The last thing Aiden Cross remembered was the cold, indifferent beep of a heart monitor flatlining. No grand exit, no tearful goodbyes. Just… silence. A life of quiet desperation, of being the nice guy who finished last, erased without a whisper.
Then came the screaming. And the stench.
It was a raw, guttural sound torn from a throat he didn't recognize, and it was his own. The smell was a thick, cloying mix of blood, filth, and something primal that made his stomach churn. He was lying on cold, damp stone, his body a symphony of agony. Every inch of him felt wrong, twisted, and weak. So incredibly weak.
He tried to open his eyes, but they were crusted shut. He forced them open, a searing pain shooting through his skull. The world swam into focus, a blurry hellscape of flickering torchlight and hulking shadows. He was in a cave, a crude, sprawling cavern that reeked of unwashed bodies and cooked meat. And the bodies… they were everywhere.
Green-skinned, tusked, and brutally muscular, they were orcs. Real, living, breathing orcs, straight out of a fantasy nightmare. And they were looking at him. No, not at him. Down at him.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms were thin, spindly things that trembled under his own weight. He looked down at his hands, and a fresh wave of nausea hit him. They were small, green, and tipped with jagged, dirty nails. This wasn't his body. This couldn't be real.
A massive female orc, her face a mask of scars and contempt, nudged him with a booted foot. "Ruk," she grunted, the word a wet, guttural sound. "Still breathing? A shame."
Another, a male with a broken tusk and a cruel sneer, laughed. "Leave it. The whelp is malformed. It will be food for the Grawlers soon enough."
Ruk. The name echoed in his mind, and with it came a sliver of understanding, a fragment of this new body's nascent consciousness. It meant "leftover meat." They had named him garbage.
The rage came then, hot and blinding. Aiden Cross had been a doormat. He had let people walk all over him, and what had it gotten him? A lonely death in a sterile hospital room. He had died as nothing.
He would not live as nothing.He pushed himself up again, his new, frail body screaming in protest. He got to his knees, his eyes locking onto the male orc who had mocked him. The orc was huge, a mountain of muscle and menace, but in his eyes, Aiden—no, Ruk—saw something familiar: the casual cruelty of the strong.
And then, something flickered in the corner of his vision. A translucent blue box, shimmering with an otherworldly light.
[Devouring Evolution System Initializing…][Host Detected: Reincarnated Soul - Aiden Cross]
[Body Detected: Malformed Orc Whelp - Ruk]
[System Binding Complete. Welcome, User.]
The words burned themselves into his mind, a lifeline in a sea of despair. A system. Like in the webnovels he used to read. A way to fight back. A way to survive.
[New Quest Issued: First Hunt]
[Objective: Consume a living creature to awaken your dormant bloodline.]
[Reward: Stat Allocation & Skill Tree Unlocked]
Consume a living creature? He looked around the cavern. The orcs were ignoring him now, turning their attention to a roasted beast on a massive spit. They tore at the meat with their bare hands, their tusks dripping with grease. They were the strong. He was the weak. He was the leftover meat.
His eyes fell on a small, rat-like creature skittering in the shadows, its beady eyes gleaming in the torchlight. It was a Grawler, the things the orcs had said he would become food for. It was small, weak, and insignificant. Just like him.
No, a voice whispered in his mind, a voice that was his but not his, a voice that was cold, and hard, and hungry. Not like me. Not anymore.
He moved, his new body clumsy but driven by a desperate, primal need. He cornered the Grawler against a pile of discarded bones. The creature hissed, its tiny teeth bared, but Ruk didn't hesitate. He lunged, his small hands grabbing the creature, his heart pounding in his chest. It squealed, a high-pitched sound that was quickly silenced as Ruk, driven by an instinct he didn't know he possessed, bit down hard.
The taste was… vile. But with it came a rush of something else. A warmth that spread through his veins, a surge of power that made his weak muscles tremble with a newfound strength. And then, the blue boxes appeared again.
[Grawler consumed. Trait Absorbed: Night Vision (Tier 1)]
[Bloodline Awakened. Stat Allocation Unlocked.]
[Name: Ruk]
[Race: Orc (Whelp)]
[Level: 1]
[Stats]
[Strength: 2]
[Vitality: 3]
[Agility: 4]
[Will: 8]
[Corruption: 1]
[Desire: 5]
He stared at the stats, his mind racing. Strength, Vitality, Agility, Will… they all made sense. But the last two… Corruption and Desire. What were they for?
As if in answer, a new box appeared.
[Desire: A measure of your ambition, your lust for power, and your ability to dominate others. Higher Desire increases your authority, your attractiveness, and your ability to form Resonance Buffs through emotional and sexual bonds.]
Sexual bonds. The words sent a jolt through him, a spark of heat that had nothing to do with the fire in the cavern. He looked at the female orc who had kicked him, at the way the other males watched her, their eyes filled with a crude, possessive hunger. He saw the power dynamics at play, the raw, unapologetic sexuality that underpinned their violent hierarchy.
And he understood. In this world, desire wasn't just a feeling. It was a weapon. And he had a feeling he was going to be very, very good at using it.
He looked down at the remains of the Grawler, at the blood on his hands. He felt no remorse. No disgust. Only a cold, clear thought.
More.He was Ruk. He was leftover meat. But he would not be for long. He would devour. He would evolve. And he would rise.
This world would learn to fear his hunger.