Adam slid free, his body grinding through jagged stone until suddenly the ground softened. The tiny tunnel gave way to mud slick, slippery and suffocating. He lost his footing at once, his legs unable to grip. His battered body shot forward, sliding uncontrollably as the slope steepened.
The world blurred past. Mud splattered against his face; grit scraped under his mandibles. His descent felt endless until, with a harsh thud, he spilled into a hollow chamber.
The space was wide and silent, eerily so. His ragged breaths echoed in the chamber. His exoskeleton lay shattered, broken fragments and chunks ripped away from his carapace. Blood swept from his legs; some hung as twisted lumps of useless flesh, no longer adhering to his commands. His gaze fell on the chamber's floor.
Shells. Dead beetle shells to be exact, lay scattered all across the room. They littered the ground in every direction. Some cracked open, some crushed into jagged fragments, some still whole but long emptied. Yet they were different than the ones that were unfortunate enough to cross his path. These were pale, a hue of ghostly white enveloped the surface. Its fuzzy texture tingled his nerves even before his body could feel them. However, it didn't help that faint noises stirred from beneath those shells.
"Wha--t..." his battered body could barely mutter words. "Wh--o's ... the-re...?" There was no reply. Only his questions lingered in the air... unanswered.
Adam's legs trembled as he forced himself upright, staggering as he tried to retain his balance. He clicked his mandibles, an instinct he isn't fond of. Fury flamed his eyes once more. With a surge of will, he lunged at the shell,
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" his roar tore through the chamber, raging like a bull to annihilate anything in his path, he hurled it aside with a snap of his jaws, ready to pierce whatever hid beneath. The shell struck the stone with a brittle crack, splintering into fragments that skittered across the floor. Adam's gaze locked forward, only to meet emptiness.
Silence erupted in the chamber.
"Am I... really imagining things now?" Adam's legs collapsed, unable to bear his weight any longer.
"..why..." his front legs found their way to his head. If he was a human right now, he would've been pulling his hair in frustration. But he's stuck in this body.... perhaps forever.
"... WHY!!" his wail filled the room, drowning the atmosphere in sadness.
Adam's mandibles clacked again in a ragged rhythm, a mimicry of sobbing. The sound wasn't even his choice, it came from the damned instincts hardwired into this body, jerking out of him like a sick parody of grief. He tried to stop, but the clicking grew louder, harsher, filling the hollow chamber until it felt as though his despair was echoing off every shell around him. His antennae twitched and swept without his consent, brushing against the damp air of the burrow. The sensations that came with it were unbearable, every stray current of atmosphere felt like fingers dragging across nerves he never asked for, painting the world in textures and currents he couldn't turn off. Every. Single. Damn. Second. Sleep was the pacifier to his pain and sorrow's but even that would leave him when he woke up. Waking up, only in a world that wanted his demise, from the very start,
He slumped against the wall of mud, dragging his broken leg behind him, the joint screaming with a pain so sharp it blurred his vison. His whole body throbbed, pulsing in alien rhythm with its insect heart. He hated it. He hated this body. He hated the way every wound lingered, never truly leaving. Raw, exposed and magnified by senses that weren't his own. "Where… where is it?" his mind screamed inside the shell of his mandibles. Where is my fantasy? Where are the shining skills, the power, the cheat abilities I was supposed to have?
Instead, what did he have? A body that bled at the tiniest of touch. Limbs that snapped like twigs. Pain that came not in dull aches but in shrieking knives every time he twitched wrong. No human voice to scream with. No human tears to cry with. He tried, God, he tried, he could feel the convulsions of sorrow wracking him, but no water welled up, no tears carved streaks down his face. His grief was dry, empty, mocked by this broken exoskeletal shell. And that made it worse.
He missed his body, the warmth of it, the softness of a palm against his cheek. He missed blinking, missed the quiet breath of air through a human nose, missed the illusion of being normal. He missed… being himself.
Sure, he had no friends. Sure, his family was gone. Sure, the apartment had been empty, and the days had stretched hollow and silent. Sure…
The word rattled in his mind as he reached for more, desperate to prove to himself that his human life had been worth something. But nothing came. His mandibles clicked again, emptily this time. He had nothing. No grand reason why his old life was better, just the fact that at least it had been human.
And so, he sulked, broken and small, his sorrow dripping invisibly into the hollow like poison in the air.
The chamber trembled.
At first, Adam thought it was just his mind, still reeling, but then the shells littering the muddy floor began to rattle, faint at first, then violently, as if something inside them awoke. His antennae recoiled instinctively. The husks split and cracked, and from within crawled beetles, dozens of them, black and glistening. Their horns scraped the walls as they rose, shaking off the dust of their false death.
"No…" The word was hollow in his mind.
One stepped forward, mandibles snapping, horn lowered. Then another. The ground quaked with their approach, and Adam's body responded without his will, mandibles raising, stance tightening. But his heart wasn't in it. His thoughts dragged him down like quicksand.
Why fight?
What was the point? He had seen things no human should have seen. Things pulled straight from horror movies and nightmares. That spider. Those joints bending backward. Those screams. If that's what lurked in this world, why keep clawing for another breath?
Maybe… maybe death is better. Maybe the next life will be what I dreamed of. Maybe then, I'll get the beautiful fantasy that I always dreamed of. The overpowered skills. The cheat skills. The peaceful life in another world.
The beetles rushed again, and he didn't move. He simply waited, his broken limbs trembling, antennae slack. His thoughts spiraled inward. Was this life even worth anything?
And then, something pierced through his mind. A memory? No, a realization. Mira's caring behavior. Skitt's quietness. Zell's ambitions. Norkk's stubborn pride. Brill's shyness. They weren't just drones or algorithmized puppets. They thought, chose, laughed in their own strange ways, bickered, dreamed, feared.
Not everything here was a monster.
His mandibles clicked, no longer in sorrow but in defiance. They need me. Mira, Skitt, Zell, Norkk, Brill—all of them. They're waiting for me. Depending on me. This world… this world isn't a punishment. It's a chance. Full of voices, full of mysteries I haven't unraveled yet.
A surge lit his chest. Not strength, not yet, but conviction.
"No more running," his thoughts roared, shoving against the despair. "If my past life was nothing but loneliness, then this… this is my chance. My chance to be better."
The next beetle lunged. Adam met it head-on. His claws scraped along its horn, his mandibles bit into its leg until he tasted bitter ichor. He twisted, throwing his whole body against its weight, toppling it onto its back where its legs flailed helplessly.
Another came. He darted, staggered, but still managed to sink his jaws into its joint. Pain lanced through his own limbs with every move, but he didn't stop. He couldn't. He would not die here, not broken, not forgotten.
"Yes…" his thoughts burned. "Yes! I will see this story till the end!"
Then he saw it.
A larger beetle, towering over the others, its horn long and jagged like a spear. It stomped forward, every step a drumbeat.
Adam screamed, an awful-alien sound, and hurled himself at it with everything he had left. His body was a blur of desperation and fury, mandibles snapping for its throat, claws clinging to its horn.
And then—
BOOM.
An explosion ripped the chamber apart. Pink mist flooded the air, thick and choking, staining the mud and shells. The world drowned in color and chaos, and Adam's senses twisted by the bizarre color in the air.
The system's chimes struck him all at once.
Lines of text flashed across his vision, stacked, overlapping, spilling over one another as if desperate to be heard:
[Warning: Hallucinogenic concentration critical.]
[Warning: Blood toxicity rising.]
[Health dangerously low.]
[System Alert: Hallucination effects—severe.]
Adam blinked hard. His chest heaved as he turned, expecting the horned beetle, the swarming horde. But there was nothing.
Only shattered husks, pale and hollow.
From their seams, soft threads of white fungus spread outward like veins, weaving silently through the mud. The battlefield that moments ago had been alive with snarling monsters now looked more like a graveyard—cold, silent, and still.
He staggered, his mind rattling. No beetles. Then… was it all…? His mandibles clicked, tasting the air thick with pink haze.
"Was the spider—was that monster—only another hallucination?" The thought nearly broke him, but the deep burning ache of his legs, the torn ridges in his carapace, the scars carved into his body screamed back at him. No… that one was real.
He exhaled shakily and scanned the chamber. That was when he saw it.
A tree, an enormous one, its trunk twisted and ancient, as though it had been growing here since the dawn of time. From its bark protruded jagged crystals, each glimmering faintly with a strange, vibrant light.
The pink mist coiled around them, wafting from cracks in the tree itself. Adam inhaled. The sting in his chest dulled. The burning in his wounds soothed. The system flickered once more:
[Status Effect: Recovery initiated.]
[Stabilization in progress.]
He froze. The mist… it was healing him. "So, this… this is the cure."
Driven by instinct and desperation, he dragged himself to the tree, sinking his claws into its side. The crystals crunched under his mandibles as he carefully chipped one free, the faint hum vibrating through his jaw. He managed to cut away a second, but no more, the weight was too much. Two was all he could carry.
He pulled back, chest rising and falling, antennae twitching restlessly. "Hopefully… hopefully these will be enough."
But as he stared into the cavern's shadows, the weight of the truth pressed down on him. This world was not a fantasy. It was not a dream. It was a pit full of terrors, some illusions, some very real, and they would never stop hunting him.
He clenched the crystals tight, mandibles scraping as he whispered to himself in the silence:
"From now on… I will do everything in my power to fight. To grow stronger. To face these demons head-on."
The cavern shuddered faintly, as if in answer. He straightened his battered frame.
"I promise. This life will not be the same as the last."