"Cough cough"
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 ?"
My body ached intensely. My heart burned as if I had just run a marathon. A pounding headache hamred my mind, suppressing any rational thought I tried to form.
"Where is this place?" I looked around, my vision finally adapting to the environnt, 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 cald, 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 ?"
I barely finished shouting before another sharp headache struck hard. mories 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!"
"Snap-Snap!"
Pain jolted 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 like a freight train, proving itself painfully real.
"Didn't you hear , Glenn? You're asking for more lashes, aren't you?!"
"Snap!" Another whip strike yanked out of my daze. The pain beca fuel, pushing 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 na was Glenn, too.'
The flood of mories that had invaded —which I thought were hallucinations or nightmares—were real. I had died, and sohow, I had transmigrated to a world called Atlas. The mories, still fragnted in flashbacks, hit periodically, slowly piecing things together.
"This has to be a joke! What kind of sadistic god decided my suffering wasn't enough and threw into this ss?"
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 ti, you'll lose your teeth," growled the executioner in charge of leading the slaves to the mines.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." I had beco a fallen demon.
The walk was short, about five minutes. A bucket and a pickaxe were shoved into my hands. I dropped both imdiately, my body too unstable to hold them.
"Whack!" A fist struck my chin, knocking 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 sa 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 ti to dwell on that, as the other slaves had already begun mining the colossal rock face.
In front of , deep within the underground cave, lood an enormous wall—at least ten kiloters high.
'We must be deep inside a mountain,' I thought.
Dragging my bucket and pickaxe, I moved to the spot where the body's forr owner always worked—a small alcove beside demons nearly ten centiters taller than . No one spoke to ; 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 mories 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 sowhat cleared, I started organizing everything I had learned from my new mories.
'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 sothing... my soul, perhaps.'
My thoughts were interrupted by a dull thud a few ters 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 et the quota if I don't want to die twice in one day." Desperately, with every ounce of strength I had left, I resud striking the rock.
'And finally... that sensation of falling.' The mory hit , montarily making lose my balance, but I quickly steadied myself. What had I just rembered? The forr owner of this body's death.
'Killed by arcane tal 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.'
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