The Writer's Venture

It was quiet; only the light breathing of the room’s owner, Tom, could be heard. It was already almost midday, yet he was still sleeping, although not on the bed, and his position was not at all comfortable.

Tom was a newly established writer who had just started getting used to the tight schedules and deadlines. Time management was not his strong suit. As a result, he needed to stay up late in order to be able to meet the set deadlines. On rare occasions, he even fell asleep by his computer, just like now.

He was leaned back, his hands resting on the arms of his chair. He had his mouth wide open, and a long string of drool had made its way down his chin, staining his shirt.

He would have kept sleeping if it wasn’t for a sudden ring. Someone had pressed his doorbell, and a loud, sudden sound woke him up instantly. It was rude, but it needed an awakening.

Feeling his slavia on his face, Tom quickly used his hand to clean it. With a slow movement, he lowered his hand back down; then he stared at his monitor, which had already turned off automatically.

“Great... I slept by in my chair again...”

He muttered as he turned the monitor on again and was about to start focusing on writing again, but his doorbell rang again. Upon hearing its sound, he took a deep breath and stood up.

Since he was so busy, he decided to do his usual grocery shopping online instead of going to the store personally, and it seemed that the delivery had arrived. Tom had a decently sized house with a bedroom, a well-equipped kitchen, a large living room, a study, a bathroom, a storage room, and a garage, which was currently empty as he had lent his car to his friend.

The moment he got to the door and opened it, he noticed a relatively angry man, though he couldn’t be bothered as he was still half asleep. The man pushed him a few documents and then instantly walked away.

Tom slowly stepped outside, rubbing his eyes. He saw how the man got into the truck and quickly drove off. His driveway was full of wooden crates.

“I thought they would at least put them into my garage...”

He murmured under his breath as he tried to fight off a yawn.

“At least maybe by moving these boxes, I will be able to wake up... I still need to focus on writing... Why the hell did I not divide my workload up properly?!”

With a loud groan, he opened the door of his garage and started pushing the box inside. He was so frustrated that he didn’t even check whether he had everything he had ordered or even opened them to see what should go into the fridge or the freezer.

In a few long minutes, he managed to transport the boxes to his garage, so he quickly went inside. From his kitchen, he grabbed a large slice of bread and sat back down to write.

Fortunately for him, after moving the boxes, he felt quite awake and, to some extent, energetic, though it quickly faded as he began to work. From time to time, he slightly moved his head and shoulders; in that process, his long and somewhat unattended black hair got in his way and covered his big blue eyes, but he just shoved his hair out of the way.

Suddenly, as he was immersed in his work, an earthquake shook him. It only lasted strangely for a brief moment, but in that moment, he fell off of his chair.

“What the...”

He muttered angrily, then pushed himself up and sat back on his chair. Just to be safe, he saved his current progress and was about to continue working, but his computer suddenly turned off, and another, but even stronger tremor appeared.

He hit his head against the cold floor once again, and as he finally registered what had happened, something unexpected started hovering before his eyes. It seemed as if it was a floating piece of text with a strange colour scheme. It had a dark grey background and a yellowish font.

“The system is starting! Please stand by!”

He just shook his head as it still hurt after hitting the ground, and as he once again looked in the direction where he saw the text, it had already vanished.

“I must have hit my head quite hard... There is no way such a thing would really happen; in stories, even in mine, a system only appears after some sort of tragic or strange event... All I did was work.”

An audible sigh left his mouth as he once again stood up. As he stared at the now dark screen, he clenched his teeth and fists, but then just relaxed.

His study had quite a large window through which he had learned that the sun was already going down. He had worked for hours without properly eating or drinking. Although he was angry that he was disturbed, at the very least, he realised that it was high time to eat something properly.

He didn’t have the time nor the energy to cook anything at all, so he just grabbed the remainder of the bread and some ham from his fridge and then prepared to eat. However, just as his butt touched the chair by his dining table, he felt tired and almost instantly collapsed onto his food and started snoring.

Just then, two new notifications appeared, overlapping one another.

“Notice! System initiated! Proceeding to prepare Host’s body!”

“Notice! A new quest has been issued! Please plant these seeds to begin your journey! Seeds had been transported to Host’s inventory!”

The first message soon vanished, but the one detailing the quest stayed, and then a third but entirely different panel appeared.

“Name: Tom Hun

Cultivation: Mortal

Farming: 0

Alchemy: 0

Forging: 0"