Sneak Peek at a New Isekai Series - Dungeon Brawler

Starting on Mondays, I'll be dropping new chapters for Aeres Academy, Book 1 in my upcoming Dungeon Brawler series. As with any preview chapter, these are rough drafts and haven't been through editing.

Preview chapters will follow the current tier release format that Celestial Cataclysms chapters follow.

Enjoy!

Prologue

My life changed five times after I was unceremoniously deposited on the planet of Tionerth, fully reincarnated in a body that was about sixty years too young.

The first time was when numb, exhausted and ignorant of the native language, I stumbled into the cobblestoned back alley that hosted Eamond’s restaurant. Among the refuse, the slumbering bundles of humanity and the alien smells of the world, I came across something familiar. A gang of hoodlums, urchins, beating on a man. 

Urchins in the Fagin’s gang sense of word, with shivs and chipped knives, ragged clothing and the thin musculature of the starving. Their victim was bleeding, a deep cut down one arm, the refuse pail fallen to the ground and spilling assorted vegetable scraps. 

I reacted without thinking, stepping into the fray and calling for them to halt their attack. Would have worked better if I spoke their language. Would have been easier to win the fight, if my body did what it was told. But it lacked the musculature, the trained reflexes and muscle memory of my old one. I might have died from old age, but I had kept training till my very last day – even if it was more tai chi than kickboxing.

It was, perhaps, for the best that I was disabused of notions of my own immortality at that moment. Though I might have regained a body in my late teens, this was not my world – as the teleporting knife, the blurring buzzsaw of a shiv and the rope that twisted around my feet as they ran highlighted to me.

My lack of finesse also helped, for the injuries I accumulated required healing. Enough so that Eamond – the proprietor of the restaurant and the attacked – gave me a room to recuperate within for a few days. One thing led to another and I managed to find my first friends and my first job. 

Funny, how of all my old skills and knowledge; it was my ability to wield a ladle and stand over a wok amidst flame that proved the most useful.

Well, that and a facility for languages.

The second time my life changed was two years later, when I chose to take the next step of my new existence. A necessary step to fill the gap in my mind left behind by the entity that had thrust me into this world, to fulfil a much needed role.

Not that I knew that, not at that time.