Adaptation: Not Yet
Not yet. My adaptability still wasn’t there. Just a little more.
Finally, the furry merchant, unable to fight off his boredom any longer, stretched into a massive yawn, mouth gaping wide. The instant his gaze drifted vacantly into the air and his shoulders sagged—
Now!
I poured every ounce of my focus onto the black line hovering in the empty space. Then I hooked it and yanked, hard, as if reeling in a catch.
Ugh…!
A pain like someone dragging a saw across my optic nerves slammed into my eyeballs again. My eyes flushed crimson, the swollen veins bulging so tight they felt ready to pop. Dry tears poured down my cheeks from the sheer recoil. But I didn’t stop this insane stunt. I couldn’t stop.
Because that rat meat, sizzling nicely over the coals, was sliding slowly but surely out of the merchant’s blind spot behind his back, dragging straight toward me.
This wasn’t an illusion.
Following the tether of my will, an object with real physical mass was being pulled along.
Ha… haa….
The agony had been forgotten long ago. In its place surged an explosive rush of euphoria and adrenaline that made my blood sing.
Me. An utterly ordinary—maybe even incompetent—guy like me. I was wielding real magic, real superpowers, the kind I’d only ever seen printed in novels or flickering across movie screens. And I was doing it in this reality, with my own will.
The overwhelming unreality of it, the power it had handed me. The primal pleasure was so intense it numbed every sense in my body. I was deliriously, insanely thrilled.
As the burning pain in my eyes grew worse, the corners of my mouth tore upward in a grotesque, uncontrollable grin.
Drip. Drip. The liquid running down my cheeks splattered onto the muddy ground.
When I wiped it away with the back of my hand, it wasn’t clear tears. It was sticky, dark red blood.
Whether this was magic or some kind of psychic ability, the price for using it was that my eyes now wept blood instead of tears.
But what did I care? Whether blood poured from my eyes or every capillary burst, what did it matter? From today onward, I had been reborn as a special existence who could wield the magic I had longed for so desperately!
Thud.
The dusty rat meat finally collapsed at my feet.
I threw myself down, snatching it up with both hands. Clutching the filthy, still-warm lump of meat to my chest like a treasure, I bolted toward the house without a single backward glance, as if the hounds of hell were on my heels.
Once inside, I frantically brushed the dirt and ash off the rat and began tearing into its flesh.
My breath was ragged, my lungs burning, but I couldn’t slow down.
The maze of alleyways in the slum that I had only swept past once had been burned into my mind like photographs, guiding me perfectly. Maybe it was because I was now in the body of a child whose brain cells were still fresh. At the very least, my memory was incomparably better than in my old body.
Bang!
The moment I slammed the door of the crumbling mud hut shut, I collapsed onto the floor.
With shaking hands I knocked the worst of the dirt and charcoal dust off the meat, then opened my mouth wide and ripped into it.
Munch, crunch… gnaw…
Rat meat—the first time I had ever tasted it in my life.
In my original body I would have collapsed in horror, foaming at the mouth. But now… shockingly, almost unfairly, it was insanely delicious.
The oily juices coating my tongue and the chewy texture of the tough meat made what little sanity I had left evaporate. I licked the bones clean in seconds. Only then did a warm fullness spread through my stomach, bringing a rush of pleasant satisfaction.
Haa. I think I can live like this.
Maybe it really was because I was in a child’s body—one measly palm-sized rat was enough to fill me up. The fuel efficiency was terrifyingly excellent.
That was when the real problem hit. The moment my hunger was satisfied, a savage thirst came roaring in.
Gulp.
I swallowed dryly, but my mouth was already cracked and burning. I needed water. I had to get water.
But from where?
In this godforsaken slum that didn’t even have sewage pipes, let alone a communal well the neighbors might share?
The only moisture visible the second I stepped outside was the filthy puddles on the dirt ground, reeking of every imaginable waste and bacteria.
I pressed my throbbing temples and closed my eyes. If I gave in and drank that muddy filth, what would happen?
Throughout human history, the worst pandemics had almost always started with contaminated drinking water. Cholera, typhoid, dysentery. If I swallowed water from a place with zero hygiene, I’d end up like that little girl I’d seen earlier—wasting away, organs rotting from the inside, dying in agony.
No. It had to be clean water. I had to make something I could actually drink.
Luckily, my mind still contained all the survival knowledge I’d learned through proper education. The method was simple: filter out the visible impurities first, then boil the water to kill the invisible bacteria.
The question was what to use as a filter.
My eyes darted around the shabby room. Chunks of cold charcoal scattered beneath the brazier. Small stones and sand I could gather right outside. If I tore a few strips from this ragged outfit, layered the materials, and stacked them, I could improvise a crude water filter.
The filtered water would then have to be boiled hard.
I slowly opened my eyes and looked at the brazier in the center of the room. A blackened, ancient cast-iron pot sat on it, abandoned since who knows when.
Of course, dried barley porridge crust was stuck hard to the bottom, but I wasn’t in any position to be picky. Actually, it was perfect. If I poured purified water into that dirty pot and boiled it, the stuck porridge residue would dissolve naturally, giving me a bit of extra carbohydrates and salt. It might even turn into something like a thin gruel or savory sungnyung.
Perfect.
It was a stomach-churning recipe no civilized person would ever consider, but I had no choice.
I gathered the charcoal pieces, the small stones, and the coarse sand. Now all I needed was cloth to hold the layers.
I squeezed my eyes shut, grabbed the hem of the pathetic rag skirt I was wearing with both hands, and—
Riiip—!
The fabric tore. The skirt that had barely reached between my ankles and knees instantly became much shorter. A cheap, ragged miniskirt was born.
“Hiiik.”
The cool breeze suddenly whistling between my bare legs made every hair stand on end.
I used to be a healthy young man who strutted around the neighborhood in shorts during midsummer. I never imagined that simply exposing a bit of thigh would flood me with this much shame.
My face burned. Without thinking, I clamped my knees together and frantically tried to tug the shortened hem back down.
Ha, fuck… reality check.
To think there would come a day when I felt embarrassed about wind blowing between my legs and actually crossed them. My mentality was shattering into pieces, but I didn’t have time to wallow in this unfamiliar humiliation.
My throat was cracking from thirst. I had to make drinkable water, and fast.
Cheeks still burning, I stacked sand, pebbles, and crushed charcoal onto the torn cloth, creating a crude but functional filter. I carefully poured the disgusting puddle water over it. The liquid that dripped through the layers into the pot was noticeably less murky.
Good. Filtration complete.
Proud of myself, I set the pot on the brazier. Now all I had to do was bring it to a rolling boil to kill the remaining bacteria…
……But how the hell was I supposed to light the fire?
This was a fantasy-world slum. There were no gas stoves or convenient click lighters. I didn’t have the strength or patience to rub sticks together like a caveman until friction produced a spark.
I slowly turned my head toward the corner of the room, where my white-boned roommate lay in peaceful, comfortable repose.
Excuse me, sir. You wouldn’t happen to have any flint in your pockets, would you?
I crept over and began rummaging through the corpse’s rags. First day in this new world and I was already looting a dead body. Truly a tear-jerkingly excellent display of adaptability.
I lifted every fold of the skeleton’s clothing, felt between every rib, but aside from clouds of dust, I found nothing. Not even a single coin-sized useful object.
Sigh. Of course. There was never going to be anything helpful.
I tapped the skeleton’s ribs dejectedly and let out a long breath.
Water was ready. No fire. How was I supposed to overcome yet another piece of this damned, adversarial world?
I pressed my forehead and racked my brain. Maybe I should rub sticks together like a primitive after all?
Rejected. These toothpick arms would dislocate my shoulders long before any spark appeared.
I couldn’t focus sunlight with a magnifying glass, and I definitely couldn’t just reach into someone else’s brazier and grab burning charcoal with my bare hands.
Then there was only one answer.
If I couldn’t create fire myself, I would steal someone else’s. And didn’t I possess that incredible unknown ability I had used to steal the meat earlier?
Decision made, I opened the creaking door and stepped outside again.
“Hiiik…!”
The moment I left the hut, the cool wind rushed up my newly exposed thighs. I gasped and slammed my knees together.
Every step made the ragged hem brush against the sensitive bare skin of my thighs. The strange, ticklish, faintly erotic sensation made my face burn tomato-red.
Shit, are people staring at my bare legs? What if some pervert looks at me?!
Completely shrunken, I hurried down the alley like a tragic heroine, pathetically tugging at the shortened skirt.
……But all those terrible worries were completely misplaced.
Not a single rough vagrant or merchant spared me a glance. In their eyes I wasn’t some pitiful, exposed young girl. I was just another dirty, smelly beggar brat with a charcoal-smeared face and stick-thin limbs.
Whew. Thank god no one’s looking…
I felt relieved, yet somehow a small part of my pride still stung. Still, I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
I quickly refocused and scanned for a target. There—at the corner of the alley—someone had abandoned a brazier with perfectly dry twigs and a piece of firewood still glowing with embers.
I hid behind a shadowed wall, clenched my eyes, and focused again.
Ugh…!
The pain returned. Fresh blood tears leaked from my eyes, but with a soft thud, the dry branch and its precious ember landed perfectly at my feet.
Success!
I wiped the blood from my eyes, clutched the precious loot to my chest with trembling hands, and sprinted back to the mud hut.
Triumphant, I set the pot of filtered water on the brazier, carefully placed the stolen ember on the dry twigs, and blew like a madman.
“Hoo! Hoo…!”
Crackle. Crackle.
Finally, bright red flames roared to life. I smiled proudly, impressed by my own insane intellect and decisive action.
……For exactly three minutes.
Oh no.
I had completely overlooked one fatal, critical detail.
This crumbling mud hut had no ventilation. Not even a palm-sized window.
“Cough! Hack, cough! It burns! My eyes—my eyes are burning!”
The thick, acrid smoke filled the tiny room in seconds. This time the tears streaming down my face were the real kind. It felt like being thrown naked into the middle of a chemical warfare drill. In the end I couldn’t endure the smoky hell. I crawled across the floor like a bug and frantically fled outside.