Arrgh!
This pain… it’s going to kill me!
The beautiful dream that should have bloomed in the quiet of the night shattered instantly. It was ripped away brutally by a surge of pain that crept into Arthur’s sleep, forcing him awake in a half-conscious state. The pain came without warning, like a storm crashing into his body from every direction.
It felt as if his legs and arms were being beaten over and over with a golf club. Sharp nails seemed to be driven into every joint and muscle, piercing all the way to the bone. His head felt like it was being crushed—squeezed, smashed, then squeezed again—as if something was trying to destroy his consciousness from the inside.
In the middle of the chaos, Arthur tried to move.
He tried to open his eyes. Failed.
He tried to move his fingers. No response.
He tried to move his arms and legs. Useless.
His entire body felt paralyzed, as if it no longer belonged to him. His senses were numb to the outside world, and the only thing he could feel was the pain relentlessly gnawing at his existence.
Arrgh… am I still dreaming, or am I actually awake?
Even if this was a dream, Arthur desperately hoped the nightmare would end soon. He had been trapped in nightmares far too often—life had never been kind to him. Because of that, in the middle of this suffering, all he could do was curse his fate that never seemed to be on his side.
Half-conscious, Arthur focused his thoughts. He tried to fight against the invisible shackles binding his body. But every time he forced himself to move, the pain only grew worse, exploding wildly until he nearly lost consciousness.
In the end, he gave up.
When his body stopped resisting, his mind began to wander instead.
What’s actually happening to me?
Don’t tell me… my boarding house is being robbed?
The thought quickly felt ridiculous.
What could they even steal from my place?
He almost laughed—if the pain didn’t feel so painfully real.
Arrgh… this pain really is going to kill me.
Am I going to die young?
No way. He hadn’t even found a partner yet. His life hadn’t achieved anything worth calling an accomplishment. Dying now felt like a cruel joke played by the world.
But slowly, amid the flood of strange thoughts, the pain began to fade.
It didn’t disappear completely, but its intensity dropped.
Huh?
The pain… It's not as bad as before.
It still hurts, sure. But it no longer felt like his body was being destroyed from the inside.
If this pain lasts until dawn… that old guy will probably yell at me again for being late to class.
Arthur let out a breath—at least, he tried to.
Wait. That wasn’t the problem right now.
Besides, would he even still be alive by dawn?
Maybe this fading pain was a sign that he was being pulled toward the afterlife.
Hmm… when you think about it… maybe that’s not so bad.
If he died, he wouldn’t have to listen to anyone nagging him anymore. He wouldn’t have to worry about a bleak future. And if he really died because of some murder or strange accident like this, wouldn’t his chances of getting into heaven be pretty high?
That thought—somehow—gave him a bit of peace.
And from that calm, Arthur finally managed to move his eyes.
His eyelids slowly opened.
At first, only pitch-black darkness greeted him. But little by little, the darkness faded, replaced by an unfamiliar ceiling. Its surface was rough and dull, colored dark grayish-brown.
Stone.
Huh?!
Arthur froze.
This wasn’t his room’s ceiling.
The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was a cheap but familiar light-brown wooden ceiling. What hovered above him now was clearly not wood.
Where am I…?
A possibility began to form in his mind.
Don’t tell me… …I transmigrated?
As a modern person, Arthur wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept of transmigration. He had read and watched plenty of fantasy stories about souls moving to another world. But he had never imagined it would actually happen to him.
With mixed emotions, Arthur tried to sit up from where he lay.
Strangely enough, his body could move now.
His arms and legs, which had been completely numb earlier, responded again—though they still hurt. He sat up, then slowly stood, making sure he didn’t lose his balance.
The sight in front of him left him speechless.
A long corridor stretched as far as the eye could see—so long that its end was nowhere in sight, as if it went on forever.
Where am I right now?
Arthur looked left and right.
On the left side of the corridor, the stone wall was filled with neatly arranged carved writings. On the right side, the carvings were images—patterns, symbols, and illustrations that looked ancient and mysterious.
He stepped closer to the left wall, drawn to the lines of text. But as soon as he tried to read them, his brow furrowed.
He didn’t recognize a single character.
The language was completely foreign—not anything he had ever learned.
Arthur leaned closer to the wall, trying to examine it more carefully. That was when he noticed a faint reflection on the stone surface.
Arthur froze, staring at the reflection without blinking, as if even the smallest movement might shatter what he was seeing. The face in front of him moved when he moved, mimicking every restrained breath, every reflexive blink, even the subtle twitch at the corner of his lips. For a moment, his mind stubbornly rejected the reality before him. This had to be an illusion—just a trick of the light, a strange reflection, or a leftover effect from the pain that had nearly stolen his consciousness earlier. Maybe his brain was still scrambled, not fully awake yet.
But seconds passed, and the reflection didn’t disappear. The longer he stared, the clearer the face became, until it was impossible to deny. A sharp jawline softened by youth, eyes staring back with the same confusion he felt, and an unfamiliar expression he had never seen before. Slowly, a bitter realization seeped into his chest, heavy and suffocating.
This body wasn’t just unfamiliar.
This body… belonged to someone else.
The reflection wasn’t of a twenty-year-old man with messy brown hair and brown eyes he had known his whole life. Instead, it was a teenager—around seventeen years old. His hair was jet black, neatly falling in place, and his eyes were a deep blue, cold and dark like a starless night sky. His face still carried the freshness of youth, yet there was a seriousness that didn’t match his age.
Even the clothes felt foreign to Arthur. A clean white shirt fit neatly against his body, paired with a perfectly tied black tie and black trousers that looked formal. Everything looked well-kept and structured—nothing like his old self. At that moment, the truth hit him fully. Whatever had happened to him wasn’t a nightmare or a hallucination.
This was reality—and it was far more terrifying than any pain he had felt before.
“S-so… I really did transmigrate…”
Arthur’s heart pounded.
After calming himself down, he looked behind him, to where he had awakened. There, floating quietly in the air beside him, was a pitch-black sphere.
Does this belong to the original owner of this body?
He stepped closer carefully. Every step still came with pain, but his curiosity was stronger.
The moment he stood directly in front of the black sphere, it suddenly floated up to his face.
“Eh?!”
Arthur flinched and stepped back.
The sphere then projected glowing text into the air. Once again, the language was something he couldn’t understand.
“You’ve got to be kidding… even the text isn’t readable.”
But then—
The writing changed.
The strange symbols shifted into a familiar alphabet.
Arthur fell silent.
“I can read it… but that doesn’t mean I understand it.”
As if responding to his complaint, the text changed again—this time into a language he fully understood.
Arthur read slowly.
“Arcturus…”
Huh? Arcturus? Sounds like a name—
Arrgh!!
A sharp pain slammed into his head.
Like a swarm of bees stinging all at once, foreign memories flooded his mind. Information, emotions, and experiences that weren’t his own forced their way in, crushing his consciousness.
He saw the life of someone named Arcturus.
An orphan from the Aries Nebula, specifically the Proxima region on Planet Centauri. He lost his parents at the age of eight and was later taken in by a strange man he would come to see as his father.
That man was a treasure hunter.
To survive, they moved constantly. Adventure became part of Arcturus’s life from a young age. And when he turned sixteen, he began accompanying his adoptive father on treasure hunts.
The memories were vague and fragmented—but they were enough to give Arthur an understanding of the body he now inhabited.
Arthur opened his eyes, gasping.
“So… I’m Arcturus now.”
But one question still lingered.
Where exactly am I?
With renewed determination, Arthur—or rather, Arcturus—began walking down the long corridor, hoping to find answers about the world that had become his new reality.
Arthur walked forward with slow steps. Each footstep echoed softly, bouncing off the cold, silent stone walls. His gaze briefly drifted back to the carved writings on the left wall, but after a moment, he let out a small sigh and looked away.
Useless.
The writings were still in the same unfamiliar language he couldn’t understand. The characters looked ancient and twisted, as if they weren’t meant for humans to read. So Arthur shifted his focus to the right side of the corridor, where images were carved into the stone.
At least pictures were more honest than words.
The first carving he saw was a perfect circle, etched with fine lines that almost seemed alive. Arthur walked forward while staring at it. Strangely, as he moved, the circle changed. Small cracks appeared on its surface, spreading like spiderwebs.
The farther he walked, the worse the cracks became.
Until, at one carving, the circle shattered completely.
What had once been whole split into three large fragments, each pointing in a different direction. Arthur stopped, his breath unconsciously catching.
The first fragment floated upward. Its lines grew rough and heavy, eventually forming the image of a massive boulder—solid, unmoving, as if holding up the sky itself.
The second fragment stayed in the middle. Its shape softened, lines stretching and curving until it became a flowing river—calm, endless, yet never stopping.
The third fragment moved downward. Its form narrowed and layered, eventually becoming a thick, closed book—as if guarding secrets not meant to be opened freely.
Arthur frowned.
“What does all of this mean…?” he muttered.
No answer came.
Too absorbed in the carvings, Arthur failed to notice that the corridor ahead had ended. His next step sent his forehead crashing into something cold and solid.
Bukk!
“Ow—!”
Arthur stumbled back, rubbing his aching forehead. When his vision cleared, he realized that a massive stone door stood before him. Its surface was covered in symbols far more complex than any carving he had seen before.
He stood still for a moment, swallowing hard.
Hesitantly, Arthur reached out and touched the door.
The instant his fingers made contact, a low rumbling sound echoed. The massive door trembled, then slowly opened inward, as if welcoming him.
Arthur stepped inside.
What he found was an empty room.
Tall stone walls, a flat clean floor, no furniture, no carvings, no sign of life. There was barely any light—only thick, suffocating darkness.
Before Arthur could go any farther, a heavy sound came from behind him.
Duum!
The stone door closed by itself.
“Hey—wait—!”
Arthur spun around, but the door had already fused back into the wall, as if it had never opened. His heart started beating faster. The room was now completely sealed.
Then, one by one, torches around the room lit up.
Small orange flames ignited simultaneously, driving away the darkness and filling the room with warm, flickering light. Arthur’s shadow stretched across the stone floor, swaying with the flames.
In the center of the room, right in front of him, something began to appear.
A small greenish light gathered, spinning into a single point. From that point emerged a tiny figure floating in the air.
It was a fairy.
Her body was only about the size of an adult’s palm. Her long hair was pale silver, shimmering like moonlight. A pair of transparent wings like a dragonfly’s fluttered softly behind her, reflecting the torchlight. Her large emerald-green eyes shone with intelligence that was hard to read.
She wore a simple white-and-gold dress, decorated with delicate patterns that looked like carved light.
Arthur stared in shock.
“What… what is this now…?” he whispered.
The small fairy floated closer, stopping right in front of Arthur’s face. Her tiny lips curved into a faint smile.
With a clear voice—soft yet unmistakable—she spoke,
“Welcome, Climber.”