Chapter 3

Through the thick foliage, a single beam of sunlight managed to shoot right into my eyes the moment I woke up. I rolled out of the way, crushing the fallen leaves that carpeted the forest floor.

Wait, leaves? forest?

I shot up to my feet. My situation had absolutely zero correlation with the one before it. I remembered the sound of the bomb going off clear as day, and everything went dark after that. If I had survived, I would have woken up in a hospital.

Was I in heaven? No, it didn't seem likely. Though the crunching of leaves under my feet was heavenly, It felt as if I hadn't eaten in weeks, and bug bites covered my arms. It was as if I had passed out exploring after running out of food. I checked my pockets to find that I didn't actually have pockets, and I was wearing a shirt and a skirt, both of which were pretty much shredded. My feet were bare, and I had cuts all over my body, either from sharp branches or knives. Since I didn't remember how any of these things came to be, I was extremely confused.

I followed the sound of flowing water, which led me to a clearing by the river. I looked at my own reflection in the water.

"Who's this?" I thought aloud. It took me a few moments to realize that I was actually looking at my own reflection.

In place of my short blond hair was green hair so pale that it could have been mistaken as a light grey, and long enough for it to hang down into the water, even though I was an arm's length away from the surface. My ears pointed up a slight bit, and my face had no distinct "male" features. I splashed the water a couple of times, hoping that my eyes were just playing tricks on me, but the reflection remained the same. The only similarity between this and my previous appearance was my eye color, which stayed the vibrant royal blue that it was previously.

In the water's reflection, just a bit above the top of my head, I noticed two orbs of light. After looking up at the sky and blinding myself for a second, I realized that both of them were suns. They were much smaller than the one I was used to, which resulted in them having the same effect as just one, large sun. This confirmed that I was probably not standing on Earth.

Apart from my face, there still weren't many similarities in this before-and-after comparison. From what I could tell, I was a bit shorter, and my body was a bit thinner and more feminine. It was almost as if I'd been thrown into a completely different body with my memories intact, overriding the previous owner of it. Though I felt like complaining that said previous owner just happened to be some girl.

My stomach growled, interrupting my train of thought. Whoever this body belonged to before, she sure didn't know how to feed herself.

After looking around, I wasn't sure if I did, either. While it seemed full of life, the forest contained almost no edible things that were visible to the eye.

I panicked slightly. I really didn't feel like dying again, especially so soon after the first time, and to starvation, of all things.

The crunching of leaves brought me back to reality. On the other side of the river, a deer walked up to the stream and dipped its mouth into the water, completely disregarding me.

I looked around for a weapon. The fact that it was just minding its own business didn't faze me. If I couldn't kill that deer, then I'd probably be the one that would end up dead.

Finally, I settled on a sharp, but weighty rock, not really thinking logically, more like in desperation. With all my strength, I performed a serve rivaling that of an NBA pitcher. The rock shot straight into the deer's head, and, unexpectedly, passed through it as if it was a thin sheet of paper. The rock buried itself in the ground behind the animal.

As the body of the deer fell sideways, I stared at the hole in its head in shock. No matter how I looked at it, all I did was throw a rock, which would have stung the animal a bit at most, but instead I was staring at a dead deer, undoubtedly killed by none other than the rock that had just left my hand. With a strangely composed mind, I deduced that such a display of strength was definitely not possible for a human, especially a girl so skinny and malnourished. I was in another world, so I wouldn't have been surprised if I turned out to be another race, too. Preferably something that was common and didn't stand out, though I realized that that was being picky.

I checked the top of my head, no horns or ears were present. The inside of my mouth did not contain fangs, and there wasn't a tail attached to my backside either. The only things about me that I could have singled out as "inhuman traits" were my slightly pointed ears and my strange hair color, both of which were pretty small details. But since I had just sent a rock straight through the head of a wild animal, I had a cause for believing that I did not remain human other than "oh, I've seen this in a book before."

A strange, yellow-colored light rose out of the deer's dead body, dragging my attention away from my internal debate on what fantastical race I could have belonged to. The light floated towards me and disappeared upon hitting my chest. My hunger and wounds instantly disappeared, and even the hollowed cheeks started fading away. It was as if I had eaten the animal itself, even though it was clearly still lying there, leaking blood and brain matter into the river and giving me the urge to throw up.

I sat down with my head between my legs to process all of this. Not only did I just hole-punch the skull of a deer, something like its soul came out and got absorbed by me, which completely replenished my body. I hadn't read about any races in fantasy that could do that besides evil ones, and I sure as hell didn't want that role.

A strange feeling on my back yanked me out of my thoughts once again, and I looked at my reflection in the river again. A pair of thin, diamond-shaped wings, glowing the same color as my hair, had appeared behind me, seemingly rooted to the small of my back. Further inspection showed that they weren't actually physically attached to my body, but floated an inch or so away from me, though it felt as if they were new limbs connected directly to my nervous system.

"What the hell…" I moved the wings back and forth, just to see if I could control them. "Can I fly with these?"

I got my answer pretty quickly. Moving the wings lifted me a foot off the ground, and I could freely control my direction and speed, even though I'd never done so before. Was this the muscle memory of the body I was in?

I searched my memory desperately, hoping to find a bit of context, or even just information that wasn't there previously. There was nothing that stood out to me. No family, friends, cities, or even a general idea of where the hell I was. I gave up after a minute or two, and just decided to fly up and see if there was any intelligent life that I could spot.

Even though my memory had no instructions on how to control my wings or my superhuman strength, it seemed that my body's muscle memory allowed me to do just that. Since muscle memory does also come from the brain, I assumed that not all of the memories of the body was lost, only the conscious ones.

My larger concern was my appearance. My new body was that of a teenage girl, probably around 14 or 15 years old, a couple years younger than my previous one. It was perfectly balanced, and had a nice figure and a cute face that was totally my type, but…

I patted my chest.

There wasn't nearly enough mass there, was there?

I laughed to myself. I was in a confusing and strange situation, but I found comfort in the fact that my mind still worked the same as always. At least that confirmed that I was still the same person.

There was nothing but forest in sight, even after a few hundred meters of flying straight up. Discouraging as this was, I found out that my eyesight had significantly improved from before, too. I was still able to see the details on the trees below me for at least a two-mile radius, though that might have contributed to the discouragement.

After choosing a direction by spitting into the wind and flying that way for about an hour, I noticed a small plume of smoke rising up from the endless sea of trees in the distance, barely at the edge of my vision. A smile found its way onto my face. I had almost given up there, but it looked like flying up so high wasn't a waste of time at all. I had a feeling that, no matter what awaited me there, my life in this parallel world was not going to be as easy as that of the peaceful, side-character role that I had wished to take on in a new world.