Curse the Mainframe! 374 Rejecting Reality?

The next day, Alec made his way into the warehouse that he was keeping 'goods' in.

By all accounts, the goods that he was 'trading' were legitimate. No fault could be seen in Alec's persona and background that would be exposed in the short run.

Everyone else that was part of his merchant caravan had been cleared out, going about carrying their orders on the pretence of a day off from their wealthy boss' kid, Alex Fields.

Alec's merchant caravan was trading goods, and he had smuggled in explosives to supposedly sell to the undercurrents in Yraii City.

Not very smart for a new merchant who was hoping to strike it big, really, but that was exactly what Alec had wanted to portray about the 'old body' he was about to inhabit.

Lucky for Alec, he was an Array Master.

Alec took out a stone and struck it against the wall of the warehouse, and a spark jumped out.

The spark instantly caused an explosion inside the place, and Alec felt the wave of heat and shattered debris flying towards him, with him almost in the middle of the blast.

It meant that he was facing the onslaught of the explosion head-on, and it would have killed a normal person.

Even with how his hearing had been muffled with his own magic, his head still spun, and his eardrums had been ruptured by the blast, leaving him bereft of his hearing.

Alec quickly allowed himself to pass out, but not before he expended all his magic into the air, as if something drastic had happened, causing him to use every bit of it to save his life... or perhaps, the arrival of a new presence.

The last thing he saw before his blurry eyes was a few shadowy figures that had appeared, and he immediately shut his eyes before allowing himself to pass out.

Being in a state like this that was so vulnerable was distinctly unsettling, but there was nothing he could do about it now…

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When Alec woke up, he was lying in what appeared to be a hospital room.

There was an IV drip attached to his wrist that was connected to a metal pole.

A man was sitting next to his bedside who was propping his head up with his eyes closed, occasionally slipping forward from time to time as if he was trying to keep awake but had lost the battle.

Alec blinked bleary eyes and noted that they had not healed his ruptured eardrums yet, as he expected.

"Wha…?" Alec murmured, sounding lost and confused. His voice was slurred and his eyes were blank.

He felt the man's sharp eyes on him as he snapped awake, and Alec looked at him with confusion and panic.

Alec saw the man's mouth open and close a few times, but there was no sound.

Alec looked horrified and he raised his hands to his ears, looking panicked. He didn't even care that the IV drip had been ripped out, causing him pain.

"I can't hear – I can't hear!" Alec shouted in panic, struggling off the bed. He fought off the man's hands that tried to keep him down.

While Alec knew that it was not permanent, nor was it actually an impairment since he had ways to get around it, it was distinctly discomforting to have such a major sense taken away from him.

Especially his hearing that he relied on a lot. His hearing that had been Awakened countless number of times, so much so that he could even hear someone's heartbeats and discern their emotions from just hearing alone.

It gave him a sense of crisis that he had not felt for a long time, pushing him. While Alec was acting at this time, the emotions that he projected were only magnified a little bit as he actually allowed them to show.

The man who had been sitting next to his bedside pressed him down, his face concerned.

Alec continued to struggle as the man turned his head and shouted for someone to come in.

After doing that, the man held both of Alec's hands in his, squeezing a little.

The System's breaths were coming out in panicked pants, his eyes shuddering in fear. His pupils were all but tiny pinpricks at this moment.

The man mouthed, 'calm down', but Alec shook his head rapidly, his eyes swirling with confusion.

In the end, Alec felt the man click his tongue rather than hearing it, and he felt a small prick as a needle pierced into his skin.

Within ten seconds, he was back to sleep.

The next time Alec woke up, the man was still seated beside him.

Alec's mind felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton, and there was a hazy sense to reality that he would not have been able to fight off had he not been so used to inducing numerous side-effects in himself.

He raised his hand shakily to his ears, and he heard the man say, "Are you alright?"

Alec's head lolled, slumping on the pillow. "Who… are you?" He struggled to get up, his head supposedly not clearing up at all.

The man chuckled. "You sure are lucky, young man. You should have died in your original world, but you miraculously inhabited this body instead."

"Wha…?

The man seemed to sense that Alec was being genuine in his confusion, and the smile on his face became more genuine.

"You've transmigratred," the man said.

Alec inwardly raised a brow. Did they come off it like that just off the bat? His mind whirled while he kept the confused and dazed expression on his face.

"No, I didn't… Is this some sort of prank?" Alec asked with a sort of desperate tone, like he was trying to escape reality.

"It's true." The man spoke seriously, holding a mirror up to Alec's face. "Look at this. This isn't your face, is it?"

Alec stared at his face in the mirror, and his hands shakily reached up to touch the mirror. "No… it's not…"

The man handed the mirror to him.

Alec somehow regained some sense of strength and hurled the mirror, causing it to shatter into countless reflecting fragments.

The man sighed sadly, looking at him with emotional eyes. "It's a sad reality, but it's one that you have to face eventually. I, too, had the same reactions one upon a time."

Alec shook his head, refusing to look at the man.

What a joke. Was this the pity card? The man here, sent by the company, was definitely brainwashed, but he had also started taking part in its operations to fool other transmigrators as well.

No doubt that this man was going to be his 'mentor' in the upcoming days, giving him a sense of stability and reassurance when Alec felt like he could no longer handle what they were forcing him through.

The man stood up and waited sadly at the door before sighing and slowly closing the door.

Alec's body shook like he was in shock, and a few trails of tears made its way down his face. He buried his face in the pillow like he was hiding them from the world, when all he was really doing was acting out a play.

In the end, this was the script that he had come up with together with Elysia to play out for the company.

A lost, confused young man who refused to accept reality. He was gentle, but after repeated brainwashing, grew colder and colder until he was only a machine.

He had already predicted that there would be someone by his side when he woke up, and that they probably wouldn't heal all the injuries before he woke up to foster a sense of trust between him and the company.

It was a trick used by them to start roping the lost transmigrator in.

As Alec buried his face in the pillow, a cold smile grew on his face.

Chapter end

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