"Daemon, get the hell up!"
Despite the rough shout that shook his eardrums, he rubbed his eyes that wouldn't open and tossed about.
It was an unconscious action, but the voice didn't speak twice.
Smack!
With an intense shock that felt like his jaw would fall off, he was rolled off the bed and his eyes snapped open.
A thick, hairy giant with a face overflowing with murderous intent was looking down at him with bloodshot eyes.
The giant stepped on his face with the boot he was wearing and growled lowly.
"It's work time. Run to the parts room right now. Understand?"
"...Yes, sir."
A hoarse voice that surprised even himself.
As soon as the giant heard the answer, he strode out of the room.
Only then could he clutch his stinging cheek and find the leisure to look around.
A narrow room filled with simple beds covered with grimy sheets. About ten people were looking at him with contemptuous eyes.
"Stupid bastard. Sleeping away without even knowing the supervisor came..."
"Leave him alone. You know well he doesn't have much time left before he dies. That's why the supervisor just gave him one slap and moved on."
"True, if he beat that guy up, he might really die."
After whispering among themselves like that, they jumped up and disappeared somewhere, leaving him behind.
Having listened to the people's words in a daze, he finally raised both hands and fumbled over his own body.
A skeletal body so thin that his ribs could be felt directly. Arms as flimsy as tree branches and calves where veins showed through.
Completely different from the body he had remembered his entire life, the body of a sick person who wouldn't be strange to collapse at any moment existed below his head.
"..."
Staggering to his feet, he finally realized everything when he stood before a small mirror hanging in one corner of the room filled with musty air.
In the cracked mirror, the appearance of the young man clutching his swollen cheek was far too similar to the third character he had created beyond the monitor.
"Daemon, wasn't it..."
A character created with no meaning, no value, solely for enjoying the game.
That insignificant flesh, for which he hadn't even bothered to properly give a name out of laziness, was now all he had.
Daemon was thus thrown into a new world without being able to utter even a single complaint.
"Move faster!"
The supervisor runs around the vast parts room busily, shouting at the top of his lungs.
On the endlessly moving conveyor belt, crudely assembled metal parts rolled about.
"The union members will be here to collect the products soon, how long are you planning to dawdle!"
When the hairy giant barked at the workers with bloodshot eyes, the hands of those standing in front of the belt moved a bit faster.
Not satisfied with that, the giant swung the small riding crop in his hand to whip two or three workers standing nearby, and only then did he turn around as if his anger was released.
"If you can't meet the deadline, you better be prepared! I have no intention of housing trash that can't even meet their quota!!"
Daemon, who had been standing at a distance watching this scene, turned his gaze back to the metal scrap in his hand.
Three days had already passed since he woke up in this nameless parts factory simply called the 'Factory.'
He still knew nothing, but Daemon had become surprisingly quickly accustomed to this monotonous factory routine.
Wake up before sunrise, work until just before collapsing from exhaustion, and before sleeping, receive one bowl of porridge worse than food waste.
The labor done spending the entire day was assembling scattered metal parts and placing them on the conveyor belt.
There was nothing Daemon could do except accept this monotonous and arduous routine that didn't even need to be understood.
Even when he tried to ask something, the workers assigned around him firmly refused to exchange words with him.
It was only yesterday that he noticed their gaze toward Daemon was no different from looking at a corpse already dead.
"Haa, haa..."
In the parts room where even ventilation wasn't proper, the workers' sweat and stench mixed and spread as steam, lingering on the ceiling.
Just from not being able to breathe fresh air, Daemon's body quickly became short of breath and heat spread through him.
If nothing else, the sense of alienation from this body so completely different from his previous self was tormenting Daemon terribly.
The hellish, arduous labor that felt like his breath would give out at any moment continued for over ten hours without a moment's rest.
If there was any fortune, it was that even when Daemon stopped his hands from assembling parts here and there, the others didn't particularly abuse him for it.
The supervisor would only click his tongue after seeing Daemon's pale face, seemingly having no intention of wasting labor force by bothering a dying body.
From the moment Daemon noticed this fact, he gradually cut corners and was somehow able to endure until work time ended.
After the work time that felt like an eternity ended, Daemon received one bowl of thin porridge as scheduled, devoured it in an instant, and lay down to sleep.
He looked at the dim ceiling and closed his eyes, but his consciousness was still clear.
It was insomnia.
"Damn it..."
Already three days without proper sleep.
Daemon roughly guessed where this terrible insomnia came from.
One of the several penalties he had attached when setting up the character. The insomnia that had reached the level of a trait was tormenting him.
The more depressing fact was that insomnia wasn't the only penalty attached to this body.
All kinds of diseases and symptoms that innately made his body weak were encroaching on Daemon and dragging him down.
How long could he endure?
What was certain was that the time given to him wasn't very long.
He didn't think a body weakened to the extreme could endure long in this harsh labor environment.
He had pondered for three days, but the conclusion had been decided from the start.
'I have to escape from here.'
Whether he withered to death in the factory or was caught and killed while running away, it was the same ending for Daemon.
He had no intention whatsoever of making this parts room filled with stench his graveyard.
The fortunate point, if any, was that not every situation was unfavorable to Daemon.
Perhaps because he was already treated as someone who would die, Daemon was under less control compared to other workers, and the other workers didn't pay much attention to what he did.
If he could make good use of this and grasp the factory's structure, it would be possible to plan an escape route.
Moreover, the most important thing was that this body wasn't completely useless and merely weak.
If Daemon's body carried various penalties including insomnia in this world, then conversely, Daemon's talents should exist exactly the same.
The magical talent he had instilled while adding all sorts of bad traits. That aptitude filled to the end of the limit was sleeping inside Daemon's body.
If he could somehow make use of that talent, then escaping from this factory truly wasn't a story without possibility.
"..."
Daemon knew.
In this situation where he was driven to the extreme both mentally and physically by arduous labor and insomnia, the current self who was calmly organizing the situation and making plans was a completely different human being from before.
The self he knew wasn't the kind of person who could maintain reason in such a situation.
That was probably the result created by mental talents like composure, concentration, and boldness that he had filled in when creating the character.
At that time, he had merely invested in the mental ability stats needed for a mage, but as a result, it was acting as the driving force allowing Daemon, who had stayed up three days and nights, to maintain his sanity until now.
Daemon didn't believe in the naive fantasy that human mental abilities were based on the soul. Rational thinking, cold-hearted mind, reasonable logic, all were talents of the physical body called the brain.
The current mental strength that allowed him to maintain composure was also clearly part of the talents this weak body possessed.
Clearly recognizing that it was Daemon's talent, not his previous self who pressed the character creation button, would be the first step to breaking through this current situation.
Until he got out of this hellish factory, he wouldn't let his guard down for even a single moment.
Daemon whipped himself like that and forcibly closed his eyes.