Chapter 1: First Awakening
"Excuse me, but there is an Accelerator ahead of me!"
That was the last line Axel remembered writing before everything went black.
His head felt heavy. His body felt cold. A vague sense of weakness seeped into every inch of him, as if even breathing had become a burden. In that hazy state between sleep and consciousness, a single thought drifted through his mind.
When did my body get this bad?
After graduation, he had become a full time writer. He lived alone in a cramped rental in a small city, rarely stepping outside except to buy groceries. Most of his days were spent in front of a screen, typing until his shoulders ached and his eyes burned. He knew he lacked exercise, but he was only in his early twenties. No matter how unhealthy his routine was, his body should not have deteriorated to this extent.
The line echoing in his mind did not surprise him. People dreamed about what they obsessed over during the day. Lately, he had been writing a fanfiction based on A Certain Magical Index, and because he happened to love Accelerator, that ridiculous line had naturally become the final thing he typed before falling asleep.
Still, this weakness felt wrong.
Something is seriously off...
He struggled to open his eyes. They felt unbearably dry, as though sand had been rubbed into them. At first, all he saw was darkness.
Is it still the middle of the night?
By instinct, he reached toward where he usually kept his phone beside his pillow.
But instead of smooth plastic and a warm bedsheet, his fingers touched something wet and cold.
His heart skipped a beat.
That was not a phone.
It was not even a bed.
The texture beneath him was soft, damp, and uneven, more like soaked grass than anything inside his room.
What the hell?
His eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness around him. Blurred outlines emerged from the darkness. The dense shadows overhead, the layered silhouettes around him, the faint rustle of leaves in the wind... none of it belonged to his rented room.
Then the pale moonlight filtered through the gaps above and finally illuminated his surroundings.
A forest.
It was a silent, sprawling forest, the trees towering so high that their trunks looked like pillars supporting the night sky.
But what truly froze Axel was not the forest.
It was himself.
The skin in front of him was pale and soft, with the kind of smooth, plump texture only a baby could have. His limbs were tiny, short, and weak. His hands looked absurdly small. Even the proportions of his body were unmistakable.
He had become an infant.
For a moment, Axel just stared in silence, his thoughts crashing into each other.
Transmigration?
And not just that... I started as a baby?!
This kind of absurdity was supposed to belong in novels, not reality. It completely trampled over every shred of common sense he had ever possessed.
But the shock only lasted a moment before cold reality took over.
Where am I?
He searched his mind for answers, hoping this body might have left behind some fragment of memory. A name. A place. Anything.
Nothing.
There were no memories from the child. No inherited identity. No clue about this world, this forest, or why he had been abandoned here.
The questions were endless.
Who was he now?
What world had he arrived in?
Why was he alone?
Had someone thrown him away?
But in the end, all of those questions were less important than one brutal truth.
If he did nothing, he would die.
Even in this bizarre new life, Axel had no intention of giving up. He had never been the type to seek death. His previous life had been painfully ordinary, yes, but it had still been his life. He had even walked away from a stable job after graduation just to chase the uncertain path of becoming a writer. He was not someone who surrendered easily.
If fate had thrown him into a second life, then he would survive first and ask questions later.
He forced himself to observe his surroundings.
He was lying on a patch of grass beneath a large tree. The ground around him seemed level, and from what little he could see, he was not on a cliff or near any obvious danger. Unfortunately, the darkness made everything beyond a few meters impossible to discern.
Cold dew had already soaked his back. Whenever the wind brushed past him, it carried a sharp chill that pierced through his tiny body like needles.
In his previous life, he had read a fair amount about wilderness survival.
Now all of that knowledge was completely useless.
Because he was a baby.
A naked baby, at that.
He could not run.
He could not climb.
He could not even crawl properly.
After quickly assessing his pitiful situation, Axel came to a conclusion so ridiculous he almost wanted to laugh.
There were only two things he could do.
Wait.
Or cry.
It sounded like a joke, but it was the truth.
Still, crying recklessly in a forest at night was hardly a wise strategy. The chances of attracting a kind passerby were slim. The chances of attracting a hungry beast were much, much higher.
But even if he tried to hold back, his body had its own limits.
He opened his mouth and tried to make a sound.
"Ah... ahhh..."
As expected, only the thin cries of an infant came out.
Pathetic.
The damp forest air grew colder as the night deepened. Axel had not even a scrap of cloth on him. His bare skin pressed directly against the wet grass, and every passing breeze made him shiver harder.
He gritted his teeth and tried to move.
If he could just roll over... just a little... maybe he could get off the wettest part of the ground.
He strained with all his might.
His tiny arms trembled.
His legs kicked weakly.
After exhausting himself for what felt like an eternity, he had not moved even an inch.
That was when Axel realized another terrifying truth.
This body is absurdly weak.
Even for a baby, this felt wrong.
He had no strength. No vitality. His limbs felt like they belonged to a child born premature or malnourished. He could barely twitch, let alone turn over.
In the end, all he could do was curl his little arms and legs inward as much as possible, trying to reduce contact with the freezing grass and shield himself from the wind.
It helped very little.
But even a meaningless posture could provide the illusion of warmth, and right now that illusion mattered.
The cold made him drowsy. The unfamiliar forest made him afraid.
His eyes stayed fixed on the shadows swaying in the darkness. Every moving branch looked like a lurking beast. Every rustle sounded like something creeping closer. His imagination, sharpened by years of reading and writing stories, only made things worse.
For the first time, Axel found himself envying the simplicity of real children.
A child would not understand the danger of the night.
A child would not imagine monsters behind every tree.
A child would not lie awake calculating the odds of being torn apart before sunrise.
He knew he needed sleep. If he could preserve his strength, then once morning came, he would have a better chance of calling for help when predators were less active.
But knowing that and doing it were two different things.
His fear would not let him rest.
Only when his body finally reached its limit, sometime deep into the night, did his eyelids grow too heavy to resist.
Then at last, Axel drifted into sleep.
When dawn came, sunlight filtered through the dense canopy above and scattered across his face in fragmented rays.
The faint warmth and glare woke him.
His eyes stung, his throat felt dry, and his whole body ached from cold and hunger. But after a brief moment of confusion, a realization struck him.
He had survived the night.
The first thing Axel did was force himself to look around more carefully.
The forest looked almost the same as it had in the moonlight, only now it possessed color. The trunks were dark brown, the leaves a deep green, and the grass beneath him glistened with dew. Everything seemed peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Then his gaze shifted upward, and for the first time, he noticed the tree above him clearly.
It was covered in fruit.
Round, unfamiliar fruit hung from the branches overhead, clustered among the leaves like small lanterns.
Hope flared in Axel's chest.
Food.
Even if he could not reach it, maybe one might fall. Maybe luck had not abandoned him completely.
"Ahhh...!"
This time, he no longer hesitated.
He cried out with all the strength his body could muster.
At this point, there was no point fearing danger. If he stayed silent, he would die of hunger anyway. Better to gamble on being found than quietly wait for death to claim him.
So he cried.
Again and again.
Until his throat hurt.
Until his voice turned hoarse.
Until exhaustion forced him to pause.
But the forest gave him nothing.
No footsteps.
No human voice.
No miracle.
Only the endless rustle of leaves and the distant songs of insects.
Time lost all meaning.
Without a clock, without hunger being answered, without anyone coming, the only proof of its passage was the shifting light overhead. Morning slowly became noon. Noon faded into afternoon. Afternoon dimmed into evening.
And then night came again.
Axel's heart sank.
Another day had passed.
Whether this world's days were twenty four hours long or not did not matter. What mattered was that he had achieved nothing. He had shouted until he ran out of strength. He had waited until his hope withered. He had gained no rescue, no food, no answers.
Only a drier mouth and a weaker body.
His stomach had long since become a dull, gnawing pain. His limbs felt colder than before. A strange heaviness settled over him, the kind that came when the body was beginning to give up.
As an atheist, Axel had never believed in gods.
Now, lying helpless in the dark as a naked infant in an unknown forest, he found himself willing to believe in anything.
Anything at all.
A god.
A devil.
A miracle.
As long as something saved him.
Even if no one answered his prayer, he still refused to accept such a miserable death.
But the heavens did not respond with salvation.
What answered him was something far crueler.
"Awoooo...!"
A wolf's howl shattered the silence of the forest.
Then another.
And another.
The cries rose from different directions, surrounding him like a tightening noose.
Axel's blood turned cold.
The hunt had begun.
And tonight, he was the prey.