CHAPTER 0

"How are you feeling? Is there any discomfort?"

Regis looked past the holographic screen, past the tube filled with the thick translucent fluid. A face that was completely unfamiliar to him looked back at him with a minimally interested look.

Regis slowly shook his head while maintaining eye contact with the woman standing outside the tube who was taking some readings on a tab connected to his tube.

"Alright, the inspection will end in a few minutes, you can rest after that. Since the surgery is completed and you have recovered completely, you should be able to start the training from tomorrow." The woman pushed her glasses in an attempt to hide the dark circles under her eye, but it was too prominent to be hidden under the thin frame of the glasses.

Regis nodded, indicating that he understood what the woman was saying and proceeded to close his heavy eyelids.

'Just what the f*ck is happening.' Regis screamed to himself.

'We did perform the transmigration ceremony, but there should be no way that those ridiculous dance moves in the abandoned house caused me to transmigrate.'

Alan, his friend had suggested that all of them perform this ceremony just for fun. At first, Regis had thought that this was just a ridiculous idea that was presented just for the sake of it, but contrary to his belief, Alan was serious. Regis also wanted to have some fun memory before moving apart for some years, so he accepted.

'And this is where the ceremony got me …..'

Regis looked around. He was is some kind of advanced lab facility and was surrounded with many other tubes, some which seemed to contain other humans as well. Some kind of robotic arm was scanning all the tubes from outside, and whenever the light from the robotic arm fell on his body, Regis could feel a slight itch in that part of his body.

'Is this some kind of X-ray scanner?' Regis looked at the arm while fascinated with the advanced looking machinery.

He wanted to look around more, but an intense wave of fatigue took over him and his eyes closed by themselves.

'I wonder what happened to Alan and Nick.'

....

"Oh! Seems like the mystic element has fused properly. We can get him out of the pod now." Regis slightly opened his eyes when he heard the strange woman's voice once again. The layer of blue covering his vision slowly receded as the fluid medium was drained out of the pod.

A section of the pod shaped like a door lifted upwards and Regis took his first step outside it.

Thud!

"Whoa! Easy there. You have been inside the incubator for three months. What did you expect would be the result if you suddenly leapt out like this?" The same woman with sparsely hidden dark circles said while looking at Regis with a slight smile.

Another person dressed like a lab attendant brought a rollator towards Regis.

"Thankyou!" Regis took the rollator and supported himself up. The same person also handed him a bottle of water to hydrate himself.

"Now that you have fused with the mystic element, you should be able to rehabilitate in a few hours at most." The woman who seemed to be the superior of the two said nonchalantly.

"Kleesar, show him to the training building and collect his IDs from the warden's office."

The man named Kleesar nodded and started walking outside at a pace that Regis could follow comfortably. The two silently walked across the corridors and soon arrived in front of a door with a nameplate reading 'Warden: Major Arbrit Klesen'. The lab attendant gestured towards the door and began walking away.

Regis looked at the door in deep contemplation.

'This sign here reads major, so I must be in a military or related facility, but is it ok for me to enter a military officer's who might as well be a superior office with a rollator? What did that woman say about rehabilitation again?'

Regis tried to move his legs a little without the support of the rollator, but was barely able to keep his balance. After some more attempts, he was able to walk while barely maintaining his balance.

'This should do.'

"Come in." As if on cue, as soon as Regis was able to keep his balance, the voice from inside reached him. Regis entered the office and found a pair of deep blue eyes looking in his general direction.

"Regis Kleeve. Do you feel any discomfort due to the fusion of the mystical element in your body?" Major Klesen asked with a friendly smile.

"No sir!" Regis replied without hesitation.

"Good then .." Suddenly, after the affirmation, the major's demeanor changed completely. Even if he didn't move in the slightest, he was emitting a formless pressure.

"Since that is the case, you are to start attending the training starting tomorrow. These are your room keys and the two sets of trainee uniform that you will be wearing during your training days. Your personal watch has been updated with everything you will require during the training period. Lastly, I hope that you give your best during the training and graduate quickly to be of service to humanity."

Regis picked up the three things lying on a nearby table and saw himself out of the office.

'How do I find my room?' Regis looked at the key in his hand and pressed a button on it.' A screen popped up from the key which had the detailed 3D map of the building with each room marked with a person's name on it. Regis quickly found his name and navigated to the said room.

Pushing the door open, Regis could see a decently sized room with a bed, a table and a strange looking rod placed on it. Walking to the rod, Regis found a button on top of the rod. Just like the key, another holographic screen appeared before Regis after pressing the button.

'So, is this the computer of this world? How does it work without a keyboard?' Regis looked at the holographic screen hovering before him and tried to poke his finger at it. His finger was met with a slight resistance and the holographic screen changed immediately.

'HoloPC and how to operate it'

'Alliance web network.anm'

Regis was amazed by new screen. The search result was exactly what he was thinking. He touched his finger at the first search result and a new tab opened before him. As he read through the content on the tab and other search results, Regis grew increasingly fascinated and shocked by the technology that was being used in the contemporary era. After surfing the alliance web network for half an hour, Regis gained a minimal understanding of the world he was in.

Humans had long passed the age where sending satellites in space was a major achievement, instead, now humans were the rulers of nearly one fifth of the milky way galaxy with an alliance of four earthly civilizations controlling more than a hundreds of habitable planet colonies and thousands of resource star systems.

"F*ck!" Regis cursed out aloud. He was shocked by the scale of human civilizations in this world, but he also grew confused. Was he in a completely different world or did he just jump thousands of years in the future. He tried to search about the era when humans were just starting to enter the space and he did find some data that matched his general knowledge, but there were also a large number of facts that were different from what he remembered, like first humans stepping in the space nearly a hundred years before what was known to him….

Regis took a deep breath to calm himself. Right now, it was not the history that mattered.

'I need to find a way to hide the fact that I am not true soul of this body.' Regis was very anxious and perplexed. Those novels that he read made it look easy to adapt to transmigration, but he felt far from it. He felt uncomfortable with the air that he inhaled, he felt uncomfortable with the body he was in, he felt uncomfortable with moving….

The watch in his hand made a slight beeping noise, breaking him out of the streak of depressing thoughts. With an affirmative thought, a screen appeared before Regis.

Regis looked at the strange symbols that he could somehow read. He knew what exactly the message was. He had to report to a certain spacious hall early next day.

'They expect someone who can't even stan… ha!'

Regis looked at himself who was now standing properly without any support.

'I remember seeing that weird screen that looked like a game interface in the lab..'

The holographic screen of his watched changed once again.