210 While I work on the next chapter.....

...try this sample chapter!

Sorry, I know. I fell asleep this afternoon and you know how it is with afternoon naps. You think you'll wake up in an hour and then the next time you wake, the dinosaurs are rediscovering Christianity.

What do?

Am working on the usual chapter right now. So in the meantime, try this one.

Tell me what you think!

______________________

I died.

How do I know that? Because until minutes ago, I was much larger man in his twenties.

And I wasn't floating in what I can only assume is an incubation tank.

Not, what I assume is a nordic twink, if my surroundings are anything to go by.

How did I die you ask?

Well, how do people die?

Lots of ways honestly.

There's always the old reliable. Suicide.

And the ever present isekai predator, Truck-kun. And his western counterpart, Mr. Plane.

He did quite the number on the twin towers a long while back.

And his role in Final Destination was a moving masterpiece.

Even I shed a manly tear when he blew up mid air.

And of course, there are other ways to die too. The more mundane ones.

Cancer, fever, blunt trauma, bad falls, heart attacks, organ failure, stabbings, psycho girlfriends, axe murderers.

Even dying of an anuerysm while trying ease out your constipation.

Not that I died like that.

Dying on your toilet, from trying to poop too hard.

Who would even die like that?

Certainly not me. No siree.

I died a very normal, totally inconspicuous death.

And did I mention my surroundings, because they are five star worthy.

A warm room, all the neon yellow piss water one could ever want, and an oxygen tube generously bukkake-ed into my body to keep me alive.

Couldn't asked for better accomodations in the afterlife.

If this even was an afterlife.

I suspect not!

Why?

Because this looks suspiciously like a laboratory for cloning experiments.

Lines upon lines of incubation tanks with similar variation of a light haired, brown eyed, girls and boys, in various stages of development, ranging from fetuses to teenagers.

Going by my size and eye line, I'd say I fall solidly into the latter part of that range.

Thank goodness. Being a child would suck!

I went through childhood once and I hated every single part of it.

The overbearing authority figures, no freeedom or money, and all that dumb kid brain crap. Not to mention, a child's body, weak and frail.

Not that being a teenager is much better.

But at least I can spank the dragon, choke the chicken, make that one eyed snake cry white tears. If you know what I mean. And that's another thing I'm very thankful for, to whoever put me in this body.

It's a guy. I'm a guy.

Whew!

Imagine being reborn and you become a girl?

Sucks to suck!

I mean sure, you won't have to work a day in your life and life will be easier and boys will simp over you and you will be loved unconditionally and you can make tons of money with feet pics ....well okay maybe I'm not making such a good case against it.

But at least I won't have periods. So that's great!

Unless in this world guys have periods?

A shiver ran down my spine and I thought out a silent prayer for that to not be true.

Vishnu, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Great Fucking Tengri. Anyone up above listening.

I have never asked you for- okay maybe I have asked for a lot of things but that never stopped you from ignoring me so let me just ask for one more thing.

Please don't let this be a world of male periods or worse, penis birth!

Please please please!

Anything but penis birth!

I prayed furiously to not much impact.

Not that I expected any.

Never had the best results relying on fate and chance and gods.

You can only truly rely on yourself.

That's the cardinal truth.

With that in mind, I peered further across the room, looking for details.

On the floor there was some sort of a ridged carving. Like circuitry or tiny rails. In a pattern I had seen before.

In an anime I watched once. And the looks of the lab, the test subjects, clones.....

I have a bad feeling about this.

Why? Because I think I recognise this layout.

It looks eerily similar to one anime I saw back in my previous life.

And that magic circle flickering on the wall all but confirms it. That's for a layered bounded field.

Wait, how do I know what a bounded field spell circle looks like?

I shook my head.

No time for this.

Let's go over what I do know.

Looks like I am in the world of Fate Apocrypha.

At least I'm in one of the Fate worlds, if not in Fate Apocrypha.

A fictional world. One of magic and monsters. Modern fantasy at it's finest, when watched on a screen.

Fine waifus, or husbandos if you lean that way. Awesome powers. Great fight scenes, in the Ufotable series versions at least.

But I'm not so sure I'd want to live in this literal death world.

Why do I call it that?

Well, because it is.

Even ignoring the trigger happy mages of the clock tower, the vampires, rogue mage clans, superpowered serial killers, literal necromancers and a positively homicidal worldwide church organization, there were still the beasts.

The Ultimate Ones. Horrifying eldritch beings tailor made by the wills of the planets, at the request of the Earth's will, Gaia, just to kill humanity, to wipe us out.

And any possible cults they might have. Because I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have their own death cults like the suicidal Jonestown idiots.

To add to that there's the goddamn Grail Wars. The bread and butter of Fate. The franchise's literal cash cow. They milk it so much I'm surprised it hasn't died of sheer fatigue.

All in all, not a great world to be in if you're not a mage. Or if you're a mage. Honestly, clock tower politics probably eat away at more mages than magical accidents led by their own insecurities.

Which is why, it's never good news to be reborn into what I can now only assume is a homunculus.

In Apocrypha, they were used as sex toys, disposable meat shields, and worst of all, living magical batteries, used and disintegrated.

Correction. Painfully disintegrated.

Nope. Not waiting around for that to happen.

There only one option for me now.

Escape.

It's been a while now, first the couple of hours I spent freaking the fuck out over being reborn, stuffing down the dissonance between my new and old identities like I do with all my emotions, even the humor I used to cope with this new and unfamiliar situation and all the while, I haven't seen anyone walk by.

Noting the outside too, this place seems deserted. There's dust piled up on the counter, there's spiderwebs on the walls and....oh boy.

Is this place abandoned? Am I going to die here? Locked in?

Nononononono!

I don't wanna die like this!

My second life has only just begun!

Think me. Think.

How do I get out of here?

How did that homunculus get out of his tank in Apocrypha?

A memory flashed through my mind.

He used a spell. Shatterpoint, I think. Overloaded the tank's glass structure with magical power, distorting it till it broke.

And if I'm a homunculus too....

I place my hands against the glass and felt for my supposed magic.

I felt something tingle in my stomach and visualized the spell.

Let's do this!

I pushed against the glass.

Shatterpoint!

And...

Pffffft!

I farted.

I buried my face in my hands out of shame.

Oh. My. God.

Why?!!

I could die of embarrassment!

What was I thinking!?

Spells? Magic?

Me?

Do good things ever happen to me?

No. Of course not. Why would I get magic and a brand new life of adventure?

Good things don't happen to people like me.

I am a failure!

Failures don't get shit!

Not even a second chance at life.

This isn't some manga or fanfiction!

Fuck!

I kicked the glass, and by Newton's Third Law, slammed myself into the back of the tank.

Ouch!

I rubbed my back, and just like that, an idea struck.

I can break out of here! I just need to hit the glass till it breaks!

Now if only I had some pointed instrument to concentrate the force with....

I looked around, but there was nothing in my tank that I could use.

No emergency hammers or axes.

Because of course there wasn't!

It's a tank. It's meant to be not breachable.

What was I even...

Then my gaze fell upon the one thing I did have in my tank.

The oxygen tube. Chrome plated with hard metal clasps at the ends.

Yup. This is it!

I looked at the other end of the tube and found a screw mechanism with instructions.

It was a simple one. Righty tighty, lefty loosey.

Now usually, I wouldn't attempt stupid shit like this, because the sheer oxygen flood into the tank could end up killing me and I don't know what this liquid is or how it will react to stuff. But, given that this looks like an industrial strength equipment, it's probably engineered with failsafes in case of situations like that. So it's not a bad gamble.

Turning it to the left, I unscrewed the hose from the bottom of the tank, took a deep breath before pinching the end to preserve the oxygen already inside it and jerked at it.

Zing!

It slid of the hose cap, as a stream of oxygen bubbled into the tank before some safety kicked in, automatically shutting the valve.

Just as I expected.

At least my engineering degree came into use somewhere, for once in my fucking life. Or should I say lives now?

Well, it doesn't matter.

Let's get the fuck out of here!

Grabbing the hose cap in one hand and pinching the tube with the other, I turned and dove down, legs up, pushing against the back with my feet as I slammed the hose into the glass bottom.

Nothing.

But I didn't give up.

It will take a couple more tries. But I know I can do it!

Again, I slammed the hose into the glass over and over, as small cracks began to form on the surface, spreading out like a spiderweb, the size of my hand.

But this brought me little joy.

It had taken me four minutes of banging to get here. I only had about another four minutes of air left in the tube. And I hadn't even broken a sliver of the glass off. It was just cracked.

Shit!

At this rate I'll really die here!

With renewed vigour, I went back to task, hitting at the glass even faster and slowly the cracks spread farther, layers of glass chipping off, settling at the bottom of the tank.

But the progress was nowhere fast enough.

I could feel my chest constrict from lack of air, my heart beating fast and hard, squeezing painfully.

I gasped, almost involuntarily.

A mistake. The strange liquid rushed in, filling my lungs, as I began to choke.

My eyes rolled over and I could feel my conciousness slipping away as I tried to cough it out, only for more of the liquid to rush into my lungs.

No.

No!

NO!

I will not die here! Not here! Not here!

This is my second life!

I refuse to waste it like this!

I struggled against the pain, my hand instinctively reaching for the glass as I pounded it one last time, sinking in the fluid, straight the the bottom.

Then..... an image flashed in my mind.

I was swimming.

No. Sinking. Down. Straight down to the bottom of the deep, dark, vast ocean. Something was there. Waiting. Watching. But never moving.

I could see the floor now. Amidst the filtering rays of dim light, just barely.

The sandy, ocean floor, lined with all sorts of crazy scary creatures. Monsters.

Fear ran through me. A deep seated, premonitiry fear, terrible and grave.

Pain. A burning pain.

A desire bubbling up from deep within me.

An electrifying jolt ran across my body, my nerves lighting up as lines appeared on my hands and I could feel a mysterious power coursing through me.

And I uttered a broken mumble.

"Sjhadderboindt."

A crackle, a pop and a crash.

The strange liquid began to drain and I felt the warm embrace of the darkness consume me.