When I gained consciousness, I was alone, stranded in the middle of what felt like a void.
Where was I? What was this place? Thousands of questions emerged in my head at once, only to be suppressed one after another.
My consciousness was too hazy to think about anything complex. Wasn't I supposed to be transmigrated? Where was this place?
Confused, I tried to move my limbs, only to realize I didn't have any. Baffled, I tried to shout, only to realize I didn't have a mouth either. It felt as if I was trapped inside a warm, slimy cocoon, unable to do anything at all.
Did I screw myself by jumping into an unknown world after all? What was happening, and where was this? More and more questions began emerging inside my mind, and the more these questions emerged, the more I noticed my consciousness getting hazy. I tried to relax and take a deep breath, only to realize I was also missing a nose.
Dammit.
My world was spinning by now—or at least that's what it felt like—I wanted to go to sleep. All my other thoughts, whether they were worry, questions, or confusion, slowly began to disappeared, leaving behind only a desire to rest. Before I knew it, I had already lost consciousness.
---
A loud, muffled noise woke me up from my sleep. My conscious thoughts returned at once, and my previous memory of this place came rushing back. How long was I out? No, wait, something was different from before.
I tried to stretch my body once again, only to feel… LEGS. I had LEGS, although they were fixed in an impossibly difficult position. There was no doubt in my mind. Those were limbs.
Ha Ha Ha, I almost cried in joy. My limbs were back—my legs, my hands.
BOOM!!!
A muffled blast in the distance paused my enthusiasm for a second.
Right, I still had to figure out where this was. Concentrating my thoughts, I tried to contact the association's guiding program. There was no response.
What in the words, I tried again and again and again.
Something was wrong. Usually, a blue system window with my bodily stats should have appeared in front of my eyes. Was it because I didn't have eyes? Wait, did I have eyes? For some reason, I couldn't tell.
Around me, the voices were getting louder and louder. Explosions would randomly go off in the distance. Angry screams and shouts would come out of nowhere.
Those seemed like human speech, though. I could guess that much. Just what kind of fresh hell had I been spawned in?
---
Days passed, maybe even months—possibly years, though I couldn't tell.
At times, my consciousness would randomly get hazy, forcing me to pass out. And by the time I would wake up, my body would have changed—or rather, grown.
As my body grew, so did my ability to think. The deep haze in my head gradually receded, allowing me to observe my situation more carefully and come up with some conclusions.
What I figured out, though, was mind-blowingly shocking.
There was a good chance that I had been reincarnated rather than transmigrated. Well, not exactly. The winning theory seemed that my soul had been transmigrated into a fetus, but wasn't that the same as reincarnation? I didn't know all of this was super confusing.
But what I did know, however, was that this was not supposed to happen. Never in the history of the association had such a case occurred. There was a reason only worlds with grown-up bodies entered the market. No one had ever found a way to reincarnate.
Could this be the reason this world had no time limit to dive in? Was it because all this time, it was planning to chuck me into a fetus?
Still, in the end, these were all speculations. Even the reincarnation-as-a-fetus theory was just that—a theory despite the chances of it being correct increasing more and more every second.
---
More time passed, and the more time I spent inside the warm cocoon, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Outside, the explosions and shouts became more and more frequent.
I didn't need to understand this world's language to know what was happening. People were dying all around me; they would cry, scream, shout—then stop and go silent. This was a battlefield. And my mother must have been some warrior, fighting inside while still being pregnant with me.
Shit, she knew she was pregnant, right?
Somehow, both possibilities seemed grim. A woman fighting on a battlefield without any knowledge about her pregnancy and hence no qualms to protect me. As opposed to a woman who would go to war despite knowing and endangering her newborn.
---
One day, I was suddenly woken up by a loud thumping of drums.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A bit startled and frankly confused, I tried to shift my body a little, only to realize that the old familiar cocoon that had been coddling me all this time had also begun to contract.
What was happening? Was it that time already? Was I finally being born?
Joy filled my heart and it felt as if rays of light were descending upon me from the high heavens, while at the same time, the thumping grew louder and louder. Eventually transforming into a crash of a thousand thunder strikes.
At that moment, I felt something—a nudge, and then another, and then another.
It was happening. It was finally happening; I internally screamed as a pair of giant hands slowly cradled my emerging body. A multitude of sensations suddenly hit me at once: sight, smell, touch.
YES, I cried out in glee, only for real this time, as a cacophony of chortled laughter came out of my mouth.
Ha Ha Ha. Yes… yes, finally. The eternity that had felt like damnation had finally ended.
I had been born. Ha ha ha ha ha, my laughter wouldn't stop. Of course. All that came out of my mouth were sounds of chortled gibberish.