Prologue: Damn, Nothing Decent to Read
"Man, there's really nothing decent to read."
The boy, sprawled diagonally across his bed, tossed the thick, collected-works volume clutched in his hand down like trash. He massaged his aching eyes firmly, then slid down onto the pillow, letting out a discontented grumble.
"Why the hell are they all at full-on collected editions level? Even fairy tales wouldn't sell if they were written like this—they flat-out wouldn't sell!!"
How had it come to this? Every scrap of writing out there was at literary anthology caliber. The boy could only lament the sheer tragedy of it all.
These weren't commercial novels; they were bloated masses of text, jammed deep with the egos of self-proclaimed artists, smothered in convoluted rhetoric that lay in wait for the reader. It wasn't like taking an axe to the skull, but every glance made his head throb.
He just couldn't fathom people who called this stuff novels and actually read it.
Books so dense you had to solve math problems just to get through them. No wonder novels had become the exclusive domain of nobles.
How great would it be if someone could just write in a way that natural images sprang to mind with a simple read?
"Damn, if I were a fantasy writer..."
If he'd been a fantasy author, he could've shifted the entire world's paradigm with skillful writing alone—become a megastar wielding continent-shaking influence.
Unfortunately, the boy had lived mostly walled off from fantasy altogether.
"What the hell happens when you drop a Murim writer into a fantasy world?!"