บท 4: Hunger
Without sleep, his awareness would disappear, regardless of whether it was day or night. During those gaps, he had no sense of time passing. It was like the full anesthesia he had experienced in his previous life—one moment, it felt like only a few seconds had passed, but when he "woke up," hours had gone by.
However, unlike sleep, during these moments of total unconsciousness, he didn't even dream.
Ronan couldn't be sure if this had happened to him before, as his awareness wasn't fully clear until after his first eye had appeared.
This led to another bizarre thought: in terms of time, he had always believed that he had only been in this otherworld for about ten days. But… had it really only been ten days?
These scattered thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a second eye. Unlike the effort it had taken to grow the first eye, the left eye emerged naturally, like breathing. Ronan didn't even need to focus his mind on it.
When he noticed his field of vision expanding, he floated to the surface of the water and looked at his reflection. Just like the right one, his left eye was also enormous and deep red. With the two eyes now formed, the cloud of mist that was Ronan's body finally had something resembling an expression. He blinked awkwardly, thinking to himself that if he could just grow a nose next, maybe his appearance would look a bit more normal.
On the third day, a nose indeed appeared on the black cloud of mist.
Ronan was starting to become more composed about these changes. As he observed his new nostrils, he thought to himself that he should probably have two ears as well.
It was as if some divine force was answering his prayers. By the fifth day, a left ear had appeared, so he patiently waited for the other ear to grow.
Then, on the seventh day, the right ear emerged.
Ronan felt deeply grateful, although he wasn't sure who to thank. Apart from the eyes, the nose and ears looked just like those of a human. Having spent over twenty years in his previous life as a human, he was still more comfortable with that appearance.
By the thirtieth day—or roughly the thirtieth day, since Ronan's consciousness was still prone to lapses—he finally grew the mouth he had been hoping for. Standing beneath a waterfall he had recently found, Ronan admired his gleaming white teeth. Never mind how eerie it was to see a mouth and teeth growing on a black mist, he was overwhelmed with joy.
In his last life, he'd worked himself to death, literally. All those endless hours of overtime left him with no time to enjoy good food or experiences. The world was so vast, but he had seen none of it before his sudden demise. It was a bitter regret!
As he thought about the money left unused in his bank account, Ronan was filled with a sense of loss and frustration.
Now that he had been reincarnated as some unknown entity, he had assumed his chances of enjoying fine meals were over. But now, with a mouth again, maybe there was hope! It was like the universe hadn't given up on him yet.
Inspecting his newly reformed facial features, Ronan silently swore to live this new life as a laid-back slacker. This time, he'd enjoy every indulgence to the fullest. Fast food, takeout, overtime work, the rat race—all of it could go to hell!
After admiring his teeth, he stuck out his tongue. Before he could make his next move, a sudden sensation froze him in place.
Hunger.
Intense hunger!
Even without a stomach, Ronan could feel the gnawing pangs of starvation. It had been over thirty days since his rebirth, but this was the first time he felt the unmistakable sensation of hunger after growing a mouth.
It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling, but one he hadn't experienced since his past life. The hunger drove him to search the forest for food.
He had long since drifted far from the spot where he first woke up. Over the past few days, he had aimlessly floated about, without any real purpose or direction. After leaving the waterfall, he floated for about ten kilometers when he noticed a change in his surroundings.
More and more colossal trees had been snapped in half, their trunks lying on the ground. Where once there had been lush undergrowth, there was now muddy, cratered land. The farther Ronan drifted, the stronger the metallic stench of blood grew in the air.
Ronan lowered his altitude slightly, staring blankly at a patch of open ground. There should have been a tree there, but it looked like someone had yanked it out by its roots, leaving behind only a muddy pit. The surrounding earth was charred black—not like it had been burned by fire, but more like... it had been struck by lightning.
And... as he followed the marks, the traces of lightning strikes grew more concentrated, leading to a massive boulder that had been shattered into pieces.
The black mist slowly hovered over the broken stones. Ronan guessed he had found where the uprooted tree had gone—it was now impaled in the charred corpse of some unknown creature.
In his mind, Ronan frowned. Yes, despite having grown eyes, the mist hadn't developed eyebrows, but that didn't stop him from imagining himself making expressions.
The corpse before him wasn't just scorched, it had also been severely battered before death. Lying nearby was what appeared to be part of its body, and its head had been cleaved in half.
Ronan's reaction was delayed. He felt like he should be vomiting, but once he drifted away from the corpse, he realized he wasn't as disturbed as he thought he'd be.
Maybe it was because the creature was unfamiliar. In his worldview, beings like this shouldn't even exist, which made his sense of disgust much weaker.
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