The last thing Akira Tanaka saw was the grill of a delivery truck.
It happened so fast. One moment he was crossing the street in Shibuya, exhausted after another soul-crushing 14-hour shift at the office. The next moment—impact. Pain. Darkness.
So this is how I die, he thought in those final seconds. Twenty-eight years old, no family, no girlfriend, no achievements. Just another corporate slave who worked himself to death. Well, almost.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd always joked about being killed by truck-kun like in those isekai manga he secretly read during lunch breaks. He just never thought it would actually happen.
Then nothing.
Consciousness returned slowly.
Akira became aware of warmth first. Not the sterile cold of a hospital, but organic warmth. Wet. Confined. He tried to move but his body wouldn't respond. Panic set in—was he paralyzed? Brain dead?
Then he heard it. A heartbeat. Not his own. Surrounding him.
What the hell is happening?
Time lost meaning. Hours? Days? He couldn't tell. All he knew was the rhythmic pulse, the darkness, and a growing pressure that built and built until—
Light exploded into his vision. Cold air hit his skin. Sounds assaulted his ears—guttural, harsh, inhuman. He tried to scream but only managed a pathetic squeal.
Large, calloused hands grabbed him roughly. Akira's vision was blurry, unfocused, but he could make out shapes. A face loomed over him—green skin, yellow eyes, pointed ears, tusks jutting from a wide mouth.
A monster.
"Krii! Krii!" the creature cackled, holding him up like a trophy.
Akira's infant mind struggled to process. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't Earth. And that definitely wasn't human.
More shapes gathered around. All green-skinned. All ugly. All celebrating his birth with disturbing enthusiasm.
No. No, no, no. This can't be—
But as his vision cleared and he caught his reflection in a puddle of murky water nearby, the truth hit him harder than that truck ever did.
Green skin. Oversized pointed ears. Yellow eyes. Tiny claws on his fingers.
He'd been reborn. As a goblin.
Days turned into weeks.
Akira—he refused to think of himself as anything else, despite the goblins calling him "Grix"—learned quickly that this new life was hell.
The goblin tribe numbered maybe forty individuals, living in a network of caves carved into a hillside. It was primitive, brutal, and reeked of waste and rotting meat. The social structure was simple: the strong ate first, the weak got scraps, and the weakest died.
His "mother"—he shuddered at the term—was a haggard goblin female who'd already birthed six others. She barely looked at him, shoving him aside whenever he tried to nurse. Survival was his own responsibility, even as a newborn.
Akira watched. Learned. Adapted.
The goblins spoke a guttural language that somehow, miraculously, he could understand. Whether it was a gift of reincarnation or something else, he didn't know. But he listened to every word, absorbed every detail.
The tribe was led by Gruk, a hobgoblin—an evolved form of goblin—who ruled through fear and violence. Twice Akira's size with corded muscle and wicked scars, Gruk killed any goblin who challenged him. His word was law.
The tribe survived by raiding. Small merchant caravans. Isolated farmhouses. They were parasites, and they knew it. But in this world, goblins were at the bottom of the food chain. Everyone hunted them. Adventurers, knights, even other monsters.
Akira learned this the hard way when he was two months old.
The raid came at dawn.
Akira woke to screams. Not goblin screams—human screams.
The tribe had ambushed a traveling merchant and his guards. Akira watched from the cave entrance as the goblins swarmed like insects, overwhelming their prey through sheer numbers. Three humans died. Five goblins died too, but Gruk didn't care. The food and supplies were worth the sacrifice.
What disturbed Akira most wasn't the violence. It was how quickly he accepted it.
This is survival, he told himself, watching goblin younglings feast on human flesh. This is the world now. Adapt or die.
The merchant's corpse was dragged back to the cave. Looted. Stripped. Then left to rot in a disposal pit deeper in the cavern system.
That night, unable to sleep, Akira crawled to the pit. The smell was overpowering—decay, death, waste. Dozens of bodies in various states of decomposition. Goblins, humans, animals, all discarded like trash.
He stared at the merchant's body. The man had been middle-aged, probably had a family. Now he was just meat rotting in a hole.
Is this my life now? Kill, eat, die, repeat?
Akira clenched his tiny fists. He'd been given a second chance at life—a shitty, brutal, green-skinned second chance—but a chance nonetheless. He refused to waste it living like an animal.
There has to be more. There has to be power I can use. Magic. Skills. Something.
He reached out toward the corpse, not knowing why. Just... feeling. Searching for something beyond the physical.
And then he felt it.
A pulse. Faint. Not life, but the echo of life. The residue of death. Energy. Dark energy.
It called to him. Resonated with something deep in his soul. Without thinking, Akira grabbed it, pulled it, willed it to—
The merchant's finger twitched.
Akira gasped, stumbling back. His heart pounded. What was that?
He looked at his hands—tiny, clawed, trembling. He looked back at the corpse. Nothing. Stillness.
Did I imagine it?
But he knew he hadn't. Something had happened. Something impossible.
Over the following days, Akira experimented in secret. Small things. Dead rats in the cave. A bird corpse he found outside. Each time, he focused on that dark energy, that echo of death.
And each time, something responded.
The rat's tail twitched. The bird's wing fluttered. Nothing sustained, nothing controlled. But it was real.
Akira's hands shook with excitement and terror.
I have power. Magic. And not just any magic—
Necromancy.
The forbidden art. The power to manipulate death itself.
In the manga and light novels he'd read, necromancers were always portrayed as villains or edgy anti-heroes. Powerful but hated. Feared by all.
Perfect, Akira thought grimly. In a world where I'm already the most hated monster, what's one more reason for them to fear me?
Three months after his rebirth, Akira achieved his first real success.
A goblin youngling—barely older than him—had died from infected wounds after a fight. The body was tossed in the pit as usual. That night, Akira made his move.
He'd been practicing. Meditating. Feeling the flow of that dark energy that permeated the cave of death. He understood it better now—it wasn't evil, just... different. Death was natural. He was simply asking it to wait a little longer.
Akira placed his small hands on the dead goblin's chest. Closed his eyes. Focused.
Rise.
The dark energy surged through him, flowing from his core into the corpse. He felt resistance—death didn't like being disturbed—but he pushed harder. Sweat beaded on his green skin. His infant body trembled from exertion.
RISE!
The corpse's eyes snapped open. Milky white. Lifeless yet moving.
The goblin sat up with jerky, unnatural movements. Its head swiveled toward Akira, awaiting command.
Akira couldn't speak yet—his vocal cords weren't developed enough. But he didn't need to. The mental connection was there. He could feel the undead's primitive awareness, could sense its absolute obedience.
Stand.
The zombie goblin rose to its feet, swaying slightly.
A manic grin spread across Akira's face. His first undead minion. Weak. Clumsy. But his.
"Gri... Grix..." he managed to whisper, his first word in this new life. His name. His new identity.
The zombie goblin stared at him with empty eyes.
This is just the beginning, Akira—no, Grix—thought. I died once. I refuse to die again. If this world wants to treat me like a monster, fine. I'll become the monster they fear most.
He looked at his undead servant, then at the pit full of corpses. So much potential. So much power waiting to be claimed.
I'm a goblin. The weakest monster. But I'm also a necromancer.
Grix clenched his tiny fists, dark energy crackling faintly around them.
Let's see how long I stay weak.