Kidnapping

"This is getting troublesome. Without this kid, there's no telling whether we'll make it out of here alive."

"Boss, forget the fact that there's a ruin beneath the 'D33 Wasteland Zone' that even the Wasteland Hunter's Guild has no record of. This damn manor is actually a rare 'Cursed Space.' Just who is this kid, and what is he doing here?"

"For the big shots in the Inner City to exile him and put a bounty on him to silence him permanently, his identity definitely isn't simple. What a shame. I'd planned to pry some secrets out of this kid before killing him, which is why I followed him for so long. I didn't expect to get ourselves into trouble."

"Huh? He seems to still be alive."

"Huff..."

His chest heaved violently, as though he had just awoken from a drowning nightmare. Suren suddenly opened his eyes.

He gulped in air, and only then did the intense feeling of suffocation gradually fade.

His vision slowly came into focus. This was an unfamiliar room.

"Where is this?"

Suren tried to struggle upright, but when he lowered his head, he discovered that he had been securely bound to a wooden chair and couldn't move.

A strong smell of blood rushed into his nostrils. Taking another look at his condition, he realized it was terrible.

His white linen shirt was stained with blood in several places, and some wounds had torn the flesh open. Even more horrifyingly, a sharp dagger had been driven through each of his palms and pinned them firmly to the chair's armrests. Bright-red blood was steadily flowing out.

The intense pain caused by his struggles stabbed at his nerves like a rising tide.

"I've been kidnapped?"

Before he could think about why he had woken up to find himself in this situation, Suren's gaze fell on the two ill-intentioned men in the room.

One was a burly bald man with purple lips and dark circles around his eyes, wearing smoky makeup. The other was a skinny man with green Rooster Head hair and nose and ear piercings.

They wore black leather jackets covered in studs and worn leather pants. From their outfits, they looked like a pair of punk-style fanatics.

Of course, what stood out most were the weapons they carried.

"Guns? Could they be gangsters?"

Suren shifted his gaze slightly.

Large revolvers hung in the holsters at both men's waists. Their bodies were covered in ancient, mysterious, and complicated inscriptions. Their designs looked somewhat exaggerated, yet somehow strangely familiar.

What puzzled him even more was that the burly bald man's right arm was fitted with a strange Mechanical Arm.

The Mechanical Arm gave off an intense dark-industrial vibe, with almost all its components exposed to the air. Brass gears, power-transmission rods, mechanical joints, air valves with gauges, and high-pressure pipes covered it. At the front of the Mechanical Arm was a fist-sized spiral-barreled cannon with a crosshair sight.

It looked like the Mechanical Arm was also a handheld Individual Artillery.

What Suren found hardest to understand was that white steam was actually puffing out of the Mechanical Arm's exhaust pipe.

"Is this... a steam-powered machine?"

Suren's brows furrowed slightly. He felt as though he had seen something unbelievable.

In this era, did people still play with steam machinery, that kind of antique?

He wasn't very frightened. His eyes held more confusion than fear.

Was this a movie?

No!

The stabbing pain in his palms told Suren that he had indeed been kidnapped!

"I remember clicking on a strange email before everything went black. Then I woke up here?"

Suren had awakened in this unfamiliar place, yet he couldn't make sense of anything at all.

No matter how hard he tried to recall what had happened, his mind contained no memory of the kidnapping process.

Suren felt that something was wrong everywhere.

He wanted to find more clues, so his gaze returned to the room.

A brilliant crystal chandelier hung above, exquisite solid-wood furniture filled the room, and rows of books with gilded lettering were neatly arranged on the bookshelves. On the wall was also a signed black-and-white family photograph.

Suren quickly formed a guess: the homeowner was probably a highly sophisticated enthusiast of British retro style—or perhaps this was originally some European castle.

But if they were this wealthy, why had they kidnapped him?

The piercing pain from the two sharp daggers driven through his hands constantly reminded him that these two men were definitely vicious kidnappers.

"These two men are kidnappers?"

Suren's pupils focused as his gaze once again settled on the two men in the room.

Their European faces, retro equipment, and steam-powered Mechanical Arm all seemed strange.

Of course, what was even stranger was that when Suren raised his head, he saw his reflection in the glossy, mirror-like ceiling—a brown-haired youth with blood smeared all over his face!

"Huh? Why do I look different?!"

Suren vaguely guessed that some strange change seemed to have occurred to him.

Moreover, when he had first opened his eyes, he had noticed some strange fluorescent text on his retinas.

He blinked and confirmed that it wasn't an illusion.

His thoughts flashed by in an instant, but a furious shout dragged them back to reality.

"Hey, kid! I know you're awake. Don't fucking play dumb!"

The skinny man with the Rooster Head glared at him viciously before snarling, "I'll give you one last chance. Tell me honestly how you found this ruin and what you're doing here, or else—"

As he spoke, the man pressed down on the hilt of the dagger piercing Suren's left hand.

"Hiss..."

A bone-piercing pain, like his flesh was being twisted apart, shot straight into his skull. Cold sweat instantly covered Suren's forehead, and he sharply sucked in a breath.

He immediately understood. These two men were conducting an interrogation, apparently trying to learn something from him.

Huh.

An interrogation?

Information?

The text on his retinas!

In that instant, a flash of inspiration struck, and the clues in his mind instantly connected.

"These men aren't trying to kidnap me. They kidnapped the 'original owner'!"

Suren suddenly came to his senses.

A bold thought abruptly surfaced in his mind: Have I... transmigrated?

Although the thought was absurd, it was also the most reasonable explanation.

Whether it was this brown-haired youth's body, the two punk-style kidnappers before him, or the conversation he could understand despite not knowing what language it was, everything proved that this was no longer his original world.

As a veteran webnovel enthusiast, transmigration wasn't something he found difficult to accept.

After his momentary shock, Suren instead became calmer.

Wait.

Had these two men already killed the original owner once?

The original owner had been killed, and only then had he transmigrated here. Suren harbored no false hope.

The kidnappers before him were willing to use crippling methods during an interrogation. He had no doubt that the two of them had never intended to leave him alive!

With that thought, he slightly furrowed his brows and pondered, It seems like I'll die whether I tell the truth or not...

A guaranteed-death opening?

Suren adapted to the situation extremely quickly.

It was like playing an immersive horror game. From the very beginning, he had already felt the adrenaline-fueled thrill.

"If I want to survive, I have to find a way to escape first."

The other party's malice was almost tangible, stabbing at his nerves even more painfully than the wounds on his hands. Yet this didn't make Suren feel afraid or tremble. Instead, it triggered certain instinctive responses in him.

Because of his unusual experiences of being confined during childhood, he possessed an extraordinary ability to control certain dangerous emotions.

At this moment.

Facing the threat of death, his body, which had been tensed by the pain, instead relaxed completely. It was as though he had flipped some hidden switch. Fear, panic, trembling—all kinds of negative emotions vanished without a trace.

A nearly numb calm surfaced in Suren's eyes.

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