Alex's body tensed as images began to flood his senses. A rush of memories that didn't belong to him: flashes of a different life. A different body. The life of someone, a man who seemed to have almost the same 17 years of memories as him, but followed by 16 years worth of similar yet vastly different sets of memories.
To be exact, he was transmigrated, or should one say his soul merged with the soul of his counterpart, an inhabitant of this parallel world.
This parallel world is different from his.
It is a fantasy world filled with dungeons and monsters.
Then, why the word Parallel?
Well, it was because both worlds have identical histories until the Year 1953, when all of a sudden, dungeons appeared all over the world, wiping out 80% of the world population in one single year, crashing the economies, and bringing forth the apocalypse.
But then humanity observed that 1 of every 100 babies born after 1953 possessed 24 pairs of chromosomes, and those that did had mutated stem cells, which generate unique cellular energy called mana.
At first, they were called divinians as they seemed like a gift from god to fight these monsters, but then later, the term is changed to 'Ignites' as they found that within these special individuals, 1 of every 1000 of them had their 24th pair of chromosome mutate further, generating powers unique to each individual.
These special individuals with superpowers were called Divinians henceforth.
To fight against the monsters, the surviving human race united, putting away their ideological differences, racial differences, faith, gender, economy, and all; by the year 1995, the entire world united under the World Federation with no concepts of countries or borders between regions.
English, Spanish, Hindi, and Mandarin became the official languages of the world, and learning one of them became mandatory in schools.
The currency system has collapsed. The World Federation opted for 'Credits' as the world's only official currency.
There is now only one military, the Federation's military, which primarily focuses on dealing with rogue outfits that either cause harm to civilians or challenge the Federation's authority.
As the world went into a recovery period, the World Federation also encouraged capitalism, which brought forth the concept of free cities. Free Cities are basically the cities with full autonomy of governance, in exchange for paying a 25% flat tax every quarter to the Federation. As for the distribution of these free cities, the Federation selected a few all over the world and put them up for auction to the billionaires, private entities, and big corporations.
Meanwhile, the humans with powers actively intrude into the dungeons before the dungeon breaks happen. These are called Hunters. And the Hunter Association is responsible for managing hunters and the dungeons.
"Wha…" Alex's eyes widened, his gaze shifting once again to his trembling hands as more and more memories of his life were stored in his brain, almost making him dizzy. "My children are alive?"
In this life, Alex is still the Leader of Pavel, one of the strongest organized criminal organizations in the world, but Pavel doesn't just control the underworld.
Pavel controls almost three-fourths of the entire Siberia and the dungeons that existed there.
As for his background story, it remained the same. Han Sungjun was a musical prodigy, an outstanding violinist with a bright future. His mother, a struggling actress, passed away by suicide due to sheer mental pressure and complicated marriage life; His father is an excellent and honest police officer, but a bad father; His sister was a Hunter, turned actress.
At the age of 16, Han Sungjun was selected for the International Tchaikovsky Competition. He travels to Moscow for the competition. He falls in love with a fellow competitor.
The same tragedy. The night after the semifinals, they go on a drive and have an accident. As a result, Alex loses his left eye, and the girl gets badly injured.
In both of his lives, In his past life story, the girl had the background of mafia, her father being a gangster who gets the assignment of transporting a prototype quantum AI chip—the first of its kind, to a client, but instead, the father would hide it in a bionic eye before transplanting it into Alex as he was angry at the accident aimed at his daughter.
Alex married the girl, stayed back in Moscow, and was forced to stay with his in-laws as the house husband, renaming himself as Alexander Han.
However, this is where both of their life paths have diverged.
In his past life, Alex saw the deaths of his father-in-law, his wife, and his 3-year-old daughter in one of the drone strikes from a rival gang, which resulted in becoming the first step for Alex to become the Mafia Overlord.
In this parallel story, Alex's father-in-law goes missing, Alex's wife dies in childbirth, but gives birth to a pair of twins.
In his past life, only one of the babies survived the birth to live for three years before the tragedy.
But, in this life, the wife dies, but both babies survive, not just for three years, but 14 years later, they grew up to be fine teenagers.
It is because of them, Alex had to put up a false front. For his children and the rest of the world, he is a legal consultant to Royal Gold Group, but in the shadows, He is the leader of Pavel and the founder of Royal Gold Group.
Somewhere during one of the dungeon break incidents, Alex awakens his powers of Mimic.
And now, both souls had merged into one, giving him the best life he could ever ask for.
His lips quivered as streams of tears uncontrollably ran down his cheeks as he digested the memories into his own. "So, Vera and Theo are alive in this reality. It's good. Very good…"
A few minutes later, Alex took deep breaths in meditation, clearing up his mind to wash down whatever unpleasant feelings he had in his mind and the heavy discomfort he was feeling in his new body, putting away the things from his past life to the back of his head and getting terms to with this new reality of his.
Eventually, he snapped his eyes open and mumbled. "I had enough struggling to maintain my power, raise my wealth, or status in the underworld. In this life, my family will be my priority. I'll be a proud father to both Vera and Theo, and a dutiful younger brother to Kang Saeri, keeping them closer to me. Dungeons… monsters… world domination… all of them can go to hell."
Name: Alexander Han
Age: 33
Ethnicity: Korean
Arcane Path: Mage
Ability: Mimic
Ability Rank: C
Mana reserves: Tier-7 (Maxed)