Argh!!...
A sharp, stinging pain burned in his chest as the still half-unconscious man suddenly opened his eyes. Grimacing in pain, he tried looking around.
The world around him appeared blurry as his eyes tried adjusting to the darkness. Cold air brushed past his skin as he found himself lying on the rough surface of the cold stone.
Ouchhh!!
The wave of pain hit again. Grabbing his chest, the man squinted his eyes, focusing his vision on his surroundings. His effort to understand the world brought no result and instead presented more questions.
Ahh!! what?... where am I?..
The questions hit reality when he felt something was wrong with himself.
His mind was blank, and he couldn't remember anything. Who was he? What was he doing? Nothing.
Except for awakening in this dark place, there was nothing he could remember. If he tried, then everything appeared like a hazy dream in his mind.
How! w-what happened... Ouch-!
A sudden, stinging pain ran through his head as he tried to remember how he got here. His heart began to flutter as nothing made sense to him.
'S-shit… I-it won't do like this…' Shaking his head, he tried calming down and trying to understand the situation one by one. It wasn't easy, but it was the start he needed.
And, now that his eyes had adapted to the dark enough, he could see things a little better.
B-bloodd?!... And the very first thing he saw was that both of his palms were drenched in blood. Instead of seeing the skin, he could only see the darkest of crimson hues.
how?!
Confused and now with a hint of fear, he looked around his body. Fortunately, he couldn't find any life-threatening wounds. As the vision gradually returned, his gaze landed upon the tracksuit he was wearing.
Despite it being black, it was fully drenched in blood. It looked ominous when dark was mixed with the red.
Was I injured?!... he questioned, remembering the pain he was feeling a moment earlier.
Turning his head down, he looked at his chest. He was right, there was something wrong with the area around his chest.
Drenched in the blood, it was harder to notice, but eventually, he found a tiny hole, about the size of a penny, in the all-but-perfect tracksuit he was wearing.
Hole?!... ahh!
Suddenly, he let out a pained cry. When he looked at the hole, something stirred inside his head.
A hole! B-but there is no wound?!.. Blinking his eyes, he looked at the hole with a hint of confusion.
The pain inside his head began to subside as things began to get clearer. The fog was clearing, and bit by bit his memory was returning to him.
So, I was shot by?!...
The memory flashed in front of his eyes as the man remembered being chased by a gang because of some item. And when they couldn't get it out of his hand.
They decided to shoot him.
... and in desperation, I pressed the button of the item, the man thought, remembering what the item was.
It was a black box, twice the size of a normal Rubik's cube. There was one button on all the sides of the cube, but no matter how hard one tried, it wasn't getting pushed until,
... my blood got on it... ahhh!... Grimacing, he recollected the fragment of memory that was returning and tried to understand his scenarios more.
As he looked around his body to figure things out more, he happened to find something of great importance. There was a pendant, a type of dog tag was hanging from his neck.
On that pendant, words were engraved.
"Kael!?" Reading it aloud, he understood what it meant.
It was his name.
Arghh!
The moment he read the name, Kael remembered everything.
He remembered what had happened, how he got that item, and why those people were chasing him for that, but before anything else, one thing was clear...
The people chasing him didn't belong to just any gang. No, they were members of his own gang
The gang he was a part of and had thought of them as members of his own family... but in the end, they had betrayed him.
Shot and killed him.
Kael's expression turned grim as he remembered the incident, why and how it had happened.
Like every other mission, his group was assigned to steal the item. At first, he thought nothing of it... But as the mission continued and he realized the gravity of the item he was stealing.
But by the time he had realized it had already been too late to back down.
He had lost quite a few members of his team, and even after their deaths, if the item wasn't stolen, it would be a total failure. Their deaths would've been in vain, which would be an unacceptable outcome.
No matter the cost, he couldn't back down, and thus Kael had decided to continue moving forward.
And after an even greater sacrifice when he stole that mysterious cube, the rest of his members decided to betray him.
At the very last moment, they decided that it wasn't worth the effort to return the item. The reward wasn't good compared to their effort, and they thought they could fetch a better price on the black market.
It was truly a stupid idea considering who had commissioned the steal, but they didn't know that.
Being the leader of his team, he had the knowledge and tried to pursue it. But, in the end, nothing mattered. Greed had clouded their judgment.
They continued their plan and the result... Kael died.
Or, at least that was how it was supposed to happen.
h-how am I still alive? I remembered my heart stopped beating. But how am I still alive... did something happen?
Kael questioned how he was still alive despite having a bullet pass right through his heart.
Not only that, his heart was completely healed, and there wasn't even a mark on his skin. On top of that, everything else was healed as well; there wasn't a single scratch mark on his body.
Is this like one of those stories where a character got transferred to another world... hmm!...
As Kael mused about the probability of something like that happening to him, his mind was drawn to that peculiar item. The item his gang was commissioned to steal.
The mysterious black cube?
... No! That can't be... I mean, why would he commission our small gang to steal the item if it could teleport someone along with bringing one back from death's door…
As Kael thought of these questions, it didn't take long for him to figure out there was something he was missing.
... wait a minute! Could it be that they commissioned us because we were a small team? he thought, but quickly dismissed the idea as it wasn't making any sense to him.
Shaking his head, he wanted to think some more, but stopped when a screen popped up in front of him. Looking at the strange letters, he read the sentence out loud.
[Kael, Welcome to the New World.]