’Everything hurts like hell...’
It felt like I had been ganged up on by a few guys.
My head pounded, my ribs ached, and even breathing was a struggle.
Like garbage that had been sitting out for days, spoiled meats, mixed with sweat and nasty liquid and who knows what else. It made my stomach turn. But I could do nothing about it.
’What the hell is this pain and smell?’
’Where are they coming from?’
My body wouldn’t move, and my arms felt like they weighed a ton. Something sharp was poking into my back. Rocks? Twigs? I didn’t know. My vision was all black.
For a while, I continued to lay at whatever I was in, groaning, constantly teetering between consciousness and unconsciousness. When I was conscious, I’d start to wonder if I had really been sent to another world, or just dumped in some back alley of a garbage site.
Because honestly, it really felt like the second scenario was what actually happened.
Or maybe, the reincarnation isn’t working perfectly, and my body was torn in the middle of the process, just like a spaceship can potentially be wrecked when passing through a wormhole.
Wherever I was, this definitely wasn’t the welcome I was hoping for.
’Where’s the welcome or congratulatory message? Where are the smiling faces of my new parents, happy to see me born? ’
’If I really got reincarnated, shouldn’t I be a newlyborn infant? Shouldn’t I be waking up on a soft bed or in someone’s arms? Wait... don’t tell me I wasn’t reincarnated—I was... transmigrated!’
The moment that thought hit me, something seemed to click like a certain button was pressed.
The excruciating pain that had been running through every inch of me started to dissapear fast. My muscles relaxed, my breathing got easier, and before long, I could move again. I was back to my peak health. It’s like someone had just cast a godly healing spell on me!
’What’s going on?’ I silently wondered as I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was a beam of sunlight, but not a thick one. Just bits of it peeking through the thick leaves above me.
I slowly moved my eyes and saw a huge tree towering above me, its thick branches and leaves acting like a canopy. Behind it, even more tall trees stretched into the distance.
I blinked a few times, letting my eyes adjust to the dim, scattered sunlight filtering through the leaves.
As my senses came back one by one, I began to hear things. The sound of water trickling nearby, like a small stream flowing over rocks. Birds chirped in the distance. Bugs buzzed around me. For a second, I almost thought the place was peaceful.
’It would be peaceful... if it didn’t smell like something had died.’
I groaned and sat up quickly. My hand landed on something soft, squishy, and mushy. I looked down, then instantly regretted it.
It was a bird carcass. An arrow was lodged straight through its head, which had split open to reveal a rotting, dark-blue mess of brain matter. Judging by the smell and the color, it had been dead for a few days.
My fingers were right in it.
"Shit!" I subconsciously shouted, yanking my arm back like I’d touched fire.
I scrambled to my feet and looked around, only to realize the rest of my surroundings weren’t any better. Rotten food scraps, broken bones, bits of torn cloth... it was a whole dump site.
The stench hit me even harder now. I gagged and nearly threw up.
"Ugh... no wonder it stinks. I was literally lying in a pile of trash."
Instinctively, I moved to wipe my hand on my clothes but stopped just in time. Instead, I wiped the mess off the tree’s surface, trying not to think about it too much.
Once I stood outside the trash pile, I began assessing my situation.
"Okay, pain’s gone... but now I’m starving. And bloody thirsty. It honestly feels like if I don’t eat something soon, my own stomach might start digesting itself."
I let out a heavy sigh, not bothering to hide my disappointment.
"There goes my dream of being born into a rich noble family. I thought I was gonna reincarnate, instead, I got a transmigration treatment. And to make matters worse, I start my first-day being food and drink deprived."
Still a bit groggy, I glanced down at myself.
"Alright, let’s see what kind of body I ended up in. Please, please don’t be a girl..."
I immediately went on inspecting my own body.
"Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Short hair. Nothing missing... so far, so good."
My hands moved down my chest.
"Flat chest, a little fat, definitely natural dark skin and not because of prolonged exposure to the sun... and a penis! A big one too! Thank god. Wait, what are these?!"
I looked closer and saw the bruises.
They were all over my body, arms, legs, and especially across my chest. Big, ugly ones. Some were dark blue, others were black. There was even what looked like a stab wound with dried blood around the wound area already seeping through the skin. They looked painful and terrifying just to look at.
"Yikes. What the hell happened to this guy?"
But then something strange happened. Right in front of my eyes, the bruises started fading rapidly. The dark spots lightened, then disappeared completely, like they were never there to begin with. Even the stab wound was no exception; it started to disappear, taking the dried blood with it like it had never been there at all.
"The injuries are healing? How magical. Is this the effect brought by the transmigration?"
Then a thought crossed my mind.
"Maybe the guy whose body I took was already dead... or dying from those injuries. Judging by how bad they looked, that makes sense. And that pain I felt when I first arrived, maybe that was what he went through before he died."
I paused, thinking it through.
"And usually, in case of transmigration, I mean, based on the novels I read so far, a soul needs an empty body to move into, right? So this guy must’ve died right before I showed up."
But another question followed right after.
"Why this body? Did Althea choose it on purpose? Was there something special about him? Or did I just happen to land in the nearest freshly dead body lying around?"
I looked down at my hands, then glanced around the forest, still trying to wrap my head around everything.
"If only I could access this guy’s memories... I could figure out who he was, what happened, and maybe even where I am. That would make things so much easier instead of having to guess every little thing."
I sighed, rubbing my temple.
"Didn’t Althea say I’d naturally learn about this world? What does that even mean? Am I supposed to just wander around and figure it all out on my own? That sounds like a pain in the ass. I don’t even know if I can understand the local language here."
At that moment, just as I was about to summon the system, seeking guidance, out of nowhere, foreign memories started flooding into my mind.
I froze. It happened so suddenly that I didn’t even have time to prepare myself.
Images, sounds, feelings, all of it came pouring in like a tidal wave. It was like my brain had been a basic old hard drive, and someone just plugged in a high-speed SSD and started copying over an entire lifetime of memories.
The data transfer might’ve been fast on the sender’s end, but receiving it? That was a different story.
Everything came in too fast, too much, all at once. Names I didn’t recognize. Faces I’d never seen. Places I couldn’t name. Fights. Fear. Hunger. Running. Screaming. More running. Bits of his life jammed themselves into my head like puzzle pieces I wasn’t ready to solve.
Time felt weird. What must have been seconds in the real world felt like years inside my head.
The pressure in my skull kept building until it felt like my brain was about to explode. The pain was unbearable. But after a certain point, it just... stopped hurting. Not because it ended, but because I went completely numb.
After what seemed like forever, the blur in my eyes started to fade. I could feel my focus slowly returning. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn novel{f}ire.net
Then I gasped, sucking in air heavily like I finally reached the surface after being underwater too long.
"Huff... huff... bloody hell... I thought I was gonna die!"
I collapsed backward, slumping against the dirt. I didn’t even care that there was another dead animal lying just inches from my face. At that moment, I was too drained to move, let alone care.
"Huff... huff..." I muttered through clenched teeth. "So this is what Althea meant by ’learning about this world naturally’? If so, yeah, I indeed learned a lot. But it sure as hell didn’t come free. In fact, it looks like I paid the brutal price for it. She could’ve at least given me a heads-up..."
It probably took me a good thirty minutes to calm down and get my breathing under control. My head still felt heavy, like it had been spinning for hours, but the worst of the pain had passed.
During that time, I tried to make sense of the memories that had just slammed into me like a truck.
Bit by bit, they started to organize themselves, like puzzle pieces slowly clicking into place. And thankfully, some answers came with them.
For starters, I now knew the name of the guy whose body I had taken over.