I felt excruciating pain, as if every bone in my body had been destroyed and reconstructed and destroyed again. Of course, I was hit by a truck...
"Okay, it looks like it worked," the boy said aloud as he tried to recover from the shock. His whole body was burning with pain, and his head hurt badly.
"Damn it, Truck-kun, I thought you were my friend, why did you kill me like this?" He questioned as he tried to recover from the last few seconds; it was like a blink of an eye, and he was awake in an unknown location.
"It was too quick for me to have been in a coma, and what kind of hospital would this be?" He questioned. After all, the place he was in was no different from a room inside a cave.
"A door, a wooden bed, and a straw pillow... Okay, we're not alive anymore," he said as he got up, surveying the area.
"Okay, maybe you really are my friend, Truck-kun," he said upon seeing a small mirror. Approaching it, he looked at himself.
He was of average height, not exceeding 1.80m. His body had some muscles, as if he played sports, something he would never have done in his previous world. His hair was black, quite messy, and cut around shoulder length.
He saw himself with his eyes as red as blood, observing the symmetry of his face, and his charming smile didn't fail to appear.
"Hahaha! Yes, Truck-Kun! You're my best friend! My only true friend! You bastard, could've told me it was that easy to get out of that crappy life! Hahaha!" He laughed loudly and then returned to the bed and lay down with an excited expression on his face.
"Let's wait for some idiot to show up. I want to know this body's name quickly," he said, his eyes shining with motivation.
Hours passed, and no one came to see him.
"Okay, let's get out. Since everyone doesn't want to see me, I'll see everyone," he got up and opened the door, coming face to face with three men.
The three had pickaxes in their hands and looked at him with fury. He slowly blamed his friend Truck-kun for not handing over the memories of his predecessor, but he didn't let it bother him.
"Why weren't you at work?" The tallest one questioned. He presumed he could be his boss.
"Oh, sorry boss... I... I was sick," he replied with an ironic smile as the men's stares in front of him got worse.
"Let's go, you slacker," he replied, this time his tone lighter than before.
"Sure," he quickly replied, but without the slightest clue as to what it was about. Logical thinking? Sure! He wasn't even afraid of the pickaxes in the hands of the workers in front of him; imagine, him being afraid, what nonsense.
He followed the workers to a mining field; in fact, he already lived in a mine, so the stone walls and the floor without any kind of coating or flooring. The guy was a miner.
"Now I understand why I have these muscles," he said, watching other miners working.
"Hey, what are you doing, Strax? Come on, lazy," the leader said, and he immediately picked up the pace and started walking behind them.
"So my name is Strax... it's a good name," Strax thought. Really, compared to his generic name from his past life, Strax was really good!
Before long, the group arrived at the entrance to a cave. The leader, the tallest man wearing a helmet with some sort of lantern, went in front, though Strax couldn't exactly tell what it was; clearly, it wasn't something technological.
The group descended a few meters, while Strax followed them quietly. He had been given a slightly rusty iron pickaxe, quite different from the others in front of him.
"Less than two hours and I'm already facing discrimination? Being handsome is a problem indeed," he thought as he looked at the "ogres" in front of him. Well, to say they looked like ordinary men was sickening; they were clearly ogres in human skin.
He followed the group, which arrived at a kind of cave with several divergences.
He then looked at the leader before asking, "Are we digging here?"
"Yes, you and Eron go to that tunnel, we two will go to that other one," he pointed to the respective tunnels, then followed the man called Eron.
Strax followed the man called Eron to a certain point where the tunnel ended; both found a wall still being excavated.
"We don't have all day, break it already," he ordered and stopped watching Strax. So, they both started digging with their pickaxes.
After digging a bit, he found a metal in front of one of the rocks he was completely smashing with his rusty and worn pickaxe. It was a large piece of something made of a resistant mineral that gave Strax a sacred feeling.
"What the hell is this? This looks nothing like the minerals I know!" With quick thoughts, Strax poked Eron, who looked at him, and he pointed at the mineral.
"Damn! Mithril!" he shouted surprised at the discovery.
'Mithril? Like, that stuff that gets quickly replaced in almost every novel? That crappy metal?'
Strax was incredulous at what he had just seen. Sure, he had thought about the possibility of being in a fantasy world, but found it silly; but now, knowing this...
'Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Come to me, System! Give me the System! Now, Truck-Kun, I know you're listening! Hahaha!'
He roared internally dreaming of his beloved Cheat; there was a different gleam in his red eyes when he saw the possibility.
Now he wasn't just here to have a new life; now he wanted to conquer the coveted Cheat that all transmigrators would love to have!
'Oh, okay, the cheat only appears after going through a process of discovery or danger,' he thought, but his thoughts were invaded by a call.
"Strax, look at this," Eron called him. He looked at him and saw a small cave open in front of the wall they were mining.
"We need to report that we found a cave," Eron said and began to return. "Wait here, I'll be back soon," he warned, and Strax nodded.
"Waiting is bullshit, I'm going to risk it," he threw everything to the air; he had already died once, another wouldn't make a difference!
Strax entered the cave and felt a unique flow of energy flowing through the cave wall. Suddenly, he felt that his body was much heavier than before. It felt strange and at the same time dangerous.
Holding the pickaxe and the helmet with the lantern-like, he lit it up completely, and the sight he saw was beautiful and at the same time frightening.
A cave with humidity and a strange concentration that he didn't know the origin of; it was something he had never felt in his life.
'This feeling in the air... what is this?'
He kept walking, feeling strange; he kept his mind sane and continued to explore.
Nothing was found; nevertheless
, the feeling of strangeness continued.
Not long after, something happened.
"There's something wrong here... I feel it," he said, looking at the paths he had followed; instinctively, he turned, feeling a strange noise coming from his back.
A strange shadow appeared in front of Strax, causing him to instinctively recoil. A monstrous spider, with hairy legs and glowing eyes, advanced towards him, emitting a shrill and threatening noise.
"Damn it! What is this?!"
He stepped back even more and held the pickaxe tightly, terrified but prepared; the spider lunged with its venomous jaws ready to tear his flesh.
Strax dodged, in an act of pure luck, and instinctively struck back with the worn tip of the pickaxe, which hit the right side of its head, completely piercing it; yet it rose again.
"Damn it, are you kidding me?!" He shouted angrily and, again, holding the pickaxe more firmly, attacked again.
Sweat fell on his face as he continued to crush the spider's head with the flat part of the pickaxe, but it still moved.
He faintly saw a glow on its belly, like a jewel, and then decided to attack there successively; finally, it stopped moving.
Panting, he watched the creature's inert body on the cave floor.
"Phew... that was close. But I can't stay here for long. Who knows how many more of these things are lurking in the shadows."
[Ding!]
[Congratulations! You received a gift from "Entity 000000007" from Sector Prime!]
[You obtained the Demonic Harem System of the Dragon God]
[Starting...]
Strax heard the sound... and he freaked out internally when he heard the little bell and read the notification in front of him...
"Damn it! I was right!"