The Child

Thirsty...

Lu Cang leaned on a wooden staff and looked up at the seemingly endless rock walls around him.

Where was this?

His last memory was of the airport terminal. He seemed to have suddenly heard a deafening explosion and seen a burst of brilliant flames.

When he opened his eyes again,

he was here.

His body felt so weak that his vision was going dark. He felt like he could pass out at any moment.

"Ah!"

"Someone's about to die!"

What was she babbling about...

Her voice sounded lovely, but she was speaking a language he couldn't understand.

Wait.

He could understand it!

He could understand what she was saying!

At the far end of his vision, a green-haired woman rushed toward him!

Whoosh!

A flash of emerald light appeared,

enveloping Lu Cang's body.

His terribly weak body recovered with miraculous speed.

"How could there be a human in such a dangerous dungeon?"

The green-haired woman sounded clearly worried.

Whoosh!

Behind the woman, flames gathered into the shape of a person.

It was a man who looked, at a glance, like he was cosplaying a wizard.

Then a hearty voice rang out. "Kumiloni, you said there's a human here?"

"We should have cleared all the monsters out of this dungeon."

The woman healing him was clearly the one called Kumiloni.

Her ears were long and pointed.

Was she an elf?

Was this a dungeon?

And this mysterious power... Could it be magic?

Even if it wasn't magic, it had to be a power beyond anything humans could wield...

Lu Cang couldn't help thinking so.

Kumiloni said, "Yes... We didn't see him when we came through."

"Could he have been randomly teleported here by some faulty teleportation array?"

"Or maybe he's just an ordinary child who got lost."

"Well... We can't rule out the possibility that he's a monster disguised as a human, trying to lure us into a trap." As the wizard spoke, a solid-looking fireball suddenly appeared in his hand.

Lu Cang hurriedly spoke up. "No, I'm not! I'm human!"

He had a feeling that if he didn't clear up this misunderstanding right away, that fireball was going to hit him in the head!

Whoosh!

The flames vanished.

The wizard grinned. "Just kidding."

"I can tell at a glance whether someone's a monster."

"And even if you were one, it wouldn't matter. We're strong."

Kumiloni gave him a reproachful look. "Iz, he just recovered. Don't joke around like that."

The wizard called Iz gave an apologetic smile. "Sorry. It's just that seeing a kid here is so interesting, I couldn't help teasing him."

"You don't have any signs of a class."

"You must be a beginner who hasn't completed your first class change yet."

Lu Cang didn't know exactly what he meant.

But he had just arrived in this world.

It made sense that he wouldn't understand, so he nodded.

Iz scratched his head. "We can't just leave you here. We've just finished clearing this dungeon and are heading back anyway, so we might as well take you home."

"Where's your home?"

At that question...

His parents' faces flashed through Lu Cang's mind.

Home...

He'd been flying back. He was supposed to be going home.

His parents were waiting for him there.

But...

But.

It seemed he couldn't go back anymore.

Maybe it was because his body hadn't adjusted, but tears inexplicably welled up in the corners of his eyes and wouldn't stop flowing.

Lu Cang tried to wipe them away with his sleeve, but the tears only kept coming.

"Iz..."

Kumiloni looked at Iz reproachfully.

"You made him cry. He's just a little kid."

Damn...

I don't want to cry.

Thinking about his parents had made him sad, sure, but bursting into tears in front of strangers wasn't how an adult should act.

Besides, he was in an unfamiliar world, with no idea what was going on. He had to stay calm.

Wait.

A little kid?

Still wiping his tears, Lu Cang looked down at himself.

The ground seemed so close.

Then he looked at his hands.

They were so small.

Uh... It looked like he really had transmigrated into a child's body.

Once his attention shifted, his sorrow gradually eased.

So it was true that kids couldn't stop crying. Just thinking of something sad was enough to make their noses sting. What an awful body.

If he accidentally started crying in front of someone again someday, it'd be utterly humiliating.

But at least it seemed like shifting his attention could make the tears stop pretty easily.

"Home... I don't know," Lu Cang answered in a childish voice.

Now that he'd spoken,

Lu Cang realized just how childish his voice sounded.

How old was he?

Ten?

Or even younger?

Iz looked a little helpless, but still stepped over to Lu Cang. "If you don't know where your home is, that makes things difficult."

"We can't just leave you in some random town."

"Could it be... your home is already..."

A trace of sorrow crossed Iz's face.

In this age, when monsters ran rampant, disasters often struck as monsters razed entire villages. When that happened, the village's few mages with even a little strength would use random teleportation magic to send the children away.

If they were lucky,

those children might survive.

But random teleportation could send them anywhere in the world.

And safe places made up less than one percent of the world.

The Death Forbidden Zone, where even level-eight adventurers feared to tread; the vast, boundless oceans; boiling lava; glaciers frozen year-round...

None of these were places a child could survive.

The lands where civilization and education flourished made up only a tiny fraction of the world.

This child cried when he was asked about home.

It seemed... he already knew what had happened to his village. He just didn't have the courage to face it yet.

Iz smiled. "I've decided. You're coming with us. Wherever we go, you go."

Lu Cang asked, "Is that okay?"

He'd only just arrived in this world, but they looked like adventurers who explored dungeons all over the place.

Taking a powerless child along with them.

It seemed like the perfect way to raise a death flag.

Iz said, "It's fine. We're strong."

"Let me introduce everyone. This is our healer, the level-five Healer, Kumiloni."

"I'm a caster, the level-five Mage, Izpalut. Everyone usually calls me Iz."

"Besides the two of us, there's also Obades, a level-five Defender, and Chicheng, a level-five Warrior."

"But they're deep in the dungeon right now, collecting loot. You'll meet them when we regroup later."

Mage, Warrior, Defender, Healer.

It all sounded pretty convincing.

But level five... Wasn't that a little low?

It sounded like they were still beginners.

You call that strong? Weren't you exaggerating a bit, Izpalut?

The author's books have no prequels or sequels. Each book is completely independent, with its own separate world. If a character with the same name happens to appear in another book, it's merely a coincidence; the characters have no connection in terms of their settings. Readers can enjoy any book without needing to read the others.

Don't take reader comments that seem to spoil the story seriously. Since each book has its own independent setting, everything in the comments is just speculation, not actual plot or lore.