I was in the middle of an alleyway, completely carefree, eyes glued to my phone while playing a gacha game.
Suddenly, I felt my body start to sway from side to side, and it didn't take me long to realize. it was an earthquake.
"An earthquake?" I muttered, frowning and tearing my gaze away from the screen.
The walls were vibrating, the ground was shifting, and a metallic rumble echoed from above… but I stayed focused, trying not to fall, which felt a lot like when a bus stops suddenly and you're not holding onto anything.
But the worst part came when I started hearing loud noises above me, and I saw a massive building shaking violently. At its top, a truck-sized advertising screen detached from the structure.
One of its side panels a thick sheet of stainless steel nearly four meters long fell freely, spinning like a scythe between the buildings. As if it had a will of its own.
I didn't have time to react because it all happened in just a few seconds. The falling sheet pierced me from the top of my head all the way down to the ground with surgical precision, splitting me into two symmetrical halves.
A spray of blood burst in all directions. My phone dropped to the ground, still glowing with the image of the newly acquired character, as my vision faded and the only thing that crossed my mind was whether I had won the 50/50 for Castorice.
After a moment, all I could feel was silence, darkness, and cold.
But as hours, days, or months passed, I was engulfed in a strange sensation, as if I were floating in a formless, timeless, bodiless space. I couldn't move or speak... but I could think. My consciousness was still there, suspended in the void.
"Am I… dead?" I thought, trying to feel any part of my body, but there was no response. Just a pulse in the nothingness, which made a deep fear settle in, the thought that I might be trapped here forever.
For better or worse, I eventually started to feel something but it made me question what was worse because I felt myself being torn apart. As if something was pulling me strongly in two opposite directions.
One part of me was being dragged toward one point, and the other part, toward a completely different one. Connected by an invisible thread. My mind began to exist in two different places at the same time. And although the pain was excruciating, I couldn't scream or cry.
A baby's cry broke the silence of a room.
In the Wheat Manor of the Demeter Familia, a woman panted, exhausted, over sweat-stained sheets. In front of her, a female figure of otherworldly beauty held a baby with a bit of brown hair, crying loudly.
"It's a boy," said the goddess assisting with the birth.
And at the same time, in another place...
In the world of Soul Land, a baby opened his eyes for the first time. Several women surrounded him, attending the birth of the youngest son of the mayor of Nuoding City. They had named him Xiao Lin.
'What's going on?' I looked around in panic, realizing I could see two different places.
I was in two cribs. I could see two different pairs of arms rocking me at the same time and hear both women speaking in two different languages. Even though I couldn't see them well due to my blurry vision, I could still tell how different they were.
At first, everything was confusing. I didn't understand anything, only that I was in two places at once.
I slept in a rustic wooden crib in a warm room that smelled of earth and hay… and also in another that seemed a bit more luxurious, though it still had that medieval era vibe, along with clothing that looked like it belonged to a martial cultivation setting.
In one of my bodies, they called me Liam Smith. I lived in a modest stone-and-wood house near Orario. My mother was a young woman with light brown hair and a tough yet kind expression. An adventurer, a member of the Demeter Familia, who only worked in agriculture.
How did I realize I was in Danmachi? It wasn't complicated. My mother simply took me for a walk and it was impossible to miss the tower that rises in the center of the city, which can be seen from almost anywhere in Orario.
"Come on, Liam, eat it all. Mommy has to go to work," said one of my mothers as she fed me tenderly, though I really wished she would use a bottle instead of her breasts.
I felt quite uncomfortable being fed this way while having the mind of a teenager, but aside from the awkwardness, I didn't feel anything else since I was still a baby and not going through puberty yet.
That made the situation at least somewhat tolerable, and it wasn't like I was taking advantage of my own mother just the thought made me nauseous.
"When you grow up, you'll learn to farm so we can serve Demeter-sama, and you won't follow your father's path of becoming an adventurer. I'll teach you the basics." I could understand some of the words she said, but I still struggled to learn the language completely.
Few people came to visit us. Sometimes "Demeter-sama" was mentioned. My mother wasn't anyone important within the familia, just another farmer, but there was nothing wrong with that it seemed like she genuinely enjoyed working the land.
In Danmachi, my environment was humble but familiar. Even comforting. But the other world was completely different.
There, I didn't understand anything. Not that I understood much in Danmachi either, but it was much harder to learn the other world's language because it felt like watching videos at 1.5x speed.
They speak so fast! My "other mother" spoke with an Asian accent similar to Danmachi's, and I didn't see her often since I was mostly cared for by some maids.
I only saw her occasionally. They treated me kindly in that mansion, but I struggled to keep up. The language was a barrier. I had to learn like a regular child: repeating sounds, mimicking gestures, observing without understanding.
Eventually, though, I understood that there, I was called Xiao Lin.
And one day, by accident, I heard something that chilled me.
"**** Xiao Lin ***** Nuoding Academy."
Those words made me realize which world I was in or at least I think I did I wasn't completely sure I heard right. Nuoding Academy. I knew what that meant. It was the academy where Tang San's story began, the biggest villain in the Soul Land series, where martial souls are awakened.
So I'm in Soul Land… and also in Danmachi. In different bodies, but I can control them at the same time.
The problem is, if I try to move in just one, the other moves in sync, which will make adapting to both worlds really difficult. The worst is when people talk to me in both worlds at the same time. It's incredibly stressful.
I could only let out a sigh with both bodies, wondering if I'll ever be able to control them separately. Because it's going to be very awkward if people see me talking to myself, in another language, or making weird movements out of nowhere. They'll think I'm crazy in both worlds.
I guess I'll just have to adapt to this new life.