The room assigned to Adam was spacious, far more luxurious than anything he had ever lived in back on Earth as he was from a middle class family. The walls were adorned with paintings which could be sold for thousands of dollars in his previous world, and the ceiling curved upward into a subtle dome that reflected soft ambient light. Everything about the place screamed wealthy, yet none of it brought him any comfort.
He stood by the tall window, hands resting against the cool glass as he stared out at the unfamiliar city beyond. Towering spires and stone bridges stretched into the distance, illuminated by lampposts. It was beautiful in a way that felt unreal for someone who used to live in a modern world.
And yet, no matter how breathtaking it was, it did nothing to ease the heaviness in his chest.
Just a few hours ago, he had been on his way to school.
He could still remember it clearly, his sister's pale face and his parent's exhaustion. The dull ache of worry sitting at the back of his mind because his sister's medicine had been running low again, and their parents were working double shifts to afford the next batch. And without the money from his part time job it's going to be difficult for his parents to run the family as all the money they earned were put into his sister's hospital fees.
Now he was here in an entirely different world separated from his family. Adam exhaled slowly, his breath fogging the glass for a moment before fading.
"They must be losing their minds right now…" he murmured.
The thought hit him harder than any of the revelations till now. His little sister, who was still lying in her hospital bed, must be waiting for him to visit after school like he always did.
His fingers curled slightly against the windowframe. He hadn't asked to be dragged into a war or to be made into some kind of saviour. And he certainly hadn't asked to be separated from his family without warning.
The gods had spoken to them before sending them to this world, explaining the situation the world was currently in. They had painted themselves as benevolent saviors, protectors of this world as they explained how the demons were invading the world and destroying cities and villages, killing thousands of innocents everyday.
And yes, he understood that people were suffering here. But that didn't erase the fact that they had taken him from his family.
He suppressed his resentment against the gods as he doesn't know if they would be able to sense his emotions. He didn't hate them, not exactly, but he didn't trust them either.
Still… there was no denying the other part of it. He raised his hand slightly, palm facing upward.
A faint flash of energy rippled across his skin, responding instantly to his intent. The sensation was strange, not heavy like lifting something physical, but not intangible either. It was as if reality itself had become more cooperative around him.
Power. Real, undeniable power.
His lips tightened. "I guess that part is kind of amazing," he admitted softly.
He had always been just… normal. He didn't have any special talents nor did he possess prodigy-level intelligence. Now, suddenly, he could feel something inside him that had never existed before.
Strength, potential and the ability to change things on his whim. And that scared him almost as much as it excited him.
Adam lowered his hand and stepped away from the window, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress was soft, sinking slightly under his weight.
"There's no such thing as a free meal," he muttered.
That had been his father's favorite phrase. If someone was offering you something too good to be true, it probably came with conditions attached.
The gods hadn't told them everything, of that he was certain. They had explained the threat, yes. But he didn't believe they didn't have something to gain from all this. And Adam didn't believe for a second that there wasn't one.
His gaze drifted toward the door.
The people of the Church were polite and respectful. But he had seen how they looked at them.
They were looking at them as not people but assets, tools and weapons to be used.
"I need information," he said quietly. He needed real information, not the polished and fabricated version the Church would feed them.
If he wanted to understand this world, if he wanted to survive in it, if he wanted any chance of finding a way back home, then he couldn't rely on what he was being told by the Church.
And more importantly… He couldn't stay here forever.
His fingers clenched slightly against the bedsheet.
"I'm going back," he whispered, no matter what it took.
…
Several corridors away, in another wing of the same building, a very different kind of thought process was unfolding.
The oldest among the summoned otherworlders sat alone on his bed, with one of his legs crossed over the other, his back leaning casually against the headboard. His expression was calm, but there was a glint of excitement in his eyes that hadn't faded since the summoning.
If anything, it had only grown stronger.
"Gods, huh…" Marcus muttered, a slow grin creeping across his face.
Back on Earth, he had been nobody special. Just another guy running with the wrong crowd, doing what he had to do to survive. Power had always been something that belonged to other people, gang leaders, crime bosses, or corrupt officials.
He was just another low level gang member doing odd jobs, muscle for people who would never remember his name. He had seen what real power looked like, and he had always wanted it.
But now? Now he could feel it, the strength and power bestowed by the gods coursing through him. He raised his hand and concentrated. Energy gathered around his fingers, forming a faint distortion in the air, like heat rippling off asphalt on a sunny day.
He laughed quietly. "This is real," he whispered.
It was not a dream or some hallucination. This was real power, and he was done being at the bottom.
The Church thought they could control them, and the gods thought they could leash them in the name of righteousness.
'Idiots.'
They had made the same mistake every ruler in history had ever made, they had given power to someone who wanted more. Now he thought he could build his own empire and become the strongest existence in the world.
His gaze darkened as his thoughts shifted to the other summoned. Most of them looked weak mentally. Some were probably naive enough to actually believe the Gods' speeches about honor and sacrifice.
But even the weakest thorn could grow into something dangerous if left alone.
He exhaled slowly. "They all have to die." Not immediately, of course, that would be foolish.
The Church's security was too tight right now and there were too many eyes around them. Any overt move would be noticed by them.
No, he figured this needed to be done properly. First, he needed information about their abilities, their limits and who could be manipulated.
A slow, calculating smile formed on his face.
"I'll play along with them for now," he murmured.
He closed his eyes, already imagining his rise to prominence.
…
Far away, in Avalon, Arthur stood inside the training chamber he had built, surrounded by floating fragments of half-formed cultivation diagrams.
They glowed faintly, composed of pure Aether structured into symbolic frameworks. Each one represented a theory, a hypothesis, a possible path forward for him.
But each one was wrong, he sighed slowly and rubbed his temples.
"What am I doing wrong?" he muttered.
The manuals he had created were, by any conventional standard, absurdly advanced. They incorporated all the advanced theories from the cultivation manuals he got his hands on and were even above and beyond them.
For anyone else, they would have been revolutionary, some might even go to war for such advanced cultivation manuals. But for him, they were useless. Arthur let the diagrams dissolve, the Aether dispersing into harmless motes of light.
It always came back to the same problem, Aether. Trying to cultivate it with conventional methods was like trying to move the Earth with the strength of a normal human.
No matter how refined his models became, they were all based on assumptions that simply didn't apply to him.
He was becoming a bit frustrated with the continuous failure to come up with a cultivation manual that would help him strengthen his soul. By now he had created three cultivation manuals that would push anyone into absurd realms of power, but even they were useless for him.
Arthur calmed his emotion as getting frustrated would not solve the problem and sat down slowly on the chamber floor, his back leaning against one of the reinforced pillars.
He had always been able to brute-force his way through problems. When someone was stronger than him, he just adapted and evolved to become stronger. When something threatened him, he surpassed it.
But his current situation wasn't something he could solve with brute force only. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, deliberately calming his thoughts, getting angry wouldn't help.
When he finally stood up, it was with renewed clarity.
"If this world doesn't have what I need," he said quietly, "then I'll find one that does."
There were infinite universes and infinite civilizations. It was impossible that none of them had a solution to his problem.
And Arthur was not the kind of person to accept stagnation. He stepped out of the training chamber, and the heavy doors sealed shut behind him.
***
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