Waking in the Void
Where the hell am I?
"……Where am I?"
When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a place that made no sense. I was sure I'd fallen asleep in my bed at home. Looking around, the entire world was pitch black. Everything was nothing. The Void.
I had to move. I took a step forward.
As I wandered, shapes gradually began to emerge from the darkness.
"What the… is that?"
It was a snake. A massive snake the size of an airplane, swimming through the sky.
Sssssss—
The snake coiled its body, then leaped viciously upward. It sank its fangs into a carp-like monster floating in the air.
-Keeeeeek!!
An ear-splitting scream tore through the void. What the fuck were these things? Just yesterday I’d been rotting away in my room. Why the hell was I in this nightmare?
I had to run. I needed to get the hell out of here. If I stayed between these monsters, I’d be torn apart and left without even a bone to my name.
"Haa… haa…"
How long had I been running? Once the tension eased, a brutal wave of hunger crashed over me. I wanted to live. I really didn’t want to die here.
That’s when I spotted a bug the size of my own body.
‘If I eat that, I’ll definitely die, right?’
I’d never exercised a day in my life. Could someone like me really fight and beat a monster like that?
But I had to survive. I couldn’t die in a place like this.
I swallowed hard and crept up behind the bug. Then I kicked it with every ounce of strength I had.
Thud—!
-Kieeeeeek!!!
"Fuck."
The bug monster curled up, then sprang at me like a coiled spring. My instincts screamed. If that hit me, I was dead. I had to dodge!
Whoosh—!
"Huk… huk…"
I barely made it. If I hadn’t rolled desperately across the ground, I would’ve been finished. Luckily, the bug monster had slammed into the ground and wasn’t moving. It looked dead.
Still, better safe than sorry. I should make sure.
Thud! Thud!
I stomped on it a few more times before I could finally relax.
"Fuck…"
After a life-or-death fight, a sudden rush of resentment hit me like a wave. Why the hell had I been dropped into a place like this? I’d never gone around doing evil shit to people. I was just an ordinary, spineless citizen. Besides, I’d been too busy to even read web novels or webtoons, let alone play games. I barely watched anime either. I didn’t meet a single one of those cliché isekai conditions—not even a little bit!
I wanted to go home. I wanted to get the hell out of this shithole right now.
Gurgle—
Oh, right. I was starving.
The bug’s corpse lay sprawled in front of me. But how the hell was I supposed to eat something like that?
…No. Was I really in any position to be picky?
Crunch. Crunch.
"Ugh… this tastes like absolute shit."
It wasn’t just bad. It was fucking disgusting. The texture was beyond horrible. I forced down the vomit that kept rising and kept eating like a madman. After forcing down enough to ease the hunger, an overwhelming wave of drowsiness hit me.
But there was a problem. This was truly The Void—a place with absolutely nothing in it. There was no safe spot to sleep peacefully.
"If I want to live, I’ll do whatever it takes."
Riiip. Riiip—
I started tearing the bug monster’s hide off roughly. But the more I ripped at it, the stranger I felt.
‘Huh?’
I’d gotten stronger. I could feel the increase in power in real time, and the damn dark sky looked clearer than before. The moment I looked up at the sky with my sharpened vision, I was horrified.
The sky of this place wasn’t nothing. That… was flesh.
What I’d been looking at wasn’t the sky. It was the body of an unfathomably massive monster. A world where such absurd beings lived and breathed. My mind went blank, but the conclusion was simple.
I had to survive first.
I crudely stitched the bug monster’s hide into a sleeping bag. Long enough to cover me from head to toe. Then I crawled inside.
The slime and blood from the hide coated my entire body. It was revolting. The feeling was so disgusting I wanted to burst out immediately. But I couldn’t. If I slept out there without any cover, I wouldn’t wake up tomorrow morning.
Honestly, even this wasn’t safe. It had only raised my survival chance from zero percent to five percent. Still, I endured it. Because I had to live.
How much time had passed?
After that brutal first day, I gave up counting the days. There was no distinction between day and night here. Every time the massive monster’s flesh covering the sky twitched, a grotesque red sunset would fall. That was what passed for a day in this place. That flesh must have twitched hundreds of times by now.
"……Hoo."
When I breathed in the darkness, I could clearly sense the flow of air within dozens of meters around me. This wasn’t a human ability. No—I had already far surpassed the limits of humanity.
At first, I’d struggled just to survive. The pathetic ordinary citizen who’d nearly died to a bug the size of his own body was gone. To survive, I killed whatever crossed my path. To survive, I tore them apart and ate them. There were no kind system messages or status windows. Every time I killed a monster and chewed its flesh, a fiery power simply surged up from deep inside my bones.
Sssssss—
A nasty scraping sound came from the darkness. The old me would’ve panicked and run. But the current me didn’t even blink.
"Back again, huh."
When I turned my head, a scorpion monster the size of a house was raising its claws in the dark. To it, I probably looked like nothing more than a tasty snack.
Boom—!
The scorpion monster charged, shaking the ground. Its speed was terrifying enough to tear the air apart. But in my eyes, it looked unbearably slow, like it had stopped moving.
Ever since the damn sky had become clear to me, my vision had already transcended that of the monsters.
Swoosh.
I lightly twisted my upper body and dodged the claw. At the same time, I clenched my right fist tight. This wasn’t some sloppy kick like before. This body had been forged by tearing apart countless monster hides and crushing their bones. It was a weapon optimized solely for murder.
"Die."
Kwaaaaaang—!
The moment my fist slammed into the scorpion monster’s hard shell, an explosion rang out. One hit. The monster’s head, which had looked harder than steel, burst apart like a watermelon, spraying in every direction.
Thud—!
The monster’s massive body collapsed to the ground without even a scream.
Shake, shake.
I casually flicked the monster’s blood off my hand. I wasn’t even breathing hard. After repeating this thousands of times, I felt nothing anymore.
One thing was certain: I was no longer the weakest predator in this grotesque world.
"……Still, I bet it’ll taste like shit as usual."
I skillfully sliced away the scorpion’s hide using a dagger I’d sharpened from a monster’s bone. The crude sleeping bag I’d made at the beginning had already fallen apart long ago. What hung over my shoulders now was a cloak woven from the hide of the strongest thing I’d killed here. It was so tough that most monsters’ claws or blades couldn’t even scratch it.
The human who had trembled in fear at a five percent survival chance was dead. Now I stood in this darkness, eyes gleaming as I searched for my next prey.
I still had no idea how to return home. But it didn’t matter. If I kept killing everything that got in my way, eventually my fist would reach the owner of that massive sky.
After roughly tearing off and swallowing some of the scorpion’s flesh, I started walking again. Ever since I’d fallen here, walking had been my only routine. I simply moved forward through the endless, borderless darkness wherever my feet took me. I had lost all sense of direction long ago. Even if I had a compass, the needle would probably go insane in a place like this.
Step. Step.
Only the sound of my footsteps on the dry ground broke the silent darkness.
Everything around me was still pitch black, but to my eyes, it all appeared in vivid three dimensions. The hyper-senses I’d gained from killing hundreds of monsters painted a complete map in my mind: the subtle shifts in air temperature, the sharp texture of dust beneath my feet, even the metallic scent of blood carried on the distant wind.
"……"
I suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky. The sky was writhing. That grotesque ceiling of flesh that gave me chills every time I saw it. In all the time I’d been walking, that colossal being had never once noticed me. Like a human wouldn’t bother noticing a single ant crawling across the ground. Or perhaps it saw me as nothing more than a speck of dust even smaller than an ant.
‘Just wait.’
I clenched my fist tightly. The cloak made from the strongest monster I’d slain fluttered in the cold wind. My body had grown stronger every time I tore off a hide. So what would happen if I ripped apart the owner of that sky?
Just imagining it made my blood boil. If there was any clue to getting home, it was probably inside that gigantic bastard’s heart.
I started walking again. How much farther had I gone?
The air around me had grown noticeably heavier. It wasn’t just lower pressure. It felt like something massive and viscous was pressing in from all directions.
Sssssss—
A sickening sound brushed past my ears. It was on a completely different level from the scorpion I’d killed yesterday—deeper, more spine-chilling.
‘There’s something here.’
I instinctively lowered my stance. I slipped my right hand under my cloak and gripped the handle of the dagger I’d carved from a monster’s thigh bone.
This was different from the monsters I’d faced before. It carried the aura of a natural-born predator. Just breathing made me feel like my lungs were burning from its killing intent.
Tat—!
I leaped silently toward the source of the sound, cutting through the darkness like a shadow.
Finally, a bizarre landscape appeared—massive rock pillars tangled together like a forest. I never expected something like this to exist here. I hid in the shadow of the largest boulder and held my breath. When I cautiously peeked beyond the rock, I couldn’t help but gasp.
"……What the hell is that?"
It looked nothing like any monster I’d seen so far. Its size was only slightly larger than a human. But its overall shape was disturbingly similar to a person. Long, slender limbs and a grotesquely twisted spine. Its entire body was covered in hard black scales, and translucent wings resembling those of an insect fluttered behind its back.