Chương 1: Hit by a Food Truck

It was a summer afternoon. The big city was as noisy as ever, and I quietly tapped on my phone. Cars honked in uneven bursts. Buses hissed at the curb, vomiting out tired commuters and swallowing up more. A delivery cyclist cursed at an Uber. Somewhere down the block, construction equipment hammered away with no rhythm at all. Influencer is what they had come to call me. Foodie. A food critic. The name hardly matters. I was someone who ate food prepared by others whom I had always seen as inferior.

Servers whose only jobs were to serve me. With the stroke of a pen, or more like, the tap of a finger, I could elevate a business… or crush it. I was waiting for the light to turn green to allow me to cross the street. The metal pole beside me was warm where the sun had baked it all afternoon. I had just posted a small reply on a video review of a local food truck. I grinned staring down at that 0. 5 star rating. I'd decimated them. Torn them to pieces.

It was something in the way the cashier looked at me that had pissed me off to no end, and so I had decided to make them suffer. Feeling self-righteous, I smiled and leaned against the lightpole. It was then that I noticed the very same food truck I had just blasted driving down the road. They clearly had the green light, and yet when I turned, I saw a woman and a child in the crosswalk.

She was on the phone, clearly frustrated, her shoulders tight, her voice raised just enough to cut through the noise of the street. She hadn't seen the truck coming, but she would soon. And I… did nothing. My feet froze as if swallowed by cement. I gasped, but I could not turn my eyes away from the carnage I was about to witness. Tires screeched, a sharp rubber-burning scream that sliced through every other sound on the block, and I turned and noticed something odd.

The food truck that had been driving down the street was no longer aimed at the woman and the child… It was aimed at me. In an attempt to miss the two jaywalkers, the truck had veered and lost control. They jumped the curb, the front bumper clipping a trash can and sending it spinning across the sidewalk. People shouted. Someone dropped a drink. The sun flashed across the windshield, too bright for me to see the driver's face. I braced myself, and the last thing I remember was a scream and the screeching of tires.

… System Initialized In your old life, you sought fulfillment through sustenance. In your new life, you will find it. When I woke, I found that I was in a place I did not recognize. Green grass, tall and thick, stretched as far as the eye could see. It rolled in soft waves across a valley, bending under the breeze like a living thing. Woodlands scattered throughout the valley in dark green patches, their branches swaying gently, with a river running straight through the center.

From where I lay, it looked like a strip of silver cutting through the fields. Homes had been set up throughout the land, small and distant, with thatched roofs, stone chimneys, and little trails of smoke curling into a pale afternoon sky. Wooden fences divided pastures and fields. Animals grazed openly, dots of brown, white, and black moving lazily through the grasslands. A cow had woken me up by slapping me in the face with its tongue. Its breath was warm and grassy. Its nose was wet.

Its tongue had the texture of a damp dish rag. I was groggy, and I rubbed my face. Something felt… different. Off. The air itself felt too clean. There was no exhaust in it. No hot metal smells. No trash to speak of. Just grass, mud, flowers, and the heavy animal smell of the cow standing over me. I was thirsty beyond measure, and I stood on wobbly legs and walked to a nearby creek. My boots sank slightly into the soft ground as I moved.

Grass brushed against my calves, leaving little beads of dew and pollen clinging to my trousers. Hmm… these weren't the clothes I was wearing before. The creek trickled underneath a few trees, slipping over smooth stones and exposed roots. Birds hummed in the branches above, hidden among leaves that flickered whenever the wind brushed through them. I reached into the water and drank deeply. It was cool. Refreshing. Probably the best water I'd ever had. If I were to rate just the water, it would get a 4. 5 out of 5.

I never gave perfect scores. Perfection was a lie and the death of creativity and innovation. The creek smelled faintly of moss and wet stone. Tiny fish darted away from my shadow. A dragonfly skimmed across the surface, its wings catching the light like bits of glass. Staring down at that water, I noticed something in the corner of my eye. A particularly still portion of the creek had a reflection staring back up at me… and I did not recognize who was looking back at me. Well, I did… but that wasn't me.

I was, or had been, a mid-thirties-year-old man, but the face that stared back at me was younger. Much younger. Sixteen at the oldest, I'd guess. I felt my own face and saw the reflection mimic perfectly—This was real. Really real. That was me. My face. No longer was my skin rough with age and facial hair, but smooth and lively. My hair shifted slightly in the breeze, softer and fuller than I remembered. Even my hands looked wrong when I held them up, the fingers thinner, and the knuckles less worn with age.

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"What the fuck!" I said, unable to hold it back. Quickly, I searched my pockets. My phone. I needed my phone. I needed to call someone. I needed—I quickly learned that my pockets were quite empty. The clothes were not mine either. Rough cloth. Plain stitching. A loose shirt that smelled faintly of sun-dried linen and field dust. No wallet, no keys, no phone, and no lifeline back to the world I once knew. I sat with my back to the creek and noticed the cow watching me curiously.

"Step off, Betty," I said. The cow continued to stare. A fly landed near its eye. Its ear flicked, and the fly vanished into the warm afternoon air. The cow chewed with slow, patient judgment. Okay, Rook, the nickname my father had given me, what are you going to do? What do you remember? Screeching tires, a scream, and the sound of broken metal as a car hit something… like a body. Had I died? Was this heaven? The smell of manure suggested otherwise. I stayed that way for at least an hour until my stomach growled.

Hungry. I was starving. Absolutely famished. The breeze moved over the grass, and somewhere far off, a rooster crowed. A cart creaked along a distant road, the sound faint but distinct in the open valley. Well… there were houses strewn about. Perhaps one of them would be able to offer some help. Or at least a meal. Betty, the cow I had befriended, stood with me, and I walked towards the nearest home I saw. Wild grasslands gave way to cultivated land.

The change came gradually, the tall grass thinning into neater rows and dark strips of turned soil. Low stone borders marked the edges of fields. Wooden posts leaned under the weight of old fencing. Some plots held leafy vegetables, others grain that shifted in golden-green ripples under the wind. Flies buzzed eagerly around Betty, as did all manner of insects. A swarm of bright butterflies flew overhead, drifting lazily over the fields. Bees moved through clusters of small white flowers along the path.

Somewhere in the brush, something tiny rustled and fled before I could see it. It was quite the scene. Beautiful, to say the least. Still, I found that I preferred the concrete jungle to it. Down the hills I walked with Betty in tow. The dirt path was uneven beneath my boots, packed hard in places and soft in others. More than a few times, she nudged me, wishing for attention. I scratched absently around her ears, and she nudged me even harder. Her bell clunked softly with every step.

Eventually, I made it to the closest home. Surrounded by wooden fences to segment different areas, there was clearly a house where someone lived and a barn where there were animals. The house was small, with a low roof of straw-colored thatch and walls patched in places with fresh clay. Smoke trailed from a crooked chimney, carrying the smell of burning wood and something savory underneath it. The barn sat a short distance away, weathered and sagging, with hay poking through gaps in the boards.

There was a coop of sorts as well. Chickens scratched at the dirt near the fence, clucking as if I had interrupted important business. A rooster stood on a stump nearby, bright-eyed and staring as if he meant to challenge me. It was a farm. Quaint, I'd guess. I had never been to a proper farm before so I had no frame of reference.

"Oy!" someone called out.

"You there. What are ya' doin'?" A man, elderly, with shriveled skin, a limp, and a kink in his back, sauntered over to me in a hurry. He came from near the barn, wiping his hands on a rag far beyond its years. His boots were caked in mud. A straw hat shaded most of his wrinkled face, but I could still see the sharpness in his eyes.

"Oh, thank God," I said.

"God?" he replied.

"Which God are ye' thankin', boy?"

"I uh… well, anyway—I'm lost and I uh… Where am I?" The old man stared at me curiously.

"You knocked yourself on the head, lad? What are ye' talkin' about? This here be Bramblewick, and my name is Ebbin. Ebbin Thatcher. This here is my land. I know it aint much, but you can't just be gallivanting about it as you please. Others, not so kind, would be much less hospitable than I." I took the old man's warning to heart.

"Thank you for your hospitality… and sorry for intruding. But I don't know where this is. My name is Rook, and the last thing I remember is a truck hitting me—""Truck?" the old man replied.

"And what exactly is that? I swear I can never keep up with you young folks' turns-of-phrases." The man didn't know what a truck was? That didn't bode well for me. No farmer in this day and age would not know what a truck was… unless we weren't in this day and age.

"What year is it?" I asked.

"It's Wiseday, the 3rd of Mindflare."

"Wiseday?" I asked.

"Mindflare?" Just then, my stomach growled loudly. The old man sighed.

"Come on lad, I can see you're having a rough time. Lucky for you, Madam Moolisa there has taken a shine to you, so I think I can trust that you won't rob me blind. Still, if you do, just know I've a few levels in Swordsmanship… although granted, it's been a few years." I was too hungry to question it, and I let the old man lead me inside his small home. Madam Moolisa mooed loudly as we left her outside, her voice carrying through the yard with deep betrayal.

The door shut behind us, muffling the chickens and the steady clinking of her bell. Inside, the home was warm and dim. Sunlight slipped through a small window and fell across the floor in a dusty square. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the rafters. A few clay jars lined a shelf beside chipped bowls and folded cloth. The walls smelled faintly of old wood and sweat. He propped me in a seat at a small table for two. The chair creaked under me.

A pot simmered over the hearth, bubbling quietly, and the smell rising from it made my stomach twist with need. Root vegetables. Broth. Maybe onion. Maybe meat. Probably meat. I couldn't tell, and at that moment, I didn't care… That was odd for me. He placed a bowl in front of me and bade me to eat. He handed me a wooden-carved spoon and sat himself.

"So, lad," he asked.

"Do you have a class or are you still an aspirant?"