2 Transmigration shouldn’t be that bad

You know, in those stories where people were being transmigrated to another world, they usually found themselves in a different condition than how they were in their original world. I had read stories about people experiencing rebirth or transmigrated inside the body of someone powerful, or rich, or both.

Or even if that wasn't the case, they were usually armed with future knowledge, so they could eventually become powerful and rich all the same.

This was the part where I asked 'why couldn't that be me?' during the first hour of waking up in this world.

No, I guessed this body used to be powerful. If I got transmigrated maybe last year—or at least three months before—I wouldn't lament this much.

But the first thing I notice when I opened my eyes here was that...nothing really changed. My body was still filled with pain, I still lay on a hospital bed, still surrounded by the smell of medicine. It was all so familiar that I thought the healer and soldiers who came to me after I woke up were cosplaying or something. Like, perhaps the hospital had some kind of event?

But then I remembered I died, so that wasn't possible.

That was when the memory of this body came crashing down on me and I had to double down in a bout of piercing headache—as if my whole body wasn't in enough pain as it was. Panting on the bed, again, I tried to pick some relevant information from the flood of memories.

The name was Valmeier. No last name, since he was an orphan and raised by a commoner priest. But for someone with a plain background, his name came from a lost, archaic language of the forest. [Valme] and [Aier] which could be translated to 'hopeful sprout'.

Damn man, if you have such a positive name, shouldn't you have a positive life or something?

Instead, this body had been stranded since baby, and ended up in a secluded monastery, where he grew up to become a combat priest. He got sent to the frontier as that monastery's priest—his foster father—replacement. By coincidence, he came to report to the Head Church at the same time as the Spear of Judgment wielder's selection; a ploy to make the Princess a Saintess, by having a hidden mage secretly made the spear fly towards the Princess, as if she was the chosen one.

Instead, it flew to the bypassing Valmeier.

Shouldn't he become the Saint then? The answer, obviously enough, was no. He did not become a Saint, or the Hero's companion. He became the palace's annoyance instead. He was sent to the frontier, wherever the battle was the hardest. Probably so he would die and then the Spear would be freed from him. He was the one who cleared the battlefield, weakening the demon general so the Hero's party had an easier time subjugating the demon's army, making them look grandiose.

Just your usual salaryman with the boss's incompetent son as your manager.

And then, at the last battle, he sacrificed himself to protect the soldiers. Just like what a hero was supposed to do, even though he wasn't the hero. Was it because he was a priest? Was he taught to always put others before himself?

I wouldn't know, I never had a life adequate enough to be sacrificed. I didn't think my organs even qualified to be donored.

So now this body was breaking down, with a burnt mana circuit and damaged mana cores. All the mana gate was clogged up and the body couldn't generate any mana flow. Couldn't even manage a self-regeneration. Everything was burnt from the inside, with a piercing feeling as if millions of tiny needles were inserted inside my organs. Sometimes, when I moved my body the wrong way, a sharp pain would shoot in my chest, like it was getting stabbed.

The real Valmeier was probably supposed to be dead during this event, and I came as a replacement to gobble on his pain. Why? Because I had been used to feeling pain all my life.

Fine, I could live with it. Even with the pain, it seemed like this body could still move at least, not confined to a hospital bed.

Or so I thought, before I stumbled upon another set of his memory. That memory informed me that Valmeier was a half-druid. And another piece of information told me that druid was a magic creature—meaning they couldn't live without constant mana flowing through their vein. Just as humans couldn't live without oxygen in their blood.

Ah, shit. So I would die too, here? Were you telling me I died and was planted into a similarly dying body?

"Ha!" I scoffed, and it turned into laughter. I just burst out laughing like I just found the most ridiculous joke ever. I laughed so much that my body shook and I ended up in a coughing fit.

The healer and soldiers there, that had been watching me blank out while sorting out Valmeier's memory, moved to help me. One of them seemed to have gone out to call for someone earlier, because someone else entered the room. The man used noticeably better armor, and the memory recognized him as one of the frontier's cavalry captains.

It was from him that I knew how the kingdom saw my—I mean Valmeier's—sacrifice. Which was nothing. Somehow they made it that it was his...my—damnit—fault that I wasn't able to protect the rest of the soldiers.

Hilarious. I laughed again, and coughed again.

They looked at me with a gaze I had already been familiar with in my previous life. Pity. He's too young. What a shame. Something like that.

Well, I was used to that already, so it didn't affect me much.

But I did want to survive.

I mean...wasn't this ridiculous? I just died, after spending most of my life in bed. What was the point of getting transmigrated into another body just to die again?

Was this condition of mine really that hopeless? Wouldn't there be something able to heal me? Some miraculous cure-all potion or something—

"That scummy Mage! How could the Hero's companion do something like that?" the Captain grit his teeth, complaining in an agitated but low voice. Yes, yes, it wouldn't do anyone any good to insult the hero's companion openly.

Hmm...but this hero thing...there was something familiar about this troupe.

Troupe?

Now that we were in the middle of 'being transmigrated to another world' situation, this Hero and their companions leading a war against the demon lord's army was...pretty common in fantasy settings, wasn't it?

It reminded me of that girl who used to share a ward with me. She said she wrote a novel, and would scribble and type in his notebook a lot. No, I did not read the novel, but she showed me her draft, and would talk to me about her settings and ideas and prompts that she hadn't managed to write yet.

It was about two years before I died, so I couldn't remember about the detail much, but I was thinking that it had a similar setting. A teenage hero being summoned to another world, asked to subjugate the Demon King. It was a typical sword-and-magic story done through adventure and choked full with a theme of love and friendship and whatnot. I remember feeling that it was quite generic.

Except for the twist in the epilogue.

After successfully killing the first Demon Lord and having a victory banquet, he would overhear the truth behind the subjugation. No, the Demon Lord wasn't really invading them because he wanted to conquer humans, but because the kingdom secretly attacked his region first. It was the human kingdom that wanted to invade the demon's territory. And thus the first volume was completed.

The girl had proceeded to tell me about what she planned to write in the second volume, about the growth of the manipulated hero. After discovering the kingdom's dubious intention, the young and naive hero would secretly investigate the kingdom's intention and finding out the bad deed his companions did one by one, including the fact that the Princess wasn't really a Saintess, and that there was someone who'd been tasked with helping them from the shadow. But that person, unfortunately, died from mana burn out before the hero could find him...

Wait.

Wait a freaking minute.

This was...eerily familiar. Right, what was the kingdom's name again? Lenaar? And what was the hero's name? From Valmeier's memory, it was Eugine...

Ah, fuck.

Right...this was that, right? Getting transmigrated inside a novel...that troupe right?

Well, fuck. Could the one who sent me here do it earlier? Couldn't you just reincarnate me from the moment of my birth? Or before Val came to the Capital at the wrong—or right?—time? Or before the final battle at least, so I have time to prepare for protection, and didn't have to burn my freaking mana circuit?

Why should I get transmigrated right at the epilogue?

"I'm so screwed..." I sighed loudly, and the Captain looked at me with an even pitying gaze. But whatever the Captain thought about, that wasn't what I was commented on.

I was screwed because there was no more volume after the first one.

Yeah, if at least the girl managed to write the second volume, then maybe I wouldn't feel so lost. Unfortunately, she passed away on the operation table, even before me, so there was no hope there. All I had were her ideas and setting, random pieces she told me.

I knew now, that the hero would eventually find out the truth about this scummy kingdom, and tried to search my whereabouts. But since the author said I was long gone before then, it would mean he only managed to find out months or even years later.

Telling him the truth by myself was another option, but I had no way of contacting him with that Princess having an iron grip on the boy. I remembered the author telling me that she wanted to make it as heartbreaking as possible, since the boy had fallen in love with the Princess. The gentle hero would even try to convince himself that the Princess was a victim too, being forced to do it by his father and everything. The author had wanted to make every discovery about his companions hurting the boy more and more so that he would grow mature and have a new resolve that befitting the Hero's stature. And then he would go around training himself for real and finding new, truer companions while being a fugitive of the kingdom, learning about the dead priest on his journey.

That dead priest being me.

No, I wouldn't be able to convince him now, when he was still very much in love and very much trusting his companions. And I had no time to wait until he discovered it on his own.

So yeah, I was screwed.

But was there really nothing I could do but wait for my death? Was there nothing within that setting and prompt that I could use...

No. Wait. There was.

She had told me that the hero would meet a great sorcerer to find out about the way he could return to Earth. But the sorcerer got inflicted with a curse that freeze their mana circuit. To gain the sorcerer's help, the hero embarked on a journey to gain a cure, and after that, the sorcerer also become one of the hero's companions.

That cure...could be used to heal me.

My eyes widened, and my body heated up in delight once I dug into this prompt. But then, my enthusiasm died down when I remembered who exactly had that cure, and why was it only the hero that could manage to get it.

That cure, something called Amrita, was in the hand of an individual named Matsa-Ra-Natha.

The Demon Lord of Greed.

And right now, I was sitting in front of him.