"Haaah… gah!"
My vision had blurred into a sickening white haze; for a moment, I was certain the reaper had finally come for me.
Quite frankly, I had no idea why light was suddenly streaming out of my tablet, or what cosmic joke was being played at my expense.
'Perhaps a passerby found me unconscious and saved me,' I thought, clinging to a shred of desperate optimism.
Living in a semi-basement hovel meant someone could have easily peeked through the window and seen me sprawled out like a corpse. It was plausible.
But then… would I have to pay a reward? I didn't have a single kopek to my name. Should I just offer a shallow word of thanks and hope they went away?
I pushed those trivialities aside for a moment and focused on the immediate struggle: opening my eyes.
I forced them open, blinking away the stinging frost.
I looked at my surroundings.
…
Wait.
"What in the hell…?"
Huh?
Why?
What met my eyes wasn't the sterile white fluorescent glare of a hospital, nor the cheap, yellowed wallpaper of my basement apartment. There were no cockroaches scurrying away, no centipedes haunting the corners.
This place was…
"Where am I?"
I didn't recognize a single thing. It looked like a forest, but it was choked with flora I had never seen in any textbook.
Searching my memories of middle school science—a class I only paid attention to so I could scrape through a performance evaluation—I was certain of one thing: this was not Korea.
Moreover, it had been the peak of summer just moments ago. Here, the air was sharp with a brutal, mid-winter chill.
It defied all logic.
What kind of madness was this?
I knew nothing of the hard sciences, but even I knew this was a biological and geographical impossibility.
"I should have studied science more!" I cursed.
It was far too late to regret choosing the social sciences over the natural ones. My priority now was to assess my environment. I was on a mountain. Or was it a fold mountain range? I couldn't tell.
I studied ethics and social theory, damn it, not physical geography!
Right then, sounds began to drift through the thicket.
"…Find him! There may be a ——— in this vicinity!"
Then came the unmistakable sound of cold steel slicing through the brush.
A primal shiver raced down my spine, my very hairs standing on end at the sound of the blades.
"What the hell is going on…?"
Something was catastrophically wrong.
Survival instinct took over. I needed to hide. I scanned the area for cover.
'The thicket?'
I dove into the tallest patch of scrub, huddling as close to the frozen earth as possible. As I curled into a ball, I caught sight of something peculiar protruding from the bushes further ahead: ursine ears. Bear ears.
The moment I saw those ears, my brain went into a frantic overdrive.
A forest. Bear ears. The sound of weapons. Memories of viral videos flooded my mind—sensationalist titles like *'Environmentalist Who Befriended Bears Eaten Alive!'* or *'Brutal Grizzly Attack at 00 Cabin!'*
If I didn't make myself known, I was dead. I'd be ripped apart. And there were hunters with blades nearby.
I had to alert the hunters to my presence immediately. I made a split-second decision and bolted upright.
"Aaaaah! It's a bear!! Help!!"
I screamed at the top of my lungs and sprinted in the opposite direction. (I wasn't scared. Definitely not.)
"Mother! Father! God! Please!!"
I ran without looking back. I tripped over jagged roots, tearing my knees, but I kept running. The stiff, frostbitten grass shredded my clothes and flayed my skin, but I didn't stop.
By the time my legs gave out, I was standing on the precipice of a sheer cliff.
"Hah… huff!"
I skidded to a halt just inches from the drop. That was likely the fastest I had ever moved in my entire life. It was a peak performance—the kind of footage they'd play at a funeral to show the deceased at their most vibrant.
"Huff… they shouldn't… they shouldn't be following me anymore, right?"
I tried to catch my breath, my chest heaving with a burning, desperate rhythm.
"The hunters will deal with it. They have to. I screamed loud enough for the whole mountain to hear."
I muttered to myself, trying to quell the tremors in my hands.
"—Find him! The cry came from—!"
Suddenly, the group I assumed were the hunters burst into view. Their attire was… unsettlingly familiar. They wore the heavy, tactical gear of elite gendarmes—the kind of security apparatchiks I had seen during countless street protests.
And those gendarme-like hunters had bear ears.
Wait. Bear ears? Riot gear?
"Wait… Ursus?"
Ursus?
This was Terra?
The realization hit me like a physical blow, but I didn't have time to process it.
"There he is! Slay him, or take him alive!"
Wait, what?
What the hell had I done for them to mark me for execution on sight? I had only just regained consciousness!
"What did I even do?! Why are you trying to kill me?!"
I barked back at them, that stubborn, contrarian spirit typical of a Liberal Arts student—or a 'Red'—flaring up in my chest.
To my surprise, the soldiers hesitated, halting their advance.
"Squad Leader. He speaks our language? I thought he was some kind of alien?"
Ah. Right.
How the hell did I know the Ursus tongue?
I had always despised modern Russia, viewing it as nothing more than a reactionary shell of the Soviet era. My knowledge of the language was limited to a few insults and bureaucratic terms like *nomenklatura* or *Soviet*.
"Follow your orders! Don't kill him, focus on capturing him alive!"
"Understood! Stay where you are!"
"Like hell I will!"
I had no idea what point in the timeline this was, but if I were caught now, I'd likely have my soul hollowed out by Duke Kashchey or my throat slit by Talulah's fascist remnants.
I didn't want to die. And I certainly didn't want to be brainwashed.
I looked back at the abyss behind me. Marx! Kropotkin! Luxembourg! God! Buddha! Allah! Whoever is listening, give me strength!
"Aaaaaaaagh!!"
"Wait! The target is jumping!"
"…Mission failure."
As I plunged into the darkness, catching a glimpse of the jagged landing below, I foamed at the mouth and promptly passed out.
…What a pathetic coward.
**********
Where am I? Who am I?
I regained consciousness through sheer force of will, clutching the back of my head as a sharp pain throbbed through my skull.
"Argh… my head!"
Actually, the pain was so intense I couldn't stay unconscious if I wanted to.
I woke up wedged into a crevice between some boulders. Looking up, I saw I was quite a distance below the cliff I had leaped from.
To survive that… truly, long live Communism. Maybe I should become a devout materialist.
Damn those bear-eared bastards…
I had escaped my fossil of a professor and a hypertensive stroke only to drop into this gods-forsaken world of Terra, right into the clutches of the Ursus military. I couldn't believe my luck.
They were just like that old professor. Bastards, the lot of them. I would never forgive them.
There is a saying in the People's Republic of China—that authoritarian state that betrayed the revolution and the masses to preach their own brand of 'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics':
"For a gentleman to take his revenge, ten years is not too long." (*Junzi baochou, shinnian buwan.*)
I will have my vengeance.
Regardless, I checked my head; there were no animal ears. I looked at my body—it was the same one I'd always had.
At least I wouldn't have to worry about Oripathy for now. From the *Arknights* videos I'd watched on YouTube, I recalled that the human Doctor could practically eat Originium and be fine.
But how was I supposed to survive? As far as I knew, there were only two humans in this world. One was the Doctor, and the other was supposedly engaged in a catfight with the Doctor's wife, Theresia.
According to the wiki, Theresia dies and gets resurrected, so she's clearly the main heroine.
"But what am I going to eat? All I have is liberal arts knowledge. Think… think! —Ack!"
While lost in these trivial thoughts, I habitually tried to stretch my neck and slammed my head against a rock.
"Agh— damn it! My head. Right where I hit it before. It hurts like… Wait, what?"
As I groaned in agony, a shimmering light caught my eye. A status window? No, a hologram was floating before me.
"What is… this?"
Displayed there were titles like *Das Kapital*, *The Communist Manifesto*, and *The Conquest of Bread*—a library of socialist and anarchist literature.
Hold on. Why are these books only the ones bound in red or black?
"What am I supposed to do with this? Does something happen if I press it… wait? It even provides translations?"
Incredible.
This power wasn't useless after all. I don't care who gave this to me; I'll just tell myself it's a byproduct of my own intellect. I can copy these texts word for word.
In that moment, my destiny was forged.
I'll sell these books, amass a fortune, and join Rhodes Island. I'll meet Kal'tsit, Amiya, and my beloved Skadi. I'll meet the Doctor and Theresia too.
That was my plan.
…Back then, I had no idea that my dream would go unfulfilled—or more accurately, that the 'Rhodes Island' part of it would go terribly, terribly wrong.