Darkness… everything was dark.

  Alexander tried to move. He felt his limbs were extremely weak, as if there was a wall in front of him blocking his movements. He didn’t understand what had happened to him; he only felt powerless and confined. Before long, another desire awakened inside him: hunger. The hunger was powerful—like he’d been starving and dehydrated for days.

  That hunger forced him to move. His body struggled with all its strength to break through that wall. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fast, but eventually he heard a cracking sound and tried to force the wall even more. He felt the cracking spread, and then tiny beams of light began to reach his eyes.

  In the end, the wall above him collapsed, and light washed over his entire body.

  Alexander didn’t understand what was happening. Everything was so bright; it took a few minutes to adjust, but he could feel the hunger inside him growing stronger and stronger. It was as if his stomach had begun consuming itself from starvation, and his body was on the verge of collapsing from lack of energy.

  “I’m hungry…”

  Alexander pushed his hunger into the background and tried to understand what had happened to him and where he was.

  All he could see was the light coming from above, the fact that he was surrounded by earthen walls, and the four eggs beside him. Clearly, he was in a pit. “What the hell is this!?” But his mind felt too exhausted to think about what was happening; he was only hungry, and he needed to eat.

  For a moment, Alexander didn’t know what he could eat, but then he realized the only source of food around him was obviously the eggs, and he forced himself out of his broken egg.

  As he did, he saw his hands and arms. They weren’t normal; they were black, and they weren’t like hands at all—more like the paws or claws of a wild animal. But his brain refused to process that information right now. His entire being was focused on one thing: food!

  The eggs were already right beside him. After he crawled out of his broken egg, he reached them and instinctively began striking one egg fiercely with his claw. But the egg didn’t break immediately; it was as hard as breaking his own egg.

  Inside the broken egg, lying in a fetal position, he saw a black, four-legged, hairless creature with glossy skin and a long tail—something that reminded him a little of a baby jaguar, yet looked as if it had absolutely nothing to do with any animal on Earth, with a mouth, ears, and facial structure that seemed wrong. For a moment, it was as if his mind came back to itself and tried to question the existence of this creature, but hunger quickly erased every thought. Immediately after, instinctively, he shoved his head into the egg and pierced the baby jaguar’s belly with his small but sharp teeth.

  At that moment, he felt an incredible sensation of pleasure flow through him, but at the same time, that sensation forced him to take more.

  Along with it, a small scream echoed through the pit, but Alexander didn’t care at all; he was lost in that pleasure, greedily tearing apart, ripping, and swallowing the baby’s belly. In a short time, the baby’s internal organs became visible, and he tore them out too and swallowed them whole.

  It was so good… and he was so hungry that he didn’t even want to waste time chewing. After he finished almost all of the baby’s internal organs and nearly tore off one of its legs, he felt the hunger inside him subside and his stomach fill. That feeling relaxed him; he wasn’t hungry anymore, and with that thought, exhaustion finally took him.

  He let himself drop to the ground right beside the corpse and fell asleep.

  When he woke up, the first thing he felt was silence.

  A deep, heavy, suffocating silence.

  Alexander opened his eyes.

  His vision was blurry; shapes were there, but there was no clarity. His eyelids felt heavy, as if they had been closed for a long time. He blinked a few times. Earth-colored walls, a pale light filtering down from above, and a strange, instinctive sense of awareness at the edges of his vision…

  The smell of soil was still in his nose. It was familiar. And yet, it wasn’t.

  He wanted to move.

  His body responded.

  That alone felt wrong.

  “I… was sleeping,” he thought. His thought was clear. “The eggs… the hunger…”

  Then, all at once, he remembered.

  What he had eaten.

  The resistance between his teeth. The warmth. The uncontrolled pleasure that surged in that moment, and the fullness that followed.

  His stomach—no, his abdomen—tightened slightly. It wasn’t nausea. It was more like delayed awareness. Like regret… but incomplete.

  Alexander looked around more carefully. The light from above was still there. Earthen walls. Broken eggshells.

  And right beside him—

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  A corpse.

  Small. Black. Torn apart.

  A hatchling.

  His mind froze for a moment.

  “No…”

  Something inside him recoiled. A defense. “This isn’t something I did. I wouldn’t do something like this.”

  He didn’t want to look.

  But he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  Then he noticed.

  The viewing angle… was wrong.

  Lower. Closer to the ground. When he slightly moved his head, his vision slid at a different angle—far smoother than in a human body, yet foreign at the same time.

  He lowered his gaze.

  What he saw was not his own body.

  Black, glossy skin. Muscular but lean. Four limbs. No fingers—there were claws. His chest was closer to the ground. The range of motion of his shoulders—no, his forelimbs—was completely different.

  “This… this is a dream,” he thought. “I was tired. My brain is malfunctioning.”

  But dreams wouldn’t be this detailed, and he was aware that even the way he was thinking didn’t feel the same as before.

  Still, he didn’t want to believe it, and he remained in that mental state for hours, but in the end he was forced to accept the horrifying reality.

  He focused on his body.

  He could feel how the muscles tensed. How balance was maintained. How this body would run, how it would leap… how it would attack.

  That was the worst part.

  This body didn’t feel completely foreign to him.

  Then he examined the corpse he had torn apart, looked at his own body, and finally understood what he was.

  Nuxali!

  The moment the word echoed in his mind, everything fell into place.

  This body… was the body of a Nuxali hatchling.

  He felt a tightness in his chest. He had a heart, and it was racing.

  “This is impossible,” he thought. “I created them. I—”

  “This is just a race I created for a game, this can’t be!” “How can this be?”

  He thought about the last events he had lived through.

  “The last thing, I was working at the office. I had finished the Nuxali RPG system. I was going to pack up and go home, and everything happened all at once right then.”

  When Alexander thought about the system, he felt a stirring in his mind. When he focused on that sensation, a semi-transparent window appeared in his vision.

  [Statistics]

  [Traits]

  Alexander flinched at the window’s appearance and couldn’t make sense of what it was. After a while, his shock and anxiety faded, and he focused on the [Statistics] button, and the window in his vision changed again.

  [Race: Nuxali]

  [Class: Queen]

  [

  CON 2.7

  STR 2.1

  AGI 3.3

  DEX 3.2

  INT 9.2

  ]

  [Biomass: 2.7 / 5]

  [Drone Capacity] 0/3

  [Template capacity] 0/1

  Alexander realized these were the same stats he had designed for hatchling Noxali—except for INT.

  “Same as before…”

  “The current traits must be based on my natural development, meaning these numbers are actually the numerical equivalent of my physical existence,” he thought.

  “When I designed the stat system, I thought of it comparatively with humans; that means an average adult male should have stats of 10,” he remembered. “The maximum potential humans could reach naturally was 20. That’s how I designed it in my previous life.”

  Each stat is based on realism and aims to reflect the growth and limitations of a real being.

  Constitution (CON) – Endurance, stamina, resistance to illness and fatigue. The kind of strength that lets you survive poison, long marches, blood loss.

  Strength (STR) – Raw physical power. Muscle mass, lifting capacity, brute force.

  Agility (AGI) – Reflexes, balance, reaction speed. The difference between slipping away or dying on a blade’s edge.

  Dexterity (DEX) – Precision, coordination, fine control. A surgeon’s hand. An archer’s aim.

  Intelligence (INT) – Determines how many Drones I can command, the range and durability of the bond, as well as memory, logic, learning speed, and comprehension.

  [Biomass: 2.7 / 5] – Represents the Nuxali’s current biomass reserves; the core resource spent on drone production, bodily repair, and the use of biological abilities.

  “So this is me… physically weak, but mentally talented.”

  Alexander then focused on the [Traits] section.

  [Hive Control]

  [Genetic Assimilation]

  [Brood Generation]

  The traits were the same as what he had designed. He began reading the trait descriptions.

  [Hive Control] The Queen has a mental bond between herself and the drones she produces, and through it she gains mental dominance over the drones; the number of drones that can be controlled at once, the range of the bond, and its durability depend on the INT stat.

  [Genetic Assimilation] Allows the genetic traits of consumed organic matter to be analyzed and integrated into Nuxali biology. The analysis process is difficult; consuming more samples can speed up and make the analysis easier.

  Based on Nuxali physiology and using the acquired gene data, it allows new Templates to be created, but this process places a mental and physical burden and takes time. There is a limit to how many Templates the Queen can hold in her mind.

  Warning!: If genetic analysis is applied before it is perfected, it can cause many kinds of damage such as cancer formation and organ collapse.

  [Brood Generation] - Pending

  Allows the Nuxali to produce new drones using biomass and expand the swarm numerically. The template of newly produced drones can be set via [Genetic Assimilation].

  After Alexander read all the descriptions, he closed the system and remained where he was for a while.

  He didn’t try to run away. He didn’t call the system again.

  He just thought.

  He knew he was supposed to be afraid. At least, he felt like he was supposed to think that way. To the human mind, this was horrifying. Wrong. Disgusting. Unacceptable.

  But those thoughts… felt as if they didn’t belong to him.

  They were more like a habit left behind. An old pattern. Reflexes taught by being human, but no longer valid.

  “When I was human…” he thought for a moment.

  He hesitated.

  What was he when he was human, anyway?

  He was an ordinary person. Someone no one turned to look at, someone no one truly cared about. Disposable at work, invisible in his private life. He had no bond with his family, and no life whose absence anyone would feel.

  No one would call him. No one needed him.

  But now—

  He narrowed his eyes slightly and looked around. Being inside this body… didn’t feel as uncomfortable as he’d expected. On the contrary, there was a strange sense of harmony. The feedback from his muscles was clear. His senses had sharpened. Everything felt more meaningful.

  The feeling of disgust… was weak.

  And he realized that feeling wasn’t coming from his body, but from his old way of thinking.

  The limits taught by being human. The morality imposed by being human. The weakness of being human.

  “Maybe,” he thought slowly, “this isn’t something horrible.”

  Maybe this was, for the first time, a real chance.

  A chance to stop being ordinary. A chance to stop being invisible. A chance to be more than human.

  This body wasn’t weak. It was only the beginning. And his mind—his mind was still his. His knowledge, his designs, his understanding… all of it was here.

  And this body was operating by the rules he had written.

  He took a deep breath. His lungs filled. Even that breath… felt right.

  He didn’t want to run away.

  He didn’t want to deny it.

  Alexander accepted what he now was.

  He wasn’t human.

  And maybe… he never had to be.

  ------------------------

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