Prologue

"We are all mortals, born into this world.

Toiling endlessly, never a moment of rest.

Since we are not immortals, stray thoughts are inevitable.

Cast aside righteousness, and place profit at the center."

It wasn't a bad tune, at least not tone-deaf, echoing inside a small electric car. The driver was entertaining himself, watching the street outside under the dim streetlights.

Have you ever seen a city at one in the morning? I get to see it every day after work. The singer thought to himself.

He thought he would live his life as a beast of burden, but unexpectedly, as he passed a certain intersection, a blinding fog light suddenly appeared from the left.

What followed was a bass horn sound, like a bellowing ox, almost deafening.

The bright light and loud noise made the driver unable to react to what was happening at first. The driver maintained his original driving posture, only turning his head to look to his left.

Ah, so it's the transmigration artifact, a large truck.

By the time he realized what was coming at him, the immense impact was like a firing pin striking the primer of a cannonball, and the battery at the bottom of the small electric car instantly exploded, erupting in fierce sparks.

The large truck didn't stop, because they were in a remote area, even more so than the outskirts. There wasn't a single functional camera around, nor were there other cars on the road, so it was useless to look for a dashcam.

By the time the fire department arrived after being notified, related photos of the car accident scene had already gone viral online.

The fire had long since been extinguished, and a car, burned down to its bare frame, sat alone on the road.

In the driver's seat, a mark vaguely visible, different from the rest of the area, was the last proof that a beast of burden had once existed in this world.

The only one who missed him was the beast of burden's boss. Because someone was absent without leave for several days, leaving work undone and no handover, the team leader flew into a rage.

Finally, a termination notice was sent to the empty house, which still had thirty years of mortgage left. Then, a few months later, it was thrown into the trash by the bank's representatives who came to repossess the house.

No one cared about the missing homeowner.

— — Trans — — migrating — —

When the happy beast of burden reopened his eyes, he didn't see his familiar driver's seat, nor the large truck or blinding lights outside the window. Instead, it was…

Well, even that window was different.

He felt as if he were sitting in a massage chair, tightly enclosed by padding on both sides and the back. Directly in front of him was an oval, slightly protruding transparent shield, his only window to observe the outside world.

Turning his head was difficult, but his eyeballs could still move. He looked left and right, and within his limited field of vision, he seemed to be in a sealed space.

Then he looked out the observation window, and saw a pitch-black expanse, dotted with specks of starlight.

Is it night?

Just a fleeting glimpse, and a planet with a dense asteroid belt and rings flashed past the window with an unimaginable scale.

This… the night sky wouldn't show such a scene, only possible in an observatory or a movie, would it?

He carefully observed the scene outside the observation window, watching the giant celestial bodies that occasionally flashed by, and the blinding lights in the distance… Oh, this reminded the trapped person of what had happened not long ago, the fog lights of that large truck.

He felt his limbs. Although they were squeezed into a padded container, at least his mobility wasn't taken away, it was just difficult to move.

He struggled to free his right hand and brought it up to his face. This was clearly not his own arm; or more accurately, it was clearly not an arm belonging to his age.

It was chubby, short, and the skin was so good it had a greasy sheen, making one have no doubt how elastic such skin would be.

This extremely healthy, even perfect state, would not appear on a beast of burden who was chronically sleep-deprived; not to mention the proportions, which did not belong to an adult.

So, was he reincarnated? Transmigrated? Or did he possess a corpse?

But there was no extra memory in his head. He didn't even understand his current situation.

Judging from the scenery outside the observation window, it was neither a bizarre quantum world nor a strange and magnificent metaphysical world. The most likely scenario was some place in outer space.

But he had no way of knowing where he was. After all, if this was truly outer space, the universe was so vast that it wouldn't be surprising to be in any corner of it.

He watched another giant celestial body flash past the observation window. From its brown and white stripes and a large red spot like an eye, this thing bore a strong resemblance to the pictures of Jupiter in his memory.

So, was he likely in the solar system?

And the planet he saw earlier with rings might have been Saturn?

Judging from this sequence, his flight direction was likely heading straight for Earth… or the Sun!

Alright. He couldn't see any rudders or controllers in his line of sight, not even a control panel. So, there was no way to determine if the thing he was sitting in could control its flight, or if it was being captured and attracted by the Sun's gravity.

If it was the former, then he was going home. If it was the latter, then he was going home to sell salted duck eggs…

Dying right after transmigrating? No, perhaps this was the scenery of the Styx in a sci-fi version.

In any case, as a qualified working beast of burden, he gave up on thinking of ways to save himself. After all, the coffin lid hadn't been nailed shut yet, and worrying about these things now was superfluous.

Moreover, he had already confirmed his surroundings; there were no obvious control devices, nor much room to move. He was very much like being in a spacecraft that was an escape pod.

The exterior was unknown. But as for the interior environment, there was no sense of technology to speak of.

… Wouldn't this be like some sci-fi movies where, after a person dies, they are placed in a coffin and thrown into outer space? Compared to the sea burials of the Age of Discovery, the Space Age would have space burials?

Because the original owner of this body died, he had the chance to take over?

… Or was he actually a Saiyan, put into a single-person space pod and sent to a backward planet to conquer it?

Unfortunately, he couldn't feel if he had a tail, and because his body was tightly wrapped by the seat, he couldn't reach out to touch it and confirm.

Thinking about Dragon Ball and how Akira Toriyama designed the protagonist, I couldn't help but want to complain.

While devaluing Earth's martial prowess and thinking a mere infant could conquer it was meant to highlight the gap between Saiyans and Earthlings, did he really think an infant who couldn't even understand its situation would know it was supposed to conquer? A pacifier might have been enough.

Even if the protagonist wasn't pacified in the Dragon Ball manga, it was close.

This kind of story setup, ripe for criticism, could only be a product of its time. If it had come even ten years later, or entered the new millennium, there wouldn't have been a setting of sending an infant to conquer the world.

It's like a Demon Lord sending his daughter to deal with the hero's party. Such an act of "sending your own to their doom" is like raising a flag that says "stab yourself in the back."

Amidst all this complaining, the person in the escape pod (or small spaceship) saw a half-blue planet through the viewing window, and it was getting bigger.

It was called "half" because the other half was black, in the sun's shadow. However, from the dark side, large-scale artificial lights could be seen, making the darkness less absolute.

"Hmm, looks like we've entered the technological age," I thought. "At least I don't have to worry about landing and facing primitive people who eat raw meat or medieval folk who tie people to stakes for fun."

Circling the Earth, many high-orbit artificial satellites flashed by. Lost in endless complaints, the person in the cabin forgot to ponder their origins and watched their small spaceship plunge headfirst into the atmosphere.

The intense friction and burning sparks turned the view outside the window a fiery red, but the environment inside the cabin remained comfortable. Even the jolting motion often depicted in movies seemed absent, and there was no sense of G-force change.

From this alone, I could tell that the craft I was in was technologically superior to the Earth I had lived on. Otherwise, without a spacesuit, I'd have been torn apart.

But that thought was quickly dismissed. Because the landing method wasn't the high-end, stable vertical takeoff and landing; instead, it found a patch of ground and plowed through it!

...Alright, the landing was rough, but the fact that the internal environment felt completely unaffected made it hard to judge the craft's technological level as high or low.

Or perhaps, one of my thoughts was correct. This thing wasn't a spaceship at all, but more like an escape pod or a cosmic coffin.

So, what was I?

"Hmm, am I not going to see a classic scene soon?" I wondered. "A group of monkeys with obvious evolutionary traits dragging me out of this cosmic coffin!"

Had I returned to a future Earth where apes had risen and humanity had fallen?

Fortunately, that imagined scene of worry didn't materialize.

Without waiting long, a group of modern people arrived, opened the hatch, and pulled me out of this mysterious cosmic vehicle.

The landing site was in the middle of the night, in a place with heavy snowfall. A group of burly men, dressed in thick, snow-white coats, were speaking in guttural Russian.

I was about to say "Hello, comrade" to greet them, but what came out was a baby's cry.

Even though I was crying, now that I was out of the soft padding, I finally confirmed my situation. With my short, stubby limbs, I wasn't a stunted dwarf, but a complete infant.

And this damn weather was so cold