The gnawing in Elias’s stomach was a constant, familiar companion. It was the sound of poverty, a dull ache that mirrored the hollowness in his life. Eviction notices were as frequent as the cold rain that seeped through the cracks in his apartment walls.
Hope had long since become a luxury he couldn’t afford. He’d scraped, begged, and toiled, only to find the ladder to a better life perpetually out of reach. It wasn't just about food anymore; it was about the crushing weight of being utterly, hopelessly stuck.
One particularly bleak Tuesday, as he trudged home from another fruitless job interview – the kind where they looked through him like he was a ghost of future unpaid bills – then his isekai happened.
It was like a heat haze, but colder, and it twisted the familiar cityscape into somethingelse. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and the grimy alleyway he’d been walking down had vanished. In its place was dirt. Not the city-grime dirt, but real, earthy dirt.
He looked up. Gone were the towering concrete buildings and the snarled mess of electrical wires. Instead, thatched roofs peeked out from behind wooden walls, and the air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke and something else, something natural.
He was standing at the edge of a village, or what he assumed was a village. It was small, a scattering of buildings clustered around a muddy track that served as a road. There was no harsh grey of cement, no reflective glass, no incessant hum of electricity. Lanterns, hanging from brackets outside doorways, were clearly powered by oil or wax.
People moved about, dressed in homespun fabrics, carrying baskets or leading animals. He saw a group of children playing with sticks in the village square, their shouts echoing in the open air.
Elias cautiously walked into the village. He saw no cars, no bikes, not even a rusty old scooter. The only vehicles were wooden carts pulled by sturdy, hairy horses. Weapons, he noticed with a jolt, were on display. A blacksmith hammered away in an open workshop, sparks flying as he shaped what looked unmistakably like a sword.
Further on, a man sharpened a long, wooden spear. He scanned the faces around him. No one was glued to a glowing rectangle. No one had wires snaking into their ears. He even strained his ears, but there was no distant, pervasive thrum of machinery that he was so used to, only the sounds of life – the bleating of goats, the chatter of voices, the rhythmic clang of the blacksmith.
A wave of disbelief washed over him. Where was he? Had he hallucinated his way into some kind of bizarre historical reenactment? But this felt too real. The smells, the textures, the weight of the silence where the city’s noise should be it was all profoundly, unsettlingly authentic.
He needed answers. Spotting a building that looked vaguely official – it had a wooden sign hanging above the door, intricately carved, though he couldn’t decipher the writing – he approached it. Hesitantly, he pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside.
The air inside was cool and smelled of parchment and beeswax. Behind a long, wooden counter sat a woman with kind eyes and ink-stained fingers. The room was busy with people in various states of bustle.
Some were studying scrolls, others were talking in low voices, and a few were examining maps pinned to the walls. It took him a moment to realize what this place was. It was an adventurers’ guild. He’d seen them in countless fantasy games, read about them in books. But in reality?
“Welcome to the Sunstone Guild,” the woman behind the counter said, her voice warm and welcoming. “How may I assist you?”
Elias, still reeling, managed to stammer, “Uh information? I’m new here.”
The woman smiled. “Many are. Adventurer, perhaps? Or looking for work?”
“Just information,” he repeated, feeling utterly foolish. “About about this world.”
She raised an eyebrow, but her smile didn’t falter. “This world? Why, this is Eldoria. And you are in the village of Oakhaven.”
Eldoria. Oakhaven. None of it sounded familiar. He cautiously started asking questions, careful not to sound completely insane. He asked about technology, about travel, about trade. He danced around the topic of electricity and mobile phones, settling for vague inquiries about ‘communication devices’.
The woman, whose name he learned was Elara, patiently answered his queries, though he could see a growing confusion in her eyes. As he pieced together her responses, the bizarre truth began to solidify.
There was no electricity. No cars, planes, or trains. Communication was by messenger or word of mouth. Weapons were swords, spears, bows, and axes. Gunpowder? She looked at him blankly. ‘Powder that makes explosions? Sounds like alchemist’s work, and dangerous at that.’
Then came the economic realities. He casually asked about the cost of things. Salt, she told him, was precious. Imported from the coastal regions, it was used for preserving food and flavoring dishes. Sugar? Even rarer, mostly used by the wealthy or apothecaries for medicinal purposes. Spices, too, were luxury goods, traded from distant lands.
Horsepower wasn’t just a saying here; it was literally the main form of transport, both for goods and people. Magic? Elara’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Magic is a gift, young man. A rare and powerful gift. Mostly practiced by nobles and court mages, or those blessed by the spirits.’
It was all true. He’d somehow stumbled – or been hurled – into a world that was, in technological terms, centuries behind his own. A world where basic necessities like salt and sugar were considered valuable, where spices were exotic treasures, and where magic was whispered about as a privilege of the elite.
He walked out of the guild into the fading sunlight, his head spinning. He was in a different world, a world of vast potential, a world ripe with resources and opportunities. He could practically feel it in the air, the untapped wealth just waiting to be grasped.
This was it, wasn’t it? His escape from poverty. A clean slate. In a world where even salt was valuable, surely, there was a path to riches for someone with well, with what exactly?
He looked down at his worn sneakers and his threadbare clothes. He knew how to navigate a smartphone, how to order takeout online, how to operate a microwave. Skills utterly useless in a world where fire was a central technology and horses were high-speed transport.
He knew nothing about farming, about smithing, about trading, about surviving without modern conveniences. He didn’t know how to ride a horse, let alone train one. He couldn’t even properly chop wood. His hands, soft from years of office work and tapping keyboards, were ill-suited for any kind of manual labor. He had no useful skills for this world.
He stared at the village, now bathed in the warm glow of lanterns, and a bitter laugh escaped his lips. Opportunities everywhere, Elara had said. Opportunities to be rich. And it was tragically, ironically, just too bad he didn't know how to make any of them his. He was surrounded by a world of potential wealth, as helpless to access it as he’d been back in his concrete jungle. The gnawing in his stomach, that familiar sound of poverty, echoed louder than ever in the unfamiliar silence of Eldoria.
Two worlds couldn't be wrong, couldn’t both be places where he was trapped at the bottom. It had to be him. The problem, it seemed, wasn't the world, or even the worlds themselves. It was him. He was lacking. Utterly and fundamentally lacking.
No Pearls for This Isekai Swine?
