Newborn

Rowan curled up and stayed that way for who knew how long. Suddenly, he felt something on his head move instinctively. Then a sweet aroma wafted over, and his stomach grew unbearably hungry all on its own.

"Since I'm already like this, I might as well starve to death." Fighting the temptation coming from nearby, Rowan calmed himself and decided to fast until he died.

The thing on his head moved more and more often, with increasing force, making his already irritable mood even worse. He looked up and saw two rod-like things waving wildly before his eyes.

Rowan was aghast. "Did I seriously grow a pair of antennae?"

Life has lost all meaning...

Ten minutes later, a little black bug was lying beside a huge white egg, eating with gusto. It was less than half the egg's size, and its tiny mouthparts licked the shell furiously. The hard shell quickly softened beneath the fluid secreted by its mouth. Every so often, it even sucked up a few mouthfuls of the sticky liquid inside the egg. A hard dish and a bowl of soup, all in one.

"Damn, this is delicious!" Rowan exclaimed.

Rowan hadn't given in to hunger. He just didn't want this thing distracting him. In this pitch-black place, someone had plopped down a glaringly white giant egg, and his eyes seemed to have a different structure now, too. It was making him dizzy.

Now that he was eating the culprit, he could focus better. And once he was full, he'd have more strength to starve himself to death.

By now, he had more or less figured out his situation. In his previous life, he had at least been a promising young man who'd lived through an information explosion and read plenty of transmigration stories and other books in his spare time.

What he hadn't expected was for his previous life to end so carelessly, only for this one to begin just as carelessly—with him transmigrating into a bug, no less.

That was right. He'd figured out what he was now.

But didn't bugs lay a whole batch of eggs at once? How had he ended up all alone, a tiny little thing with no other members of his kind around? Even now, he had no reference point to see what he looked like—or whether he was mighty and imposing.

Whether Dole had done something before or the bug's instincts were influencing him, after just one meal, Rowan seemed to have accepted that he'd been reborn as a bug. He was even starting to think about his appearance.

After most of the eggshell had disappeared, Rowan was full and felt a little happy, so he gave up on the idea of ending his life for now. Since he was already here, he might as well make the best of it. If there was a second life, maybe there'd be a third. It was certainly a novel experience.

But just as he'd finished comforting himself and was gradually becoming more optimistic, thinking he might get another life and preparing to do something spectacularly reckless, reality dealt him another heavy blow.

Perhaps it was because his mindset had changed. As he accepted that he was a bug, the last bit of discord between his soul and his bug body was resolved. At the same time, some information stored in the bug's body entered Rowan's mind.

"An Infinite Evolution Bug? Efiash? So that's my origin in this life? Sounds pretty damn impressive."

Holy crap, some old geezer with green hair did this to me. It's over, it's over. This wasn't an accident. It was a planned attack.

So that means my plan to do something spectacularly reckless and start my next life is shot?

The bug's body retained only a small amount of information about recent events. There was none of that so-called bloodline inheritance from novels. Rowan's surprise and alarm soon subsided as he finished receiving it. Although the green-haired old man had spoken a language Rowan had never heard of, he had somehow understood what it meant.

I might as well just die! His newly positive outlook sank again, and the little black bug curled back up.

Half an hour later, Rowan began contemplating his life as a bug while eating eggshell.

Judging by the final scene he remembered, he had been transported away by some kind of formation. That left three possibilities for where he was now: he'd been sent back to the planet where he'd lived in his previous life; he was on the continent with the wizards; or he was somewhere unknown, other than those two places.

He'd have to wait and see which one it was, but that wasn't the most important thing right now. If his guess about the huge rocks around him was right, then his current situation was extremely dangerous.

Although his surroundings were pitch-black, Rowan guessed he was underground. He had no idea how deep. After the giant white egg was gone, it had grown even darker, but his eyes could still sense some special kinds of light.

Those lights couldn't help him tell up from down or left from right. But, strangely, his antennae and the hairs on his legs were telling him which direction the surface lay.

It was a strange feeling, impossible to describe unless you experienced it yourself.

Facing the surface, he used his two front legs to scrape the rocks ahead of him back beneath his body. Then his middle and hind legs worked together to push the rocks behind him.

That was right. He had six legs now. That was normal for a bug, wasn't it?

At first, his movements were clumsy, but he quickly got the hang of it. Maybe he really did have a talent for being a bug.

As he continued upward, the rocks around him grew hotter, until they gradually became almost unbearably scorching.

The light ahead grew brighter and brighter. At last, Rowan broke through the obstruction and reached the surface. And the sight he least wanted to see appeared before him.

A vast stretch of yellow rocks reflected blinding light. The scorching ground burned his belly and his soft tail, making him feel as though he was about to be roasted alive.

As he'd suspected, he was in a desert. Those huge rocks were nothing but grains of sand. If he hadn't ended up in a land of giants, then he must be incredibly tiny.

That might be normal for a bug, but for a human with no experience being one, this situation was a nightmare start.

Enduring the searing heat, Rowan looked around. He couldn't see a single plant as far as his eyes could reach.

His vision was strange, too. It reminded him of the giant advertising screens in some shopping malls back when he was human. They were made up of dozens of small monitors that were synchronized by some kind of program. The images on each monitor were different, but together they formed one perfectly enlarged picture.

But the scene before him wasn't made up of a few dozen screens. It was built from tens of thousands of densely packed little screens. Using the small amount of knowledge he had about insects, he guessed he must have a pair of Compound Eyes.

That was normal for a bug, wasn't it?

But no one had told him those eyes came with extremely severe nearsightedness. Things nearby were incredibly clear, but anything a little farther away was blurry. Never mind trying to see if the sun in the sky was the one he knew, so he could figure out whether he'd made it back home.

He couldn't see the sun, but by using a method unfamiliar to him—one he definitely hadn't had as a human—he could tell there was only one light source in the sky.

Only someone who'd never been a bug could appreciate how amazing that method was.

Of course, Rowan would rather not have had the experience.

He had little information to go on, the surface temperature was too high, and he didn't know whether there were other dangers around. With a viewing distance of only three or four meters, Rowan felt deeply uneasy.

Since there was no next life, he might as well experience as much as he could in this one. He'd put his plan to do something spectacularly reckless on hold and focus on staying alive first.

With his butt sticking up, Rowan began scraping through the sand to head underground again.

Digging seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing. In no time, he had mastered all kinds of digging techniques. Up, down, left, or right—he could dig in any direction.

Once he reached a sufficient depth, the area around him cooled down. Rowan had only been "born" recently, and after all that strenuous digging and the many mental blows, he felt exhausted in body and mind.

Curling up, he slowly drifted off to sleep, with just one thought filling his mind.

I don't want nearsighted eyes!