Chapter 3: Finally… I Can Move!

After sitting up inside a suspicious black metal box, Gawain was utterly bewildered. In fact, even the very act of “sitting up” had happened unconsciously.

An unprecedented wave of chaos and dizziness assaulted his mind. His ears buzzed relentlessly, and his entire body was flooded with a wild, indistinct jumble of sensations. Everything before his eyes was blurred with at least four overlapping images—two of which were in black and white. Yet, amid all this confusion, his thinking hadn’t completely collapsed.

Perhaps he should be grateful to whoever had just struck the back of his hand with a stick. That sharp pain had snapped him back from the brink of total mental collapse, granting him a precious moment of clarity.

But that hit really hurt…

As his thoughts gradually steadied, Gawain finally recalled what had happened before—his vision abruptly cutting out, the activation of some escape protocol, the sensation of falling endlessly, and now… this real, tangible, sentient body he could move.

A body!!

He had a body!

After crossing who knows how many millennia, after nearly convincing himself he was destined to exist only as a third-person, overhead perspective, Gawain had finally gained a physical form!

The mental chaos was understandable, as was the overwhelming flood of new sensations. He hadn’t experienced anything beyond sight for so many years. Even though his mind remained intact for some unknown reason, adapting to feeling heat, cold, pain, and touch was a challenge.

Still, Gawain could feel himself rapidly adjusting to this body, to the return of physical sensations in the material world. As the dizziness in his head lessened, the fourfold, ghostly double-vision finally cleared, and the scene around him came into focus.

The first thing he saw was four heavily armed burly men not far ahead—one was a grizzled middle-aged man with graying hair, clad in sturdy steel armor. His muscles bulged so much they nearly reached his forehead, and he wielded a silver-gray longsword. The other three wore simpler armor and carried weapons that looked more standardized and less ornate.

A petite girl was half-kneeling on the ground, pressed down by the swords of these four men. Her face was obscured by her hair and the angle, but a pointed ear peeked out from the strands.

Further away stood a woman in a flowing red dress. Her elegant, mature beauty and curvaceous figure caught Gawain’s eye, and he quickly noticed the unmistakable tension and fear flickering in her eyes.

But a sudden noise beside him drew Gawain’s attention. He turned his head just in time to see a girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen, nervously hopping down from the stone platform where he sat. She carried a metal rod that looked like it would hurt if swung at someone…

Putting two and two together, Gawain’s expression twisted oddly. “You were the one who hit me just now, weren’t you?”

The words slipped out before he could stop them—and then he froze. He realized he hadn’t spoken in Chinese, but in a language he’d never heard before. Yet somehow, it felt instinctively familiar.

Rebecca, unaware of the chaotic thoughts swirling in the “ancestor’s” mind, was nearly in tears. This young noblewoman, newly inheriting the viscount title and facing a massive upheaval, stammered, “Ancestor… I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“I…” Gawain still had no clear idea what was going on. Despite having observed this world from above for many years, experiencing it firsthand was a first. His confusion probably exceeded that of everyone else present. “Who… are you all?”

The woman in the red dress appeared the calmest on the scene. After Gawain sat up and spoke, her fear visibly lessened. She stepped forward cautiously, still wary but composed. “Do you know who you are?”

“Me?” Gawain blinked, then hesitated before instinctively trying to say his own name. But he stopped himself, realizing he should be someone else.

Looking down at the box beneath him—odd in design but unmistakably a coffin—and taking in the surroundings, which, though spacious, resembled a tomb chamber more than a home…

Then, reading the expressions on the faces around him, Gawain came to a startling conclusion: he had come back from the dead.

If he said any name that didn’t match the body he now inhabited, he’d be immediately branded a demon or evil spirit and killed. The girl had just called him “Ancestor,” so he guessed he’d possessed the body of one of their forebears. Never mind how their ancestor’s body had remained uncorrupted for centuries—what mattered was that as an outsider’s soul, he’d taken over the ancestor’s body, slept in their grave, and just now kicked open their coffin lid… The embarrassment of being exposed was indescribable.

With that thought, Gawain lowered his head, pretending to think deeply but actually scrambling for an excuse—maybe he’d been asleep for so long his memories were fuzzy. But just as he focused, a fresh wave of dizziness hit him hard.

He had just barely adapted to the new body and shaken off the first bout of dizziness, only to be struck by a second wave. His body swayed, nearly falling back into the coffin. The woman in the red dress, seeing his strange behavior, nervously raised her iron staff, ready to cast a fireball at the “ancestor’s” face—

But a low voice from Gawain stopped her mid-motion.

“Gawain Cecil. I am Gawain Cecil, founder of the Kingdom of Ansu… What year is this?”

As he spoke, he lifted his head slightly, his gaze calm and deep as the sea.

Inside his mind, however, a storm raged.

Memories belonging to Gawain Cecil flooded in like data from a hard drive, rapidly cataloged and recorded. During that brief dizziness, he had accessed the most basic parts of these memories and understood the identity he now held.

His greatest surprise was that the body’s name was also Gawain.

Only, this “Gawain” had a different surname: Cecil.

A coincidence?

There was no time to ponder the strangeness. The memories kept pouring in, and he struggled to keep from fainting or grimacing. In this dazed state, he faintly heard the girl who had just struck him answer in a clear voice: “It’s the year 735 of the Ansu calendar, ancestor. You’ve been asleep for over seven hundred years…”

Heddy, hearing Gawain’s words, visibly relaxed. As a scholar and spellcaster, she knew something about undead resurrection. These profane beings had fatal flaws in their souls. When they first awoke, they could barely speak or think. Even the stronger ones quickly regained mental faculties but completely forgot their past lives.

And they must never speak their own names—whether by memory or reminder, uttering their former name would cause the soul’s fire to backfire and burn them. Even if it didn’t kill them, the pain was unbearable.

The soul fire’s backlash was unmistakable.

So Heddy relaxed but remained deeply puzzled. If this ancestor wasn’t an undead risen from the grave, then how on earth had he suddenly come back to life?

No matter the confusion, proper respect was necessary. She stepped forward, bowing with nervous reverence. “Ancestor of the Cecil family, I am your descendant, Heddy Cecil. This young lady beside me is also your descendant, Rebecca Cecil. Please forgive her rashness just now, and… forgive us for disturbing your rest.”

Well, this one was a great-great-great… great-granddaughter, and the other seemed to be as well.

The flood of memories finally slowed. Gawain had no time to carefully sift through the neatly arranged data in his mind. He wanted to understand his surroundings quickly. He grabbed the coffin’s edge, trying to stand, muttering, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I don’t even know how I woke up. Can someone help me out?”

He overestimated his control over the new body. When he tried to sit up fully, he almost fell back in, feeling a bit embarrassed.

Rebecca, clutching her staff nervously and watching for a while, finally saw her chance to help. She eagerly hopped onto the stone platform, grasped Gawain’s arm, and said, “I’ll help you out of the coffin, I’ll help you out…”

The phrasing sounded awkward no matter how you heard it.

“Seven hundred years, huh…” Gawain’s body stiffened as the girl helped him out. He glanced down at his clothes and muttered, “What kind of fabric is this?”

“Looks like Moonmark cloth woven by elves…” Rebecca answered uncertainly.

“Real black tech,” Gawain said.

Rebecca blinked. “Huh?”

The ancestor’s words were so profound.

With Rebecca’s help, Gawain finally stepped down from the stone platform and stood steadily on the ground. He felt his control over the body improving rapidly, as if his soul was installing drivers at lightning speed. His mind and body coordinated with astonishing speed.

He let go of Rebecca’s hand and took a small step forward on his own.

The next moment, tears welled up in his eyes. If there had been a microphone nearby, he felt he could thank every person and every TV station he knew without repeating himself.

After all these years, most novel protagonists who time-travel or reincarnate have already conquered gods, demons, and the universe. He had just completed the very first human challenge: standing upright and walking…

And only after achieving this milestone did he remember the little girl still surrounded by those four burly men.

(End of Chapter)