Don't you hate it when Final Destination happened to you? I sure did.
My death came from a fan. I was sitting on a couch and chilling when one of the screws decided to quit its job and sent a fan blade toward me. The sharp edge broke through the cage and cleanly sliced my neck.
So, yeah, I dropped dead. Dying from suffocation and blood loss at the same time sounded fancier than getting slammed by a truck-kun, but I digressed.
I didn't know how, but my consciousness left my body instantly. When I came to my senses, the world or something similar came into view. My vision descended as though I were a rocket flying straight to Earth. I traveled through the atmosphere and reached the clouds. Mountainous terrain greeted me as soon as I exited the cloud mass.
I couldn't move. My vision was fixed as the ground came closer.
The landscape grew clearer. A field full of dead bodies and a massive pit full of corpses stretched from horizon to horizon. Crows and vultures flocked in the sky, but they didn't seem to detect my presence.
And then I fell into that mass grave.
There was no pain or collision. My vision got sucked into something, and five senses returned.
My eyelids were heavy.
Something pressed on top of me and my limbs.
The stickiness and wetness crawled on my skin, like a billion ants were parading on me.
I opened my eyes.
It was pitch-black.
As soon as I regained my full senses, the putrid odor of rotten blood and human flesh hit my nose. My sensors urged me to rise to my feet, but I couldn't move. The weight of the corpses on top of me pressed me against the floor. My hands, arms, legs, stomach, and feet were all numb as if sharp needles had been repeatedly piercing my skin.
I could not breathe!
It dawned on me. This body had already been buried!
I had to get out!
I pushed the dead bodies aside and dug my way up.
Blood and unknown flesh fell on my face as I swam my way up. The saltiness and bitterness of human blood filled my nose and mouth. I spat everything out as I inhaled every bit of air.
My arms and back grazed something sharp, cutting through my skin. I assumed that metal armor, blades, or shrapnel might have scratched my skin, but I had no time to bother with those.
A second felt like hours. A minute felt like an eternity.
My lungs compressed and expanded, demanding more air. My chest was burning, and my heart clenched itself so hard that I couldn't think straight. Using the last bit of my strength, I punched the bodies above me.
I prayed. I hoped that I wasn't digging the wrong way.
After crawling over another body, my eyes perceived lights. My face caught a glimpse of the wind.
I opened my mouth wide and gasped for air.
I survived!
God, that was too close!
I thanked God that the mass grave wasn't properly buried.
Taking my time, I gasped for air and caught my breath. After minutes of struggle, I reached the surface.
Upon standing up, I looked down to where a thousand bodies were piled up. I deeply inhaled once more.
The air was not clean. It was so dusty, smelly, and rotten that I almost vomited. Fortunately, there was nothing in my stomach. I was unsure whether I should thank the former owner of this body or pity him. The poor bastard had been starving before his death.
I might have survived the suffocation and being buried alive, but the danger was far from over.
Upon examining my arms and legs, I found cuts and wounds. Rotten blood from these corpses might have gotten into my blood vessels.
Yeah, those wounds were going to rot soon. I needed an antibiotic ASAP. Moreover, I needed food.
My body was so undernourished that I had trouble standing upright. Crows and vultures gave me a weird look as though I were a piece of fried chicken coming back to life and walking out of the kitchen.
It took me several minutes to adjust to my new vision and body balance. My limbs were no longer numb, but I was thirsty and hungry. My eyes searched for food.
No living human was in sight, only corpses, crows, and vultures. Obviously, I wasn't desperate enough to eat human corpses or poke a hornet's nest by capturing a crow. Hundreds of crows would have swarmed and killed me on the spot if I harmed one of them.
Surrounding the mass graves was the aftermath of a big battle. Broken armor, arrows, wooden shields, and spears littered the field. As for armor and usable tools, they might have been cleaned by the victor army because I didn't see any.
My two bare feet and bloody body attracted a lot of flies and worms from the muddy ground, soaked in red liquid. I found myself wearing a crude yellowish tunic with a hole in the stomach area. A yellowish rag coiled around my neck.
Pulling the rag-scarf out from my neck, I inspected it, spreading it wide. I discovered a rat symbol on the scarf.
The color was faded, but I recognized it.
"Ah, shit."
The image brought back a lot of memories, reminding me of an NPC faction from a hack-and-slash video game I used to play.
I had no problem with this being a game world. Rather, I had no F to give. I just wanted to live.
The insignia belonged to a country, Avaritia, that promoted slavery. They occasionally dispatched troops to foreign countries to abduct young women and children to become their slaves.
I hurried and tossed the scarf and my yellow tunic away before someone from the other factions saw me. I'd rather have walked around half-naked than worn the Avaritia faction's uniform.
Walking one step at a time, I parted from the mass grave and corpses. Along the way, my bare feet stumbled upon the body of a soldier from another faction. He wore intact leather armor, but there was a metal javelin stuck in his chest.
I yanked the javelin out. The spear shaft was made of crude iron or something, since it was as heavy as a standard barbell on Earth. The javelin tip, however, was detached and stuck in the dead body.
I put the useless shaft away and looted the body, replacing my dirty clothes and pants with the uniform of that soldier. After putting on a set of hay boots, leather pants, and leather armor, I searched for more bodies for supplies or food. Unfortunately, those troopers didn't carry supply pouches or belongings.
I wanted to search more, but my stomach growled, stopping me from being a loot goblin.
My mind wandered. I started thinking of random food and the good life on Earth.
"I wished I could just break some jars and spawn some turkeys."
I couldn't help but think of Musou games that I had played before my death. In that game, players could break some objects to find food items, which replenished the player's HP bar. I doubted I could miraculously find one here.
Although my logical side didn't believe in such coincidences, my heart prayed for a miracle. I looked around, searching for a suspicious lone jar, crates, or destructible objects that stood out in the wild.
On my right, 100 meters away, there was a gray ceramic vase as tall as my chest, glistening under the sunlight.
I wanted to rub my eyes, but my hands were too dirty. I was afraid I might cause an eye infection and lose my eyesight. Thus, I blinked and shook my head several times in disbelief, like a certain meme.
"Nah. It was just a vase."
I laughed with my dry and cracked voice. My throat was so parched that I started thinking of drinking the blood puddles around me.
As if I had lost my sanity, my feet brought me to the ceramic vase while I anticipated a miracle. I peeked inside.
It was empty.
"Heh, of course."
Obviously, nobody would have left behind a whole roasted chicken in a vase in the middle of nowhere, especially on a battlefield.
Venting my frustration, I grabbed a broken spear nearby and smashed the vase.
It didn't break. The vase tilted and fell sideways, rolling.
"Son of a…!"
My strength was pathetic, or rather, this body was too weak!
Because I would die from starvation and a severe blood infection soon, I thought dying with dignity might be a better choice. I brandished the spear above my head and brought it down to dispel this false hope.
The vase broke with a clank. Pieces of hardened ceramic scattered.
Nothing else happened.
"Yeah, thought so."
Being able to return to life was already a miracle. Expecting more would be too greedy.
I gave up everything.
I tossed away the half-broken spear and turned around. Instead of searching those bodies for food, I'd rather have left that place before I got an additional lung infection or random diseases. Death by blood infection was already bad enough.
As I turned, the corners of my eyes spotted a beacon of light. A strong scent of cooked chicken came from behind.
Something appeared.