The world was a limbo of colours, with countless shades flashing across his vision like flashing neon lights, then came sudden awareness. His five senses came back one by one, the first to awaken was hearing...then came smell, touch, sight and taste respectively.
"Where am I?... Who am I?"
He muttered in profound confusion. Feeling a confusing emptiness in his core. His question resounded against the air...as if it held all the answers to his existential questions.
Then, his gaze fell on a rock besides the ground he was sprawled on. The rock was splattered with something red and dry; dried blood. His own dried blood.
"Argh...Argh...Haa!" He screamed as a sudden headache hit his head like a freight train, making him grab it with both of his hands.
His hands got covered in dried blood. Blood was apparently also splattered across his head. Yet, he didn't have enough awareness to focus on it, because his mind was flashing across memories of fifteen years of life lived in this world.
"Ha...Ha...Hahahahah… Danmachi!" He spoke. Tumbling to the ground as his mind processed the memories in his mind. He took deep breaths which fully turned into a full blown laughter at the thought of having transmigrated into one of the anime's he considered favourite.
Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon?.... *Danmachi* for short, was a Japanese anime following the protagonist Bell Cranel and his adventures in Orario, the dungeon city. And now he had transmigrated into that very protagonist of *Danmachi*, Bell Cranel.
"No way!? I'm Bell Cranel? I'm not dreaming, right?" He questioned himself while pinching his cheek, the pain from the pinch snapped him out of his euphoric state.
The memories in his mind along with the pain he could feel conveyed an undeniable fact to him—this was real... No hallucinations, no jokes by some cosmic god, nor any grand illusions.
His memories did not carry much things except some Japanese culture understood through anime. A huge amount of anime's, manga's and novels. Along with an enormous amount of Chinese novels, with their ching chong, ding dong shit.
"I don't remember how I died or whom I even was before transmigration. But... I do have the memories of my predecessor, the original Bell Cranel."
"Guess my predecessor was pretty clumsy to have kissed life goodbye by stumbling on wet soil, hitting his head against a hard rock." Bell spoke with a hint of pity while glancing at the dried and crusted blood now on his hands along with the dried blood on the rock nearby.
The recent memories of his predecessor filled him in about how clumsy and unfortunate the old Bell was.
From what he comprehended from the old Bell's memories... 'He' was on his way to Orario after his grandfather left one day without any indications or warnings, just leaving a small parchment behind... urging him to go to Orario and have his own adventure in the dungeon city.
Though, through his cannon memories, he now understood who his grandpa really was. It was still hard not to feel the same melancholy like his predecessor when the only memories he had were those of the old Bell.
Maybe he was clutching and imprinting on these memories since his own sense of self was negligible, with probably only the memories of fiction being a boon. Something like a staple golden finger among transmigrators.
"I should probably get moving, it's not safe to stand dumbly in the forest and think about these things when I can get attacked by an animal at any moment." He spoke while taking in his surroundings. High trees with their foliage blocked some sunlight, along with wet soil covering the ground with some patches of grass.
Bell quietly picked up the rock which had half a hand in his transmigration and put it reverently in a small leather sachet on his back.
His steps moved with caution, blending with a hint anxiety and fear as he walked through the dense forest. His eyes searching for a mud road following which would directly lead to Orario's main gate.
The village chief from the village lying just outside the forest had told this to his predecessor when he spend a night there on his way to Orario.
After searching with no head or tails for an hour straight, he finally found a mud road cutting straight through the forest, with carriage marks and trails left all over it.
He followed that road for four hours straight. Finally seeing the outline of a huge city boundary becoming visible in the distance. A grand tower stretched endlessly towards the sky from the city's centre. It was the 'Tower Of Babel' which could be seen even from here.
"So beautiful...Yet terrifyingly real." He mumbled incredulously with a tinge of awe as he gazed at the enormous tower piercing straight through the sky.
Think about a mega buildings of five hundred stories depicted in anime's and increase the scale and size by another five hundred times.
That was the type of construction monstrosity lying before his eyes. Since it was so far away from him... It technically should've looked small like any other construct from this far away, yet it did not look small at all.
It was like the Kami's Tower from *Dragon Ball*.
"That is where my adventure begins." Bell spoke with anticipation bleeding through his words as his steps quickened unconsciously. Wanting to reach that surreal tower and the dungeon city of Orario, and the stunning adventures waiting inside.
He was closer.
To his dream.
The only question was...
Was the dream his... Or Bell's?