Alex watched his health bar plummet as the enemy jungler collapsed on him from the fog of war. His teammates, the ones who were supposed to peel for him, were nowhere near. He clicked frantically, trying to flash over the wall, but his character stood frozen.
"What the..."
The lag spike hit at the worst possible moment. His screen stuttered, and when it resumed, the words DEFEAT blazed across his monitor.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Alex tore off his headset and slammed it on the desk. Twenty thousand dollars. The grand finals of the Regional Championship. Gone because of a lag spike that shouldn't have been possible on tournament-grade equipment.
His teammate Marcus leaned over from the next booth, voice low. "Dude, I'm sorry. I didn't think it would actually work."
Alex's blood went cold. "What?"
Marcus wouldn't meet his eyes. "Jenkins paid me five grand to install a packet sniffer on your rig. Just a little delay during crucial moments. Nothing you could prove." He shrugged, already standing. "It's just business, man. You would've done the same."
No. No, he wouldn't have.
But before Alex could respond, Marcus was gone, blending into the crowd of tournament staff and spectators. The referees were already reviewing the match. They'd find nothing. Marcus had made sure of that.
Alex sat alone in the booth, hands shaking. Five years grinding solo queue. Three years on amateur teams. One year finally making it to the professional scene. All of it ending because the person he'd trusted most had sold him out for pocket change.
The venue lights felt too bright. The crowd's disappointed murmur pressed against his skull. His phone buzzed with messages from his team's manager, furious, accusatory texts about choking under pressure.
Alex didn't respond. He grabbed his jacket and walked out through the service exit.
The night air outside the convention center was cold. February in Seattle meant rain, and it was coming down hard. Alex didn't bother with an umbrella. He just walked, hands jammed in his pockets, replaying every moment of that final fight.
His phone buzzed again. His landlord. Rent was overdue. Tournament winnings were supposed to cover it.
Alex stopped at a crosswalk, watching the red hand blink. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead.
A semi-truck rumbled past, spraying water across the sidewalk. The signal changed. Alex stepped forward.
He didn't see the second truck.
The driver had been checking his phone. Ran the red light going forty-five in a thirty-five zone. Alex registered the headlights, the horn, and then...
Impact.
Flying. Pavement. Pain that whited out everything.
His last thought, weirdly calm: At least Marcus didn't get to enjoy the money.
Then nothing.
…
Cold.
That was the first sensation. Not pain. He'd expected pain. Just a bone-deep cold that made his teeth chatter and his body convulse.
Alex's eyes snapped open.
Trees. He was staring up at trees. Massive ones, their branches thick as houses, leaves shimmering with a faint silver luminescence that had no right existing in nature. The sky beyond them was wrong too. Too many stars, arranged in constellations he didn't recognise, and two moons hung overhead. One pale white, one deep crimson.
"What the hell..."
His voice came out raspy, wrong. Alex tried to sit up and his body screamed protest. Not from fresh injuries. He'd expected broken bones, at minimum, but from old ones. Bruises mottled his arms in shades of purple and yellow. Claw marks scored his chest through a torn, bloody shirt he'd never seen before. His hands were smaller, younger, callused in places that didn't match his muscle memory.
He scrambled to his feet, nearly fell, caught himself against a tree trunk covered in moss that glowed faintly in the dark.
This isn't Seattle. This isn't anywhere on Earth.
The trees were too large. The air tasted strange, metallic, charged with something that made his skin prickle. And the sounds: distant roars that definitely didn't come from any animal he'd ever heard.
Alex looked down at himself properly. Leather pants, torn at the knees. Boots that were falling apart. A belt with empty pouches that looked like they'd been ripped open and looted. No phone. No wallet. No ID.
"Okay. Okay, think." He pressed his palms to his temples. I got hit by a truck. I should be dead. Instead I'm... where? Some kind of forest? Is this a coma dream?
He pinched his arm. Hard. The pain was sharp, immediate, real.
Not a dream.
Transmigration.
The word popped into his head unbidden, pulled from countless web novels he'd read during queue times between matches. Isekai. Reincarnation. Getting hit by truck-kun and waking up in a fantasy world.
"You've got to be kidding me."
But even as he said it, Alex knew it wasn't a joke. The cold was real. The alien forest was real. And this body, younger, injured, definitely not his, was real.
So what now? Where am I? Whose body is this?
A sound froze him mid-thought. Footsteps. No, paw steps. Heavy, deliberate, moving through the underbrush somewhere to his left.
Alex spun, his hand going instinctively to his belt, searching for a weapon that wasn't there. His heart hammered against his ribs as golden eyes emerged from the shadows between trees.
The wolf was wrong. Too large. Its shoulder height came up to Alex's chest. Its fur was matted with dried blood, and bone protrusions jutted from its spine like some kind of mutation. Venomous saliva dripped from its fangs, sizzling where it hit the moss.
Venomwolf, his mind supplied, the word accompanied by knowledge he didn't remember learning. Mutated predator. Hunts alone. Territorial. Killed the previous owner of this body three days ago.
Wait. Previous owner?
The wolf's lips peeled back in a snarl. It lowered into a crouch, muscles bunching.
Oh shit. Oh shit, it's going to...
Alex's body moved before his brain caught up, stumbling backward, tripping over exposed roots, landing hard on his back. The impact drove the air from his lungs. The wolf lunged.
Something blazed to life in his chest.
Not pain. Heat. Searing, golden heat that exploded outward like a shockwave. The energy slammed into the wolf mid-leap, and the creature yelped, crashed into a tree trunk, and scrambled back, singed fur smoking.
What the hell was that?
Alex stared at his hands. They were glowing. Faint traceries of gold light ran across his skin like circuitry, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
A translucent blue screen materialised in front of his eyes.
[INFINITE EVOLUTION SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
[HOST COMPATIBILITY: 100%]
[BONDING SEQUENCE COMPLETE]
"What..."
[WELCOME, ALEX PROCTOR]
[PREVIOUS HOST DECEASED. SOUL INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL.]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: SURVIVE. EVOLVE. ASCEND.]