"Where the hell am I."
Sael blinked and looked around the unknown lands. He weakly stood up. His point of view was now shorter, almost half his usual height.
"W-What?!! It's a child! No, I'm a child now! What happened?!!"
He screamed for a moment. His vision was blurry. He sat down as his head spun, blood refusing to stop. At this rate, he might die again. Or even third time at this point. He thought for a moment, trying to figure out what in the damn world happened. Then he brushed the thought aside. It wasn't the time for such questions. He needed to stop the bleeding and find some food.
He picked up the broken branch this kid had been hanged on and used it to support his dying body. He looked at the cursed tree for any fruit. But there was no fruit. The tree was ominous, its gnarled branches holding the pale corpses of multiple children. Their skin drained of color, dead for hours.
A cold sensation curled under his skin as he recognized the kids. Or rather, this damn body recognized their faces. They too were slaves of the merchant group. Just like him.
He took a few steps back and tripped. He looked down.
It was the corpse of the merchant boss's wife. Once beautiful and dignified, now discarded like trash. Naked, abused, her body desecrated throughout the night. A deep cut across her belly, likely the cause of her death.
That same chilling sensation crept under his skin once again. Driven by fear, he ran with what little strength he had left.
***
It was morning now. The sun appeared between the shield of two mountains. Its radiant light shone across the landscape and the corpses left to rot.
He walked as far as he could. His fear grew stronger with every ominous roar echoing from the shadows of the woods. But exhaustion conquered him. He collapsed to the ground.
He was still conscious but couldn't lift his body. Silently, he waited for death.
After a long time. How long, he couldn't tell. Some sound reached his ears. His eyes half-opened, barely, just enough to perhaps see the face of his killer. Then darkness swallowed his vision.
"Hey, is this thing dead?" someone asked, softly kicking the unconscious boy.
"Nah… still breathing. But won't last long," another said, watching the dust shift near the kid's nose.
"What do you say? Take it or toss it?"
"Let's take it. We're low on goods, ya know."
***
The caravan shook uncontrollably along the hole-riddled road. A kid, about the same age as Sael's new body, poked his nose with a thin branch.
"Achu… where am I now?"
He sneezed and jolted awake. His neck felt tight choked by some rough rope. Maybe it was a leftover sensation from the noose he felt last night. His head was bandaged hastily. Not properly, but enough to save his life. Someone non-professional had done it, using some unknown herb that turned an odd color when mixed with his blood.
The kid who had been poking him jumped back at Sael's sudden movement.
"Sapuka Fuikata," the boy said in some strange tongue, leaning in, expecting a reply.
Sael blinked. He had no idea what monkey language this kid was speaking.
'Am I really in a different world?'
Then the kid handed him a bowl. Its contents looked like a mix of shit, urine, and roadside herbs.
'What is this damn thing? I'd rather get crushed by that outer space rock again than eat this.'
The kid kept offering. Although Sael didn't understand a word, he felt no hostility. But still it wasn't food. He refused with a shake of his head.
"Kota de kote ra fugijo," a man riding some lizard like creature outside said in that same alien tongue.
"I don't understand," Sael muttered, but nobody seemed to care. Only wide eyed stares answered him.
Then he tried to move. At the slightest shift, the clinking of chains rang out. He followed the sound and saw that his neck and limbs were bound in iron.
He looked around and saw men, women, and children. Everyone chained. Staring at him with hallowed gazes. All tied to a massive iron rod in the center of the slave caravan.
They were all slaves.
***
A day had passed.
Sael was starting to accept his miserable fate. He was a slave now, just like the kid whose body he now inhabited.
Sometimes he saw blurry visions, followed by searing headaches. In those visions, he saw his old body—formless and shadow-like—in some unknown place. But he wasn't alone. There were 48 of them. And the voice of a god echoed.
Then the vision shifted to this kid's memories. But the headache made him forget again.
But not everything.
Now, he could understand a few words of this strange, otherworldly language.
As he was deep in thought, a sudden noise brought him back. It came from the front of the caravan. People were shouting. The only words he could pick up were:
"Monsters!" "Monsters!"
'There are monsters here too?!' he thought, oddly excited. Maybe it was all the books he had read. The idea of hunting monsters thrilled him.
He waited with anticipation.
He was seated farther than the others, his back resting against the iron bars of the cage. To his right outside the cage was an old man with a long beard on that lizard–like creature, dressed in a tattered wizard robe. He held a wooden staff and was staring at Sael with weathered eyes.
Suddenly, the old man raised his staff.
From its tip, a blue glow appeared. He whispered a command.
A beam of starlight magic shot forward, not at Sael but past him, striking a wolf-like creature with black horns. The spell didn't kill it, but left a deep, bleeding wound.
'Magic... There's magic here!!'
He stared at the old man, bewildered and amazed.
From the front of the caravan, sounds echoed: steel piercing flesh, claws scraping against iron, beasts roaring in pain. But the sound Sael had expected, the screams of humans never came.
Soon, the caravan rolled forward again. The clinking of chains resumed.
Sael's eyes were fixed on the corner that would give him the front view first. As they passed the battleground, he saw the corpses of the beasts the wizard had fought. Their bodies torn open, blood soaking the soil, guts spilling.
A scene even worse than the food they had been offered.
***
It was evening now. Time passed painfully slow, but somehow Sael held on as he stared at the armored slavers riding those strange, lizard-like creatures. They were using them like horses. Maybe horses didn't exist in this world.
He looked at the weakening light of the sun as it drifted toward the direction the slave caravan was heading. If celestial bodies worked the same way as in his previous world, then they were moving west. Not that he knew anything about this damned, godforsaken world.
The thought reminded him of an anime he had once read about in a book "Sea Turtles". Now, he could truly understand the pain of a baby turtle, newly hatched, abandoned by its mother, and left to fend for itself in a strange, unknown, hostile world under the unblinking gaze of predators.
And with that thought, he couldn't help but laugh.
"This is one hell of a situation I'm in."
His stomach was growling, his head still hurt, and his eyes were darkening, desperate for sleep. He was in the body of a child, after all.
He leaned his back against the cold iron of the caravan, and the night was starting to bite. The iron now colder.
He wanted to sleep on the floor, but each time he glanced at it, sleep fled. Stains of dried blood were everywhere, mixed with traces of vomit from an old man whose eyes were void of life.
But his mental strength was slipping. Death now seemed better than living like this. The hunger only grew.
Evening fell, and darkness swallowed the deathly forest. A dimly lit lamp, hanging crookedly, was the only source of light, bathing the cage in a sickly yellow glow.
That was when the annoying, monkey-like little human offered him that wretched excuse for food again.
"Fugijo, fugijo," the kid kept saying.
But now, Sael understood. It wasn't "eat" like he had thought before. The boy was saying: "Don't die. Don't die."
This time, he didn't refuse the little monkey. He accepted that bowl of hell.
'Maybe I'll die faster after eating it.'
Holding his breath, he closed his nose and took a deep sip. The moment he did, his eyes glowed faintly in gold. And then, in front of him, appeared a set of runes etched in an unfamiliar language, yet somehow... he could read them.
[Welcome, Traveler from Beyond.]
[I, Sephiroth, bless you with my heart and hope you live a life of freedom and happiness.]
He spat out the disgusting, gooey soup he had just forced down.
"Huh...!?"
Despite his shock, the glowing runes in front of him shifted.
[Gift- A Drop of the Deathless God's Blood]
[Do you wish to consume?]
"Yeah—wait, what?" he muttered, instinctively.
[Consumption succeeded.]
[You have obtained an Extra Life.]
Before he could process what was happening, a loud scream tore through the dreadful night, followed by an explosion. The slave caravan was thrown several meters into the air before crashing down with a deafening roar.
The cage shattered, and Sael, who had been in the corner was flung into the forest. Gasping for breath and vomiting blood, he turned and sat up. The lamp had landed near him, miraculously still glowing. His chain, which had been attached to an iron rod, was now broken. Though still bound, he could finally move freely. He picked it up and scanned his surroundings.
Then his eyes widened in horror.
The boy, the one who had offered him food was impaled.
The iron rod that had held their chains together had broken during the blast and pierced the kid straight through the back, the metal protruding from his chest.
The boy was now dead.