Reincarnation is a bloody thing. Who knew I would end up like this?
Every person reborn in a fantasy world dreams of wielding magic. But luck is a factor no one considers—being born with the right foundation is everything.
Me? Born in the dirt, dumped at an orphanage, and raised as nothing more than a child soldier.
What a shitty country, and what a shitty princess. We all knew she was just a body double, but she had to play her part, and this was the result: a slaughtered vanguard. How do they expect squires under fifteen to fight beasts like these?
They don't. Those knight bastards just threw us to the claws so they could buy time to run away.
I force my eyes up to the wolf—it’s the size of a house, its breath steaming in the cold air. Now that the hunt is over, it snarls, preparing to start the feast.
I really don’t want to die.
Please, anyone... just save me.
I don’t care if the one who saves me is a devil.
I don’t want to die! Just save me, please!
It seems my desperate thoughts are heard. A blinding flash of lightning tears open the sky and strikes down with a deafening crack, crushing—no, obliterating—the monster.
Like an angel descending from the heavens, a woman steps through the smoke and casually plucks the glowing monster core from the air.
She turns her back, ready to leave.
No, don’t leave! Please save me... please...!
I try to scream, but only choked air leaves my mouth.
No. No. NO!
I have to try. I have to ask for help—at least try!
"H... e... l... p... me..."
Only a broken, wheezing sound escapes my lips, but it’s already too late. She’s already walking away. My vision starts turning cold and black. So this is how I die again... I don’t want to die. Not again.
The Void. Nothingness is all that waits beyond death. After experiencing that endless freezing dark once, I never wanted to go back.
Just as my heart gives its final stutter, pain snaps through my skull as something yanks me violently off the ground.
Agony jolts my consciousness back to reality. She is standing right there: the witch—no, the angel who destroyed the monster. She holds my broken body suspended in the air just by grabbing a fistful of my hair.
"What an ugly thing you are," she says, her tone as flat and natural as speaking about the weather. "How ugly you are to even be breathing in this state. Not a single one of your limbs remains intact. Your stomach has a rather lovely hole through it, and your neck is half-gone, too."
She describes my butchered body without a shred of pity, merely observing the ruin with mild curiosity, wondering why I haven't just expired yet.
"A... aa... aa..." I struggle, blood pooling in my throat.
"Are you asking to be killed? Who in their right mind wouldn't ask for death in a state like this?" She raises a glowing hand, ready to snap my thread. "I shall grant you a swift death."
"N... O... I... w...a...nt... to... live!"
I said it. Against the pain, I finally said it!
She freezes, her hand pausing mid-air. Her narrow eyes lock onto mine, silently asking, "How can a creature like you ask to live?"
‘What can you offer?’
Her lips don't move, but her voice echoes like a cold bell directly inside my head.
I have nothing to offer. I’m just a penniless beggar on life's road... but I will give you everything I have and everything I will ever become. I offer you myself.
"You are worthless," she sighs, though a dark spark glints in her eyes. "But... it could work."
"You are beyond saving, but not entirely."
She lets go, letting me drop like garbage onto the wet dirt. With a lazy flick of her wrist, every shattered corpse across the battlefield bursts open. A sickening squelch sounds, and rivers of crimson rise into the air, swirling around me like a violent storm.
Blood thickens. Forms a heavy choking cocoon. As it seals me off from the world, shrinking tight against my skin, the freezing void consumes me once more.
"What a resilient lifeform he is," she murmured. "A waste... but perhaps not."
She traced a fingernail across the glowing essence stone, opening a hairline fracture just wide enough for the blood cocoon to slip inside.
"It will make for a fine test."
Her gaze swept across the battlefield. Child soldiers and young maids littered the blood-soaked ground. Not a single adult knight lay among the dead.
I know half-lings and mana-born measure age differently, she thought, but surely not by this much.
She cast one final glance at the scarred battlefield before rising into the sky, vanishing as though she had never been there.