Chapter 1: The Magic Net Crashed Again
In a daze, a sudden sense of weightlessness hit.
An Yi jolted awake, his body instinctively tensing and exerting force. In the panic, his right hand gripped a crevice, giving him a foothold, and his body finally regained balance, no longer sliding.
“Phew—”
He let out a heavy breath, subconsciously thinking he had nearly fallen off the edge of the bed again.
But the roaring sound of water filled his ears, the damp cold wind carried a sticky fishy smell, and his right leg felt like a chunk of flesh had been bitten off by a dog, throbbing with pain.
Something’s wrong!
He abruptly opened his eyes and turned his head to look. The scene before him made his scalp tingle.
Beneath his feet was a pitch-black Abyss, its depth impossible to see. His lower body dangled outside, held only by a few fingers of his right hand.
Fortunately, the spot where his upper body lay was a gentle slope; otherwise, he would have definitely fallen.
‘I…’
An Yi admitted he was a bit scared, his mind chaotic, his legs weak.
Don’t panic, don’t panic…
After a bit of mental preparation, he cleared his distracting thoughts, slowly turned his head without looking down, pressed his chest and abdomen against the uneven earth and stone, and alternately used his hands to find handholds, inching upward slowly.
After four or five minutes, he had crawled several meters and finally reached a relatively flat area.
He panted for a few minutes to recover some strength, sat up, and tensely surveyed the surroundings.
This was a pit, a Giant Pit!
Visually, its diameter was at least several kilometers, and he was right in it!
‘Earthquake?!’
An Yi rubbed his face hard, trying to calm himself.
It was overcast now, but visibility was still decent.
Beneath him was a pillar of earth and stone slanting against the pit wall, and he was in a half-collapsed Wooden House midway up the slope.
The Wooden House was in ruins, with only the roof slanting into the ground, casting a patch of Shadow. Scattered around were numerous broken Wooden Boards, likely once part of the house.
Looking around, there were many such pillars of earth and stone nearby, tall and short, oddly shaped, with landslides and collapses happening anytime.
Perhaps due to geological differences, while other parts of the Giant Pit were similarly uneven, most were relatively gentle; the high ones neared the pit’s top, the low ones bottomlessly dark.
In the visible distance, the pit was littered with broken Buildings and miscellaneous items, as well as… countless corpses and humanoid monsters!
‘Where the hell did they drop me?’
An Yi huddled his body, panicking inside, but his mind grew clearer.
The pillar underfoot was very steep, with massive water flows cascading from above the Giant Pit like waterfalls, making climbing extremely difficult. No monsters came this way; it was temporarily safe.
At the far end of the Giant Pit, without water erosion, the slope was gentler. The monsters surging from the pit’s dark bottom chose to charge up from there, shadowy figures indistinct.
Screams, angry shouts, roars… one after another.
‘Cold weapons!’
Whether monsters or humans, almost all fought with swords, bows, and crossbows. No firearms were visible; instead, colorful strange lights and shadows flashed occasionally.
‘What is that?’
Too far to see details, but everything was too strange; An Yi felt uneasy.
He looked down at himself. The tattered gray robe was unfamiliar, as were his hands and body. His half-long hair, sticky with sweat, hung before his eyes—a tea-gray color shimmering with silver light.
‘This clearly isn’t me!’
He had transmigrated!
‘Where is this?’
The thought just arose when a strange image projected in his mind:
A Silver Twenty-Sided Die spun endlessly, fragments of Memory continually ejected from it, like slides as Memories began to flash back.
The original owner’s name was Anse Hollewen, 21 years old this year, who had lived in the Trade Capital Baldur’s Gate since childhood.
In his youth, after witnessing the power of Arcane, he crazily craved Magic. But his parents were ordinary people running a Bakery; they had enough to eat but couldn’t afford to hire a professional to teach him.
At 16, Fabian’s Mage Tower in the Brampton District openly recruited Apprentices. Unable to dissuade him, Anse’s parents spent all their savings to send him in, making him a Magic Apprentice.
But private Mage Towers were just for making money. Fabian taught only once a week, lectured and left, not caring if you understood.
The original owner’s Intelligence was only slightly above average. After five years of diligent study, costing dozens of Gold Coins annually, he only learned two Cantrips: Light and Ray of Frost, both Evocation School Spells.
Higher-difficulty Cantrips like Mage Hand and Prestidigitation he could never master.
Today, as usual, Anse was studying Arcane Knowledge in his Room when a massive earthquake struck, Buildings collapsed, accompanied by a violent Eldritch Blast. The Eastern District and most of the Brampton District vanished from the surface, leaving an irregular Giant Pit.
The Giant Pit connected to the Underdark, countless underground Creatures surged into the City, plundering and killing, while lawless people took advantage of the chaos. Baldur’s Gate was in total disarray.
The Mage Tower stood at the Giant Pit’s edge, barely not falling in, but facing the sudden change, dozens of Apprentices panicked.
When they found Mentor Fabian in the Meditation room, he was bleeding from all orifices, on his last breath, uttering only “Magic Net Crashed” before dying on the spot.
Magic Net… Crashed again!
As everyone knew, the Goddess of Magic was always disaster-prone. The Magic Net had Crashed more than once; the Arcane Cataclysm）Magical Plague（ was caused by the third-generation Goddess of Magic, Midnight, being assassinated by the God of Murder Cyric.
Now it seemed the fourth-generation Goddess of Magic was probably gone too.
As everyone’s mentality exploded in panic, two Duergar led a group of Goblin and Orc Slaves charging into the Mage Tower.
The Mage Tower was badly damaged, no longer able to defend, so the Apprentices could only flee for their lives.
But people were more vicious than monsters.
As the Apprentices broke through the encirclement, Assistant Instructor Gais used Mold Earth to destabilize the Mage Tower’s center of gravity. The tower tilted, its edge collapsed, and several Apprentices including Anse, along with monsters, fell into the Giant Pit.
Before falling, the original owner saw Gais flee in the chaos, clutching the Mentor’s relic, harboring dark hatred but powerless.
Good news: he didn’t die from the fall. Bad news: the falling Duergar didn’t die either, hit him with a mind spike and kicked him off the pillar.
The Memory ended there abruptly; as expected, the original owner didn’t survive and croaked.
‘This place… is actually the Faerun continent in Dungeons & Dragons!’ An Yi’s heart shocked.
It was now Valley Reclamation Calendar 1699, Month of the Summer Tide, July 6. Over two hundred years had passed since the “Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus” event（1492）, and over three hundred years since the Arcane Cataclysm in the Year of Blue Flame 1385.
In Anse’s Memory, one of his ancestors moved from Luskan to Elturel just in time for the holy city’s fall; Elturel was dragged into the first layer of the Nine Hells, Avernus.
Fortunately, the ancestor wasn’t in the city then, survived by luck, and fled along the Chongsa River to Baldur’s Gate.
‘Your luck is far worse than your ancestor’s, Anse.’
Still, falling into the Underdark was much better than falling into the Nine Hells.
An Yi inwardly griped: since he had transmigrated, he’d live on well with the new identity and name.
In his previous life, he was just a stinky wage slave, no ties, no prospects, nothing to miss except those virtual online entertainments.
He shifted his body to loosen the stiffness, then looked at his injured right calf.
The muscle was swollen and purple, but not deformed; toes and ankle could still move slightly.
‘Probably no fracture.’
Anse listened carefully, but the water was too loud to hear activity at the pillar’s top.
‘With the roof covering, the Duergar on the pillar probably can’t see here.’
The pillar was very steep, and the Duergar was injured too; even if discovered, they probably wouldn’t dare come down.
Confirming no immediate Life threat, he focused on the depths of his mind, that endlessly spinning silver die.
‘This must be my golden finger.’
He felt exhilarated inside; this might be the key to escaping the current predicament.
The die was the most common twenty-sided die in Dungeons & Dragons Rules, entirely silver, each face bearing a special symbol, but all dimmed.
Anse tried mentally touching the die, and a vague message reached his heart.
Supplement:
- This book’s story is set on the Faerun continent. After the protagonist transmigrates, the timeline has advanced two hundred years; seas have turned to mulberry fields, times have changed, so it’s semi-fictional;
- This book mainly uses DND5R setting, incorporating some 5E and 3R elements, but the rulebook serves tabletop role-playing. For realism and logic, there are a few private settings.
Also, not knowing DND won’t affect reading; necessary settings will be explained, check the work’s related for details; - In Dungeons & Dragons（DND）, Wizard equates to witch, same word in Common Tongue, referring to Arcane Spellcasters who master Spellcasting through study;
- In DND, Goblin is just Goblin, numerous clans. Original term Goblin, transliterated as Goblin.
Ogre and Bugbear are Goblin kin, all Hobgoblin-related; - Baldur’s Gate 3 occurs in DR1492. In DR1494, Elturel falls into the Nine Hells, forced into the Blood War.
This book occasionally mentions the event, but the early story doesn’t involve the Nine Hells, Abyss, Celestial Mountains, or other Outer Planes.
