Jin-ho was now staring at the people in front of him, who were chained up with iron shackles and collars, just like him. They looked like they had been beaten regularly and had wounds all over their bodies, which reflected the life they had lived until now. Most of them had barely any clothes on, wearing something that would not even qualify as rags. Most of the females had their breasts hanging out of those rags, but they didn't seem to care much about it. Some were also crying while others were trying to comfort them.
This was a small cell where nine people were staying, which was very cramped. Sweat, blood, and the scent of rotten flesh were the most noticeable odors one would pick up if they inhaled the air. Instead of doors, there were iron bars, very much identical to the police station cells he had once seen.
But even after seeing this much absurdity, the most absurd thing was yet to be seen.
He noticed that every one of the captives had pointy ears, which were in every aspect similar to the elves from many fantasy stories he knew.
Jin-ho entered an inner crisis after seeing this.
'This doesn't make sense. How can there be elves in the world? This must be part of some shooting makeup or some kind of prosthetics, right? Hmm, there's no way elves could be real,' thinking this, he laughed in his mind.
Just as he thought that, his hand almost instinctively reached out to touch his own ear. In his shock, he found that he himself had that same set of pointy ears. And it certainly was not makeup or even any super-realistic prosthetic.
"What the fuck," he shouted out loud from the shock.
People around him turned towards him as soon as he shouted. Everybody was now staring at him.
He gave an innocent smile while scratching his ears as if nothing had happened. When everybody turned their gazes away, he began thinking hard about this whole situation he found himself in.
'How in the hell did my ears become like this? Even if they were elves, how could I become an elf like them when I have always been a human? This is a joke, right? This has to be a joke.'
'And if this isn't a joke, then where am I? Am I in a fake, artificial reality? Is all of this happening just in my head? No, that can't be true. No technology can be this real. At least not yet. I am literally dying from the pain in my body. How can this not be real? But then what? Have I died and reincarnated in this new body? But shouldn't this work with me being born as a baby like those protagonists from the manga that I used to read? How can I just possess an elf's body just like that? What about the previous owner of this body? What happened to him?' Jin-ho was thinking of every possibility he could think of, which would explain this.
After some thinking this and that, Jin-ho concluded. He was sure: this is real. Even though he didn't know why or how this happened, he became an elf.
Just like that.
'Hmm. Then I must have become an elf somehow after my death. And as there are no elves on Earth, then this must be a different world.' Suddenly, an exciting realisation came into his mind.
'Now I just have to figure out how I am in shackles, and how the hell can I get out of here.'
His excitement died down a little from realising his own situation. He really was in a shackel, chained to the wall like an animal.
He crawled closer to the other elf beside him, who was also chained just like him. It was a girl who looked like a 12-to-14-year-old. She was a malnourished and very sick-looking girl. 'Who knows her actual age? Maybe it's close to 18, but due to the lack of nutrition, her body might have shrunk down to this size,' Jin-ho thought to himself.
"Hey, can you tell me where we are and why we are chained up like this?" Jin-ho asked the girl, almost like a whisper, as if his mouth had dried up, not having any water for days.
The girl stared at him for some seconds. Then her eyes suddenly began to tear up. She broke into a cry. Hearing the girl cry, others came closer to her.
Without having any clue about why she began crying, Jin-ho made some distance between them instantly, as far as his chain allowed him to go, trying to indicate he wasn't the reason she started crying.
The other elves asked her what the matter was. She replied by saying what he had said to her. Then, as if a repetition of the earlier scene, they also began to have tears form in their eyes.
One of them was sobbing while murmuring that "he must be so traumatised from being tortured so brutally for two days that his mind finally broke."
Others were nodding to that, and some were also saying, "That wretched noble boy must have tortured him more than usual for him to become like this. They should just rot in hell." Most of them were saying something almost similar to this.
From Jin-ho's point of view, this looked like they were feeling bad for him, as if he was tortured so badly he must have lost his memory. So they were pitying him.
Ignoring them, Jin-ho asked them, "Hey, can you tell me what is going on? And why are we in here?" Jin-ho asked.
"Eon. Did you really forget everything? Don't you remember anything?" one of the women asked him, wiping the tears from her eyes.
'So apparently, this body's owner's name was Eon, Interesting!' Jin-ho thought in his mind before answering. "No. For some reason, I have no memory of any of this. Can you tell me everything from the beginning?" Jin-ho asked again.
"Then what is your last memory? How much do you remember now?", that same woman asked again.
'I'd better say I have no memory whatsoever in case they know everything about me, and something doesn't match the way I say. I have to hide the fact that I am not the person they are thinking I am. Even though I didn't mean to, I literally stole this owner's body somehow; even though I didn't do it intentionally, they obviously won't like this.'
After some brief silence, he spoke up again. "Well, I don't remember anything. My memory is sort of mixed up. Everything feels somewhat jumbled. I can't exactly pinpoint any specific memory about anything. I feel confused."
Seeing the confused expression on his face, they somehow bought the lie. Some of them even began to cry even more loudly after hearing this.
'Hmmffffff. I actually pulled it off, I guess. They don't seem to suspect anything,' Jin-ho was relieved with this.
Then one of the good-looking men came closer to him and started explaining all about their life to him. How they were captured after the war. How the humans made them slaves and kept them imprisoned here for ten years. Beat them, tortured them, and whenever they felt like it, came down here and took them out to pleasure themselves as they liked.
Hearing the word "pleasured," Jin-ho suddenly had goosebumps. He stared at the guy who was saying the rape part by sugarcoating it. It was visible in that man's eyes that he had also been raped.
'What?! What the hell did he just say?! Males also get raped?! As in seriously?!'
The idea of men being used as toys... it made his stomach turn.
He had always thought of elves as noble creatures, but here they were, broken and abused. The reality of this world was far darker than any game he played back on Earth.
Jin-ho had always been absent-minded. He was quiet. He never hung out with the other kids. He always lived in his own world, experiencing reality differently from everyone else. For this reason, he never quite fit into society. His grandfather had always worried about him because of it, but Jin-ho never understood what was wrong with the way he was.
Though he was inherently unlike the human average, his uniqueness granted him no immunity from this. His mind still struggled to adjust to the sudden weight of this new dark knowledge.
'Wait a minute. If that man was raped... does that mean most men get raped after they become slaves? Does that mean... I was also raped by someone after becoming a slave?'
Panic started to rise in his chest, but he quickly shoved it down.
'Wait, wait, wait. Let's not go down that route. Even if this body's owner had to suffer that misfortune, it doesn't have anything to do with me. After all, it didn't happen to me. I literally just arrived in this body. As long as I handle what comes next, I can ignore that fact. Yeah. Let's just forget it.' Thinking this, Jin-ho pressed his fingers hard against his forehead, as if trying to physically delete the memory of what he just heard.
One of the women then asked him if he remembered what had happened during the last two days, when the guards had taken him out of his cell. She was asking about the torture they put him through in those two days, pointing out that he had many new injuries he didn't have two days ago.
Looking down at his own body, he found fresh wounds and bruises painting his legs and arms purple and blue.
'So they did torture me in these two days,' he thought, grimacing. 'From the looks of these scars, this body was beaten brutally. Judging by the lash marks... I'd guess it was a whip?!'
He decided not to answer the question about the torture. Instead, he looked up at the group. "Do you have any idea where my parents are?"
"Nobody knows," the man replied, shaking his head. "Everyone from our village was captured; that's all I can say. Most of us were separated from our families at the slave market and haven't seen them since. Only a handful of people were blessed enough to be bought together."
After saying this, the man glanced toward a woman and a young girl who looked identical to each other, huddled together in the corner—clearly mother and daughter.
'So in other words, I can't expect getting help from this body's owners' parents.'
"How long have we been here?" Jin-ho asked the man.
"I can't say for sure, but it should be around 10 years," replied the man.
"If we have been here for 10 years, then does that mean there is no chance of being rescued from here?" Jin-ho asked the question without beating around the bush.
Hearing this, everyone who was present there looked at the ground without saying anything.
Seeing their reaction, he understood what it meant.
'So, chained to an iron collar, check ✅;
beaten so severely as if it were part of the routine, check ✅;
potential chance of getting raped, check ✅;
almost zero chance of ever getting out of this place, check ✅.
Great, just what I needed after getting killed by some crazy chick whom I saved, only to be getting isekai'd as a slave for eternity. I mean, why bother getting me killed only to send me here without any cheat-like power like every protagonist from the fantasy stories gets whenever they get isekai'd? At least they should have given me a way to defend myself.' Jin-ho became frustrated with this whole situation.
After some brainstorming, when he couldn't find a solution to this, he felt fear, anxiety, and anger all at once.
He realised his position in this world perfectly, just by hearing the fact that he had been a slave living in this dungeon-like room for the past ten years. No help will come for them.
Which means, if he himself doesn't find any way to escape this place, then it is very likely that he will have to spend the rest of his life rotting here as a slave.
This is like waking up from any nightmare, only to find a bigger nightmare is now his reality.
In his mind, he began to beg anyone who might have sent him into this world to give him a way to survive in this new world.
Although he had never believed in God, he began to understand now that there must have been someone of a higher power, a being who must have possessed god-like ability. If not, this situation would not exist. Only someone who can bend space and maybe the reality itself can be capable of doing this. So he prayed to that entity.
Jin-ho's prayer must have been from the heart, as it showed in the result right afterwards.
Just when he stopped begging in his mind, a big transparent screen popped up in front of him out of nowhere.
It had a sentence written in it.
$$ HOST'S PRAYER HAS BEEN ACCEPTED $$
"Whoa, whoa. What the fuck is this?! Did my prayer really worked?! Just like that?! Now this feels like a game. If not for the pain, I would've really thought all of this was some sort of hallucination or even some kind of brain damage." Murmuring to himself, he was staring at the screen.
After he read it, a new screen, different from this one, showed up in its place.
$$ SYNCING WITH HOST: 6% $$
$$ SYNCING WITH HOST: 12% $$
After syncing for 20-30 seconds, it showed 100%. Then it disappeared completely. After a while, suddenly, a different screen window opened in front of him.
-STATUS-
Race: High Elf
Age: 96 years
Strength: 10
Stamina: 30
Agility: 12
Mana: 3000
Insight: 16000
SP: 0
'Whoaaaa. For a second, I really thought it was just my imagination. But It Is real. Wait, if this is real, then that means this really must be my status screen, just like a game.'
'Not bad. High Elf, ehh? From the looks of it, this body is barely 18, yet this screen shows I am 96. So does this mean this body has a crazy life span? Will live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?! Holy fuck. This IS A CHEAT, sort of, I guess. But what are these Mana and Insight for? How do I use these?! Wait, can I use magic too?!' Just when he thought this, a new screen popped up again.
[Unlocking Skill Window]
-SKILLS-
Locked Skill: Matter Manipulation
(Condition: Study magic for the first time)
Locked Skill: Heat Manipulation
(Condition: Master Matter Manipulation up to lv 10)
Locked Skill: Spell Management
(Condition: Create a new spell)
Locked Skill: Alchemy
(Condition: Create a lower-grade potion)
Locked Skill: Inventory
(Condition: Master Spell Management Skill up to lv 5 )
Locked Skill: Smithing
(Condition: Melt raw ore of any metal)
Locked Skill: Crafting
(Condition: Craft an item unknown to this world from scratch)
Locked Skill: Skill Shop
(Condition: Master all of the unlocked skills up to lv 10)
After seeing this new screen, Jin-ho muttered to himself in a low voice, "Well, well, well. Now, this is what I call a protagonist's cheat ability. Looks like I will be busy." Suddenly, he began to laugh like a maniac, as if he had suddenly become the happiest person in the whole world.
'Hehe. Heh heh hee. Hehehehehehehe. Hah hah hah hah hah'.
Author: Jin-Ho found his dream cheat ability, but will be able to use it for his rise in this world. Cause as a wise man once said, Even the deadliest weapon becomes a cheap toy in the hands of an idiot.
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