"When I woke up, I was the dirt beneath someone's shoe.
They didn't say sorry."
Darkness.
Not sleep. Not void.Something else.
Awareness—barely formed, flickering like a faulty bulb—began to stretch across… what? A space? No. Not space. A shape. But not a body. Something vast. Something heavy.
Aki Morizawa didn't open his eyes.
He didn't have any.
He simply... was.
He remembered a desk. A high-rise window. His reflection against endless lights, his suit wrinkled, his inbox full. Then, a tremor in his left arm. A flash of pain. His forehead hit the keys.
After that—nothing.
And now?
There was something. Something immense.
Time passed. Days, perhaps. Or seconds.
He existed in fragments. At first, they were like dreams.He felt the sensation of sun on rock, of moisture beneath moss, of worms burrowing. But not as a person lying in a forest.
As the forest.
He became aware of hills. Then valleys. Rivers. Glaciers.
Every time it hurt—he realized it was because something had changed. A chunk of him had broken off, perhaps from an earthquake or a landslide. Not pain in the way a person feels pain. More like a... memory being erased. A puzzle with one piece suddenly missing.
It scared him.
He had no mouth to scream.
Then came the birds.
They landed. Their talons scraped bark. They nested in the crags of his cliffs. They pooped on him.
"Charming," he thought.
That was the first thought that felt truly his.
It came like a sudden breeze—identity. The name followed:
Aki Morizawa.35. Unmarried.Burned out before he ever burned bright.
What kind of reincarnation was this?
He'd heard of the truck-kun trope, but this was ridiculous. If he was in a fantasy world, where was the cheat skill? Where was the cute goddess? Hell, he would've taken reincarnation as a slime.
Instead, he was a continent.
It took him what felt like years to figure out that he had layers of awareness.
The surface: trees, lakes, mountains. He could sense them dimly, like an idle screen.
Deeper: movement. Creatures. Worms. Roots. A whole underworld of activity, none of it asking permission.
Deeper still: pulse. Not blood, but something like mana. A system of ley lines, threads of spiritual energy moving in patterns too complex to follow.
He felt like someone who had been strapped into the cockpit of a spaceship mid-flight, with all the instruments flashing and no clue what anything did.
And then, one day, it happened.
Footsteps.
They were light. Human. Two pairs, crunching through the underbrush of a young forest in what Aki instinctively knew was his northern range.
His attention zoomed in like a lens focusing. He felt the shift in temperature around them. The way their weight compacted the soil. The displacement of bugs. The breath in the air.
For the first time since becoming this world, Aki Morizawa wasn't alone.
He couldn't see them. Not exactly. But by sensing the changes in the environment—the rhythm of their steps, the disruption of airflow, the shadows—they appeared in his mind like ghostly silhouettes formed from context.
A boy and a girl. Teenagers, maybe seventeen.
Both wore rough clothes. The boy carried a crude bronze sword. The girl had a staff that hummed faintly with magic. Aki could feel it vibrating against his ley lines like someone plucking a nerve.
They were talking. Their words didn't register. He had no ears. But the vibrations did. Sound passed through the trees, into the soil, into him.
"This place gives me the creeps," the boy muttered.
"Don't be a baby," said the girl. "It's called the Worldroot for a reason. It's ancient. Holy."
Ancient? Holy?
Aki listened. Their words sharpened. Not through his effort, but theirs. Something about the girl's staff—it resonated with him. Amplified the signal.
"They say this forest is where the World God dreams," the girl continued, reverently. "Where everything started."
Aki froze.
World God?
Were they talking about him?
His awareness flared. Not just in the forest, but across the globe. As if recognition granted him new permissions. Whole regions he'd previously ignored lit up like cities at night.
Dozens of scattered tribes. Cultures. Civilizations.
They were all living on him.Worshipping him.Changing him.
He had no temples. No shrines. But the belief was there. He felt it like a heartbeat. Tiny, flickering beacons across his body.
Aki, once a cog in a corporate machine, had become something much stranger.
He wasn't just reincarnated into a world.
He was being shaped by those who lived within him.
He began to experiment.
At first, it was minor. Shifting a breeze. Cooling the temperature slightly so the girl would look up, rub her arms, and mention the "gods being close."
But it cost him something. Energy? Mana? No—something deeper. Whenever he exerted influence, he lost clarity in other parts of his consciousness. Like a computer allocating RAM.
Still, it was worth it.
Over time, he learned to bend a tree branch slightly. Nudge a falling leaf. Tilt a rock. These were his first words, his first interactions.
It wasn't much, but it was enough to plant dreams.
Dreams became his language.
Every night, when people slept in his forests, or by his rivers, or on cliff sides where the wind sang, he sent fragments—flashes of thought, instinct, image.
He couldn't speak in sentences.
But he could show:
A deer walking a certain path.
Fire swallowing a village.
A woman, drowning in a place not yet built.
A smile. A name. A forgotten song.
Sometimes, dreamers awoke screaming.
Sometimes, they awoke inspired.
Either way, they believed.
And belief made Aki stronger.
A century passed.
For Aki, it felt like watching a film through a kaleidoscope.
Civilizations rose. One tribe discovered fire magic by accident when their shaman dreamed of burning stars. Another built wooden machines that mimicked ants after dreaming of a hive mind.
Aki didn't plan these things. He simply inspired. Seeded fragments into sleep and watched them bloom or wither.
Until one day, something unexpected happened.
A new arrival entered his world.
He felt it immediately—a puncture, a displacement, like a needle piercing skin. A ripple across the ley lines. A presence that didn't belong.
This one wasn't born here.
It was summoned.
The boy who appeared in the southern deserts wore modern clothes: a torn blazer, sneakers, and a school emblem Aki vaguely recognized.
Another Japanese student.
He woke up gasping, panicking, screaming in a language no one else understood. Until he didn't.
A system message appeared above him. Aki could feel it—not as text, but as an intrusion. A program running independently of his will.
[Welcome to Veledra, Summoned Hero.][Your skill is: Infinite Blade Works – Unique Tier.][Your destiny is to conquer the Demon King.]
Aki reeled.
He didn't authorize this.
Who did?
That night, Aki dreamed. For the first time, he dreamed.
He stood in a mirror. But the mirror was cracked. His face shifted, blurred, turned into mountain ranges, clouds, a city skyline.
Behind him stood a woman.Long silver hair. Eyes like sewing needles. Smiling.
"How are you enjoying the test, Aki?" she asked sweetly. "I was curious how long it'd take you to realize you're not alone."
"Who are you?"
"A crafter of worlds. Or a troll with divine permissions. Same thing."
"You did this to me?"
She tilted her head.
"Technically? You accepted the Terms of Service. No one reads those. Besides, you were going to die anyway. This way, you get to live forever."
"As a world?"
"Not just any world. A testing ground. For heroes. For summoned ones. For gods in training."
Aki felt himself break again. Not physically. Existentially.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one does. But if you play your cards right, maybe you can do more than observe.""Maybe one day... you'll walk among them again."
He awoke with a scream that only the earth could hear.
And deep in the forest, where an elf girl slept under ancient roots, a dream bloomed in her mind.
A wordless image:A man made of mountains, weeping.A world crying to be known.
She sat up, breathless.
"The World God…" she whispered. "He's awake."
[To Be Continued in Chapter 2: The Hero Who Shattered the Sandstone Sky]