“Drip… drip… drip.”

Hajime heard the sound of dripping water. A chilly wind blew past his ears as his whole body shivered. His face was on something hard and his lower body was freezing cold.

He groggily pushed himself up with all his muscles aching as he realized what had actually happened.

‘…I survived?’

His eyes got a flash of hatred as he remembered the reason he was here.

‘Hiyama…’ 

‘I’m still alive by a stroke of luck.’

He realized that his body went through a series of waterfalls as he ended up washed up on the shore of the river where he was currently at.

“T-Talk about a-a water s-slide from hell. S-So fucking cold.” He says, shivering and stuttering due to the cold.

He got up and started walking, the path resembling a cave of sorts.

“I’m gonna do this, I can do this. I’m gonna get back and figure something out. I’m going to go back home.” He gave himself a pep talk, renewing his determination.

As he walked down, he realized that this path was far more arduous compared to the path that everyone was on previously.

Filled with boulders and other obstructions, it required one to navigate the terrain much more carefully.

Finally, as he saw something of an open area, he also saw a giant rabbit with red eyes.

He quickly hid behind the boulder nearby, ‘Did it notice me?’ Hajime gets worried as the rabbit looks around.

He calms down when he realizes that the rabbit had found some prey and started fighting a two-headed wolf.

The rabbit utterly wrecked it before a few more showed up as they tried to gang up on the rabbit.

Looking at the fight Hajime realized what kind of dangerous place he was in. That behemoth that utterly wrecked his party was nothing in front of these predators.

As the rabbit finally killed all the wolves and made a cry of victory.

Hajime in his fear tried to step back but his step was a little loud due to the panic.

*Clatter*

The rabbit heard him and immediately looked in his direction, those glowing red eyes focused on him.

Hajime stiffened with that intimidating stare as the rabbit pounced at him.

Hajime still reacted quickly and transmuted the ground around him to block the rabbit from attacking him.

The rabbit just broke through the makeshift wall and pounced at a scared Hajime.

’This is where I die…’ Hajime closed his eyes as he expected the rabbit to kill him in the next moment but the blow never came.

As Hajime opened his eyes he saw the rabbit shaking a little in fear.

‘This thing can feel fear? What kind of monster can make it afraid?’

Hajime reacted quickly realizing the presence of another predator as he started to transmute the ground in front of him and tried to make a cave to hide.

The rabbit just ran away and jumped as a large two-meter-tall bear with huge hands with big claws pounced at the area where the rabbit was before.

Hajime looked back and saw that the rabbit landed on the ground, cut in two halves blood spurting out from both halves.

Hajime panicked even more as he tried to run away quickly.

The Claw Bear saw Hajime trying to go down and slashed its claw in the hole that Hajime made to run away.

The next moment the claw bear pulled its claws back with an arm stuck between them.

Hajime suddenly felt that his left side felt ineffably lighter as he looked at what should have been his arm.

‘What? Where’s my arm? Why is there so much blood?’ His body refused to believe the reality that it saw, but it could only do that for so long.

As Hajime looked back at the monster he saw a traumatizing thing. It was looking at Hajime like food as it ate the arm right in front of Hajime. To the bear the wolf was prey it could look down on but Hajime was just food.

The pain finally hit Hajime as he reacted, “Aaaaaaahhh!!!” He screamed his lungs out due to the pain that he was feeling.

The bear reached in again with the intention to eat Hajime alive as Hajime tried to run away.

“Ahhhhh Gahhh Transmute!” Hajime screamed with his face covered in tears, snot, and drool as he was finally able to evade the bear and go deep enough that the bear couldn’t reach him.

The guy who’d always been ridiculed and looked down upon used the only skill that he had.

Something that could only be useful for crafters and blacksmiths was used to save his life from a monster more terrifying than anything imaginable.

He kept using Transmute as he was basically running on nothing but willpower at this point.

He didn’t know how deep he dug or how far he’d gone, but he kept going.

“Transmute… Transmute… Transmute.”

He kept going as he finally reached a wall that he couldn’t change, signifying that he’d reached the edge of the floor.

He just fell unconscious as he felt a tiny drop of water fall on his face.

He unconsciously turned his head a little so that the water could fall into his mouth.

…

“Drip… Drip…” The water continued flowing drop by drop into Hajime’s mouth as he finally regained consciousness sometime later.

It took him a while to regain his bearings and remember his situation.

“Aaah!” Hajime felt the phantom pains in his left stump as he tried to get used to the feeling of not having his arm.

‘When did I heal? How?’ Hajime stared at his left stump which he thought would be building him to death.

’This water…’ He realized that the water that he was drinking wasn’t really water but some kind of a panacea.

Hajime was still a little lightheaded as he went through the phantom pains and the initial blood loss.

“I guess this is what saved me.”

He reached his hand out to the source of the water and started transmuting. He went up as the trickle of water got more and more prominent.

Unsteadily he kept going toward the source of the water, constantly drinking the trickles that were falling.

The water kept restoring his mana as he deliriously and single-mindedly tried to find the source.

As the trickle of water finally turned into a little stream, Hajime reached the source of the water.

”This… This is… Ambrosia?” Hajime saw a basketball-sized crystal, emitting a pale blue light as the ‘Ambrosia’ dripped from it.

He read about it in a book, I was a panacea from the Age of the Gods which was said to be able to heal anything and bring a person back from the brink of death. It was just a legend and Hajime never expected to encounter it here.

Without delay, Hajime transmuted the ground around it to collect the water that was dripping from the crystal.

Then he put his mouth to the crystal as that finally eased the pangs of pain that he constantly felt.

He then curled up into a ball with his hands wrapped around his knees and his face buried between them, hoping for someone to save them.

That day Hajime Nagumo was broken.

What broke him wasn’t the betrayal that he went through, it wasn’t that he had an enemy that he couldn’t beat, it was those eyes, those eyes of the bear that looked at him as if he was nothing but food.

’Someone please save me.’ But no one was coming, Hajime had to get through this ordeal by himself.

Hajime spent the next three days in that makeshift cave, hoping for someone to save him fruitlessly.

Although the Ambrosia could keep him alive through the most heinous of injuries, it couldn’t sate his hunger. He constantly felt the phantom pains and the pangs of hunger that consumed him.

All he could think was, ‘Why me? Why did this happen to me?’

As the days passed, his thoughts kept spiraling into more and more darkness.

‘…I’m not dead yet? I really want to live.’ His thoughts started contradicting himself as he spiraled into more and more madness.

After that a strange shift in his mentality started happening, his thoughts got darker as he started getting more focused.

On the eighth day since finding the ambrosia, his mind had finally gotten warped.

‘Why is this happening to me? Why was I brought here? That fucking god that ripped me off from my home. I don’t want to stay in this place. I want to go home. Anyone that stands in my way is my enemy. No one will be allowed to stop me from going back. Be it that god that brought me here or anyone else. I’ll kill them all.’

He forgot all the hatred, all the resentment, and all the anger as nothing mattered to him anymore. The unfair god that threw him into this world, his classmates that betrayed him, that girl who promised to protect him. Nothing mattered anymore.

All that mattered was that if someone was the enemy, he would kill them and go back home.

Going through these hellish days, Hajime finally pieced his broken soul back together. It wasn’t a hastily fixed, patchwork-filled soul. It was something forged in the depths of the abyss. A soul tempered by unfathomable pain. It was a soul that was going to be stronger than steel.

That day, the gentle Hajime who would take all the bullying that came his way with a smile and move on died. In his place, a monster was born.

The kind Hajime that Kaori fell in love with was no more.

All of Hajime’s thoughts were focused on one particular direction as he made plans to get out of this hell hole.

…

Twin-tailed Wolves usually made their dens in certain open parts of the labyrinth floor. 

They usually moved together in packs of four to six. Alone, they were among the weakest of the monsters that roamed the floor, so they always acted in groups. 

This pack was no exception and was a group of four wolves that skirted from boulder to boulder, vigilant of their surroundings, searching for a suitable hunting ground. 

Twin-tailed Wolves generally preferred to ambush their prey since they were among the weakest. They usually needed to gang up on enemies that would win in a one-on-one fight against them.

They wandered the corridors for a while until finding what they deemed a suitable hunting spot and all hid behind different boulders. All that remained was to wait for prey to fall into their trap. 

One of the wolves slipped between a small crack in a nearby boulder and the wall, then erased its presence. It licked its lips in anticipation, imagining the flesh it would soon feast on when suddenly it felt a rather odd sense of unease.

All the members of the pack had an ability that connected them telepathically. They couldn’t communicate through it but they had a general idea of the situations of their companies.

That wolf’s unease intensified as it heard a momentary roar from one of his companions. The next moment it stopped feeling the connection to that companion.

A few moments later the wolf found itself stuck between two walls that manifested themselves around it and got crushed to death.

The same thing happened to the other two wolves.

Hajime had been spending the previous days training his Transmutation nonstop 24/7 as he had the Ambrosia which could sustain him through the hunger.

As long as he dealt with the constant excruciating pain in his stomach and the phantom pain in his stump, he could train his transmutation without stopping for days until he was finally confident in taking care of a group of wolves.

He brought the dead carcasses into the cave that he had with The Ambrosia.

He was so hungry that he spent no time cooking them, not that he could since he had zero affinity for magic.

He just peeled the fur off them and ate the wolves raw.

‘God that tastes like shit…’

In the dimly illuminated cave, there was a ghastly figure that was eating the raw flesh of an animal.

There was a crucial detail that he forgot in his hunger, the monsters in the dungeon are poisonous to humans and cannot be eaten.

Hajime, in his endless hunger, ate half the flesh of one of the wolves, the pain in his stomach increasing instead of decreasing.

He only stopped due to realize that his body was being destroyed by the poison of the wolf that he just ate.

He just drank some ambrosia as he continued eating the wolf in his uncontrollable hunger.

After he finished the wolf, he couldn’t even stand up as he just submerged half his face in the tiny pool of Ambrosia, trying to heal himself back up.

Hajime went through hours of excruciating pain as his body was constantly destroyed and reconstructed without stopping.

He felt that the pain he felt before this was nothing but child’s play.

The searing pain was so intense that it would’ve made anyone else want to kill themselves, but Hajime had already reforged himself in the depths of the abyss, he kept going as he drank more and more ambrosia.

As the pain finally dies down, Hajime looked at his reflection in the water as he saw someone completely different staring back.

He had white hair and red demonic eyes that would strike terror into anyone.

‘… I look edgy as fuck.’ That was the first thought that Hajime had as he looked back into his own reflection.

“We weren’t supposed to eat monster meat… I can’t believe that I did something so retarded… Then again, I doubt I could’ve lasted much longer without food either.” Hajime said as he smiled self-deprecatingly.

Despite how much the previous weeks of constant pain had completely exhausted him, he felt rejuvenated right now. There was no pain, and he felt much stronger than before.

He looked down and saw very prominent muscles, even his height had increased by a good amount.

“What happened to my body…? Everything feels different.” He focused and some dark red veins made themselves visible on Hajime’s arms.

“Fuck, I better not have turned into a monster of some kind. That would be a terrible joke.” As he thought that the red veins of mana disappeared.

He turned to look at his status plate to see if it showed any changes.

{

Hajime Nagumo Age: 17 Male Level: 8

Job: Synergist

Strength: 100

Vitality: 300

Defense: 100

Agility: 200

Magic: 300

Magic Defense: 300

Skills: Transmute — Mana Manipulation — Iron Stomach — Lightning Field — Language Comprehension

}

“Holy mother of tarnation. This is crazy.”

‘Mana Manipulation? That must be what the weird red veins are. Monsters can directly control the mana without incarnations. I guess that must be due to the Mana Manipulation skill.’

“Does this mean that I can directly get a monster’s ability by eating it? That would mean that this Lightning Field is an ability of those wolves.”

Hajime tried to use it as he used to transmute. He picked up a piece of flesh and imagined lightning coursing through it as he activated the Lightning Field ability.

Immediately the flesh got seared. The ability worked as a kind of shield that Hajime was able to cover around himself. 

He spent some time practicing it as he ate more of the monster meat.

He realized that eating the wolf’s flesh didn’t hurt him anymore, which was probably due to the Iron Stomach skill.

Finally having some relief he is able to think clearly and make a base in the place with the ambrosia.

He cured the meat of the other wolves as he then spent the next few days diligently training his skills.

He had already trained transmute to the point where he could get its derivative skills. The first derivative skill he got was Ore Appraisal.

It allowed him to identify the different kinds of ores that were present in the dungeon.

He even found an ore called Blastrock, it was basically the gunpowder equivalent of this world.

As long as it was exposed to a spark of fire, it would violently combust. 

Finding this gave Hajime the idea to make himself his own weapon.

He found the hardest stone that he could find, Taur, and used it as the base for a six-chamber revolver.

The bullets were backed with compressed Blastrock.

He used his Lightning Field ability in conjunction with the gun to ignite the bullets as the lightning propelled the bullets much further with a lot more speed than it would’ve.

Hajime made a fucking handheld railgun with his abilities in a fantasy world and he was damn proud of it.

He named it Donner as it was supposedly going to accompany him through his journey in this world.

…

Hajime then finally killed that rabbit that saw him as nothing more than food after trapping it.

As he ate the rabbit’s meat all he could think was, ‘This is fucking disgusting.’

But despite the disgust that oozed out of him while eating it, he still ate the rabbit. One he was hungry and two, the rabbit had a really cool ability that Hajime was wondering if he could get after eating the rabbit.

Hajime killed the rabbit by luring it into a place with water as he used his Lightning Field to stun the rabbit for a little bit. Lastly, he blasted the rabbit’s face off with Donner. The railgun-powered revolver was an absolute beast of a weapon.

After eating the rabbit Hajime checked his stats and saw a significant boost alongside a new ability called Air Dance.

’This was the ability that the rabbit used.’

When Hajime activated the ability by imagining his legs getting a boost in speed, he was propelled forward and slammed face-first into the wall.

‘Okay, I need to practice this first.’

A few more days passed as Hajime trained his abilities before deciding to look for that Claw Bear that ate his arm.

…

After a painful and grueling battle, Hajime finally killed that bear and decided to look for a way up.

He spent two days unsuccessfully looking for the way up before he found 

a lone cabin on that floor.

Looking at that cabin that the monsters gave a wide berth to, was mind-boggling for Hajime.

There was a fucking vacation cabin right in the middle of the dungeon, there was an aura coming from the cabin that gave Hajime the chills as if warning him that getting close to the cabin was dangerous.

After eating the monsters, Hajime had developed a kind of sixth sense, similar to what monsters had, that’s why he was able to sense that repelling aura.
’Should I check it out?’

“… Nah. Too much work, I’ll do my own thing.”

Hajime walked away to look for the way up, ignoring the bizarre in the dungeon.