After sitting up from a suspicious black metal box, Wayne was in a state of severe bewilderment. In fact, even the act of "sitting up" had been something he'd done unconsciously.
An unprecedented wave of chaos and vertigo was assaulting his brain. His ears were filled with a deafening buzz, every inch of his body was bombarding him with frantic, indistinguishable sensations, everything before his eyes had at least four afterimages, and two of those afterimages were in black and white. Yet amid all this chaos, his ability to think hadn't completely given out.
Perhaps he should thank whoever it was that had whacked him on the back of his hand with a stick, in that instant when the chaos had nearly swallowed him whole, the blow had gifted him a precious moment of clarity.
But that whack had really hurt...
As his thoughts gradually returned to order, Wayne finally recalled what had happened before, the sudden interruption of his field of vision, the activation of some kind of escape protocol, the sensation of endlessly falling, and now... this very real, sensate, movable body.
A body!
He had a body!
After transmigrating for god-knows-how-many tens of thousands of years, after nearly convincing himself that he'd been born as a third-person overhead camera angle, Wayne had obtained a body!
The mental chaos was understandable. The flood of confused sensations from every part of his body was equally understandable. It had been far, far too many years since he'd had any perception beyond sight. Even though his sanity had remained intact for reasons unknown, it was incredibly difficult for him to adjust to a state where he could feel heat, cold, pain, and itchiness.
But Wayne could feel himself adapting to this body at remarkable speed, adjusting to the myriad sensations of returning to the physical world. Once the vertigo in his head subsided slightly, his cursed quadruple-afterimage vision finally returned to normal, and the scene around him came into focus.
The first thing he saw was the four armed, burly men not far ahead. One was a middle-aged man with graying hair, clad in armor that looked impressively sturdy, muscles practically bulging up to his forehead, wielding a silver-gray longsword. The other three wore noticeably simpler armor and weapons, though the uniform design was evident.
A petite girl was being held at swordpoint by these four hulking men, forced into a half-kneel. Her hair and the angle obscured her face, but a pointed ear-tip could be seen poking through her locks.
Farther away stood a woman in a red gown. Her elegant, mature beauty and shapely figure made Wayne steal a second glance, and he quickly noticed the poorly concealed tension and fear in this refined lady's eyes.
But a commotion nearby soon caught his attention. He turned his head just in time to see a girl who looked no older than sixteen or seventeen scrambling down from the stone platform he was sitting on, clutching a metal rod that looked like it would really hurt to be hit with...
Considering where the girl had been standing moments ago, Wayne's expression turned a little odd. "Just now... that was you who hit me, wasn't it?"
The moment the words left his mouth, he was the first one startled. he realized that what he'd blurted out wasn't Mandarin, but a language he'd never heard before, yet this unfamiliar tongue felt as natural as if he'd been born speaking it.
Rebecca, however, had no idea how many chaotic thoughts were swirling through her "ancestor's" head. This young noblewoman who had only just inherited a viscountcy before being struck by catastrophe was on the verge of tears. "Great Ancestor... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry...!"
"I..." Wayne still had absolutely no idea what was going on. Although he'd been hanging in the sky watching this world for countless years, this was his first time in a first-person perspective. His confusion was no less than anyone else's in the room. "You all are...?"
The beautiful noblewoman in the red gown appeared to be the calmest person present. After Wayne sat up and initiated conversation, the fear and tension on her face had visibly eased. She now took a step forward, still clearly on guard, but speaking with composure. "Do you know who you are?"
"Me?" Wayne paused, but just before he instinctively said his own name, a jolt of awareness hit him. he should have a different identity now.
He looked down at the box beneath him. The style was a bit strange, but this thing was undeniably a coffin. Then he looked at the surroundings, spacious, bigger than his apartment from his previous life, but unmistakably a burial chamber no matter how you looked at it...
Factoring in the expressions on everyone's faces, Wayne realized something.
He had risen from the dead.
If he said any name that didn't match the "corpse" he was inhabiting, he'd immediately be put down as some demonic abomination.
What had that girl next to him said? Great Ancestor, right?
So he could safely guess that he'd possessed the body of their ancestor. Setting aside the question of what their old ancestor had eaten growing up to keep his body from decomposing after all these years, the important thing was that, as an outside soul, he'd not only taken over their ancestor's body and slept in their ancestor's grave, but had also kicked their ancestor's coffin lid clean off... If this got exposed, "awkward" wouldn't even begin to describe it...
With that in mind, Wayne lowered his head as if deep in thought, but was actually scrambling for an excuse, something about a long slumber causing memory confusion, perhaps. But the instant he focused his attention, a powerful wave of vertigo struck him.
He had just barely adapted to his new body and shaken off the first bout of dizziness, and now a second wave crashed over him. He swayed and nearly toppled back into the coffin. The noblewoman in the gown tensed the moment she saw his strange behavior, raising her staff, she was about to plant a perfectly composed, full-powered fireball right in her ancestor's face. But the deep voice that came from Wayne's mouth interrupted her.
"Gwayne Seawright. I am Gwayne Seawright, pioneer of the Kingdom of Andraste... What year is it now?"
As he spoke, he raised his head slightly. His gaze was calm and unfathomable, deep as the sea.
Inside his head, however, waves were crashing violently.
Memories belonging to Gwayne Seawright were flooding out in a torrent, but they were being rapidly filed and cataloged as if they were data on a computer hard drive. During that brief spell of vertigo, he had accessed the most surface-level portions of this data and learned the identity he was supposed to have.
His greatest surprise was this body's name, it was similar to his own name, Wayne.
Except this "Gwayne" had an extra alphabet before his name.
He also had a different family name.
Seawright.
Was this some kind of coincidence?
Wayne had absolutely no room at the moment to ponder how remarkable this coincidence was, because the memories of Gwayne Seawright were still pouring in. He had to exert every ounce of willpower to keep himself from passing out or letting a grimace twist his features. In this hazy state, he faintly heard the girl beside him, the one who'd whacked him with an iron staff, answer in a bright, clear voice.
"It's now the year 735 of the Andraste Calendar! Great Ancestor, you've been asleep for over seven hundred years..."
Hestia also breathed a great sigh of relief upon hearing Wayne's answer. As a spellcaster with an extraordinarily rich foundation of theoretical knowledge, she knew a thing or two about undead resurrection. Those profane creatures had a fatal flaw in their souls, almost none of them could speak or think when first awakened. Even those among them powerful enough to quickly regain the ability to think would completely forget everything from their living days.
Moreover, they absolutely could not speak their own names. Whether they recovered their memories on their own or were reminded by others, the moment an undead uttered the name they bore in life, it would trigger a backlash from the soul-fire, a searing, burning agony. Even if it didn't "kill" them, the pain was unbearable even for the undead.
And the phenomenon of soul-fire backlash was absolutely impossible to hide.
So she relaxed, though she remained deeply puzzled. Because if the ancestor before her hadn't been raised as an undead, then what was happening was even harder to explain.
How did you just... up and rise from the dead, Great Ancestor?
But regardless of her confusion, proper courtesy was still essential. So Hestia stepped forward, bowing with both tension and reverence.
"Oh ancestor of House Seawright, I am your descendant, Hestia Seawright. Beside me is likewise your descendant, Rebecca Seawright. Please, in consideration of her youth and ignorance, do not hold her earlier reckless act against her. And... please forgive us for disturbing your eternal rest."
Right, so the one in front of me is my great-great-great-great-granddaughter, and the one next to her seems to be the same.
The frenzied flood of memories seemed to have finally ended. Wayne didn't have time to carefully review all the data neatly arranged in his mind, he wanted to understand the situation around him as quickly as possible. He braced himself against his coffin, trying to stand, and muttered.
"It's fine, it's fine. I don't even know how I woke up. Could someone give me a hand?"
He discovered he'd overestimated how well he'd adapted to his new body. He strained but couldn't quite manage to stand, which was a touch embarrassing.
Rebecca, who had been standing nearby clutching her staff and watching nervously the whole time, realized it was finally her moment to shine. She hopped right up onto the stone platform and began helping Wayne out by the arm.
"Let me help you out of the coffin, let me help you out of the coffin..."
No matter how you heard it, the phrasing was uncomfortable.
"Over seven hundred years, huh..." Wayne's entire body was stiff as the girl helped him out of the coffin. He looked down at the clothes he was wearing, and what he marveled at left Rebecca thoroughly baffled. "What's this fabric made of?"
"I think it's Moon-Rune Cloth, woven by elves..." Rebecca said uncertainly.
"Sheesh... Now that's some black-tech wizardry."
Rebecca: "...Huh?"
The ancestor speaks in such profound riddles.jpg
With Rebecca's support, Wayne finally made it down from the stone platform and stood firmly on the ground. He could feel his control over this body improving at breakneck speed, as if his soul were rapidly installing drivers. His consciousness and body were synchronizing at an astonishing rate.
He let go of Rebecca's hand and tried taking a small step forward on his own.
In the next moment, he nearly burst into tears. If there'd been a microphone nearby, he felt he could have given a lengthy acceptance speech thanking every single person he'd ever known and every television station without repeating himself once.
After all these years, time enough for any fantasy novel's transmigrator to have slain gods and unified the universe, he had only just completed the first achievement challenge of being human.
Walking upright...
And it was only after unlocking the "walking upright" achievement that he remembered the little girl he'd nearly forgotten, the one still surrounded by four hulking men.