The Time Master (Interworld Network Book I): LitRPG Series by Dmitry Bilik

Chapter 2

As Bulgakov once wrote, "Fear your wishes, for they have a habit of coming true." I'd add that when they do come true, it's in a twisted way that you could never have fathomed out.

Like anyone with average looks, for my whole life I wanted to appear a little cuter than I actually was. Nature and my parents hadn't done an excellent job fulfilling their duties. Unlike my gorgeous sisters, I didn't have wild success with the opposite sex. You might call me average: narrow chin, long, straight nose, sharp cheekbones. A typical Hollywood-style villain nerd.

But the guy looking out at me from the mirror was ... cute. The jaw was more prominent. Against the backdrop of the jaw, the sculpted cheekbones looked completely natural. The ears were small, unlike the radio detectors I'd grown used to. The eyebrows were blond—actually, silvery—and the skin and hair were noticeably lighter. The only thing that hadn't changed was my brown eyes. That was the only way I knew that the reflection in the mirror was mine.

But there could be no mistake. The light-haired, sturdy guy in the mirror was me. I frowned, scratched my forehead, and again adjusted my slightly wet hair. It looked like I was the one who needed first aid, not the stranger in the foundation pit. Calm, I had to stay calm.

I went back to the kitchen, as if I'd been hit by a dusty sack. The water had begun to boil long ago, but instead of the rice I just threw in the sausages and opened a beer. What a business. No, not quite. What a business. And I couldn't really tell anyone about what had happened. I'd be shipped off to the loony bin immediately. To be honest, at this point even I wasn't completely sure that I hadn't gone crazy.

What if the things that happened in all those fantasy books were coming true? Had the apocalypse come, were most people turning into zombies and just a few into Players?

I turned on my small kitchen TV and flipped through the channels. Vremya, Vesti, Novosti, Comedy Club, a soccer match—nothing out of the ordinary.

I even had to look out the window. Occasional passersby, wrapped in light jackets that were still too light for winter (it was all the fault of the late cold spell) were bustling home. No one was devouring or killing anyone. Maybe I'd been hurled into some sort of parallel universe?

I even walked around and across my apartment. No, it didn't gel with my theory. The same Soviet-era furniture: the folding couch, Grandma's old table with my laptop on it, the Czech wall unit - the last vestiges of a country that no longer existed. The chipped wooden windows, the wallpaper that had been put up when my grandfather was still alive, the curtains... They obviously didn't match the interior and who knows when they'd last been washed. Other than the computer and TVs—one in the tiny kitchen and the other in the bedroom-living room-only room—nothing had changed since my grandmother was around. I mean, I'm a loafer and my bachelor's existence only contributed to that.

I went back to the kitchen to mull some things over, especially because I'd finished the first bottle of beer and the sausages were cooked. I poured some mayonnaise and ketchup onto a plate and created an absentminded meal to the accompaniment of a sports commentator lamenting about how a striker had missed an empty goal from 10 yards away.

My head was heavy. I couldn't get myself to form even a few intelligent thoughts, all the more so because my body's efforts were focused on digesting the food. In fact, the beer was acting like a sedative. My eyes were sticking together and my nose was trying to get acquainted with the table. Sleep. I needed some sleep. There's a reason why people say you should sleep on it.

The alarm on my phone had been screaming for nearly a minute before I turned it off. I pattered to the bathroom in the darkness. The things you dream!