PROLOGUE: End

(This is just an exposition for the personality and background of the MC. If u can guess the general characteristics of his personality from the synopsis, u don't need to read this if u wanna get straight to the actions.)

In the recesses of a dark apartment complex there lay a man with an unkempt appearance and an indiscernible age. His room was filled to the brim with litter accumulated through years of neglect. Not a speck of light from the outside world reached within, the only source of illumination came from a computer that ran 24/7.

Many would pity the living conditions this man experienced, but they would not be surprised. His story was rather common for his time. Outcasted by society by an inability to conform to normality, he was left all by himself with no friends to accompany him through life. To add insult to injury, he was even abandoned by his parents, disillusioned from the joy of parenting of his difficulties socializing with others. Though they had the tact to leave him enough money to sustain himself if that could even be considered a plus.

Left all alone. He took it upon himself to learn the bare minimum skills needed to sustain himself. He also took into learning ways to earn passive income if ever the fund provided by his former parents were not enough. For a boy who had been given nothing but neglect and disdain, it would be considered a miracle that he did not resign himself to whatever was in store beyond death, but he had something which he wished to continue doing in his life. Reading stories. A hobby picked up by people left with no places to go and no people to meet.

He thoroughly immersed himself in stories of numerous genres and mediums. He enjoyed tall fantastical tales some provided and pondered on the deep introspections given by others. He would read and flip the physical pages of a novel he bought with familiarity, and would do the same as he scrolled through the page of a web novel.

Though he consumed many stories. There was one, in particular, he would always cherish. Danmachi. It was the first story that provided him with a sense of wonder, beyond the generic fairy tales and stories he found in daily life. He instantly fell in love with the story.

Throughout the years he would both love and hate the courageous but naive behavior of the protagonist. He would adore the personality of the cast and the interaction they had with one another. He was beyond fascinated with how the world worked and what lay beyond the sceneries that were shown.

When he caught up to the anime, he moved to the novels. When he finished those, he would move on to the spin-off stories and mobile game for more canon material. And when all else was finished, he would move to fan forums and fan-created content while he waited for more material to be published.

This was his life. A constant cycle of diving into a world he could never live in, and diving out to perform the bare minimum to ensure he could continue doing it another day, though he had long lost his sense of time and distinguished new days from when he would wake up from his sleep, with it ending when he closed his eyes to slumber once again.

This cycle kept him going for an unknowable amount of time until it eventually wasn't enough to sustain him.

"....fuck"

There he lay, in a pile of litter and filth accumulated through the years. He woke up expecting to continue the cycle yet again, but his body failed to move. Weakness covered every part of his body, so much so that he even found it a struggle to breathe and even utter a single word.

'so this is how it ends...'

He always expected his bare minimum lifestyle to catch up with him at some point, so it wasn't a surprise to him when the day finally came.

'is it muscle atrophy? a lack of nutrients or vitamins? I could've sworn I consumed enough to keep going...though pondering on it won't even matter now that it is happening ...'

'guess I'll just close my eyes until I stop breathing. I read somewhere this is the best hypothetical way to pass'

Throughout his time in isolation, he would pick up random tidbits of information from numerous forums while he searched for more stories to consume. Though he never dared to participate in these conversations. Physical or online, he was a true anti-social loner.

As minutes passed by, he could feel his body slowly shutting down. Though he tried his best to clear his thoughts for the inevitable...all that came were regrets...regrets he accumulated throughout the years...regrets which only surfaced now that he no longer had stories to distract himself from confronting them.

'damn it'

Though his body failed to allow him to continue his cycle of immersion, it allowed him the chance to release the emotions he hid for so long as numerous tears fell down his unkempt face.

'I love stories, but I never said I didn't want to live a normal life'

'I wanted to have family, friends, maybe a lover if I was lucky'

'I wanted to have an experience as heartwarming as the slice of life stories I read-"

'I wanted to have an experience as perverted as the porn I watch and the fantasies I made-'

'Though this world doesn't even compare to fantasies...I wanted to experience an adventure too...'

He lamented his lack of everything he desired. He cursed the world for abandoning him when he wasn't even old enough to cross the street without supervision. But just as much as he hated the world, he hated himself too in equal if not greater measure.

He hated how he didn't push himself to learn to socialize. He was able to learn the bare minimum life skills to read stories more often, so it was definitely possible to learn to solve his problems if he put his mind to it. Instead, he distracted himself with stories and comforted himself with a lie he knew was false.

He had an able body and mind, yet he did nothing with them to solve his problems. He desired an adventure but was too much of a coward to move in the face of his fears. A hypocrite through and through.

'heh...so this is the hypocrisy that Archer hated Shirou for having...though Shirou managed to do something in the end despite being a hypocrite...'

He finally confronted all the emotions he welled up. Though they're left unresolved he felt a bit of satisfaction at having finally faced them.

'this is the end of the line for 'ol...I don't even remember my name anymore...I guess dying makes u delirious...'

'I...just hope isekai's are real...'

'that way...I can do what I wasn't able to in this life...'

Thus he closed his eyes. His heart stopped beating. The heat of his body slowly but surely faded. His corpse was left undiscovered for a long time. Only having been discovered when his apartment complex was set to be demolished 6 months after his passing.

Though the discovery of his body brought some surprise. The world quickly moved on without him. But beyond the eyes of the people of his home world, his soul began a journey through a dimension beyond comprehension.