Beyond the Void - An Isekai LitRPG Adventure

[Smetcalf]

When William became a professor, he'd thought it was something to be proud of, a worthy career. His own professors might've told him he had a mind for physics and could go far if he applied himself, but when the offer fell in his lap, he didn't see a reason to reject it. What he didn't realize was that without a reason to keep going he wouldn't, settling into the monotony of life.

This lack of motivation is what saw William grading papers late on a Sunday night, wishing he could kick his past self for settling for life as a boring, middle aged physics professor. He was struggling to stay awake, sleep warring with his willingness to do his job. William knew he couldn't put off grading until later, he'd been grading nonstop the last two weeks, and there was still a pile he didn't even want to think about.

Before he could fully nod off, he was jolted awake by a rumbling that seemed to come from all around. The room started to shake, papers tumbled to the floor, ruining hours of work, but William was more concerned with getting somewhere safe, and dropped to the floor and moved under his desk, remembering the drills from a childhood growing up on a fault line.

The shaking quickly became a secondary concern for William, as a sharp pain in his chest drew his attention away from his now trashed apartment. Rubbing his chest, William started gasping for air as his lungs felt like they were trying to squeeze their way up his throat. Black spots clouded his vision as he fell forward, his last sight a yet ungraded paper.

At first William didn't realize he was awake, the darkness surrounding him so absolute he could barely tell the difference. With no basis in time, William drifted through the Void, seeing nothing except the infinite black of the space between. While he couldn't see anything, William felt more than he ever had, for he was in the presence of magic for the first time in his life.

While he might have been surrounded by mystical energy unlike anything he'd ever encountered, William was quickly losing himself in the Void unused to having no input from any of the five senses. Before his mind could fully slip from his grasp, a purple light bloomed in front of him, tiny, but real. It was salvation for William's fractured mind, and he reached out to it with an invisible limb, desperate for contact with anything that wasn't his own thoughts.

As he approached the light, William could feel himself being drawn into it, and as he reached out to touch it, he slipped unconscious.