"If you want to take my family's shop today, you'll have to walk over my greatsword first!"
"Heheh, little sister Debbie, why make things so hard on yourself? Your father fell gravely ill and passed away, and you borrowed a big sum from me to see to his funeral. Per the contract, if you can't repay the debt, Anthony's Magic Cottage comes to me. We've got it in black and white. Are you trying to back out?"
"Busca, you know perfectly well I could have repaid that money. But these past few days you've been illegally driving my customers away and wrecking the business here, so I can't scrape the money together. Everyone knows how long you've been drooling over Anthony's Magic Cottage!"
"Hehehe, say whatever you like. The contract's right here, and whether you want to hand over this Magic Cottage or not, you've got no choice in the matter. Little sister Debbie, I'd advise you not to do anything stupid."
His consciousness had only just returned when Ye Chui suddenly heard this conversation.
What the hell is all this? Is someone playing a movie right beside me? And it's the scene where a shameless bully picks on a poor little girl — have people no decency anymore!
He opened his eyes and instinctively tried to sit up, but a cry of pain escaped him and he dropped back down, his whole body aching with a sour soreness too miserable to describe.
But what astonished Ye Chui even more was something else. Where on earth is this place?
He found himself lying in a little room lined on every side with all manner of strange odds and ends, decorated in a style steeped in something… magical. And in the middle of this room that looked like a junk shop stood two groups of people facing off.
One side had three people. Their leader was a short, pudgy man with a fat head and big ears, a high, prominent nose, a mop of red curly hair, and a rather comical strip of goatee on his chin; he wore a golden-yellow robe. This was presumably the Busca from that conversation.
The other two on his side were tall, heavily built brutes with savage faces, longswords in their hands, grinning nastily as they came forward.
And Debbie, who was facing off against these three, turned out to be a girl who looked no older than fifteen or sixteen, with a spirited mop of short black hair and a slight, delicate frame. What Ye Chui found truly unbelievable was the colossal greatsword in her hands, a weapon fully as big as she was. It had to weigh a hundred jin at the very least, yet those thin little arms of hers could swing it up and hold it upright in the air before her eyes…
Only someone who saw it could appreciate just how absurd that picture was.
Holy crap! What is going on here? Where am I? Who are these people? They… they all look like Westerners? And their clothes don't look modern at all… Ye Chui was left staring, dumbstruck. I clearly remember being in my own rented room — so how did I end up here? Unless… I died back then, and this is a transmigration?
As a hacker who had spent most of his life in the online world, Ye Chui had of course read his share of web novels.
Just then, a violent headache swept through his head.
It came in waves of memory — the memories of this body's original owner.
Ye Chui felt dizzy and dazzled, and in an instant he understood a great many things.
This was a world of magic utterly different from the one Ye Chui had come from, a world ruled by magic, called the Aigendas Continent — a name that instinctively gave Ye Chui the refreshing chill of a summer drink… The owner of this body was called "Hammerhead," an orphan adopted by George Anthony, the proprietor of this shop, Anthony's Magic Cottage. Being an orphan, naturally he had no proper formal name.
Because Hammerhead had shown some talent for magic since childhood, Old George had treated him as his successor. Old George also had a daughter — that little sister Debbie, the one with the short hair swinging the greatsword — and in Old George's plans, he had even hoped Hammerhead would one day marry Debbie and take her as his wife…
But Old George had never been in good health, and not long ago he had fallen ill and passed away.
To treat Old George's illness, Hammerhead and Debbie had spent every last bit of their savings, but in the end Old George still hadn't pulled through. To pay for his funeral and settle the medical bills they owed, Hammerhead and Debbie had no choice but to borrow money from Busca, the richest man on the street, putting the magic shop up as collateral.
Busca owned a great many businesses, including a magic shop on this very street. Big as that shop was, its business had never matched Anthony's Magic Cottage, and he had long coveted the cottage fiercely; he had pestered Old George about it even before. Now was the perfect opportunity. To get his hands on the little shop, he had deliberately used despicable tricks to quietly drive away the customers who came to buy at the Magic Cottage, so that Hammerhead and Debbie could not gather the money they owed him in time.
Today Busca had come with his men to make trouble, to drive Hammerhead and Debbie out and seize the Magic Cottage.
When they arrived, Hammerhead went over to stop them, only for one of them to shove him to the ground. His head struck the floor, and that was the end of him — Hammerhead had walked the path of magic since childhood and his body was frail, so his little life was snuffed out, and it was Ye Chui who got the bargain. For reasons unknown, he had taken over Hammerhead's body…
So that means I'm a mage now?
Sifting through the memories in his head, Ye Chui was astonished beyond words. In his last life he had been a hacker known as "the Mage"; now, reborn, he had actually become a real mage! And in that same instant a clang-clang-clang of metal rang out — the two brutes Boss Busca had brought had already come to blows with Debbie.
Debbie's frame was slender, yet she could swing a greatsword weighing a hundred jin with ease, which secretly amazed Ye Chui. But having inherited Hammerhead's memories, Ye Chui also understood that this was not at all rare on the Aigendas Continent.
On the continent, apart from mages, there were all sorts of other professions to choose from — swordsmen, for instance.
Swordsmen themselves split into further branches. Debbie had no talent for sensing magic, but she had shown a superb, first-rate gift as a swordsman. Her dream was to become a greatswordsman — the most powerful of all the swordsman branches…
But for now Debbie was only a rank-two novice swordsman, and the two men Boss Busca had brought were swordsmen as well. They were not greatswordsmen, the most domineering of the swordsman branches, but they were rank-two novice swordsmen all the same. With the two of them attacking Debbie alone, how could she possibly stand a chance?
Seeing the little sister with the greatsword beaten back step by step, Ye Chui could not possibly stay silent any longer.