Chapter 1: Prologue

"You and I are both mortals, born into this human world.

Running about in bitterness all day, never finding a moment of leisure.

Since we are not immortals, it is hard to avoid stray thoughts.

Pushing aside morality and justice, we place profit at the center."

It wasn't unpleasant to hear—at least it wasn't tone-deaf singing—echoing inside a small electric car. The driver was amusing himself, watching the street outside under the dim glow of the streetlights.

Have you ever seen the city at one in the morning? I see it every day after I get off work. The singer thought to himself.

He had expected to spend his life as a beast of burden, but as he passed through a certain intersection, a blinding fog light suddenly appeared from the left.

Following it was a low-pitched horn, like the bellowing of an ox, loud enough to shatter his eardrums.

The brightness and the thunderous sound left the driver unable to react to what was happening in that first instant. He simply maintained his driving posture, merely turning his head to look to his left.

Ah, so it’s the transmigrator’s artifact: a large truck.

When he realized what was coming at him, the massive impact force was like a firing pin hitting the primer of a shell; the battery at the bottom of the small electric car exploded instantly, sending out roaring sparks.

The large truck did not stop, for they were in the suburbs of the suburbs. There wasn't a single qualified surveillance camera in the vicinity, nor were there any other cars on the road; looking for a dashcam would have been useless.

By the time the fire department received the report and arrived, photos of the accident scene were already going viral on the internet.

The fire had long since been extinguished, and a car burned down to its skeleton sat lonely on the road.

In the driver's seat, one could vaguely see a mark different from the rest—the final proof that a certain beast of burden had once existed in this world.

The only one who missed him was this beast of burden’s superior. Because someone had been absent from work without cause for the next few days, with no one to do the work or take over, the team leader was furious.

Eventually, a termination notice was mailed to the empty house with thirty years of mortgage remaining. It was then thrown into a trash can months later by the bank’s foreclosure agents.

No one cared about the missing homeowner.

——T—R—A—N—S—M—I—G—R—A—T—I—N—G——

When the happy beast of burden opened his eyes again, he did not see the driver's seat he was familiar with, nor were there any large trucks or blinding lights outside the window. Instead...

Well, even that window was different.

He felt as if he were sitting in a massage chair, tightly wrapped on his left, right, and back. Directly in front was an oval, slightly convex transparent shield; this was the only window through which he could observe the outside world.

Turning his head was difficult, but his eyeballs could still move. He looked left and right; within his limited field of vision, he seemed to be in a sealed space.

Then he looked out the viewing window; it was pitch black, dotted with specks of starlight.

Is it night?

Just as he glanced over, a planet with a ring of asteroid belts flashed past the window in an unimaginably huge scale.

This... the night sky wouldn't show scenes like this, which could only exist in a planetarium or a movie.

He observed the situation outside the viewing window intently, watching the massive celestial bodies that flashed by from time to time, as well as the blinding light in the distance... Oh, this reminded the person trapped inside of that event from not long ago—the fog lights of that large truck.

He felt his limbs; although he seemed to be squeezed into a container wrapped in soft cushions, at least his ability to move hadn't been stripped away, it was just very difficult to move.

He struggled to free his right hand and raised it before his eyes. This clearly did not belong to his own arm; or to be more precise, it clearly did not belong to his own age group.

It was chubby, short, and the skin was so good it shimmered with a layer of oil, leaving no doubt as to how elastic such skin would be.

This extremely healthy, even perfect state would not appear on a beast of burden suffering from long-term sleep deprivation; not to mention the proportions, which did not belong to an adult.

So, was he reincarnated? Transmigrated? Or had he borrowed a corpse to return to life?

But there were no extra memories in his brain. He couldn't even figure out his current situation.

Judging from the scene outside the viewing window, it was neither the bizarre quantum world nor the strange and magnificent metaphysical world; the most likely scenario was that he was somewhere in outer space.

It was just impossible to deduce where he was. After all, if this really were outer space, the universe was so vast that it wouldn't be surprising no matter which corner he was in.

He watched another massive celestial body drift past the viewing window. From the brown and white stripes and the large red spot like an eye, this thing looked quite like the pictures of Jupiter in his memory.

So, was there a high probability he was in the solar system?

And the planet he saw earlier with rings might be Saturn?

From this sequence, the direction he was flying in was very likely pointing straight at Earth... or the Sun!

Well. Where he could see, there were no devices like a rudder or controller, and he didn't even see a control panel. So there was no way to deduce whether the thing he was sitting in could be controlled, or if it was being captured and attracted by the Sun's gravity.

If it were the former, he might be going home. If it were the latter, he was going back to his hometown to sell salted duck eggs...

Dying just after transmigrating? No, perhaps this was the sci-fi version of the Naihe Bridge.

In any case, as a qualified beast of burden, he gave up on thinking of ways to save himself. Anyway, the coffin lid hadn't been nailed shut yet; worrying about these things now was redundant.

Moreover, he had already confirmed the environment he was in; there were no obvious control devices, nor was there much room for activity. He seemed very much like he was in a space vehicle, like an escape pod.

The exterior was unknown. But as for the internal environment, there was no sense of technology to speak of.

...Could this be like in some sci-fi movies, where after people die, they are put into a coffin and thrown into outer space? Comparing it to the sea burials of the Age of Discovery, was this a space burial for the space age?

Because the original owner of this body died, did he have the chance to occupy the magpie's nest?

...Or was he actually a Saiyan, stuffed into a single-person space pod and dropped onto a backward planet, responsible for conquering it?

Unfortunately, he couldn't feel whether he had a tail, and because his body was tightly wrapped by the seat, he couldn't reach out to touch it to confirm.

Speaking of which, thinking of Akira Toriyama's setting for the protagonist in Dragon Ball, he couldn't help but want to complain.

Although belittling Earth's military power and thinking that sending a baby over could conquer it was meant to highlight the gap between Saiyans and Earth.

But sending a baby who didn't even understand the situation—would he know he was there to conquer? Maybe a pacifier would have done the trick.

Although the protagonist in the Dragon Ball manga wasn't handled with a pacifier, it was about the same.

This kind of story setting full of plot holes could only be a product of that era. If it had been ten years later, or in the new century, there wouldn't be such a setting of sending a baby to conquer the world.

It was like a Demon King sending his daughter to deal with a hero's party. This kind of behavior of delivering oneself to the enemy was simply like raising a flag for the daughter to turn around and assassinate him.

Amidst the full complaints, the person in the escape pod (or small spaceship) saw half of a water-blue planet through the viewing window, and it was getting bigger and bigger.

The reason he said half was because the other half was black, on the side facing away from the Sun. However, from the black half, one could see large-scale artificial lights, making the black not so black.

Hmm, it seems he had entered the technological age. At least he didn't have to worry about facing primitive people who drank blood and ate raw meat after landing, or ancient people from the Middle Ages who would tie people to a stake for burning at the drop of a hat.

Circling the Earth once, many high-orbit artificial satellites flashed by along the way. Amidst the endless complaints, the person in the cabin forgot to explore his roots and just watched the small spaceship he was sitting in plunge into the atmosphere.

The sparks caused by intense friction and burning made the scene outside the viewing window turn bright red, but the environment inside the cabin remained comfortable. Even the bumping sensation often depicted in movies seemed to be non-existent; of course, he couldn't feel any G-force changes either.

Just from this point, one could tell that the thing he was riding had a higher level of technology than the Earth he had lived on. Otherwise, he, who hadn't put on a spacesuit, would have been tortured to death.

But such a thought was immediately thrown to the back of his mind. Because the landing method of this thing was not the high-end and stable vertical takeoff and landing; it found a piece of land and plowed right through it!

...Well, this landing method was very rough, but the lack of any difference in the internal environment made it hard to evaluate whether the technology level of this thing was high or low.

Or rather, one of his thoughts was correct. This thing was not a spaceship at all, but an escape pod or a space coffin of some kind.

Then what kind of thing was he?

Hmm, he wouldn't see a classic scene in a moment, would he? A group of monkeys with obvious evolutionary characteristics dragging him out of this space coffin!

Had he returned to the future Earth of Planet of the Apes, where humanity had fallen?

However, fortunately, that imagined worrying scene did not appear.

Without waiting too long, a group of modern people came, opened the cabin door, and dragged him out of this inexplicable space vehicle.

The landing site was in the middle of the night, in a place where heavy snow was falling. A group of big men wearing thick, snow-white coats were speaking Russian.

He just wanted to say a "Bonjour, comrade" to greet them, but what came out was the crying of a baby.

Although he was crying, having broken free from the wrapping of the soft cushions, he finally confirmed his situation. He, with his short limbs, was not some stunted dwarf; he was fundamentally a baby.

Then, this hellish weather was so cold...