He opened his eyes with great effort and tried to stand up. His body felt sore and the dizziness was not helping one bit. It took a while but eventually he got a hold of himself and started to take in his surroundings.

Drip Drip

Looking around, he realized he was underground. The tunnel he was in was huge and there was water dripping from the stalactites above him. While he was staring at the walls and trying to figure out what exactly happened to him, he heard the pitter patter of footsteps at the end of the tunnel.

‘Ah people. Maybe I can ask them where I am.’

His body still ached slightly so he just waited for them to come instead. When he finally saw them, he froze.

‘Oh, my fucking god.’

Monsters, ugly terrifying monsters from the depths of hell. They were humanoid seeing as they had the standard four limbs but their face was ugly with big ears, a mouth full of sharp pointy teeth and big eyes. As a gaming enthusiast or otherwise known to the public as a gaming addict before his death he had wide knowledge of monsters that appeared in fantasy settings.

Despite that the monsters before him while humanoid where not the common goblin or one of those kobolds. Gnolls? No, they didn’t look like hyenas that could walk. Maybe they were weird mutated goblins?

A spark set of in his mind, they were gremlins.

Small humanoid creatures that depending on which game or whatever source you referred were either covered by scales, fur or ugly monster skin. Surprisingly the creatures in front of him had a combination of all three.

It was only as they started getting closer to him was panic was starting to register to his muddled mind. Should he run away or should he fight? Maybe begging for mercy would work?

The gremlins were not as they were advertised in video games and novels. They were the same size as him and had sharp claws and looked mean and scary. Not at all like some level 1 monsters found in a cave.

Weirdly enough while he was scared and panicking his body didn’t move at all. Not because he couldn’t control it or any such reason like that. It was hard to put in words but his body wasn’t scared.

Mind can influence the body but the body also influences the mind. Feeling odd he took a look at his hands and then continued staring at it. His hands were ugly and murky green in colour and his fingertips ended in claws.

It made sense all of a sudden. Why the tunnel was so huge and the monsters coming towards were the same size. Why he didn’t tremble in fear on seeing them. It was because he was one of them.

He is a Gremlin.

Rather then panic or scream hysterically he just looked at the gremlins in front of him. He could see that they were surprised on seeing him. How he could tell they were surprised was a surprise in itself considering their ugly little faces.

Guess it was because he was a gremlin himself. The two gremlins took one look at him before the larger one of the two hit the head of the other and started scolding him. Surprisingly or perhaps unsurprisingly he was able to understand him considering he was now a gremlin.

They spoke in a very crude manner. But from the gist of it he was scolding the other gremlin for making a false alarm and wasting his time. The older one then looked at me, gave a nod and then scurried out of the tunnel.

The smaller gremlin looked ashamed? It was strange how I can detect their expressions despite their ugly mugs. He looked at me and there was relief and then happiness. He then said to me,

“Good good, you okay. I worried you dead.”

‘Dead? I tried that and it didn’t suit me.’

A surge of warmth came out of no where and his body stopped aching and his mind cleared up. Memories flashed in his mind and he started to realize what happened. Someone did die. The previous owner of this body was called Kryzen and he overworked himself plus he got bitten by some weird insect which resulted in his death.

Some how he managed to take over this body and now he was alive again. His previous aching body and grogginess was him coming back alive. Does this mean he reincarnated into the body of a gremlin? No this wasn’t reincarnation.

He wasn’t born again; he just took over the poor gremlins body. This was transmigration to be exact. Deciding to go over the memories later, Kryzen as he was now called told the small gremlin,

“I am fine, go back to mining you still have a quota to fill.”

The smaller gremlin obeyed and went back to hacking at the walls with his bare hands…claws. He still didn’t have a name yet, wasn’t old enough. His name was Kryzen. An okay name he supposed but it will have to do. No point in using his old name in a new world.

Going through memories in his head he gained a rough idea of his current situation.

He was part of a gremlin community that lived in the mines. The gremlins mined some sort of ore and then delivered it to Guards every day. There wasn’t much to consider from the memories. The monsters weren’t smart and this applied to the previous owner of the body as well.

They just worked every day since their birth and then died. A dull life but the only life they know. Gremlins had short life spans, 15 years to be exact. This was even shorter than goblins who had a lifespan of 20.

Speaking of goblins, the gremlins weren’t alone in the mines. There were a couple of communities in the mines with gremlins being the smallest and weakest of them. Goblins, gnolls and some undead minions worked in the mines. The undead belonged to the owner of the mines. The previous owner of the body has never seen his face though so it was hard to tell if that person was a human or not.

Honestly, he only inferred all this from the memories in the head. The gremlins were only slightly smarter than the average 5-year-old human and their common sense was a little weird. As far as the previous owner of the body and the other gremlins were concerned this was their way of life and they didn’t bother concerning themselves with anything else.

They considered it to be normal to mine every day and deliver ore to undead guards and somewhere in the middle eat and get some sleep. Kryzen as he was now called realized these gremlins were to a sense domesticated. Not enslaved and forced against their wills but domesticated.

They were born to mine ore the same way a pig was born to be slaughtered. Their ancestors were trained to mine ores all day and eventually it became their way of life. Whoever was in charge didn’t even bother using slave collars or anything similar to handle the mines workers.

They were breed for the sole purpose of mining ore so there was no need to waste resources on slave collars. These monsters would never rebel because they don’t even know what that means. Bet the owner of the mines would never have considered a human soul taking over the body of weak little gremlin.

I looked at the pile of ore next to me and gathered it all in a sack and carried to the nearest undead guard post. According to the memories, the gremlins had their own guard post separate from the other ‘mining’ communities. This was to prevent interactions with other species in the mine.

From what Kryzen gathered the goblins were a bunch of sadistic bullies who enjoyed beating up gremlins because they were the only thing weaker than themselves.

Goblins were small reaching at most 4 feet in height but gremlins were even smaller. Most gremlins reach grow up to 2 to 3 feet once they were fully matured. Unlike goblins, gremlins were not only smaller but they were also weaker physically.

The only reason the gremlins had their own guard post is because gremlins were excellent miners. There claws were hard and durable and were excellent for mining. Thus, gremlins despite their weaker physiques were better miners then the other species in the mines.

Its not like the owner of the mines actually cared about the gremlins though. The goblins were impacting the productivity of gremlins by the way of beating them up on sight so he or she deemed it better for us gremlins to have our own guard post.

Fights or rather one-sided beatings still happen with goblins but at least it wasn’t as bad as before.

‘Us gremlins are just have to have to be the puniest huh.’

Kryzen stopped for a second. He just referred to himself as a gremlin. Was he one of them though? Well he was technically a gremlin now but wasn’t he a human before, shouldn’t he consider himself as something different?

‘Identity crises are for normies. I am or was a gamer. I’m just living the game now as a totally different race that’s all.’

His thought process was a little different from normal people. It wasn’t like he hadn’t played games where he was a monster before or hadn’t read novels where the main character was a monster. Kryzen would just go with the flow and not think about such things.

This is his second chance in life, a new beginning to his story and he was not going to make it so that his story had the psychological tag.

There was still some way to go before he reached the guard post so he let his eyes wander a bit. Gremlins of various sizes and looks were mining about as usual. This previous Kryzen was actually quite old among the gremlin community.

He was one of the rare gremlins to cross three years of age. Most died either from exhaustion or due to stupid goblins or the bugs in the tunnels. There was only one really old gremlin in the entire community. He was 12 years old which was a big deal considering the living conditions in the mine.

Kryzen decided he would visit the old gremlin when he had time. Maybe he knew something special. He doubted it though. Even the previous owner of his body had very lacklustre experiences in mine. Seventy percent of the memories were basically mining and remaining was eating. Well there wasn’t even any sex in his memories.

There were no females at all. All the females were in a separated and were used as breeding tools to create more mine workers. Cruel but in the eyes of the owner of the mines it increased efficiency as none of us would be distracted by sex.

Wouldn’t all monsters still have cravings though? Guess not because of some weird reason none of the monsters felt any lust. Absolutely none. Kryzen guessed that some weird magic was used to inhibit the lust of all the monsters or there was something added to their food.

‘Man, this mine owner is such a bitchy boss. Poor dude died a virgin.’

While Kryzen was feeling sorry for the previous owner of the body he realized that he died a virgin too. Maybe he should start thinking about something else.

‘How do I escape this cursed place though.’

Judging by the undead skeleton guards, this place probably belonged to a evil necromancer of untold power. That just made things so much harder. There is no telling if he would be attacked by zombies if he left the mines, if he could leave in the first place.

There was no indication of there being an exit from the memories in his head. This was going to be hard. Kryzen figured he would just figure out his escape later.

‘Fantasy creatures and all, and magic by the looks of it exists in this world and I don’t have anything to rely on. A guide of some sort would have been super helpful. Being a human would have been better too.’

Kryzen just grumbled in frustration as he finally made it to the guard post and deposited the ore, he collected in front of the skeleton guards. They were was no emotion as one of the guards took the bag and seemed to analyse its contents.

There should be no problem though. The previous owner mined enough to fill his quota before dying. Very convenient for Kryzen. The guards finished whatever it is they were doing to the bag and threw it to a sort of storage room.

Now Kryzen could go past the guards and get something to eat and take a three hour and nap after which he would wake up and do the same thing again and again for as long as he was alive. At least that was the case before he took over. Now he would whatever it takes to escape the mines. This second chance would not be wasted.

But just as the guards accepted the mined ore and Kryzen could walk away something appeared before him.

|You have fulfilled your daily mining quota|

| Gained 500 SP|