Chapter One: No Way Out?

Playing games, fighting bosses, grinding late into the night, getting hungry, and going out for a midnight snack—what kind of accident could happen?

Car accident? Robbery? Or maybe... a romantic encounter?

None of the above.

Logan Carter opened his apartment door, stepped out, and was instantly transported.

The moment he crossed the threshold, he felt a bit dazed, the light around him rippled strangely like water, and he lost his balance, stumbling as he was about to fall.

Logan Carter hurriedly reached out, instinctively grabbing the doorknob behind him, steadying himself before he could hit the ground.

"What the hell? Is this an earthquake... wait, something's off, the doorknob feels different!"

The doorknob on his rented apartment was polished stainless steel, smooth and icy to the touch, but the one he was holding now was wooden, rough to the touch, and carved with all sorts of strange patterns.

Looking back, he found that the door he was leaning against was no longer the deep blue security door of his apartment, but a natural wood-colored door, its surface adorned with many old-fashioned carvings.

The lighting around him had changed too. The hallway lights in his apartment building were energy-saving bulbs, white, steady, and bright, but now the light was dim yellow, barely illuminating the space, and flickering constantly.

Following the light, Logan Carter saw an antique desk in the center of the room behind him, with a silver candelabrum on top. The candelabrum held twelve candles, six of which were lit, and beside it lay a thick, yellowed book.

Wooden stairs, wooden doors, ancient-style furniture in the room—unexplainably strange, yet oddly familiar.

"My god, what on earth happened? I just wanted to go to KFC for a fried chicken leg!" Logan Carter was dumbfounded.

As he stood there at a loss, something even stranger happened.

Logan Carter was shocked to find that his hand was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye. No, not just his hand—his feet, his whole body were shrinking!

'What the hell is this? There's no way to explain it!' Logan Carter's eyes nearly popped out.

Sure, he liked playing games, but he never neglected his studies. As a top physics student at a prestigious university in China, majoring in materials physics, he always prided himself on being a successor to Lord Newton, never believing in any supernatural nonsense, and scoffing at so-called paranormal phenomena. But now, all of this was happening right before his eyes, and Logan Carter felt his worldview collapsing at breakneck speed.

Next, he noticed that his clothes had changed at some point.

Since it was early winter, he had just gone out wearing a dark gray down jacket, but now he was dressed in a strangely styled indigo cotton robe, with a fur vest draped over his shoulders—made of fine bear fur, thick and dense, but with a retro design that also seemed familiar.

'Familiar, really familiar, I feel like I've seen this vest somewhere before.'

But it wasn't over yet—something even more bizarre happened.

Logan Carter realized that a strange new set of memories had appeared in his mind.

In these memories, he was not a top student at a prestigious Chinese university. His name hadn't changed, but he now had a surname—his full name was Logan Carter, only fourteen years old, the only son of Sir Laplace, living in the province of Elant in the Duchy of Deren. The family owned a thousand acres of fertile land, with over sixty tenant households, and he had lived in comfort since childhood, doted on by his parents, getting whatever he wanted—a typical rich young master.

The memories felt incredibly real, as if Logan Carter had actually lived them.

'The province of Elant in the Duchy of Deren—wasn't that a place in the game I just played? How could I possibly be in the game world? Is someone messing with me? Or am I dreaming?'

He pinched his own cheek and arm hard, grimacing in pain, his arm turning purple, but the surroundings didn't change at all.

"Not a dream? Then could it be that when I went out just now, I happened to cross a natural space-time wormhole? Even though wormholes haven't been observed, they're theoretically possible. As for the changes to my body and memories, maybe those are side effects of the wormhole... If it's a wormhole, then maybe it's two-way."

Thinking this, Logan Carter opened the door again and tried to step back into his apartment.