1 Chapter 1: New Life
I was floating in a never-ending pool of darkness.
How did I even end up here? Where am I? Who am I? Questions like that filled my mind as I tried to remember, but all my memories were blurry.
What the hell is going on? I started to panic.
I tried to move but found myself unable to move even a finger. I tied to yell, but not a sound came out. I couldn't hear anything, and I couldn't feel anything.
Time passed, and I was tired, so I just stayed there, floating, having given up on ever getting out of this place. Was it pathetic to just give up? Probably but I didn't care after spending however long I was stuck here.
More time passed, and my memories started to get clearer.
I was the youngest and had two older siblings. An older brother who treated me as his punching bag every time he was angry. No, he would treat me like that whenever he wanted to.
While my parents made me do everything from cooking, cleaning, and everything else they could come up with so I could stay inside the house or, more precisely, in the basement.
My older sister was the nicest out of my whole family by treating me like trash, not worth even looking at. She even gave me her old phone when she threw it at me one time, and it broke.
The screen was cracked, and the bottom part didn't work, but the top was still readable, and that's how I learned about light novels.
Reading them in secret every night so they wouldn't notice I had the phone. It became my favorite time of the day, just reading various novels in the dark and cold basement.
{Confirmation complete. Acquiring Resist Skill: [Cold Resistance]}
The other was the school library I could go to and read.
I was also happy in school. While the kids avoided me, the teacher treated me like every other student.
When I got my grades for the first time, I was excited, thinking my parents would be proud of me for the first time, but when I showed them to my parents, they could care less about my grades. On the other hand, my brother beat me up due to getting worse grades than me.
As I got older, I understood there wasn't anything I could do, so I just tried my best not to anger anyone, and so time flew by.
Then one night, after starting a new volume of a novel I had recently started reading, I went to sleep, and now I'm here.
Am I dead? Strangely I wasn't sad thinking that, having spent my whole life hearing things like; you are a waste of space, and you should just kill yourself. If anything else, this made me want to laugh, thinking that they would probably celebrate if I died.
Actually, death isn't that bad...
{Confirmation complete. Acquiring Ultimate Skill [God of Death: Hades]... Unsuccessful...}
{Repeating attempt... Failed.}
{Repeating attempt... Failed.}
{Downgrading Ultimate Skill [God of Death: Hades] to Ultimate Skill [Shadow Monarch: Ashborn]... Unsuccessful...}
{Repeating attempt... Failed.}
{Downgrading Ultimate Skill [Shadow Monarch: Ashborn] to Unique Skill [Shadow Lord]... Successful.}
[Warning body is in critical condition...]
{Confirmation complete. Acquiring Common Skill [Self-Regeneration]... Successful.}
Huh? A voice, so I'm not dead?
Then I felt pain spreading throughout my body, like millions of needles stabbing me.
My eyes opened, "W-ww-we..." I tried to say, but my throat was dry, and speaking was too painful.
I managed to stand up with difficulty, my legs were wobbly, and it felt like I would fall if I tried to take a step, but I ignored it and looked around.
The room was small and empty, besides the wooden bowl with what looked like soup near a big wooden door and a bucket in the corner.
The door was massive compared to me. At first, I was confused, but then I panicked and looked at my hands. I saw two small, pale, and bruised hands I didn't recognize.
I woke up in an unknown room, everything was bigger than it should have been, and I couldn't even recognize my hands... Did I really die and reincarnate?
I looked at the clothes I was wearing. They were grey and torn, looking like they weren't washed for weeks.
Then out of nowhere, before I could do anything else, a translucent blue screen appeared before my eyes.
_____
Name: Cale #/%^&*&^>
Titles: Slave, Adopted Prince
Level: 1 (0/100 EXP)
Magicules: 1,000
[Stats]
Strength: 10 - 20% = 8
Vitality: 10 - 20% = 8
Agility: 10 - 20% = 8
Intelligence: 10
Perception: 10
Remaining Points: 0
_____
While I was looking with wide eyes at the screen, the door unlocked, and a red-headed fat man with a big scar above his right eye and medieval-looking clothes walked in and looked at me with disdain.
"Good, you're still alive. You should have learned your lesson now." He said, grabbed my arm, and dragged me out of the room.
We passed a dark corridor before he walked upstairs without slowing down, making me trip and be dragged up the stairs before being thrown into a different room.
"Now, you will think before doing something stupid again." The bastard said and slammed the door shut before a locking noise could be heard.
"Cale, are you hurt?" A girl asked as she ran to me. She was around ten years old with blonde hair and bright green eyes.
She checked my body for injuries, and I winced in pain.
Tears started forming in her eyes, "Why did you agree to do that..." She said and started crying into my shoulder.
I didn't know what to do, so I stayed silent and looked around.
The room we were currently locked in was large compared to the one I was locked in before and had what looked like four dirty sleeping mats on the floor and a single candle to light the room.
Besides the girl and me, there was another boy who looked like a male version of the girl but maybe slightly older.
"We had to do it, Mai." The boy said, looking at her and then looking at me, "I got it," he said, showing a rolled parchment of paper and a knife, "We are getting out tomorrow."
He rolled up the parchment showing us a map. "We are somewhere around here and must get all the way to here." He said, tracing his finger from a location that looked like a forest in the middle of nowhere and stopping under the text Holy Empire Ruberios.
"When we arrive in the empire, we can find shelter in the church... Maybe even become Holy Knights..." Then, he started telling us the escape plan.
The plan was simple, but there wasn't anything better we could do to escape, especially as kids.
When one of the slave traders comes here to give us food, we will use the knife and stab him before making a run for it.
After going through the plan, we hid the map and knife under a loose plank on the floor and went to sleep.
But I couldn't fall asleep and looked at the ceiling. It's because I recognized the name of the Empire. It's where the novel I read before reincarnating here.
The story is about a salaryman who is murdered and reincarnates in a world with swords and magic as a slime with unique powers and builds his own nation of monsters.
I didn't see the Jura Tempest Federation on the map, so that means I'm before it was created or the map is old.
But the Holy Empire Ruberios the nation is led by Holy Emperor Louis Valentin, who, secretly is a Vampire and subordinate of Demon Lord Luminous Valentine the "God" of Luminism, and the true ruler of Ruberios.
Is it the best option we have? Maybe we should try to go to another country?
I chuckled... If I'm honest, serving a Vampire doesn't sound bad compared to everything in my previous life.
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Authors Note:
Thank you for reading this chapter.
I will publish a new chapter daily for the first week of this story then afterward, the upload schedule will be around one or two new chapters a week.
If you want to read my other stories like 'In Danmachi as Arthur Leywin' or 'The Beginning After the End: Legacy' check out my profile.
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