Kian landed on solid ground.
It was cold.
The piercing atmosphere made him cough out the dust and ash he'd inhaled. Even if he tried to open his eyes, he felt like he would be blinded by the harsh wind.
He still remembered the exchange between him and the Goddess. Looking back on it now, he might have been a little too bold. Still, he wasn't planning on going back on his words. He wanted to survive.
Using his arms, he shielded his face to at least be able to see where he was. They managed to block the flying dust and ash from entering his eyes, and filter the dirty, breathable air—though it still tasted like shit.
"What the fuck!?"
He was on a mountain peak—a seemingly bottomless one. At this altitude, the atmosphere should have been thinner, but he didn't know how this world works. Around the mountain slope was a void of fog and ash, the moonlight barely pierced through the thick, ashen air. And it was cold. Kian would have frozen to death if he wasn't wearing his jacket.
His idea of moving forward and trying to survive was slowly crushed by the ruthless environment. Who the hell lives here? It seemed like he was sent straight to his death.
Well, because he was.
Remaining upright would have caused him to be blown away by the wind this high up, so he crouched and moved slowly with small, heavy steps, evading the harsh air currents. It wasn't like anything he'd ever experienced back on earth. This place would actually kill him no matter what he did.
But that sort of scenario, that sense of helplessness, was nothing new to him. Before being transmigrated, there were always things that had been bound to go horribly wrong no matter what he did. Despite that, Kian gritted his teeth through it and managed to survive
Luck was not something he could rely on. He had to act if he wanted to live.
But the longer he stayed in the godforsaken place, the more impossible his goal seemed. There were no trees to share the cold and cruel winds with him. No other living creatures aside from him were on that mountain. And it made sense. This was not a place where a sane living being would settle on.
As he continued to descend, the winds seemed to grow gentler, though still strong enough to blow him away. He chose the other side of the mountain behind where the winds were coming from. It helped reduce the risk of flying off into the void as the mountain's bulk blocked the air currents.
The mountain wasn't as steep as he'd expected, meaning he wouldn't need to worry about falling to death. He could take his time and descend slowly, but doing so would take ages, considering this was the tallest mountain he'd ever seen in his life.
Come to think of it, the scale of the rocks around him and the sheer size of the mountain compared to him was not normal. It was as though he had shrunk to the size of a small critter. Everything seemed too big. That said, it was safe to assume that he would likely die before reaching the bottom.
To make matters worse, he was starting to feel exhausted and hungry. His mouth had dried up too. If what the goddess meant by "certain death" was dying by starvation, then Kian was pretty much screwed.
Fear was starting to creep up inside him, just by thinking about being alone in this foreign world and starving to death.
But time passed without him noticing, he was too busy thinking about the most messed up ways he could go, he had already descended a considerable distance from the peak. And as he did, the air felt a lot warmer. Almost comfortingly warm. The winds had settled too.
But the ash. It had gotten worse. His hair, even inside of his clothes were getting covered by them. Kian didn't question why. He didn't give it much thought. All that was in his mind was going to the bottom where he could at least find food and water.
If beneath that sea of fog was a lush forest with some drinkable water in it, his chances of survival might increase. Though he will have to struggle fighting and evading monsters, it wasn't worse than having to wait for death and going crazy.
In the off chance that this world really didn't have any life form, then Kian wouldn't be able to procure any food.
'But that can't be. If I'm able to breathe, it means there's oxygen. And if there's oxygen, then it's highly probable that life exists here.'
With that in mind, the chances of dying by starvation halved, because death by monsters shared the other half.
Hours had passed since Kian arrived on the foreign world. He felt like it had been a day. But the blurry moon above the dark clouds didn't budge. While he was walking, Kian had ample time to think. And after hours of deducing, he had come to a conclusion.
The scale of the environment didn't make sense to him, as did the passage of time. And after thinking about it, he did feel that his body was a little bit heavier.
From that information, Kian concluded:
This world was more massive than earth. That should explain the thick atmosphere, stronger gravitational pull, slow day and night cycle, and the generally larger appearance of his surroundings.
That discovery sent shivers down his spine, just thinking about how hard it would be for him to survive in this world. There wasn't a single advantage he could use to survive. The goddess wasn't playing around.
Kian's heart skipped a beat when his next step slipped on a rock. He didn't have time to scream when he fell down a couple of meters to a softer surface.
He felt it with his butt first, then with his hands. The soft, grainy sensation. After hours of walking on solid, moist rocks, he finally found it.
Soil. It wasn't the foot of the mountain yet, he wasn't even halfway down. Yet there was soil on the small rock outcropping. He should have asked why, but he was just relieved by the change of environment.
Though, he couldn't find it in him to rejoice. He fell from pretty high up and since the gravitational pull of the planet was a lot stronger, the fall hurt way more than it should have.
But he landed on soft soil. If he'd landed on a rocky surface instead, he would have been badly injured or even died.
Was luck actually on his side this time?
Where he landed, a massive cave lay on the slope of the mountain. He fell right in front of its mouth. It wasn't a natural cave, he could tell. It seemed like something powerful had drilled that hole into the massive mountain.
All he could hear was silence as he stared at the dark void within the massive cave. Falling into it would be the worst way to go, yet he didn't.
Something worse was about to happen, Kian could feel it.
His heart rate began to rise.
He took a few steps back before completely turning and trying to run from the ominous cave, but pain and exhaustion started to creep up his body. Not to mention that every step felt like running in his dreams, his body felt too heavy. He ran, nonetheless.
And then that deep, gutteral growl caused even the solid rocks to vibrate, shaking the ground beneath Kian's feet. A frequency so low that he couldn't hear it. He could feel it.
He did not dare to look back. All he could do was keep moving his injured legs to try and get away.
He was slow.
Desperate gasps escaped his mouth as he tried to run as fast as he could. But then his leg got caught in a deep crack on the slope. He tried to pull it out but his feet had anchored itself under the corner of the crack. If he wanted to get his leg out, he had to cut it off. But he had neither the time nor the strength for that.
Its presence was overbearing, terrifying. Slowly, Kian looked up as the shadow of a giant covered him.
The dragon met his gaze. Its body wasn't even fully out of its cave, but it had already reached him using its neck. Kian trembled in fear, and he stopped breathing. Tears began to well up in his eyes when the monstrosity opened its mouth. A bloody line of fangs, each one even larger than him, looked darker as it drew closer to him.
In a land as dead as this, he was a walking meat.
Kian's screams filled the silent night.
If it were someone else, the dragon would have bitten their head off or chewed them thoroughly, ending their suffering in an instant. It wouldn't have been too bad, dying quickly in the hands of a mighty dragon.
But Kian wasn't as lucky. The dragon swallowed him whole—except for his leg that got cut off from the crack where it was stuck. The dragon didn't chew him. He was too small for that. Instead, he got swallowed alive.
Crying desperately, Kian got pushed by the dragon's thorny tongue to its throat. He helplessly slid down the dark, narrow, slimy tube where he tried to claw his way to stop himself from falling further down. As he descended lower, drenched in thick saliva, the repulsive smell of acid and other chemicals began filling his nostrils.
And finally, he reached the end of the dragon's throat. He didn't notice that his nails were already removed by his attempts to use them for stopping his descent. His fingers stung badly, but he had to use them to hold on to a sharp bulge on the surface of the throat.
He held on tight with his bloodied hands, the open nerve of his cut leg dangling down, bringing him unbearable pain. Right below him was the dragon's digestive organs—a pool of acid and toxic gas.
With gritted teeth, each breath was a fight for another second of survival. His eyes were wide open but he couldn't see a thing. He couldn't feel anything but pain all over his body and inside his lungs. He'd inhaled absurd amounts of gas within the dragon's stomach.
Tears fell down his face as his desperate, controlled breathing echoed in the digestive chamber.
"I don't fucking deserve this shit!" He cried as his fingers slowly slipped from the bulge.
"Shit... oh god.."
With no other ways to hold himself up, he used his jaws. He bit on the slimy surface as hard as he could to prevent himself from falling. The taste of stagnant bodily fluids filled his mouth. Because his hands had already given in. He was forced to breathe through his nose, taking in the killer smell of rotting corpses of other creatures inside the chamber, and the fucking acid. It was like sniffing through a bucket filled with vomit except the smell was a thousand times stronger.
And then suddenly, the intense, orchestral music occupied the darkness. Without sensing the earphones plug, his phone that he didn't know was still in his pocket, blasted the music that had been paused. Perhaps it got clicked accidentally, causing the music to play, but the sound of the notes made his lonesome, and hopeless situation even more terrifying.
'I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die,'
The flesh he was biting on began tearing apart, he could feel himself lowering. He groaned desperately as the tear became bigger. And then it came off. With widened eyes, he fell. The fall was agonizingly slow—perhaps it was the brain stretching his final moments.
He was terrified, shitless. Without knowing it, he had swallowed the piece of flesh torn from the dragon's organ.
'I don't want to die!'
Kian got submerged into the ruthless boiling liquid and then digested.
————
————
In the thick, endless forest, where the sun shone brightly, and trees stood mighty and tall—where greens covered the land and a vast variety of ecosystem thrived, one particular part seemed devoid of life.
It wasn't a desert, and it was still clearly part of the forest. But it was as though the creatures, even plants, collectively decided to avoid that one area within the forest.
The stench of feces was so strong that so much as smelling it would make even the strongest monsters unconscious. Not even the most disgusting slugs, worms or insects were desperate enough to scavenge the substance of nutrients. The dragon shit was practically poison to any creature.
And then, as if a scene from a zombie movie, a single hand emerged from the pile of toxic dirt.
Kian crawled his way out of the dragon's feces. His internal organs were mixing in disgust, and his nose had long since died. He might have swallowed some of it.
After crawling away from the pile of shit, butt-naked and covered in dragon poop, he spent the next hour vomiting the last of internal fluids he had left in him, along with chunks of the brown dirt.
"Fuck this." He breathed, teary eyed but his face was emotionless. The nightmarish memory, the fear he felt while being inside the dragon's guts was fresh in his mind. He had no idea why he was still alive and standing, and he didn't want to find out at the moment.
"Fuck this bullshit."
—RING—
His thoughts were interrupted by the internal sound, but his panting was nonstop as saliva dripped down his lips.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: Draconic Sight (Lv.1)]
'Huh!?'
He squinted when a holographic screen appeared before him, showing texts and information about... himself.
And apparently, his new skills.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: Abyssal Maw (Lv.1)]
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: Poison Blood (Lv.1)]
Bit by bit, he was able to process the information. He fell to his knees.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: Immortality (Lv.1)]