~ Prologue ~

And so... I died... again...

As I gazed at the swirling white energy around me, I felt it pulling me through the cracks of reality and dragging me into the void between universes. Like a whirlpool of chaotic lightning, it flowed through and around me, yet no matter how relentless it was in striking my soul, I felt neither pain nor fear of it. By now, such a scene was... familiar to me.

I knew with absolute certainty that there was nothing I could do to stop this process. There was no way I could fight back against this invisible claw that cared not of my will and dragged me on the edge of reality across time and space. In the past, I tried to resist this unfathomable force, yet no matter how much I struggled or screamed at the gods, no one and nothing came to my rescue.

The only thought flowing through my mind at that time was the following one:

This again, huh? I wonder in what world I'm about to be sent now?

It was natural for me to think this way, but I wasn't like this at the beginning. No, back then... I was afraid, terrified of what was going to happen next. The second time was slightly exciting as I willed myself to do my best. Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth, and so on...

But such was the fate of the human mind. At the beginning, it was sort of fun, then slowly fear, anxiety, and depression settled in my heart. Then came the madness, which didn't last as long as I would have thought it would. Lastly came the indifference and lack of interest of what was going to happen to me. I simply wanted to get it done quickly so that I could return to my original world. That was it.

Normally, a teenager and even someone older such as myself would have jumped in excitement at the idea of living the experience he could only read about in books or games. Being transported to another world filled with magic, countless possibilities, and maybe a cheat power or two? Who wouldn't want that?

Still, it wasn't all fun and games for me... Actually, it wasn't fun at all.

Every time I arrived on the other side, it was a different planet, a different universe, a different summoner: old kings or queens, young princesses, princes, spooky magicians, weird nutty old men, anthropomorphic creatures, and even aliens! You name it, I ended up getting summoned by them.

Either way, the moment they first laid eyes on me, they muttered something to themselves, then they apologized and told me that I wasn't exactly what they were looking for. Some even claimed I was a fake, while others were down right pissed off and beat me to death on the spot. The cases were various, but all ended up in the same manner... with my 'removal' from their world.

I got stabbed; decapitated; once I even had my heart plucked out; set on fire; exploded with a magic spell; fed to a giant worm; squashed by a giant worm; eaten by my summoner; ripped in half by my summoner; had my stomach slashed open and sent to be devoured by stray dogs; electrocuted by the princess; cut in half by the prince; eaten by a human queen; and the list went on, but those were the most gruesome ones. I did have a few summons in which I was simply sent to live on the streets for a while, but eventually an assassin would end up taking my life, or I would find some way to get myself killed. Whatever the case, it wasn't pretty, and it wasn't pleasant either.

Thinking about it, I probably experienced quite a varied number of ways to die, more so than many others would have. The only times when I didn't die were when they simply shoved me back into the summoning circle.

Yet, what happened AFTER I kicked the bucket in that world? Simple, I saw the same whirlpool of lightning energy as it pulled me back into my body on my original world, Earth.

I usually woke up on a hospital bed groaning in pain.

There was a reasonable explanation for this. Thankfully, I didn't return with the same injuries I suffered in the other world, but the MAIN condition for me to be sent there in the first place was that I had to suffer some sort of accident here, on Earth. In other words, whatever force sent me to the other world did so with the intent of leaving no strings attached, but it appeared as though I always managed to return before I could kick the bucket over here.

Maybe it thought something along the lines of: if I died on Earth, then there was no reason for me to worry about it in the other world. Eventually, a god or some other form of entity would have probably told me the truth, and I would have just kept on living there...

Thus, the cycle was repeated endlessly: accident on Earth, death in the other world, return to suffer on Earth and find a way to pay the bills for the hospital just so I would end up in another accident.

The most interesting one yet, in my opinion, was probably the 27th one.

When the doctor told me how I ended up in the hospital, he could hardly believe it himself.

“You fell from the rooftop of an eight-story building and landed in the back of a truck that was delivering broken glass. I don't even understand how it was physically possible for you to survive... Just what sort of luck do you have?”

I replied with a wry smile.

To make matters worse, all of my memories of these countless transitions between worlds were for some reason sealed up for as long as I was on Earth, leaving me to believe that I simply had a Guinness World Record worth of bad luck and hospital bills.

If only I knew...

If only I knew that all of my so called 'bad luck' was in fact just the result of me being summoned for no good reason by some idiot from another world just so he could kill me. Well, I would have probably gone crazy, so maybe it was for the better?

It wasn't like I could do anything about it in any of those cases. Even now, I could only pray to whatever god listened and hope I was going to be done with that world quickly. The summoner was most likely going to kick me back into the portal or cut off my head or end me in some other rather painful way.

This is it... I thought as I felt how the vortex of energy finally released its grasp on me.

I was standing now in front of an endless sky filled with beautiful stars.

Correction!

I was floating in the middle of SPACE and looking at the vastness of cosmos displayed before me.

“Mortal! You have arrived!” a rough and terrifying voice came from behind me.

By the gods that thing sounds scary! I don't want to turn around! I whined in my mind and gulped.

Judging by its voice alone, I thought it was a beast as big as a mountain, all black and covered with the bones of its enemies. With teeth as big as buses and claws as sharp as kitchen knives, it was a monster meant to hunt down and eat little humans like me. Maybe it had wings or wiggly black tentacles with spikes at the end that could shoot venom. Or maybe it was a giant snake-like thing with seven dwarf heads with beards and wielding hammers with their long tongues!

Great... This time, I got summoned to be the breakfast of an intergalactic monster. At least it's a new one... I thought and struggled to find the courage to turn around.

“Raguros! Stop it! You're scaring the poor child!” this time, it was the voice of a woman, who I could only imagine as being as beautiful and enchanting as a real angel.

“Ah! Sorry!” the frightening monster was heard again “Ahem! Sorry! Will you please turn around now?” the rough and scary voice suddenly changed into that of a beautiful woman.

I immediately turned around, and to my astonishment, I saw an eye-catching, golden haired beauty wearing a luxurious amber-colored dress that emphasized her generous chest and alluring body curves.

“Tehe~!” she took the standard pose, sticking out the tip of her tongue, one eye closed, and lightly touching her head with her fist's knuckles.

As I looked at her with a poker face, I shouted in my mind How can such a beauty have such a scary demon-like voice?