I awoke feeling like something was off. I probably had a weird dream, but I felt that I should have heard thousands of claps in response to that simple fact.
The ground beneath me was cold stone, cracked and aged. I could feel it, the years etched into every spot , the erosion of time eating at this place. Slowly, I sat up, brushing away the dust clinging to my cloak.
My eyes adjusted. Four blank walls enclosed the room, paper windows torn and stained. There were desks, perhaps twenty, no, fewer, all covered in dust. The air reeked of mildew and disuse. Cobwebs clung to the corners like pathetic banners of surrender. It was a classroom once… now nothing but a corpse.
"Tch," I scoffed, rising to my feet. My boots echoed as I stepped across the cracked tile. "This is the place where mongrels are taught to crawl?"
What the hell… why did I say that? I said without thinking, so it surprised me. The only thing I could do after that was frown since it didn't feel like me. Was I drunk?
I walked slowly between the desks, dragging my fingers across one of the surfaces. Dust. Dirt. Decay. Nothing here was worthy of remembrance, and yet, some part of me… knew it.
'This place…'
This place, this academy, stirred something unfamiliar in my mind. I could feel it, a flickering ember buried in the ash: names, voices, a language not quite my own, yet nestled in the back of my thoughts like an unwelcome guest.
The walls bore emblems — a leaf, perhaps? Faded, peeled paint revealed the symbol etched into wood. I narrowed my eyes.
"Konohagakure..." The word left my lips, though I had no memory of speaking it before. And with it came a flood — not memories, no. Fragments. Impressions. A world not mine, yet somehow stitched into my soul.
I clenched my fist. Chakra. The very essence of life here... crude compared to true divinity, but malleable. Potent. It sang to me — no, it knelt before me, waiting to be commanded.
And then I laughed — low, sharp, echoing through the dead halls.
"Very well. If this is the world I've awakened into, then let them bear witness."
I stepped to the broken window and shoved it open with a flick of my wrist. Rusted hinges screamed in protest. The outside was cloaked in twilight, the village beyond still slumbering — unaware their king had returned, or perhaps arrived anew.
It was weird for me to think like that… but it also felt natural. Regardless… This place... I knew it.
Not in the way one knows a battlefield, forged in sweat and blood and memory. No, this was something stranger. More distant, as if it had been whispered to me in a half-remembered dream.
The Ninja Academy. The name surfaced from the mire of unfamiliar knowledge, uninvited but certain.
I shouldn't know that. I shouldn't know any of this, the crude layout of this pathetic building, not even the word "chakra" that pressed against my mind. My brow furrowed, my hand brushing against the wall again. Wood. Stone. Real. All of it too real. The air was damp in my lungs, thick with the scent of rot and forgotten sweat. I could taste the iron of age on my tongue. Dreams were never this real.
"This… is no illusion," I muttered, more to myself than to anyone still watching. "And no dream I would deign to entertain would be so... provincial."
I turned in place, scanning every shadow. The room was empty, yet I felt watched. Not by eyes, but by something older. Time, perhaps. Memory. As if the walls themselves remembered laughter, lectures, footsteps… lives. I had no place among those memories. And yet...
A sharp ache pulsed at the back of my mind. Not pain, not quite, but a pressure. Like trying to remember a name that danced just out of reach. Why did this place feel familiar?
I had never been here. I would never come to a place like this. Yet still… I knew that door led to the hallway.I knew that locker in the corner had once belonged to someone with dreams bigger than his talent.
I knew the names of jutsu I had no right to know. For the first time in what felt like eons, I felt something strange, not rage, not disdain… but unease. My gaze narrowed, and I reached inward, calling forth power.
Chakra stirred. No... more than that. The Gate of Babylon pulsed behind my spine like a heartbeat, still present. Still mine. At least that remained unchanged. Even if the world had shifted, even if my throne had vanished, my treasury endured. My divinity remained untouched.
Good. A king may tolerate mystery — for a time. But confusion? That was a luxury for peasants. Still... I could not shake the feeling.
"I don't belong here."
So the question became: why am I here? And more importantly: who dared summon me to this world of shadows and shinobi?
As I stood in the silence, something pulsed behind my eyes, a flicker, a faint blue shimmer, almost imperceptible. Then…
Ding.
The sound was soft, artificial. Utterly foreign to this crumbling world of wood and stone. And in the next breath, it appeared before me:
A glowing panel. Suspended in the air. Transparent yet legible. A screen, for lack of a better term — digital, sterile, completely out of place.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE INITIALIZED]
Name: Gilgamesh
Class: Archer Lv 01 (0/100)
Health: 200/200
Chakra: 200/200
Stamina: 200/200
Attributes:
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 10
Charisma: 10
Luck: D
Abilities:
– Gate of Babylon [Unlimited Treasury of Noble Phantasms]
– Charisma EX [Leadership befitting a god-king]
– Golden Rule [Wealth, Fortune, and Impeccable Taste]
Alignment: Chaotic Good (?)
Current Location: Abandoned Ninja Academy, Konohagakure
Objective: Unknown
Status: Incomplete Integration... Memories Syncing…
I stared at the panel, unblinking.
"...What in the hells is this?"
A system? A game interface? I recognized the structure from dreams — no, from fragments of memory that weren't mine and were mine. RPGs. Status menus. The vocabulary of some other world. Another life of mine?
And there, right at the top, the name that should've been a declaration of dominion — Gilgamesh.
I gritted my teeth, the corners of my mouth twitching into a smirk half-formed by disbelief.
"So that's the game, is it? I've been assigned a role… As if I needed such confirmation of my supremacy."
Yet, deep down, something didn't fit. The memories of the king of heroes and my memories as an regular person mixing together. That would explain why I said such weird things. It looked like my personality was changing thanks to Gilgamesh's memories.
If this were illusion, it was maddeningly well-crafted. Too consistent. Too grounded. The cold of the floor, the taste of stale air, the grime under my nails — far too real for any dream or game.
No… this was reality. Or something dangerously close to it.
The half-destroyed academy around me stood as proof. It wasn't simply old, it was broken. The scars of battle still clung to the shattered windows, the scorched walls. Whatever happened here wasn't long ago.
War? Disaster?
Whatever the case, answers wouldn't fall into my lap — even if glowing blue screens tried to pretend otherwise.
I closed my fist, and with a mere thought, the system vanished from view — not gone, but hiding like a dog waiting to be summoned.
"Very well, then. If this world would play games with me, let it try."
I turned toward the exit of the classroom. Light seeped through the cracks in the far wall, the scent of smoke faint in the wind.
If there were answers, they would be out there — somewhere amid the ruins. And whoever placed me here, whoever dared treat a king like a pawn in their game…They would kneel before this was over.