Free Web NovelChapter 2: Great Nurturing Returns System!
’If... If only...’
’Huh?’
Realization bloomed in the consciousness of a lost soul.
’I can still think?’ The soul questioned. ’Do people think when they die?’
’I can’t say I’m completely certain that they don’t, since their souls leave their bodies. I mean, I’ve never died before. It’s my first time.’
’...I did die, right?’ the soul asked. ’Yes, I did. That I’m completely certain. I was hit by a...’
As the final memory played through his mind — rammed into by a speeding truck that had a failed brake — Jacob’s eyes immediately snapped open, and his chest heaved, his breathing soaring high off rhythm as he sucked in desperate gasps.
Glistening beads of sweat slid down his forehead, trickling into his eyes. He wiped them away with his thumb, clearing his foggy vision.
When his sight was finally clear, Jacob found himself staring at the white, cracked ceiling of an unfamiliar room.
He sat upright immediately, calming his beating heart.
’So I didn’t die, after all?’ he thought, ’I survived?’
"But—"
He motioned his neck, gazing at the room he found himself in.
It was a small, cramped apartment. So cramped and congested that he wondered if fresh air even made its way into this room.
And, sure enough, a cool night breeze cascaded through the open window positioned on the wall right next to his bed. However, this breeze did little to quell the rising sweat that had already soaked Jacob’s pajamas.
He gazed outside the window.
The world outside was dark, and the moon was the only visible source of light, its dull silver rays trickling into the room through the window, joining forces with the flickering, dim light of the hanging bulb to faintly illuminate the entire room, just enough for Jacob to identify the layout.
He narrowed his eyes and, once again, gazed at the room.
Unpainted walls surrounded a small bed where he lay. He was even taller than the bed, and he imagined he had to curl himself into an uncomfortable position just to sleep here.
At one corner of the room, a small fridge, which rusted at the edges, sat, right next to a small wooden table lapped to the wall, where various items were placed.
A mirror hung on the wall just above the wooden table. Jacob wondered if the owner of this room was a woman who liked to check her makeup in the mirror before heading out. But he quickly dismissed that thought. He just couldn’t imagine a woman living in a place like this.
Even the wood of the wardrobe that sat opposite the mirror at the other end of the room was peeling off.
The only thing that appeared fairly normal in this room was the white, plastic door that Jacob assumed led to the bathroom.
He let out a sigh, massaging his temple.
Where the hell did he find himself?
He knew it. Mondays. Cursed Mondays. Not only was he hit by a damn truck — although the circumstances that led to that were one hundred percent his fault — he found himself in a strange apartment too.
This place looked so... poor. So small and so low-tier.
The room’s appearance was even worse than his rented studio apartment. And just a few... minutes ago, he was in support of the notion that there couldn’t possibly be a home — where an actual human lived — that looked worse than his own.
Obviously, the resident of this... space had proven him wrong.
"—This doesn’t look like a hospital at all."
No shit.
"Where the hell am I?!"
This was not an ideal position that one would want to find themself the very moment they awakened from a car accident that they somehow managed to survive. Without any aching wounds or injuries.
A miracle?
Jacob sighed, calming his breath. His inflated chest slowly deflated until his breathing returned to a normal tempo.
He stood up from the bed, and he gazed at the white bathroom door.
’That one must lead to the bathroom,’ he thought. His gaze moved to the other door at the corner of the room. A wooden one, peeling just like the wardrobe, ’and that door leads outside this damn place.’
If he wanted to know exactly where he was, he couldn’t do it from inside this... apartment. He needed space, real fresh air. A telephone, maybe.
But who would he even call? He had no one.
Ah, maybe leaving this apartment would give him a faint idea of where exactly he was.
And so, he took a step. The door was his target.
But that step he took felt wrong. His leg... it– the feeling was unexplainable, but it felt like it wasn’t his. The strength in his leg was off. It felt wobbly.
He shrugged. Maybe getting hit by a truck did that sort of thing to a person.
He took another step.
[100% Synchronized.]
’Huh?’
’What was that mechanical, robotic voice just now?’
"Who said that?" he asked aloud, heart beating a bit too fast.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t really noticed this before, but... had his voice always sounded this smooth and deep?
He shook his head. That was a silly thought.
The moment he no longer heard anything, he attributed that strange robotic voice to his imagination, and he took another step forward. And paused.
Suddenly, an overwhelming pain took hold of his skull, strangling his brain. He gritted his teeth, clenching his head as his heartbeat surged, breathing spiking immediately.
He did his best to hold back a scream. It took serious willpower.
The pain made his vision dizzy, and his consciousness woozy.
’What...’
His stomach churned, hot bile rising fast.
’Where am I?’
He closed his eyes, and in his mind, scenes began to flash through with unprecedented speed. They were unfamiliar scenes of an unfamiliar life.
No... they were familiar. They were all too familiar.
They were—
[Memories fully synced.]
The pain finally seized, and the young man stood there, breathing still heavy and ragged as he unnervingly gazed down at his familiar yet unfamiliar palms, clenching them.
—His memories.
"I’m Lucien Rancroft."
Ah, damn.
So that was what it was.
It was just like one of those damn cliche webnovels he always read while waiting for the author of his favorite novel to upload.
Now he fully understood. And he cracked an anxious, nervous smile.
’You’ve gotta be shitting me.’
"I transmigrated?"
Lucien.
Lucien Rancroft.
The name felt all too familiar to him, in a weird, twisted way. freeweɓnøvel.com
But...
His eyes widened, but narrowed immediately.
He took a small step. This time, his legs felt normal. And after taking three more steps, he completely abandoned the thought of exiting the room, and instead, he began pacing to and fro around the room.
’I transmigrated, right?’ He asked himself. ’And if it’s just like those webnovels, it must mean that I’ve transmigrated into a novel. Well, not necessarily a novel as that isn’t the only trope that exists, but there is a tiny possibility.’
He kept walking to and fro around the cramped space of the room. It was a miracle that he even had space to walk.
’This is a problem. I’ve read over hundreds of webnovels. Most of which I don’t even remember the plot. Just haphazard, shapeless plot details.’
He looked around his room once more. His rusting fridge, the peeling wooden wardrobe and the stove lying in one corner. He never actually used that stove.
No, Lucien never actually used that stove. Not Jacob.
’Ah, fuck it.’
He might as well accept the fact that he was Lucien now. His memories and Lucien’s were completely fused. Now it felt like he had lived two complete lives. Two completely different lives.
Back to the topic.
’The presence of these modern details entails that I’m not in one of those Western medieval fantasy novels. Or the cultivation ones. I really thank whichever god was in charge of this whole thing for not sending me into a cultivation webnovel.’
He held his beardless chin, caressing it as he paced around the room.
’This means I might be in a modern webnovel. I just need to confirm if it’s really the world of a novel or a completely different world I’ve been transmigrated into...’
"Wait," he uttered aloud. "I— Lucien knows this world. I can just use his memories to identify core, important things about the world, then compare them with my memories of those Urban fantasy novels, and if none fit, then..."
He halted mid-stride, closing his eyes.
’Definitely gonna be one of those worlds with gates and dungeons, right?’
Well, it wasn’t. Not exactly.
This world was Earth. Not the kind of Earth that Jacob was born in, though.
This Earth was different. It had five continents instead of seven, and the entire world was united under the banner of ’The Union,’ an organization that sought unity and the advancement of humanity.
But it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill, big dreams organization. It was basically this entire world’s only government.
The currency that the entire world used was propagated by the Union. A currency called Unit.
The Union established this rule where every person registered in their database possessed a special watch they called a camo-watch that linked to the Union Central Hub. It was like an ID of sorts. And it was needed in everything.
People who weren’t registered in the database and thus had no connection to the Central Hub were called Zeroes. People without ranking.
And, yes, everything in this world was ranked by the Union. People, schools, poops, vending machines, businesses, jobs... every single thing that mattered.
There was even a Rank 1 clumsiest person on Earth. Lucien couldn’t imagine living with that sort of shame.
Speaking of shame, in this world where every single person was ranked, Lucien was an orphan. And one of the unranked ones. So, basically, Lucien was a zero orphan.
This made him grimace.
"I’m an orphan again?" He clicked his tongue, "Couldn’t even give me a family this time. Well, I should’ve expected this when I saw the state of this.. uh, apartment. No way someone being sheltered by their parents would live in a junkyard like this."
Lucien sighed.
Zeroes could possess that camo-watch, if they... somehow got their hands on it.
They could use it for various personal functions. But they couldn’t use it for the important things and the core reason it was created — identification — because there was no way someone who wasn’t recorded in the database could access the Central Hub.
This was the reason why zeroes couldn’t live in the outside cities, where everything was ranked and required identification. Even getting a house out there required identification.
Zeroes stayed in reclusive areas in the big cities. Areas abandoned by the ranked ones. Zero zones.
It was one of such areas that Lucien had managed to secure an... apartment. That explained everything, including why the place looked so poor.
Lucien glanced at the watch wrapped around his left wrist.
’Why did I not even realize that I had this on earlier?’
He let out a soft exhale as he put an end to his spiraling stream of thoughts, glancing upward at the cracked ceiling.
The breeze flowing through the window ruffled his silver bangs, and for the first time since he woke up, it chilled him.
This entire world did ring a bell.
"Union."
He glanced at his watch once more, checking the date.
[9th-Jan-2199]
Lucien’s eyes widened, but narrowed back as he cracked a shaky smile.
"You’ve gotta be shitting me."
2199. Union. Zeroes. And the rest of the 5280 Chapters worth of fantasy webnovel nonsense.
This... it all sounded like [Dawn of the Five Calamities].
To be exact, the original plot and storyline of the novel were meant to begin exactly sixteen years from now.
The year 2215.
That was when Sky Ravensborg, the 15-year-old protagonist, freshly graduated from a sanctuary academy, set out on a journey with his comrades to grow stronger, all to end the ruination of his world caused by the five calamities.
Actually, the only reason Lucien even knew about the existence of the Union was because of those rare Chapters that popped up once in a while, showing the struggle of any of the five calamities, how they survived in the world as Zeroes at their young ages, how they navigated a non-fantasy world pre-Eden arrival, doing their best to survive. And how the world changed with the arrival of Eden, treating awakened ones as precious treasures, and how the previously zero calamities became ranked.
See, with the arrival of Eden, the gates and the dungeons, the entire world structure changed forever.
In just two years, large factions grew. And those factions eventually dwarfed the Union. Examples of such Factions were the Hunter Association and the Guilds.
But wait a damn minute.
Speaking of the arrival of the gates and Eden, those occurrences all started on this exact year. March to be precise. Two months from now. This meant the storyline of [Dawn of the Five Calamities] began when the world was already used to all these things. Sixteen years from now.
Lucien sat down on his bed, massaging his forehead.
This was all too much for him. The information was a whole lot to take in.
Only a few seconds ago, he was grieving the deaths of his favorite webnovel characters.
Now he had to deal with the fact that he’d died and left his old world behind, transmigrating into another man’s body, in the world inside of said favorite webnovel.
And the worst — maybe the best, because Post Five Calamity arrival era was a genuine nightmare — part of it all was that his favorite characters were still kids!
The five calamities, the most fearsome, hated, baddest, meanest...
Were still...
Lucien’s fingers froze immediately, and he stopped massaging his forehead as his eyes widened.
Realization had struck him, causing his quivering lips to part as he whispered:
"They’re still kids..."
That was right. The youngest of the
Five Calamities — Amira — would be only five-years-old by now.
The last, fragmented thoughts of a dying Jacob surfaced in Lucien’s mind:
’If only... if only those five were shown love and support...’
’If only they were raised right and guided properly. If only...’
This...
This was it.
Maybe?
No. Yes. This was exactly it.
But...
Was this why he was brought here?
To change their fate because he desired it so greatly?
To give them a chance at the happy ending they never got?
No, to give them a better life and a better ending?
Those five suffered all their lives, starting from a tender age. Even right now, as he sat down on his bed contemplating shaky thoughts, they were probably suffering. Well, maybe all of them except for Michael. His own suffering began when Eden descended.
Nonetheless, their constant suffering was what drove them to become the oh so hated calamities in the future.
Now... now Lucien, or Jacob, dared to dream.
And he dared to ask...
Just what if?
What if they never suffered at all?
What if there was a way he could make it so that they didn’t need to shoulder so much sorrow?
What if the Five Calamities didn’t exist at all?
What if...
What if Lucien raised them right?
[Ding–!]
That robotic sound chimed in again. It was clearer this time, smoother and more fluid, like a phone notification sound.
Lucien didn’t mistake it for his imagination this time.
As he stared at the blue screen hovering in his field of vision, he didn’t shake or feel shock.
A deep otaku like him perfectly understood what this fantastic masterpiece was—
[User’s Will Has Resonated With the World.]
[Great Nurturing Returns System Has Been Triggered.]
—A system.
Of course, it was a system. It was the golden rule of webnovels. The essential package. The golden finger.
Every transmigrator needed an overpowered...
Wait.
Lucien squinted his eyes, gazing at the text floating on the blue screen.
He frowned, brows knitting as he grimaced.
"Great Nurture what now?"
