——————————————————————————————————————————

“-re! Who do we have here, boys?”

Opening his eyes, the first thing Cheek saw was a bunch of rough-looking men.

‘-? Highlanders?’

Shaking his head dazedly for a moment, Cheek had yet to fully catch up to the situation.

Throwing out his drowsiness, Cheek took a better look at the men in front of him.

Dark-skinned, tall and ripped.

For a moment, Cheek thought he was seeing strange bodybuilders.

“Oi! Look at that guy, staring at us like an idiot!”

“You said it, bro!”

Another bulking man spoke, promptly hitting the wall above Cheek’s head.

“This punk’s quite rude, don’t ya think?”

Furrowing his brown, Cheek was now fully awake.

Quickly reassessing his situation, he found himself confused at the look one of the men was giving him.

He was less before than his compatriots, he was shorter too, yet neither of those traits were the problem…

He looked like he had seen a ghost, his face was white as a sheet, and he stared at Cheek dumbly.

‘I’ll think about this later’ Cheek thought, his whole body going alert.

Promptly leg sweeping the man at his front, he didn’t wait for the man to get back up.

Immediately charging at his foe, who had created an opening in his shock, Cheek went with an attack for the most damage.

He gave him a hard kick to the nuts.

Blanching the man slumped on the floor, clenching his legs together.

In some odd stroke of luck, the fall of the second man had prevented the first from getting up.

Not hesitating for a second, Cheek drove his foot into the man’s skull, knocking him unconscious and possibly giving him a concussion.

Turning around in a stance to fight the third, Cheek found the man to have passed out.

Sending a backward kick towards the second man’s head, Cheek swore he heard something hit the wall.

‘Well, that was anticlimactic.’

Thinking it was late and passed the time he should have been back home, Cheek didn’t forget one very important thing…

To rob them.

‘They attacked me first, whatever they have is now rightfully mine.’

Fifteen minutes later, Cheek had finished looting their pockets, he was now contemplating whether he should bash the third guy’s head too.

He was fairly certain the first two would suffer from memory loss, but he wasn’t sure about the third one.

‘I mean, in some way, it’s the logical thing to do.’

Unsure of how to feel about this train of thought, Cheek didn’t have the time to finish it was a shockwave threw him off his feet.

‘Wha-’

Feeling the ground collapse under him, he couldn’t even speak a word before he was buried under an uncountable number of rocks.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Eyes opening droopily, Cheek’s mind was a mess. His whole body hurt, and he couldn’t think straight.

Gathering his wits over the course of a couple minutes, Cheek finally opened his eyes.

Now that he could think properly, he truly felt he was in a bad spot.

Some rock was keeping him from moving his foot and another had crushed his fingers.

Wasn’t he kinda lucky tonight? Sure, he was, and is, in pretty bad situations, but it could have been worse.

So much worse.

Having finished assessing his body’s condition, Cheek moved on to his environment.

It seemed the collapse had landed in in some sort of underground cave system.

…

Something was definitely up with this city, he knew that the underground market was strange, but this was just on a whole nother level.

‘I have to get out of here fast.’ He thought, unsure if oxygen was still flowing into the small “room” he had found himself in.

He was stuck in some sort of enclosure of rocks, there wasn’t any light either, it made it much harder to see.

Awkwardly stretching his arm behind his back. Cheek tried to move away the rock that was crushing his right hand.

Gripping onto it, he lifted it up and quickly tried moving it away.

It didn’t work, it was far too heavy for him to move in this incredibly awkward position.

Trying again, he gripped onto it and lifted it up as much as he could.

Feeling the pressure on his right side ease, he yanked his arm away, before letting the rock fall back down.

Moving on to his foot, Cheek was extra careful about his broken fingers.

Quite normally, his arms were too short to reach the rock, forcing him to use his left leg.

Kicking and pushing at the rock, Cheek finally managed to lift it up enough to remove his leg.

Struggling for a moment, he found he could barely fit in the small enclosure the rocks had formed.

He was sure he couldn’t move too much, the rocks were certain to fall right on his head.

Carefully feeling around the rocks to find an exit or some sort of hole, Cheek’s finger slide into a crack between two rocks.

Not knowing how to act for a moment, he considered his options.

He could risk it by prying open a hole, or he could hope and wait.

It wasn’t much of a choice.

Slowly prying apart the rocks, the trapped man found that although heavy, they were quite loose.

‘It shouldn’t be impossible…’

But it wouldn’t be easy either, it also had a good chance of collapsing before he could make it out.

‘Rather, is the other side safe?’

Anxious, he was anxious.

The walk that had led him into this mess was supposed to calm him, not kill him!

‘I just hope it didn’t reach Elisia…’

Wait! Shit!

‘Elisia! Fuck! I can’t die here!’

He couldn’t leave her alone!

Suppressing his turbulent emotions, Cheek didn’t waste any more time.

He pushed the rocks with as much force as he could muster, throwing his body into the opening.

Doing one roll before stopping, Cheek very vividly heard the sound of rocks falling onto each other.

*Crash!*  *Craaaak!*

…

*…plack*

Silently slumped against the wall, Cheek didn’t dare make a sound, less it worsens the fall.

Contemplating what just happened, he came to one conclusion.

Lucky. He had been lucky.

Lucky to have been transmigrated.

Lucky not to have died at the market.

Lucky to have beaten those three highlanders.

Lucky to have such a good sister…

Unknowingly, tears had already started dripping down his eyes.

‘Is this all I amount to? A man who relies on luck every step of the way?’

He was, wasn’t he? Even as Noah, he never did much to help his situation, he only hoped.

Hoped that it would be enough.

Hoped to be able to make it.

…No, that wasn’t true. Although he had been lucky at several moments within his life, he had been unlucky an equal amount.

If he truly relied only on luck, he wouldn’t even be half what he is now.

‘After all, making those sandwiches did help.’

Letting out a self-deprecating chuckle, he reached out his hand to feel where he was.

It wasn’t the time to be mopping around, after all.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Feeling in front of himself with his hand, Cheek found that this tunnel was strange.

Its surface was smooth, really smooth.

It was like he was sliding his hand on a wet piece of plastic.

‘It isn’t natural, is it?’

Or maybe it was, this world was strange, he really didn’t know.

Concentrating on the goal, he could feel the air around him turn cooler.

It was strange, it felt strangely… fresh.

Reaching the end, a light shone on Cheek’s eyes, making him reflexively close them.

The room he found himself in was strange tool.

From what he could see, it was a perfect half-sphere and the source of light that had burned his eyes was actually some strange white globe attached onto the ceiling.

And then… there was that thing in the middle of the room.

It was attached on some sort of grey pedestal.

He couldn’t see what it was from his position, but he somehow felt uneasy simply be looking at it.

Looking around for any exits, Cheek found none.

He had no reason to stray here any longer, this situation was far too ominous for his liking.

Turning around with every intention to leave, he found the path he had come from was gone.

A chill went down his back.

Observing his surroundings one more, Cheek belittled himself within his mind.

‘Even if I went back, where else could I have ended up?’

Not seeing anything else out of place, he frowned.

Wasn’t something supposed to happen? Like, that was how it happened in every fantasy novel he read.

And lo and behold, like the world had been waiting for such a thought, a crack appeared.

The wall didn’t stretch, it didn’t collapse, in one moment it wasn’t there and in the other, it was.

Slowly but surely, Cheek could hear footsteps getting louder and louder.

It barely took a few moments, but for Cheek’s frazzled mind, it was an eternity.

A silhouette stepped out, yet it was unclear, distorted.

It didn’t stay that way for long, though, the closer it got to the slate, the clearer it seemed to become.

This just made Cheek’s worries increase.

Feeling a shift within the air both Cheek and the mysterious figure simultaneously turned in the same direction.

Another crack had appeared.