It had been one year since he arrived in this world in someone else’s body. A long time has passed, but Kagami felt only a stranger to his new body. At times he would look at his palms, seeing no trance of the star shaped scar he had had for four years prior.

Everything reminded him of how different this body was. He was a head shorter. Rather than the black and straight, his current self had gold hair. Eyes black compared to blue. Skin etched with scars and skin with no blemish.

And more than anything, his current body was much weaker than his old one. It was like a dragon compared to an ant. That was the gulf between his past and current self. He had trained for a year in hopes to regain that strength, but he only found himself much more disappointed in himself than anything for not being able to reach his strength.

Frustration speckled in his face as he shoved the boulder aside, a barrier between the Sanctuary and the Maze he would go out to every few days to hunt.

As he stepped through the threshold, outside of the sunroot’s light that enveloped the Sanctuary, he stepped into an open area lit only by the lanterns that hung upon the wall. The Gatekeeper watched him as he pushed the boulder back in place, blocking the Sanctuary from unseemly visitors.

“Going out?” Luke had asked, his tone disinterested, but he still asked to be polite, despite their relationship.

Kagami bent over, trying to catch his breath, sweat dripped from his face. The boulder had been a heavy lift, if it was his original body, he could easily have moved it without batting an eye. He looked up at the man with the red mane. The Gatekeeper rested his back and his spear against the wall as he looked down upon him.

“Walnut wants me to hunt. Says we need more material for weapons,” Kagami answered him. He swallowed, clamped his mouth, and stood straight up. He still hadn’t caught his breath, breathing heavily out of his nose.

“Hunt? Bringing corpses means you will have to pay the toll.”

“Toll.” Kagami lit up at that. “You’re saying you want to fight me depending on how many corpses I bring?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Luke looked displeased by that, but Kagami couldn’t help it. He saw it as training, even if he would be beaten. He would get stronger. He couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Alright, you stay right there. I’ll bring back enough bodies for us to fight all day.” Kagami pointed at him. “So stay right there. Give me a few hours and we’re gonna have fun.”

Then Kagami ran off. In the distance he could hear Luke yell.

“I hate you!”

The man that he hated, Kagami wasn’t him. He just inhabited his body. His wife had been a fan of this kind of genre. Isekai, she called it. She told him of stories of main characters being transported to another world, meeting some sort of god, granting cheat abilities.

Though Kagami never understood his wife’s obsession towards it, he knew she loved it and that was enough.

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The thought of his wife finding him in a prince’s body made him chuckle. He was sure if she had ever seen him, she would never guess it was him. He could imagine her mischievous smile. No doubt, she would laugh at him if she ever got the chance.

His heart felt like it was being squeezed, but he didn’t have time to think about that right now. He had a job to do.

Here he was, at the bottom of a hole in the world, walking through a tunnel with darkness so thick that the lantern he held high above his head didn’t even cut through it. It was like walking through an inky fog.

No one in their right mind would just go outside of the Sanctuary to hunt. Most people in the Sanctuary mined instead. It was safer after all.

But Kagami didn’t care too much about the danger. This was way to get stronger. What he hunted was what most men feared down here.

Blade Spiders. Giant spiders with legs that cut like swords. They descend when you first came down here from the elevator. The elevator acted like a fishing hook, and the prisoners the bait. It was no wonder most people were still scarred from that incident.

It had surprised Kagami too.

His footsteps echoed with each step. He was intentional on that, he wanted to draw some out, but despite doing that for a while, he hadn’t seen one yet. He eventually traveled further away from the Sanctuary, going deeper. The tunnels expanded and forked like veins. The darkness even more foreboding, hiding something much more dangerous behind its veil.

Kagami paid it no mind though. He knew these tunnels well. It came from experience. He did it to find a way out of this place.

He stopped at a particular fork in the tunnel. The fork to the right would lead him out, but that was only if he had the power to defeat that man. Kagami balled up his fist, frustration speckled across his face as he gritted his teeth.

He wasn’t ready yet.

It was a cruel fact that stabbed his heart like a molten hot blade.

The left, which Kagami took, would open up to the Well. A barrier of wind blew pushed across his face, his golden hair billowed. Once he passed the threshold, the wind stopped. He gazed upon the darkness and then to his feet. He stood on top of a cliff, and below was still an endless drop. Walnut had told him that a Goddess had pierced the earth with a spear. Even though the elevator took them down, it didn’t reach the bottom. That was where the right path would take them though.

Kagami stood there for a moment, looking up at the abyss. Not even a hint of sunlight reached down here. How long had it been since the sunlight caressed his skin? Since coming to this world, bad things just kept on piling up on him.

His mind wondered back to his first day in this world. He had been tossed at the feet of that Masked Queen, clearly surprised that the son she had killed had been alive. Yet, when she talked to him, she seemed to realize that something was wrong.

“You’re telling me that you are not my son, but a person from another world?” She repeated those words. Her tone cold, but Kagami felt like she had been amused by the idea, even if it were probably a lie. “There used to be a time when Heroes had come from another world. I was one of them. Yet, I have never heard or seen someone inhabiting a body that had been killed.”

“You’re from another world? Japan?” Kagami looked up, blood dripped into one of his eyes. He had been injured earlier when he got captured.

“I am.” He saw her eyes narrow from her mask’s slits. “But I don’t believe you Cedar. I don’t think you are who you say you are. It’s more likely, that you are just pretending you are a person from another world.”

“I told you everything. I have no reason to lie.” Kagami said.

“If you are who you say you are, then that is true. But if you’re Cedar, you have all the reason to lie.” She rose a hand. Brilliant light gathered to it. “Rather than risk it, it’s better to just kill you.”

A screech snapped him back to the present. The little light moving down in the darkness explained the reason why Kagami hadn’t seen a blade spider. His eyebrows knitted as he watched the elevator descend to its destination.

Kagami broke off in a sprint. He jumped between rocky platforms that speckled the wall, intending to get there as quickly as possible.

It had only been two days since the last one came out. They didn’t expect another one to come down for a while.