Chapter 2: 1 – Memories of the avid novel reader

November 5^th, year 781 of the Imperial calendar

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity inside that god forsaken place, I opened my eyes. Much to my surprise, I was in a fluffy bed instead of lying on the cold, hard floor. I looked around, the room I'm in was more extravagant than anything I've ever seen. I noticed that I was being watched, not by a doctor, but by a little girl around my age.

 We made eye contact, what startled me is that she didn't even avert her eyes. She looked like a noble, not the haughty kind but the gracious kind instead. From her silky blonde hair, sky blue eyes to her seemingly frail body, everything about her screams lovable, calling the urge to protect her from within me. As far as I can tell, there are two types of people that are not severely affected by my eyes: People that are at least 2 minor ranks higher than me and people that have stronger mental strength than me. That means whoever the girl in my room is, she's very formidable, unlike what her petite frame would suggest. Just as I was tensing up, preparing to defend myself if necessary, she ran out of the room, shouting on top of her lungs. "Mom, come! He's awake!".

I sat there dumbfoundedly, staring at the empty but large hallway beyond the door. She seemed very energetic which is the complete opposite of me. I think she would get along well with Raun, though I get irritated imagining him being with one more cute girl. From what I can see in the hallway, the place I'm in is definitely a mansion, a big one at that. Not giving me time to absorb more information from my surroundings, footsteps rang out indicating that someone was moving towards my room. It was a lady in her thirties, she looked like the older version of the girl I saw. She sat on a chair, facing me with eyes full of kindness and sympathy. However, something about her told me that if she was to harbor hostility against me, I would definitely end up dead on the spot. We sat in awkward silence for dozens of seconds before she finally spoke.

"Hello, Theodore." She said in a calm voice. I just sat in place, staring at her while confusion overtook my emotions. How did she know my name, I thought. Something about her seemed very familiar, awfully so. Mistaking my silence for something else, she stood up and walked towards the exit. "I'm viscount Nightshade, we met once when you was around 3. You're probably very shocked after what happened before I brought you here so I'll give you time to collect your thoughts."

What happened? I wondered before something akin to a button was pressed in my head, releasing the memory of that night.

Mother... She didn't abandon me, right? There's no reasons to, I refuse to believe it. I thought hard about it, wasn't there already a reason why she left me? A damned good one at that. I'm basically the thing that ruined her life, that made her unable to enjoy her youth. Thinking back, didn't the woman introduce herself as viscount Nightshade? That means what the letter said is true! I was abandoned!

My eyes started to get wet. The person I thought loved me the most left me behind, does that mean all the things she have done for me, the love and care she gave me was fake? No, I refused to believe so. I didn't think I could bear living anymore if that was the case. That's right, the voice! I exclaimed inwardly. It said something about mother! 'Grandpa' was definitely trying to do something weird to me and the voice that chased him away told me that my mom is responsible for it being there, that means mother didn't leave me, she just went to wherever the voice was to seek protection for me! That is the case, no, that has to be the case, I muttered again and again like a broken record.

---

Feeling a bit better after consoling myself, I started to recall what happened after the voice disappeared. Well, it's something quite absurd: The world is ending in 20 years. No, I'm not some naive 10 years old believing in the homeless man shouting about the apocalypse descending onto the world. Instead, it is based on my memories, no, more accurately, my grandfather's memories.

My grandfather's name was Marcos Der- No, that's not right, she was named Diana Walker. I saw through the entirety of her youth, from her making friends to her first time masturbating. Yeah, I'd rather forget about that as soon as possible. She liked to play video games and read web novels in her free time. Her life is nothing remarkable though, apart from the fact that she was in a different world than the one I'm living in. Her world was named 'Earth'. Its technologies are mostly on the same level as my world's, the only difference is that they used electricity instead of Mana. That's to be expected since 'Earth' didn't have any Mana to begin with. Apparently, magic, Mana, and everything that is commonplace here was considered fiction in her world.

Her life was cut short though, as she was killed by a truck during her way home from the market. After waking up, she found himself in a strange world, my world. Luckily for her, she read enough transmigration LitRPG novels to know what first to do when she fell into this situation, which is to collect information. She got her first piece of information pretty early on: she was now a guy. That was not a pleasant situation, at least for her. She was so shocked that she fainted immediately, in the wilderness, with no signs of civilization in sight. Luckily for her, no starving beasts came to disturb her sleep and she finally accepted her new identity after several days of weeping loudly.

After calming himself down, he began shouting very embarrassing chants and incarnations, trying to use magic the same way as the novels he had read. When that didn't work, he muttered 'Status', expecting a translucent blue screen to pop up in front of him. Lucky for him, this world has a status screen. His excitement died as soon as he found out that it was not the 'OP system' that protagonist of novels usually have. Instead, the status screen of this world just showed him his abysmally small stats along with his Skills and Art tabs which were empty.

Turns out that watching survival shows doesn't automatically make you a survival expert, and Diana, now named Marcos Dervit, found that out the hard way. He picked up berries, thinking that they were edible, only to have diarrhea a day later, that was pretty amusing to see. He tried to make a shelter but it just collapsed on him when he was sleeping. Just as he was about to die from dehydration and starvation, he heard a call for help.

Being the 'OP protagonist' that he was, he ran head-first into the place the sound was coming from. What he found was a lone carriage that somehow ended up in the middle of the forest, surrounded by 3 green gremlins known as goblins. Immediately after, Marcos kicked one goblin to the ground, which was really impressive considering his stats. The other two goblin reacted quickly though, and nearly beat him to death. Luckily for him, carriage's escort came just in time and killed the goblins.

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The carriage soon opened. Instead of the beautiful noble lady he was expecting, he was met with a fat middle aged man who was a merchant going sightseeing in the forest. Swallowing the feeling of disgust, Marcos accompanied the merchant towards the nearest town.

 I have to say, he abused the merchant's goodwill very thoroughly. He demanded a large portion of the already small ration. Normally, the merchant would have kicked Marcos out as soon as he requested that, but the merchant's daughter, who was almost as ugly as her father, fell in love with Marcos thinking he was the knight in shinning armor that saved her life. It was very amusing seeing Marcos appease the daughter while trying his best to not let disgust show on his face.

They parted ways when they came near to a town, much to the delight of Marcos. The separation was very heart-wrenching, at least for the merchant's daughter. Tears and snobs stuck onto Marcos' clothes as she made him promise to meet her again someday, though I doubt Marcos was being sincere with it. 

Going into the tavern and snooping for information, Marcos almost spat out his drink when he heard the name of the lord of the region he was in. He was kicked out of the tavern for screaming when he heard the name of the 6 grand dukes. Apparently, the grand dukes' name were the same as those in his all time favorite novel 'The holy swordsman'. That's when he realized that he was, in fact, transmigrated into a novel. 

I'd hate to admit it but he was right, he was inside a novel. I couldn't really deny it after he accurately predicted various future events. He had the ambition to include himself in the protagonist's harem when he was Diana. Although it's a bit hard to achieve considering he was now a man and he was more than 70 years away from the start of the story.

After despairing for roughly 3 days, he came up with a plan, to take over the consciousness of his descendant - me. I'd say it was a good plan if I wasn't the target of it. Now I get why he was in that dark place with me. Mother really protected me, I'm glad I trusted her.

There was a big deterrence to his plan. That is, he had to have sex to have a descendant in the first place. So, he came up with another plan, to make a lot of money. Unfortunately for him, he knew next to no way to get money easily 70 years before the start of the novel. As such, he resorted to what he does best, plagiarizing novels. Surprisingly, the novels with overused plots that he copied from 'Earth' sold very well, making him a lot of cash. Thus, began his days of going around the Empire, frantically finding dark mages to secure a method to invade my consciousness.

Things went pretty smoothly for him from there, though it took him longer than he expected to find a wife. Problems arise when his wife was infertile, leading to his child - my mother - being born much later than he planned. 

Not counting on the fertility of his wife, he disgustingly forced my mother to get pregnant with someone when she was only 15, the result of that was me. I felt very complicated when I didn't know who my father was, even more so now that I realized I was just a vessel for grandp- no, Marcos.

My mother found out about his plans through her innate memory reading skill when I was still 2. Not wanting me to suffer, she took me and ran away from home. Luckily, her close friend, who is now viscount Nightshade, protected her from Marcos. 

Marcos spent the rest of his pathetic life pretty peacefully, aside from the times when he stalked me, including the time where he gave me that novel, wanting me to take a hint. Thinking back, I now understand why mother was so angry.

 The ending of 'The holy swordsman' was pretty bleak. The protagonist, along with his harem, defeated the Evil God. All's good except for the fact that they were the only people in the world to survive the calamity and thus are 'forced' with repopulating the world. It's just the author's very roundabout way of giving excuses for the protagonist to have sex since he was very dense throughout the entirety of the novel.

Not wanting the world to end in such absurdly stupid way before I could find my mother's whereabouts, I resolved myself to get stronger. Although I'm pitifully weak, I will make full use of the trash Marcos' memories to change the ending, find my mother and live happily with her. Thus, I decided to go monster hunting as soon as I could. I'm in a novel, how dangerous could it be?

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