[Planet-Alternate Earth 2302. Human Territory.]
"AHHHH! What the..." Ryo, who was watching a fist approach his face a moment ago, looked around, visibly confused.
He was on a medium-sized bed, pretty comfortable, but the room looked different from his familiar surroundings in his own room.
Plain white walls, spacious in size, simple yet functional furniture, and some weighted barbells in the corner of the room.
"Ooh, I get it. I'm lucid dreaming," Ryo laughed to himself, shaking his head in sudden realization. He had never experienced a lucid dream before, but he had heard it was some sort of state of consciousness.
He hopped out of his bed, but he felt strange, as if he was standing on nothing. He looked down, and his eyes widened—his feet were floating above the tiled floor.
At this point, Ryo was getting freaked out, but he laughed it off and glanced back at the bed he woke up on. His eyes widened even further.
"WTF?" On his bed was some guy sleeping. Ryo walked to the bed and looked at the guy for a moment. He looked like him, kind of, but he wasn't going to let this slide.
He punched at the boy's face, only for his fist to phase through. His jaw slackened. This can't be, he thought, then jolted as another realization came upon him—was he actually dead?
Ryo shivered at the thought but did remember everything going blank.
He paused for a moment before looking toward the exit of the room and ran at it, phasing through to the other side.
As he looked at each direction of the corridor, he saw many dorms, with numbers on each one.
He took a few steps down the corridor. It was silent; nobody seemed to be awake yet. The only sound that was heard was a clock ticking.
At his 20th step, he felt his body freeze for a moment, then, as if he were being tugged, he felt himself gravitating quickly all the way back to the sleeping boy in the dorm.
Back in the stranger's room once again, he glanced back at the boy. "Can I not go too far from him? Well, this is gonna be a headache..."
He gasped as an even stronger pull was felt suddenly, and he was moving in a blur—not even able to see what was around him, like he was supposed to be wearing glasses but couldn't seem to find them.
It felt like a long moment until his body finally stopped. His soul paused. He glanced around quickly at where he was before he spotted a young man on a hospital bed. The sun shone through the small gaps in the blinds.
Ryo moved closer to the boy in the bed. This one seemed older than the other one he saw earlier. Blood-red hair to his shoulders, taller.
The door to the room opened. Ryo held his breath before berating himself and floating backward to see what was happening.
Five people walked in. One was a doctor with a white jacket... a staff in his hands. A woman and a man seemed to be a pair, pretty regular-looking folks. The final two were men with swords at their waists and an eerie cold look on their faces.
The doctor moved the curtain away from the red-haired boy's bed.
"How is he?" The man who came with the woman asked, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke. He subtly glanced at the two men with swords before looking back at the doctor.
"Well, his state is completely the same as when he arrived here when he was ten years old. In a coma, but unlike everyone else who has a sage core, he still doesn't, unfortunately," the doctor spoke calmly, moving his staff to the boy's head, where a green light shone before disappearing.
Ryo, who was standing right beside them with a grin, was now watching with wide eyes as he looked between the swords at the waist of the two men. His pupils dilated at the bright light that erupted from the staff. "Sage core? It can't be, right? Please, please, please say it's not..."
The woman beside the man shivered. "Will he ever wake up again? Will my Roan be able to come back to us?" The woman began to sob subtly, her body trembling with grief. The man beside her patted her shoulder to comfort her.
The two armed men, who had stood still a moment ago, nodded to each other and both stood beside the boy's bed, one on each side.
The doctor sighed, but his face was calm—one that had experienced the cries of parents many times before. "We don't know, but he is a possible threat. The last one that existed without a sage core was the perfect spawn point for an Abyss gate. Humans without a sage core are souls without any protection against beings from other dimensions."
As the parents were looking resigned about their son, Ryo was jumping on the spot beside them, invisible to them, but indeed jumping with his hands in his nonexistent hair, his mouth agape, screaming, "Why is his name Roan?!"
Ryo was a bit on the dumb side, but it was obvious to him. This was not Earth; he was not a soul stuck between heaven and hell. He was on a whole different planet altogether... a planet that strongly resembled his own novel that he spent writing just for money to survive in the urban tax fest.
Who was Roan? Well, let's just say, when he wakes up in two years from now, he is not Roan but something else in Roan's skin.
Ryo trembled slightly at the thought, especially since this fucked-up place was one where even the main cast weren't guaranteed to survive and the two overpowered protagonists could never catch a break.
The voices around him stopped, but Ryo couldn't care. He was too busy panicking.
But then he paused, a smirk on his face before he laughed out loud, his hands on his stomach.
"Hahaha! I'm a soul. I don't need to care about dying. I've already kicked the bucket. I can watch all these people struggle like it's a movie."
But to his most abundant horror...
He felt another familiar tug on his body, cutting off his laughter.
"SON OF A..."