My Life in Another World Is Dreadful

By Alberto Catellani

Having lost everything, having been saved by a friend thought lost to the memories of his past, having no choice but to embark into a foreign land to fight into a crusade that yet is not as it seems, the one known as Hum has but one purpose in this strange new world. To survive, and find peace with his ghosts, with the reality he is surrounded by, and perhaps who knows, even get his revenge while on the way through the Republic of Valvia, who is not a Republic, and whose crusade against heretics might in truth hide a darker secret.
What is honor? What is right, or wrong? Does it even matter when you're but a simple man holding a sword and a shield amidst many others? With powerful Xiuzhe achieving abilities beyond the ken of humans, and Gods snuffing those powers out within sight of their priests, everything is interwoven into yet another series of clashes.
Not just for supremacy or conquest, but for the very right to exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alberto Catellani
• Release date: Mar 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005824198

Alberto Catellani

Alberto Catellani was born on the 9 of March from the country that brought forth the greatest of inventions: the Road. We are talking of Italy, and he was born on a dark and stormy night at 3 in the morning. From a bright and early age, he wanted to write and once he found his grandfather's old typing machine, write he did. What he wrote back then is best left forgotten to the annals of time. Still, he keeps writing on. Known on the Internet as Shadenight123, and outside of it as someone with fifteen years plus of experience as a Dungeon Master capable of actually finishing the campaigns he starts, he has enjoyed a Classical Schooling, moved on to the beer-filled lands of Germany, and is currently attempting a Master level degree with, hopefully, a Ph.D afterwards. And in the meantime, he keeps on writing. Writing brings happiness, to himself and to those who enjoy his books and that, more than anything, is what truly makes him willing to write more and more. If you work at something you enjoy doing, after all, it will be as if you haven't been working at all.

Book preview

Acknowledgments

When all is said and done, and nothing besides remain,

I feel that I must thank those who have always been by my side,

And even though some might have joined only later,

They are still as welcomed and cherished as the oldest amidst you.

No journey ever truly ends, and none ever truly begins,

They merely continue, like twirling scales of an ever-spinning Snake.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Map of Calemil – Year 811-812

Preface

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Map of Calemil – Year 811-812

Preface

The fourth book. The start of a new Trilogy.

History has a fun way of telling us what is real and what is not, and humans insist that everything they do is rational. That is a lie. Even in recent times, Economists have understood that humanity is not rational; we do not care about cost-benefit analysis when we can let our emotions guide our every move.

We do not care about doing good for an increased chance in revenue or doing something important when we can just not do it to begin with depending on what the complex combination of chemicals within our heads tell us.

Humans are not rational.

Yet, they expect rationality from their heroes, from the ink and paper that they read. Why? What is it, I wonder, that makes the modern narrative hero a monster of rationality? Has anybody ever read of the First Punic War? Of Hiero the Second? (Who was probably the first Isekai of modern Earth, considering his name and the way he acted with his own mercenaries).

Or more famously of Hannibal? Elephants, crossing mountains. Only a madman who wouldn’t concern themselves with the feeding and caring of the beasts would ever possibly conceive such a thing.

Or maybe, someone who knew the depths of strength that every living being can dig for when they seek that final push that may spell the difference between life and death.

There is a pattern, however. Humans like to believe in cause and effect and forget that butterflies flapping wings cause the destruction of countries. And sometimes, it is nothing more than a chance, a random, unexpected chance.

Some call it divine design.

I like to call it the triumph of Chaos over rationality. And why not?

Rationality costs a lot of time, and effort, and sometimes it just doesn’t work. The solution to that is quite simple; stop thinking too much. Enjoy life. And Enjoy this book too for what it brings you, and if it makes you grin, or feel happier even if for just a few minutes, or perhaps an hour at most…then it will have served its purpose, and you will have me happy too.

Sometimes, being happy is all about making other people happy.

Enjoy your time. Catch the moment. Carpe Diem would say the Romans. A day to catch carps, would an Italian student say, trusting their guts and emotions rather than their dictionary.

Just know that I cherish you just as you are, without any other reason than because I want to.

Take that, rationality.

Alberto Catellani.

Prologue

It was a dark day.

The Koi fish were dead; flopped belly-top and with vitrified eyes, pooled together and rotting, but without a single buzzing fly to rest upon their putrefying flesh.

Their bodies bled their colors and their innards into the still waters of the garden pools; the bamboos bent by the wind.

Yanjiang's houses were broken; holes dotted their walls and rooftops. Ugly-looking iron spikes had perforated them and stood like wicked thorns, growing from the ground upwards. It was a forest of iron trees.

No, the wise Dongbin corrected himself mentally, it is a forest of iron branches. Trees would have leaves, and strong trunks, and deep burrowing roots, these misshapen monstrosities had nothing but the faint mockery of a resemblance.

No gaki could have done this, the intelligent Dongbin spoke, and his followers listened raptly to his words, etching them into their souls for each of his word was worthy of that much honor. No moshou either.

There is no life left, one of his pupils spoke. All is silent, devoured.

Yes, the proud Dongbin nodded, With time, even the plants will die. There are no gui here. No Yin, no Yang. Nothing but emptiness.

The thought alone was terrifying. He noticed, the brave Dongbin, that his disciples had grown quiet and fearful. Their Chi was unbalanced, their breathing uneven, and they drew strength and will from his presence alone.

Yanjiang had housed thousands of people, and then it had grown quiet. A cloak of darkness had silenced all sounds of life and left behind nothing. He, judicious Dongbin, of the Eternal Vigilant Defense sect, in charge of protecting the border against the blasphemous and the forbidden, had come to study the situation.

They, his ever-changing disciples, who belonged to the lowest step and rank accompanied him.

The taker of the Fourth Step amidst the Nine towards Immortality, ascender to the second Rank of the Nine that led to mastery over the Step itself, Dongbin gave them orders, and they humble of the first step and first rank followed.

It was clear that the wind was the only witness left, yet his disciples split up and searched through the houses. They worked industriously, leaving no grain of rice unturned, no single thread of hay untouched, no wooden plank unturned or rooftop unexplored.

They passed by tatami mats torn and against which those strange iron spikes seemed to grow. They glided silently across the streets and past the wooden bridges of the rivulets that fed into the ponds and the streams filled with nothing but the masses of dead fishes. They noticed that even birds had died and fallen in the waters, and had been left there, plucked out of their lives in the air by some cruelty that knew no boundaries, and made no difference of creatures which harbored Chi or did not, as long as they had life within them.

Henhou, the neighboring city, was a bustling place filled with thousands and thousands more; it felt alive even at a distance, and the sensible Dongbin could sense the jarring contrast between the land he was in, and the one that stood beyond the hills and the forest.

If something as dark as what had happened in Yanjiang occurred again, he would rush to seek its source.

No clue was forthcoming from the mouths of his disciples; they gathered around him once more, like lost monks coming to pray at the statue of his wisdom. Though he did not expect much from the apprentices, the annoyed Dongbin still felt the trifling instance of displeasure.

Then, silence.

The silence itself was telling.

The wind had stilled; something, somewhere, had quieted the winds down. The breeze hadn’t stopped by itself. It had choked. It was unnatural for it to happen, yet as he brought his left arm up, the long sleeves of his dress covered most of his face. Distracted less from his surroundings, his senses could concentrate. The source of this alteration of reality could not be close, or he would have sensed it.

Dongbin glanced at the sky, and there he saw dots. Peering through the clouds, descending towards them, small dots that soon grew in size to become iron rods of great power and strength. He jumped up, his dress' sleeves fluttering behind him as he reached for a rooftop with a graceful leap, and then twirled in mid-air to deflect the incoming projectiles from over his head.

His pupils died; the rods broke through walls and rooftops, through their stances and their attempts at avoiding the steel rain that fell over them. Their lives mattered not, for more students could be gathered and taught.

Graceful Dongbin landed gently atop a spike, which now dug into the earth. Whatever manner of beast or army could launch such things from such great distance, they had quite the great scouts, for he could not sense any life near him.

He sensed no un-life either, no Yin, nor Yang.

The creatures of the underworld would reek of the former, and the living did have much of the latter.

Dongbin had no choice but to follow the trajectory of the rods, which would lead him away from the village and onto the very clouds, though he did wonder who would handle the corpses. That question was answered by the corpses themselves, whose bodies began to reek of Yin energies as they rose from the spikes that had impaled them.

Their mouths were open in the mockery of their last breath; their eyes empty as their arms twisted upwards to break free from their iron tethers.

Vile alchemy must have imbued the rods, capable of turning the living into the unreasoning dead.

The resolute Dongbin struck quickly and cleanly through them, his moves and attacks easily slicing the skulls in half, not even a single drop of blood landing upon his pristine silk robes. He wondered what manner of beast could have done such a thing, what manner of forbidden technique had brought shambling bodies back into the embrace of life in such a wrong, obscene manner.

The northern border led into the land of the man-eating Oni; of the ghosts and undead, of the failures of unclean sects and impure practices, which had been banished a long time before his path even began. And now, those very same banished were perhaps returning. If so, the Great Emperor of Gaozhou would call forth his great and carefully cultivated army, and they would march in triumph once more to cleanse the lands north.

Though the cautious Dongbin would have to report such events, and thus leave the village and not seek out the archers responsible for these attacks.

He twisted abruptly, breaking from his thoughts and his stance, as something came quite close to slicing his cheek. Had he not avoided it, he might have become like the very same unliving students he was now mentally berating and destroying, granting their spirits a modicum of peace and recovering the small shards of lingshi from their remains.

The great alchemists of his sect might gleam more information on the method by which they had been so violently transformed if he delivered those; even so, what had attempted to strike him had been a spear of sorts, one which had the same speed as lightning itself.

A lesser practitioner of the arts might have indeed been struck, but not he.

He was the wise Dongbin, after all.

Hey fancy man, a voice spoke happily, somewhat coming from all the metal rods around him at once. Lightning arched across all of them. You hear the thunder only when the lightning's struck already. You're already dead, didn't you know that?

The unworried Dongbin scoffed at the bravado, and then his body fell down. He pondered why; the realization came to him that he no longer had a chest.

He also no longer had arms, or legs. The lightning that had arched all around him had small, extremely sharp filaments within it. They had sliced through his whole body, cauterizing the wounds, and preventing his nerves from notifying him of the damage. His human body was no longer so human since the Fourth Step, but some vestiges of it still functioned like it used to be.

His neck was still there, as was the necklace with jade upon it. In an emergency as it was, the hasty Dongbin had little precious time before his whole body would be destroyed; a painful process which, no doubts, would require him much care and attention to restore later on.

Though the jade by his neck was small, a brief message could still be inscribed upon it with the sharpness of his teeth and the mobility of his tongue. Then, his head rolled by the effort of his hair's roots, strengthened through multiple months and years to be as much of a weapon as the rest of his body was, and with a quick breath from lungs he no longer had and a spit from what little of his throat’s muscles remained, the jade message flew through the air and out of the village.

Someone, hoping the gods were on their side and his aim had been true, would find it and bring it to some who might read it.

Even so, he felt his own head being lifted, and now there he was, the Dying Dongbin face to face with the entity that had somewhat killed and turned into unliving his own pupils.

The cruel smile of the creature was filled with sharp, razor teeth. The hair was sparkling yellow, and electricity arched across their body. They held a spear in the nook of their armpit, and their eyes blazed orange.

Then, the unwise Dongbin was no more.

---Libvir---

The Viciri Lighthouse signaled that we'd reach the port of Chang by the end of the day. It was a large construction made of bricks and stones, at the top of which a large brazier burned brightly in the night. It signaled that around it, sharp rocks would bring doom to any ship unwilling to heed the wise counsel of its flames.

We were packed together quite tightly on a large ship, one that perhaps had served as a slave ship back in the days and was now refurbished to allow for mercenaries to travel by the hundreds on them. Or perhaps the ship still acted as a slave ship but used its downtime to ferry across a different kind of slave; one bound by the desire for freedom, the quest for a warm meal and perhaps the hope to achieve riches without end.

Kralje was hissing softly, the cramped quarters pretty much fouling his mood just as much as they unkindly reminded me of when I had been in such enclosed spaces as a slave, headed for the war in the desert of the Shifting Sands.

My dark hair was cut with the sharp edge of my sword, a simple enough arming sword with a pommel and a hilt. My dark eyes reflected the haunted gaze of my face on its flat side as I sharpened it, because a sharp sword would always serve better than an unsharp one.

My meager belongings didn't account for more than a shield, circular-shaped and made of wood and covered in leather. Some hastily put together patchwork of leather shoulder-guard and sword arm-protector, and the somewhat ominous satchel that looked eerily the same to the one I had before.

Then again, all leather satchels tended to look the same. This one lacked sand; thus, it was clearly not the same as the one I had carried since my liberation in the Shifting Sands, through my time as a soldier in the Lamoutiersian' army of the Mad Warrior Maiden, and into my time as the captain of the Fifth.

If anything, I was glad for the boots; good boots would last me a lifetime and were an investment I was very happy I had made, even if it had felt like a lot of silver for Kralje to spend on, but I had a mental tally of money I owed the Serpes, and I’d make sure to pay him back every single coin of the total, regardless of how much he insisted I should not.

The ship came into port in a manner of mere hours after we moved past the lighthouse, and as a wooden walkway touched the docks’ wooden pier, Kralje and I descended in good order. The overpowering smell of the sea and the sharp screams of the seagulls echoed all around us, people yelling in both foreign and non-languages as merchandise was moved, and supplies were hauled on or off the ships.

More than a few robe-wearing men looked at us, and I couldn’t blame them. We made quite a pair. Kralje was taller than a human, even when coiled upon himself. He was a Serpes, a snake-man of the Shifting Sands whose tough scales and deadly poison made them ferocious warriors, and as fast as horsemen in the right terrains. His scales glimmered of a dark, mottled green, and his golden eyes stared at everyone as if they were prey.

He wore a long, curved blade at his belt and a pair of javelins on his back; a long shield and a leather belt wide enough to cover his stomach were all the armor he had, or perhaps even needed.

We had no idea where to go from there, but we knew there was work, and we had but to move away from the pier and onto the docks proper for the people who had a need for our sword arms to walk towards us.

Or rather, they walked towards Kralje first. Their language, I absolutely didn't understand.

Kralje didn't either, but they had come with a translator.

The two men that drew near had dark hair and eyes and wore flowing robes the colors of teal. They were eyeing Kralje with gazes filled with admiration and surprise, and the one who was apparently capable of speaking the tongue of us mercenaries -a bastardized dialect of Solis and Lamoutiers, with hints and spruces of other words- made the presentation.

The noble Quan Zhan wishes to hire your service, oh mighty beast, the translator spoke.

I do not come alone, Kralje answered, placing a hand on my shoulder.

The translator referred the message. Your servant is welcomed also.

Servant? I'd have gone with something else, like squire, or-

He is my shield in battle, Kralje hissed back. He is no servant of mine, but a friend to whom I entrust my own stomach.

The translator frowned at that, but then referred the message. The noble Quan Zhan appeared intrigued in turn however and said something which his translator referred to us.

The sea of Chi is indeed a precious thing to treasure and protect, the translator said. You will be well-paid in silver dragons; a dozen a month.

Three silvers a week? I muttered. For what manners of duty?

The translator didn't need to ask his noble patron that question, since he had come prepared, Noble Quan Zhan's territory has thieves and brigands, a small group is needed to reinforce the garrison he already has in place. More foreigners are there; they will aid you with getting acquainted with your duties.

That did sound good enough. Thieves and brigands wouldn't be that bad of a thing now, would they?

The thrill of the hunt is something I am accustomed to, Kralje said with a slow nod. We accept.

Very well! My master is thrilled, the translator spoke, and the noble did indeed beam a smile at us. We shall gather more before the day is over; we will provide your accommodations, thus worry not and simply follow us.

Follow them we did.

Had I known where I would end up, I’d have taken the first boat back to Lamoutiers.

To be more precise, I would have swum my way back and drowned on the way. It would have still been a better result.

Chapter One

The Noble Quan Zhan gathered a group of twenty circa, and by the end of the day we were settling within a large and well ventilated stable, waiting for the next day's long march to his lands. There were quite a few who were either playing cards or dice, and a couple hung by the stable’s entrance, staring out into the streets and at the passerby.

There were no horses nor wild animals, but the hay was fresh. We weren’t prohibited from leaving if we so desired but getting lost in the city was not how any of us planned on spending the day.

Look at that! one of the mercenaries exclaimed, pointing a finger at a robed figure that was dashing on small black shoes daintily across the rooftops, gracefully appearing to be somewhat flying. Got to be a Wind Mage or something.

The robed figure was wearing bright blue silk clothes and seemed to be headed somewhere with quite the urgency. On its back was a large scroll, topped and bottomed with some manner of dragon-motif made in jade.

He wasn't the only figure that I noticed dashing right and left through the rooftops.

Is roof-jumping some manner of pastime for these guys? the mercenary that had reached the entrance first at the exclamation had meanwhile crossed his arms and placed his back against the supporting wall of the entranceway.

His green eyes stared around as if trying to orient himself. His hair