The atmosphere was oppressive. My eyes were still adjusting to the dim light, but the shock of reality was abrupt.
"What the fuck is this? What happened to me?"
My body ached intensely. My heart burned as if I had just run a marathon. A pounding headache hammered my mind, suppressing any rational thought I tried to form.
"Where is this place?" I looked around, my vision finally adapting to the environment, and realized I was sprawled on the ground; dust covered my body. "Am I in a cave?"
I tried to get up but had no strength. I knew this sensation well. "My body is heavy. I can barely crawl." A few minutes passed before my condition stabilized.
My breathing calmed, my heartbeats slowed, my vision finally returned to "normal," and I could finally comprehend my situation.
"This has to be a joke! WHO THE FUCK DID THIS TO ME?"
I barely finished shouting before another sharp headache struck me hard. Memories that weren't mine began flooding my mind. My stomach churned, nausea rising, and soon the bitter, acidic taste surged from my mouth.
Now, my whole body trembled with helplessness. "This can't be happening, it can't, it can't, it can't." I panicked. No, it was worse than that—I had a full-blown breakdown. Saliva dripped from my mouth, my heart pounded erratically, I hyperventilated, and finally, I collapsed into unconsciousness.
"Get up, you piece of shit!"
Pain jolted me awake. My back burned, my bones ached, and my veins felt as if they were filled with needles instead of blood.
"Fuck... this wasn't a nightmare."
The reality I thought was just another fevered dream of a dying, decrepit man hit me like a freight train, proving itself painfully real.
"Didn't you hear me, Glenn? You're asking for more lashes, aren't you?!"
"Snap!" Another whip strike yanked me out of my daze. The pain became fuel, pushing me to my feet. I followed the damned executioner, my thoughts clearing as I finally grasped my situation.
I was no longer on Earth. My body was lean, frail, and emaciated. Countless scars covered my torso; above my head, two black horns stood tall, marking the fact that I was no longer human either. "This is insane. I must be hallucinating." My hands were slender, with powerful, pitch-black nails.
But the biggest problem of all was the chains binding my ankles, wrists, and neck.
'I transmigrated from a terminal cancer patient to a fucking fallen noble condemned to slavery in the demon empire.' And as if that wasn't enough, the coincidences were too convenient. 'And this bastard's name was Glenn, too.'
The flood of memories that had invaded me—which I thought were hallucinations or nightmares—were real. I had died, and somehow, I had transmigrated to a world called Atlas. The memories, still fragmented in flashbacks, hit me periodically, slowly piecing things together.
"This has to be a joke! What kind of sadistic god decided my suffering wasn't enough and threw me into this mess?"
My murmurs were silenced by a punch to the back.
"You're being way too defiant for my liking today, Glenn. Keep mumbling to yourself, and next time, you'll lose your teeth," growled the executioner in charge of leading the slaves to the mines.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." I had become a fallen demon.
The walk was short, about five minutes. A bucket and a pickaxe were shoved into my hands. I dropped both immediately, my body too unstable to hold them.
"Whack!" A fist struck my chin, knocking me to the ground.
"Don't test my patience! You're on thin ice today!" the executioner spat, stepping on my body before moving on to the other demons in the same pitiful state.
I noticed my nose was bleeding, as well as my ears. 'Probably a side effect of the transmigration.' I could still feel internal tremors, similar to when I first woke up in this world. But there was no time to dwell on that, as the other slaves had already begun mining the colossal rock face.
In front of me, deep within the underground cave, loomed an enormous wall—at least ten kilometers high.
'We must be deep inside a mountain,' I thought.
Dragging my bucket and pickaxe, I moved to the spot where the body's former owner always worked—a small alcove beside demons nearly ten centimeters taller than me. No one spoke to me; no one even acknowledged my presence. They all had hollow expressions, malnourished, weak, their eyes lifeless as if they had been brainwashed.
With all the strength I could muster, I slowly began to swing the pickaxe. The target? Small, glowing veins embedded in the colossal wall. Each strike was torture; my body ached as if I had been run over by a truck. 'Do trucks even exist in this world?' I wondered. My memories were completely scrambled—old Glenn and new Glenn. 'What a miserable combination.'
The rhythmic sound of the pickaxe, at least, helped calm my mind. With my head somewhat cleared, I started organizing everything I had learned from my new memories.
'First, I died—I'm sure of that. The undeniable proof is this body and these horns on my head. I'm no longer human.' I kept analyzing: 'Then, there were those lights in the void. It looked like two lights, but in truth, they were eyes—golden eyes, as if analyzing something... my soul, perhaps.'
My thoughts were interrupted by a dull thud a few meters away. One of the demons mining collapsed into convulsions. Two guards slowly approached him.
"This one's reached his expiration date," muttered a tall, slender demon, drawing his spear from his back. "One less to worry about." His spear impaled the miner's head, granting him a swift death.
My heart pounded at the sight. Here, we were treated as nothing more than trash; any excuse was enough to get us killed. After a few minutes, I managed to calm down and refocused on my task.
"I need to meet the quota if I don't want to die twice in one day." Desperately, with every ounce of strength I had left, I resumed striking the rock.
'And finally... that sensation of falling.' The memory hit me, momentarily making me lose my balance, but I quickly steadied myself. What had I just remembered? The former owner of this body's death.
'Killed by arcane metal poisoning.' That was the very ore we were mining right now.
"Fuck! Not only can I die as a slave, but this fucking mineral is toxic too!" Despair flooded my mind.
'I need to find a way to escape this place. I didn't transmigrate just to live as a slave. I wasn't given a new life for this.'