It was pitch black around Zade, and It felt like he was floating, but he wasn't so sure.
Confusion slowly flooded his mind as he tried to figure out what was happening.
He thought he had died. After that last hit to his head, he was certain he was already a goner. However, it doesn't feel like he is dead right now, which is beyond unbelievable to him. Although he doesn't know what death feels like, he already assumes he's supposed to be in a burning fire now, because despite living a good life, he knew he had committed lots of sins— like lying, stealing, fighting and so on when he was still living in the gutters.
But that wasn't the case presently. There was no burning fire around him, neither was he feeling any pain in his body. There was no bright light either for him to assume he was now in heaven.
It was just pitch black.
He wasn't in pain, he was breathing well, and his ears could pick out faint noises of birds chirping and of the wind blowing grasses around.
Was he in a hospital? He wondered within himself as he tried to open his eyes.
However, his eyes refused to open.
He tried a few more times, but it still didn't work. It almost felt like they were glued close, which made the confusion within him to triple.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
This time, he frowned.
What the fuck is happening?
Before he could start to dwell on all the weirdness that was suddenly happening, the sound of a door opening made him stiffen.
Was that his brothers? Were they here to finish him off after he survived?
Was that grandfather Melbroune?
His unasked questions were answered in the very next moment.
"This useless child! We'll finally be getting rid of him!" A woman's voice pierced through Zade's thoughts. Her voice was matured and filled with venom.
"I know, right? He's nothing but a waste of space. A mere vegetable that cannot see, walk or speak. It's pointless to still let him keep breathing." A lighter, feminine voice responded.
"Right! Now, help me lift his head up, then I'll feed him this ancient spider's venom." The older woman spoke this time, just as footsteps got closer to him.
Zade was confused. Were these people speaking about someone else? What they were just saying made no sense. This is the twenty first century, what the fuck is an ancient spider venom outside of fantasy books and games.
However, he was beyond shocked when he felt a hand behind his throat, then he was roughly pulled into a sitting position.
What the fuck?
He wanted to yell those words but no sounds came out despite him feeling his mouth moving.
The woman holding him up laughed as she roughly pressed his jaw down and held his mouth open. "He's trying to say something, isn't the sight funny?"
This woman was clearly referring to him at this point and Zade was beyond irritated.
He felt insulted.
He was twenty five, how dare this person touch him like this?
Like he's a freaking child.
He tried to push her away, but his hands felt limp at his sides. He tried to kick his feet, but it felt limp as well. His limbs felt numb, there were no feelings inside them, and at this point, Zade was starting to panic.
"It's not! It's just annoying. The sight of him now repulses me. I can't believe I once treated him like my son." The older woman bit out, then Zade felt something being placed at the tip of his opened mouth.
"I'll feed him this spider venom now. It has fully absorbed the right amount of mana that's supposed to poison his weak body in seconds."
This was when Zade's brain short circuited.
Those words… They were familiar.
He knew he had seen it somewhere before. It was so vivid in his brain now, and as he tried to remember where he had heard it from, it suddenly hit him from nowhere.
It was from a novel! His favorite novel!
Beast Taming in the Zone!
Holy shit! Zade thought as his heart began to pound hard.
Now that he had remembered the novel, the contents of the novel was starting to rush into his mind in waves. This book was his favorite book ever. He had read it times without numbers, so it didn't take him that long to remember to figure it all out.
There's a character in the book. A character worse than a filler character, because the character didn't even get any lines in the book. It was of a boy aged fourteen, who was rendered blind, dumb and lame by his cruel family. He could clearly picture the character right now, and as something started flowing into his mouth, he realized with a jolt, that presently— he was that cannon fodder of the novel, and also the most useless and irrelevant side character in the entire story.
As cold liquid slid down his throat, it hit him square in the face, that he was currently being fed a poison that killed this exact character in the story.
Zade was yet to even fully process the fact that he had transmigrated into his favorite novel, as a useless side character that barely got any screen time!
He didn't even know that transmigration was possible! He had thought it only happened in books!
As more of that liquid started rushing down Zade's throat, and now that he was aware of what the poison was about, his first instinct was to panic. In the story, the side character had died a minute after being fed the poison, in intense pain.
Zade found it very ironic that he just escaped death, only to transmigrate into a character that's on the verge of death again!
In the story, the side character struggled hard against the poison before dying. But he actually wasn't supposed to have done that.
Since Zade read the incomplete novel to the very last updated chapter, later in the story, it was revealed that the poison that killed the character, could have been cultivated by the side character and used to heal himself, because of the excess processed mana in the poison that was meant to destroy the side character's weak body.
Unfortunately, the side character had been unaware of that information, so he died.
But Zade was aware of the information. He could vividly remember how the cultivation process was described in the novel, and how it happened.
The rest of the poison got fed into his body, then the two women left while crackling.
Zade's first instinct was to panic again, because this situation was still so jarring, and even despite having information on how to cultivate the poison, he was still afraid… because if it didn't work, he'd die in a minute like the character died in the book.