“Ugh…
Where…
where am I?” Cain slowly opened his eyes.
Looking at the stark white walls around him, a flicker of confusion crossed his mind.
Hiss…
Just as he tried to get a better look at his surroundings, a sudden, splitting headache ripped through his skull, shattering his concentration.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, but as the agonizing pain gradually receded, Cain began to understand exactly what kind of situation he was in.
Right now, however, he didn’t have the energy for complex thoughts.
He just wanted to rest.
That blinding pain had squeezed every last drop of strength from his body.
Even though cold sweat had soaked his clothes, leaving them clinging uncomfortably to his skin, he couldn’t even lift a finger to peel them off.
He had no choice but to endure it.
Inhale…
Exhale…
Inhale…
Exhale…
Cain breathed heavily, taking in the foul, harsh scent of disinfectant filling the air.
His chest heaved up and down with every violent gasp.
He felt utterly pathetic.
Once his body had recovered a little, Cain started to seriously process his current predicament.
Going through his newly acquired memories, he quickly realized that his situation was, to put it mildly, incredibly bleak.
Originally, this body had lived in a small, peaceful village, surrounded by doting parents and kind neighbors.
But one day, out of nowhere, the entire village was attacked by a group of men in black.
Every adult was slaughtered.
The children were rounded up and shipped here to serve as living experimental materials.
How could a seven-year-old child comprehend all this?
It was because that excruciating pain had forced the memories of his past life to awaken.
There wasn’t much to say about his previous life.
He had been a thirty-year-old corporate drone—an unmarried otaku who had never even been on a date.
As he continued sifting through the memories in his head, Cain’s expression grew strange.
“This…
this feels like the world of Fairy Tail.” At first, he wasn’t completely sure.
But as he dug deeper into his fragmented memories, an inexplicable sense of familiarity washed over him.
When a certain man’s face surfaced in his mind, Cain was absolutely certain—he had crossed over into the world of his past life’s favorite anime, Fairy Tail.
And this wasn’t the magic-deprived parallel world of Edolas.
This was Earth Land.
Forget the memories of flashy, destructive spells; the very magic power flowing through his own veins was proof enough.
Closing his eyes, he gently felt the warm, comforting thrum of magic inside him.
Cain fell into deep thought.
“It seems that awakening my past life’s memories triggered the awakening of my magic, too.” Just as he was about to test out his newfound magical abilities, he remembered exactly where he was.
He forcefully clamped down on his excitement.
“Phew…
Good thing I reincarnated into Fairy Tail and not Naruto, One Piece, or Bleach.
If I had known I was going to end up here, I would have finished watching the anime!” Cain muttered, a bit frustrated.
The anime had gone on hiatus for a while back in his old world, and he had never been the type to read the manga.
When it eventually came back and finished the Grand Magic Games arc, the episodes had gotten all jumbled up, and he had eventually dropped it.
He couldn’t even remember where he had stopped watching.
Still, he remembered the general plot.
The ultimate final boss was the Black Dragon, Acnologia.
“Wasn’t that thing immune to magic?
Ah, whatever, I can’t remember clearly.
Anyway…
System, start!” Cain crossed his arms over his chest, a confident and calm smile spreading across his face.
Seconds ticked by.
A minute passed.
That familiar ‘Ding!’ never came.
Cain wasn’t about to give up so easily.
How could an isekai protagonist not have a cheat system?
Even if he didn’t physically transmigrate or possess someone as a wandering soul, awakening his past life’s memories still totally made him an isekai protagonist!
“System?
Jarvis?
Siri?
Great Sage?
Raphael?
Mom…?” Refusing to accept reality, Cain tried every activation phrase he could think of.
Yet, no system materialized.
Defeated, he temporarily abandoned his quest for a cheat code and began to inspect his surroundings.
Pushing aside the covers, he planted his small, bare feet on the smooth floor.
Looking down, he noticed he was wearing nothing but a thin, smock-like garment—something closely resembling a hospital gown from his previous life.
The room wasn’t large, maybe three or four hundred square feet.
The furnishings were extremely bare-bones; besides the bed, the room was empty.
Oh, wait, no.
There was a small bathroom attached to allow the occupant to take care of basic physiological needs.
As he walked, a cool breeze drifted up his gown, making Cain realize he was completely commando.
This made him wildly uncomfortable.
After all, while his body was currently seven years old, he had the self-awareness of a man in his thirties.
Suddenly remembering something crucial, Cain scrambled toward the bathroom in a panic.
Lifting his gown, he checked his manhood.
Finding it perfectly intact, he let out a long sigh of relief.
“Thank god, thank god.
I’ve heard the girls in Fairy Tail are absolutely top-tier, hehehehehe.” Lost in some degenerate fantasy, Cain let out a very strange, creepy laugh.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound abruptly snapped Cain out of his daydreams.
A man in a white lab coat, wearing glasses and scribbling on a clipboard, stood at the door.
He looked at Cain and said coldly, “Subject 115, come with me.” Without waiting for a response, the man turned and walked away.
Cain froze for a second before realizing that ‘Subject 115’ meant him.
Cain obediently followed behind the man, his mind racing.
Strange.
Didn’t they just finish an experiment on me?
Why are they calling me out again so soon?
From the original body’s memories, Cain knew that as a test subject, he was scheduled for various checkups every week—or worse, strapped to an icy operating table for some horrific experiment.
When he was first captured and brought here, Cain could still see the other kids from his village.
But as two months dragged by, every single one of his former companions had vanished.
Meanwhile, he had been upgraded from a filthy, damp cage to the clean, tidy room he was just in.
The original seven-year-old Cain hadn’t understood why, but his thirty-year-old self understood perfectly.
It was simply because he had survived the previous experiments.
To them, he was now a highly valuable, rare specimen.
After passing through seven or eight heavy security doors, the man in glasses brought Cain to a halt in front of a metal bed.
“Lie down.” Once Cain climbed onto the bed, the man ordered, “Don’t move,” and began operating a machine nearby.
As the man typed away, a red laser swept down from the ceiling, scanning Cain from head to toe.
Just as Cain thought the scan was the end of it, a sharp prick of pain flared in his right hand.
He turned his head and saw a needle embedded in his skin, slowly drawing his crimson blood into a vial.
Once the blood was collected, the needle retracted and vanished.
The man in glasses continued typing furiously on his console.
About ten minutes later, the man stared at the screen.
The results clearly stated that everything was completely normal, but he frowned deeply.
However, he didn’t dwell on it.
After escorting Cain back to his room, the man walked into a large laboratory.
A balding old man, roughly in his seventies, glanced over at him and asked, “How were the test results?” “Doctor, the results are completely normal.” “Normal?” The Doctor sounded extremely surprised.
He had noticed an anomaly with Subject 115 from the monitoring room and assumed the boy was suffering from side effects of their previous experiment.
Hearing his assistant say that everything was perfectly normal was quite unexpected.