It was Sunday morning.
I was sprawled lazily across my bed, a bucket of chicken nuggets tucked under one arm, my laptop balanced on my knees. Beside me lay my trusty phone, the same one that had stuck with me for no less than seven years. Its battery life was so bad it could drain from a hundred percent to zero in a whopping thirty minutes, yet for some inexplicable reason, I still refused to replace it.
Life was calm. Peaceful.
Until—
I picked up my phone.
…What?
WHAT?!
What the hell?! Is this guy an oil prince or something?! Who just drops five grand on a degenerate webnovel about catgirls?! Who is this absolute GIGACHAD?!
…
Yeah. Believe it or not, that was the moment I died.
Someone had just spent thousands of dollars on my webnovel. And before I could spend a single cent of that generous sum, or at least pay my rent, I choked on a chicken nugget and died!!!
Just like that.
Well, anyway, death wasn't the end.
The next thing I knew, I had been reborn in another world.
Not as a human. Not as a slime. Not even as a goblin.
I was…
A castle.
Yeah.
A freaking building.
Stuck in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere.
******
Reincarnated as a castle – Day 1
After the first wave of panic faded, I took a few shaky mental breaths. Key word: mental! After all, there's no breathing when you don't have lungs! I didn't even have a nose!
Eventually, I calmed down enough to process the hand fate had dealt me.
Haha… Oh. Oh, the irony!!!
I had spent years roasting those brain-rot webnovel authors online. You know the ones, who were churning out the same tired isekai trash where the protagonist gets yeeted into a fantasy world as some random object!
Reincarnated as a slime? A spider? A sword? Honestly, those were the top-tier ones.
Then came the real nonsense. An apple? A hot spring? And don't even get me started on that poor bastard who got reincarnated as a condom! Seriously, what were those authors smoking?
But now? Guess who isn't laughing?
Me!
ME!
Because I am a castle now!
Yup. A literal, physical, immobile castle, squatting in the middle of a small forest clearing like a giant stone paperweight.
Just me, a bunch of trees, and a whole lot of existential dread.
***
Though calling myself a "castle" might be generous. In reality, I looked more like a fortified manor house, or a miniature keep at best.
My primary structure was hexagonal, formed by six thick stone walls rising about fifteen meters high. Each corner was capped with a stubby turret, topped with a peaked slate roof to keep out the rain. The total footprint sat around 200 square meters, split between two above-ground floors and a cramped basement.
Throw in the small, overgrown yard filled with tangled weeds and half-buried flagstones, and the total ground area came to about 500 square meters. A moss-covered stone wall, maybe three meters tall, surrounded the compound. Thankfully, I still had an enormous iron gate to keep unwanted guests out.
But that was it. No drawbridge, no moat, and certainly no crystalline spires piercing the heavens like the epic castles in the fairy tales children dream about.
A simple design for a simple castle.
Pathetic, really.
But enough of the boring specs. There were actually a few cool features worth mentioning.
For instance, I had two kinds of vision. The first was external, like there's an invisible drone hovering high above my courtyard. From that bird's-eye view, I could see everything: the clearing I occupied, the thick treeline encircling me like a natural fence, the rolling hills in the distance, and a narrow river slicing through the forest a few hundred meters away.
The trees were mostly towering oaks and tall firs, dense and shadowy, and exactly the kind of place where you'd expect elves, wolves, or creepy forest spirits to jump out and ambush you.
The second type of vision was internal. It felt like I had a CCTV camera embedded in the ceiling of every room. I could see all my halls, chambers, staircases, and even the gloom of the basement. Nothing escaped my sight.
Processing all these simultaneous viewpoints was really intense, though. Imagine you are not seeing one vision at a time, but many! A regular human brain would have short-circuited trying to handle the data stream. Thankfully, I no longer had a brain, so I had no headaches.
Heh. Weird perk of being a building, I guess!
It took a bit of mental fumbling, but I eventually got the hang of it. Flipping between views, or watching several at once, soon slowly felt second nature.
As for my physical makeup? Nothing fancy. My main building and outer walls were composed of thick, gray stone bricks—sturdy, weathered, and radiating classic medieval European vibes.
My courtyard, however, was a disaster. Overgrown grass, creeping vines, and half-dead shrubs tangled together in a landscaping nightmare. A few cracked paving stones poked through the greenery, proving no one had done yard work here in decades.
Not that I could fix it. I had no hands, remember?
Thankfully, I didn't have OCD. Otherwise, this mess would have driven me insane within the first ten minutes!
And the inside? Even bleaker, sadly. Every single room was so barren, so empty. No chairs, no tables, not even a bed or one of those creepy old paintings with eyes that follow you. Just dust and empty space.
Anyways, the floors were wooden in most places, stone in the basement, and the walls were a mix of cold gray brick and faded plaster. I did have a few nice windows letting the light in, but that was the extent of my luxury.
Now, as for what I could actually do…
Let's start with the obvious: I couldn't move. I was a building. But I did have a few parlor tricks.
One: I could open and close all my doors and windows at will. With just a thought, I could swing them wide or slam them shut.
Two: I could ignite any torches or candles inside my walls. Handy for when night fell, or when I wanted to feel a little less like a haunted ruin.
And… yeah. That was about it.
Almost, anyway.
There was one more thing.
Like every cliché isekai protagonist ever, I had access to a System.
Yup. Just like in the stories.
Whenever I thought the words, "System, open," a glowing blue screen materialized in my mind's eye.
_______________________________
Magic Castle System
Name: Unknown Castle
Type: Basic
Level: 1
Castle Points: 0
Population: 0
Skills:
- Door Manipulation
- Lighting Manipulation
- Self-Repair (Level 1)
Access:
- System Shop (require points to unlock)