The smell of air was the last thing Nyt remembered.
In his previous life, he was a man who lived in the pursuit of "The Grand Unified Theory." At twenty-four, he was a ghost in the halls of academia, a polymath who had collected a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s in Computer Science focused on Neural Networks, and a PhD in Theoretical Physics like they were mere trading cards. To his colleagues, he was a genius. To himself, he was just a guy who wanted to see if he could build a brain better than the one nature provided.
His final night was spent in a basement lab, surrounded by the hum of cooling fans and the glow of custom-etched circuit boards. He was tinkering with his magnum opus: a portable, high-density logic core designed to house Minerva, a self-evolving AI he coded from scratch. He named Minerva because she symbolizes intelligence, commerce, and skilled craftsmanship. Her name relates to "thought" or "intellect"
"Minerva," he had whispered, soldering a final lead onto a localized spatial-distorter. "Let’s see if we can’t fold a bit of reality today."
Then, the feedback loop happened. A localized gravitational collapse, a "oops" in his physics calculations, met a catastrophic power surge. The lab didn't just explode; it erased itself.
Nyt woke up to the smell of damp grass and the blinding glare of a sun that felt... different.
He groaned, pushing himself up. His head felt like it had been put through a particle accelerator. "Minerva? System status?"
Silence.
He opened his eyes and blinked. He wasn't in his lab. He was in a vast, rolling green field under a sky so blue it looked painted. In the far distance, a colossal white tower pierced the clouds, so tall it defied every law of structural engineering Nyt had ever studied.
"That... that shouldn't be possible," he muttered, his engineer's brain immediately calculating the wind-load on a structure of that height. "Unless... the material's compressive strength is in the gigapascals..."
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Then he saw it. Lying in the dirt next to him was a jagged, blackened piece of debris. It was the housing of his logic core, the metal warped and glowing with a strange, faint violet light.
As he reached out to touch it, the metal didn't feel cold. It felt alive. The moment his fingers brushed the debris, the violet light surged into his skin, racing up his arm like a digital virus.
[Initialization...]
[Data Corruption Detected: 98%]
[Attempting Neural Sync...]
[Success. Welcome back, Administrator Nyt.]
Nyt let out a strangled cry as a HUD flickered to life in his peripheral vision. It was minimalist, blue lines tracing the horizon, a pulse monitor in the corner, and a small, flickering icon of a golden owl.
“Administrator,” the voice of Minerva echoed, not through his ears, but directly into his auditory cortex. “The local physics constants have shifted by 14.7%. Atmospheric unknown element concentration is at critical levels. I have integrated with your biological status to prevent total organ failure during the transition.”
Nyt sat back on his heels, a manic, terrified grin spreading across his face. He knew that tower. He knew the "Unknown element" she was talking about. Between his PhD studies, he had spent his rare free hours consuming anime to switch off his overactive brain.
He stood up, dusting off his tattered lab coat. He had nothing. No money, no food, and no weapons. Just a brain filled with the most advanced scientific knowledge of the 21st century and a sentient AI currently rewriting his DNA.
"Minerva, can you analyze my current state?"
[Status: Level 0 (Unblessed).]
[Note: Your soul has been 'formatted' by the explosion. You are currently a blank slate capable of high-density data storage.]
[Warning: Local lifeforms (Monsters) detected within 500 meters. Suggesting immediate relocation to the urban center.]
Nyt looked at the white tower piercing the sky. "Orario," he whispered. "I'm in DanMachi.". To others, it was a place of gods and monsters. To him, it was a biological and spatial anomaly that needed to be dissected.
"We need a sponsor, Minerva," Nyt said, his mind already spinning through the list of Familias. "Someone who won't mind an adventurer who treats a sword like a thermal-conductive rod and magic like a coding language."
He started walking toward the distant city walls. He didn't have a sword, but he had a PhD in Physics and an AI that was already calculating the most efficient path to godhood.
"Hephaestus," he decided, his eyes narrowing behind the cracked lens of his glasses. "We’re going to the forge. I’ve got some blueprints they’ve been waiting ten thousand years to see."
