1 Fantasies

Daron was in his room. The air condition was turned to the max setting at 16 degrees Celsius to keep out the insane summer heat even though it was deep into the night. The cool breeze from the machine flowed swiftly within the room, passing the messy bedsheets, the action figures in pristine condition, the book shelf with all sorts of books on seeming random topics and finally arrived at the feet of a man.

This was 59-year-old Daron, who was furiously typing on his high-end Alienware laptop. In all technicality, this was not his own laptop, but one provided temporarily to him by the companies he worked for.

Since a young age, Daron had always been intrigued by magic, mana, and manipulating such forms of energy. He had often though himself to be 'the protagonist' to some sort of plot, and that one day, it would be revealed to the world that he actually had magic powers, or that the world would finally discover the existence of magic, and he would be unnaturally talented at it. Sadly, he lived in the real world, and such fantasies could only remain fantasies.

As time passes, Daron had reached high-school, where he had to actually make decisions that would affect his adult career. Daron never tried very hard for scoring marks, and instead was still somehow stuck in his fantasies most of the time. Yet, he was somehow able to score marks that would always land him within the top 5 of the class.

This was why none of the teachers could stop him from day-dreaming in class, and why not many of the students could make fun of him.

As children progressed in their studies, they would begin to understand the importance of scoring good marks, especially when most of them were within the same or similar financial backgrounds. While being in middle school, many children would make fun of those who could actually get good grades, calling them names like 'nerd', 'four-eyed freak', etc. However, with time, when reaching high-school, those who were athletically excellent had already put their full attention on their future careers, and those lackeys who followed the afore mentioned people were left with only one thing to do, since they were normally mediocre at most things.

'Studying'

They would also understand how the hierarchy of the future would work. Those with good grades would get better jobs and would have a high likelihood of being at a higher position in the adult world that themselves. People tended to keep their distance from such people, not afraid of them, but not wanting to meaninglessly cause conflict.

This was why Daron remained unattached to his studies throughout high-school. However, nearing the end of his second-last year in high school, he had to make a decision. What would he pursue for his future career?

He didn't have much of a friend circle that he could call close. At most, they were a study group that met up every weekend for a few hours to revise the week's portion and exchange notes.

This made it hard for him to ask them, and so he had asked his parents.

Since his grades had always been rather excelling in all aspects, his parents did not bother too much with his studies. Instead, they only had one complain, and that was his clear lack of friends.

"Do whatever your heart tells you Dary baby~" his mother spoke in a soothing voice.

"Do something that a lot of people are doing so you at least know a large number of people in the field, or else do something completely new that not many people are doing from your class. That way, you can make new friends. Don't go for the mediocre aspect."

That felt like much better advice to Daron that it would to most others. Daron did not like being 'mediocre'. That was one of the major reasons for his fantasies of magic, and himself being the protagonist.

After around a week of deep thought, even within his own fantasies, his imaginary characters would all be thinking about different things adding up possibilities together and thinking about what would be the best option for Daron, he came up with an answer.

'Writing'

He was going to be a writer.

Following this path that barely a few people took within his class of 62, Daron entered a university where none of those people had gotten in and began his university life, which somehow went equally as smoothly, if not even smoother than high school, since most universities only accepted students who were serious about working in their chosen field.

Before he learnt how to write, he was first taught how to read and analyse, which Daron quickly caught up with the year syllabus of reading. Naturally, he did not stop fantasising, but used them to increase his reading speed, by imagining multiple people reading the books. What he did not realise since he somehow was given a dorm room with no roommates, all to himself, was that it was not normal for humans to read 3 books at a time, just because it was interesting.

Soon, Daron had already begun to borrow the books for the next years and began to learn how to write.

The reason he wanted to become a writer was simply. All his life, he had fantasised about innumerable situations about magic coming to this world, a whole different magic world, and all sorts of nonsense.

With writing, he should be able to convey those fantasies to others, who had similar thoughts to himself.

In this process, he had learnt that the most suitable option for such writing was light novel writing, rather than writing full paperback novels or other forms of writing.

After graduating, he applied for a few of the best light novel companies within his country. For some reason, although he did all the research on said companies to get him into them, he did not research about the fact that they were in fact the world top 3 light novel companies.

Sending over one of his latest test works, he waited for a few days before he got a response from all three.

"Accepted"

Now this had put him in another dilemma. What should be done with the three of them.

Suddenly, he thought of something that would make his life even easier. He would simply work for all three companies part time. After some negotiation, the three companies agreed, and hired him each for a single novel at first,

This was how his career as a light novel author began. After a few years, here he was. Multiple award-winning pieces, a total of 51 full length light novels of each 300+ chapters.

Although every single one of his novels had their main theme set as magic, it had also become one of his signatures that his fan-base respected. If one was to take another look at everything in Daron's room, they would slowly begin to notice something.

Everything here was branded from many of the most expensive brands. The messily thrown bed sheets were Luis Viton, The AC was the latest model by Panasonic, his pyjamas were Gucci. The list went on, and the total price of everything in his room was beyond what most people would earn in their entire lives.

These were not even bought from his salary, but were all benefits provided to him by the companies he worked for.

He was currently working on a piece about a young man who was faced with the disaster of 'Gates' appearing, through which monsters attacked Earth. Mana also entered the earth, that strengthened certain humans though the process of awakening. These humans came to be known as hunters and began to fight back against the monsters. [1]

After finishing the 10th chapter for the day, Daron finally hit send, to send this to his editors in the company in charge for this novel, before closing the laptops, leading back on his top of the class seat, putting his legs on the table, and going off to sleep.

[1]No copyright intended from SL. This story is not about that, just wanted to further elaborate the fact that Daron's novels were really famous, SL included.

Next chapter