Chương 6: The Time-Traveling Ulcer

A weightless sensation that made my stomach turn completely inside out, accompanied by a flash of light that felt like a blowtorch applied directly to my optic nerves. As it turned out, spatiotemporal teleportation—this whole "Chrono-Leaping" business—was nowhere near as elegant as sci-fi movies made it out to be. If I had to describe it, it felt like being a hamster tossed into the spin cycle of a gargantuan industrial washing machine, violently revved up to three thousand RPM.

It was the brutal, agonizing sensation of the laws of physics shattering into a million pieces, only to be forcefully reassembled in an instant.

"Blegh... Gah..." The moment the transfer finalized, I dropped to all fours on the ground, dry-heaving violently. Fortunately, since I had consumed nothing but stomach medicine before departure, I managed to avoid a catastrophic reversal. Still, the bitter, acrid taste of stomach acid coated my entire mouth. Blinking my eyes open, I found myself staring at a patch of muddy ground. Wet, dark soil. Trampled weeds. And then, a suffocating stench slammed into my nostrils like a physical fist.

"Ugh... God, it reeks...!" I instinctively pressed my handkerchief against my nose. It was a violently raw stench of primordial life—a dense, suffocating mixture of rotting mulch, thick overgrowth, and the unmistakable, pungent odor of animal waste. Worse still was the oppressive humidity and sticky heat clinging to my skin. The sheer density of the air itself was fundamentally different from the Neo-Tokyo of 2300, where climate-control systems maintained a perfectly optimized temperature year-round.

The oxygen level here was almost too rich; just breathing made my lungs feel like they were on fire. 『System Check... All Green. Spatiotemporal coordinate variance: 0. 002. Landing successful, brother. 』 A cheerfully casual synthesized voice echoed directly inside my skull. It was Gennai, communicating via the neural chip embedded in my brain all the way from the modern era—or rather, the future. 『So, how's the air of Japan from seventeen hundred years ago? Packed with negative ions, isn't it?

Seems great for your health! 』"... It's a nightmare. It smells like a livestock farm and a public restroom had a baby." Tears welling in my eyes, I dragged myself to my feet, brushing the thick mud off my scraped knees.

"And besides, why does my body feel so heavy? Is the gravity different here?" 『Gravity's exactly the same, pal. It's just that a scrawny future-dweller like you isn't used to walking on unpaved terrain. 』 Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I forced myself to survey my surroundings. We were in a vast basin encircled by a dense, suffocatingly lush primeval forest. In the distance, the gentle, rolling ridges of the Three Mountains of Yamato carved a silhouette against the sky.

The heavens above were an impossibly vivid, piercing blue, and the clouds possessed a stark, breathtaking three-dimensionality. Down below, I could see a densely packed settlement of humble, primitive structures with thatched roofs, looking little better than makeshift shacks. Just beyond them loomed the timber skeleton of a massive temple currently under construction—most likely Asuka-dera. This was the year A. D. 603. The eleventh year of Empress Suiko's reign, in the Land of Yamato: Asuka.

The very dawn of Japanese history, right before the wheel of time truly began to turn. My current attire consisted of the "period-accurate garments" Gennai had graciously prepared for me. It was a crude, tunic-like kantoui woven from coarse hemp, held together by a simple cord around my waist. No matter how you looked at it, I looked like a low-ranking laborer or a destitute peasant. The "man" standing right beside me, however, was an entirely different story.

"Hmm. So this is the island nation of the Far East, Yamato? As the data suggested, the infrastructure coverage rate is abysmal." Despite standing right in the middle of a literal quagmire, he remained in a state of immaculate, pristine whiteness, without a single speck of mud defiling him. He wore a garment modeled after the hou —the ceremonial court robes of the era—but the material itself was as lustrous as the highest-grade nanofiber silk, reflecting the sunlight with a blinding, almost divine radiance.

Perched upon his head was a black-lacquered eboshi hat, which secretly housed built-in communication antennas and a quantum processing unit. In his right hand, he held a silver-white scepter—the high-frequency vibration device known as the Harmony Rod. The Historical Correction Android, Code Name: PRINCE.

Our legendary Prince Shōtoku stood tall in the muddy terrain, his feet planted firmly in what looked suspiciously like high-tech tactical boots, scanning the perimeter with a look of undisguised, aristocratic distaste.

"Uh, PRINCE-san? Can I ask you something?"

"What is it, Narrative Architect?"

"Don't you think your outfit stands out a bit too much? I mean, you're literally glowing. You're too white for the seventh century..."

"Irrelevant." PRINCE dismissed my concerns with a cold, sweeping flick of his hand.

"A leader destined to guide the masses must always maintain visual distinctiveness. This is the baseline factory setting for 'Charisma.'" With that absolute declaration, he pulled a compact vanity mirror from his robes and meticulously adjusted the angle of his eboshi by a fraction of a millimeter. A narcissist. Prince Shōtoku was a colossal, unadulterated narcissist.

"We move, Kataru Mononobe. According to my generator's scans, those unhygienic structures over there constitute the political epicenter of this land... the Oharida Palace."

"Wait, hold on a second! Don't just walk off on your own!" PRINCE began marching forward with smooth, fluid strides, his motor-driven legs effortlessly gliding over the treacherous mud as if it were a paved highway. Panicking, I scrambled after him, my straw sandals slipping wildly as I struggled to keep pace.