As Duran recited Kardrett's words, his chest tightened and his throat went dry. A feeling he could only describe as a pulling energy swirled around him, so overwhelming that it reminded him of a day he once played with a vacuum cleaner. 

He was only 7 at the time, but not young enough to forget how painful it felt when the vacuum sucked on his scalp. 

This time, though, it was as if the vacuum was a giant one, so overbearing and all over his body, obscuring all his senses. Did the goddamned god throw him into a black hole? 

He didn't know when he closed his eyes or when he became a butterfly. 

Of course he didn't become a butterfly, but why did he feel like in the air, floating as if he was a kite? Why didn't he feel the floor where he had placed his forehead when Kardrett instructed him to do so as a part of the ritual?

‘Am I dying?'

‘But why? Why does it have to be like this? What did I do wrong to deserve this kind of fate?'

Duran continued to chant a mantra of WHYs until he couldn't hold his grip on his consciousness any longer.

All his struggles to remain conscious proved futile anyway. 

‘Is this really the end of mine?’

He intended to speak this out loud, but he couldn't find his voice. Even when he let out a sigh, nothing came out.

It was as if he didn't have a mouth anymore.

‘I hope this bastard keeps his word and be there for my friends and family.’

With this too-good-to-be-granted-wish of his, Duran gave up the struggle to remain conscious. Ironically, that's when he regained all his senses.

He felt something liquid in nature and salty flowing down his throat, something so soft like a human's body on his hands, then a burning sensation on his knees. 

“What's happening to me?”

He was surprised when he heard the voice, though it was weird, like his mouth was filled with milk or some kind of sour and sticky soup.

He instinctively opened his eyes, aiming at scanning his surroundings. Maybe it would answer all the questions about the weird sensations his senses felt.

‘It's daytime?’

‘A man's arm? No! Kardrett’s arm. I'm biting on it and sucking blood out of it!’

Upon the realization, Duran rose to his feet and spit the blood yet to go down his throat, taking steps backward in fright. 

The salty taste on his tongue forced him to lick his lips to free it from any remaining blood. He then spat and spat like his life depended on it.

‘What's actually happening?’

Even if this could be an illusion, it felt real. 

The steps he had taken away from Kardrett’s body gave him the full view of the scene. Kardrett lay dead on the ground, alongside another dead body. 

‘Wait! That's also… a god? No no! A goddess!’

There was a spear protruding from the goddess's chest, her right hand holding a dagger that sank deep into Kardrett's heart.

Duran was no Sherlock Holmes, but even a fool could see what had transpired. There had been a battle between the two, and each paid with their lives. 

His only doubt was why. Why would they kill each other? They were gods for goodness's sake. Did they... 

It was as if this thought served as a button to unlock pain, as though some powerful being didn't want Duran to think about it. He felt as if a horde of countless ants were crawling inside his brain. If this went on for a minute, he was sure he would burst. 

He touched his head as if to stop the pain, screaming and shuddering like an electric shock victim. The next second, he lost his footing and his knee touched the ground, finally allowing his entire body to collapse on the ground where he curled himself into a writhing maggot.

'Why? Why?'

This question kept playing on his mind. As if stealing his body wasn't enough, the goddamned god had the audacity to send him somewhere he would feel this kind of pain.

'What did I do wrong to deserve this?'

Wait! 

If Kardrett had really stolen his body, what was this he had? 

Duran would have surveyed himself to see if he still had his own body, but the pain was too excruciating for him to do any other thing besides screaming and lamenting, asking himself weird questions.

'Is this hell and I'm being punished for having stolen Jessica's first kiss?'

This also was among the things he hated Kardrett for. The goddamned god had stolen his life before he could even kiss a girl. 

What he did to Jessica, the crush of his life, he wouldn't call it kissing. Perhaps indirect kissing would be the perfect phrase. 

It was weird and cringey but he still remembered it like it happened yesterday. 

Jessica drank from a cup, which Duran stole, took to his room and drank from it forever.

He was kissing her everyday!

These sweet childish thoughts helped Duran cope with the pain, and as it subsided, some kind of foreign memories filled his head. 

The images of places he had never seen, people he had never interacted with and creatures only seen in horror movies. 

Unfortunately, that was not the craziest part. It was the information that followed the images that frightened him.

It spoke of a world where gods were at war, everyone fighting for a god he worshiped. No one knew when the war had started, or why the gods decided to fight. 

Before their war, gods met and created 'Almighty Interpreter' which became known as AI during the war. It was an abstract god of logistics, or simply, a system that was neutral and was supposed to enforce the rules of the war. It served as a referee.

From that moment, gods started picking soldiers from the human world to create armies. Some gods would even give their soldiers droplets of their blood to travel to their realm and fight for them.

At first, it was only their followers. Only those who wanted to go and fight for their gods would receive a droplet of a god's blood to become strong. But then, not long after the war started, gods failed to contain it in their realm, affecting the human world as a result.

Some gods were killed and beasts like wolves drank their blood. Snakes did the same, and some humans of course. They would go drink the blood of a fallen god for it was the only way to not be left weak in a world that was evolving at such a speed.

Sadly, not everyone with a body could drink a god's blood and become strong. Some people had weak hearts, and the pigment from a god's blood ended up killing them. Others became monsters and monsters became more monstrous.

Seeing that most humans were dying before they could even join the battle, gods decided to add a new function to Almighty Interpreter. A function to determine those whose bodies could withstand a god's pigment. Whose blood could successfully mingle with a god's. 

From then on, AI would automatically determine the warriors, giving them the bloodline of a god they worship.

"Holy shit!"

Duran couldn't help but exclaim after such a tale. Now he could connect some dots. 

Kardrett and... he was about to refer to the goddess who had been fighting with Kardrett with a term as simple as white goddess basing on her dress, but a foreign name popped into his head. 

Shiim.

The goddess’s name was Shiim, the goddess of the ocean, the protector of  Pegrinan island. 

By now, the pain was a bygone thing. Duran rose to his feet, trying to digest the gigabytes of information pilling into his head one after another. 

Or, was it his head? He wasn't sure anymore. Because by now, whenever he tried to refer to himself, the name that came wasn't Duran, but Only. 

Only Pegrinan. 

'What kind of a name is that?'

The answers to his question came, but he had no time to entertain them since even the face wasn't his. 

Instead of his modern hair cut, instead of his blue eyes and a simple loose white T-shirt he had been wearing when Kardrett invaded the hotel, the guy in his mind wore clothes of fantasy game characters, his body bulky, his eyes green and his…

'Just what's going on?' he thought, trying to push away the crazy assumption popping into his mind. 

A situation where a person's soul migrated into someone else's body after death was nothing new to him. He was an avid web fiction reader and an otaku, after all. Transmigration tag was among his favorites. 

Could the same have happened to him?

If it did happen, he was in danger. He would never forgive Kardrett for sending him into a world where everything screamed danger. 

According to the memories of Only Pegrinan, it was estimated that the people on this island would go extinct during the upcoming spring. 

There were mutated bats, giant and ferocious, hunting them and the winter that had forced them into hibernation was coming to an end. No one had hopes of escaping their claws and wide maws this time.

The ocean around the island sheltered horrors of itself, never freezing like water should do in winter, but always steaming and full of hungry predators. 

Humans had no escape. 

Only Pegrinan, Duran's new body and identity, was supposed to be the island's king, but only strength mattered in this era. The strength he didn't have because his heart was weak and Almighty Interpreter never chose him for a warrior. 

He never received a god's droplet of blood to enhance his body like the others. That would explain the reason why the dude was drinking Kardrett's blood. 

He was so greedy that he drank from Shiim, then from Kardrett when the goddess' blood didn't seem to work. He must have died as a result, leaving Duran to take over his body.

After this realization, Duran had only one question. Not why, or among 5 Ws, but a full question. 

Was he a weakling like the original owner of this body, or had he received the powers from the blood he drank? 

Though he never wished to live in this world, dying on the first day he arrived wasn't among his wishes, either. He needed strength to survive.

Perhaps he could save the island's residents this upcoming spring and claim his throne. Maybe they would work together to navigate the treacherous waters and go somewhere else to expand their kingdom. 

'I have to test it!'

A certain scene from an anime popped into his head, and he held out his hand toward the dagger Shiim had stabbed into Kadret's heart. Assuming he had telekinesis, he tried to lift it. 

Nothing happened. 

He shot fire balls but only the freezing air of winter brushed against his hands. 

None of the superpowers seemed to work. He was a weakling.

"I'm fucked up!"

That's the only explanation he could give his predicament. Fucked up. 

He looked all around him. Only a white expense, freezing air and unseen dangers lurking nearby. The original owner of this body had come running after he spotted Kardrett and Shiim tangled in a ferocious battle, not even considering shielding himself from the cold with a coat or whatever they used in this world. 

"I'm fucked up!"

The memories had come with places. Duran knew where the human settlement was. Far away. Very far. He wouldn't survive winter with his bare upper body despite the huge, rocky chest and abs decorating it.

"What was this fool thinking about running into the cold naked? Dammit!"

As if his situation wasn't in need of prayers enough, something peculiar started happening on the goddess's body. Something was inside her belly, convulsing and writhing, seemingly struggling for a way out. 

Duran stepped closer for a better look, but he instantly regretted doing so. 

Sloppy sounds echoed around as the abomination tore the skin on Shiim's belly, then her white dress turned red as a sliver snake-like horror shot out of it. 

Its nitro speed took it ten meters into the freezing sky, but it made a U-turn and dived back to her, this time on her neck. Its fangs sank into her flesh, and the horror grew large and larger like a balloon the more blood it drank. 

Its appetite for a god's blood took it to Kardrett after Shiim's body went paler than it already was, wrinkled like a million-year-old oldwoman.

It did not seem to notice the tiny human a few meters from it, but it will surely do after Kardrett shared the same fate with Shiim.

Looking at the abomination, now the scariest thing he has ever seen, the largest snake in the history of all he has ever imagined could exist, the only thing that filled into Duran's heart was fear. 

The real fear.

'I have to run while it's still preoccupied!'