The Weave Collapsed Again

A sense of weightlessness struck him in his daze.

An Yi jolted, his body instinctively tensing and exerting force. In a panic, his right hand hooked into a crevice, and with that anchor point, he finally regained his balance and stopped sliding.

"Hoo—"

He let out a heavy breath, subconsciously assuming he had nearly fallen off the edge of his bed again.

But his ears were filled with a booming roar of water, and the cold, damp wind carried a fishy, cloying stench. His right leg felt as if a dog had torn a chunk of flesh from it, the pain making him twitch uncontrollably.

Something was wrong!

He snapped his eyes open and turned his head to look, the scene before him making his scalp tingle.

Beneath his feet was a pitch-black abyss of unknown depth; his lower body was dangling over the edge, his entire weight supported only by the fingers of his right hand.

Fortunately, the area where his upper body lay was a gentle slope, or he surely would have fallen.

"I..."

An Yi admitted he was a bit terrified; his mind was a mess, and his legs felt like jelly.

Don't panic, don't panic...

After a brief moment of psychological preparation, he cast aside his distracting thoughts and slowly turned his head away from the abyss. Pressing his chest and abdomen against the uneven earth and stone, he alternated his hands to find purchase, slowly inching his way upward.

Four or five minutes passed. After crawling several meters, he finally reached a relatively flat area.

He gasped for a few minutes to recover some strength, then sat up and nervously surveyed his surroundings.

It was a pit—a giant pit!

At a glance, the diameter was at least several kilometers, and he was right inside it!

"An earthquake?!"

An Yi rubbed his face hard, struggling to keep himself calm.

It was an overcast day, but visibility was decent.

Beneath him was a pillar of earth and stone, leaning diagonally against the wall of the pit, and he was in a half-ruined house halfway up the slope.

The wooden shack was dilapidated, with only the roof remaining, jutting diagonally into the ground and casting a patch of shadow. Scattered around were large amounts of broken planks that might have once been part of the house.

Looking around, there were many such earth and stone pillars nearby, some high and some low, in strange shapes, with landslides and collapses occurring at any moment.

Perhaps due to geological differences, although other parts of the giant pit were equally uneven, most were relatively gentle—some reaching the top of the pit, others plunging into bottomless darkness.

As far as the eye could see, the visible parts of the pit were littered with broken buildings, debris, and... countless corpses and humanoid monsters!

"Where the hell did I end up?"

An Yi huddled his body, his heart racing, yet his mind becoming increasingly clear.

The stone pillar beneath him was very steep, and massive amounts of water poured down from above the pit like waterfalls. The climbing difficulty was immense, so no monsters came this way; he was safe for the moment.

At the far end of the giant pit, where there was no rushing water, the slope was gentler. The monsters surging out from the darkness at the bottom of the pit all chose to charge up from there, appearing as shadowy, indistinct figures.

Screams, angry shouts, and roars echoed incessantly.

"Cold weapons!"

Whether monster or human, almost everyone fought with swords, bows, and crossbows. He saw no firearms, but instead, strange, colorful lights flashed from time to time.

"What is that?"

It was too far to see the details, but everything was so bizarre that An Yi felt a sense of unease.

He looked down at himself. The tattered gray robe was unfamiliar, as were his hands and body. His shoulder-length hair, matted with sweat, hung before his eyes—a tea-gray color with a silvery sheen.

This is clearly not me!

He had transmigrated!

"Where is this place?"

As the thought arose, a strange image suddenly projected into his mind:

A silver D20 spun incessantly, and fragmented memories were constantly thrown out from it, flashing back like a slideshow.

The original owner was named Anser Horleywen, 21 years old, who had lived in the trade city of Baldur's Gate since childhood.

After witnessing the power of the arcane in his youth, he had craved magic with a fanatical obsession. However, his parents were ordinary people who ran a bakery; they were comfortable enough, but they couldn't afford to hire a professional to teach him.

When he was 16, Fabian's Mage Tower in the Brampton District publicly recruited apprentices. Anser's parents couldn't refuse him and spent their entire savings to send him there to become a Magic Initiate.

But the private mage tower was just a money-making scheme. Fabian only held a class once a week and would leave immediately after, not caring at all whether the students understood.

The original owner's intelligence was only slightly better than an average person's. After five years of painstaking study, spending dozens of gold coins each year, he had only learned two cantrips: Light Spell and Freezing Ray, both from the Evocation School.

He simply couldn't master more difficult cantrips like Mage Hand or Prestidigitation.

Today, Anser was in his room studying arcane knowledge as usual when the earth suddenly shook. Buildings collapsed, and accompanied by a violent magical explosion, the East District and most of the Brampton District vanished from the surface, leaving behind an irregular giant pit.

The giant pit connected to the Underdark, and countless subterranean creatures flooded into the city, looting and killing. Criminals took advantage of the chaos to stir up trouble, and Baldur's Gate fell into complete disarray.

The mage tower stood on the edge of the pit, barely avoiding falling in, but faced with the sudden catastrophe, dozens of apprentices lost their heads.

When they found their Mentor, Fabian, in the Meditation Room, he was bleeding from his orifices and dying. He only managed to say, "The Weave has collapsed," before he died on the spot.

The Weave... it collapsed again!

It is common knowledge that the Goddess of Magic has always been prone to disaster, and the Weave has collapsed more than once. The Arcane Blight (Magic Plague), which makes spellcasters tremble at the mere mention of its name, was caused by the assassination of the third Goddess of Magic, Midnight, by the God of Murder, Cyric.

It seems now that the fourth Goddess of Magic has likely perished as well.

Just as everyone was losing their minds in a panic, two Gray Dwarves led a group of goblins and Orc Slaves charging into the wizard tower.

The wizard tower was in ruins and no longer possessed any Abjuration capabilities, leaving the apprentices with no choice but to flee for their lives.

Yet, the human heart is more treacherous than any monster.

As the apprentices attempted to break through the encirclement, the lead Assistant Teacher, Gais, used Mold Earth to destabilize the tower's foundation. The structure tilted, the edges collapsed, and several apprentices, including Anse, fell into the Giant Pit along with the monsters.

Before the original owner fell, he saw Gais taking advantage of the chaos to escape, clutching the Mentor's relics to his chest. He felt a deep, helpless hatred in his heart.

The good news was that he didn't die from the fall; the bad news was that the Gray Dwarf who fell with him didn't die either, and it gifted him a Mind Flayer before kicking him off the stone pillar.

The memories ended abruptly there. If nothing went wrong, the original owner hadn't survived and had kicked the bucket.

This place... it's actually the Faerûn of Dungeons & Dragons! An Yi felt a jolt of shock.

It is currently the 6th of the Month of Summer Tides, Dalereckoning 1699, more than two hundred years after the events of "Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus" (1492 DR) and over three hundred years since the Year of the Blue Fire in 1385 DR, when the Arcane Blight occurred.

In Anse's memories, one of his ancestors had moved from Luskan to Elturel, only to encounter the fall of the Holy City when Elturel was dragged into Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells.

Fortunately, the ancestor hadn't been in the city at the time and survived by chance, fleeing along the Chongsa River to Baldur's Gate.

Your luck is far worse than your ancestor's, Anse.

However, falling into the Underdark was still much better than falling into the Nine Hells.

An Yi grumbled inwardly. Since he had transmigrated, he would just have to live well with his new identity and new name.

In his past life, he was just a lowly wage slave with no attachments and no future; aside from virtual online entertainment, there was truly nothing to miss.

He shifted his body to ease his stiffness, then looked at his injured right calf.

The muscle was swollen and purple, but not deformed, and he could still move his toes and ankle slightly.

It shouldn't be broken.

Anse tilted his head to listen, but the sound of water was too loud to hear any movement from the top of the stone pillar.

With the roof overhead, the Gray Dwarf on the pillar shouldn't be able to see this spot.

The pillar was steep, and the Gray Dwarf was also injured; even if he discovered him, he likely wouldn't dare to climb down.

Confirming that there was no immediate threat to his life, he immediately focused his attention deep within his mind, on the silver die that was spinning incessantly.

This must be my cheat.

He felt a surge of excitement; this might be the key to breaking out of his current predicament.

The die was a D20, the most common type in Dungeons & Dragons rules. It was entirely silver, with a special symbol on each face, though all of them were dim and lusterless.

Anse tried to touch the die with his consciousness, and a vague piece of information transmitted into his heart.