Curiosity still dragged him closer.
He crouched and ran his fingers along the edge carefully, not pressing hard, just tracing, and the metal felt cold beneath his skin.
Near the base of the blade he noticed an engraving, an inscription cut with a steady hand, and when he leaned in, his fingers stopped just beneath a single name.
'Freya.'
Isaac stared, and [Library of Memories] responded instantly, information surfacing with that smooth, cold certainty he had already begun to recognise, like a book opening to the exact page he needed without him having to flip through it.
Freya Arden.
He didn't even have to search for it.
His throat tightened.
"…Then that means…"
He looked down at his hands again, flexing his fingers as if the answer might be written into his skin.
Soren Arden.
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱ there was a family called the Ardens, Counts in the Fialova Kingdom, not a major faction, not a central pillar of the story, more like a name that existed on the edge of the world so the setting felt lived-in beyond the protagonist's path.
The Ardens had been mentioned only a handful of times in the game, the sort of detail most players forgot, but Isaac had never been "most players," and now he could recall it with uncomfortable clarity.
The first mention was Freya.
A prodigal knight, described as a once-in-a-millennium talent, a name tied to admiration and loss, because she had died months before the main events began.
In the lore, she had been on campaign, fighting monsters and demons crossing over the demon realm's borders into Fialovan territory, and she had been the kind of person the world expected to survive, until she didn't.
On the final mission of her campaign, she had fallen into a demon's trap, and she had died, abruptly and cruelly, the kind of death that existed mostly to remind you that even legendary talent didn't guarantee a storybook ending.
The second mention was the current head of the family.
Sofia Arden.
Countess and former general, the second-highest rank in the Fialovan army, which alone spoke volumes about her strength.
And even beyond that, she was known as shrewd in politics and finance, the kind of woman who smiled politely while bleeding you dry.
She appeared in a main quest where the protagonist had to secure sponsorships, and interacting with her had been a headache, full of careful dialogue choices and reputation checks that punished you for getting too bold.
Isaac exhaled through his nose, the faintest edge of humour slipping through.
'I remember her being a pain in the ass to deal with.'
But that was it.
That was the Arden family, as far as the game had cared.
Freya, dead.
Sofia, difficult.
But no Soren.
Soren Arden didn't exist as a character in the original game, not an NPC with dialogue, not a quest giver, not a name hidden in a lore entry, nothing at all, which meant either he had lived and died so quietly he never touched the protagonist's path, or this was already not the same timeline the game had outlined.
He stared at the axe again, at Freya's name carved into metal, and he felt something in his chest loosen rather than tighten.
'To be honest… that's fine.'
If anything, it was a relief.
Because if Soren wasn't supposed to matter, then Isaac wasn't about to be dragged into the spotlight by default.
'Thank god I'm not the protagonist.'
Just imagining that level of constant stress made his stomach churn, the endless fights, the political nightmares, the way the game had forced the protagonist to shoulder responsibility whether you wanted it or not.
Then a colder thought cut through his relief, sharp enough to straighten his posture.
"Wait," he murmured, eyes narrowing. "Does the protagonist even exist here?"
The question should have been absurd, yet it mattered more than almost anything else, because if the protagonist existed, then the main story might still unfold, disasters and arcs and world-ending threats arriving on schedule, and Isaac's knowledge might actually mean something.
If the protagonist didn't exist, or if the timeline had shifted enough, then the same threats could still be coming, only now without the person who was supposed to stop them.
Either way, he couldn't afford to ignore it.
'I'll have to find the protagonist,' he thought.
Yet the thought wasn't at all heroic; it was practical, like checking where the exits were in a building you didn't trust.
His gaze flicked to the desk, to the bag he had seen earlier, and he reached for it, needing something concrete to grab onto rather than spiralling in hypotheticals.
Inside were papers, books, and a student ID, and the moment he saw the printed information his earlier excitement took a small hit.
Arcane Studies, Class F.
Isaac stared at the letter, then let out a low sound of disgust.
"Of course."
He shuffled through the rest, and a ranking list made his expression tighten further.
"Rank ninety-six out of one hundred and twenty-five…" he read aloud, then groaned and dropped the paper back onto the desk as if it had insulted him personally. "So I'm weak and failing. Perfect."
It would have been funny if it didn't feel so familiar, starting at the bottom again, in a new world, with a new face, and still carrying the same bitter sense that the universe liked seeing him struggle.
He forced himself to keep reading anyway, because information was safety, and in a place like this, ignorance would get him killed far faster than low stats.
The papers confirmed the current date.
The 21st day of the Birch Sun.
In the game's calendar, that meant the school year had only just begun a couple of weeks ago, early enough that the academy still carried that "new term" feeling, late enough that the main story timeline was already ticking forward somewhere out there.
Isaac's heartbeat quickened.
'Then… the main story's already started.'
He sank back onto the bed, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling again, and the words that had felt impossible earlier now sat heavy and undeniable in his chest.
"…I really am in the game."
The fear was there, of course it was, because this wasn't a save file he could reload, and his body was objectively pathetic by any combat standard, yet underneath the fear, something bright continued to push through, stubborn and almost painful.
Wonder.
Excitement.
Possibility.
He could feel it blooming in his chest like a small, fierce flame, and he hated how much he wanted to protect it, because wanting things had always been dangerous in his old life.
His mind drifted again, inevitably, toward the missing gap in his memory, because it still didn't make sense that he could remember everything now, every detail of his past, every detail of the game, yet not the single most important transition of his life.
He tried to reach for it carefully, not grabbing, just touching the edge, like testing whether a bruise still hurt.
Pain flared instantly, sharp and warning, and he sucked in a breath, going still.
It wasn't hazy in the normal way.
It wasn't "I can't recall," it was "I'm not allowed," a clean, locked door that punished him for trying to open it.
Isaac swallowed, forcing his thoughts away from it again, because collapsing repeatedly on day one was not a strategy.
'Fine, I'll live without knowing for now,' he told himself, jaw tightening.
He stared up at the ceiling a moment longer, listening to the quiet of the dorm, to the faint distant sounds of the academy outside, and the strangest part was that even with all the unanswered questions, even with the threat of whatever story was unfolding beyond these walls, he still couldn't stop the relief from settling deeper into his bones.
He was here.
He wasn't there.
And for the first time in months, the idea of "tomorrow" didn't feel like something to dread.
His lips curled into a small grin, softer than before, more tired than triumphant.
"Heh… guess I'll figure the rest out tomorrow."
Sleep came almost instantly.
————「❤︎」————