The first thing Grahilo didn't expect to wake up to was in darkness or somehow darkness. Maybe the best thing to say that he was in a lot of darkness and it was super quiet. He couldn't see anything and he couldn't hear anything. The weird thing Grahilo noticed he was not scared and there was no scary intent that he could sense. You know, that scary intent that you feel when you know you know you will die, or the scary feeling that something terrible was going to happen. He couldn't sense it but why was it so freaking dark.
"Where the hell am I?" Grahilo said to himself. This was bad, was this a birthday surprise gone wrong. He knew the next day was his birthday and he had stayed up last night until it was almost 11:00 before going to bed and was anticipating for the next day. Maybe his family and friends carried him to whatever this place is so that they can surprise him....? Yeah, probably not. No smart person will put him here and notice he is awake and fucking say nothing!
He took a deep breath before trying to get up.The moment he pushed himself upright, clang! His head struck a low-hanging pipe jutting from the ceiling, the sound echoing like a bell across the chamber.
"Ow—gah!" he staggered backward, clutching his forehead. Pain bloomed across his brow like fire chasing shadows.
A soft laugh broke the silence. Not cruel—just amused.
"Ha! Yep, that's gonna hurt."
Grahilo spun around in fear. "Who the fuck is that! Show your fucking self!" He didn't know who it was. He had never heard that voice in his entire life. Then she emerged. She had a face that danced between mischief and mystery—sharp green eyes that flicked like switches from curious to calculating, framed by streaks of copper hair pulled into uneven braids. Her skin was flecked with oil and soot, and a tiny scar—almost artistic—curved beside her lip. She wore a toolbelt heavy with odd gadgets: wires twisted into shapes, a cracked lens, what looked suspiciously like a fossilized beetle claw.
Grahilo looked at her in curiosity. "Did she just finish fixing something?" He thought. "Maybe she is one of my friend's girlfriend."
"You always wake up like that?" she teased, tapping her temple as if to demonstrate proper head awareness. "First rule of riding inside a giant insect machine: duck."
Grahilo nodded subconsciously, what she said not registering in his head. Then it registered.
"Did you just fucking say insect machine?" He asked, incredulous at what she just said.
The girl just looked at him like she was talking to someone stupid. "Man," She said. "Hitting your head must have scrambled your brain. Yeah, I did say that."
Grahilo crouched in shock. "How," He thought. "What is my family thinking! They couldn't have agreed to this. Where they taking me somewhere. Maybe understandable but not in a fucking machine."
He took a deep breath. This was insane. He hadn't even heand of insect machines. Was he in coma when they brought it out?
"Another thing." The girl said. "What is fuck and fucking? Never heard of it before."
Grahilo just gaped at the girl and could only think one thing:This bitch is crazy!
She crawled up to him and and when she was in front of Grahilo, she extended a hand, confident and unbothered by the chaos surrounding them.
"Name's Lysca," she said, flashing a grin. "Pilot, tinkerer, occasional headache fixer. I've been in this beetle longer than you've been conscious, so... welcome to the belly."
She tilted her head. "You're lucky I heard you groan. This place eats quiet boys for breakfast."
Grahilo blinked at her. Questions swirled behind his eyes, but before he could speak, she tossed him a small packet of something cold and rubbery. "Here. Press that on the bump. And relax. This beetle runs smoother when you don't fight it."
Grahilo pressed the packet to his head and winced. "This is a beetle." He wondered. "This shit just turned more crazy."
Grahilo tilted his head, the cold pack still pressed against his forehead, and studied Lysca for a moment.
"So..." he said slowly, cracking a half-grin, "do you have a boyfriend who's going to crawl out of a vent and punch me for talking to you?"
Lysca's eyes widened for a split second, and a warm blush flushed across her cheeks, softening the soot-smudged edges of her face.
"What? Pfft—no!" she laughed, brushing her braid behind her ear a bit too fast. "I'm not thinking about about that now and this is not the right time to think about it."
Grahilo thought for a moment. He had asked that question to confirm if she was dating one of his friends but that was a big fat no. What was going on?
Grahilo's breath hitched. The walls of the beetle hummed with a low, rhythmic pulse, but his heart was beating louder. "So… what country is this?" he asked, eyes still wide from the throb in his chest.
Lysca leaned against a strut and studied him for a moment, her crooked smile gone. "Scarragon," she said simply. The word slid across the air like a blade wrapped in silk.
He swallowed. "Scarragon…" It didn't ring any bell in his memory—not from geography lessons, games, or fiction. And then it clicked—this wasn't fiction anymore.
He shot up from his seat, ignoring the lingering pain in his forehead. "I really did transmigrate," he whispered, voice almost stolen by the whirring gears. "Like in those webnovels… but I'm the only one."
"Webnovels? What is that?" Lysca asked, confused.
Grahilo sat down in shock. He had fucking transmigrated! Like the stories he had read in webnovel stories. How had his life spoilt like this! It was just yesterday, yesterday! He was reading the interesting story. "From Bullets To Billions" by JKS MANGA . He was laughing at how the mc was suffering insult from his family just to figure out what was going on. And now he had transmigrated and he definitely knew he was not going back.
He was furious. Why was fate treating him like this. He hadn't died, right? Wait, did he?
Grahilo groaned into his hands. He had died. He must have gone to bed and died in his sleep. The gods must be crazy. That was a stupid way to die. He definitely wished he had died a honourable death.
As the beetle rumbled to a slow crawl, the walls around Grahilo began to shift—panels folding open, revealing narrow corridors bathed in flickering blue light. Drawn by instinct, he stepped into one and found himself in a chamber he hadn't seen before.
They were there. Huddled in corners. Silent.
Teenagers, maybe a dozen of them. Just like him—roughly his age—but nothing about them was familiar. Their clothes were torn, smeared with soot and grime, their faces pale and streaked with streaks of dried sweat and fear. Some gripped blankets too thin to offer real warmth, others curled into themselves like they were trying to disappear.
They were shivering. Scared.
One boy glanced up as Grahilo entered, eyes wide and hollow, like he hadn't slept in days. A girl rocked back and forth near the engine wall, whispering something in a language Grahilo didn't understand.
The air was heavy. Like guilt. Like stories nobody wanted to tell.
Grahilo stepped forward cautiously. "Are they… passengers?" he whispered to Lysca, who'd followed him.
She folded her arms. "Refugees. Survivors. The beetle finds them, too. But they're from here. So as you."
Grahilo's voice trembled as he looked at the scared, grimy faces around him. "Lysca… what happened? Why are they like this?"
Lysca's expression hardened. She stepped close, her voice dropping low. "It started after the Jiporugi War broke out. Everything changed."
She walked past the huddled teens, brushing her fingers against the walls like remembering made them tremble. "Scarragon was losing ground. So they started transporting us—to Kirigaar. It's a stronghold city... They want us to become defense soldiers. Weapons."
Grahilo felt the chill in the air, deeper now.
"But before this beetle reached the gates," she continued, "we were ambushed. A swarm of Jiporugis burst from the crater fields—they're faster, smarter now. The teens fought back... they used their abilities."
Grahilo's breath caught. "Abilities?"
She nodded. "Elemental manipulation. Kinetic force. One girl even froze half the ceiling with her scream."
He looked down at his own hands. They felt ordinary. Heavy.
"You," Lysca said softly, "you didn't show anything. No burst. No spark."
He flinched, recalling the moment—the chaos, the girl with tears in her eyes, him running to shield her.
"You tried to save her. You got knocked out cold."
She gave him a long look. "And somehow, we brought you back. Alive."
Grahilo sat back in silence. It was as if the story had made him remember this body's memories. He remembered the first attack when Jiporugis attacked. He remembered the Awakening Test this body had gone through and how he failed to awaken.
He sat back with a sigh. From his memories, this body didn't know his parents and was an orphan before the attack.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes in frustration.
"Great." He muttered to himself. "The one trope of webnovels: the weak one. And that is what I transmigrated at."
Grahilo passed the huddled teenagers in the dim corridor, the murmurs began—not loud, but pointed enough to slice through the quiet like needles.
"Why's he even here?" one boy muttered, pulling his threadbare coat tighter.
"He didn't help when the Jiporugis attacked," said a girl with streaked silver hair. "Didn't blast. Didn't shield. Just… froze."
Another voice whispered bitterly, "We dragged him in. Wasted energy. He's a liability."
Grahilo's steps faltered. The words echoed louder inside his chest than they did in the corridor. He could feel the weight of their stares—even if none of them dared meet his eyes directly. A shiver ran down his spine, but it wasn't fear. It was something colder: doubt.
"Great." He thought. "I knew this was going to happen."
The beetle lurched to a slow, grinding halt, its armored legs burrowing into scorched soil like anchors. The hum of its core lowered to a tense murmur, as if bracing for what lay beyond.
Lysca turned to Grahilo, her hand gripping a lever etched with glowing lines. Her expression was unreadable—but there was a flicker in her eyes. Not relief. Something closer to dread.
"We've arrived," she said, voice taut. "Kirigaar."
Grahilo peered through the narrow viewport. Beyond the curve of the beetle's shell, massive iron gates stretched into the sky like shattered fangs. Towers loomed behind them, tangled in webs of blinking machinery and wind-born banners. Guards with gleaming armor marched like shadows across rusted platforms.
But something was wrong.
The gates weren't opening.
Lysca's fingers twitched at the console. "That's... not protocol," she whispered.
Then, as if pulled by an unseen thread, every teenager in the chamber fell silent. One by one, they turned toward the entrance hatch, their bodies stiff, eyes locked—wide with fear.
From outside came a sound.
A knock.
No.
A claw.
Scraping.
Grahilo's heart jumped. Lysca stared at the hatch, her voice barely audible now.
"They found us…"