As the memory played slowly, I noticed that infront of me stood the boy, Alex but now he was much older than in the last memory.
'He looks to be 14 years old in this one. All the other memories are clouded and this is the only memory left.' As I was thinking to myself, a familiar sound resonated in the surroundings.
Swoosh! Whip!
Swoosh! Whip!
Two whips simultaneously hit Alex's back. Seeing the whip made me feel like I was forgetting something. Alex started to squirm on the floor with pain.
One of the men holding the whip said in an angry voice, "You son of a whore! Why couldn't you learn how to extract the seeds from the old man? Now he's dead and we can no longer grow the Starlight fruit!"
Whip!
The other man whipped him and said, "Get back to mining, you useless piece of shit! No food for you today!"
"Ugh!"
The boy groaned in pain but still fearful of the whiplashes, he moved to pick up his pickaxe and started mining the minerals. His limbs were thin like sticks and his skin was pale. He was shivering, either due to weakness or fear or both. But if someone were to look closely, they would notice that eventhough he was skinny and looked weak; the muscles on his body were toned. Infact, the muscles on every guy here were toned since they were mining from a very young age. But what's use of such muscles when they can't even grant you freedom!
***
The memory ended and with it the headaches, and now there was only darkness. I kept my eyes closed, fearing that something might happen again if I opened them. I can now recall all those events I confronted earlier!
'This nightmare is really scary and it's also a lucid dream! First there was that creepy incident in the train, then I felt like I was dead, soon as I thought I woke up, I was surprised with pain and I fainted. To top it off, there are these strange memories in my head of a very miserable kid!'
As I was thinking about the past events and resting on the floor to catch a breadth, a familiar voice rang in my ears.
- "Soul assimilation successful, host has regained his consciousness. To activate the system, please say, 'Activate'."
It was the same robotic male voice that resounded in my ears when all my senses were shut down in the void earlier. I probably heard it again somewhere in between the events that transpired.
'So this nightmare hasn't ended yet. How long will I have to suffer? Am I actually in Hell?'
Grieving over my life, I opened my eyes slowly. I had some trouble first as my eyelids were covered with eye gunk that were sticking to the eyelashes preventing them from opening but somehow, I managed to open them and what I saw surprised me to my core! From the stale smell, the dampness and the structure, I can tell that I was in a stable, a very big stable made up of straws and wood.
I looked at my arms and my legs; they were pale and as thin as a stick. My eyes opened wide and I looked around when I noticed an inwardly curved platform made of clay, containing water. I stood up with some difficulty. My body was feeling weak and I felt like my legs would break at any moment but I grit my teeth and walked towards the platform. I needed to know what I looked like. I needed to know what was happening.
As I went closer to the platform, I looked at the water and the reflection inside of the water. What I saw cleared up my mind. Now I knew why this dream felt so realistic and why I was feeling pain eventhough one can't feel pain in dreams, because this wasn't a dream. No, I should rather say that this was a nightmare in which I was trapped. Because, from all the novels I've read, movies and anime I've watched, and games I've played, I'm pretty sure that I've been reincarnated into a strange world as a slave named 'Alex'.
"Shit!"
***
'Most of it makes sense now but I still can't wrap my head around how I died or how the reincarnation works. First, let me figure out if I know the world I'm in.'
Thinking that, I went through all my memories and tried to figure out where I was but I was lacking too much information.
Boof!
As I was racking my brain, I heard a heavy breathing sound from my back. The hairs on my body rose up and I swiftly turned back to see where the sound came from. I saw about ten buffalo or horse like creatures arranged and locked in a row. The room was pretty big and they were quite far from me. As I moved closer to them, I realized that they weren't actually normal domestic animals but monsters!
They had a buildup similar to normal horses but slightly bigger in size. Instead of having two, they had three pairs of legs and three horns on their forehead. They had an additional tail compared to the horses I was used to. They even had two udders, one below the chest and another at the back! As I noticed the details my brain felt a slight jolt of electricity and a fragment of a memory hit me making me say out loud, "Lakéqus!" Lakéqus was the name of this beast. It was the only source of milk here and was also used for transportation.
- "Host should activate his system. To activate the system, please say, 'Activate'."
The robotic voice resounded again in my ears and only then did I realize what this was. It was a system! A system or status screen which will be my cheat to conquer this world! Without any delay, I opened my mouth and said with utmost expectations, "Activate!"
***