{Beep...Beep...}
Dean never understood the feeling one would get when they were close to death.
He had seen shows, movies, and anime where people on their deathbeds, whether sick or heavily injured, somehow sensed that death was near.
But what exactly was that feeling when your life was slowly slipping away and you knew that you would no longer be a part of this world?
Unfortunately, Dean was finally able to grasp that feeling.
His curiosity was finally answered as he lay on a hospital bed, surrounded by machines that constantly beeped in his ears.
He didn't mind the beeping. It had been months since he had been continuously hearing them. They were more like his constant companions and a beacon that told him he was still in the land of the living.
'Living? Was this really living?' A weird smile appeared on his face.
Everything had been going well in his life. He was at the peak of his career, had good friends who meant the world to him, and there was nothing else he could ask from God.
He was really happy and living in the moment.
But maybe that was the problem.
At the young age of 24, he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Everything went to hell from then on. His condition started deteriorating rapidly. Severe weakness, abdominal pain, weight loss, and jaundice tortured him every day.
{Beep...Beep...}
He looked outside the window. It was snowing.
This was his favourite season, and yet he couldn't enjoy it at all.
'Ugh.'
He was tired again and felt sleepy. It hadn't even been that long since he woke up, and now he had to sleep again.
But he willed himself to keep his eyes open, as he had a feeling that once he closed them, he would never be able to wake up again.
'It's like I can predict my own future,' he thought, but couldn't smile as even that felt tiring.
He stopped looking outside the window and glanced at the ceiling.
Dean knew that there was no escaping this once he was diagnosed.
So close to death, he had thought he would be okay with it and would have already accepted his fate. But now that he lay on his deathbed, acceptance was the last thing on his mind.
'Man, fuck acceptance, fuck this cancer, and fuck this death,' he couldn't help but curse.
Tears welled up in his eyes. A grown man crying was not a good thing to look at, but he didn't stop or control himself. Tears continued flowing like a river as he kept cursing his fate.
He didn't want an end like this. By this puppeteer of a cancer which controlled every last minute of his life. This puppeteer kept him chained to the bed, weak and far from all the things that a normal guy like him would generally be able to do.
And now it was about to throw its puppet away after getting tired of constantly controlling it.
Buzz…Buzz…
His eyes turned to his phone sitting on the side. Using his weak, thinned arm, he picked it up and unlocked it.
There were two notifications on it. One from his friend Ben, and the other was a notification of his favourite novel's chapter being uploaded.
He quickly replied to his friend Ben, who had left a few minutes ago after visiting him.
After his parents' death, his other family, his friends, were the ones who took care of him when he was emotionally distraught, and now that he was sick, they would come every day to visit him.
{Beep...Beep}
Once he was done replying, he opened the webnovel app and started reading the latest uploaded chapter.
Other than the beeping of the machine, these webnovels and fanfictions were what he would spend most of his day on.
As he went on reading, his expressions turned furious. He couldn't help but shout internally as the MC made a stupid decision, leading him to risk his life.
'This asshole of an author,' he swore and wrote a paragraph-long comment about how foolish the MC was acting and what a dumb plot the author had written.
Once done, he kept his phone away. He kept breathing in and out to calm himself down.
'Fuck,' he sighed. 'Why do they always do this? Don't they know how important life is?'
{Beep...Beep}
Dean knew he might be acting overboard, getting too attached to a character whom he should just consider a non-living character of a novel.
Even the author complained that Dean was taking everything too seriously and should just stop reading if he had so many complaints about the decisions the MC made.
But what did the author know?
Dean, for the past few months, had been living his life through these characters. Reading about them doing all the things he couldn't do somehow made him happy. Placing himself in the MC's position, he would enjoy their adventure.
This was the last bit of happiness that remained in his life, and the author was taking it away by letting the MC make such awful choices.
How could he not be angry?
{Beep...Beep}
Dean rubbed his eyes clean as he didn't want his friends to find that he died with regret. If he died with a smile on his face, it might atleast ease their pain.
After wiping the tears off, he closed his eyes. He couldn't continue to keep them open anymore. It was so tiring and painful even with all the medications given to alleviate his pain.
A bitter thought rose in his mind. 'I'm only twenty-four…'
There were still many things Dean wanted to do. He wanted to visit new places, read more stories, and write stories of his own. He wanted to spend years complaining about foolish main characters and arguing with the authors about them.
He wanted to laugh with his friends, grow older with them, and live an ordinary life. But all of that was slowly being taken away from him.
His fingers weakly gripped the bedsheet as a desperate thought rose from deep inside his heart, 'I don't want to die.'
'Why do I have to die?...'
'I want to live...'
'...I want to live...'
Holding onto that single fragile wish, Dean slowly drifted into sleep.
───────────── ✦ ─────────────
It was colder than usual.
'Did the nurse leave the window open in the morning?' a half-awake Dean wondered as he rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his blurred vision.
But something felt wrong.
The constant beeping of the hospital machines was gone. Not only that but the pain and weakness that had been eating his body for months had also disappeared.
Dean slowly opened his eyes.
"...What the hell?" He suddenly froze as his eyes took in everything.
He was no longer in a hospital room.
Instead, he was floating in a vast dark space.
Endless darkness stretched around him, yet it wasn't empty. The space was filled with a beautiful starry sky that looked magnificent enough causing him to startw at or for a few seconds.
Still the current situation brought him back from enjoying the scenery and a question popped up in his mind.
"...Where the fuck am I?"
Just as the question formed in his mind, something changed.
Out of nowhere, two enormous wheels appeared in front of him.
They were gigantic. Each wheel was easily hundreds of meters wide and floated silently in the starry space.
The first wheel had a golden title above it with names of countless tv shows, movies and anime written on it.
[Universe]
The Walking Dead.
Marvel.
The Last of Us.
Divergent.
American Pie.
Transformers.
The Boys.
Harry Potter.
Star Wars.
Fifty Shades of Grey
And many, many more.
As for the second wheel, it followed the same pattern as the first, but with a different title and different contents.
[Ability]
Telekinesis.
Sharingan.
Magnetism Control.
Necromancy.
Time Stop.
Super Regeneration.
Elemental Manipulation.
Reality Distortion.
Flight.
..
....
And many others.
Dean was still staring in disbelief when both wheels suddenly began spinning.
They kept spinning faster and faster till all the words written across it became nothing but blurs of light.
Dean could only watch silently as he had no control whatsoever on how things were progressing.
After a few seconds, the spinning slowly began to slow down.
The first wheel stopped with a loud noise as the the name of a single world falshed on it.
{Game of Thrones}
'Thank God, I have seen this show,' Dean thought as he understood that he was going to be sent to the GOT universe.
Well, other than that, he couldn't come up with a logical reason for why all this was happening to him.
Before Dean could think any further, the second wheel also slowed to a halt.
The pointer stopped on one ability.
{Shadow Extraction}
For a moment, everything was silent. Then both gigantic wheels suddenly vanished.
A second later, a golden page appeared in front of Dean.
The page floated in the air and glowed faintly.
Words slowly appeared on it.
****
Ability: Shadow Extraction
Rules:
• A shadow can only be extracted from a corpse personally killed by the user and his shadows. The extraction must be performed within a limited time after death. If too much time passes, the shadow fades and extraction fails.
• At the current level, the user can maintain five shadow soldiers at the same time.
• The number of shadow soldier slots increases by killing important characters of the world:
– Characters with minimal screen time: +1 slot
– Characters with major screen time: +3 slots
– Characters central to the plot: +7 slots
• Shadow soldiers retain about ninety percent of the abilities they had when alive. They feel no fear, pain, hunger, or anger and possess absolute loyalty to the user. They have unlimited stamina and never grow tired in battle. Also day or night does not affect their functioning.
• Shadow soldiers are extremely difficult to destroy. Even if their bodies are torn apart, they can regenerate as long as their head remains intact. To regenerate from severe damage, they must return to the shadow space inside the user's shadow. Greater damage requires longer recovery.
• If a shadow soldier is summoned while injured, its combat performance will be affected based on the severity of the injury.
• If a shadow soldier's head is destroyed or completely severed, it disappears permanently and the slot becomes empty.
• Shadow soldiers normally remain inside the user's shadow until summoned. To summon a shadow soldier, the user can issue the command verbally or mentally.
• To extract a shadow from a corpse, the user can command "Arise" verbally or mentally.
• Shadow soldiers require no energy to maintain.
• The user can remove the existing shadow soldiers from his slots by giving the command "Disintegrate" either verbally or mentally.
•The user can instantly recall his shadow soldiers into his shadow space from anywhere within a one-mile radius at will. With continued use, this range will gradually increase.
• The user must remain conscious to command them. Without commands, shadow soldiers will stand beside the user and defend him automatically.
• Once every twenty-four hours, the user can exchange places with one shadow soldier. The current maximum distance for exchange is one mile. The range can increase with consequent uses.
• Any damage suffered by the user can be passively transferred to a shadow soldier. A life-threatening injury will immediately destroy one shadow soldier instead of killing the user. If all shadow soldiers are destroyed through damage transfer, the ability enters a thirty-day cooldown. During the cooldown period, the ability cannot be used, even if new shadows are created.
• Shadow soldiers can gain experience through battle. Over time, they can grow stronger in physical ability and combat skill. Long-serving shadows may eventually develop faint traces of personality or minor behavioral quirks.
****
Dean stared at the glowing page.
'...Shadow Extraction? Not bad I guess...but there were many incredible and far more powerful abilities on the wheel,' he sighed.
Just as he finished reading the final rule, the golden page dissolved into particles of light.
And in its place another golden page appeared with different content on it.
[You will be transmigrated into the 'Game of Thrones' Universe with 'Shadow Extraction' ability in a minute]
And a timer appeared on that page, below that line, counting down from 59 seconds.
Dean stared at the glowing page and the timer beneath it.
For a few seconds he simply blinked at the words. Then a strange sound escaped his mouth.
"Ha…"
The laugh grew louder.
"Ha… hahaha…"
Within moments he was laughing loudly.
"Hahahahaha!"
Dean laughed like a madman in the silent starry space. His shoulders shook as the laughter continued. Anyone seeing him would have thought he had lost his mind.
But he did not care.
He was happy. Truly happy. From the very bottom of his heart.
Afterall his wish had come true and he was going to live.
Even if it was in another world. Even if it was inside someone else's body. None of that mattered to him.
He was going to live.
He would not die in that hospital bed while his body slowly stopped working because of the puppet disease that had ruined his life.
That fate was gone now.
"I'm… going to live," he whispered with a trembling smile as it was still hard for him to beleive it.
After some time the laughter slowly faded. The excitement in his chest remained, but his breathing gradually calmed down.
Once his emotions settled a little, another thought appeared in his mind.
'Whose body would he wake up in? Would it be a farmer? A soldier? A noble? Or someone important from the story? And what would his new life be like? Would it be peaceful or dangerous?'
One question after another filled his mind while the timer kept counting down.
10...
09...
Dean continued thinking about the possibilities and his future.
03.....
02....
01...
The moment the timer reached zero, the golden page disappeared and he lost consciousness.
───────────── ✦ ─────────────
Cold.
That was the first thing Dean felt as a freezing wind brushed against his face.
Slowly his eyes opened.
At first his vision was blurry then shapes slowly began to form as his sight cleared.
He realized he was being held upright by two men. Also several people were standing around him.
They wore thick clothes that looked like armor and heavy cloaks. Swords hung at their sides. Their appearance reminded him of guards or soldiers.
Dean blinked again while trying to focus.
As his senses slowly returned, he noticed something else.
Both his hands and feet were bound as if he was a prisoner.
Just then, a huge amount of information rushed into his mind.
'Shit!'
Dean bit his lip as a sharp pain spread through his head as the process continued. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to endured it.
After a short while, the painful surge finally stopped.
Dean slowly opened his eyes again. His eyes looked clearer now, as he had completely understood the situation he was in.
All credit to the information that had been transferred to his brain which were actually memories which belonged to the original owner of this body.
Through those memories, Dean quickly understood the situation he was in.
'Fuck my luck,' his face twitched.
The body he had transmigrated into belonged to a man named Will.
A ranger of the Night's Watch.
Out of all the people in this world, he had ended up in the body of one of the most unfortunate characters in the entire story.
Will had deserted the Night's Watch after going beyond the Wall. After running away, he had been captured by the guards of House Stark.
And now they had brought him here.
They were waiting for the Lord of Winterfell himself to arrive and pass judgment.
Dean cursed again inside his head.
He knew exactly what punishment awaited a deserter of the Night's Watch.
In the North there was only one punishment.
Death.
Death by beheading.
And the one who carried out the sentence would be none other than the Lord of Winterfell himself.
Eddard Stark.
Dean clenched his teeth.
This scene was extremely familiar to him.
It happened right at the beginning of the very first episode of the first season.
He had transmigrated into a man who was about to lose his head within minutes.
'God damn it…'
For a moment frustration and anger surged inside him.
But after a few seconds, Dean slowly forced himself to calm down.
He took a deep breath.
Even though the situation was terrible, it was still better than his previous life.
In his old world, his body had been so weak that even basic movements were difficult. He had spent most of his last days lying in a hospital bed, barely able to function like a normal person.
At least now he had a healthy body.
He could stand. He could run. He could fight.
And most importantly, he had been given an ability.
Compared to his old life, this was still an opportunity.
Dean slowly lifted his head.
'No matter what it takes… I will survive,' Dean thought as there was a maddening sparkle in his eyes.
☩ ───── End of Chapter ───── ☩
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