Jin-Ho stared at the figures in front of him. They stared back.
It was a silent competition of hollow eyes and ragged breaths. The tension in the cramped, stinking cell was thick enough to choke on. These weren't the graceful, ethereal beings from the movies he'd watched back in Seoul.
These were broken things. Their skin was the color of bruised fruit, their ribs jutted out like the hulls of wrecked ships, and their spirit seemed to have been ground into the dirt long ago.
After a few heartbeats of heavy silence, they all turned away. They slumped back into their corners, returning to the rhythmic, soul-crushing business of existing.
Jin-Ho didn't move. 'So they can't see these Blue words floating in front of me?' he was shocked.
He leaned his head against the cold, weeping stone and surveyed the room. The iron shackles around his wrists were heavy, not the prop metal of a film set, but cold, pitted iron that had rusted into his skin. The collar around his neck felt even worse; every time he swallowed, the spikes grazed his throat.
The cell was a tomb for nine. It was not that cramped, but just staying in this cell felt nauseating of him. The scent smelt like dried sweat, old blood, and the sweet, cloying odor of infected wounds. Instead of a solid door, a row of thick iron bars separated them from the corridor, a design identical to the maximum-security police cells he'd seen in news reports, but far more primitive.
Then, his gaze landed on their ears again.
Long. Tapered. Pointy.
'This doesn't make sense,' Jin-Ho thought, a bubble of denial rising in his chest. 'How can elves exist? This has to be some kind of high-budget psychological experiment. Or maybe I'm in a coma?! Yeah, that's it. I'm in a hospital in Seoul, and my brain is just making this up to cope with the trauma of being stabbed.'
He let out a short, dry laugh in his mind. 'It might be just prosthetics. Very realistic, very expensive prosthetics.'
His hand, moving almost of its own accord, reached up to his own head. His fingers brushed his temple and moved higher.
The skin was warm. It was soft. And it stretched out into a sharp, undeniable point. He gripped the tip of the ear and tugged.
A sharp, electric jolt of pain shot through his skull.
"What the fuck!" he shouted, the words erupting from his throat.
The sound shattered the silence of the cell once again. Every elf in the room snapped their heads toward him again. Jin-Ho froze, his hand still gripping his ear, his heart hammering against his ribs. He gave a small, panicked, innocent smile and began to scratch his ear as if he were just dealing with an itch.
When they finally looked away, his internal crisis shifted into high gear.
'It's real. It's actually real. I'm an elf. I'm a goddamn elf.'
His mind raced, a thousand questions colliding at once. 'If I'm an elf, then where am I? Earth doesn't have elves. Is this an artificial reality? No, it can't be. No technology can simulate pain this accurately. This pain in my gut feels like it's been there for weeks. Did I reincarnate? Like those manga protagonists? But don't they usually start as babies?! How can I just... woke up in a grown body? What happened to the original owner? Did I steal his life?'
The more he thought, the more the reality settled into his bones. He wasn't in a coma. The screen in front says otherwise. It says he was in Elandor. He pondered the word 'ELANDOR' for some time.
His excitement at being "isekai'd" died a swift, brutal death as he looked at the chains again. He was a prisoner.
After getting used to the hovering glowing screen in front of him, Jin-Ho took a shallow breath and crawled toward the elf beside him. It was a girl, perhaps fourteen or eighteen years old by human standards. She was so malnourished that her skin looked like translucent parchment stretched over a bird's skeleton.
"Hey," Jin-Ho whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering across pavement. "Can you tell me... where we are? Why are we chained up like this?"
The girl didn't answer at first. She just stared at him with eyes that were too large for her face. Then, slowly, they began to fill with tears. She let out a soft, broken sob that quickly escalated into a full-blown cry.
The other elves scrambled closer to her, their chains clinking like a funeral dirge. Jin-Ho backed away instantly, his hands raised in a gesture of peace, feeling the cold weight of the wall hit his back. 'What the hell?! I just asked a question! Why did she start crying on her own?'
The prisoners huddled around the girl, whispering in a language that sounded melodic even in despair. One woman, her face etched with exhaustion, looked at Jin-Ho. Her eyes weren't filled with anger, but with a pity so deep it made his skin crawl.
"He must be so traumatized," the woman murmured, her voice trembling. "The torture... Julius's torture must have broken his mind this time."
"Two days," another man whispered, nodding solemnly. "They took him for two days of 'entertainment.' Of course, it was about to happen. It's a miracle he can even speak."
Jin-Ho caught the words. Julius? Torture? "Eon," the woman said, leaning toward him. "Do you really forget everything? Do you not know who we are?"
'Eon. So that was this body's owner's name.'
"I... my head is jumbled," Jin-Ho lied, playing into their assumption. "Everything feels like it's behind a thick fog. I don't remember anything from before... I feel like I woke up just now."
Hearing that, some of the women began to cry. To them, this was the ultimate tragedy; not only was he enslaved, but he had been tortured until his very identity had shattered.
Jin-Ho felt a little bad about lying, but it was the perfect cover, so he didn't say anything while they cried.
When they calmed down a little, he pressed them to tell him the situation, "Umm, can you tell me why are we here?" he pressed. "From the beginning if possible."
A man with a jagged scar across his cheek sat near him. He spoke in a low, hollow tone, detailing a decade of nightmares. He told Jin-Ho about the war they had lost, the burning of their forest, and the ten years they had spent in this dungeon. He spoke of the humans who bought them, sold them, and beat them as they pleased.
He looked down at his body. Fresh, purple bruises painted his arms. Long, angry red welts, lash marks from a whip, crisscrossed his chest. The original owner of this body had been through a literal hell before Jin-Ho arrived. Although the rest of the Elves didn't have any heavy wounds on them, their overall condition wasn't that great.
"Where are my parents?" Jin-Ho asked, trying to find some anchor in this world.
"We don't know," the man replied, shaking his head. "You were sold at the market ten years ago with us. We stayed in this cell together all this time."
Jin-Ho looked at the room.
'Chained like an animal? Check.
Beaten for sport? Check.
Zero chance of rescue? Check.
Great. I save one girl, but get a knife in the ribs, and my reward is eternity in an elf-flavored gulag?'
The frustration and fear began to mount. His breathing became ragged. He realized the heavy reality of this world instantly.
'I need a way out. I need a weapon. I need... anything!'
Jin-Ho wasn't a religious man. He had never believed in God. But in the depths of this dungeon, staring at the words that still hovered faintly in the periphery of his vision, Jin-Ho began to pray. He prayed to whatever authority had the power to rip a soul from Earth and dump it in this world. He prayed with the desperation of a man who had nothing left to lose.
'If you're listening... if there's anyone out there... give me something. Don't let me die like this! Please! '
The blue words suddenly flared with a blinding intensity.
{HOST'S PRAYER HAS BEEN ACCEPTED}
Jin-Ho jumped, his chains rattling violently. "Whoa, what the fuck?!"
The other elves looked at him for a second, but thinking he was mumbling on his own, they ignored him.
But Jin-Ho didn't care. He has bigger things to worry about. He was staring at a new window that was scrolling through data at a blistering speed.
{SYNCING WITH HOST: 12%... 45%... 89%....}
{SYNCING 100%..}
{SYNCING COMPLETE}
A complex, crystalline window expanded in front of him. It looked like the high-end UI of the VR games he used to watch streamers play.
[ - STATUS - ]
Race: High Elf
Age: 96 Years
Strength: 10
Stamina: 30
Agility: 12
Mana: 3,000 / 3,000
Insight: 16,000
Skill Points (SP): 0
'96 years old?' Jin-Ho's jaw dropped. 'But I look just eighteen. Does that mean I'm going to live for a millennium? That... that is a massive cheat! Isn't it?'
His eyes quickly moved to the "Mana" and "Insight" sections. '3,000 mana? Is that a lot? And what the hell is Insight?'
As if reading his thoughts, the screen flickered, opening a secondary tab on top of the existing tab.
[ - SKILLS - ]
[LOCKED] Matter Manipulation (Level 1)
(Condition to Unlock: Study magic for the first time)
[LOCKED] Heat Manipulation
(Condition: Master Matter Manipulation to Lv. 10)
[LOCKED] Alchemy
(Condition: Create a lower-grade potion)
[LOCKED] Inventory
(Condition: Hold more items than the Host can carry)
[LOCKED] Skill Shop
(Condition: Master all starting skills to Lv. 10)
Jin-Ho stared at the "Matter Manipulation" skill. Although this doesn't make sense, he understood someone listened to him and granted him this ability of some sort, which very much resembled the games he used to play back in his high school days.
His heart began to race. He was a prisoner in a stone room, held by iron chains. But If he could manipulate matter... he could turn these chains into dust instantly. He could turn the iron bars into water.
A low, bubbling laugh started in his throat. It wasn't the broken sob of Eon; it was the sharp, dangerous laugh of a man who had just been handed a loaded gun in a room full of enemies.
"Hehe... hehehe..."
The other elves didn't pay any attention to him now. But Jin-Ho didn't notice; he didn't care at all. He was just staring at the shimmering blue text, with a predatory glint entering his blue eyes.
A High Elf's body. A system of gods. And a reason to use them. What else could he ask for?
"Well, well, well," he whispered, his voice dripping with newfound malice. "Looks like I'm going to be very, very busy."
Author Note: Author: Jin-Ho found his dream cheat ability, but will he be able to use it for his rise in this world? Because, a wise man once said, even the deadliest weapon becomes a cheap toy in the hands of an idiot.
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