Chapter 1: What if... your second chance wasn’t another life... but another world?
"What if... your second chance wasn’t another life..."
A distant explosion.
"...but another world?"
Huff... huff... huff...
Kaelen ran through the crowded streets of the slums, the clouds gloomy overhead.
He bumped into several people but never stopped to apologize amidst the cursing.
He rounded the corner onto a street with identical shacks built across the road as far as the eye could see, but screeched to a halt before one of the shacks and charged inside.
"Aunt Mary, I bought the medicine!" he exclaimed as soon as he stepped in, but froze on the spot at what he saw.
Aunt Mary was kneeling on the floor, tightly hugging her daughter, Stephanie, as she sobbed loudly.
Kaelen felt his heart drop. "Aunt Mary... I-I got the medicine."
He repeated slowly, refusing to believe the scene before his eyes.
He had worked twice as hard, risking his life to hunt deeper into the wasteland for larger mutated beasts he could trade with the physician for some medicine after Stephanie had fallen critically ill.
Stephanie suddenly moved in her mother’s embrace and looked up at him with teary eyes.
Kaelen was instantly relieved to see she was alive and... looking much healthier. He was confused.
Aunt Mary finally let go of her daughter and walked toward him, pulling him into a hug as she sobbed on his shoulder.
"Kael," she said amidst her sobs. "My daughter was never sick."
Kaelen was even more confused now. But his brain immediately told him something was off.
Aunt Mary had just referred to Stephanie as "my daughter."
For everyone else, she wasn’t wrong because Stephanie was indeed her daughter. But... when it was him, she always referred to her daughter as "your wife."
That was because Stephanie was his girlfriend.
Since they first met when they were young, the two had grown attached to each other as they grew up, and Kaelen had taken on the responsibility of feeding the family of two out his love for Stephanie.
Aunt Mary pulled back and grasped his face as tears streamed down her cheeks. But Kaelen could see now that they were tears of joy.
"My beautiful daughter was never sick... she was undergoing her awakening," Aunt Mary said with a wide smile.
Kaelen was stunned before he became overjoyed at the good news. He looked over her head to see Stephanie, but for some reason, the red-haired girl avoided his gaze.
Aunt Mary wiped her face with her sleeves. "I’ll leave you two to talk and say your final goodbye while I go report this to the Tiger Squad so we can be promoted to the higher floors."
Kaelen’s heart immediately dropped upon hearing that.
"W-What?" he could only muster as the middle-aged woman walked past him and ran out of the shack.
He turned to stare at Stephanie in shock, watching the girl who had been sobbing and avoiding his gaze lift herself up and wipe her face. Her expression immediately changed to something he couldn’t recognize as she crossed her arms beneath her bosom.
She didn’t look at him and instead stared out the small hole that served as a window. Her expression was neutral, with the only thing indicating she’d been crying just a moment ago being her red eyes.
"Aren’t you going to stop Mom?" Kaelen blurted out after a moment of silence.
Stephanie flinched but quickly regained her composure. "Mom? Y’know it’s cringe hearing you call my own mother that."
"You didn’t answer the question," Kaelen said, raising his voice in growing annoyance. She had suddenly awakened, and now couldn’t look him in the eyes she couldn’t take her eyes off before.
"Why should I?" she replied plainly, still looking away.
"What?" Kaelen felt his heart clench upon hearing her nonchalant reply.
"Why should you?" He suddenly strode forward and grabbed the girl’s shoulder, pulling her to face him.
"What do you mean by that?" Kaelen raised his voice. "You made me promise I’d never leave you if I were to ever awaken, and I agreed and would’ve kept my word to the very end."
"E-Exactly. You said it right there. You’re the one who promised not to leave me if you were to awaken, but I never did. I’m not like you, Kael; you’re an orphan. You don’t expect me to keep that promise when I have a family to take care of."
Stephanie shot back, unafraid to say it to his face.
"Why don’t you stop being so selfish for once, Kaelen? Hasn’t my mother suffered enough? You expect me to remain in the slums and keep suffering with my mother when I have something that could change our fates forever?
"You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking like trash. You should reflect on your actions and work harder toward improving your life and awakening if you ever want to see me again on the higher floors," Stephanie spat in a heartbeat.
Kaelen was rendered speechless. The quiet and sweet Stephanie he’d come to know and fallen in love with had suddenly grown the spine to trash-talk him overnight.
"So you’re breaking up with me just like that?"
A glint of disdain flashed across her eyes the next moment. "What do you mean by that? Was I ever in a relationship with you?" she asked with sharp eyes.
Kaelen immediately felt like he had been struck in the back of the head with a metal bat. He was trying to keep his emotions in check, but that sentence broke the last straw.
He slowly began laughing in pain, his laughter growing louder and more unhinged.
He was flat broke after spending all his savings and the rest to purchase the medicine she needed. He had eaten as little as possible to make sure there would be enough for her and her mother, and the moment she awakened, all those things meant nothing.
His eyes turned red, and his fingers dug into the girl’s shoulder as he stared at her with a dangerous glare, making her flinch.
"You bitch, you’re going to pay me back for everything I’ve done for you and your mother, since you’re powerful now. You’re going to pay me for everything before I let you leave this place," Kaelen roared in rage.
Stephanie felt pain shoot through her shoulders and became scared. She tried to push him away, but his stance was like an immovable mountain and his grip like iron clamps.
"You’re hurting me. Let me go—"
Just as she was struggling to free herself from him, a burst of flames suddenly shot out from her hands, hitting him in the chest and sending him through the makeshift wall.
Kaelen slammed into the dirt, involuntarily rolling across the mud with a gaping hole in his shirt, which revealed a badly burned chest that sizzled as drops of rainwater began drizzling at that moment.
He could barely move as he looked up at the gloomy sky, feeling his consciousness slowly slip away.
A single heartbeat echoed.
"What if... your second chance wasn’t another life..."
A distant explosion.
"...but another world?"
Kaelen shifted his gaze.
The narrator’s deep, calm voice came from a wide black screen displaying the advertisement he’d seen one too many times but never cared to actually pay attention to.
[Fast cuts]
Cities crumble.
Dragons soar through storm clouds.
Armies clash beneath crimson skies.
A lone player raises a glowing blade.
Narrator: "Welcome to Evolution Online..."
"...where every choice shapes your destiny."
"...every battle changes history."
"...and death... costs everything."
A single dragonfly fluttered through the drizzling rain, shifting away from the neon glow of the billboard before landing directly on his wet chin.
BZZZT.