Sword of Dawn (黎明之剑）by 远瞳

Nox_Albus

Newest book from the author of “The Record of Unusual Creatures" now at webnovel.com

Gorwin got himself transported to another world, not without a little episode.
After floating for millions of years above and over some alternate earth, he decided that he needed a body to truly become a denizen. He succeeded, but he had never expected that he had to climb out of a grave and face some very frightened great-great-great-great-grandaughters...

Nox_Albus

Chapter. 1 What it's like to revive into a bird's eye view

Year X, Month X, Day X, Time X.

The world below is as it always has been. In all areas visible, it is a clear weather with no wind or heavy clouds.

From a rigid bird's eye view, Gorwin gazes at the earth far below and ponders his meaning of life -- not that he could do otherwise.

He no longer remembers the time passed in this perspective, neither does he have any knowledge what he is like right now. Of course he could still calculate time by counting the rise and fall of the sun, but to be fair, you stop doing that when you realize how small a million is to you. 

Does this count as transporting to another world?

Gorwin is one of those who have no problem getting thrown to another world, not because he's oblivious to life and death, but because he had to commit to the duo when his plane crashed in his previous life. He decided that if he were absolutely going to die, he would prefer transporting to another world to falling into a collectible box. BUT he was not ready for the fact that the transportation involved hanging in midair.

And for who knows how many million years.

Gorwin has absolutely no idea of what condition he's in right now. He is a fixed perspective, a bodyless sense of vision if you may. He has no sense of anything else, or any idea if he's a ghost or a floating corpse. He can be sure of one thing -- he is not a floating man.

No normal human has developed the mental capacities to allow himself to think clearly, remember coherently, or even have the idea to consider his meaning of life, after countless years in the sky.

Madness was the way out.

Not for Gorwin, though. What's more, his memory has grown to extraordinary levels.

His memories have stayed intact across those millions of years. He could still remember the last days of his past life, which include piercing screams, buzzing alarms, a quaking aircraft, glimpses of the sky and the earth outside the window, the air mask that never found its way onto his neighbor's face, and finally, the giant boom as the plane fell to pieces in its flight.

It was as clear as if it were only yesterday. Including how surprised he was after waking up from the boom to floating over an unknown planet, everything was clear and precise.

From the moment he opened his eyes again, he was able to distinguish the land and the oceans of planet below from those of his own planet Earth. He spent a little while adjusting himself to arriving to an alternative world, and gave himself plenty of time working on not floating anymore.

Unfortunately, he found very little success in the latter.

He was a "fixed" perspective, denied of any motion whatsoever. He was a bird's eye view, except that the bird stared right below and never moved at all. He was limited to observing one limited area of the earth, which included one irregularly shaped piece of land and the ocean surrounding it. Anything outside of the angle was, unfortunately, completely inaccessible.

He could not turn the view angle, so there's no telling if there were more land across the ocean. He has never had a glimpse of the sky for the very same reason.

But is there anything at all to see? Are there any other celestial bodies? Could there be a God with a white beard holding a lamp right behind him?

Gorwin never missed backstroking so much in his life. Even if the only thing he could see was a white-beard old freak he would love to do a backstroke.

He couldn't. He was as immobile as immobile can be.

Well, he did find a bit of mobility after a long time of practice: he could zoom in and out within his area of sight. In other words, he could move the bird high and low.

Ah that was happy news that lasted a long time for Gorwin. He tried moving that bird everywhere he can. He was never able to see beyond that ring of ocean, but he finally had the choice to zoom in enough to see what's on that piece of land.

There was a luxuriant amount of green - the clearest sign of life.

Well, it'd be nice to see some daily lives of some alter-earth people. He's limited to floating and watching, but it'd be less boring if he watched some exotic culture.

He zoomed in as much as he could, to the point he could see the leaves of every blade of grass. It was that day when he found that the mammals on the land - yes there were animals that seemed like mammals -

Not one of them has learned to stand on their feet.

But it was no matter. Gorwin had plenty of patience. His patience no longer has a limit now that he's a perspective. He waited until the monkeys finally learned to walk. 

He waited many years more to see the first artificial fire. It was flint and steel.

With that little ember change began to come.

Gorwin has no idea what had happened to him, but he could feel everything becoming faster ever since the first human ember bloomed on the earth. Perhaps he is losing track of time, but everything on earth began to change rapidly, as though he was watching a video on fast forward. Those humans quickly formed clans, which transformed into early city-states, as the humans had their grasp on unbelievable powers and began to use them on expanding territories. Before he could see clearly, however, those early kingdoms fell to ruins, as the remaining humans built new cities on their ancestors' corpses...

Humans begin to fight over living space with other races. Kingdoms and beliefs came and went, wars and cries of God's names echoed over and over. The fast forward accelerates into a blur, and Gorwin is no longer able to process the sea of information pounding into his vision. He saw creatures like dragons raging into existence, but he cannot see if the dragons came from the land or beyond the seas.

  He sees swords held high and wars burning the entire land, only to see new civilizations reborn. 

It was after quite a long time did he realize that the world never accelerated, but he began to skip over information. His observation slowly became intermittent glimpses, changing from a constant gaze to a few frames across a few years or a few decades, giving him the false assumption of the world becoming faster and faster. His thoughts would restart as if they were never interrupted, after longer and longer pauses, so he failed many times to realize what happened to himself.

There's something wrong.

The thought struck Gorwin like lightning, but that lightning took centuries to hit its mark.

He could see the earth changing below. With the one thought that something was wrong another kingdom has crashed from its pinnacle into piles of rubble.

Gorwin has no idea what is going on, but he knew that it was not normal. In  a few frames and thousands of years in between, he realized that his mind was about to collapse. He had barely a second for thought in a century, and the pauses were only growing.

The earth is changing faster than ever, and the frames flashing by went too quickly to be decipherable. In this pace, after some point, the mind that recognizes itself as Gorwin would disappear in this nonsensical place, into a neverwaking slumber.

After millions of years Gorwin finally found his sense of urgency. He began to think violently for a solution to his situation. If he had a brain it would have been overloading like crazy, with one idea bursting after the next. But the slideshow reminded him that there were a thousand years between two frames of his thought.

It's a bit of a hyperbole. Or is it?

Break free from this situation. Break free. Break free. Break free. 

In any way, in any form, he had to break free from this situation. Since when did returning to that damned falling plane become a viable option? But he must not lose himself in this nonsensical way in this nonsensical place!

Yet his senses began to blur, and his mind began to fog. The connection between frames of his memory was problematic after all. He pondered angrily with all his might, but as a mere perspective, no anger or thought had any impact on anything.

The moment he thought he was about to fall into eternal static, a voice suddenly came to him,

"Energy source failing. Mainframe restart failed."

"Activating Escape Program."

At the next moment, the bird's eye view vanishes, and darkness is all that Gorwin can see. 

Yet his mind refuses to stop. After countless years, Gorwin is finally thinking "with his eyes closed". 

He has no idea how long the darkness lasted. He had a sense of twirling and falling, into somewhere cold and narrow. The senses are returning to him like familiar strangers, and they're nudging each other in his brain. In the chaos of senses a faint sound began to stand out, a young female voice in quite a panic,

"Wait... please don't kill me now! Your ancestor is rattling in his coffin!"

bosa2800

I get happy with a new translator makes its publication in the forums, but when I see that the novel belongs to qidian I get sad.