In a daze, a sudden sense of weightlessness struck.
Anser jolted, his body instinctively tensing. In a panic, his right hand gripped a crevice, finding a point of leverage. His body finally regained its balance, and he stopped sliding down.
"Whew—"
He took a heavy breath, instinctively thinking he had almost fallen off the edge of his bed again.
But his ears were filled with the thunderous sound of water. The damp, cold wind smelled of brine and was very cloying. His right leg felt as if a dog had bitten off a piece of flesh, the pain making him twitch.
Something was wrong!
He snapped his eyes open and turned his head. The scene before him made his scalp tingle.
Below his feet was a pitch-black abyss, its depth unmeasurable. The lower half of his body was hanging out, held up entirely by a few fingers on his right hand.
Fortunately, the place where his upper body lay was a gentle slope; otherwise, he would have surely fallen.
'I...'
Anser admitted he was a bit scared. His mind was a mess, and his legs felt weak.
Don't panic, don't panic... After a bit of mental preparation, he cast aside distracting thoughts and slowly turned his head, looking away from the drop. With his chest and abdomen pressed tight against the uneven earth and stone, his hands alternated to find leverage as he slowly wormed his way upward.
Four or five minutes passed. He crawled several meters and finally reached a relatively flat area.
He panted for a few minutes to recover some strength, then sat up and nervously surveyed his surroundings.
It was a pit, a giant pit!
He estimated the diameter to be at least several kilometers, and he was right inside it!
'An earthquake?!'
Anser rubbed his face hard, trying to calm himself down.
It was a cloudy day, but visibility was decent.
Beneath his feet was a pillar of earth and stone leaning diagonally against the pit wall. He was on a mid-slope inside a half-destroyed house.
The wooden house was in ruins, with only the roof sticking diagonally into the ground, casting a shadow. A large number of broken wooden boards were scattered around, perhaps once part of the house.
Looking around, there were many such pillars nearby, of varying heights and strange shapes. Landslides and collapses were happening at any moment.
Perhaps due to geological differences, although other parts of the giant pit were also uneven, most were relatively gentle. The high points were near the top of the pit, while the low points were bottomless pits of darkness.
As far as the eye could see, the pit was filled with ruined buildings, debris, and... countless corpses and humanoid monsters!
'Where the hell have I been brought to?'
Anser huddled his body, his heart racing, but his mind became increasingly clear.
The stone pillar beneath him was very steep. Large amounts of water poured down from above the pit like waterfalls, making it extremely difficult to climb. No monsters were coming this way; he was safe for now.
The far end of the pit had no water rushing down and a gentler slope. The monsters emerging from the darkness at the bottom of the pit all chose to charge up from there, their figures shimmering in the distance.
Screams, angry shouts, roars... they were continuous.
'Cold weapons!'
Both monsters and humans were fighting mostly with swords and crossbows. No firearms were in sight. Instead, various strange Lights and shadows flashed from time to time.
'What is that?'
It was too far to see the details, but everything was too strange. Anser felt an odd sensation in his heart.
He looked down at himself. The tattered gray robe was unfamiliar, as were his hands and body. His medium-length hair, matted with sweat, hung before his eyes; it was a brownish-gray with a silvery sheen.
'This clearly isn't me!'
He had transmigrated!
'Where is this?'
Just as the thought arose, a strange image suddenly projected into his mind:
A silver twenty-sided die spun incessantly, throwing out fragmented memory pieces. A slideshow of memories began to flash back.
The original owner's name was Anser Holrevin, 21 years old this year, who had lived in the trade capital of Baldurs Gate since childhood.
After witnessing the power of the arcane in his youth, he became obsessed with magic. However, his parents were ordinary people who ran a bakery. They had no trouble with food and drink, but they couldn't afford to hire Professionals to teach him.
When he was 16, the Fabian Mage Tower in the Brampton District openly recruited apprentices. Anser's parents couldn't talk him out of it and spent all their savings to send him in, making him a magic apprentice.
But private Mage Towers were just for making money. Fabian only held class once a week, and he would leave as soon as he finished speaking, not caring at all if you understood.
The original owner's Intelligence level was only slightly better than an average person's. After five years of hard study and spending dozens of gold coins every year, he only learned two Cantrips: Light and Ray of Frost, both of which were Evocation Spells.
He simply couldn't learn more difficult Cantrips like Mage Hand or Prestidigitation no matter how hard he tried.
Today, while Anser was studying arcane knowledge in his room as usual, the earth suddenly shook. Buildings collapsed. Accompanied by a violent magical explosion, the Eastway District and more than half of the Brampton District disappeared from the surface, leaving an irregular giant pit in their place.
The giant pit connected to the Underdark. Countless subterranean creatures rushed into the city, looting and killing. Lawless individuals took the opportunity to cause chaos. Baldurs Gate was in total disarray.
The Mage Tower stood on the edge of the pit, barely avoiding falling in. But faced with the sudden turn of events, dozens of apprentices panicked.
When everyone found their mentor, Fabian, in the meditation room, he was bleeding from his facial orifices and was at death's door. He only said one sentence—"The Weave has collapsed"—before dying on the spot.
The Weave... had collapsed again!
It was well known that the Goddess of Magic was always plagued by misfortunes. The Weave had collapsed more than once. The Spellplague, which made Spellcasters blanch at its mention, was caused by the assassination of the third-generation Goddess of Magic, Midnight, by Cyric, the God of Murder.
It seemed that the fourth-generation Goddess of Magic was likely gone as well.
Just as everyone's minds were blown and they were in a panic, two Gray Dwarves leading a group of Goblin and Orc slaves burst into the Mage Tower.
The Mage Tower was in ruins and no longer had defensive capabilities. The apprentices could only flee for their lives.
But human hearts were more sinister than monsters.
When the apprentices charged through the encirclement, the first Teaching Assistant, Gauss, used Mold Earth to destabilize the Mage Tower's center of gravity. The tower tilted, and the edges collapsed. Several apprentices, including Anser, along with some monsters, fell into the giant pit.
Before falling, the original owner saw Gauss escaping in the chaos, clutching the mentor's relics. He felt a secret hatred but was helpless.
The good news was that he didn't die from the fall. The bad news was that the Gray Dwarf who fell with him didn't die either; he hit him with a Mind Sliver and kicked him down the stone pillar.
The memory ended abruptly there. If nothing unexpected happened, the original owner hadn't made it and died.
'This place... is actually the continent of Faerûn from dungeons & dragons!' Anser was shocked.
It was now the 6th of July, Flamerule, 1699 DR. It had been over two hundred years since the "Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus" incident (1492 DR), and over three hundred years since the Year of Blue Fire (1385 DR) when the Spellplague occurred.
In Anser's memory, one of his ancestors had moved from Luskan to Elturel just as the Holy City fell. Elturel was dragged into Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells.
Fortunately, the ancestor wasn't in the city at the time and narrowly escaped death, fleeing along the Chongsa River to Baldurs Gate.
'Your luck is far worse than your ancestor's, Anser.'
However, falling into the Underdark was much better than falling into the Nine Hells.
Anser complained inwardly. Since he had transmigrated, he would live well with his new identity and new name.
In his past life, he was just a lowly worker with no ties and no money. Aside from virtual online entertainment, there really wasn't much to miss.
He moved his body to relieve some stiffness, then looked at his injured right calf.
The muscle was swollen and purple, but not deformed. He could still slightly move his toes and ankle.
'It shouldn't be broken.'
Anser listened intently, but the sound of the water was too loud to hear any movement from the top of the stone pillar.
'With the roof covering me, the Gray Dwarf on the pillar shouldn't be able to see me here.'
The stone pillar was very steep, and the Gray Dwarf was also injured. Even if he were discovered, the dwarf probably wouldn't dare come down.
After confirming there was no immediate danger to his life, he immediately focused his attention deep into his mind, on that incessantly spinning silver die.
'This must be my cheat.'
He felt excited. This might be the key to escaping his current predicament.
The die was a twenty-sided die, the most common in dungeons & dragons rules. It was entirely silver, with a special symbol on each face, but they were all dim and lightless.
Anser tried to touch the die with his mind, and a vague piece of information was transmitted to his heart.