The boy's eyelids fluttered open to a blur of green and gold.
Sunlight stabbed through the canopy in jagged streaks, illuminating motes of dust swirling around his face. His fingers twitched against damp earth, digging into the moss as his vision cleared.
The forest smelled like crushed mint and wet bark. "Where the hell" His voice came out hoarse, unfamiliar. Too high. He lifted a hand and saw small, delicate fingers.
Memories hit him in jagged pieces. Falling asleep in his dorm room, the stale pizza crust on the desk. The fan's rhythmic hum. Then nothing. No dream, no transition. This wasn't right. He'd been twenty-three, six feet tall, not... whatever this was.
His throat tightened as he patted down his body, child-sized frame, weirdly soft skin, and clothes that didn't belong to him. Rough-spun fabric, leather straps. His dorm room had been a mess of textbooks and energy drinks, not… whatever this medieval-looking getup was.
He stood, knees wobbling, and nearly stumbled backward.
The forest floor wasn't helping; uneven roots and damp leaves conspired against his balance. His new body felt wrong, too light, too small, like wearing someone else's limbs.
A breeze carried the sound of rushing water nearby.
He staggered toward it, each step sending jolts through unfamiliar muscles.
The river's roar grew louder, drowning out his ragged breathing. When he finally pushed through the last tangle of ferns, he fell to his knees at the bank, heart hammering as he leaned over the surface.
His reflection stared back, a stranger with golden eyes that burned like captured sunlight. His fingers instinctively touched the sharp, delicate features.
Golden lashes framed those unnaturally bright irises, and his hair, what the hell, golden strands that caught the light like molten gold.
His fingers traced the bridge of his nose, then skimmed over his cheeks, which were softer than they should've been. The reflection mimicked him, those eerie golden eyes narrowing as realization punched through the fog in his skull.
The reflection blinked back at him, wide-eyed, lips slightly parted and he exhaled sharply through his nose. Touching his own face again, he pinched the skin hard enough to bruise. Pain flared. Not a dream, then.
Fragments clicked together suddenly, a blinking cursor on his laptop screen, the glow of blue light in his dark dorm room. He'd been scrolling through forums, half-asleep, when the ad popped up: a pitch-black banner with silver text. "Ever wished for a new beginning? Click here." Below it, a checkbox *I accept full responsibility for my choices* and a submit button pulsing like a heartbeat. He'd snorted, clicked it on impulse.
The ad had dissolved into cascading gold symbols on the screen, an interface he didn't recognize popped up: *Race Selection*, *Physical Attributes*, *Ability Allocation*, *Equipment*. His fingers moved without thought, scrolling past elves and dwarves and several others, pausing at the race *High Pallum*, he selected it without a second thought. The height slider maxed out at 6', but he dragged it down to 5' for the hell of it. After designing his character, an option that said *Randomize Abilities and Equipment? * flashed in crimson. He clicked yes; he couldn't be bothered anyway. The final screen asked for a name, his thumb hovered, then typed *LeoNova Reinhardt* before slamming the laptop shut and then he went to bed.
His stomach twisted as he stared at his reflection, this was the exact build, the exact face he'd made on that character creation screen. No wonder his limbs felt alien; they weren't his anymore. The realization curdled in his gut; this wasn't just some fever dream. He'd *designed* this body, clicked *submit*, and somehow woken up inside it.
The river's icy spray snapped him back to the present. Breathing hard, he forced himself to stand, no use panicking when survival came first. His fingers instinctively went to his hip, finding a slim dagger sheathed there, its hilt wrapped in dark leather. Random gear, just as he'd chosen. "Great," he muttered, voice still unfamiliar in his ears. "Random stats, random gear, probably dumped all my points into charisma or some useless shit."
A twig snapped behind him.
LeoNova whirled, his new limbs moving with surprising grace as the dagger slid free from its sheath. The blade caught a streak of sunlight, but his pulse didn't care about aesthetics. Something rustled in the underbrush. Not the wind. Something alive.
Then he saw it, yellowed eyes peering between the ferns, glistening with hunger. A goblin. The creature's green skin was mottled with dirt, its knobby fingers clutching a crude club studded with what looked like teeth. Not the pixelated trash mobs from games. This thing stank like rancid meat and old sweat, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air.
The goblin's lips peeled back, revealing jagged brown teeth. It wasn't alone. Rustling to his left, then his right, shadows shifting. Five, maybe six. LeoNova's grip tightened on the dagger. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the river. Every instinct screamed *run*, but his legs refused to move.
The first one lunged, club swinging in a clumsy arc. LeoNova dodged left, too slow. The club grazed his shoulder, sending white-hot pain blooming down his arm. He hissed, stumbling back. The goblin screeched, triumphant, spittle flying from its mouth. Its breath smelled like rotting fish left in the sun. Reality crystallized: these things would eat him alive.
His dagger felt pitifully light as the second goblin rushed from his right, claws scraping his thigh. Blood bloomed bright against his trousers. Instinct took over, he pivoted, slashing upward. The blade caught the creature's throat, spraying hot, blueish blood across his face. The metallic tang filled his nose, thick and nauseating. The goblin gurgled, collapsing in a twitching heap.
A club hammered into his ribs from his left, knocking the air from his lungs. LeoNova hit the ground hard, dirt filling his mouth. Two more goblins scrambled forward, their clawed feet kicking up clods of earth.
In that instant he felt like something was wrong, or maybe, right? The pain in his ribs flickered out like a snuffed candle. Beneath torn fabric, his skin knitted together seamlessly, not even a bruise left behind. His split lip tingled, then smoothed over as if erased by an unseen hand.
The goblins lunged, and this time LeoNova moved with far greater speed than before, his dagger carving through the creature's forearm like it was wet parchment. Blue blood sprayed in an arc, but more shocking was the sudden heat flooding his veins, like someone had injected liquid fire into his marrow. Strength surged through him, sharpening his senses to a point.
As the goblin shrieked, clutching its severed wrist, LeoNova felt adrenaline morph into something sharper. His nostrils flared at the scent of spilled blood, and the sluggishness in his limbs evaporated. The goblin's yellow eyes widened in terror as he loomed over it, his golden irises reflecting its distorted face back at it. The next slash was effortless, the blade slicing through gristle and bone with sickening ease.
Pain registered distantly, a claw raking his bicep, but it dissolved like salt in water. His skin prickled, flesh reknitting itself at a visible rate. The sensation wasn't exactly soothing; it was like invisible hands yanking his flesh back into place.
LeoNova braced as another goblin charged, club raised overhead. His forearm blocked the blow with a loud crack.
He barely registered the pain before it vanished, replaced by a searing heat spreading from his core. His fingers curled tighter around the dagger's hilt, muscles coiling with newfound tension. The goblin's throat parted beneath his blade before the creature could scream, blue blood arcing through the air in a viscous spray. With each kill, the fire in his veins burned brighter, his movements sharpening into lethal precision.
LeoNova pivoted on his heel, the dagger's edge biting deep into the fifth goblin's belly, its guts spilling onto the moss in a glistening heap. His breaths came in ragged bursts, the adrenaline a live wire under his skin. The last goblin scrambled backward, its club forgotten, yellowed eyes wide with primal terror.
He should feel exhausted, but his limbs thrummed with unnatural energy, every cut and bruise vanishing at an accelerated pace. The heat in his veins pulsed like a second heartbeat, LeoNova wiped blue blood from his chin, the metallic tang sharp on his tongue.
The last goblin whimpered, scrambling backward on clawed hands until its back hit a gnarled tree root. Its yellowed eyes darted between LeoNova and the corpses littering the clearing, the stench of spilled guts thick in the humid air. LeoNova stepped forward, boots crunching on twigs slick with gore. His dagger gleamed, still dripping.
He rushed forward, driving the blade through its eye socket with a sickening squelch. The goblin's body convulsed once, then stilled. Silence settled over the clearing, broken only by his ragged breathing and the distant rush of the river.
LeoNova staggered back, his hands trembling as he stared at the blade still embedded in the creature's skull. The metallic scent of blue blood clung to his nostrils, mixing with the earthy odor of damp moss and crushed ferns. He yanked the dagger free, wiping it absently on his thigh, the fabric already stiff with drying gore. His pulse still hammered, but the heat in his veins had subsided into a low, persistent hum, like embers glowing beneath his skin.
The clearing was a mess of twisted limbs and pooling blood, the goblins' bodies already cooling in the afternoon sun. He knelt beside the first one he'd killed, its throat slit cleanly, the wound now crusted over with congealed fluid. His fingers hovered over the corpse, then recoiled. This wasn't a game. The creatures had smelled real, fought real, bled real. And he'd just butchered them with reflexes he shouldn't have possessed.
LeoNova flexed his hand, watching as the last traces of a shallow cut on his arm vanished before his eyes, the skin sealing itself without even leaving a scar. Whatever regeneration this body had, it wasn't natural. Neither was the way his muscles had moved during the fight, fluid, precise, as if his limbs remembered combat his mind had never learned. He exhaled sharply through his nose, the adrenaline still buzzing beneath his skin.
The goblin corpses lay scattered around him, their blood soaking into the moss. LeoNova's dagger trembled in his grip, not from fear, but from the leftover energy humming in his veins. He'd never killed before, only in video games where death was pixels and respawn timers. Here, the smell of ruptured intestines coiled in the back of his throat, thick enough to taste.
His boot nudged a goblin's corpse. The disemboweled goblin's stomach gaped open, revealing glistening ropes of blue-tinged organs. Something glimmered within the mess, a shard of crystal pulsing with faint violet light. He crouched, using the dagger's tip to fish it out. The magic stone came free with a wet pop, slick with viscera, its facets catching the light like fractured amethyst.
The moment it left the corpse; the goblin's flesh shuddered. Skin flaked away like dried paint, then the corpse crumbled into ash. LeoNova's grip tightened around the stone.
He watched, transfixed, as the creature dissolved into nothingness. The other corpses remained intact, their wounds still leaking sluggish trails of blue onto the moss. His thumb brushed the stone's surface, cool despite the gore it had been buried in, and something clicked, the dead monsters, the way the body dissolved into dust after removing the magic stone.
LeoNova's breath hitched. The pieces locked together. This wasn't some generic fantasy world. The pulsing stone in his palm was proof; he'd landed squarely in DanMachi's universe, where gods walked among mortals and monsters lurked in the depths of the dungeon below Orario. He exhaled sharply, the realization settling like lead in his gut. He'd clicked 'randomize' on abilities and somehow ended up with obscene regeneration and reflexes sharp enough to carve through flesh like parchment.
His gaze flicked to the remaining corpses, his stomach lurched. This wasn't a simulation. The crunch of cartilage beneath his blade, the wet splatter of viscera on his boots, too visceral, too textured to be anything but real.
LeoNova moved to the next goblin, driving his dagger into its chest cavity with a grunt. The blade scraped against something solid embedded in the creature's ribcage. He twisted the dagger, widening the gash until he could wedge two fingers inside, his skin slick with blue fluid. The stone came loose with a squelch, smaller than the first but pulsing with the same violet luminance. The corpse shuddered, then disintegrated into a cloud of black ash.
Another body, another stone. His hands worked mechanically now, digging through ruptured flesh, his fingers growing numb to the gelatinous texture of organs sliding against his skin.